Labour activists see Hoon and Hewitt as Blairite plotters

Hewitt and Hoon are MP's who see Brown leading the Labour Party to a crushing defeat in the General Election in a few months. They (mis)calculated they could avoid that - and the knock effect on their political careers - with their call for a PLP vote on his leadership. Just another day of Westminster manoeuvring, not "treachery" (to what? certainly not the working-class or the labour movement which Brown and Blair's New Labour project was designed to drive out of politics).

Brown should be described as a traitor, as well as Hoon and Hewitt.

But it seems unlikely that Hoon and Hewitt moved in order to save "their political careers".

Hewitt has already said she will quit at the general election to focus on her company directorships, such as at BT.

There are different accounts as to whether Hoon will quit or stand again as an MP. For sure he was keen to get out of Parliament and get an EU job: commentators suggest that spite at failing to get his EU job motivated his recent move.

Martin Thomas

Well, the term "treachery" was Peter Kenyon's, not mine.

But Hoon's and Hewitt's call for Brown to be replaced by an even more right-wing, or let's say, more outspokenly and unquibblingly right-wing, Labour leader has helped the Tories. They must have known, at the very least, that there was a very large chance of that happening.

That. presumably, is why it was they - rather than Blairites who plan still to be active in the Labour Party after the general election - who made the move.

Any worker knowing that what the Tories plan to do - and knowing also that in almost all constituencies, and in terms of alternative governments, their only even limitedly union-linked alternative is Labour - has good reason to be angry with Hoon and Hewitt.

They will be angry with Hoon and Hewitt even though they know how bad Brown is and has been, and even if they know Brown's promises to keep key public service spending up if he wins the election up are hollow.

I have to say that there is a real air of unreality to this discussion. Firstly, the question is Brown a traitor? On the one hand as a Marxist I can sympathise with that argument on the basis that his politics are bourgeois, and therefore, advance he interests of Capital as against Labour. But, is that because Brown is quite consciously an agent of Capital? Possibly, but I'm not definitely convinced of it anymore than the fact that Harold Wilson, Clem Attlee or Nye Bevan held bourgeois ideas made them conscious agents of the bourgeoisie. If we proceed on that basis then we have to also conclude that pretty much every worker is also a traitor to their class, because they too share these same ideas, and often much worse! Surely, what we have as with every Workers Party, is the fact that, as with the class as a whole it reflects the dominant ideas, and outside some real material changes in society, those dominant ideas are bourgeois. There is nothing more Traitorous in Brown's politics of beleiving (mistakenly) that the cause of workers is bound up with the cause of society as a whole, which means the cause of Capital, and that very same idea which dominates the politics of every Trade Union, which sees the interests of its workers as being bound up with the fortunes of the companies for whom they work. Moreover, you can really only describe someone as acting treacherously if tehy act in a way, which is not only contrary to the way they knoow they should act, but doings so in the full knowledge that those who they betray desire them to act differently. But, we saw in he 1980's when Laboour leaders DID propose a more working class oriented politics that the very class who is supposedly now being betrayed, REJECTED, those politics.

If workers vote overwhelmingly for militant strike action and the union leaders sell-out, that is a betrayal, but how is it a betrayal when the workers themselves vote overwhelmingly against such a course of action. Its Ultra-Leftism in the way Lenin described to take your own understanding of what should happen, what the reality is, and to transpose that on to workers existing cosnciousness. Moreover, it mitigates against the very task that is required of changing that consciousness, just as Lenin criticsed the Ultra-Lefts for their simialr position in relation to the Trade Unions or Parliamentarism. It might be unpalatable, but the reality is that the vast majority of workers who will not vote for Brown will not do so because they think he is too right-wing. Were that the case left candidates would already have been winning substantial votes. The reality is that many will not vote for him for thoroughly reactionary reasons. Most ordinary workers I speak to say they don't like Brown because he's Scottish (!), because of Immigration and so on. Under these conditions, however, inadequate you may beleive the politics of Labour to be, however, right-wing its membership it DOES represent the best elements of the class, which is one reason it is necessary to try to secure a Labour victory, and stop the further drift to the right of the class towards the Tories, UKIP and the BNP. And its in that sense that the actions of Goon and Blewitt, and anyone else who acts to preevent thaat are not just acting as traitors to the Workers Party, but to the class.

And, actually the vox pops conducted yesterday DID show a lot of ordinary workers who thought that they were traitors. The fact that the Tories had a poster campaign ready to go on the day itself suggests that this was designed to scupper Labour's election campaign, in a week when labour was coming back in the polls, and when the Tories had been put on he back foot. Matthews point that some young people and otehrs will not be voting is no more something we should welcome than if they were voting for the BNP. It represents not an advance in class consciousness but the very opposite. Matthew is right to say that many who vote Labour do not do so, because of any strong sense of class consciousness. But, he's wrong to then go on to say that it is out of some vague anti-Toryism. The proof of that is the votes that Blair received over 3 general elections. It is probably the case that those who DO vote labour still out of some sense of class loyalty also do so, out of a vague anti-Toryism, but for the rest it appears to be the extent that New Labour had adopted vague Toryism that won over their votes! Its precisely because of that that the idea of trying to stand candidates to the Left of Labour seems peculiarly adventuristic.

Arthur Bough

As it turns out, Lenin WAS mostly incorrect in his assessment of the Social Democratic leaders as traitors, but he couldn’t know that at the time, and he had good reasons for making that assessment. Firstly, let’s be clear that Lenin was not a Pacifist, and his opposition to the War was not based on some belief that short of a socialist overturn the War could have been avoided. On the contrary, his position was based on the premise that international revolution was at hand, and that the War would quickly spill over into it. He wrote,

“The Basle Manifesto of 1912, adopted unanimously in anticipation of precisely the kind of war between the great powers which has in fact come about, definitely recognised the reactionary and imperialist character of the war, and clearly announced the approach of a proletarian revolution in connection with such a war. In effect, the war has created a revolutionary situation, and has generated revolutionary sentiments and discontent. It is the task of Social-Democrats to maintain and develop these, help to clear the revolutionary awareness of the masses and purge their minds of the falsehood of bourgeois and socialist chauvinism, promote every effort at revolutionary mass struggle against imperialism, for socialism, and to work to transform the imperialist war into a civil war for socialism.

To intensify their revolutionary agitation, Social-Democrats must make use of the growing massive desire for peace, which expresses the disappointment of the masses and the clearing of their revolutionary consciousness. But in so doing, Social-Democrats should not deceive the people by holding out hopes for any kind of stable democratic peace, that would rule out the oppression of nations, and that would come soon and without the revolutionary over throw of the present governments.”

It was, in fact, the same justification the revolutionaries had, alongside the temporary collapse of the Second International, for splitting the workers movement, and creating the Third International. But, they were wrong, weren’t they. In actual fact, the masses of workers did not sign up for the War because the Social-Democrat leaders told them to, but because they were still infused with a bourgeois class consciousness, and with Patriotism. Even the Bolshevik deputies in the Duma adopted the same position. Were the Bolsheviks or people like Karl Liebknecht “traitors” to the class for actually going to fight in that War alongside the workers??? Were they traitors for actually shooting workers in the opposing trenches? That, of course is the kind of nonsense conclusion that most of the Left arrives at nowadays in its Pacifistic opposition to War as I’ve set out in my blog Proletarian Military Policy. It is implicitly the conclusion that flows from what you say here.

The other justification for his position was the fact that these Parties and their leaders actually had had a position of opposing the War, right up to its outbreak. They CHANGED their position. Even so, had Lenin not believed that revolution was imminent, its likely his position would have been different, more akin to that, which Trotsky adopted with the Proletarian Military Policy. After all Engels himself had adopted a similar position in relation to workers “defending” their country in his pamphlet on the Prussian Military Question.

And, of course that would have been a sensible Marxist position to adopt. A Trade Union Militant does not act in the way you want socialist politicians to act. Faced with massive opposition to a strike call from the membership, a trade union militant does not focus their attention on the tiny hardcore “vanguard” membership, and say, we will strike anyway! That is not only suicidal, because you would get isolated and sacked, but the quickest way of losing what support you might have had amongst the general membership. The militant, instead, looks for ways of making the best of the situation, of making an organised retreat. Again that is Lenin’s message in “Left-Wing Communism” to those who rejected the idea of making compromises. Its your insistence on not “betraying” some supposed and increasingly diminishing “vanguard”, rather than sticking with the class, that has led to the revolutionary Left becoming so isolated from the class.

It is your use of the term “traitor” that makes a nonsense of it, not mine. If the majority of people in a country vote to make an alliance with another country in a War, and a politician implements that vote, despite their own conviction that it is wrong, do they act treacherously? If on the other hand, they hand secret papers, etc. to some other nation, acting out of their own beliefs, and against those of the majority, is it not that, which is treachery? And, I repeat, if the majority of workers hold a particular position, which is different from that which you hold, should you not also describe those workers as traitors to their class, as well as the leaders, who those very same workers have themselves raised up? It is your use of the term, which makes no sense, because using it means that the only people who are not traitors to the class are that tiny Minority, who act in the way you believe they should.

From a political standpoint it not only makes no sense, but it is practically useless. It serves no purpose other than to allow you to draw a halo around your head, and sing hosannas to your purity. It is not the Marxism of Marx, but of the Monastic Order. It is why those in the left sects who adopt it, are more like Monks than working-class politicians, continually contemplating how many angels sit on the head of a needle, continually falling into schism, and occasionally coming out of their cloisters to prey on some unfortunate when they think they might be able to add to their coffers, or need to replenish their numbers.

Arthur Bough

Matthew,

Have you spoken to any actual ordinary workers lately???? Many of them actually believe that Spending Cuts are necessary, because they think that the Budget Deficit will damage the economy. Many of them outside the Public Sector would welcome job cuts, and certainly cuts in Public Sector workers Pensions. Huge numbers beleive that many claimants are scroungers. In all of that they are terribly wrong, you might even want to describe them as "traitors to their class", or maybe as you did when you didn't like the views of ordinary workers at LOR who thought that the idea of "British Jobs For British Workers" was a good solution to their problems, you could turn your back on them and their reactionary ideas, maybe even organise a picket against them!

Do you really not understand that the reason the LP keeps getting the votes of millions of workers, is precisely because the working class is imbued with bouregois ideas, including these reactionary sentiments? Do you not undertsand that the reason they do, and that sects like the AWL keep being ignored by the working class, is precisely ebcause it is you, and not the LP, that is totally divorced from the working class, and increasingly it seems even from reality!

What is worse, is that the AWL is no less a bourgeois organisation with a bourgeois reformist programme than is the LP. Indeed, if anything, were we to do a sociological comparison based on members I think its quite clear that the LP would come out as far more proletarian. The main difference is that Brown and Co. are more consistent in their bourgeois reformism than is the AWL. The LP, like the Trade Unions that it is based upon does not beleive in replacing Capitalism, but winning reforms to it, redistributing wealth to those in society who most need it. Under those conditions the kinds of programme that Brown advocate makes sense. You can only redistribute wealth if you first create it. The more you create the more you can redistribute.

But, in fact, the AWL in practice shares this outlook. You work with an equivalent of the old Minimum and Maximum Programmes. Your Minimum programme consists of advocating Trade Union struggle, for workers to redistribute wealth by raising their wages. Your support for Welfarism is only the application of this approach to the level of the State. Marx described what was wrong with this approach. He wrote,

“Trades Unions work well as centres of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.”

Karl Marx – Value, Price and Profit

and,

“At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society."

Rather than advocating the kind of reformist politics that the AWL put forward via this Trade Union struggle, Marx argues the need to demonstrate in practice to workers, "that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society." by the creation of workers Co-operatives.

And, the AWL's advocacy of bourgeois, reformist, redistributive socialism through taxation is just a continuation of that politics. The only difference with you and Brown in this regard is that he is more intelligent. He at least realises that if you are going to pursue such a course, then its a good idea to try to create a vibrant economy that can finance such redistribution!

Again Marx described that kind of vulgar socialism when he wrote,

“If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?”

And, rather than Marx and Engels advocacy of workers actually changing their material conditions here and now, utilising those "material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society" what do you offer workers who are confronted with the problem of their firm closing down? Again you offer them a reformist solution. You offer them the propsect of replacing their exploitation by a weak private Capitalist for the prospect of a more vicious, a more effective exploitation at the hands of a powerful Capitalist State!!!

Yes, of course, for Sunday best, for Branch Educationals, Summer Schools, and for pointless propaganda you have your Maximum Programme of ridiculous calls for a "Workers Government", of the idea of Soviets and so on, but such demands are so removed from current reality - remember Lenin's dictum about the truth always being concrete?- that it may as well not exist, because not only is their no prospect of any such Programme being omplemented, but there is no path from your Minimum programme in theory, and less still in practice, which leads to it.

You are left with just your Minimum, bourgeois reformist programme. So if we are to start talking about politicians, being traitors for advocating bourgeois politics, I suggest that you follow the example in the Bible, and first remove the mote from your own eye.

Arthur Bough