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.

New Series on Marxism

"Do something useful", is the advice I'd give someone looking to get more involved in politics and wondering what to do. I've been reviewing my own political commitments and, with a relatively small amount of time on my hands, less than brilliant health, and a capacity to be sometimes not terrible at writing, I've decided to take my own advice and start a series on Marxism on this blog.

Why, sceptics will rightly ask, does this constitute doing something useful? The British left needs more blogposts like British pig farms need more visits from David Cameron. Perhaps. But the British left certainly has a problem with ideas and tradition. There has been a resurgence in participation in left wing politics since Jeremy Corbyn's first campaign. There has not, on the whole, been a revival of interest in socialist ideas, still less in the historical thought of our tradition. 

To the extent that the new generation of activists bring political ideas with them, they are the default US-imported identity politics of present day university campuses. Do not misunderstand me being critical of 'identity politics' here: it is of paramount importance that socialists fight oppression on the basis of gender, race, and sexuality. The problem with the kind of individualistic moralistic finger-wagging which increasingly passes for left-wing politics is that it actively damages this fight, both by making it the preserve of a 'woke' elite and by disentangling it from the politics of class.

Marxism, a collection of doctrines whose central claims I am unfashionable enough to believe to be true, offers an alternative, putting class in a central analytic position and looking forward to a politics of the "immense majority" acting in their own interests. As a tradition which has developed over a century and a half of working class struggle it, as embodied in those activists who understand the world in terms of it, serves as - in the old phrase - the memory of the class.

And we need a memory. I think that many of us on the Labour left have been so impressed and surprised by the new intake that we have, with misplaced modesty, thought that we have nothing to offer them. The enthusiastic Corbynite teenager can teach the retired lifelong activist to send tweets; that activist, we seem to believe, has nothing to offer. On the contrary, ideas and experience will prevent us from making mistakes which could prove fatal for our movement in the next few years.

So, a series on Marxism is my attempt to make some contribution to fill this gap. There will, over the coming months, be seven posts on these themes:

1. Marxism in outline

2. The centrality of class - exploitation

3. The centrality of class - history

4. Marxist politics

5. Marxism, gender and race

6. Marxism and the New Left

7. Marxism and the Labour Party

Statement on the Labour left slate for the NEC

This was sent to me and I agree wholeheartedly with it. I'll be voting for the Momentum slate in the interest of left unity, but we need to do much better in future.

We feel that there should be a much more transparent and democratic process engaged in for the selection of the NEC Left Slate in the future. It is no longer sufficient that a handful of Executive members of Left organisations meet as the CLGA and choose who we are told to vote for: the grassroots members of these organisations should have the ability to choose who they want on this slate. Having the Executive members of the CLGA organisations select members to put forward for these positions excludes ordinary members from the process. The current system whereby a small group comprising the CLGA decides the final slate by “consensus” is no longer representative of the grassroots Left.

We are proposing that Momentum lead the democratisation within the Left by putting in place the following system for choosing the next NEC Left Slate:

Anyone who is a member of any one of the CLGA organisations and who is eligible to stand for the Labour Party’s NEC is able to put themselves forward for election. They must submit a brief bio and at least one nomination to indicate support from either a branch (or another local organisation) or the Executive of one of these organisations. To facilitate a fully democratic decision-making, all the CLGA organisations must circulate the details (bios & nominations) of all the candidates to all their members, as it is not simply the ability to vote for these candidates, but the opportunity to have full knowledge in which members are making informed choices.

The selection of the final slate is compiled by allowing each member of all the CLGA organisations to vote for the 9 candidates, using a Single Transferable Voting system. Since individuals may be a member of more than one Left organisation within the CLGA, the ballots are issued to members based on Labour Party membership numbers, so that an individual only gets one vote. The 9 candidates receiving the most votes are deemed to be the “left slate” and will be advertised by all the participating groups as such. This selection process should ideally be run by an independent scrutineer such as the Electoral Reform Society.

Strong and Stable

Theresa May is talking about strong and stable leadership. A lot. Like some kind of dystopian Tory stuck record she is repeating the phrase regardless of whether it makes any sense in a given context. It runs through the Tory campaign like a motorway through a site of natural beauty. In an admirably ecumenical fashion it is the mantra of the vicar's daughter. It sounds like either the world's worst dating site bio or an advertising slogan for toilet paper. Yet again and again, the Prime Minister says it. If Theresa May were asked whether she would prefer tea or coffee, she would respond that she stands for strong and stable leadership, and that to chose either drink would be to risk handing power to the Coalition of Chaos.

Why is she doing this? The image she wants to present is a classically conservative one - of order and unity, bringing the nation together above the noise of political contest. It is a disturbing outlook for sure: taken to extremes, it feeds into the kind of grotesque fascism represented across the Channel by Marine Le Pen. It cannot be denied, or at least it should not be denied, however that these tropes appeal to no small number of people: leadership, unity, stability, strength.

Not everyone for whom this talk is comforting or uplifting has a pair of jackboots on their shoe-rack. May's values appeal to the anxious, to those whose lives lack shape, community, or apparent meaning. They offer a prospect of having a clear place in the world and of belonging to something along with others. In other words, they promise to undo the unsettling effects of capitalism. Right-wing politics in capitalist society finds itself caught in a constant bind: on the one-hand wishing to unleash the market on society in the cause of profit, on the other needing to restore the order also required by profit in response to the disorganising effects of capital's social rampage.

The Left has to understand the roots and the appeal of language like May's in order to respond to it adequately. It would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions, and a betrayal of the victims of the racism 'national unity' invariably brings in its wake, to adopt May's own themes in the fashion of Blue Labour. Even offering 'leadership' seems to me to suggest a presidential politics to which we'd be better placed to propose an alternative: we are not so much about leading as allowing people to take control of their own lives. This said, in order to counter the 'strong and stable' line, something has to be said that speaks to the uncertainty, vulnerability and isolation that breeds it. Corbyn's programme is good in this respect; in the longer run an explicit class politics is the answer. For now, the task is to get out there and offer an alternative remedy to the disease for which May offers toxic snake oil.