WHAT'S THE PROBLEM WITH BEING LEFT WING.
I think the above, is an important question for anyone of the left. Why? At this years New Labour Party Conference, the leader when questioned three times "are you left wing" refused to answer, saying as is the current fashion of all the mainstream party leaders, "I,m for hardworking families".
I expect Cameron/Clegg to respond if asked the same question, at their party conferences to answer, you've guessed it "I,m for hardworking families". So if you consider yourself communist/socialist/left wing or progressive, why is it that the leading party of socialism, through its leader, mouths the same meaningless sound bite platitudes as those of the right? It is a question those of us with a commitment to the betterment of our class through struggle must ask. If only to be honest to ourselves.
In my opinion those who consider themselves of the political persuasion "that dare not mention its name" i.e Left Wing, then is it not time to ask the question. Should I support a party (New Labour) that denies being Left Wing, itself (in my opinion) a denial of being socialist?
For decades the perceived wisdom of the Left in the UK, has been to influence The Labour Party, by either joining it, supporting it in elections, or in its early days, partaking of strike action to defend the working class. The post war political consensus, has been that of a mixed economic model. That is state controlled health, education, and welfare running parallel with a capitalist economic system. The great achievement of the post war Labour government cannot be overestimated, with regard to its ambition in the creation of a welfare state.
With the creation of "New Labour" the pretence of being a socialist party died. Hence my question why should a convinced socialist support it? I have many friends who are New Labour supporters, some indeed are local Councillors who are indeed socialist through and through. They tell me that they remain in the party to keep it socialist ( an oxymoron if ever there was one ), the old LBJ maxim of "better being in the tent pissing out than being outside pissing in", would appear to be the rational for their loyalty.
OK, so what has their loyalty, and that of thousands like them to a so called socialist party achieved. I think at this point a critique of New Labour" achievements is in order. What has the loyalty of socialists to this party achieved in regard to the following.
Unrestrained capitalism: The UK has the least amount of financial institution regulation IN THE WORLD. This "kid in a sweet shop" attitude given to Banksters and their cohorts by Thatcher, has strangely continued and escalated, by again what I call a so called socialist party. Gordon Brown gave unlimited scope to Ponzi scheme economic practice. Question: Where was the voice of the socialist heard. What was the influence of socialists on this totally "uber" capitalistic concept of economic governance?
Unrestrained Military Adventurism: New Labour as the only national government partner invaded Iraq, at the behest of Bush. A war based on lies. For the sole reason of providing a platform for corporate asset stripping of a sovereign nation. Of course the minor inconvenience of over a half million people dead, doesn't matter does it!. Question: Where was the voice of the socialist heard. What influence did socialists within New Labour achieve, in a party supposedly one of fraternal peace to all nations?
Unrestrained Greed: Tied in to the above, one can only look on in shame as a New Labour speaker of the House tried in desperation to hide the fact that; and I use this phrase again, with no apology.That a so called socialist party member tried, To hide the fact that New Labour M.P,s, were using parliamentary expenses as a personal slush fund. Question: Where was the voice of the socialist heard. What influence did socialists within New Labour achieve, in a party of so called equality and openess.
I could go on and on, I could mention the likes of Diane Abbot who demands comprehensive education for all, but sends her kids to a private school. Or Peter Mandelson, who has a so very a private bank account with Coutts Bank, the same one Liz Windsor uses. I think you get my drift now.
So what in my opinion then is the influence of those staunch socialists in New Labour, of which their are many, who are dedicated to the betterment of the working class. I think you may have guessed already. ZERO.
Truth is New Labour under Miliband to quote Pete Townsend, is a case of "Meet the new boss same as the old boss". Can't call himself Left wing, never mentions socialism, will allow the city to carry on and on and on reaping its rewards. Example Europe will possibly initiate a scheme of taxation on financial transactions. Would this happen under "New Labour". My answer (in a rather sing song voice) "I dont think so".
New Labour needs the city more than its own members, and the Trades Union movement. They; the banksters, as they do, in this globally corporate owned and governed world call all the shots, dont they. Political parties of the world are nothing more than puppets to the above mega corps, this is the world we live in, can it be changed.
Not by supporting tired, non socialist entities such as New Labour. The progressive movement must break the link with this party. Why? Well what have socialists voting/supporting/trying to influence the Labour Party achieved. (I tried not to make this part sound like a passage from The Life of Brian, but failed).
Yet again a big fat ZERO. Its up to us to have the courage to admit this fact, only then can a realignment of the political persuasion "that dare not mention its name", will be able to challenge the political stasis that engulfs us today.
Che Castro
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The Labour Movement and the left
Since its formation, the Labour Party has been the mass party of the organised working class. It continues to enjoy the electoral support of large sections of large sections of workers.
But its politics and ideology have been those of social democracy, seeking to manage and reform capitalism in response to the immediate temporary interests of the labour movement, rather than abolishing it in the fundamental interests of the working class and humanity as a whole.
The Labour Party has never fundantally challenged ruling class. At best, it has only reflected and represented the 'trade union consciousness' of the working class in political life. The reformist outlook that dominates Labour confines the party to an exclusively parliamentary role within the capitalist system. It sees its campaigning work almost entirely in terms of participation in elections and carries out little or no socialist education.
Yet the Labour Party is different from social democratic parties in other countries in one crucial respect. It is formed as a federal party with mass trade union affiliations.
The unique structure and composition of the Labour Party has ensured the continuation of a significant socialist trend within it. These socialists have at times won major advances in the battle of ideas within and beyond the party. They have supported policies for democratic public ownership, progressive taxation, capital controls, trade union rights and nuclear disarmament that challenge monopoly capital in the interest of working people.
But the Labour Party left is not a cohesive and united force. The predominance of the social-democratic trend over the socialist trend in the Labour Party leadership, especially in Parliament, has helped ensure that Labour governments have only ever reformed capitalism, rather than abolishing it.
The New Labour faction which seized control of the party in the 1990s, represented the emergence of a new trend from within social democracy.
Adapting to and then championing neo-liberal policies and imperialist 'globalisation', it broke from social democracy to openly represent monopoly capital in the emerging new phase of imperialism. In its drive to turn the Labour Party into a wholehearted 'party for business', it brought the corrupting interests of monopoly capital into important aspects of party and government activity.
To ensure the Labour Party's acquiescence in its own political and ideological transformation, a series of measures were adopted by agreement with misguided trade union leaders to dismantle democratic procecesses within the party. The resulting centalisation challenged the Labour Party's federal character, concentrating power in the hands of a small clique at the top. The rights and partication of affiliated organisations were severely restricted at every level of the party. The rights and participation of affiliated organisations were severely restricted at every level of the party.
Whether the trade unions and socialist and social-democratic trends will be sufficiently strong, determined and united enough to take back control of the Labour Party from New Labour can only be determined in the course of a determined struggle to do so.
The working class and peoples of Britain need a mass political party, based on the labour movement, which can win General Elections, forms a government and implement substantial reforms in their interests.
For as long as many of the biggest trade unions are affiliated to the Labour Party, the potential exists to wage a broad-based, resolute fight to reclaim the party for the labour movement and left-wing policies. Certainly, this is the most direct route to ensuring the continued existence of a mass party of labour in Britain, and is an objective that every non-sectarian socialist and communist should support, whether from within the Labour Party or from without.
But decisive progress in this direction requires the unions themselves to fight both inside and outside the Labour Party for policies that will challenge state-monopoly capitalism in Britain. Moreover, support will need to be won at every level of the trade unions and the whole labour movement for an alternative economic and political strategy (AEPS) to that being pursued by the British ruling class. This would provide the most favourable conditions in which to resolve the crisis of working class electoral representation. Here, too, the Communist Party and the daily socialist Morning Star newspaper have an important contribution to make to the struggle within the labour movement.
Only after a determined fight can the big trade unions make a realistic assessment of whether the Labour Party can be reclaimed. They will have to decide whether the Labour Party can be reclaimed. They will have to decide whether to persevere or, together with political allies, to re-establish a mass party of labour that will represent the interests of the working class and the people generally.
For as long as little or no progress is made in the direction of reclaiming or re-establishing such a party, other left-wing and class-struggle trends are likely to emerge that are not organisationally or politically related to the Labour Party. It is likely that they will seek to participate in the political and electoral arena.
The Communist Party's role is to work with all left trends that a real, sustained base in the labour movement, urging them to unite around policies and in actions which raise the combativeness, confidence and political consciosness of the working class. This would lay the basis for their convergence in a reclaimed or re-established mass party of labour, one federally organised to permit the affiliation of socialist and communist parties and committed to the fight for socialism.
Socialist and progressive forces, left parliamentary and assembly representatives in the Greens, Plaid Cymru, the Scottish National Party SNP and other organisations also have an important part to play in the battles for reforms, for peace and for more fundamental social change.
But they do not resolve the crisis of labour movement political representation. Neither do sectarian or ultra-left iniatives which have no significant base in the working class and which misrepresent themselves as the alternative or the solution to the fight for a mass party of labour.
Britain's Road to Socialsim - Draft Edition
Programme of the Communist Party
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Are the ruling class suffering from a collective psychosis?
The web definition for psychosis is:
‘A severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.’ Are their policies psychotic and should they be sectioned under the mental health act for being a danger to themselves and other people?
The British capitalist class did well under the Thatcher government and did even better under a Labour government led by the openly right wing leadership of Tony Blair and later Gordon Brown. Now a Conservative led Lib-Dem government continues to pursue imperialist foreign policies whilst making severe cutbacks throughout the public sector. Are they satisfied? No. Have they lost contact with external reality? Judging by their reaction to any form of unrest, No. Should they be locked up for harming themselves? So far nobody has been convicted for Corporate homicide, so the answer again is, No. Should they be locked up for harming other people? Definitely.
The world is facing environmental disaster and resource shortages. A sensible solution would be democratically planned economies that use resources to feed people, house people, educate people and expand health services with the governing law of being free at the point of need. Instead bombs rain down on people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Guns are probably more widely available than ever in human history. Space programmes are pursued whilst the raw materials used to make more computers, mobile phones, jewellery, petrol, medicine, vehicles, televisions are being unearthed mostly in countries where the ruling class rule at the point of guns. There are exceptions workers are not so easily exploited in countries where the working class have state power. Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia are among the countries where brutality against workers has been met by nationalisation of industries and workers in control of those industries. One example is the publically owned Venezuelan petroleum company PDVSA which produces more barrels of oil than it ever did as a private concern. Workers are represented in mid and high levels of management. Workers actually own one of the most vital and wealth creating sectors of the economy.
Neither the wars nor the cutbacks will deliver anything of benefit to working people. It will impoverish millions driving many into what Karl Marx called the reserve army of labour. For those in the Third World, capitalism has for decades manifest itself as war, starvation and as opposed to democracy featuring massive disparities of wealth. The cutbacks will also undermine the bargaining power of those in work, as the disabled and unemployed are being forced into a low paid and the wage less voluntary sector of the population.
The imperialist wars have a devastating effect on the target populations. Coupled with racist and anti migrant rhetoric in the advanced capitalist countries there is often no organised support or safe place to go for refugees, themselves fleeing from wars caused by NATO. Why is Question Time, the capitalist press and the news media silent on the issue of the UN working towards the safety and good health of people who as a direct result of the US and European capitalist classes have been made refugees. Would the United Nations be incapable of responding to calls for negotiated peaceful resolutions to war in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, the occupation of Palestine and a further plan to avoid future wars between nations? The political wings of the state terrorists aren’t pushing for peace or security for all
The League of Nations established after the First World War in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles, had as its founding statement: "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security." Currently the international cooperation has been a US led and British backed mass murder drive. According to the medical journal the Lancet up to a million people have died in Iraq. Imran Khan a Pakistani politician and a previous captain of Pakistan’s national cricket team revealed to Newsnight that an estimated 30,000 people have been killed in Pakistan. These deaths have been part of a sustained illegal attack on a sovereign state that has been a staunch ally of imperialist forces fighting the Taliban. The use of drone bombing needs to be stopped as it is indiscriminate. Are drone attacks legal under the terms of the Geneva Convention? The war against Afghanistan started in 2001 in pursuit of Osama Bin Laden. He was recently been killed in Abbottabad yet the war has not stopped. People extra judicially accused of being linked with Al Qaeda have been routinely killed, kidnapped and tortured. States suddenly deemed to be dictatorships have had their leaders killed without trial and their populations bombed. The tags dictatorship and wanted for war crimes are the new warrants for what Blair referred to as regime change. Why haven't arrest warrants been issued for war crimes against politicians that have consistently supported attacks on the people of other countries. Muammar Gaddafi was killed as a prisoner. Saddam Hussein was executed by a US backed Iraqi government. Slobodan Milosevic died in custody. Why can’t NATO forces treat prisoners humanely and if they are guilty let people in their own country put them on trial? It’s worth noting that humanitarian concerns have not been shown regarding the treatment of tens of thousands of Libyan people who have disappeared during the recent NATO backed rebellion. Neither has anything much been said about the lynching of Black Africans by the rebels during the revolt. The capitalist media machines encourage a barbarous approach to humanity revelling in warfare. The peace and security achieved by NATO is the peace of the burial trench and the security of American and European big business whether they be oil companies, arms dealers, mercenary firms or companies with rebuilding contracts.
Rest easy merry gentle men the profits are a plenty and soldiers drawn mainly from the working class are dying in the front line for expanded mineral exploitation and strategic concerns that benefit the corporations.
What is needed is sustained national and international pressure from movements within and without the imperialist countries calling for an end to war and anti people economic and social policies. Let us build a world where democracy includes working people actually owning and running the economies that we live in. Just to re-iterate an increasingly common comment “Rulers, the world can no longer afford you."
There isn’t much democracy in Britain
There isn’t much democracy in Britain. Three choices present themselves immediately. One leave Britain to another country that isn’t being bombed and whose population is likely to be dominated by the decisions of multi-national companies. Put up with gross inequality and face growing poverty stretching down the generations. There is also a terror policy in operation which includes being accused of being a migrant and be forced from your home to another part of the world, a Muslim or Asian by bigotry and racism, a rioter who if convicted faces lengthy sentences and homelessness and face anything from torture, kidnap and wrongful imprisonment to enforced exile. This is the country in an alliance of other countries whose leaders like to call themselves democracies. This group of countries is also home to the richest people on the planet. There is also the choice of working with others against the policies of the Tory led Liberal coalition.
People in Britain face increasing cut backs in the public and private sector. The government have not only broken pre election promises but are presiding over open attacks on working people. Unemployment is at an all time high, people surviving on benefits are facing stoppages, direct cuts and ATOS panels that have directly attributed to people killing themselves. However this is not on the news, you will find it in the pages of the Morning Star. You will also find it in your everyday workplace, home and with people who are being victimised by the government.
The Labour Party as evidenced by the recent conference is led and controlled by the right wing. A leader that openly prefers £6000 tuition fees as opposed to Tory £9000 tuition fees is what millions of people vote Labour for. It is not the reason millions of trade unionists pay their political levy to the Labour Party. A recent survey showed that 8% of MPs were working class. In many other workplaces there is no active trade union. There is a crisis of representation. In many workplaces workers are told that the customer is always right. However, In terms of political representation the electorate appear to be wrong.
I don’t know anybody who actually voted for the cutbacks, evictions, rising prices and unemployment. Yet we are all experiencing a rapid deterioration of services and material living conditions. With housing now the most expensive it has ever been are any MPs, AMs, MSPs or the quiet yet affluent Euro MPs calling for a house building program and for free housing? Such a policy would provide work for millions and abolish homelessness. If a company director can live in a multi million pound house with all the mod cons why can’t everybody else? Do we have to be content with rip off rents and mortgages or be made homeless?
Mass campaigning from the Left can force this government out of office and encourage Labour Party members, union dues payers included to claim ownership of their party. If this is not successful then the Labour Party will continue to drift further toward the right. The building of a democratic anti monopoly alliance that can break the stranglehold the super rich have over the economy and the mass media is essential.
David Brown
