An anonymous member of the British Communist Party has sent polecon.blog an internal briefing titled 'Party Line', which tells members what to do about Corbyn's triumph in winning the leadership of the British Labour Party. Among the 'concrete priorities' it outlines, the briefing lists the promotion of the 'British Road to Socialism' as particularly important. 'The BRS alone' it states, 'sets out the revolutionary perspective in which the new political situation can best be understood and developed further.' It goes on, italicised for extra emphasis, that 'No CP member or supporter should be without extra copies of BRS to sell or to pass on.'
This 1948 CP programme has been re-endorsed by modern the CP as it seems to summarise to them the current left turn of the Labour Party and the wider movement in Britain against austerity - wherein such a predicted and worked-for left turn by the Labour Party was always the key to a socialist breakthrough under British conditions. The original BRS was of course based on a snapshot of the political circumstances in Britain in 1948 under the Attlee regime - extended as far as the limited imagination of the British Communist Party leaders (endorsed by their Soviet maestros) could reach. What exists now, they argued, is the actual and only road to British socialism, and all that was required to consolidate this victory would be more of the same!
The BRS has mesmerised parts of the British left for years, particularly inside the trade union movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s (albeit while the Communist Party itself shrank.) Winning an apparently left leadership of the 'official movement' seemed to come close and then to fade away again over decades of struggle. But since the 1990s and the accent of the Blairites, as well as the partial collapse of traditional trade union movement, the BRS, as a practical plan to achieve socialism has seemed less and less relevant. Now, nearly 70 years after its origin, has Corbyn's victory revivified the relevance of the old CP programme?
Or is it a case of history repeating itself, 'first as tragedy, second as farce?' What has really happened since WW2 that might give some accurate guidance how, in an advanced capitalist country, political root and branch change in favour of the majority, might be secured? Has the sudden left turn in the Labour leadership opened once again 'the British Road to Socialism'? Before coming to any definitive conclusion about what the recent convulsions within the Labour leadership really mean, surely it is worth noticing some of the actual struggles, movements and even victories in the last decades since the BRS was written, that have occurred and that might offer a guide, even to Britain, on how to reach for a new society based on meeting the needs and wishes of the majority.
The greatest event in the world since 1945, perhaps ever in recorded history, is the victory of the Chinese revolution and the consequent movement in a thirty year span, of one sixth of the world's population out of abject poverty. This event alone effects everything in the modern world. But what are its underlying and crucial mechanics? And do they have any bearing on the possibility of a socialist future in general and especially in the advanced western countries?
First off the claims made about the merits of globalisation or the spread of UN programmes against poverty as the reasons for China's (or India's) economic development need to be unceremoniously junked. Russia, then the Soviet Union, was the first to break the ties and restrictions of western imperialism in the modern era. China broke the back of Japanese imperialism and fought off the power of the US in huge battles in Korea. The decline of the West, first with Cuba, then Vietnam and now with Iraq, North Africa, Syria, Iran and Afghanistan and the global economic crises of the 1970s and today have allowed an historically unprecedented space to open up for what were previously the world's biggest colonies. The Chinese leadership has used this opening to let its domestic market rip, first on the land - accompanied by the most stringent controls over foreign capital - and used a vast proportion of the enormous capital accumulated to raise living standards. It has created its own 'industrial revolution'. 100 years ago China (and India) would have been bombed and gassed into submission. Globalisation is a western response to the weakening of their traditional imperialist power and grip.
The point for the West in this remarkable shift of wealth and power is the increasing dependence of western capitalism on its military and its finance sector for its continued global dominance, while it tries to manage the inherent weakness of its national capital accumulation from the industrial (now cut free from national taxation) and social sectors. Despite the continued existence of western dominated imperialism across large sectors of the globe, its decline in the second half of the 20th century, accelerated since 2000, means that Western Europe is weaker, globally speaking, than it has been at any time since the 15th century defeat of Moorish Spain. The US, similarly has started its long decline.
It is therefore not the 2008 based deficit that requires the British rulers to attack the historic gains of working class people in their unions, in their health, in their social security and standards of living. Blair sold hospitals before the 2008 crash. He kept Thatcher's union laws. It is simply that British and large parts of European capitalism, do not work in the old way, without their historic capacity to loot the world. To survive they must loot their own people. They can no longer export their domestic unemployment and social upheaval. And that is the fundamental fact that introduces the novel volatility in politics and the crisis of the political system - EU wide. It is the crisis in the way that people are ruled in Europe - in the context of the new international dispensation.
The Chinese Communist Party's 'experiment' with the market, launched not as idiotic apologists say, by globalisation and the benefits of the free international movement of capital, (never allowed by the regime) but by Chinese land reform, has had the effect of turning the Chinese bureaucracy and society inside out. China is now in the political grip of a vast, corrupt state-capitalist caste, crystallised by the communist party and the military leadership. But the effect on the rest of the world on the opening of a window of development in China (and India), especially on the politics of Europe, has been dramatic.
Western social democracy is the main loser in political terms. It has been squeezed almost to death. Social democracy has played less and less of a role in the bitter fights between capital and labour in the last two or three decades in the West because it has no role in organising the concessions to be garnered from what was the table of the western imperialists. In the absence of anything else it has tried, in societies like Britain, to offer its ability to manage the dismantling of previous health, welfare and social security provisions in a way most designed to avoid conflict. Blair 'renewed' the Labour Party in the UK on such a premise. Today the British Tories have dubbed themselves as 'the working peoples' party.' This is more than contempt. They now believe that they can dismantle Britain's welfare state very well, and without serious resistance, and therefore even better than a crisis ridden Labour Party.
The last chance for serious battle for social reform in Britain was the discovery of North Sea oil; a resource that was utterly squandered by the UK's political leaders, the oil giants, daft levels of military expenditure and the beginnings of the tumultuous rise of the City of London. So the new left in Britain, offered the keys to the leadership of a rocky Labour Party have stormed and conquered what has become, in effect, a political shell. Carrying on in some version of the old ways, even in with a BRS perspective based on Attlee's achievement nearly 70 years ago, is impossible. It will hit the buffers in the very short term. From the outset a new systemic solution to the way we live has to be built in the minds and in the actions of millions, albeit for now using the materials that actually exist and the political platforms that have been achieved. But only an utterly transformed Labour Party, built on and through an entirely recomposed, independent, self-active working and middle class, could replace the terminal social democratic project in the west.
What then can be learnt from some of the great movements and battles of the last decades that might offer a direction for such a cause?
Most immediately the struggle of the Greek people underlines the limits of the social democratic perspective for reform. The Syriza leadership manoeuvred with three elements in the campaign they fought to stop austerity in Greece. First was Greece's traditional masters. They rejected any possibility of any alliance with any sector of this decrepit oligarchy. Second was the Troika and the wider EU which Syriza leaders believed could be split both by the rationality of their arguments and by a mass movement's pressure. Third was the Solidarity Movement in Greece' which the front rank Syriza leaders had not come from but which was the engine room of Syriza's electoral success and which had created a large sector of the Greek population that were prepared to fight. It is traditional social democratic politics to seek out sectors of the ruling classes who will confirm the need for reform, albeit within the system (sometimes as its only defence.) In the event no section of Europe's rulers were prepared to support Syriza. Its social democratic strategy had failed.
In the event, it is the Greek people's Solidarity Movement that has kept their struggle alive (providing practical support, always demanding the state take its responsibilities while creating an image of a different sort of society.) This is the single biggest factor in the failure of Golden Dawn to capitalise on Syriza's retreat and, most recently, from the staggering impact of the refugee crisis. It is not an exaggeration to see this movement as the recreation of an independent working class social movement from the early seeds of the occupation of the squares. In the absence of reform in Europe, and the absence of any immediate insurgent possibility, the creation of a new form of social resistance can serve to help bridge the gap between this society and the next.
The experience in Latin America of the left's recovery has centred politically on the emergence of key leaders who have a direct relationship with the mobilised plebeian sectors of the population, often centred among the deeply oppressed indigenous cultures. This stems in part from the utter despair of the population for the standing political institutions and parties to achieve significant change. While in the West such views are less extreme, following the historical experience of gains previously made from these sources, this more organic and 'present' relationship between political leadership and an alienated population can imply a whole new meaning for radical politics and politicians, even in the West.
Political leaders have to be centred in the actual movements and concerns of those they seek to represent. They need to deliberately and publicly shun the day to day trappings of those political institutions and formalities that are despised by the public. They have to challenge, root and branch, the unfair character of the political institutions; unfair because they do not challenge wealth and power; unfair because millions of poorer peoples' votes are useless or lost. They must insist that their political lives will produce no privileges. Around such formulae a new political leadership can emerge, even in the parliamentary arena as well as in the social movements.
Alliances, blocs and agreements between left, green and nationalist currents have proved successful in the reconstruction of left political organisation following the collapse of social democracy and, in some cases the demise of large communist currents and parties, right across the globe. British Labourism (not helped by the outlook of the BRS) has often exhibited a deeply sectarian view of how politically to assemble the most progressive sectors of the population and their organisations. While the principle of refusing to mix working class politics with classically ruling class political organisations, particularly in government (a deadly mistake made by a range of popular front governments in the Europe of the 1930s) the concrete analysis of the concrete situation is always necessary to examine the character of different formations which present themselves as vehicles for the advancement of the people as a whole and often evokes the need to do constructive politics with them - in the interests of the whole of the subordinate social classes. From that point of view in will make the British Labour Party's disaster in Scotland worse unless the Corbyn leadership reverses the sectarian and triumphalist approach to the SNP that it has inherited from Blair and his children. Similarly new political alliances need to be established with all of the UK parties that want to fight austerity, oppose Trident and seek reform of Britain's political system.
These and other key lessons are being practically lived out across the world as this is being written, by people who are battling for a new world and who are shaping and reshaping the means to get there. Corbyn's Labour Party is an immense achievement and produces hope across millions, not just in Britain. It must now learn the world's lessons; quickly.
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