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I have refrained from commenting much on the several interesting threads that emerged on this list in particular in the period from when all the votes had been declared until the declaration of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which is being spun by its leaders as 'Lib-Con', but known to some opponents as 'Con-Dem Nation' and various other things (one Labour MP suggested, quite acutely, that the most damaging thing is simply to keep calling it a 'Tory' government). Anyhow, my reticence on here is because of having been prepared in this election (in a way I was not prepared to do in the elections of 2001 and 2005, or even 1997) to actively urge support for Labour, and furthermore to be prepared to continue this, and campaign, after this election. This is not entirely inconsistent with the SWP position (as a lapsed SWP member - my various reasons for not renewing membership are for another occasion or post) which essentially endorsed 'lesser evilism' on this occasion, though urging support for TUSC candidates where they existed. I remain a little sceptical about the latter (but it wasn't an issue at least in my own constituency, where my local MP is and was Jeremy Corbyn) - at least in cases where it would have been likely split the vote and enable either a Tory or Lib Dem to win the seat. In this election every seat really did count; supporting Respect candidates in 2005 was another matter. I'm sure this will be a red rag to many members; it is not a decision I took lightly, and probably requires some justification. I'd like to attempt to do so as well as offering some wider observations on the election: First of all, I do believe that 'lesser evilism' should not be dismissed out-of-hand. As Richard Seymour and others have pointed out on this list, when faced with actual parliamentary elections which will have wide-reaching consequences, to simply abdicate entirely from the process neither serves any productive purpose (other than preserving some sense of personal purity which I find facile) nor precludes the possibility of other meaningful socialist organisation and action at other times. I have no illusions whatsoever that the Labour Party is a socialist party, nor ever really has been. However, there are a few non-revolutionary socialists who remain affiliated to the party (including Corbyn). Under Blair, Labour went further in the direction of unfettered neo-liberalism than at any earlier time in its post-1945 history, and remains to the right even of numerous continental European Christian Democratic parties at least in terms of redistributive taxation. However, nuances still matter, certainly in terms of their policy implications and effect upon working people, and this election above all in the last two decades in the UK could (and now almost certainly will) usher in the most devastating consequences for the welfare state, the health service, education and much else (the latest blog post by Seymour - http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-coalition-means.html - is very good on this). And I would even extend these nuances to cover the difference between Labour under Blair and Labour under Brown: in no sense can the latter be dissociated from the former, but the latter has undertaken certain actions including the nationalisation of Northern Rock or even the intervention on behalf of the banks. These, whilst undoubtedly serving the interests of capital, do betoken something of an ideological shift in terms of non-interventionist market ideology (there is of course the argument that these shifts constitute a regressive manoeuvre, consolidating a system for which the 'free market' is nothing more than an ideological facade for a deeply regulated and jealously guarded state machinery for capitalism - right at the moment I'm still working through this for myself). More to the point, one can identify progressive policies - in terms of spending on education, health, etc., where there has indeed been a palpable difference compared to pre-1997 - that did occur throughout the New Labour period, as well as the fact that the party retained an umbilical relationship with organized Labour. These actions were, as I interpret it, possible only because of circle around Brown which co-existed together with the mixture of nationalism and toadying to US imperialism to be associated with Blair (from which of course Brown and his cohort can never be wholly dissociated). I certainly don't want to make too much of this, less still make this an issue of personalities within 'high politics'; just giving one reading of what may be minor, but nonetheless not insignificant, details. The 'organic' relationship between Labour and the organized working class [see below for some further questions on this] is a reality in ways which make it very different from the US Democrats, as has been amply argued by others. If this disappears entirely (as I believe Blair would have liked - and it is crucial to observe what are the plans of the next Labour leader in this respect), then there is absolutely no justification whatsoever for supporting the party. But however reactionary the leadership may be, this remains a fundamental difference from either of the other two mainstream parties (just for the sake of brevity I'm not filtering the various parties exclusive to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland into the equation here). Where I can't agree with Seymour is in the claim that the Liberals* are not a party of the ruling class; or at least I think the analysis needs some further nuance. Just to quote: [*Liberals as short hand for Liberal Democrats; borne from the merger of the Social Democratic Party (a breakaway faction from Labour in the early 1980s) and the old Liberal party.] Seymour: 'The Tories are a political party whose class basis is dually the ruling class and the petit-bourgeoisie - but particularly the ruling class, who basically dominate all internal decision-making regardless of the will of the constituency membership. The Labour Party is a party rooted in the working class, and the organised working class has a say in determining the policies and personnel of the party. The Liberals are rooted in the professional and managerial salariat, a segment of the middle class, though it assembles a cross-class alliance at the polls. That's the sociological basis of the three parties. ' I don't see how the comments made about the Liberals could not to some extent also be made about the Tories, and vice versa. The difference is one of balance, which may be about to change further following the outcome of the election. If we look at the demographics of each party's core vote, there is definitely a concentration of industrial, urban, relatively low income workers for Labour, and higher income for the Tories, with the Liberals falling somewhere in between in urban areas, but also garnering support (instead of Labour) in the few areas of the UK that have never undergone such intensive industrialisation - in particular the South West and some parts of Scotland. There is some fluidity in these demographics - made much of in particular by the Liberals, who like to present themselves as a party standing outside of class allegiances despite all evidence to the contrary - but overall this picture holds and has continued to do so for some decades. Various shifts in the voting patterns of middle-income workers between all of the three mainstream parties account for most of the differences in electoral results under the particular constituency-based first-past-the-post system that operates. In terms of the *funding* of the three main parties, there is a clear dominance of big business supporting the Tories with the unions supporting Labour; Labour have gained some prominent business supporters, especially under Blair, but as pointed out elsewhere, this has never yet supplanted or marginalised union funding. The Liberals have only a fraction of the business funding that the Tories gain - this is, I believe, a major reason why they have never since the early- to mid-20th century been able to move beyond the 'third party' role. Now the paragraph above, with little mention of class, might read like an analysis in terms of the categories of bourgeois capitalist democracy rather than a Marxist appraisal. To some extent this is true; I am laying it out in this fashion not in any sense to endorse such an extremely limited political spectrum but because I want to ask others here for their thoughts on how certain categories might best be applied in the context of such an electoral system: 1. Where exactly is the line to be drawn between the petit-bourgeoisie and the 'professional and managerial salariat'? Is it that meaningful, any longer, to make a distinction between a certain amount of inherited capital, and that which might be accumulated relatively quickly by those in the second category (especially if working in such fields as financial services)? 2. In an economy such as Britain where unionised Labour accounts for a very much less significant section of the workforce than in, say, the 1970s, (50% in 1975, 55% in 1979, only around 29% by 2006), how do we now measure the extent to which a party can be 'rooted in the working class'? Representation of organised labour now seems an insufficient criteria. 3. How informative is it to talk about the Tories particularly in terms of the ruling classes, if presumably the latter correspond to the classical Marxist category of the bourgeoisie? Seymour rightly filters the petit-bourgeoisie into the equation as well, but this still to me seems insufficient. Here (with a nod towards Marxist historian Tim Mason's concept of the 'primacy of politics') ideological affiliation seems to me also to be of crucial importance in terms of understanding the range of the Tories' support; 36.1% of a 65.1% turnout (and it has been significantly higher in the past) seems an awful lot of people to be encompassed by those categories; and the party is democratic, at least to an extent, and cannot ignore the ideologies of its membership for that reason. There is no doubt that if there is a party representing the ruling classes/petit-bourgeoisie, it is the Tories (for now - see below), but the strength of their support forces questions of consciousness amongst members of the professional/managerial salariat, and even to sectors of lower income social strata than those as well. I am not in any sense looking to disavow classical Marxist categories of class, but do worry that a society as politically reactionary as the UK needs to be understood as much in terms of false consciousness (very important in terms of the effect of the pronounced right-wing shift of much of the media on this occasion) and/or in terms of an extension of Lenin's ideas on reactionary wing of the proletariat who benefit from the profits of imperialism. How can some class-based analysis of a political process in a single country remain feasible (if indeed it can) in the context of global capitalism (including its implications in terms of migration such as are engendered by the desire of capital to minimise labour costs- though I realise to raise this issue could provoke a bad flame war here)? I'm just throwing up these questions for which I'm far from having arrived at even a provisional answer of my own. In terms of the outcome of the election and the ensuing coalition negotiations, the implications are still being processed by bourgeois commentators, let alone Marxists. The real face of Liberalism - a concept rarely defined with any rigour in mainstream British political discourse - has shown itself, but the process has been strange. In 2005, with the Iraq War still fresh in voters' minds, the alignment with US imperialism as stark as it has ever been, and many of the oppressive attacks on civil liberties already in place (some were extended in the next parliament, and after Brown became PM, most notoriously the 2008 Counter-Terrorism Act with its provision for 42-day internment, but even this did not go as far as Blair's (failed) attempts to introduce a 90-day limit), nonetheless Labour still won relatively comfortably. Many Liberal supporters made much of these issues during the 2010 campaign; however the Liberal vote increased by less than 1%. This fact is significant in terms of the Liberals' positioning of themselves as some sort of 'left of Labour' alternative, whilst wholly masking the real transformations of the party in the previous few years under the new leadership. To cut a long story short, this leadership basically jettisoned most of the social democratic elements of policy in favour of a hard-line neo-liberalism pioneered by the so-called 'Orange Bookers' - in many ways very similar to that of the Tories, certainly to the right of Brown's Labour, and with a team consisting of at least one individual (David Laws, now Chief Secretary to the Treasury) who had advocated the replacement of the National Health Service with an insurance scheme. These New Liberals combined rhetoric of civil libertarianism (not necessarily to their benefit, as suggested above - also some of their express policies on immigration likely lost them potential votes) with economic neo-liberalism. This new alignment was almost wholly ignored by the media in the election and years leading up to it, and it took me somewhat by surprise. At the same time the particular manifestations of British class society raised their ugly head throughout the campaign, which was quite heavily dominated by three televised leaders' debates (for the first time in a British General Election), and a right-wing media making a huge fetish of the supposed charm and charisma of both Liberal and Tory leaders - both the worst types of products of the most exclusive private schools in the country - which was culturally contrasted (in terms of demeanour, modes of communication, etc.) with a supposed uncouthness and unrefinedness of Brown, in terms very much reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's snobbish remarks on James Joyce and others. Neither Cameron or Clegg are even sophisticated or particularly coherent ideologues, but this fact in itself benefited them within a presidential-style campaign. This might all sound a bit trivial and parochial, as well as reflecting a casual and ad hoc notion of class rather than a Marxist one, but I believe it is relevant to the cultural dimension of such an election: just as such grotesque phenomena as idolisation of the monarchy by sections of the working classes require analysis, so I believe we need to consider the spectacular impact that the cultural trappings and affectations of privilege (very different to those of Thatcher, say) can have upon consciousness, especially when glorified by the media. After the results were counted up, it quickly became apparent (as to some more shrewd observers during the campaign) that the Liberals' sympathies lay very much more with the Tories than Labour. Various revelations which have emerged over the last few days have made clear that Liberal negotiations with Labour amounted to little more than window-dressing on the former's part, as well as a means of raising the bargaining stakes with the Tories. With hindsight, I can see that a Lib-Lab pact was not likely to be feasible; the numbers did not add up without the support of other small parties, the coalition was sure to be mercilessly pilloried by the Tory-supporting media, including the BBC (the ground was prepared for this with talk of Brown 'squatting' in Downing Street when he was simply acting according to constitutional precedent); perhaps most importantly, such a pact would likely require Labour to minimise its remaining connections to organised labour, to make them a Liberal party in all but name. This would have been a disaster in terms of marginalising and eliminating even a social democratic opposition. By contrast, it was not difficult for the Tories and Liberals to arrive at an agreement, with the latter quickly pushing under the carpet what had been presented as key demands in terms of Trident, nuclear power, Afghanistan, meaningful electoral reform and so on (and the new Tory Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has already been making noises suggesting that there might be UK support for a US attack on Iran, with no dissenting noises from the Liberal coalition partners). I doubt many of the civil libertarian demands will go very far, either. And just in terms of the public face of the coalition, it represents a political class more dominated by the sons (almost always sons) of privilege more than ever before, as do many other aspects of public life, a situation consolidated by various unctuous pieces in the media basically amounting to the old 'born to rule' argument; the implications of this for the social marginalisation of many other strata of society are very severe. One further observation on this latter issue: I do believe entrenchment of class in British society has been getting worse rather than better over the last 20 years, and this has been crucial in bringing about a new alignment of middle-class liberals away from social democracy. I would not find it too far-fetched to believe that the disdain for Thatcher - and many others in her party - from this body of people during the 1980s and beyond was predicated primarily in terms of her culturally representing what was perceived as a form of lower middle-class brutalism in comparison to the more well spun and packaged upper- and upper-middle-class suavity with which they were comfortable, rather than because of her aggressive neo-liberal policies. Cameron and the Tories have learned from the success of Blair in opposing this type of image, and have been relatively successful in marginalising those within their own party who continued to present such a face. In one sense, this does not affect issues of class and economic interests as enacted within policies and actions, though it is certainly tied to perceptions of class as they are embodied in the politicians themselves. I remain unsure as to how the ConDem coalition may pan out: whilst there are already clear indications of a significant falling away of support from the Liberals towards Labour, I have been surprised and deeply disappointed over the last few days to encounter a large number of active Liberal campaigners and members - including many who played the 'left of Labour' card and presented themselves as a radical alternative - now miraculously transformed into aggressive cheerleaders for the coalition and toadying supporters of their Tory partners. But even if various constitutional wranglings currently being worked out go ahead, and there can be no other election for five years, I believe this arrangement will entail either the Liberals essentially being swallowed up by the Tories (they are barely distinguishable from a relatively small not not insignificant libertarian faction that already exists within the party) or the Liberals and Tories coming to parallel the Democrats and Republicans in the US, with the Tories only distinguishable by a continuing streak of xenophobia and old-style nationalism combined with various forms of conservative moralism and the like. The total core vote for both may be unlikely to increase significantly in terms of numbers; whether Labour, and any form of social democracy, has a future in the UK depends upon whether there is sufficient of a fall-off of the Liberal vote (and possibly some of the Tory vote as well which has previously gone to Labour) such as becomes distributed amongst Labour or other leftist parties. If not, the future looks extremely bleak, with a hard-line neo-liberal faction dominating British politics for the foreseeable future. It had been assumed by many mainstream commentators that in the event of a hung parliament like this one, or in a proportional electoral system where such outcomes would likely be more frequent, the Liberals would come together with Labour and the Tories would be marginalised, but suddenly this looks very much less likely. All that remains to be defended from what exists (in my view) is the continued participation of a party with a fundamental structural link to workers (though again this is a term which needs more precise definition) and their organisations. In the far-from-edifying world of British Realpolitik in non-revolutionary times, this may hardly be an inspiring goal, but the alternative would be considerably worse (and this will become very quickly apparent as the ConDem coalition gets to work). All that can be done to exacerbate splits and tensions in the coalition is worthwhile - happily the media, simply wanting juicy stories, are likely to do this anyhow. I do believe that even those most opposed to the worst aspects of the Blair-Brown Labour Party in government should nonetheless fear the party's disintegration as a whole, at least when there is not yet any real sign of a developed and extensive worker's movement ready to take its place. I'm not sure how coherent all of the above is, and it's certainly far from truly rigorous; I'm simply looking to see how it might be possible to arrive at a Marxist analysis of the 2010 British General Election which does not trivialise the distinction between neo-liberalism and social democracy (maintaining this distinction is intrinsic to the type of Marxism to which I subscribe) and also filters issues of consciousness and ideology *as well as* class determinism into the picture. I would be extremely interested in all other posters' thoughts. Solidarity, Ian ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
