Ever since the bail-out of the banks the injustice of capitalism has been impossible to deny. The victory of Jeremy Corbyn shows a groundswell of opposition to the massive attacks that European governments of all shades have implemented in the name of ‘austerity’. Students forced to take out life-burdening loans; workers obliged to accept low paid precarious jobs; crumbling health services forced to farm out services to boost profits of private companies; cuts to unemployment and welfare benefits with claimants being tarnished as ‘scroungers’ while facing humiliation to avoid being ‘sanctioned’… The list is endless.
Elsewhere in Europe, in Spain, Greece and Italy, the growth of populist parties has channelled working class anger and given false hope that the answer is a more democratic capitalism. In Britain though, the gradual, sector by sector attacks from a coalition government proclaiming that “we are all in this together” combined with a popular press targeting ‘benefit scroungers’ which sets worker against worker, have meant a more fractured resistance. Single issue campaign groups, isolated local battles, have sprung up in their hundreds and thousands.
It did not take long before that infinitely flexible, tried and tested weapon for diverting working class discontent onto safe ground for capitalism – the left wing of the ‘Labour movement’ – stepped in. When this happens genuine grass roots struggles are directed towards a sometimes hidden, sometimes clear left Labour agenda. The unions, particularly Unite and Unison have created paid full-time ‘campaigner’ posts in order to stretch their tentacles outside of the workplace and ensure they have a prime role in local protest actions.
At least one union, Unite, offers £5 to anyone who can recruit a new member for the union. These prominent public sector unions have also notoriously been responsible for energy-sapping sectional ‘days of action’ and A to B marches which drained any confidence workers might have in their power to fight back as a unified class force. Instead, behind the scenes, these unions were working for a revival of an old-style, pre-Blair, pro-Keynesian Labour left. They were prepared to back whoever emerged as the Left candidate in the Labour leadership election.
A Saviour for Capitalist Democracy?
On the more strictly political level, a common thread running through the left is the need for greater democracy. They might talk about greedy bankers, but they are not talking about getting rid of parliament and overthrowing capitalism in favour of the direct democracy of workers’ assemblies. This is all too utopian for them. They see the sclerosis of parliamentary democracy (12 million people did not vote in the general election) and imagine that with a more responsive, caring, return to something like (mythical) old Labour there can also be a return to something like the heady days of full employment, a cradle to grave NHS and welfare system … as if after forty years of deepening crisis for world capitalism returning to the post-war boom was a policy option. Groupings like Counterfire and the People’s Assemblies are heavily involved in the Labour Party left. Since they also overlap with the Stop the War Coalition, chaired until now by Jeremy Corbyn, this explains their backing for Corbyn as left Labour leadership candidate when Ed Miliband abruptly threw in the towel after Labour’s election defeat.
Of course, this doesn’t explain how Corbyn came to be the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. Inside the Labour Party there have always been left-wing factions calling for programmes based on state ownership and intervention. During the ‘70s and early ‘80s they were prominent in Labour Councils like Lambeth, Islington, Greater London and Liverpool, with leaders such as Ken Livingstone advocating “left-wing” policies. One of the high points was when Tony Benn came close to being elected as Deputy Leader in ‘81. Meanwhile the ‘free market’ economy appeared based on brutal restructuring and the decimation of the industrial working class.
Following Kinnock’s clampdown on Trotskyist ‘entryism’ and the rise of ‘Blairism’ many of the advocates of state intervention became marginalised or chose to organise outside the Labour Party. This included the many political factions and organisations which emerged from the Trotskyist and Stalinist camp. These have always passed off state intervention in the economy via existing institutions with a left leadership, as a step towards socialism. A remnant of that left wing has continued in the Parliamentary Labour Party organised in and around the Campaign Group. Their presence has always been tolerated by the Labour Party establishment. In fact, they were a vital part of keeping together the Labour Party “broad church” – a way of making sure that generations of emerging activists can be corralled into the Labourist prison, an entirely safe situation for the capitalist system.
And so the New Labour establishment felt no threat by including Corbyn on the list of candidates. He was included at the last minute to give the illusion of choice. (The other three all stood somewhere in the “more of the same” mould, presenting varieties of “Austerity Lite” but all ready to balance the books.) As we say on our website – Corbyn was intended to be an Aunt Sally radical to disappear in the first round or two of voting with a slap on the back and wishes for “Better luck next time”.
Unfortunately for the Labour MPs and functionaries they had no feel for the fact that those eligible to vote did not want more of the same. They failed to see that the unions had responded to the Party’s ending of the block union vote by encouraging their members to sign up for individual Party membership. Furthermore, when the Blairites copied the US primaries and made it easy for individuals to join and cheap to buy a vote (£3), they did not imagine that tens of thousands of people would do just that and vote for the token Left candidate. No doubt most of them want a return to the old Labour policies of state ownership, though many younger people have been attracted by Corbyn’s pledge to end student loans and bring back the student maintenance grant.
If this were the end of the story it would be a bit of a joke seeing the Blairites sidelined with egg on their faces. But the truth is ‘Corbynism’, is a very real obstacle in the way of the working class developing a serious, unified resistance to all that capitalism throws at them. Grass root struggles are going to be even more turned into recruiting grounds for JC, the new messiah who can perform the miracle of using the capitalist state in the interest of the working class. This, as the worst crisis in the history of global capitalism makes life unliveable for more and more people on the planet. Many new militants are beginning to turn towards Communism. Instead of the need for the working class to overthrow the capitalist state Corbynism provides a dead end alternative. It pretends that state intervention and ownership is socialism. In fact that approach is part of what Communists call state capitalism. The fact that resistance to austerity needs to happen in a wider fight against capitalism is being lost in the sea of Corbyn social democratic confusion.
State Capitalism is Not Socialism
Events in Greece show clearly what it means in reality to support a left wing government. As Syriza held their referendum we wrote:
“Electing a Government while all the capitalist economic, political and state structures remain intact can offer no way forward. Syriza may have given lip service to fighting austerity but in reality it paved the way for the state to attack workers and make them pay for the crisis."
The Corbynite Labour leadership is not in the same exposed position as Syriza, but already Corbyn has backed down on his left-wing symbolism around national Anthems, poppies and kissing parts of the monarch’s anatomy to enter her Privy Council. His long time ally, John McDonnell has had to renounce any association with “unpatriotic” Irish Nationalism. He accepts the need to ‘balance the books’ even if not as rapidly as the Tories. How this squares with Corbynomics – the policy of printing more money for investment in infrastructure and/or ‘people’s quantitative easing’ -– he does not need to explain. As for students’ hopes of a future without a debt load on their shoulders, Corbyn has already indicated he will not abolish student tuition fees. What chance the replacement of loans with maintenance grants?
Yet still the left-wing factions continue to be cheerleaders for the Labour leadership and all the evidence is that they’ll keep on doing so. Whether as members of the Labour Party, as “independent” parties or a mixture of the two, they’re taking the chance to strengthen themselves and recruit. They’ll peddle the myth that a left wing government can use the state to solve the crisis. But this is a lie, and a very dangerous one. The truth is that state capitalism isn’t socialism. Socialism is based on the working class forming its own mass organs of democracy outside of parliament and the state. Socialism can never be possible until the state is overthrown. Part of the Labour Party might be trying to become the acceptable face of capitalism, but this is a dead end and no way forward for workers today.