Round the block
The electoral cycle of labourism in Britain
There’s a block in the British political system which will prevent the emergence of a new mass workers’ party.
Unlike other European states, Britain has a party system in which two parties are (usually) capable of alternating in government without the requirement of support from third parties to implement their legislative programmes.
And perhaps unlike most of the other similar capitalist states, Britain has a social democratic formation founded by the trade union movement in which unions still command significant, if largely indirect, influence over policy, and have thus traditionally been reluctant to “break the mould” of British politics. Indeed, the attempts to do just this by splits by sections of Labour’s right wing leadership have failed in the past.
Labour’s monopoly on working class political representation
Although this situation has thus far prevented Labour from becoming what some of its leaders have hoped to create, a version of the US Democratic Party, as a consequence Labour has faced little in the way of serious electoral challenges from other workers’ parties.
Labour remains what has been termed by Marxists in Britain, following Lenin’s formulation, a “bourgeois workers’ party”. Labour is an organisation whose membership and support base is proletarian but whose leadership accepts the domination of the constitutional order by capitalist class.
Despite the creation of the Communist Party and its pre-WW2 ability to gain representation in parliament, Labour has not faced a concerted and persistent rival capable of depriving it of seats in parliament.
Without the ability to order one’s preferences when voting, the typical working-class person or ally who is conscious of Tories as the representatives of the boss class has not risked “splitting the vote” since it became apparent Labour had overtaken the Liberals.
On the occasions when this has happened since then, on each significant occasion by a rightwing split by disgruntled Labour MPs hoping to break free of the organised working class, the result has been to divide anti-Tory voters at the ballot box and deprive the broad masses of reforms.
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Britain’s electoral system has put a block on an enduring and external challenge to Labour’s bourgeois leadership from a new mass workers’ party.
A viable electoral formation, with a programmatic commitment to the liberation of the whole of humanity through a revolutionary break with the rule of the capitalist class, would require both a rupture in the trade union movement brought about through radicalisation of working class consciousness and the electoral and constitutional reforms necessary to convince significant numbers of people to break with pro-Labour “tactical voting” against the Tories.
The Labour Party itself has thus been a site of intense and broad struggle between the left and right of the workers' movement rather than this contest taking place between separate parties in elections, with those to the left of social democracy having the ability to provide a consistent challenge and develop a coherent identity with a core of public support.
The electoral cycle of labourism
A rupture in the organised working class in Britain is a possibility, but only when all other options are exhausted.
Without a change in the electoral system, we may not be able to escape from the following dynamic:
1) A Conservative government introduces counter-reforms aimed at reducing the power of the organised working class, provoking resistance and the radicalisation of workers’ organisations and thus mass consciousness.
2) Class-conscious young and working people look to Labour to provide an alternative. The party experiences an influx of membership and an increase in expectations which are opposed and resisted by the Right.
3) The Labour Right seeks to manage state-monopoly capitalism rather than break with the ruling class and - both in opposition and in office - seeks to purge and sideline internal opponents to allow it to abandon policy commitments to take on corporate power.
4) A generation of young class-conscious workers exit the party, boosting extra-parliamentary campaigns at the expense of the Labour Left’s ability to retain a stable base of support.
Making a breakthrough
The returns which the state-monopoly capitalist class will concede to the working class are diminishing. There could be a fix to bring about a growth in labour’s share of national income, but it does not appear likely that the Labour Party is capable of departing from the path of declining living standards.
At this stage in the cycle, It is not possible for the organised left to break with the cycle of labourism. The organised labour movement will be key to establishing a new mass workers’ party. But the unions will first seek the election of a Labour government as the path of least resistance.
And so it is up to the left groups to take the initiative and draw up a workers’ list of candidates for the general election, mindful that those outside of Labour or without a high profile will not be elected to parliament at this stage.
From a “workers’ list” to a left bloc of MPs
A Workers’ List could be a means by which to make recommendations to class-conscious voters disillusioned with Labour’s leadership.
It could include the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and those likely to join it. This would prove that it’s as much about winning immediate reforms as it is about laying the groundwork for a new workers’ party.
And it would certainly include independent labour movement MPs and candidates such as those MPs blocked by the Labour Right from standing again in selection races to get the party’s nomination.
But a Workers’ List should also field candidates of the left groups and pre-party formations, either under their own party identity or as part of a joint ticket.
Our aim should be to back – and to be seen to back – the election to parliament of the biggest possible bloc of left MPs on the basis of a policy platform which comes from below. A key demand on Labour and on the Labour Left should be for electoral reform to allow proportional representation, which is a prerequisite for a realignment of the left in British politics and the establishment of a new mass workers’ party.