Introduction: a programme and a perspective
This pandemic is producing changes in society and in the labour movement the like of which no-one could have anticipated just a few short months ago. Political ideas are swirling around like the wind in a tornado and within the raging storm of discussion and debate, socialist ideas will be seen to be more relevant than at any other time in recent history. The ideas of socialism are being discussed and debated principally within the labour movement. But when the pandemic is over, we will need to hit the ground running, producing pamphlets and articles on what socialist ideas mean, how they link to the day to day needs of workers and how the capitalist system will not be able to answer those basic needs. The programme of socialism must be taken out to much broader sections of the labour movement and the wider working class than ever before, and it will be.
But for the moment, in the absence of meetings and normal social and political intercourse, we are all armchair socialists and keyboard warriors, so one of the main tasks for Marxists is simply to take stock and keep a sense of perspective and discuss amongst ourselves. We must reinforce the fundamental idea that society is in a constant process of flux and change; we are dealing with a moving picture, not a still picture. We need to understand and discuss with as wide a periphery as we can reach, the direction in which society is moving and the social and economic forces that are in play. We need to assess how these affect the labour movement and the working class. Having a perspective means that even in completely uncharted waters, as we are now, we at least have a compass, so that we have some idea of the direction of movement. We need to discuss the implications of the pandemic for Marxism and for the left in general and for the labour movement and this document is a contribution to that discussion.
How the land will lie
Having said that, in a situation more volatile and unpredictable than ever before, it is impossible to know how the land will lie even a few weeks ahead and this is therefore an interim discussion document; a longer and more developed version will need to be produced in the future when the way is clearer. This document should be read in conjunction with those produced by Left Horizons and circulated last year: British Perspectives and tasks 2019 and Some notes on World Perspectives, April 2019. However, for Marxists, the key question now, as always, is to keep a steady head and maintain, as far as it is possible, some sense of perspective.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Boris Johnson said it was the “biggest crisis in a generation”. He was wrong, as usual. It is the biggest political – and economic – crisis since the Second World War, the biggest public health crisis in a century and the biggest crisis in the NHS since its foundation over seventy years ago. We are living through a political ‘moment’, historically speaking, that will have profound and long-lasting consequences. It will be profound in the sense that there will almost certainly be a deep economic recession, with some economists even saying that it will be more severe than the depression of the 1930s. The economic fall-out from the 1929 crash took years to unfold, but Covid-19 has battered the world economy to its knees in a few weeks.
Revolutionary implications
It will also be profound in the sense that the political earthquake that will affect every corner of the world will have revolutionary implications. Not least, for us here in Britain, the pandemic has implications for the struggle for socialist ideas inside the Labour Party. Even with the right wing winning the Labour leadership, what they would want to do in ‘normal’ times – like pour ice water on the radicalism of the party and evict the left – will not necessarily be what they will be able to do.
Finally, the implications of the epidemic will be long-lasting in that they will play out over five, ten or fifteen years, with political ebbs and flows, and movements to the right and the left. The president of Rwanda, in Central Africa, has said that it will take “a generation” for his country to recover; without the transformation of society, the effect of the pandemic on the poorest countries will leave a scar that will last for decades. There may be new waves of epidemics but what we have witnessed in Britain and Europe will be nothing compared to the devastation that will be caused in those countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America where health and social support systems are extremely weak. This moment represents a political earthquake of historic proportions and when it has passed nothing will remain as it was before. There will be reverberations, like after-shocks, that go on for many years.
World economic and social background
The social and political developments in Britain are not unique to us. We are living through a period of revolution and counter-revolution, but it is a world phenomenon and what we experience in the UK is merely the local manifestation of a world crisis. A global perspective must always be seen, not as an optional extra, but as an essential requirement to understanding the situation in Britain.
Even before the coronavirus, many tens of millions of workers around the world were drawing the conclusion that the entire political and economic system was rigged against them and that it works only for the benefit of a tiny handful of the rich and powerful. In all countries, established politics and politicians were held in utter contempt and in many cases were being kicked out. To win any election, anywhere, parties and candidates had to position themselves as the agents of “change” and, more often than not, as opponents of the “establishment”, notwithstanding the fact that many of them were themselves deeply embedded in that very establishment.
In many parts of the world, in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Sudan, Algeria, France, Peru, Chile and in many other places, workers and youth have demonstrated a boiling anger against a rotten and corrupt political system that drives down living standards, public services and workers’ rights. They have put themselves on the line in mass rallies and demonstrations, sometimes week after week, against corrupt and rotten regimes and in many cases have paid for it with hundreds of lives.
Leadership of workers’ movement
This hostility towards established politics reflects the beginning of change in political consciousness among tens of millions of workers, although it is not a straightforward process and new mass movements have reached to the right as well as the left. Because of the failure of the leadership of the workers’ movement to offer a viable alternative to the austerity and insecurity of capitalism, in many countries the process of change has been infused with reactionary nationalist ideas, utterly hostile and dangerous to the labour movement. This has been reflected in such diverse events as the anti-immigrant overtones in the 2016 Brexit vote in Britain, in the election of Donald Trump and in electoral victories for nationalist leaders in Eastern Europe and Turkey. In the longer term, Marxists must be alive to the possibility of more substantial neo-fascist movements, resting on impoverished layers of the middle-class, backward workers and lumpen elements. It is yet another price that might have to be paid for the failure of a bold lead from labour leaders.
But as a general process, in the sense that old ideas are being discarded and new answers are being sought, what we are seeing is the growing alienation of tens millions from the established political systems. This is a process that will accelerate as a result of Covid-19 and it will have profound implications for the political consciousness and the struggles of the mass of workers.
Global economy facing slump
We have carried on the Left Horizons website many excellent articles by the Marxist economist, Michael Roberts, so it is not necessary here to repeat the analyses he has given in his articles. But it is important to emphasise, as a necessary background to political events, that the global capitalist economy is facing its greatest test since World War II. In the initial phase of the pandemic, world stock markets fell by a greater amount than they fell after the 2008 financial crash. The FTSE100 index, for example, fell by a quarter.
All of the state banks: the European Central Bank, the US Fed, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and all the rest, introduced massive monetary stimuli, far bigger than anything seen after 2008, putting into the shade the quantitative easing of the past ten years. All the banks reduced interest rates to record low levels. There has been a massive and world-wide programme of state fiscal intervention, effectively printing money, to maintain businesses and the tens millions of workers unable to work and earn a living. Across the world, the total number of workers laid off is equivalent to 195 million full-time jobs at the latest count. There are now 26 million registered as unemployed in the USA, and nearly 2 million in the UK have applied for Universal Credit since the lockdown, although the latter figure disguises the hidden unemployment of those workers unable or unwilling to register for benefits.
Profound economic disaster
As economists discuss the economic fall-out, the only questions are how deep the recession will go and how long it will last. What is not in doubt is the profound economic disaster the pandemic has caused. On April 14, in the Financial Times, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund was quoted as saying, “The coronavirus crisis will leave lasting scars on the global economy and most countries should expect their economies to be 5 per cent smaller than planned even after a sharp recovery in 2021”. This economist forecast that 2020 would see “the worst global economic contraction since the Great Depression of the 1930s” and that output losses would “dwarf” the world financial crisis 2008. According to the IMF, the main advanced capitalist countries will see a contraction averaging over 6 per cent this year and there is “considerable uncertainty” about the time and scope of an economic recovery.
Weaker public finances
In the USA, the Financial Times report continued, “unemployment is expected to rise from 3.7 per cent in 2019 to 10.4 per cent this year and only dip to 9.1 per cent in 2021. There is likely to be a smaller rise in the eurozone from 7.6 per cent last year to 10.4 per cent this year and 8.9 per cent in 2021…Almost all other countries should plan for output next year to be about 5 per cent lower than thought likely in October 2019, the IMF said — a forecast that reflects significant bankruptcies and lay-offs. This growth performance will result in much weaker public finances as countries seek to limit the damage from Covid-19.”
The latest forecast (April 23) from JPMorgan is that the US economy will shrink by 40 per cent in the second quarter and unemployment is likely to hit 20 per cent. Although formally, the US is not in ‘recession’ yet – defined as two consecutive quarters of zero growth – in fact, it is already in a depression. Nothing of this scale and speed has happened since the early 1930s.
In China, GDP fell by nearly 7 per cent from a year ago, its worst performance since at least 1992 and even if there is some recovery, the overall annual rate of GDP will be down. The Chinese economy has not contracted over a full year since the end of the Mao era in the 1970s. “China faces its worst job market in more than two decades, with tens of millions of people temporarily without work or unemployed in the first three months of 2020 and the number of jobs set to shrink by more than 10 million this year, according to UBS Group AG economists” (Bloomberg News, April 24)
Collapse of world oil prices
As a separate but linked element in the chain of economic disasters, we have seen the complete collapse of world oil prices. As the use of carbon-based fuels by cars, aeroplanes and businesses have fallen off a cliff, world demand for oil has shrunk away. Even after filling up every storage facility and oil tanker available and having finally come to an agreement to reduce world output by ten per cent, the oil-producing countries are facing major problems. The fracking industry in the USA will suffer lasting damage as the price of West Texas Intermediate has fallen from $63 a barrel in January, first to below $20 a barrel, and then to below zero for the first time in history. This meant that the oil producers were effectively paying for others to store their output. There is no prospect in the medium term for oil prices to rise to anything like previous levels and this will completely hollow out the US fracking industry, which needs at least $40 a barrel to make a profit, with serious implications for the US economy.
Long-term increase in unemployment
It almost seems that each day brings newer and more pessimistic forecasts. Although the most hopeful economists are suggesting that the economy might quickly bounce back, there are more of them expecting a long-term increase in unemployment. Looking at the present figures, the Financial Times editorial (April 20) describes job losses as “eye-popping.”
“In the US, joblessness caused by the lockdown has probably wiped out a decade of employment growth. Economists estimate the 22m rise in unemployment claims in the past month represents job losses equivalent to the increase in employment since the global recession of 2009. The US is not alone: Spain has shed at least 900,000 jobs; applications for Britain’s universal credit have jumped by 1.4m.
More is likely to come. While the extraordinary figures partly reflect the sudden stop in economic activity — piling job losses that would take months or years in an ordinary recession into just weeks — they do not include furloughed staff. Unknown numbers of these workers may find their jobs have simply evaporated when lockdowns come to an end, particularly in some of the hardest-hit sectors such as tourism, entertainment and hospitality.”
In the medium term, the editorial continues, “many jobs will simply disappear. Even once official shutdowns come to an end, it will be a long time until nervous consumers return to restaurants and tourist hotspots. In other areas, the shutdown will accelerate long-term trends such as the shift away from bricks-and-mortar retail, one of the largest sources of employment”. According to another report by the McKinsey consultancy group, as many as 59 million jobs are at risk in Europe. It is likely, they say, to remain above 11 per cent for as long as the next three years.
World trade set to fall
According to the World Trade Organization World, trade is expected to contract more than during the financial crisis; world merchandise trade is set to plummet by up to 32 per cent due to the pandemic, marking a much faster contraction than the 12 per cent decline in 2009. “These numbers are ugly – there is no getting around that,” the organisation’s director-general said. “The unavoidable declines in trade and output will have painful consequences for households and businesses, on top of the human suffering caused by the disease itself.” Trading between the capitalist powers, let us recall, often by over 10 per cent a year, was an important driver in the heyday of the long post-war economic upswing, but as a driving force for world GDP, it has rapidly dwindled.
In future documents it will be necessary to deal in more detail the difficulties of the banking sector, but there is also the possibility of a growing crisis here too. Large deficits and debts will damage even the largest banks in the coming period. The German Deutche Bank has already warned that the fall-out from the pandemic “may affect its ability to meet financial targets”. There are “tougher times” ahead for banks, according to Euromoney, “…the consensus now holds a U-shaped recovery as the very best we can hope for, with a long convalescence after the lockdowns in which some companies, especially highly leveraged ones in vulnerable cyclical sectors, will fail”. A new financial crash is unlikely in the short term, but the demise of smaller banks and more general instability cannot be ruled out.
Food security warnings
Maximo Torero, assistant director-general at the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, has now issued a warning about food insecurity as a result of the pandemic. (Financial Times, April 21) “Two months ago,” he said, “no one was really talking about food security, but now it is what everybody is talking about.” The UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) warned that the number of people facing acute food insecurity might double to 265m in 2020 from last year’s total. “The pandemic and lockdown measures combined with rising unemployment and limited access to food could lead to violence and conflict, the WFP warned.” In a situation where there was a failure to access food, the WFP warmed, it could trigger a new mass movement of refugees like the crisis of 2016. This picture, painted by authoritative experts in their field, is a sombre one.
2020s – “decade of rage” predicted before Covid-19
It is worth looking again at the situation before the pandemic struck. A perspective for the next decade could be gauged from a report in January by Verisk Maplecroft, a relatively small and unknown consultancy firm, but one whose dozen or so economists and analysts provide businesses with detailed and carefully-researched reports on global trends in politics, economics and environmental risks. Verisk Maplecroft offers its business clients “a 360° perspective on risk”. Their report, Political Risk Outlook 2020, is filled with meticulous research and analysis, including charts and tables, in what they call a “forensic look” at world trends, but the opening paragraph of the Executive Summary says it all:
“If the early 2000s were marked by the global war on terror, the 2010s by post-crisis economic recovery and the rise of populism, the 2020s appear set to become the decade of rage, unrest and shifting geopolitical sands.”
According to the report, nearly a quarter of all the world’s countries saw a big increase in protests, opposition movements and unrest in 2019, concluding that this is “set to rise further” in 2020. It estimates that whereas 47 different countries saw civil unrest in one form or another last year, this number was likely to rise to at least 75 this year. Hong Kong and Chile were among those mentioned as being a focus of big mass opposition movements in 2019, but among other flashpoints to look out for in the coming year, they listed Nigeria, Lebanon and Bolivia. It also specifically mentioned unrest in Sudan and Yemen, and they included, in a category of “extreme risk”, Ethiopia, India, Pakistan and Zimbabwe.It was a measure of the extreme volatility and unpredictability of world politics that so very often, they noted, these opposition movement seem to come like a storm out of a clear blue sky.
The report made no pretence at analysing the austerity drive and growing insecurity that affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people – factors that are the main dynamic in creating the unrest. It merely noted the developments and the fact that this is becoming a normalised feature of world politics.
“The pent-up rage that has boiled over into street protests over the past year has caught most governments by surprise. Policymakers across the globe have mostly reacted with limited concessions and a clampdown by security forces, but without addressing the underlying causes. However, even if tackled immediately, most of the grievances are deeply entrenched and would take years to address. With this in mind, 2019 is unlikely to be a flash in the pan. The next 12 months are likely to yield more of the same, and companies and investors will have to learn to adapt and live with this ‘new normal’.”
Pre-existing conditions, before infection
This was the perspective of some of the strategists and thinkers of capitalism before the pandemic. These were the “pre-existing conditions” before infection. How much more will they be quaking at the prospect of social upheaval now?
Neither should we forget the most serious longer-term threat to the social and economic fabric of society – climate change. It has completely slipped from the agenda of the press in recent weeks, but it has not gone away and under ‘normal’ circumstances it would be central to any discussion on world economic perspectives. David Wallace-Wells, in his book The Uninhabitable Earth, offers a summary of the general situation today, comparing it to a couple of generations ago:
“…we are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a considerably faster rate; by most estimates, as least ten times faster. The rate is one hundred times faster than at any point in human history before the beginning of industrialization. And there is already, right now, fully a third more carbon in the atmosphere than at any point in the last 800,000 years – perhaps in as long as 15 million years. There were no humans then. The oceans were more than a hundred feet higher…”
Looking towards the medium and longer term, therefore, it is simply not realistic to try to develop a perspective for world economic and political developments without taking climate change into account. Through an increased incidence of floods, droughts, wildfires and ‘weather anomalies’, by causing degradation of primary food production and by exacerbating refugee migrations, climate change will add to the mix of social and political upheaval in the coming decades.
In the immediate present, there has been a short-term decrease in carbon emissions as a direct result of the economic slump and the lockdown in the most industrial countries. “It’s going to put a pause on anything climate related,” says Glen Peters, research director at the Centre for International Climate Research in Oslo. “In the policy discussions for the next 6-12 months, climate is probably not going to be mentioned, it is going to be about coronavirus and economic recovery.” (Financial Times, April 14). International UN-sponsored climate talks scheduled for November in Glasgow have already been delayed. The Convention Centre that was going to be the venue has been converted into a hospital for Covid-19 patients. The pandemic is likely to be the dominant issue for months and perhaps the immediate years to come. But climate change cannot be just lopped off the agenda as if it were suddenly a non-issue.
The Tory right are using the pandemic as a pretext to push the political agenda back on gender and race equality and against climate activism. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Daniel Hannan, one of the founders of Vote Leave, took aim at diversity targets: “When a million more people are on the dole, does anyone think it will be a priority to publish gender pay gaps? . . . Or whether the chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer are privately educated white men?” Writes an educated white man. He went on to liken the lockdown to the dream state for climate change activists, adding: “It will be awkward, after this, to argue that…we should all be prepared to suffer a little for the sake of the planet.” For the socialist left, none of these issues have gone away and after the pandemic is over, it will be doubly important to make sure equality, diversity and climate change are still high priorities for the labour movement.
British economy even more badly hit
If global economic prospects in the coming years are grim – a “decade of rage” – then the position of British capitalism is worse than all others in the OECD countries. Leaving the EU was always a potential huge shock to the British economy, because any reduction in access to the giant European market for British business will not possibly be offset by a deal with the USA. But even before that happens, we now have the pandemic leaving the British economy more damaged than most other OECD countries. The UK economy is looking at a 35 per cent drop in output in the second quarter of the year, an estimate based on a three-month lockdown, followed by a three-month partial lockdown. The result is going to be a £218bn hole in public finances compared with its March forecasts, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility.
But the OBR forecast is a tentative one, by its own admission, and assumes that after the lockdown and recession that the economy will “recover quickly with no lasting damage”. It leaves out of account, in other words, the strong possibility of large-scale and permanent economic damage to the catering, hospitality and other sectors, leaving millions of workers permanently out of a job. With a likely long-term decline in air traffic, potentially tens of thousands of workers in airports will find their jobs on the line. The OBR estimate that as many as 8m workers might end up ‘furloughed’ in the scheme supported by the government, but a significant proportion of them may end up permanently out of work.
GDP drop three times bigger than 2009
Even on “relatively benign” assumptions, the OBR suggests that UK GDP would still fall by 13 per cent in 2020, which is much larger than the annual falls experienced at the ends of both world wars or the in the 2008 financial crash. Writing in the Sunday Times (April 19), its economics correspondent, David Smith, wrote, “It is three times the GDP drop in 2009, when the global financial crisis gave us the worst year in the post-war era. Nothing like it has been seen, in fact, since the Great Frost of 1709”. What will this do to the government’s budget deficit, bearing in mind that the whole rationale for the Tories grinding austerity of the last ten years has been to cut that deficit?
”This [economic damage] would lead to an explosion of the deficit, climbing to almost 14 per cent of GDP in 2020-21 – more than double its peak in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and the highest level since the second world war. In March, the OBR had forecast it would reach just 2.4 per cent of GDP in this financial year. Public sector net debt would rise sharply to exceed 100 per cent of GDP, ending the fiscal year at 95 per cent of GDP – compared with 77 per cent the OBR had forecast just over a month ago. It would remain 10 per cent of GDP above the Budget forecast even in 2024-25.”
Economics will dictate political developments
The most recent figures (April 23) show the rapidity and extent of the collapse in business activity in the UK. Manufacturing and services activity contracted at its fastest pace on record, with a large portion of the economy shut down and a huge increase in unemployment. The latest IHS Markit/Cips flash composite purchasing managers’ index signalled by far the fastest decline in business activity since comparable figures were first compiled more than two decades ago, dropping to 12.9 in April from 36 in March.
All of these economic factors have to be taken into consideration in looking at likely political developments in Britain as we come out of the pandemic. It will be like emerging from a shelter after a tornado has ripped through a community; coming into the sunlight, the survivors will see destroyed buildings, burst water mains, downed power lines, broken glass, debris and fires. Such a landscape, devastated by a natural disaster, might be a fitting metaphor for the political scenario we will face after the pandemic. Nothing will be the same again. Moreover, although it is beyond the scope of this document, that will true across the globe and we will see political explosions around the world: revolutions, counterrevolutions and wars.
“there is going to be hardship ahead”
Although we have been fed the usual ‘pap’ that we are “all in it together”, Tory Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has already issued a sombre warning. “This [pandemic] will have a very significant impact on our economy,” he said, after the publication of the OBR assessment [above] of the impact on the economy. “It’s important that we are honest about that. People should know that there is hardship ahead – we can’t protect every person and business.” There cannot be any doubt that the Tories and their backers in the boardrooms of business, will want to recoup all the lost rent, interest and profit, and there is only one way they can do that. The logic of capitalism will allow of no other possibility. That is how the system works. Workers will be expected, “in the national interest”, to dig in for more austerity, at least as great as that between 2010 and 2020, and lasting as long.
Robert Shrimsley, in the Financial Times, April 14, suggested that “Mr Johnson’s illness has augmented his authority.” That may indeed by the case in the very short term, but as he goes on to say, “Critics will rightly question his stewardship of the crisis. They are right to be angry. The UK death toll may end up as the highest in Europe and there are issues around the availability of protective clothing for health workers.”
Two weeks of personal leave for Johnson
In fact, the longer the crisis lasts, the louder have become the criticisms of Johnson. It now appears he missed the first five ‘Cobra’ meetings in January and February and that “he doesn’t work weekends”. While scientists were ringing alarm bells, Johnson was celebrating at the end of January, the UK’s departure from the EU. In mid-February, a crucial time in the acceleration of the pandemic, he took two weeks of personal leave. He went AWOL, in other words.
According to a devastating Insight report in the Sunday Times (April 19), the chief executive of the British in Vitro Diagnostics Association, which represents 110 companies that make up most of the UK’s testing sector, “did not receive a meaningful approach from the government asking for help until April 1 – the night before [Health Minister] Hancock bowed to pressure and announced a belated ambitious target of 100,000 tests a day.” According to the Insight team, the British Healthcare Trades Association, representing 500 companies that make various bits of PPE were also contacted…on April 1.
This hopeless inefficiency would have been cut across in days, had there been a socialist government able to plan resources properly. Socialists would argue that a planned, nationalised economy, drawing together all the large and small manufacturers of testing kits and PPE would have been integrated into a national plan, to ramp up production and make resources available to front-line workers. The combination of a myriad of separate companies and a shambolic lead from Downing Street has cost lives and that should not be forgotten.
Johnson will be judged…sooner or later
It is utterly unrealistic to consider likely developments within the working class and specifically inside the Labour and trade union movement, without taking into account the grim economic background that will face workers when the pandemic is over. There will be pressure on all the Tory leaders and on the right-wing Labour MPs – who are an important agency of capitalism inside the labour movement – to persuade the population to accept more sacrifices. There is no other mechanism that capitalism can use to correct the huge economic blow it has suffered in the first half of this year. New austerity measures might be dressed up as ‘temporary’ and they may be sweetened by some modest reforms, like improved finances for the NHS, but the main thrust of the Tory government, and the logic of the capitalist system it serves, will mean cuts in living standards for the majority of the population.
Failings will come back to haunt them
All of Johnson’s and the government’s failings will come back to haunt them, mostly likely after the pandemic is over. Whilst many workers might want to knuckle down to see it through, the strident, almost daily complains from health service professionals, nurses, doctors, medical journals and experts will be remembered. The lack of PPE and a testing regime, and the expectation that essential workers put their lives on the line will not be forgotten either. What we have had in the UK is more or less the original “herd immunity” strategy in all but name.
Peter Shrimsley, in the Financial Times, also noted that the government’s response to Covid-19 “will be judged by the population’s direct experience. Were the desperately ill denied respirators or hospital beds? Did the National Health Service care for our mothers? Did shops run out of food? An NHS unable to cope will do Mr Johnson damage.” But it will be more than that. It will be about how the government blagged its way through weeks of sacrifices by front-line workers denied PPE. It will be about a strategy utterly bereft of serious testing regime. No promise was too big to make when ministers gave their daily press briefings, but time after time they came up short when it came to deliver the goods.
Developments in the labour movement: ‘No Going Back’
This important economic and political backdrop is an essential prerequisite for any discussion on future developments in the labour movement. The election of Keir Starmer and the attempts of the right-wing to gloss over the contents of the now infamous report on anti-Semitism have created a degree of dismay and disorientation on the left of the party. But it is impossible to work out correct orientation, strategy and tactics without a perspective and it is impossible to develop a perspective without seeing the background.
The generalised and instinctive solidarity that workers have felt for NHS and other essential workers has been in sharp contrast to the prevailing mood that key workers were being left to fight a ‘war’ without adequate weapons or defence. Scores of front-line workers in transport, retail and especially in the NHS are among those who have lost their lives in the pandemic. It will not be forgotten. Neither will it be forgotten that large numbers of workers deemed “essential” are the among the lowest paid of all workers: those in retail, cleaning, social care, transport and not least the NHS itself.
No going back to previous conditions
When the pandemic is over, the workers in all these sectors will be demanding that there is no going back to being “essential”, yet still being among the lowest of the low, in terms of wages and benefits. Too many trade union leaders have stood silently while their members have been in the firing line. While the British Retail Consortium is saying that now is “not the right time” to ask for a wage increase, the leaders of the unions should be demanding a rise. A spokesperson for USDAW, referring to retail “heroes”, has said workers should be rewarded for risking their health to keep people “fed and watered” and he predicted a post-crisis “day of reckoning” on pay and conditions. True enough, but what we seem to get are infrequent and half-hearted peeps of protest, when there should be a chorus of loud demands, backed up if necessary with threats of walkouts, from all the trade union leaders.
Refusing to work without PPE
It was notably the leadership of the RCN, not Unison, that told its members it would support them if they refused to work on wards without PPE. It was the management of Tesco that unilaterally increased its staff wages by 10 per cent, while there wasn’t a peep out of NHS unions demanding the same for NHS staff. With a few notable exceptions, union leaders have been relatively quiet during the pandemic. Some right-wing leaders have made more noise and fuss defending the disgraceful behaviour of the backstabbers in Labour headquarters than in shouting for the interests of their broader membership.
The USDAW spokesperson’s “day of reckoning” will indeed arrive, but it will be a reckoning for the union tops as well as employers. The trade union leaders might find after the emergency is over that they are sitting on a volcano. There are some anecdotal indications that the membership of some trades unions are increasing as workers seek protection and support during the crisis, but whether this is true or not, the membership of the unions will be more restive and more demanding than ever before.
Pressure on union leaders
Under those circumstances, any trade union leader who fails to respond to their members’ demands will be met by howls of anger. If workers are being asked to go back, not only to the ‘norm’ but to even worse conditions and to making more sacrifices “in the national interest” there will be outrage. The leaders in the right-wing unions will be put under pressure like nothing they have felt in the recent period. Branches, shop-stewards committees, districts and regions will be put under pressure to change. Those at the top will have to change just to survive and many will be replaced by more radical leaders in the next few years.
This pressure on the unions will have important implications, too, for the Labour Party. Even the representatives of ‘left’ unions have often voted with the right-wing in conferences and on Labour’s NEC. Their behaviour will now be put under the spotlight and it will be far less likely that union representatives at conferences and on committees will be the pliant tools of the union top brass in the future. There is expected to be at least two major elections in big unions this year – for the general-secretary positions in both Unite and Unison. These election contests will be accompanied by great ferment and debate among the membership.
Twenty members of the NEC of Unison published an open letter criticising the disgraceful behaviour of a Unison officer when she was a full-time Labour officer and was named in the infamous anti-Semitism report as one of the election saboteurs. Len McCluskey published a very good statement on the issue, condemning the behaviour of the same Labour officials. Both of these unions can play a crucial role, not only in defending their members’ rights, but in supporting their members’ aspirations in the political plane, in the Labour Party, but only if the elections this year reflect the genuine interests of the members.
Unions the key to changing the Labour Party
We must seek to build a base of support for Marxism inside all the trade unions. It is long-term and patient work and there are no short-cuts. Workers in union branches and in workplaces do not take kindly to mouthy individuals who have all the answers, but who are not prepared to pull their weight in helping the union or their fellow-workers. Whether in the workplace or the union branch, as Trotsky said, the Marxists must be the “best workers” gaining the respect and ultimately the political support of their brothers and sisters. Indeed, the developments inside the affiliated unions and the ferment among their members, will be the key to serious long-term change in the Labour Party itself. We must be in the forefront of debates, always patiently advancing a programme of transparency and democratisation of the unions and pressing for the unions to pursue their members interests on the political plane. The pressure on the trade union leaders will be a key factor in developments inside the Labour Party.
The election of a new right-wing leadership around Keir Starmer has been a big set-back for the left and the labour movement in general. Starmer was backed by most of the anti-Labour press because he was seen as the best candidate to bring the Labour Party to heel. He was supported by most of Labour’s old guard right-wing because they have always been opposed to the mass, radical membership that has grown up in the last five years.
People fed up with austerity
What put the fear of God into them was the fact that Corbyn’s election reflected the radicalism of the working class, as it was transmitted through a mass party membership. People were fed up with austerity – and still are – but the insecurities of working-class life are another world to the social and political lives of many Labour MPs.
Corbyn’s election reflected a mood within the working class in general, something the right wing and even some lefts, have never understood. It was an “insurgency” as one commentator in the Financial Times put it. “In many respects,” he wrote, “the big surprise of the populist insurgency is that it has not been bigger. In another age, the 2008 crash might have triggered a revolution. Instead, Mr Corbyn and his fellow travellers are now capturing the seething popular resentment”. (September 11, 2015)
Sabotage of right wing
It was the radicalism that flowed from that, writ large in Labour’s manifestos in 2017 and 2019, to which the right objected. That, and the fact that a greatly increased and uppity membership was a serious danger to the cosy careers of too many MPs. The sabotage by the right wing started literally on the day Corbyn was elected and it did not stop for one moment. For four and a half years the right-wing, including lame-duck deputy leader, Tom Watson, relentlessly sabotaged and undermined the leadership. Keir Starmer, we have not forgotten, played a role in that. Unfortunately, many ‘Labour’ MPs – and as we now see, many ‘Labour’ full-time staff – were happier to see a Labour Party defeated rather than see a left Labour Party in office.
What is likely to happen under Starmer’s leadership? His appeal to many party members revolved around his supposed calls for unity. “We have come out of this [leadership] contest as a better party” he tweeted, “more united and ready to build a better future.” But it is clear that his pitch for leadership covered a different, hidden agenda – why else would notorious right-wing Labour politicos be backing him and why else did the majority of the anti-Labour press back him?
Margaret Hodge suggested before the result was declared, that if Starmer was elected, “I fear [she meant “I hope”] The only way he can turn it [the party] round is by doing something different from what he’s telling us he’s going to do now”. Precisely. The Times of Israel announced Starmer’s election purely in terms of his being “a Zionist with a Jewish wife”, adding that he vows to “tear out this [anti-Semitism] poison…”
The right wing will now want the leader to carry through their programme, which would mean a mass purge of members, a complete dilution of Labour policy and – high on their ‘shopping list’ – a return to the fake party ‘democracy’ of the Blair years, when the MPs had a disproportional say in the election of the leader and conference was a stage-managed leadership rally. Robert Shrimsley, writing in the Financial Times, March 30, is clearly singing from the same hymn-sheet. Referring to the suspension of parliament, he suggested, “The new Labour leader can meanwhile use the time out of view to settle internal issues, clamp down on anti-Semitism, purge the most factional Corbynites and appoint a credible, experienced shadow cabinet…” (emphasis added).
The pressure of economic crisis and austerity
But the other equally significant pressure that will be brought to bear on the new Labour leader will be the economic and social demands of workers, including hundreds of thousands of affiliated union members, demanding a “reckoning” after the pandemic. The pressure that will be brought to bear inside the trade unions will inevitably have its parallel in the Labour Party. Recent Labour conferences reflected from the rostrum all the insecurities of working-class life and an insistent and repeated demand for change. Even if it were possible to emasculate the national conference, as was done under Blair, and purge large sections of the left – neither of which are foregone conclusions – it is inevitable that the pressure of the working class will make itself felt inside the Labour Party.
Keir Starmer’s first serious test might be his relationship to Boris Johnson, a figure reviled by the big majority of Party members. Starmer’s record since his election has been abysmal, to put it mildly. “In a two-horse race, he would come third”, as some wit put it on Facebook. Piers Morgan, a complete reactionary most of the time, has conducted a far more effective grilling of Tory ministers on his breakfast TV show than any Labour shadow minister has been able to do. Labour party members, including many who voted for him, will realise we have a mild-mannered solicitor for a leader when we need a streetfighter.
Starmer has said that under his leadership. Labour “will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for opposition’s sake.” Now that Corbyn is out of the way, it has been suggested that Johnson will invite the leaders of the other parties to briefings or to the government’s ‘Cobra’ meetings. Some have gone further and suggested a coalition, as there was in wartime, from 1940 to 1945.
Calls for cross-party cooperation
George Freeman, for example, a former Tory transport minister, has called for a cross-party ‘Covid cabinet’. Peter Mandelson, another former Blair spin-doctor, has echoed this. “If Keir Starmer manages to hold the government’s feet too close to the fire,” he says, “a coalition of some sort will begin to look more attractive to Johnson and if Labour is invited in it might be difficult to refuse,” (Financial Times April 3). Disappointingly, even some trade union leaders have supported the idea. Manuel Cortes, whose TSSA union backed Starmer, has called for the parties to “work together” to beat the pandemic.
In the face of opposition from Labour party members and some MPs – including Jeremy Corbyn himself – Starmer, while he may forgo a formal agreement with Boris Johnson – might agree to informal contacts and briefings. But however ‘informal’ the support for this Tory government might be, it will still be seen by many as propping up a reactionary government, and one that is utterly incapable of dealing with coronavirus as a national emergency. It would create great consternation within the ranks of the party membership.
We see the election in perspective
While the ultra-lefts are walking away from the Labour Party and many genuine members are dismayed by Starmer’s leadership and his selections for the shadow cabinet, we have to make it clear that we will stay and fight. We will not be panicked by a setback. We must see his election in perspective and keep a sense of proportion, and we will draw encouragement from the fact that Rebecca Long-Bailey received a solid 135,000 vote and Richard Burgon over 92,000. The overwhelming majority of those members will not leave. Neither would we write off party members who mistakenly voted for Starmer.
The leaked anti-Semitism report has not really taught us anything we did not already know. Even after Corbyn’s election and the increase in party membership, the right retained three important bases of support: in the Parliamentary Labour Party, among thousands of local councillors and in the party apparatus. We knew that. It is also possible that the leadership will stifle or somehow mitigate the fall-out from the 2017 election sabotage revelations. But the leak of the report and its widespread dissemination will leave an important legacy. The stink of it will hang around in the party for years. Already, it has stiffened up large sections of the Labour left. The members of the Campaign Group of MPs signed a letter of protest, and this organisation didn’t even lift a finger when Chris Williamson was suspended as a Labour MP. Among the tens of thousands of members who voted for the left, the report will not be forgotten, nor the sabotage forgiven.
Argue patiently for socialist ideas
Marxists will continue to argue patiently for socialist ideas and a socialist programme as Labour Party members. There is a feeling expressed among some on the left, particularly in the light of the resurgence of Labour’s right wing, that “we need actions not resolutions”. But that is a false comparison. When it comes to any actions and campaigns by workers: strikes, demonstrations, or elections, then the Marxists will, of course, actively participate and support. But to do so without raising and discussing political lessons is a dereliction of duty. Moving resolutions in Labour Party or trade union meetings is rarely an end in itself – it is more often than not a means of focusing discussion on what needs to be done and it is an essential and unavoidable part of raising and debating socialist ideas in the labour movement. While the ultra-left resort, as ever, to shrill denunciations, we will use the language of facts, figures, and argument. We will not participate in – indeed we would condemn – stunts and gestures that add nothing to a debate and only risk discrediting the left. As all the great Marxists in the past have argued, it might useful to chronicle the crimes of the Labour bureaucracy, but that is never enough by itself to win over the majority of workers.
The Labour manifestos of 2017 and 2019 had policies that were popular, according to all the opinion polls. Socialist ideas are gaining currency and relevance, whereas the ideas of Labour’s right wing are increasingly irrelevant to the lives of ordinary people. In the coming months and years, we believe that socialist ideas will gain a wider basis of support than ever. Looking at the top of the party, it might appear that the tide is moving against us. But in the working class as a whole and in a large part of the Labour Party and trade union membership, the tide will be moving with us.
The task of building a Marxist tendency
The most important responsibility for Marxists, in anticipating great upheavals and events, in looking forward to debate, argument, discussion and ferment inside the labour movement, is to prepare for it. Left Horizons has made great strides in the two and a half years since the website went live. We have begun to establish a clear, consistent, and coherent class tradition in the labour movement. As Ted Grant used to always argue, it is not just important what we say, it is how we say it, in a manner than is sober and serious and accessible to all workers. This political foundation is most important. What we need to add to it now, is an organisational framework of readers and supporters in all parts of the country, in Labour Party and trade union branches. We must work with common methods, strategies and tactics, and that must mean active and sustained membership in the trade unions and the Labour Party for the foreseeable future.
It is always a moot point to quote the leaders of socialism from the past. Critics will suggest that what they wrote fifty or a hundred years ago no longer applies. There is a grain of truth in this; we should not cite Lenin or Marx or Trotsky just for effect. But where their writings shine light on a question today, they ought to be used. How else would we learn from history?
In anticipation of great events
We quote Ted Grant here, from 1943 (Socialist Appeal, vol 5 No 4, April 1943) not because we think conditions today are identical to those of wartime Britain, but because he is addressing an issue that is absolutely relevant today – that of building a Marxist tendency in anticipation of great events, and for that reason his words are worth repeating. Ted was writing in this quote in reply to an article by Fenner Brockway, one of the leaders of the ILP, who said the following in relation to the idea of a workers’ international: “That [new] international will rise from the socialist revolution in Europe to which we can look confidently in this period of history. It will throw up its own organisation and leaders. There is little value in formulating the programme of this resurgence. It will create its own…”
Ted Grant answered Brockway as follows:
“True enough that the socialist revolution and new leaders and organisations in Europe will arise like a phoenix from the ashes of the old outlived organisations, destroyed by fascism. But has history then no lessons for us?…How…could he [Brockway] write it so light-mindedly of the revolution automatically solving its own problems? The last world war saw a chain of revolutions unleashed by the working class. All were defeated except one-the Russian Revolution. Since then, further revolutions and upsurge is on the part of the workers have taken place in numerous countries. All have ended in disaster. The revolution by and of itself solves nothing…
“What would we think of a general staff which prepared for war by announcing that it was not interested in problems of strategy and tactics? And that the war would automatically create the organisation of the army and its own strategy and tactics?…True enough, all the details of war cannot be laid down in advance, with the broad principles apply in every walk. So it is in politics. Of what use is the science of socialism – Marxism – if we cannot lay down the broad principles and programme in advance of great events?” (emphasis in the original)
We must draw the necessary conclusions
Again, anticipating great events and how they would impact on the Labour Party, Ted Grant referred we need to draw the necessary conclusions. Among those groups of workers who are the most experienced and the most embedded in the traditions of Marxism, there is a need for “sustained, serious and systematic criticism” of the policies of the Labour and trade union leadership, always in a measured and sober manner.
“Where such criticism comes from select coteries, external to the mass organisations”, Grant explained, “it is generally ignored, however deserving it may be of a better fate; only when it is supported by workers within the organisations who have earned the right to criticise by means of steady work side-by-side with other active members, only then is there the chance of driving the lesson home…”
“It is the experience of every active trade unionist that between periods of struggle – against wage cuts, for wage increases – the trade union is carried on by a small minority of members… It is in these periods of ebb that the trade union bureaucracy consolidate itself…
“As the crisis forces increasing numbers of workers from passive to active support of the Labour Party, they find within the party the nucleus around which to gather and poorly growth means the growth of the left wing. To gain the maximum development along lines of revolutionary struggle requires the throwing of the entire available forces of the militants into the work of building the left wing”.
We must always bear in mind the perspective of great events. The social media bubble in which we currently operate will be swamped by the storms that are coming. The tiny sects on the fringes of the Labour Party will be eclipsed; their failure to grow in the recent period, of the most draconian austerity for generations, is testimony to their lack of a future, if they but knew it. The massive movements in the future will attain a broad sweep, and they will knock lumps out of and leave marks on all the organisations of the working class. But it will pass us by unnoticed, if we isolate ourselves from the inevitable, unclear, strivings of the workers inside those organisations. If we separate ourselves from the workers’ organisations, we will isolate separate ourselves off, without in any way being able to help, or being able to discuss with or learn from the workers, through their experiences.
Streams can merge into a raging torrent
We are not going to echo the big egos of the sectarian leaders who beat their chests and announce, “it is us or no-one”. It is more than likely that there will be political tendencies and currents like ours that arise in the heat of great events. So much the better, because as it happens in nature, streams can merge to become a raging torrent. But however modest or significant our own contribution becomes, we cannot hide away from the responsibility of any Marxist, not only to seek clarity and definition in the correct “line of march”, as Marx put it, but to build a movement to take that march forward. A Marxist tendency is not created only by the need of objective circumstance: it is made by the subjective involvement of organised Marxists in the day-to-day life of the workers and in their reactions to events. The involvement of Marxists in the movement is made all the more fruitful, the clearer and the sharper the understanding of events unfolding around them. It is in that spirit that this document is presented.
April 27, 2020
