Michael Doyle argues that the inability of governing elites to renew capitalism after the 2008 financial crisis is down to an absence of ideas and elite complacency because they are still reaping the benefits of capitalism, and this is a real opportunity for socialists.
In the last week, the Corbyn-Sultana party has finally been launched. This initiative has been in the works for some time now, with confusion as to whether or not it was going to be a party, an alliance or a movement. Already, the discussion surrounding the nascent party revolves around whether it will form an electoral alliance with the Greens. This reflects, to a large extent, the dominance of London-based politicos, journalists and policy wonks, who obsess about Westminster politics with all of the Westminster jargon that comes with it. Even before the new party has a name and structures in place, there is already fevered talk of an electoral alliance with the Greens, the objective being to force Labour to choose between soggy centrism or ‘left eco-populism’.
Given the logic of right-wing Labourism in its current state, it is implausible, bordering on delusional, to think that Labour would choose to have any governing association with this red-green alliance. The Greens are an unusual hybrid political formation which consists of liberals, socialists, social democrats and small-c conservatives. But what they represent for the advocates of such an alliance is establishment respectability. The Greens are the most left one is allowed to be in Britain. They have MPs, and so the thought goes that this will bequeath a modicum of establishment respectability whilst being toothless and ineffectual at realising change. The new party must have an anti-systemic, insurgent politics. Unfortunately, the early signs do not look promising.
Without politics, there is no programme and insofar as any politics are expressed, they are vague generalities. For example, in his piece for the Guardian outlining the vision of the new party, Jeremy Corbyn talks about how he wants a party that is ‘One that ends this government’s complicity in genocide and brings about justice for the Palestinian people. One that makes the wealthiest in society pay a bit more in tax to ensure that everyone can live in dignity.’ The genocide should definitively end the façade that ‘Labour Zionism’ is an honourable position that any left-wing party can hold. After all, for there to be justice for the Palestinians, this would necessitate a one-state solution, a position that no doubt will not pass the optics test, or that the strategists who want to focus solely on the cost-of-living crisis will want to adopt.
On economic policy, the taxing of the wealthy a little bit means it is unlikely that there will be any real fundamental change in the balance of wealth and economic power in the UK. The proponents of wealth tax harken back to the 1950s as evidence that a wealth tax will level out inequality. Yet this was the ‘golden age’ of capitalism and Labourism’s high point. Today, given the power economic elites have over any prospective social democratic government – particularly in the bond markets – the scope for the kind of social democratic political economy envisaged by the economic thinkers around Corbyn is greatly limited. Yes, taking the utilities into public ownership is popular and decommodifying essential goods is a necessary first step in democratising the economy, but would the new party propose appropriation without compensation? Given the anti-establishment and anti-systemic mood, there would clearly be space to make an argument for that. Yet the programme resembles a skeletal draft.
It is not credible to launch a party without understanding what it stands for. For a socialist party, there are already answers to the big fundamental questions about the decline of the post-war international order. Opposition to NATO, the forever war in Ukraine, opposition to the EU, opposition to American hegemony and the associated barbarity that comes with it. The programme and the name are to be decided at a big conference inviting 600,000 people in the autumn, which will be online. This type of praxis is reminiscent of the millennial left experiments with Marxist autonomism and horizontal organisation. Not only is it ineffective, but it is apolitical. Already, one of the leading figures associated with the formation of the party has said they want to see the membership decide all the strategic decisions the party takes. This raises the question of the class nature of the membership. Since the decline of working-class consciousness from the high point of the 1970s, the memberships of many socialist organisations have been captured by the middle class. This has translated into leaders who are quite aloof from the working class. No doubt amongst the 600,000 who have signed up to the new party, there will be working-class people who are politically conscious, whose material experiences have shaped their politics.
Despite the party’s rickety start, some positives should be acknowledged and built on. The fact that 600,000 to the left of the centre-left have signed up to the party reflects a deeper revulsion at the political establishment. Although there is already a concern that this is the central preoccupation of the leaders of the new party, with Twitter-X posts boasting about the numbers signing up to a mailing list.
The fact that, albeit in embryonic form, there is a pole of attraction for the disaffected that does not uphold the status quo of the economic doom loop and does not viciously attack refugees and immigrants is to be welcomed. It cannot win electoral power, and it would be a travesty to the thousands who have signed up to pretend that it is possible. The FPTP electoral system and the media ecosystem attached to it negate that possibility. After all, when Corbyn led the Labour Party and came within 2227 votes of becoming the largest party in a hung parliament in 2017, the British state found it simple to demolish that project throughout the next two and a half years. The new party must exorcise Labourism. It must be a party that seeks to renew socialism, begin to make the political arguments to shift collective consciousness and imagine a new society. If not, then it will be yet another false dawn at a moment when it has never been more opportune for socialists to make a real change.
