For the sake of the royals, abolish the monarchy

For a revolutionary socialist to admit to a degree of sympathy for the Royal Family is a bit like a cat declaring himself haunted by images of suffering mice, a sign of irredeemable softness. Yet I do pity the Windsor family. Any relationship of dominating inequality damages those at the top end as well as those at the bottom, albeit in different ways. Marx wrote of the bourgeoise being alienated under capitalism. The financier in front of a laptop screen showing market values is at the mercy of forces he doesn't control, even if the impact of those forces on his life is more cushioned than it is on the rough sleeper outside the cafe where he is sipping coffee. In fact, that the financier lacks a meaningful, equal, human relationship with the rough sleeper is one way is which he is alienated.

Similarly the Royal Family, by virtue of the very social set-up that gives them wealth and opportunity galore, can scarcely function like normal human beings. Their every doing happens under the lens of the paparazzi. Their most intimate moments, weddings, funerals, and so on, are public property. It is, admittedly, not the most tear-jerking tale of woe; many residents of Grenfell Tower, an easy walk from Prince Harry's family home, found themselves the objects of press attention without the compensation of a black tie evening function. Still, it would be better for the Windsors were they not on a pedestal (and not just because if somebody is on a pedestal, somebody else inevitably occupies a more lowly position).

Happily, we don't need to wait for anything as drastic as socialist revolution to relieve the Windsors of their burden. It is perfectly possible to abolish the monarchy, and this should happen. And it is perfectly possible for Labour members to mobilise around a policy of holding a referendum on the monarchy issue. The leadership, lifelong republicans the lot of them, maintain an embarrassed silence on the questions. One of the tensions of labourism is that it commits itself to bring about change through constitutional mechanisms. Attacks on that constitution itself are therefore shot through with a certain dissonance. The radical Labour politician who wants there to be no monarch still has to deal with that monarch on a regular basis, and acquiesce to any number of rites and procedures which speak of royalty's place at the heart of the British order. It takes peculiar circumstances and particular clear-sightedness for the effect to be anything other than quietism on the Crown: Tony Benn's experience of being in government is one example.

I sense scepticism at this point among some of my readers. Surely, they are thinking, the reason Labour isn't calling for the monarchy to be abolished (and won't do) is that there are far more important things on which to focus. We need to save the NHS, repeal anti-union laws, nationalise the railways. Abolishing the monarchy is a distraction. In any case, the monarchy  is popular, and committing itself to even a referendum would cost Labour at the polls and prevent it from doing these things.

The assumption here is that the monarchy is not that important, and isn't tied up with the other things wrong with British society. This is just wrong. Millions of people organised their way around watching two people they don't know get married. Many waved union jacks and threw street parties. As they did so they reproduced the deference that poisons British society. If you think that somebody deserves our attention simply because of the family they are born into, you are more likely to be the kind of version who is happy to vote for a bunch of Etonian Tories because 'well, they know what they are doing'. This is class politics from above. Its product is a mass of people who know their place. The point of socialist politics, on the other hand, is to change our places.

All of this is quite apart from the role of the Crown in the British constitution. Perogative powers allow Prime Ministers to do many things without even reference to parliament, as the victims of many RAF bombing missions over the decades know to their cost.

But what would we replace the monarchy with? The assumption in the background of this question is inevitably that, whilst having an unelected aristocrat as head of state may not be perfect, it is better than the likely alternatives: how would we feel about President Blair? Well, we could at least unelect him, which is not the case with queens. But it's not clear at all that Britain needs a head of state. It probably needs somebody to meet visiting heads of state and open the odd shopping mall. Fine, let the Speaker of the House of Commons do it. Or some more local dignitary. Or somebody chosen at random. The range of possibilities is much wider than debates usually allow.

So please let's allow the Windsors to be ordinary people. I don't want to be having to avoid anniversary celebrations in 25 years' time.

Some thoughts on the anti-Semitism furore

In a context in which anti-Corbynite MPs recently joined in a demonstration against Corbyn's supposed softeness on anti-Semitism, shoulder to shoulder with members of the DUP, it seems in order to suggest that their motivation might be something other than a principled commitment to anti-racism. Protesting against hatred for a particular enthno-religious group alongside Ulster loyalists is rather like protesting against unusual clothing arm-in-arm with Lady Gaga.



And indeed, be in no doubt: the point of the furore over anti-Semitism and Labour is to weaken Corbyn, to sew doubt in his supporters, and to damage Labour's prospects in the coming local elections, providing the context for another leadership bid by this year's Owen Smith equivalent. The right in the Party have been in stasis since the unexpectedly good results in the last General Election. There is no way, however, that they will sit by and let Corbyn fight another General Election (a Corbyn government is, for many of the Old Believers from the Blair years, a worse prospect than a Tory government). This is their chance to stop that, and they have pounced.

Whatever else we say about Labour and anti-Semitism it is vital that we understand that this is what is going on, and that we support the leadership. On top of that, four points:

1. Anti-Semitism around the left is real

Defending Corbyn is not the same thing as being defensive. Some on the left have been unhelpful in denying that anti-Semitism around the left is a thing. Whereas anyone who looks honestly at the trajectory of anti-capitalist protest (and, to an extent, of Palestine solidarity politics) since the 2007/8 financial crisis will know differently. A crisis of capitalism focused in the financial sector, happening at a time when left ideas and organisations were weak, provided the opportunity for every vile caricature of Jewish people, every obsession with the Rothschilds and the Illuminati to work its way out of the woodwork. That mural is a case in point. So are the weirdoes with home made signs featuring the Star of David, one sees on the fringes of demonstrations. To the extent that these people have found their way into the Labour Party (and inevitably some have), they should be expelled. It is no use denying any of this.

Far from being a sign that the left has gone too far, however, the persistence of what August Bebel called 'the socialism of fools', shows that we need a stronger, more disciplined, left with better political education, capable of offering an account of the world persuasive enough to draw people away from the simplicities of bigotry. The Corbyn movement provides the best opportunity for that in this country for a generation. Anyone who is genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism ought not to try to undermine that movement.

2. Anti-Semitism within the Labour leadership is not a thing

This shouldn't need saying. Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong campaigner against racism of all kinds is not an anti-Semite. Nor is John McDonnell. Nor is Christine Shawcroft (who is something far less politically exciting: an overworked official trying to deal with a mountain of complaints, many of them spurious. We would do well to reflect on the story of the boy who cried wolf). The injustice of good people, who have dedicated their lives to the cause of a more equal and just world, being cynically accused of racism (or at least of turning a blind eye to racism) is palpable. They deserve our absolute support and solidarity.

3. The politics of cultural and religious belonging is complicated

A problem in left of centre politics at the moment is the lack of sophistication in understanding the politics of cultural and religious belonging. This criticism applies equally to Corbyn's attackers and to many of his defenders. Ethno-religious groups are not politically uniform: differences of theology and tradition run through them and intersect with divisions along lines of class, gender, and sexuality. Speaking about the group I'm most familiar with: a certain type of conservative Catholic will accuse people of 'anti-Catholicism' in the context, say, of debates about legal abortion or same-sex marriage. These accusations are spurious and are made for political effect. This does not mean for one moment that anti-Catholic bigotry is not a real thing. It's just that this isn't it: and, crucially, plenty of Catholics (myself included) will argue against the conservatives, and will do so on grounds internal to Catholicism itself.

The danger is that people unfamiliar with the texture of ethno-religious groups treat them as undifferentiated unity. They see a subgroup taking offense at something and assume that the offense is warranted, proportionate, and directed at the right people. Thus the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a conservative organisation politically opposed to Corbyn over the Middle East is not the voice of all Jews in Britain. It does not speak from a political vacuum. The voices of Jews who support Corbyn cannot be allowed to be silenced.

4. Corbyn will never be able to give enough to satisfy his critics

Ian Austin, Stella Creasy and John Mann do not want a slightly more muted, or somewhat more woke Corbyn. They want no Corbyn. They want the Labour Party to be led by somebody else. Concessions to them - Shawcroft's resignation, committees, enquiries - none of this will satisfy them. So, whilst absolutely fighting anti-Semitism, those concessions ought not to be made. This battle, and that's what it is, is not about anti-Semitism (indeed, I'm tempted to say that using British Jews as pawns in intra-Labour wrangles is itself anti-Semitic) it is about the direction of the Labour Party. Only a resolutely socialist direction will secure proper action against all racism and against the capitalism that fuels it.

Incidentally, if we're now being merciless towards MPs who fail to notice racism, I do think that Stella Creasy might want to ask herself whether she is in a position to cast the first stone.

Class on campus: support the UCU strike

Higher Education has something of a genteel image, so that industrial militancy in universities can seem as incongruous as full frontal nudity during an episode of Songs of Praise. The suggestion that lecturers might be at the forefront of class struggle has a whiff of the Dave Spart about it. We are prone to think that pickets lines fit more naturally outside factory gates than faculty offices.

This in itself tells us something about the dated nature of our instincts about both work and about universities. The refashioning of British capitalism since the 1980s has witnessed both de-industrialisation and the growing need for a technically educated workforce, both trends making universities a less unlikely front in industrial relations than they might first seem. Universities themselves are, in any case, disappointingly unlike their portrayal on Endeavour, let along Brideshead Revisited. Staffed by an increasingly casualised, not infrequently hourly-paid, academic workforce, backed up by worse paid academic related staff, all presided over by an ever weightier layer of senior management, there is little idyllic to be found here.

The current UCU dispute over pensions is important and deserves the full support of everyone in the labour movement. Not only does it represent the revival of a struggle over public sector pensions (and by extension, all pensions) which has been moribund since 2011, but the viciousness with which managements have responded to strike threats is a barometer for current thinking amongst senior HR personnel throughout the economy: in most universities affected by the strike aggressive emails have been sent out to staff; attempts have been made to trick workers into declaring beforehand that they will strike (the claim being that this information is needed to keep up pension payments), and most worryingly, several universities have - with dubious legality - asserted that they will treat failure to reschedule classes cancelled because of strikes as action short of a strike, and will dock pay accordingly. This last move is an attempt to change a withdrawal of labour into a rescheduling of labour, the only effect being that the workers in question get less pay. It is the academic equivalent of expecting a car worker who has been on strike one day to produce twice as many car components the next.

If university bosses are allowed to win through these kind of tactics, it will set a disturbing precedent. They are, however, weak and divided - today one vice-Chancellor broke ranks with Universities UK. Labour activists can be crucial in winning this struggle: pass motions at your branches, but above all make contact with your local UCU branch. Find out how you can help. Find out if the management at your local university have been using the aggressive tactics mentioned above. If so, get your Labour MP to complain directly to the vice-Chancellor, or if you don't have a Labour MP, get your CLP to do so. One victorious strike would make all the difference right now in Britain. Whether or not this strike is victorious depends on all of us.

Model motion in support of UCU - please put to Labour branches/ CLPs

An industrial dispute with the potential to be one of the most significant in the UK in recent years has reached a new stage. For details see here. Support throughout the Labour movement is essential.

This Branch/ CLP notes that after prolonged attempts to negotiate with Universities UK over proposed reforms to pensions, the Universities and College Union has voted to take industrial action in pre-1992 universities. This is likely to begin on 22^nd February. Central to the proposed changes is the abolition of defined benefit pensions.
 We believe:

• ·         That all workers are entitled to a decent retirement.

• ·         That defined benefit schemes are a good way to secure this.

• ·         That the attack on pensions in universities represents the latest front in an attack on public sector pensions.

• ·         That this is part of a process of levelling-down of pension provision that will have a negative impact on all workers, whether in the public or private sectors.

 We resolve:

• ·         To support UCU’s industrial action.

• ·         To liaise with the UCU branch at [LOCAL UNIVERSITY] and get details of picket lines; to inform our membership of these by email and to encourage members to turn up and support them.

• ·         To write to the vice-Chancellor at [LOCAL UNIVERSITY] expressing our support for the strike and urging the employers to negotiate reasonably with the union.

• ·         To contact [LOCAL MP/ LABOUR CANDIDATE] asking her/ him to both write to the vice-Chancellor and to communicate her/ his support to the UCU branch at [LOCAL UNIVERSITY]

  The motion will require alteration if there is no pre-1992 university locally.

 For details of the dispute, useful for correspondence, see https://www.ucu.org.uk/strikeforuss

Against the Single Market, for internationalism

So I advocated voting to leave the EU. In some left-wing circles this admission is rather like owning up to necrophilia, but for all that I stand by it. In particular I stand by my judgement that the Leave vote would have caused major upset in the Tory government, possibly bringing it down, were it not for the fact that the Parliamentary Labour Party decided to buy a reprieve for the Tories, deflecting attention from them by attacking the Corbyn leadership and forcing a second election.

Be that as it may, we're now on track for, what people insist on calling, Brexit. Much left-of-centre opinion is now advocating a 'soft Brexit'. This is often taken to involve ongoing membership of the Single Market and Customs Union. To this end the SNP have invited Corbyn to a 'summit' apparently intended to focus the fight for Single Market membership.

It is certain that some Labour members will be tempted to advocate Corbyn's taking up the invitation. They are wrong for at least two reasons.

First, the invitation is a trap, intended to put Corbyn in an impossible position, trapped between Leave and Remain supporters in his own electorate. The proper response to it is to say that Labour are the largest opposition party and don't need invitations from anyone.

Second, the Single Market is not a good thing. Leave aside discussions about free trade and protectionism. Built into the rules governing the Single Market are a barrage of neo-liberal measures which would tie the hands of a future radical Labour government. In particular they would prevent it from seriously reversing the privatisations of the past three decades (the lazy response here, that plenty of EU countries have nationalised railways (say) is beside the point - the issue is about returning railways to public ownership, outside of exceptional - East Coast -circumstances once they have been privatised, as they have in Britain). It is unconscianable that the Labour front bench would want to frustrate its own programme by lining up behind the Single Market.

So far, so good. And Corbyn agrees. But does this mean that Labour should simply line up behind the right-wing Brexiteers? So, and for a tediously left-wing reason, class. For whilst we - the great majority of people - have nothing to gain from the neo-liberal regime of the single market, large sections of British capital, including crucially the City of London, do. And whilst we shouldn't place too much faith in those mainstream economic forecasters who failed to predict the 2008 financial crisis, the 'experts' the British electorate were chided for ignoring at the referendum, we have to realise that disinvestment on a massive scale is likely to be the default result of the UK exiting the Single Market. The consequences of this for working class people would be catastrophic.

This means that the parliamentary left can't afford to be passive spectators in an EU exit process steered by the right. There needs to be an alternative programme, and it has to tackle questions of ownership and control, particularly in the financial sector. This, to my mind, is the only way a Labour government could secure a decent basis for a radical programme and protect the living standards of ordinary people in the next few years.

Nor ought Labour to buy into the lie, which I'm afraid has been encouraged by some on the front bench, that the Single Market and free movement stand or fall together. There is no reason that a UK outside of the Single Market couldn't open its borders to EU migrants and negotiate free movement for British citizens throughout the EU. The Labour Campaign for Free Movement is necessary.

The Centrality of Class I - Exploitation

(This is part of the Introduction to Marxism series. See here.)

The most important reason that I think the contemporary left could do with more input from Marxism is that the contemporary left doesn't have nearly enough to say about class, whereas Marxism makes class central. Upon hearing this kind of statement people often worry, "What do you mean class is central? Are you saying that gender, race, and sexuality - for example - are any less important?" But that's to misunderstand what's meant by the centrality of class: it isn't that class matters more than gender, race, and so on. And it certainly isn't that class exploitation involves more suffering than sexual or racial oppression, as though some computer programmer in Woking had a better claim to be numbered amongst the wretched of the earth than a Saudi woman. No, the Marxist claim is that understanding class has a certain priority with respect to understanding over non-class oppressions; you understand a society in a particularly intimate way if you understand its class relations. This is important, of course, if you want to change society, and so class exploitation ought to be of interest not least if you want to fight sexism, racism, or homophobia.

The reason Marx thinks this was touched upon in the first post of this series, historical materialism: the way we reproduce ourselves as a species, that is, the way we produce the things we need, constrains the way we can organise society. And class quite simply is the general way we organise production socially, the way a society contains different groups who in different ways own or control the means to produce the things we need. From this it ought to be clear that class, for Marx, is not a matter of accent, or of what kind of sauce you put on your chips, or even of how much money you have. The question is simply: do you own the means to produce things for human need (beyond your own domestic needs)?

Before capitalism and in the early days of capitalism the answer to this question might well have required a little thought: perhaps you might have your own small-holding, but also work the local baron's land, or perhaps you might do piece-work for a local industrialist in your cottage. Under developed capitalism, however, things are much simpler: the vast majority of the population do not own factories, companies, sufficient shares or other accumulated wealth to be able to survive without working (or receiving state benefits in countries where these exist). Nor do they own land, or significant amounts of tools or resources. These people, most of us, the proletariat in Marx's language, must sell our capacity to work to others in order to survive. The bourgeoisie, meanwhile, own the means of production and lay claim to the profits made in their factories, farms, call centres, and computing labs.

Here's the rub: those profits, to which the bourgeoisie lays claim, result from the labour of the proletariat. Capitalism in other words is an exploitative system; to be a proletarian is to be exploited. Now, I have no intention of going into the details of Marx's theory of value and exploitation, mainly because this is an introduction, but also because it is laid out clearly in the first volume of Capital and explained well by David Harvey's free on-line course. Basically, though, the idea is that value is produced by human labour and that profits are surplus value, the value produced by labourers minus the value returned to them in the form of wages (which will need to be enough in the long-run to allow the workers to survive) and that required to keep firms ticking over in terms of plant, machinery, and so on (all of this being produced by another group of workers, working for another capitalist).

This has a number of consequences. Three seem to me particularly important for the current left:

Economic theory. Marx's account of exploitation is the cornerstone of his economic theory. A systematic grasp of economics is not a strong point on the left, and that is a failure of ours. Yet we have our own tradition of economic thought, and we should get better acquainted with it. Michael Roberts' blog is a good place to start.

Immiseration. It needn't be the case that workers are poor, and many are clearly not. There are all sorts of reasons for this. The exploitative nature of capitalist work, however, builds a tendency to make workers as poor as is compatible with them still working into the nature of production. The reason for this is quite simple: value that goes to workers as wages does not go to bosses as profit. Marx's theory allows us to link our proper outrage at sweatshops and zero-hours contracts to the functioning of the system.

Conflict. The fact that value that goes as wages can't go as profits and vice versa means that conflict is built into the capitalism system itself. My interests contradict my bosses' interests, and that is built into the way things are. Class struggle is not something dreamed up by hot-heads or preached by demagogues, it happens in every supermarket, workshop, and college every day of the year. Marxism is not about arguing for class war, it is about recognising that class war is already with us. Once we have done that, the next thing to recognise is that the only way to abolish class war is to win it, to do away with capitalism and with class-based society. I'll say more about how Marx thought that was possible in a later post.

There's a lot more that could and should be said about class and exploitation: what about the sizeable number of public sector workers in contemporary capitalist economies, where do they fit in? What about those members of the working class who are unemployed or undocumented? What about work done illegally? As I said above, though, this is supposed to be an introduction. With that in mind, one further comment - I suggested in the first post that Marx was a therapeutic thinker, whose work is best read as attacking illusions in our self-understanding which prevent us from being politically active or effective on behalf of the working class. One particularly pernicious illusion tells us that our employers provide us with work, that they are somehow doing us a favour by employing us, and that we should be grateful to them (politicians often talk of 'job creators'). Marx turns the picture upside down and the right way up, so that we can see clearly what is the case: it is not us who need the bourgeoisie, they need us. We could produce what the species need without people exploiting our labour for profit. The bourgeoisie could not profit without exploiting us.

If Marx by his writing has stopped one person being grateful to her boss, then his work was worthwhile.

Marxism in Outline

(On the Introduction to Marxism series see here)

It is easier to say what Marxism is not than what it is. It isn't a quasi-religious worldview, promising guidance for every aspect of its adherents' lives. On the contrary, to the extent that Marxism makes demands on those who follow it, it does so as an emergency measure, in the hope that its demands will one day be no longer necessary (there will be no Marxist politics in a society without exploitation). Marxists can and do disagree on matters of philosophy, religion, art, and much else besides: nothing recognisably in the spirit of Karl Marx claims to have all the answers. Nor, and this will upset some Marxism's  more enthusiastic proponents, is Marxism a science in anything like the modern English sense. Whilst Marxism advocates attention to empirical detail, in politics for example and economics, the claims of Marxism itself have the character not of empirically testable scientific propositions but rather of philosophical reminders, drawing our attention to aspects of human life in the world which should be obvious, but for the effects of ideology. 

To borrow language from another great and currently unfashionable philosopher, Wittgenstein, Marxism is a therapy, a way of thinking which helps us to get ourselves untangled from the illusions sown in capitalist society. It is not simply a therapy, of course: Marx wants us to get our ideas right in order that we transform the world and abolish the social relations which give rise to illusions in the first place. In fact, we won't even get our ideas right in the first place unless we're engaged in transforming the world. Thought, Marx reminds us in his Theses on Feuerbach, is a practical affair.

As I see it, Marx's philosophical reminders as they lie scattered throughout his work (which, unlike some, I see as a unity) fall mainly within three areas:

An Account of the Human Person: Human beings are social, rational animals, who find fulfillment through collectively working in a creative fashion. On this basis Marx opposes individualistic accounts of human beings and accounts for which we are basically mental or spiritual beings, without sufficient attention to our material nature. Practically, he opposes capitalism which he believes prevents us from fulfilling our natures (a type of what he calls 'alienation').

Historical Materialism: Because of what human beings are, there are significant material constraints on human activity. In particular, human beings need to be able to reproduce themselves as animals as a precondition for cultural, political, and other economic life. I cannot write Wuthering Heights, or even Donald Trump's Twitter account on an empty stomach, and keeping my stomach full typically requires the efforts of dozens of my fellow human beings. On this basis Marx thinks that understanding the ways in which human beings produce goods, and the social relations which characterise that production, are fundamental to both understanding and transforming human societies.

The Critique of Political Economy: Economics cannot explain its own foundations in its own terms, Once we enquire into these we see that the labouring human being, to which our attention is drawn by Marx's account of the human person, is the source of value under capitalism, which is intrinsically exploitative. Marx's account of capitalism shows it to require human alienation for its ongoing existence, which provides an excellent reason to overthrow it. At the same time the account permits a deeper understanding of the economics of capitalism, and in particular of the crisis-prone nature of the system.

I'll say more about these in the weeks that follow.