Issue 196 of SOCIALIST REVIEW Published April 1996 Copyright © Socialist Review
Bob Fotheringham's letter (March SR) asks whether it is time the Socialist Workers Party should re-examine our attitude towards the Labour Party and recognise that a fundamental and irreversible change has taken place, to the extent that we should no longer call for a Labour vote. His letter raises basic misconceptions about the nature of the Labour Party and why we call for a Labour vote.
We have never called for a Labour vote uncritically or sown any illusions that a Labour government, left or right, would deliver socialism. We wish to see Labour in government for two reasons. Firstly we want to see the Tories, who are an openly bosses' party, defeated. Secondly, in breaking with reformism many workers will have to go through the experience of Labour in government.
My main disagreement with Bob is over the extent to which 'New Labour' is a US style Democratic Party, with no links to the working class. Bob rightly identifies the weakening of trade union links and a rightward shift in ideology epitomised by the removal of Clause Four. But does this represent a qualitative change that makes Labour the same as the Tories?
It is not Labour's programme that is key to a call for a Labour vote. Labour has never been socialist. The defining feature is Labour's link with the working class through the trade unions and the way in which workers identify with Labour on the basis of class.
The Labour Party is pathetic, in its daily parroting of Tory policies. But is this true of the membership and the millions of workers who will vote Labour in the next election? Every survey shows that party members and voters are to the left of Blair on questions of renationalisation, the setting of a minimum wage, trade union laws etc.
The organised opposition to Blair is weak. The collapse of state capitalism in the USSR has created an ideological crisis in the Labour left. However, the 10 to 15 million workers who will vote Labour at the next election are more likely to identify with old Labour rather than new.
Finally, the question of voting Labour is not just in the future. In the recent Hemsworth byelection socialists quite rightly argued for a vote for the Socialist Labour Party. Their share of the vote showed that there is disillusionment and a willingness amongst some to break with Blair before the general election. But we must also maintain a dialogue with those workers whose greatest desire is to see the back of the Tories. In most seats this will be a choice between voting Tory or Labour.
Our energies must continue to be building ideological resistance to the market and where possible relating to those fighting back. But on the question of dumping the slogan 'Vote Labour but build a fighting socialist alternative' and adopting 'A plague on both your houses' the answer is: 'Not yet!'
Andy Brammer
Glasgow
A vote for the Labour Party is a class vote. A vote for Labour suggests that there is a difference between workers and bosses--even the very name of the party implies this. Conversely, a vote for a nationalist organisation suggests that workers and bosses have a common interest that we are all Scottish or Croat or whatever. Thus in Scotland although a vote for the SNP can be a vote for policies that are to the left of Labour (no poll tax, no Trident, etc), it still remains a move to the right, away from class politics.
To understand the situation in Scotland it is important to understand that it is not through voting for the SNP that Scottish nationalist ideas are generally expressed. For although a 'soft' nationalism is widespread in Scotland today, the SNP have still not broken through in the central belt where most workers are concentrated.
Where nationalist ideas find their outlet in the working class today is in and around the Labour Party and the STUC. This is a direct result of the rotten Stalinist popular front politics of most of the Scottish left, combined with a deliberate adaptation to nationalist politics by the Labour establishment as a response to the challenge from the SNP in the early 1970s. It is a product of defeat, demoralisation and the belief that English workers have been bought off by the Tories and will never fight back.
Historically this is wrong. The Tories have never won a clear majority in England (although the Tories did win 50 percent of the popular vote in Scotland in the 1950s). Today, as workers throughout Britain begin to regain their confidence to fight, it is even more wrong.
The idea that the devastation wreaked on most of Scotland in the past 20 years is a product not of the actions of British ruling class policies, but of English oppression, is fatal to independent workers' struggle. It lets the Scottish Tories completely off the hook.
So Michael Forsyth, the Scottish secretary of state, can portray himself as a friend of the Yarrow workers as the shipyard is threatened with closure. English workers and not the Tories are seen by the union as the enemy. The atmosphere at the recent Scottish Socialist Alliance launch was such that a striking Liverpool docker who spoke felt moved to apologise for being English! And now the SSA are advertising a public meeting where a 'Scottish firefighter' will speak.
Socialists must argue that workers on both sides of the border have common interests. Today when workers everywhere in Britain are facing a vicious onslaught of cuts in local council services from a weak and divided government, to argue that firemen in Scotland have different interests to those on strike in Liverpool is to argue a strategy that can seriously undermine the struggle.
Socialists must oppose such defeatist tactics and argue for maximum unity of the working class. We also must be clear that the politics of the SSA are not a move to the left but, tragically, a move to the right.
Duncan Brown
Glasgow
I really enjoyed the last issue of Socialist Review with all the analysis of Ireland after the bombing of Canary Wharf. The interview with Eamonn McCann provided analysis of the breakdown of the ceasefire and the prospects for the future which are so sadly lacking elsewhere. There was one question I was left with, however--the possibility of an audience for socialist politics both amongst Protestants and Catholics.
The Republican tradition landed in a stalemate after 25 years, paving the way for the peace process. Relying on Clinton, the Southern Irish government and the British government has been seen to be a dead end with Clinton and Bruton showing clearly they have more in common with the British government than with ordinary working class Catholics. Surely there must be a greater number of people within the Nationalist community open to the idea that there must be another way of solving the problems than, say, 25 years ago?
By the same token, Protestant workers have seen their living standards decline alongside those of Catholics. What have the Unionist organisations got to offer other than more Tory policies and possibly a return to war?
I'm not trying to say that the situation is easy, but I would have thought there would be a new audience amongst younger people for politics which say you can't trust the politicians and that working class people have more to gain from uniting than allowing themselves to be divided on religious grounds.
Sheila McGregor
Tower Hamlets
Rarely have I come across so crass an example of populist philistinism parading as 'socialist criticism' as in Ben Watson's review extolling rave music as 'culture from below' (March SR).
He displays a double ignorance.
'In this century', he tells us, 'the bourgeoisie has been incapable of generating its own musical forms... No 20th century composers have emerged to rank with John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix.'
Really? Has he never heard of (or even listened to) Mahler, Copeland, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartók, Janácek, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Berg, Weill, or Britten? Of course, none of these composers actually came from the bourgeoisie in the strict sense of the term, meaning the capitalist owners of means of production.
But this was just as true of the great composers of the previous century and a half. Mozart and Beethoven were hardly big capitalists.
It was their search for a livelihood, for opportunities to practise their art and for recognition that forced all of them, often in spite of themselves, to adapt to existing society as well as going beyond it artistically.
Few of the artists extolled by Watson have been all that different. Great jazz musicians, for instance, are no more 'proletarian' than great classical musicians--as is shown by the cases of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis. And the same applies to the best rock and pop musicians, many of whom started off as art school graduates. So let's see an end to this fake populist crap and have some real Marxist analysis of culture in Socialist Review.
Kevin Ovenden
Hackney
Alan Maass (March SR) is right to say that Bruce Springsteen's album The Ghost of Tom Joad is his most political so far. And Springsteen's politics and personal integrity certainly put him in a different league from most rock stars. But that still leaves open the question, 'Is it any good?'
Springsteen came to fame 20 years ago with songs like 'Born to Run'. Through both words and music, they expressed--like all good soul and rock music--the emotional pain which workers feel, and a rebellious yearning for something better. As usual in popular music, both the pain and the rebellion were expressed in terms of personal relationships. But in the 1980s, on the albums The River and Born in the USA, Springsteen began to address political issues. Unemployment and Vietnam, for example, were acknowledged as causes of broken relationships and personal suffering. These albums reflected workers' bitterness and anger in a decade when US bosses went on the offensive, busting unions and cutting pay. They gave a moving and subtle account of how those attacks touched individual lives.
Tom Joad continues this trend. But the sense of rebellion is lacking--the songs describe the awful lives the characters lead, but, as Alan admits, there is no sign of fighting back. The lack of fight is echoed in the music--Springsteen's swaggering emotional rock is replaced in most songs by nothing but an acoustic guitar.
As Trotsky wrote, all art is of course the product of a capitalist society and of particular economic and social conditions. But art also has its own rules by which it must be judged. A song may describe exploitation and oppression, and still be a bad song. The Ghost of Tom Joad, then, may be Springsteen's most political album yet, but it also shows that he has lost his way artistically. The fire of Born to Run or Born in the USA is replaced by depressing folksy worthiness. Instead of the joyful energy of previous concerts, the fans are told to sit down, shut up and listen to Bruce lecturing. The transformation of Springsteen into a political folk singer is a very mixed blessing.
Colin Wilson
Manchester
Could I raise a socialist objection to some of the terms being used in talking about films in Socialist Review? Liz Wheatley concluded her review of Casino (March SR) by saying, 'Sharon Stone deserves her Oscar nomination.' She's not the first to let her enthusiasm about someone's supposed acting ability--or feminist credentials--lead to endorsement of Hollywood's biggest PR charade. It's a moot question: do any of these overpaid mannequins deserve the money and fame bestowed on them?
The star system is capitalism's answer to the drudgery it inflicts on people who work: a fantasy. Far from being a meritocracy that hoovers the world for 'talent', the Hollywood industry is run by a self serving, self congratulatory elite whose main concern is to make the richest nation in the world feel good about itself. Hollywood steals our right to be beautiful, glamorous and sexy and makes it the property of an elect who live in Beverley Hills. Socialists shouldn't flatter themselves that their printed reviews contribute to some kind of democratic bestowal of just deserts. The left has a long tradition of criticising the terms used by the bourgeoisie to talk about art. Bertolt Brecht pointed out that talk of 'fine acting' was mystification, an excuse to stop thinking about the political issues of the subject matter. Indeed the Oscars, and the idea that stars are the crucial ingredients in a film, were introduced by studio bosses in the teeth of trade union opposition. Like any major capitalist enterprise, films are actually the product of intense collective effort: just look at the endless credits at the end of any recent movie! Fixation on the 'star' is an imaginary identification with the superrich. It is as reactionary as daydreaming about royalty. A Marxist criticism of film should look at the materials--social and technological--involved in a film's production, not repeat the Guardian's drooling adulation of star myths and Oscars. As revolutionaries we refuse to tail end the bourgeois press politically--so why should our cultural coverage do so?
Ben Watson
Camden
We welcome letters and contributions on all issues raised in Socialist Review. Please keep your contributions as short as possible, typed, double spaced if you can, and on one side of paper only.
Send to:
Socialist Review,
PO Box 82. London E3 3LH