- Coalitions of the Unwilling
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Popular attitudes towards the Labour government elected in 1997 have moved slowly, but inexorably, from initial hope that it would reverse the harm inflicted on Britain by eighteen years of Conservative rule through disillusion to the final, bitter farce of Gordon Brown’s succession when the New Labour leadership came to resemble a royal court in the late Middle Ages: the dying king, surrounded by his favourites, unwilling to retire to a monastery and surrender power to a son whom he hates and who is likewise surrounded by courtiers of his own. The succession was thought to be sanctioned by divine law, but commanded little respect among the people at large, with whom neither father nor son has any contact. The new king now reigns over a troubled country is wracked by feuds and dissent, fractious and unhappy, though neither the old nor the new monarchs are willing to recognise or take responsibility for this state of affairs.
The dismal descent from confident opening to beleaguered endgame stems from New Labour’s ambiguous relationship to its Conservative predecessors. When they took over in 1997, Blair and Brown argued that what was needed to repair the damage caused by ‘Thatcherism’ was a new marriage between ‘social justice’ and ‘economic efficiency’, a formula that conjured up images of regulating markets and taming capitalism. But the New Labour project is not about bringing traditional social democratic values to bear on global capitalism. Rather, it is an exercise in neo-liberal social engineering. It seeks to redesign social institutions, reshape cultural norms and redirect individual behaviour in pursuit of boundless economic growth and the extension of market relations into ever more spheres of human life. In this sense, it is the continuation of Thatcherism by other means.
Like Mrs Thatcher before them, New Labour’s leaders insist “there in no alternative” and, indeed, if some version of ‘old’ or ‘real’ Labour were the only other option on offer, this claim might pass muster. But we believe the time is long overdue to dispense with ‘labourism’ altogether and build a modern democratic left. There is no need to start from scratch. The groundwork was done in the 1970s when the contradictions of Keynesian social democracy came to a head and the Wilson and Callaghan governments, beset by inflationary crisis, tried to manage the economy in partnership with the unions. The collapse of the social contract gave the radical right the chance to crush militant labourism, overturn the post-war settlement and entrench neo-liberalism as the dominant paradigm of public policy. Seeking to understand and learn from these disasters, a number of activists and intellectuals who were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain or were associated with its monthly magazine Marxism Today drew on the legacy of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Communist who died in a fascist prison in 1937. Several pamphlets and articles written in the 1970s and 80s and informed by Gramsci’s key concepts of hegemony and civil society are reproduced here. Recently, there has been a revival of interest in the period. We have, therefore, also included some contemporary reviews dealing with various aspects of Gramscian politics.
Of course, the conditions under which a Gramscian left first emerged have now gone. However, the basic issue remains the same: the need to develop policies capable of uniting a national historic bloc around a hegemonic socialist project. The nature of this bloc and the policies that can unite it are the subject of various exploratory pieces. These include our recent booklet, Feelbad Britain, which develops an analysis of the current British situation. The project is in its early stages and we are keen to receive responses from anyone who shares our view that labourism is dead and that a new political formation is required to challenge the hegemony of neo-liberalism, tackle the global environmental crisis and work towards a democratic, post-capitalist economic order. Accordingly, we welcome relevant comments and additional material.
In February, 2008, we are organising a workshop to discuss these issues. For further information see the link to contemporary pieces.
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