Harold Wilson's ghost CHRIS BERTRAM eo Panitch, Working-Class Politics in risis, Verso, £6.95 HERE IS a popular notion somewhere on le left that we are going through is mething called the 'crisis of Marxism' ell maybe Marxism is in crisis, and then gain maybe it isn't: what Leo Panitch monstrates is that the crisis in workingoss politics in the West is, in the first stance, due to the failure of non-Marxist ecial democracy. The left of the political ndscape of much of the postwar period is been dominated not by the struggles a class-conscious proletariat (to which eare now supposed to bid 'farewell', its ward march having been halted) but welfare-statist social democracy as ersonified by Brandt, Kreisky, Palme Id in Britain by the rather sorrier looking gure of Harold Wilson. If the prospect of Id revolution in the West looks a lorg ay off, the promise of the white hot chnological one has not been fulfilled ther. What does social democracy offer day? In Spain the Gonzalez governent has unleased market forces on a ble that would impress Milton Friedun. In Greece the rhetoric of the left has en displaced by the calculation of the Irvard Business School. In Britain the itersley-Kinnock leadership has plans the economy that are no more radical In those of the Liberal-SDP Alliance. As hitch puts it: '''Common Sense" has all of us that reforms conceived and blemented within the logic of capitalhave to be re-examined once they ally do begin to have the effect of ring business away'. In a crisis, eryone (or nearly everyone) dances to tune of capital. Both Hall and Hobsbawn have recog ed the responsibility that Wilsonism for the present impasse, yet in setting faces against the forces that said er again' — the Bennite left - they setting the scene for a repeat formance (perhaps this time as farce). litch submits the 'new revisionism' and ersion of the recent history of the our Party to a searching critique: who ly was responsible for disunity in the -up to the 1983 general election? NATIONAL No. 5 July/August 1986
Harold Wilson What is touted as a broad alliance of social movements actually turns out to be unconditional unity behind the forces that blocks the demands of the Labour Women's Conference and witch hunt the Black Sections. (And who actually supports these movements - why, the classist National Union of Mineworkers.)
On the future Panitch is sober — not to say pessimistic - he argues that the 'new revisionists' in their call for unity at any cost to defeat Thatcher have (understandably) struck a chord with wide layers of activists and this is a very powerful barrier to socialists (particularly in the Labour Party) today. But there is a more profound problem, class indentities are not just given, they are also constructed (The 'new revisionists' seem to be in two minds about this, on the one hand there are those who argue that the policy and programme of working-class parties must conform to the empirical given consciousness of the class, the leadership must not run ahead of its base, on the other, the 'discourse theorists' argue that all subjectivities are constructed in and through 'discourse' and reject class as a
fundamental and privileged feature of
the social world).
For Marxists there is a dialectical
relationship between the class and its
leadership and class identity has both an
objective and a subjective side to it. Yes,
there really is a working class out there'
but its conciousness is formed by its
experience and also by history and the
concerted intervention of political
leaders and activists. The problem in
Britain is that the empirical consciousness
of the working class has largely been
formed in an environment dominated by
Labourism, collaboration by trade union leaders and welfare-statism. The task of
creating a new class identity is a Her-
culean one, but cannot be flinched.
This lack of answers is the weakness of
Panitch's approach, a weakness he shares with Ralph Miliband and others. While the left has met the challenge from the 'new revisionism' and (in my view)
defeated it on a purely intellectual level, such a victory will be of no significance if we cannot elaborate a plausible strategy for the years ahead
The bulk of the essays in this volume are concerned with 'corporatism', an intellectual growth industry to rank with fast food and slushy drinks in the secular domain. Panitch deals with both the reality of the social contract and tripartism and with various theories of corporatism. For Panitch, corporatism is a system of state-structured class collaboration which poses acute dangers for the working class.
Far trom opening the possibility of extending working-class control over economic policy, corporatist structures require that trade union leaders police their memberships in the interests of capital. Panitch rejects notions that seek to blur the class character of the state by talking of struggle within the state, and ideas that it might be possible to use corporatist structures to transform the existing state into some sort of social corporatism.
As a critique of social-democratic ideology and practice, Panitch's attack on corporatism is fine but his class struggle versus corporatism approach is nevertheless rather one-sided. What is interesting about some 'corporatist socialisms — such as Austro-Marxism and Guild Socialism - which sometimes espoused themes of 'social peace and class collaboration is that they also developed ideas about workers control, for example, that prefigure a society of socialist democracy. Functional representation in a capitalist society might be a recipe for class collaboration, but get rid of the capitalists and it might be an essential element in a system of socialist democracy for a highly differentiated working class. 3I