Forlorn Hope: When the call came down to make Corbyn unelectable, the Establishment's journalists and columnists rose to the challenge. Antisemitism was only the most imaginative of the charges levelled against the old democratic-socialist. There were many more and, sadly, they appear to have worked. Boris Johnson may not be much liked or trusted, but he’s more liked and trusted than Jeremy Corbyn.
WHAT BETTER DAY to assess the latest contribution from The Daily Blog’s resident Marxist than Election Day in the UK? I’m pretty sure
Dave Brownz will be as gobsmacked as I most certainly will be if Jeremy
Corbyn’s Labour Party ends the day with the makings of a majority in the House of Commons.
Should the impossible happen, however, the issues raised in Dave’s post will
take on a new urgency. The question of whether socialism and democracy can
operate successfully together will instantly, in the UK at least, cease to be a
matter of academic debate.
The essence of Dave’s argument is that any attempt to
introduce socialist policies, while all the core institutions of the bourgeois
capitalist order are still standing, is doomed to fail. According to this
argument, every socialist reform attempted by a Corbyn-led government of the UK
would end up being thwarted. Either, Labour’s changes would be welcomed as a
much needed intervention on behalf of Britain’s beleaguered capitalists. Or, if
Corbyn’s reforms did, indeed, strike at the heart of UK capitalism, his
government would be deposed. Peacefully, if possible. Violently, if necessary.
Dave’s (and Marx’s) way out of this no-win situation is to
call for “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. In place of the social forces
which currently run, justify and benefit financially from capitalism, set up an
entirely new system operated by its victims. Only then, say the Marxists, can socialism
have the slightest chance of surviving and flourishing.
There is a grim logic to this position. Certainly, a
socialist government surrounded by capitalist institutions will very swiftly
find its room for political manoeuvre shrinking. The courts will intervene on
behalf of those affected by its most radical policies. Senior public servants will
leak its transformative plans to the capitalist press. Right-wing middle-class
students take to the streets in protest. Foreign corporations will threaten to
seize the nation’s overseas assets in the event of inadequately compensated
nationalisations. Hostile capitalist powers will impose sanctions in order to
“make the economy scream”. Dave’s argument: that if all these forces are not
first swept away by the revolutionary masses, then they will conspire to
strangle an infant socialist government in its cradle; is pretty compelling.
To date, Corbyn’s fate lends credence to Dave’s case. In the
four years he has led the British Labour Party he has been the target of an
unrelenting campaign of personal vilification and political destabilisation. With
hindsight, it is clear that the Labour Party has, for decades, been kept “fit
for office” through a combination of destruction and creation. The careers of
potentially successful Labour left-wingers have been destroyed, while the
reputations of those considered a “safe pair of hands” have been enhanced –
mostly by Capitalist Britain’s well-positioned defenders in the security
services and the news media. Corbyn’s success was a slip-up – a big one.
Exactly how big is indicated by the sheer viciousness of the campaign set in
motion to destroy him.
It has, however, been an extremely costly exercise for “The
Establishment”. To “get” Corbyn, the supposedly left-wing Guardian newspaper was
forced to reveal its unshakeable allegiance to the “dictatorship of the
bourgeoisie”. When the call came down to make Corbyn unelectable, the Guardian’s
journalists and columnists rose to the challenge. Antisemitism was only the
most imaginative of the charges levelled against the old democratic-socialist.
There were many more and, sadly, they appear to have worked. Boris Johnson may
not be much liked or trusted, but he’s more liked and trusted than Jeremy
Corbyn.
The temptation to subscribe to Dave’s critique of
democratic-socialism’s contention that liberal capitalism can be dismantled and
reassembled without sacrificing its “progressive” features – such as Freedom of
Expression, the Rule of Law and Personal Liberty – is very strong. Especially
once it becomes clear that, as I used to tell my fellow trade unionists back in
the 1980s, “all the rights we possess as citizens of a democracy are given to
us on just one condition – that we never use them”. But, to move from this
bleak realisation to the Marxists’ wholesale embrace of proletarian
dictatorship strikes me as a step too far. It requires us to pretend that the
terrible events of the twentieth century never happened. That the exigencies of
dictatorship – regardless of whose particular class interests it is established
to serve – do not lead inevitably to censorship, concentration camps and mass
executions.
The trick, it seems to me, is to so conduct yourself as a
democratic-socialist government that the capitalists are insufficiently motivated
to overthrow you. There is, as alluded to above, a high price to be paid for
exposing the iron fist of fascism inside liberal capitalism’s velvet glove. Nevertheless, convincing the Powers-That-Be that your left-wing government has more to offer
them alive than dead isn’t easy. It requires a mixture of political wisdom and
cunning not often found among the men and women of the Left. Harold Wilson
almost had enough to achieve his goal of fusing the interests of British
capitalists and British workers in “the white heat of technology” – creating
thereby a “producers’ alliance” that would overpower the City of London and
“Put Britain First”. Had he been Prime Minister at any other time but the Cold
War, who knows, he might have succeeded.
Could Corbyn have made a similar case for a “producers’
alliance” to restore Britain’s waning economic fortunes? If he had somehow
contrived to link Wilson’s project to the economic and cultural frustrations
fueling Brexit – maybe. A democratic-socialist European Union: offered to
Labour voters as an alternative to the present, bureaucratic, neoliberal
monstrosity; now that might have been worth voting “Leave” to achieve. Barring
some sort of miracle, however, it’s too late to make that case now.
No doubt Dave Brownz will shake his head at such naivety.
But, even as Labour goes down to yet another defeat in the UK, I refuse to
abandon the hope that one day we’ll find the right person at the right time.
Because, in the end, if your socialism isn’t democratic, then it’s not worth
having. No one ever said achieving social justice and freedom would be
easy, but then, as my dear old dad used to say: “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 13 December 2019.
