A preliminary summary
Recently I finished reading _The End of Parliamentary Socialism: From
New Left to New Labour_ by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. It is an
excellent book and I highly recommend it. It's academic, but it is
very rich in detail and ideas. There is much for the NPI to learn from
the similar efforts of those on the Labour New Left, particularly
those close to Tony Benn, and the things to be learned aren't what the
"modernizers" might think they are. Tony Benn's vision, already
articulated quite clearly by the time of his 1970 Fabian Tract "The
New Politics: A Socialist Reconaissance", recognizes a few fundamental
facts:
*socialism will never be achieved by Parliament alone, as Parliament
is an institution both designed to serve particular class interests,
and utterly unprotected from the depredations and pressures of
capitalist power, particularly in the financial and media sectors
*the politics of Labour governments therefore will always be
accommodationist in nature; it will never be possible to pursue a
truly radical course if the Government relies only on its own
integrity
*at the same time, Benn's exceptionally clear and early vision of how
the globalization of capital and financial services would
monumentally increase pressure and restrictions on national
governments, and his realization that "any nation could theoretically
turn its back on all this and legislate itslef into a siege economy
free from this intricate network of national and international power
structures. But, as with the individual drop-out, it could only do so
at a price in lower living standards that would not be politically
acceptable."
*the challenge therefore is how to advance a socialist politics when a
single country acting alone will not be able to do so. The answer is
in a few parts.
*the key, Benn said, to the socialist project is building
international support and solidarity; but to do this, the public at
home must first be mobilized
*popular mobilization was also necessary to act as a countervailing
pressure on government, to push government and enable it to enact
legislation against capital's wishes. Only a politicized population
could give government the support, and the opposition, it needed to
carry out bold measures.
*at the same time, Benn recognized that the corruptibility of the
Labour party was intrinsically linked to its undemocratic
decision-making, which consistently gave control over party policy to an
alliance of conservative trades unions and authoritarian right-wing
social democrats
*this meant that the average party member's relation to the party was
one of exploitation, not participation, let alone empowerment
*it also meant that the work of educating and grassroots organizing by
which alone support for a socialist project could be built would
never be done, and that Labour rhetoric about socialism, which in any
case the right-wing authoritarians never believed, would always be
hollow
*Benn, while in government, did devote considerable energy to the
elaboration of an alternative economic strategy, mostly involving the
imposition of capital and exchange controls, and the nationalization
of several clearing banks. He consciously did so not in the
expectation that this strategy could or would be implemented, but for
political reasons, to open the space for alternative explanations to
the monetarist line then being pushed (ultimately successfully) by US
Treasury. In doing this, Benn and his allies ultimately produced one
of the fullest descriptions of what large parts of a democratic,
socialist economy might look like; but the project was doomed to
remain uncompleted
*in any case, this was not Benn's main theme; as he himself said as
early as 1970, and was later to say more clearly and consistently,
"the main theme of this... is that the new citizen wants and must
receive a great deal more power than all existing authority has so
far thought it right, necessary, or wise to yield to him
*Benn's main demand was for decentralized democratization of the
state, and the main way he saw of achieving this was decentralized
democratization of the Labour party, so that
labour activists at the
constituency level would be empowered, and
members of parliament
accountable to them. The party could then act "in the state and against
the state," as Benn believed necessary. Although he was able to achieve
some reforms, against great political opposition from the Labour
right and party establishment, and although the party's membership
expanded, and was more active, during the period of New Left
activism; and although, when the party ran on New Left ideas, its
public support was higher than when it abandoned these for the
philosophy of "There is No Alternative" -- in the early eighties
support for Labour fell only when the New Left policies were
abandoned and the right wing precipitated a vicious media red-baiting
campaign -- eventually the changes were rolled back by the Labour
right, and now, most are but a memory as decision-making has been
concentrated in the hands of a very few chosen advisers of the Prime
Minister, working in secret
More remarks to follow.
[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: rasmus_raven ]
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posted 16 February 2002 04:09 AM
