What Kind of Socialism Is This?
It’s high time this blog was more
forthcoming on the position from which it comments, often satirically, from
time to time.
This is more easily said than done.
For there is very often a tension, even a (seeming) contradiction, between past
and present, between present and future, and between future and future-future.
To give a simple example, Jim was a
pacifist socialist in the 1930s till Franco came along in Spain to fight and
destroy the Spanish Republic. So Jim - feeling that a stand was necessary to
save the world from fascism, and it had to be here - joined the International
Brigade on the side of the Loyalists, fought, and lost. His experiences
toughened him, so he was opposed to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 because he’d
spent some years fighting Nazis and fascists even though many hoped this pact would
preserve peace. And then, of course, Jim joined up again, this time to fight
Nazis (and Japanese imperialists) for the next five years. But by the end of
that time and the creation of the United Nations, Jim felt a new era of peace
might be upon us, and he returned to something of his old pacifism, albeit not
entirely without some caveats. Was Jim inconsistent, or was he at any rate true
to himself and his feelings throughout these changes of attitude?
To start with the (immediate) past and
present, we here believe it is the duty of satirists – and thus this blog - to
point out the various fantasies and self-serving propositions, printed usually
in the Right-wing Press, that cannot escape ridicule and at least implied
condemnation. This is very short-term and since most of those we criticise are
pre-eminently of the British Conservative Party and the New Labour Blairites
who shadow it, it will be assumed that we are therefore with Jeremy Corbyn and
the Labour Left. In current politics, we certainly are. Labour is presently a
sort of Dyno-Rod to flush the drains of Conservatism, thus getting rid of the
sludge in order to face the realities of today and tomorrow. And we sympathise
with millions who will vote Labour to save their jobs or in one way or another
get their lives back. But though emotionally we warm more towards Corbyn and
the Labour platform than we do towards a now-absurd party of inequality, the
party for the wealthy 1%, snobbery and scarcely-concealed racist bigotry
(what’s not to like here?), we are at the same time under no illusions about
what Labour in power may actually achieve, whatever the size of the electoral
backing, if elected it is. Against the policies now being put forward by John
McDonnell, under Labour there will be a ‘capital strike’ the likes of which
were never known by Attlee or even Wilson. Investment could and probably will
flow out of this country like water, a country already vulnerable in the light
of having left the EU on whatever terms. This is how capital works in defending
what it failed to defend when it lost any election. It votes with its money –
ironically, just as workers vote with their feet when they go on strike. Thus
the Labour government, so previously full of hope, finds itself struggling,
like the present-day Syriza in Greece, to maintain some semblance of socialism
as it eliminates large parts of its programme to suit the capitalists. It is
possible that Corbyn/McDonnell will be tolerated so long as they can ‘hold the
fort’ for capital against an alienated population, thus finding themselves doing
capital’s political job for it, which politicians always do anyhow. But capital
will be satisfied with nothing less than total dominance and will sooner or
later jettison what’s left of a Labour government when a groomed and heavily
financed Right-winger comes along to entirely reverse the whole Corbyn project
and bring back a ‘natural party of government’. Such will be the feeling of
loss among so many that widespread cynicism about any kind of socialism at all
will be prevalent, perhaps for more decades.
In fact, it seems that social
democracy (Labour) is doomed, and that is because the capitalist system itself
is in crisis. Social democracy worked fine when there was plenty of money in
the kitty to be shared around a bit – as bargained for by social democrats with
the capitalists if all this was absolutely necessary, but denied social
democracy’s ‘useful idiocy’ a cash-drunk capital will thus be unopposed,
apparently supreme and everlasting – and so widening even more the gap between
worker aspirations and capital’s maximal profits into a chasm. In other words,
social democracy has to die before socialism can live.
Because one outcome of a chasm truly
unbreachable by means of capitalist/bourgeois type politics will necessarily
have to be socialism: that is, socialism of the popular will throughout the
world, for the popular will is socialism.
Socialism may be inevitable in these terms, but the nearer we are on the side
of history the harder we will have to fight for it. So it’s not going to be a
pushover even if capitalism as a polity is wholly dead. Commandeering the
apparatus and advanced technology will mean socialism can be a reality where it
could never be in early Soviet Russia or any other poverty-stricken and
primitive country.
This is largely the position of the
Socialist Party of Great Britain, in being and intact since 1904, a part of
world socialism in its alliance with its ‘companion parties’ all around the
globe. In other words, no socialism actually exists in the world and never has.
For one thing it must be global or it is not possible. Socialism in one country
does not work, not only because of opposition from other countries but also because
the national state as such is a heap of capital and the instruments of its
dominance. Capital and the nation-state must be expropriated and dissolved
together.
All other socialist parties, and
Labour, maintain the illusion that socialism is possible on a
country-by-country basis, generally by allowing at least some capital to
operate. But capital and socialism are inimical, like oil and water, or chalk
and cheese. To have ‘ a little bit’ of capital in a socialist society would be
like saying of a baby born out of wedlock in times gone by (in order to explain
it away) that it was ‘only a small baby’. ‘Only a little bit of capital’ will
not do.
We on this blog are not members of the
SPGB, for two reasons:
- We don’t want to give the impression that this blog is somehow an SPGB ‘front’ – therefore our independence from the party must be clear, and
- We sometimes write of matters that as such are of no particular interest to the SPGB anyhow.
All these
things may constitute contradictions in our approach, but we prefer to think of
them as fateful paradoxes, the kinds of things Jim encountered in a lifetime of
trying to be on the ‘right’ side. Although Hegel’s ‘cunning of reason’ (that
which works behind conscious intentions) may be a myth, what its material
manifestation is on earth will not be done with us for a long time yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment