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 uture historians will look back on the events
of our times and remark on the strange fact that an epoch
so rich in revolutionary movements and upheavals should
have gone so far with the abandonment of revolutionary
politics.
During the last fifteen years the world has been transformed
by movements which 19th century revolutionaries and insurrectionists,
from Buonarotti through to Marx would have recognised as
a part of the landscape of their own times. Old regimes
have outlived their usefulness; economies have ground to
a halt; social crises have paralysed the will of the establishment;
and the working masses have swamped the streets with their
militant demonstrations and desire for change. From the
eastern half of Europe through to southern Africa - and
across to the Far East, which remains convulsed by radical
movements to this very day - revolution remains firmly
on
the agenda.
In every case, serious political commentators acknowledge
the class forces that are at work in the barrios and workplaces
which fuel mass strikes and community-based struggles. From
Gdansk to Seoul working class grievance has provided the dry
tinder of radical social movements; yet in very few cases
has a working class politics been generated capable of dictating
the terms of change. In a rather academic summary of the dilemma
of modern-day class struggle, Erik Olin Wright has written:
"... class structures... constitute the most fundamental
social determinant of limits of possibility for other aspects
of social structure. Class structures constitute the central
organising principles of societies in the sense of shaping
the range of possible variations of the state, ethnic relations,
gender relations etc, and thus historical epochs can best
be identified by their predominant class structures." (Classes,
1987)
In less opaque language, similar sentiments were reproduced
on numerous occasions during last year's one hundred and fifty
year centenary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto,
and on many occasions by right wing opponents of Marx's schema
for international revolutionary class struggle. Capitalism
is a system engendered by conflict between its key constituent
classes; its existence does promote periodic crisis; and there
are permanent barriers to social mobility across class lines,
which will always ensure that the poor remain poor and the
rich, rich. Capitalism thrives on such tensions - and so,
Long Live the Class Struggle!
Politicians against class struggle...
Paradoxically, it is just when the universal character of
class society and class struggle has been accepted by the
academics, historians and the best of the political commentators
that working class politicians have given up on the concept,
and have embraced the 'radical centre', proclaiming the possibility
of social harmony between workers and capitalists. The rejection
of old-style class-conscious politics has been a key part
of the Blair project since its very earliest days. This was
the true symbolic significance of the campaign to erase the
old-style 'the world for the workers' Clause IV from the constitution
of the Party. Calls for mutually beneficial co-operation between
trade unions and employers have subsided over the years into
naked enthusiasm for the thrusting, get-ahead aggression of
entrepreneurial capitalism as against the sluggish, undynamic
public sector. Politics is no longer about struggle over principled
positions: it's about 'networking' and the effective use of
the new gold standard - wondrous bits of information. Whilst
from every other perspective the evidence of class interests,
class action, and class struggle seems plain, from the standpoint
of politics it has vanished into thin air to be replaced by
the insubstantial and apolitical 'project'. What exactly is
going on here?
Blair's class project
Much will be revealed about these matters if we insist on
our right to view Blairism as the class project of our times.
As all students of the power of ideology from Gramsci onwards
will know, the ability to dictate the dominant terms of social
and political discourse is the ability to function as a ruling
class faction. If one group in society struggles to a position
of ascendancy in society and is able to maintain to most people's
satisfaction that 1) it is not ascendant, and 2) that it never
ever struggled to get there, then it has succeeded in covering
the tracks of its own personal class struggle. A joke told
by socialists in the United States makes the point well:
Questioner: What is the secret of the American ruling class?
Reply: I didn't know there was an American ruling class.
Questioner: That's its secret.
Blairism represents, for the time being, a successful attempt
on the part of an elite section of British society to organise
itself behind a credible political programme and to push ahead
with designs for modernising reform in its own class image.
It has not abolished the class struggle, but has waged it
with a remarkable degree of proficiency on its own terms and
in its own way.
The need for the project, perceived by a fraction of British
society transformed in its social and economic standing paradoxically
by the transformations brought about by Thatcherism, can be
simply stated. The change in the fortunes of the different
fragments of British society during the 1980s, brought about
by the shift in the balance between industry and finance capital,
and within finance capital by the sweeping changes in the
way capital markets were run after the City's 'Big Bang',
ushered to the forefront new 'meritocratic' classes as big
time movers and shakers. To some extent grateful to the Thatcher
reforms for the upturn in their fortunes, they nevertheless
could not be easily integrated into a Conservative political
elite which itself was resistant to change in key areas. Amongst
these were its attitudes to the archaic nature of the British
state structure (the over-centralisation of power, the domination
of English interests in the UK state, continued support for
ossified and outmoded institutions like the House of Lords),
and a negative and chauvinistic approach to Europe. Traditional
Conservative attitudes on issues of sex equality were also
an important obstacle to the assimilation of the new elite
- a high proportion of whom were female achievers in the meritocratic
professions of City finance, the law, and medicine.
The emerging elite needed a new vehicle for the advancement
of its modernising political programme, and by the end of
the 1980s there were signs that this would be best achieved
through an alliance with the Labour Party. The signs were
fortuitous in a number of respects. Radicals had long led
this Party from bourgeois social backgrounds and their presence
in its ranks was not considered incongruous. It was also in
an advanced state of turmoil, with its own traditional elites
bogged down in dogfights with critical fractions of the rank-and-file.
In such a situation there were few obstacles to the relatively
rapid advancement of talented individuals who were prepared
to work hard. But perhaps most importantly, the new elite
classes found within, paradoxically, a fragment of the socialist
left's ideological legacy, ideas and propositions they could
closely relate to. This might be summed up as the 'missing
bourgeois revolution' thesis pioneered by New Left thinkers
- most prominently Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn - in the 1960s.
The missing bourgeois revolution
Anderson and Nairn developed a remarkable analysis of British
society over the years which held that the root cause of the
British malaise was the failure of its ruling elites to produce
a genuinely bourgeois transformation of the country's political
culture. Around two hundred years previously, British ruling
class fractions had done a deal which preserved the essentially
aristocratic character of the British state, on a bed rock
of modern commerce and finance. In the modern period, this
failure to produce a thoroughgoing bourgeois revolution had
translated into a national state apparatus that was chronically
ill adapted to handle the pressures of the new ways of life.
Minority nationalities suffered under the yoke of English
imperialism; grassroots pressure for decentralisation away
from Whitehall and Westminster went unheeded; newly emerging
elites, despite their self belief in their own merit, were
unable to negotiate their ways into the real centres of power
and decision-making; and perhaps most crucially, the implications
of the rise of Europe were unable to penetrate the brains
of a traditional ruling class which assumed the Empire/Commonwealth,
the financial power of the City, and the special relationship
with the US represented the UK's permanent claim to be a world
power.
It is now very clear just how this New Left agenda from the
1960s has powerfully influenced the core ideals of those who
adhere to the Blair project. So strongly in fact that it is
reasonable to regard the march to power of the new Labour
meritocracy as th.e very bourgeois revolution, some two hundred
years too late, which Anderson and Nairn lamented for its
absence. Rather than representing the transcendence of class
struggle, new Labour represents little more than one of its
episodes, and its projects can be scrutinised even now for
signs of the tensions and internal conflicts which will inevitably
pull it apart.
New Labour tensions
Some of this looms even now. Current debates about the consequences
of neglect of 'core' supporters; clear signs of unravelling
of the famous private finance initiatives which were to replace
taxation as the basis for funding public enterprise; the rottenness
of foreign policy based on the power of NATO and dirty deals
with other ostensibly modernising national elites, all point
to an inauspicious future for the Blair project in the years
ahead.
The tensions both within the Blair project and in its place
in contemporary society are strongly influenced by the dimension
of class struggle. New Labour is permanently affected by its
situation within - or at least around - the labour movement
- as the current debate about its problematic relationship
with its 'core' supporters is showing. The success of the
project depends, in the short term at least, on modernisation
being achieved in key areas (education, the health service,
transport). Blair is required to struggle for a degree of
autonomy from direct parliamentary accountability and does
this by such strategies as the appointment of high profile
administrators of the Chris Woodhead variety, who clearly
have far greater influence over policy decisions than the
ministers they are supposed to serve, or by breaking up departments
(transport, the environment, local government) into fragments
which cannot be held together by even the most strong-minded
of ministers. All the time he works to secure a social and
economic base for the project that lies outside the democratic
arena altogether - amongst ritually-praised entrepreneurs,
reform-minded magnates, and investors strapped into the project
through commitments to PFIs.
It is certainly the case that, during its hard-line anti-Tory
phase, there was a coincidence of interests between proponents
of the Blair project, with their desire for reform in the
interests of a modernising elite class, and a working class-based
movement for social and economic change. To some extent this
continues - particularly in relation to Europe, where the
triumph of the project over the reactionary, nationalistic
impulses of Hague's Conservatives is one of the most urgent
tasks of the current moment. But in many other areas of politics
and social policy, Blairism is pulling hard away from working
class interests. In key areas - the maintenance of a strong,
well-financed public sector, and its basic commitment to democratic
accountability, the project has moved into an area of politics
that has been maintained and occupied throughout the ages
by the most patrician of the elite classes.
In this way the ground is being marked out for the next phase
of the class struggle. Somewhere, from deep within the bowels
of society, forces will be assembled with class interests
that bind them closely to the maintenance and development
of democracy and a non-market public and social space. The
big question is whether this movement will benefit from the
focus and political leadership which Blair and his group have
provided in promoting their belated revolution of the UK bourgeoisie.
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