Discussion: ‘Bridging the gap (3): a way forward?’ – Len Arthur
‘Bridging
the gap’ discussion posts 1 & 2 argued that if, as socialists, we agree, to
a large extent, that the structural problems of capitalism underlie the current
economic crisis and drive climate change, there is nevertheless a huge gap
between where we are now in terms of our effectiveness and capacity for resistance,
and the need to transform the power of capitalism. Further, it was suggested
that a key to taking on this challenge is a question of the relationship
between our consciousness of the issues involved and our confidence to act. In
short, the challenge is to attain greater understanding, unity and solidarity
between those who accept the need to make such a transformation possible. This
post will tentatively propose a possible way forward.
The
second post suggested that a dichotomy exists within key current political debates
about how this gap may be bridged, between those who would place an emphasis on
being able to effect transformation through ‘prefigurative’ action (sowing the
seeds of a future society in the present) and those who would emphasise large
scale collective mobilisation. It was indicated that issues about the role of
reformism, leadership, autonomy, horizontalism, transitional demands and party
organisation are affected by this dichotomy.
Since the
onset of the financial crash in 2007, it has become increasingly clear that those
who support capitalism are committed to a brutal project of making the working
class pay for the crisis. They need to re-establish their control and power
over the working class in order to sustain their systematic exploitation of
humanity and the planet. During the last six years, their intentions and
methods have been more exposed than at any time since 1945, as the reality of
systemic failures have been open to all, eroding the legitimacy of neo-liberal
arguments. The financial crisis has revealed more than a bank-supported lending
bubble; criminal behaviour and market fixing is seen at the very heart of the
system, even being described by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England as a
‘cesspit’. Writers such as John Cassidy and Naomi Klein, who are not
Marxists, have found an eager audience in their exposure of the myths that
underpin the economic arguments used by those who rationalise capitalism.
Despite
this exposure, our ability to resist and fight back is weakened if we, as socialists,
cannot provide both an explanation for this trajectory of capitalism and,
critically, also offer an alternative and reasoned counter trajectory, thus
enabling us to challenge, contend and move toward transformation. Drawing upon a
key idea of Antonio Gramsci, this final blog post will propose that it is
possible to work toward a new synthesis, thus overcoming the dichotomies of the
transformation debate and, in so doing, so perhaps move the discussion about
the related contentious and divisive issues - such as those relating to
‘reformism’ etc - into a constructive mode of discourse, aiding left unity.
Gramsci, in his writings
between 1929 and 1935, later collected in the Prison Notebooks, developed a useful distinction between the ‘war
of movement’ where the capitalist state is under direct revolutionary threat
and the ‘war of position’ where, like siege warfare, neither the working class
nor the capitalist state, can strike decisively against each other. Alternative
forms of hegemony, in terms of both ideas and organisation, are required to
sustain the ‘war of position’, and critically for this post, Gramsci points to
both Italian history and revolutionary history more generally, to indicate how
difficult it is to move back from a ‘war of movement’ to one of ‘position’.
Moreover, he argues that a war of position is not easy to sustain and ‘is concentrated, difficult, and requires
exceptional qualities of patience and inventiveness’. In making this
analysis, Gramsci, was also drawing upon the debates of the first four
conferences of the Communist
International
and Lenin’s consideration of similar issues, as in “Left-Wing”Communism
– an infantile disorder, as well as the contemporary writings of Trotsky.
As
Gramsci indicates, socialists are aiming for a ‘war of movement’ but have to
recognise that this may not be achievable, given the balance of forces at one
particular time. Therefore the idea of a trajectory toward transformation is
critical but what can be done often falls far short, creating difficulties,
recriminations and accusations: going forward can be easy but deciding when to
defend, realise and accept that the advance is at an end, is fraught with
political problems. However, a conscious and collective decision about when,
how and whether to act is greatly helped by a political understanding of the balance
of power. It helps to provide confidence about the process of how and why a
particular decision was made, whilst still retaining a connection to a longer-term
trajectory toward the prospects of transformation.
To
what extent, then, is it possible to handle a war of position better, and what
implications could this have for contemporary issues such as the experiences of
Labour councillors facing Tory-imposed financial cutbacks? What is suggested
here is that the war of position can helpfully be seen as having three forms,
each dialectically relating to each other.
Forms of the war of position
1) The struggle for ideas and understanding
I
remember a socialist Cardiff shop steward called Carl Cave once describing
capitalism to me as being like an octopus, with the tentacles of power of
capital reaching down and sucking away at all aspects of our lives. Working for
a dreadfully dangerous company using asbestos in oil seals and brake linings,
he vividly knew what this meant in his everyday existence. Exploring and
explaining how the hegemony of this octopus works – the ideological struggle,
if you like – is an important part of the war of position. It is composed of a
huge, international and extremely rich body of texts – such as can be found in
the Marxists Internet Archives – and, for most of
us on the left, reading, consulting and discussing around these issues is
probably what takes up most of our time. Recent and effective examples are Owen
Jones’ book Chavs and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, referred to above,
and I’m sure your personal list is endless.
Constantly
exploring, exposing and explaining how capitalism works is essential and a
guide to action but, paradoxically, can also contain the very real danger of reinforcing
hegemonic fatalism: it can explain a monster that just seems too large and
powerful to challenge. Hence, the best writings will contain some reference to
the possibilities of how to challenge and, of course, our own reading and
discussion can turn a critical analysis into an argument for resistance and
action.
As
socialists, we are committed to change through contention and transformation. A
historical perspective is thus central to our process of critical analysis,
enabling us to understand the shifting fortunes of our past struggles and those
of capitalism and its defenders. Just within the UK we celebrate, among many
other movements, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the Rochdale Pioneers;
and we still draw upon the lessons of the 1926 general strike and 1945–51
Labour government. It is not possible to imagine how we would conceive of the
socialist project without these references. International working-class history
also provides central lessons and inspiration such as the Paris Commune of 1871
and the Russian Revolution of 1917 – and perhaps even more so today, when the
current crisis can only be understood in its international dimension. So, for
example, people have recently argued that our current public sector situation
is like the 1980s: we applied the ‘dented shield’ then and today we just repeat
the formula. I would argue it is not the
same – the balance of forces have changed; capitalism was then ‘on a roll’ intellectually,
associated with a series working class defeats and political reversals: now, as
argued above, the capitalist raison
d’être is exposed and therefore potentially more
vulnerable and if we are serious about transformation, we should take account
of this historically different situation.
Despite
being an essential part of the process, transformation does not come about
through ideas alone but also through practice; through action. As in the famous
quote of Marx – his eleventh Thesis on
Feuerbach
– ‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it’.
As in
all dialectical processes, some links to action can be closely associated with
the role of ideas. Most recently, the UKUncut campaign against tax avoidance
and evasion has drawn upon an analysis of corporations, recognising that those
who rely on direct sales to the consumer value their public persona or ‘brand
image’ as being central to their ability to sustain sales. So UKUncut, by
directly undermining these brands through well-targeted public action, has hit
at the value of these brands. Similarly, the Occupy movement, particularly in
the US, has put inequality back on the political agenda. Mike Marqusee recently described his own experience
in this area from the US in the 1960s. However, most forms of action that have
a chance of influencing the process of transformation require greater
collective work and effort and it is around these actions that the most
difficult discussion revolves.
2. Boundaries, reformism, compromise and
“selling out”
As
Gramsci indicated above, sustaining a ‘war of position’ when it is difficult to
move toward transformation and the ‘war of movement’ is fraught with
sensitivities, even though it is clear that the power of capital reaches right
down into everyday life. These sensitivities are often expressed in debates
around the issues of reformism, compromise and ‘selling out’. It will be
suggested here that perhaps thinking of boundaries as ‘frontiers of
control’
may provide a unified way through the debates.
Paul
Blackledge, in his assessment of John Holloway discussed in the previous post,
argues that the power of the market and the pressure to reduce all economic
relationships to ‘exchange value’ as a market price, prevents the carving out
of an autonomous space of ‘use value’, that is protected against market price
pressures and commodification. Blackledge goes on to say that Holloway, in not
recognising this pressure, ends up compromising with reformism, instead of
following a trajectory toward transformation. In making this argument,
Blackledge comes close to arguing that effective resistance is not possible,
other than that directly leading to transformation and a war of movement.
Moreover, suggesting that compromise can be reformist confuses what is a tactical
argument with a strategic argument about the nature of transformation. He ends
up downplaying the rich history of socialists’ debates around coping with the
problems of the war of position and, in effect, takes the debate backwards
toward hegemonic fatalism.
As
socialists, we are possibly more aware of trade union struggles and it is
perhaps helpful to explore the ‘war of position’ tactical process of
compromise, boundaries and the frontier of control within this context. Most
trade union struggles, although they have the potential to move toward
transformation and reveal the wider forces at play within society, actually end
up with an agreement or compromise. This is not the necessarily the original
intention of the struggle, but a question of the balance of forces. Mark
Serwotka’s speech reported in the first of these posts, described the current
difficulties in the public sector pensions dispute in these terms. Two key aims
are essential in assessing whether a compromise needs to be reached with the
employers. First: are the members affected fully and truthfully informed of the
current state of play in the negotiation and level of resistance, and are they
in democratic control of the decision making process? Second, do the terms of
the proposed agreement take forward the benefits and the control of the members
over their work and contracts and, if not, does the agreement still allow for a
resumption of the struggle at a later date?
All trade union leaders face this situation and it can create a false
division and pressure on militants if this is not recognised as a possible
outcome, especially if the process is described as a ‘sell out’.
An
example from my own experience relates to the early 1990s when, at the end of a
two-year struggle to sustain our existing contract in higher education, the
employers wanted all members to sign individually to accept the new contract.
We argued that we would sign on behalf of the members and they would just sign
to say they had received it. This may seem like a small point and some
representatives, keen to get an agreement, couldn’t see the problem but it would
have meant that the employer could argue, disingenuously, that the members had signed
– not us, as a union. However, what was at stake was the chance to come back:
by signing as a trade union, we preserved the collective agreement and retained
our collective control over policing and interpretation. It was clear that we
could have re-started the dispute over the principled issue of recognition and
under this threat the employers backed down. Small, difficult, but important in
the longer run, and the argument came from our wider socialist understanding of
the longer-term strategy and the balance of forces.
Carter Goodrich, writing in 1920,
described such an outcome as a ‘frontier of control’: the line at which the
battle had temporarily stopped. In the case cited above, the collective
agreement and contract described in detail the terms of employment and
associated procedures, forming a boundary between the rights of the employer
and those of the workers. In this case, the boundary, or frontier of control,
is another way of expressing what is meant by the ‘war of position’. It
represents a temporary outcome of an ongoing process of resistance, struggle
and contention. It forms an essential part of sustaining the possibility of a
war of movement and transformation. It is not helpful to have this difficult
process of reaching a compromise described as ‘reformism’ or a ‘sell-out’.
I have
suggested in my ZCommunications blog, using the term
‘deviant mainstreaming’, that there are prefigurative similarities between the
boundaries arrived at through collective trade union struggle and those arrived
at in establishing ‘alternative spaces’ (such as co-operatives), as recognised
by the ideas of ‘autonomy’ and ‘horizontalism’, described in the last post. I
suggest that recognising these similarities, through the ideas of boundaries
and alternative space, might help us to overcome the dichotomy between trade-union
and social movement type struggles, and thereby lay the basis for united action
between the socialist left and the green and cooperative movements. Perhaps the
main difference is that, where a boundary is established by a collective
agreement, it requires constant defence and the exploration of improvement. It
is not so easy to see the pressure to push out and generalise in social
movements like cooperatives, where the boundary is one of ownership and
interface with the market. But the key point, perhaps, is that the boundaries
and the alternative space are not an end in themselves: they form democratic
and collective organisations that can move in different directions. What is
important is that the strategy pursued within the organisation can determine
the future direction, either toward or away from transformation – both trade
unions and co-operatives are examples of terrains for this struggle.
3. Leadership – the role of transitional
demands and actions
Finally
Paul Blackledge, in the ISJ article quoted last week, argued that socialist
leadership, particularly in the trade union movement, was central to ensuring
that the potential for transformation inherent in all workplace struggles, was
brought to the surface. If, as argued in the earlier part of that article, the
power of capital is difficult to challenge short of transformation and if
compromise can be seen as reformist, life must be very short and difficult for
those with leadership positions this side of the revolution! What is not
explored and needs to be, to properly engage with the issues raised by John
Holloway, is how those in leadership need to act once that position has been achieved.
The
answer that is being suggested in this post is that there is nothing wrong with
socialists seeking leadership positions in any organisation of struggle, so
long there is complete openness about how politics links with the issues faced
by the members, and that the problems of leadership will necessarily mean
engaging with the difficulties of a war of position as well as movement. I am
suggesting that it is possible to cope with these difficulties and maintain a
trajectory toward transformation, not just as an idea but also in practice, in
three inter-related stages. First: constantly engaging with the social and economic
context, through discussions about how a range of ideas and understandings can help
to clarify the issues and shape possible solutions. Second: accepting that
compromise may be necessary, but it should take place openly and, as far as
possible, move the ‘frontier of control’ - the boundary between our
space and theirs – in our direction. Third: the aim should always be to
move through these stages whenever possible from a war of position to a war of
movement: and that this can be achieved by always looking for the opportunity
to raise transitional demands and actions.
Transitional
demands have a long history but the clearest statement is still that of Trotsky writing in
1938
where he defined them as a ‘…bridge between [the] present demand and the
socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from
today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working
class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by
the proletariat.’ The language is of its time and context but the core idea
remains valuable. So, for example, given today’s crisis, which has clearly been
brought about by a failure of capitalism and in particularly the banks, the
demand that we ‘will not pay for the bankers’ crisis’ enables a link to be made
between every issue over cuts, job losses and wage loss and the failures of the
system: preparing the ground for radical change and transformation: a war of
movement.
Going
further, and making links between prefigurative social movements that emphasise
autonomy and horizontalism and those that emphasise collective generalisation,
it is possible to use the core of Trotsky’s definition and argue for transitional actions as well. So, for
example, an alternative space that significantly reduces carbon emissions or a
cooperative that controls the use and distribution of the value created and has
an influence over the use value of its output, is a prefigurative challenge to
climate change and capital. Moreover, if this alternative space is linked to a
horizontal movement to replicate and expand, the challenge is greater, as is
the direct link with transformation. A related argument was made recently by Hilary
Wainwright.
Developing
transitional demands and action, as has been argued here, is not always
possible and we often find ourselves doing our best through developing our
conscious understanding, or forced to accept a ‘where the battle has
temporarily stopped’ compromise. Transitional demands and actions provide a
means of keeping the debate open about the possibilities of moving toward
transformation in terms of practice. In addition, while developing transitional
demands and actions is not necessarily straightforward, the collective process
of debate is in itself worthwhile. The key importance for our current time,
however, is that an openness about such an approach helps to relate to the
‘exceptional qualities of patience and inventiveness’ of a war of position as
described by Gramsci, without losing sight of the need always to work towards a
war of movement. By indicating that resisting capital and climate change is not
easy, that there is potentially a fundamental unity about the role of
capitalism across a wide range of issues and grievances, and that there is an
underlying similarity between different ways of fighting back; we may be able
to help promote greater understanding on the left and a more effective unity in
action.
What,
if anything, you may ask, does this have to do with the Labour Party, committed
to change through elections and social democracy? Owen Jones, writing in the Independent
recently, raised similar issues. Well, working through the three stages
outlined above, an answer may sound like this. First, what is Labour’s analysis
of the current economic situation? In an earlier post it was suggested that
there may be an overlap with radical Keynesian thinking on inequality and the thinking
of Marxists, such as David Harvey. In any discussion about policy within the party,
socialists should at least try to make a link with these debates and the questions
about who pays for the bankers’ crisis. If this type of contextual issue cannot
be raised directly, then it should at least inform discussion on specific
policies. So, for example, on the role of AMs and councillors in relation to
the Tory cutbacks: if the issues are only tackled from the basis of technically
balancing the books, then the Tory cuts will just be made. However, if the
political context is taken seriously, then it becomes a different question, of
whether it is possible to develop transitional demands and actions or, on what
grounds can a compromise be reached that will still sustain a forward
trajectory toward transformation? If the issues are not resolved in this way, we
as socialists should still work in unity with organisations that are resisting,
whether they are made up of party members or not.
And finally - left unity?
The key argument in these three posts is that
the political consciousness of the trajectory to transformation is key,
sustaining confidence and potentially providing a guide to action in whatever
contexts socialists find themselves in. The implication is that a form of
political organisation is required to encourage and support leaders – for the
want of a better term - to facilitate the discussion and help coordinate action,
with transformation as the aim. It is for us in the Labour Party to consider
how this might relate to us but we should also be involved in discussions
beyond the party. So, for example, many writers have started to look to Syriza
in Greece as a good example of how socialists could come together in a way that
facilitates debate and action across all forms of resistance – a consideration
that has received increased attention with the recent problems of the SWP. Do
you think what has been suggested in this post helps clarify issues and provide
a means of reaching out and developing unity with all those who recognise
transformation is required?
