The British Prime Minister was forced to defend capitalism in a speech she gave on the 28 September and then throughout her Tory party conference at the beginning of October; why? And was she right in her claims about capitalism's achievements?
Teresa May probably thought that she would never have to stand up for capitalism again after her jolly student days. Yet here she is, in office, as one of Britain's shakiest PMs, giving a major speech on the benefits of one system of society as against another social system. Thatcher's sole entry into that particular argument was 'There is no alternative.' In other words, it has been decades since British political leaders, from both right and left, have, in any sense, felt the need to talk about, or to defend, the capitalist
system of society.
The reason May made her speech is because the Corbyn led Labour Party has shifted the centre of political gravity in Britain. On the 29 September, the day
after May's first speech, the press were full of stories that Tory MPs were supporting a letter to the PM on the need to cap domestic energy prices, and another group of Tories were demanding a halt to their own 'Universal Credit' policy roll-out, on the grounds of its grievous social-welfare reductions. On the day before the Tory Conference Boris Johnston (again) broke Cabinet rules with his press comments on Brexit in a shot aimed directly at the Tory leadership crisis. And now her closing conference speech, 4 October, was deemed a disaster by the mainstream media. The Tories desperately seek a new leader but with that comes the undeniable pressure from the British public for a new election.
In the meantime a YouGov poll found that 58 % of Britons support re-nationalising the railways, water companies and other utilities (with 17 % opposed). 61 % support increasing the minimum wage to £10 (with 19 % opposed) and 52 % support increasing the top rate of tax to 60 % (with 23 % opposed). There is also majority support for policies such as rent controls (59 %), abolishing zero-hour contracts (64 %) and introducing universal free school meals (53 %). And a 2016 YouGov poll found that the public see socialism as more favourable than capitalism. (Data from New Statesman 28 September.)
May made her pro-capitalist speeches because she was, and remains, frightened that Corbyn's Labour Party has now given a shape to how austerity might be reversed. At the same time Corbyn proposes (modest) inroads into the ever-expanding wealth of the rich. (Labour's new manifesto is an essentially Keynesian document but nevertheless it is more than enough to panic the neoliberal horses!)
This shift of mainstream political thinking, if consolidated by Labour through another election, will in turn provoke the next episode of Britain's political crisis. The paradox is that as Labour gets closer to implementing any serious reform in society so will a majority of its parliamentary party and some of its affiliated union leaderships revolt - in the defence of a Blairite agenda. That therefore means the survival of the Labour Party in its current form is fragile - at the very point where it is most close to becoming the government in a new General Election.
The main characteristic of Britain's on-going political crisis is therefore not the apparent decomposition of the Tory Party. It
is in bad shape but its old age, its war over Brexit and its own leadership problems do not come from the
class based schisms that score Corbyn's Labour Party. The Tories will always consolidate when ruling class interests are challenged. That is its historical role.
Labour on the other hand has 'a river running through it.' Most of the European social democratic parties have already destroyed themselves as they have consistently levered the working class interest out of their organisations. Uniquely, the British Labour Party, despite or more accurately because of Blair's failures, has been able to provide a home for a new, deep anti-austerity, anti-racist and anti-war radicalisation. This directly clashes with Labour's bureaucracy, with many Trade Union bureaucracies and with most Labour MPs. And the divisions inside the Labour Party are a class-based.
The next stage of Britain's political crisis, now the Tory government is under the gun, will concentrate around the future of the Labour Party. The outcome for Labour members and supporters and the Corbyn leadership will be determined ultimately by the success (or not) of the build up of a mass social and political movement both inside and outside the Labour Party. Such a movement has to be joined together by a shared, active and courageous challenge to a society and a signal campaign aimed at root and branch change in the Party itself.
This new political pole in society is yet to fully emerge. But the elements for its birth are surely evident in the waves of industrial action, the strength of young people's voices, the new anti-racist movement, and the demands from the ranks for a bottom to top reorganisation of Labour. To make radical change in society it is required to make radical change in the organisations and movements that already exist. To that end the Labour Party Momentum current, the trade union contingents, sharing the anti-Tory demonstration and other radical events in Manchester, during the Tory Party conference, is a model of the alliance to be built.
But that is for the (perhaps) imminent future. A solid and coherent
socialist perspective has not by any means yet won over society as a whole and May's speeches still need to be answered and challenged.
The points that May has raised needs to be examined honestly. She said that capitalism, despite its faults had, throughout its existence, changed the world and the lives of most of the world's population immensely for the better. Her followers added that 'real socialism' had never been successful at any time in history. (They give the example of the China's Communist Party needing capitalism to improve the country's growth and increase its living standards.)
Leaving aside May's extreme exaggeration of the radicalism of Corbyn's programme as 'Marxist', her point about 'the regulated market' sounds like it might work. After all that is what Roosevelt did in the US, Attlee did in the UK etc. Social democracy was able, in the US in the 1930s and in the UK in the 1940s to regulate capitalism with positive results. (In reality May and her coterie demand a bonfire of all regulations 'hampering' capital.) But surely there has been tremendous human progress in periods of 'regulated' capitalism - as May pretends now to support?
History certainly proves the staggering, and up to now, unique energy and technical progress spawned by the capitalism system as it spread across the globe, transforming, as Marx remarked, every aspect of life. But despite the utopian visions of thinkers like Adam Smith, a fundamental characteristic of this new, live-wire system of society quickly emerged which also 'changed the whole world.' The capitalist machine, it turned out, depended entirely on exploitation. And its first act was to create a whole new social class, pulled gradually and then savagely away from a thousand different ways of life, as the bedrock of this exploitation, by turning work, like everything else, into a commodity to be bought and sold.
But capitalism is just another social system. No more, no less. It has been more dynamic in its technique than previous systems. Its purpose (despite all the magic processes that its academic supporters claim it produces for the benefit of all) is to create wealth for a tiny elite who own the means of production and therefore the exploitation of the bulk of the human race. Full stop. So exactly from where comes the undoubted and unique social and political advances
that have taken place (and that are still taking place in some countries) under this social system of capitalism?
Besides its drama and speed and technical development it is also certainly possible also to describe the capitalist system as the most deadly and and traumatic social system since the initial civilisation of the human race. In turn it has framed Slavery, World Wars, the Holocaust etc. But it is also the first social system in the history of humanity to face its own creation. The exploited mass of the population subject the system to a virtually relentless pounding as a vast, relatively homogeneous, social class that, in its collectivity and its indispensability to the system, shock and even, from time to time, break-open the conditions of their own exploitation. All, every single example, of any substantial social and political progress that has been achieved under the capitalist system, including 1930s US and 40s UK, has been the result of this struggle of the exploited. Capitalism has created the greatest counter-force in the whole history of all previous class societies. Capitalism gave birth to a new vast majority with the opposite interests to those of its selfish, frightened parent.
The capitalist system is not benevolent. It is true that some people with vast riches can and do worry about the world - or their personal future status in heaven. They give charity. It is true that children's history books and films present the heroic roles of (mainly) white, leading men in the reforms that have been forced through. But schools and the vote and hospitals and welfare and leisure and an end to slavery and women's equal rights and housing and, and, and, were all fought for, sometimes with immense sacrifices, and won by millions of working class people and their organisations.
Yet every single inch of progress that the vast majority of working people have travelled across the centuries of capitalism remains insecure - for the simple reason that the exploited are not the ruling class. They are never allowed to
control economics which is dominated by ownership. And even their hard won potential political 'control' (through fighting for and achieving the franchise in many countries) deserves to be in inverted commas for 99% of the time, as political life is dominated by those who rule economics!
The great successes of capitalism in the reform and improvement of society turn out to be the great successes of its opposite, against the grain, against the tide, against the basic mechanism of the social system that people live under. The exploited contradict the very society that created them.
If capitalism as a system therefore provides no substantial advantages to society, except those ripped from its rulers, what of the
failure of socialism as a new system in the world; and what then of socialists requiring capitalism to improve their societies? What should be made of the modern developments of capitalism in China?
First it is worth noting that the UN figures on the rise of living standards across the globe since the 1980s - always quoted by academics that cherish capitalism - is almost entirely caused by the dramatic movement of a half to two thirds of a billion Chinese people moving from the land to work in cities. That huge movement, on its own, substantially changes the whole world's picture of humanity's, of working class's material progress. In Europe and the US living standards are on average falling and have been since the 1980s in the case of the US. The West, from the point of view of the average living standards of the bulk of its population, is in decline. It is most dramatically obvious in the almost universal view across Europe (and the US) that the next generation will have a substantially lower standard of living than the current one.
Nevertheless, was it not the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party themselves that used capitalism, the capitalist system, to make a breakthrough in the living standards of millions? After all, millions of Chinese peasants were not battling to create cities or factories.
Does this vast shift in China, the single greatest forward shift in the standards of living in human history, prove the merits of the capitalist system? Such a tremendous event deserves at least some study.
The paradox is that China's huge 'advance' comes from out of the
weakness of global capitalism. In another one of those spectacular contradictions of a system in turmoil, the decline of the world's greatest single capitalist power over the last 25 years created the very conditions for an underdeveloped, agriculturally based, minor economic power, hostile to the US, to develop the space for a state controlled, capitalist, expansion. US led imperialism began its global decay in Vietnam. By the 21st century the US's overblown military and its declining share of world trade crossed lines that were brutally exposed in Afghanistan and Iraq (and today in Syria and in its dealings with N. Korea.)
It is the continuing and expanding weakness of the world's main capitalist leadership the opened the door to the Chinese CP. The control of global finance, a key feature of successful Western imperialism for 100 years, has been partly redistributed in a complex and uncertain network. And it was the great international corporations in the West that forced down the West's own barriers to trade with China in their desperate greed for cheaper labour. China's second great leap forward, strictly under the control of a Chinese leadership, is a result of the decay of Western hegemony and perhaps of the capitalist global system as a whole.
The fundamental nature of Chinese society is also controversial. The successful grasp of capitalist development promoted by the Chinese CP has expanded and fertilised the association of China's regime with institutional corruption. But prior to the 1980's and 90's 'reforms' to develop a capitalist market, the Chinese CP had already long adopted the 'Stalinist' road. Many socialists outside China (and inside) already regarded the Chinese socialism as a failure. Therefore it was not at all the 'capitalist experiment' as such that defined China's government and state. It is clear even now that the capitalist market in China is wholly subordinate to the state and the Communist Party. The total absence of the representation of China's working classes in the centres of power - since the 1948 revolution - and the social turmoil that is today associated with the critical political and economic disasters in China often effecting the majority - all serve to demonstrate the consolidation of a state capitalist regime in China. (China has remained the country with the most social upheaval in the world, according to UN figures. It is followed by South Africa.)
Does the Chinese example therefore show that even a would-be 'communist' country needs capitalism? What is the relationship between socialism and capitalism - if there is any at all? And why has the resistance to - and the inroads driven into - world capitalism never actually resulted in the victory of a fully developed socialist system of society in any major developed country?
These three questions all depend in practise on the truth of the assertion that all countries that have tried socialism up to now have failed. The truth is that historical reality is only been able to give a partial answer to that allegation. (Some left organisations have claimed that all the conditions have been there for success - at least since 1917 - but a succession of wrong leaderships failed, betrayed and ultimately destroyed the socialist projects in their grasp. This explanation for the retreats and defeats that the socialist cause has faced across the world and across a century and a half seem at best partial and limited. Did the Paris Commune die through weak leadership? Were the Vietnamese leadership doomed to failure despite their world breaking success?)
Any objective study of the last 200 years however would need to start from the recognition of the immense triumphs of the exploited classes on a world scale that are visible, tangible and produced virtual miracles in their time. Since the days of the French revolution humanity has tried to find rational ways to order society in the interests of all - and that still remains the great unresolved issue of
our time. But a virtually constant contest between the majority social classes and capitalist rule has made astonishing advances. (Amongst other things forcing the progress of technical advances made through capitalist enterprise.)
On the narrower plain of the supposed vulnerability of socialist societies to capitalism, it is valuable to note Lenin's practical approach in 1917. This was the early days of the Russian revolution and six years before the Soviet regime was forced to open up a capitalist market on the land. Lenin tackled enthusiastic workers committees representatives that wanted to both manage and control their enterprises. He argued with them. Who knew how to operate the connections with the banks, organise transport requirements, how to draw in raw materials and how to make the accounts? He proposed a new type of apprenticeship where the workers' committees had overall control but would simultaneously take up an exercise in practical learning from those who knew and used the companies' systems. This was the dialectic of apprenticeship and control. In the event, War Communism shattered any medium or long term learning - as the White Russians and 17 imperial armies launched their counter-revolutionary blood-fest.
In Tsarist Russia Lenin could see two decisive new moments in the battle to win a new society based on working class leadership and majority rule; first from the way capitalism won economic dominance under the noses of a ruling feudalist, aristocracy with a God given monarch. In fact capitalist economic success inside non-capitalist regimes started in Italian banks during the Renaissance. Later it turned into the common route across the West and latterly Asia ultimately aiming towards the revolutions and wars that capitalism finally led to overthrow the old monarchical and feudal regimes. Lenin noted that this was the opposite to the means of establishing any socialist system. Socialism cannot spread its economic hegemony under a capitalist system. The socialist project depended first on the conquest of political power.
Second Lenin understood that in underdeveloped countries like Russia, progress in society would not pass through any long term 'capitalist stage' as the imperialist centres had done. The capitalist system, under imperialist control in these underdeveloped countries, was entirely happy to work alongside feudal power. Indeed they defended it against their own workers. Capitalism could happily live with, indeed promote, the 'ancien regime' while its economic system, dominated by the great empires in the West, would spread. Progress of any sort would not therefore come at all within capitalism. Lenin saw that only political and state power organised by the exploited, by workers supported by the peasant insurrection, could open the door to any chance of progress, and that would need to be in a socialist direction in Russia. Which, as demonstrated earlier, did not mean that capitalism could not be used if properly controlled in building a fresh economy in an underdeveloped nation.
It is speculation to imagine what would have become of Lenin's suggestions to the Worker's Committee representatives from Petrograd and Moscow's great factories. The working class, allied with a revolutionary peasantry, in control of a state power that's built democratically, learning the capitalist mechanisms for production, distribution and exchange; capitalism as a subordinate economic system, inside a would-be socialist society. Full of danger no doubt as Russia's later experiment opening up a market on the land (NEP) quickly exposed - as a new class of 'entrepreneurs' emerged with resources and their own self-seeking political objectives. But NEP was essential for survival; and in the end successfully controlled even by the battered early Soviet state.
How do these complex experiences reflect on the British Prime Minister's views of the merits of the capitalist system?
In the first place there is no evidence from history that the capitalist system, the free market, provided the slightest instance of social progress for capitalism's exploited classes. Every advance made by capitalism's exploited classes was wrung out of indirect or direct confrontation, industrial and political struggles, revolts, wars and revolutions, sometimes in desperate wars of survival; sometimes 'delivered' by political instruments that rested on the working class's support (for example the social democratic parties and trade unions.) The capitalist system in not neutral. It serves owners of Capital. Left to itself it serves no-one else.
Second, capitalism did not 'free' the world from feudal misery and slavery. On the contrary slavery was a 100 year economic platform for the British Empire's capital accumulation. It finally broke with slavery to defeat its competition. Slaves then had worse lives as labourers. In many underdeveloped countries with feudal type political and social rule, capitalism deliberately refreshed and promoted their savagery and backwardness (e.g. 'British' India.)
Third, every major effort to establish a socialist society, a society that can ensure the basic requirements of all within it, where economics is subordinate to the whole of societies' interests, has never come close to victory in any developed capitalist country. The desperate lives and misery created by the imperialist stage of the capitalist system in underdeveloped countries led and still leads to waves of revolutionary efforts to transform conditions. Lenin once commented that the revolution would succeed in such countries but socialism, which depends on a certain level of economic and social development, would be mastered there only with the greatest difficulty. Meanwhile, while a majority-led social revolution in developed countries would be immensely difficult, the road to building socialism would be easier.
What May does not understand is that the world and its people are only at the beginning of successfully challenging the capitalist system. This change in society will be the first in human history where the conscious efforts of millions of the exploited will be its engine - rather than the attractions of personal wealth or God's will, or any of the other ridiculous banners that litter history. May does not see that daily life is a struggle between the classes and that great gains have already been forced from a system that, left to its own devices, denies human security, is uninterested in a positive life for all and rejects the precedence of people over commodities. It is absurd to say that socialism does not work. Its preparatory work is all around us, every day. The final fruition of a socialist system overthrowing global capitalism, will take more time and be a continuous and enormous effort. But because of the immense technical advances of modern capitalism starting from its battles with feudalism and fermented by irrational competition (how many washing powders do you need?) it will be much faster than capitalism's centuries of preparation.