AUT: Aufheben on social democracy

[pmargin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Profit Margin)]

This piece from the latest issue of Aufheben may interest those pondering
the question of neo-Keynesianism. A HTML version should be available at the
Aufheben web site soon, along with other recent articles from that journal.

Steve

______

Social democracy: No future? (Aufheben 7, Autumn 1998)

Relating to the retreat

The question of how we grasp social democracy and its current retreat is
now more than ever a practical one. The institutions of social democracy
continue to be the focus of many contemporary struggles. In the UK context,
this is exemplified in recurrent conflicts over privatization, employment
rights and cuts in welfare spending. Hence we face the question of how we
relate to these struggles: what do we want and how should we fight?

        The question always arises because our immediate experience as
proletarians of the institutions of social democracy is characteristically
twofold. Consider the example of the welfare state. In the first place, the
organs of the welfare state-benefits, health care, free education-present
themselves simply as a means of survival.(1) But our experience of such
organs is also one of domination, control, objectification. These
institutions do not belong to 'us'; their processing of us often seems to
be for alien and bureaucratic aims and purposes-for ourselves only as
bourgeois citizens, or in the interests of 'the public', 'the law' or other
such abstractions.

        Leftists, emphasizing the first aspect of this immediate
experience, campaign for the maintenance and extension of the conditions of
the post-war settlement: full employment, the restoration of 'trade union
rights',(2) reversal of cuts in the health, education and benefits systems,
plus a meaningful minimum wage. Yet 'defence of the welfare state' and the
other leftist demands represent either adherence to reformist social
democracy as progress or a misconceived and disingenuous strategy of
'transitional demands'.

        An anarchist or 'ultra-left' analysis often emphasizes instead the
second aspect of our immediate experience of social democracy: social
democratic institutions as control mechanisms. Some anarchist types claim
that, without the welfare state, genuine forms of mutual aid will
necessarily develop, and thus that we need not resist attacks on the
welfare state. However, while it is undeniable that the welfare state has
served to atrophy working class community traditions of mutual aid, given
the present absence of growth of militant networks and organs of support,
this kind of analysis is simply ahistorical posturing. The restructuring of
the welfare state is taking place at the initiative of capital and the
bourgeois state-albeit in response to previous rounds of working class
struggle. This is a time of chronic weakness in the working class and
revolutionary movement. Simply to accept the present programme of 'welfare
reform' is a capitulation to the autonomy of global finance capital and its
ideology of neo-liberalism-a force which is currently growing in
self-assurance and audacity. This kind of account seems to see the working
class as passive and in need of a good kick up the backside to get it to do
anything-the more life-threatening the kicking the better. The present New
Labour Government's abandonment of social democracy will not in itself
bring us closer to communism: only the self-activity of the proletariat can
do that.

The nature of social democracy

The practical questions we face and the one-sidedness of the responses of
some so-called revolutionaries each points to the importance of a deeper
understanding the nature of social democracy. In previous issues of
Aufheben, we have already given a basic definition of this social form:(3)
social democracy, in all its variants, can be considered as the
representation of the working class as labour within capital and the
bourgeois state-politically through social democratic parties, and
economically through trades unions.

        Social democracy therefore presupposes both the state and democracy
itself. In terms of the state, social democracy is the representation of
the working class within national boundaries. On the one hand, social
democracy sets the interests of a postulated national working class against
that of other national working classes. On the other hand, within national
boundaries, social democracy seeks to act on behalf not just of the working
class, but all classes. Rather than being abolished, the bourgeoisie will
be taxed to pay for services for the working class. In terms of democracy,
social democracy can be conceptualized as the extension of the principle of
democracy-political equality between individual citizens-to the relations
between classes.

         The function of social democratic parties is to represent the
working class as wage-labour in the bourgeois political-legislative realm.
The social democratic party in power therefore operates to include the
interests of the working class within the state form through institutional
intervention against some of the excesses of the market.

        Trade unions represent the working class economically, as
labour-for-capital. Their role is to mediate between the owners of capital
and the individual sellers of labour-power as a social category. They
negotiate the price of labour-power and they therefore presuppose that
labour takes the form of wage-labour-a commodity. Their function is thus
premised on alienated labour. As such, trade unions unite the working class
in the form that it is constituted by capital-that is, as individual
commodity-sellers and by specific trade or industry.(4)

        From the working class perspective, what was progressive about
social democracy, first as a movement then as a state form,(5) was its
recognition of different classes with opposing interests. Social democracy
begins from the recognition that it is the whole working class, not just
individual owners of the commodity labour-power, that exists in relation to
capital. Social democratic parties therefore gave the working class as such
an independent voice (i.e., separate from relying on progressive bourgeois
parties such as the Liberals and, in the USA, the Democrats). When in
power, such parties were seen to be able to transform society to reflect
the needs of the workers (qua workers) not just those of the bourgeoisie:
hence nationalizations, employment rights and welfare state services. The
practical importance of social democracy for working class militants, then,
was that it provided an organizational form through which concessions could
be demanded and won from capital for the national working class as a whole.

        Yet in recognizing and representing the working class within
capital, social democracy is essentially in a contradictory position. On
the one hand, to assert its power against that of the bourgeoisie, social
democracy must mobilize the working class: the organs of social democracy
are animated by the working class, who join and vote for parties and
unions, and who take part in union-organized industrial action. On the
other hand, social democracy must prevent the working class from mobilizing
too far-from becoming a class-for-itself-since it must preserve the capital
relation. Social democracy must therefore both mobilize and demobilize the
working class if it is to represent it. The working class is recognized and
enabled to act as an agent but is simultaneously reified. As such, social
democracy functions to recuperate proletarian antagonism but is also
vulnerable to such antagonism.

        Social democracy embodies the tensions of the commodity form
itself. The production of commodities requires subjective activity, but
also that such subjectivity be subsumed within an alien subject-be
alienated and hence objectified within capital.(6) However, such
subsumption is necessarily provisional; in order to objectify labour,
capital must confront labour-power as a free subject-a free seller of the
commodity of labour-power-on a daily basis. The daily reproduction of
alienated labour means the daily possibility of rupture in the
labour-capital relationship. What is specific to social democracy as a
political-ideological expression of the commodity form, however, is that it
proposes to extend the bourgeois principle of fair exchange between
individual commodity-owners to the relationship between the classes.

Social democracy as an historical form

The requirement of capital politically to mediate working class needs
within itself emerged, developed and reached ascendancy in conjunction with
the threat of the proletariat to go beyond itself. To maintain the
continued existence of the working class as such, and hence its own
existence, capital had to find a form adequate to satisfy some of the
desires of the working class from within capital. It is worth pointing out
in this context that the requirement to mediate working class needs within
capital does not have to be achieved through the social democratic form.
Thus Mafia protectionism and philanthropic liberalism each represent
alternative forms of capitalist mediation of working class needs.(7) In
order to grasp the crisis, retreat and possible future of social democracy,
it is therefore necessary to briefly trace out how and why it came to its
moment of triumph.

        Historically, social democracy emerged in the bourgeois democratic
struggle against the reactionary forces in the nineteenth century as the
distinct voice of the working class. The political weakness of the
bourgeoisie in some places meant that social democracy had to take the lead
in the bourgeois revolution-for example in Russia and to a lesser extent in
Germany. In 1917, social democracy split between reformists and
revolutionaries, although these two wings shared a Second International
conception of socialism as state control of the means of production.(8)
=46ollowing the second world war, the dominant reformist wing of social
democracy split again between democratic socialists and the revisionists
who sought to reform capitalism through Keynesian economic policies.(9)
This latter form of social democracy was the basis of the post-war
settlement.

        The triumph of social democracy in the UK though the post-war
settlement was a crucial class compromise. Pressure from the working class,
and ruling class fear of revolution-in light of the revolutionary waves
that swept Europe at the end of first world war-forced the provision of
comprehensive and inclusive welfare, full employment, rising real wages,
wealth redistribution through taxation, and corporatism-tripartite
organizations and trade union rights. The new 'consensus' was both
political and economic. By enforcing rising wage levels against individual
capitals, the trade unions ensured the rising effective demand necessary
for the general accumulation of capital under the Fordist mode of
accumulation.

        In return for these concessions, the working class as such gave up
the desire for revolution. The triumph of social democracy therefore meant
that class conflict became both mitigated and fragmented. In the first
place, with the provision of comprehensive welfare, the stakes were seen to
be lowered: unlike in the 1920s and '30s, losing your job no longer meant
the threat of starvation. In the second place, with the working class as
such giving up the idea of revolution, a split was created between everyday
demands over issues such as wage levels and the 'ideals' of a free society.
In the old workers' movement, bread-and-butter demands and 'utopian'
desires had been seen as inextricably linked. Now the first was largely
institutionalized and de-politicized through the machinery of the trades
unions and the second had to find new forms to express itself. The various
'counter-cultural' movements-beatniks and hippies for example-were such
forms of expression. Despite the truth of their critique of capital,(10)
all the time these movements remained largely estranged from the working
class qua the working class, they developed no means of realizing their
desires for 'freedom' beyond travelling, drugs, communes, festivals,
mysticism etc.

        However, as class struggle rose across Europe and the USA in the
late 1960s, and with the subsequent crisis of capital accumulation, this
situation changed. Workers' demands for more money and less work began to
exceed the limits of the social democratic compromise, and even questioned
the terms of this compromise. The fruits of Fordism-televisions, cars,
washing machines, steady employment and rising real wages-were not enough.
At this point, there was a convergence of everyday needs and 'utopian'
desires-as best exemplified in the French and Italian movements of 1968 and
1969-77 respectively. This was a creative time for the working class and
revolutionary movement, for the convergence of tendencies and desires
opened new possibilities and developed new revolutionary analyses of
capitalism.

        Across the world, capital responded by taking flight from
traditional bastions of working class power. Finance capital became
increasingly autonomous, outflanking areas of working class entrenchment by
shifting to regions where labour was cheaper and more malleable. Social
democracy served to tie the interests of national capitals and working
classes; but, with the upsurge in working class struggles against the
social democratic compromise, capital in the form of finance capital began
to free itself from national boundaries and their particular regulations
and restrictions. This became reflected in the ideas of those politicians
who recognized that the working class and the social democratic forms in
which its needs were expressed had to be confronted. The politics of
'neo-liberalism' is thus the ideological expression of this new freedom of
finance capital.

        In the UK, the flight of finance capital led to crisis for sectors
of the British economy, most notably in manufacture and heavy industry.
Unemployment rose, and it became one of the key weapons used by the
Thatcher Government explicitly to restructure the terms of the post-war
settlement. The defeat of the miners, the strongest section of the working
class, was the turning point in this project.

        The subsequent development and election of 'New Labour' represents
the recognition by the political wing of British social democracy that the
renegotiation of the post-war settlement begun by Thatcher et al. was
irreversible.(11) The project of 'New Labour' is to create a new 'one
nation' consensus on the basis of the 'neo-liberal' encroachment on wages,
conditions and welfare.

The future of social democracy?

Does the retreat of social democracy mean that capital will develop new
forms of mediation of working class needs? Certainly, this is New Labour's
hope as they scrabble around for ideological clothes to gloss over the
brutal indecency of 'neo-liberalism'. Appeals to patriotism, and use of
terms such as 'communitarianism' and 'third way' are examples of this.(12)

        Or will the rejection of social democracy by the bourgeoisie see
its eventual re-emergence from within the working class-perhaps in a more
radical form? This is what the left is hoping. For our part, of course, we
want to see new forms of struggle, politicizing everyday needs and
connecting them with revolutionary desires, developing in the space vacated
by both social democracy and Stalinism.

        In the UK context, there is only limited evidence to support both
the leftist analysis and our own aspirations. The most iconic industrial
disputes of recent years-Magnet, Hillingdon and Merseyside-took place with
little or no official union support, despite the wishes of their
participants. These small groups of workers in struggle instead had to
approach other workers directly, and to look to others outside of the
unions and workplaces-most notably Reclaim the Streets (RTS)-to find the
forms and networks of support necessary for their struggles.(13) Similarly,
London tube workers in the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union looked
to RTS occupations and Critical Mass bike blockades for support in 1996. In
January 1997, 2000 tube drivers took militant direct action themselves by
occupying the Department of Transport building at Victoria. A further
interesting development was the use of the 'sickie' by British Airways
workers in summer 1997.(14)

        However, some of these examples may represent isolated local
incidents rather than a growing trend.(15) Moreover, whereas the
convergence between 'basic' workplace demands and 'utopian' desires in the
late 1960s was due to a growing sense of possibility, hope and strength,
with Governments on the defensive, today's celebrated acts of unity are
based on mutual weakness. Today, working class and small 'utopian'
movements come together out of self-defence against the growing attacks
from state and capital. This is particularly clear in the case of the
Liverpool dock workers' dispute. In the past, the sacking of 500 dockers
for refusing to cross a picket line would have brought half of the major
ports in the country to a halt and the economy to the brink of crisis. But,
in the present case, even the dockers' own union-the Transport and General
Workers Union, the largest union in the country-refused to officially
recognize the dispute for fear of legal penalties. It was this lack of
traditional trade union support within Britain that led the dockers to make
the links with the small but high-profile militant ecological movement and
to other dockers abroad.

        In sum, the retreat of social democracy has so far seen only a
limited convergence of struggles over bread-and-butter issues with the
desire for revolutionary social change. Thus while the working class (qua
working class) gains preserved within social democracy are being rapidly
eroded, there is as yet no sign of the return of what was lost with the
triumph of social democracy.

The present series of articles

Class struggle today appears fragmented and the working class itself
relatively weak. But the tendency to antagonism is of the essence of the
capital relation, and inevitably appears. The issue then becomes one of
grasping and relating to the trajectory of antagonistic forms from a
communist perspective.

        Will working class struggles over the institutions of social
democracy serve as the basis for a resurgence of this social form? Any
successes, however radical, might legitimize a new class compromise and
thus marginalize any revolutionary struggle. The present crisis and
weakness of the left means that it is today less of a threat to the class
struggle. Indeed, there is little at the present time for the left to
recuperate! But, of course, working class struggles may produce their own
leftism; so the weakness of existing leftist organizations should not lead
us to assume a clear path to communism. Social democracy could still be
revived as the dominant form of working class mobilization.

        On the other hand, could struggles over the 'gains' of social
democracy, which typically revolve around mundane needs, promote militant
activity more generally, develop new movements, and take us beyond both
social democracy and its 'neo-liberal' counterpart? The retreat has been
taking place for over 20 years, but there is still much at stake.
Understanding social democracy and its dynamic remains an urgent task.

        With this issue of Aufheben, we therefore begin a series of
articles on the retreat of social democracy.(16) We have raised rather than
answered the question of how we should respond to the various skirmishes
and struggles taking place over the retreat of social democracy. This is
because we believe that each type of struggle needs to be analysed in
itself and in some depth. This is the aim of the present series.

        We also recognize that the present Introduction has focused largely
on the UK, which is in many ways a special case. In certain other European
countries, for example, the Communist Party has assumed a far more
important role than here in entrenching social democracy; this might help
explain the fact that social democracy remains stronger in certain other
countries across the channel. There is a need, therefore, to look at the
struggle over social democratic organs and institutions in the form of
analyses of particular cases.

        For all its peculiarities, however, the UK case is seen by some
European governments as a model for their own restructuring, and may
indicate a possible future for them. The restructuring in the UK, in turn,
is modelled on that in the USA, the subject of our first major article in
the present series. Social democracy was never so well established in the
USA as in most of Europe. Yet at the present time, both unions and militant
workplace struggles in the USA are currently undergoing a renaissance.

Notes

(1)             We use the term 'survival' in Vaneigem's sense when he
distinguishes it from 'living'. See Raoul Vaneigem (1967) The Revolution of
Everyday Life, London, Rebel Press/Left Bank Books.

(2)             In fact, of course, it is mostly workers' ability to strike
rather than their right to operate in unions that has been attacked. While
union membership has declined overall, the bank-balances of many unions-now
operating as little more than mediators of services such as insurance-has
been enhanced.

(3)             See the opening section of 'Kill or Chill: Analysis of the
opposition to the Criminal Justice Bill' (Aufheben 4, summer 1995) and the
Editorial in Aufheben 6 (autumn, 1997).

(4)             Demarcation into particular trades and sectors might be
said to encourage inter-working class struggles over wage differentials.
While this is an example of the channelling by social democracy of
proletarian antagonism, struggles over wage differentials may have the
potential to go beyond themselves and threaten capital. As we discuss
further below, social democracy produces its own grave-diggers.

(5)             As we shall see, the historical distinction between social
democracy as a movement coming out of the working class and its
institutionalization as a form of government is an important one.

(6)             As we discuss further below, the dominant form of social
democracy in advanced capitalist states in the post-war boom period has
entailed the use of Keynesian economics-harnessing working class
subjectivity in the form of demand for commodities as the motor for capital
accumulation.

(7)             Indeed, in the UK, it was enlightened (and threatened)
liberalism in the form of the Liberal Party that made most of the early
concessions to the working class, paving the way for the full development
of social democracy, before the Labour Party was mature enough to do these
things for itself.

(8)             However, this well-known split in social democracy between
reformists and revolutionaries obscures a more interesting current-the
communist left-that broke from social democracy at this time but which also
came to reject the radical social democracy promoted by Moscow. See our
forthcoming article on left communist accounts of the USSR.

(9)             The former existed as a meaningful wing within the Labour
Party until the 1980s. In Europe, the situation was slightly different, but
a similar 'democratic socialism' is expressed in the Communist Parties and
in particular their 'Eurocommunist' wings.

(10)    For a useful discussion of the antagonism and limits of the
'counter-cultural' movements, see 'On the poverty of hip life' in Ken
Knabb's Public Secrets (1997, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets).

(11)    By no means all of those in the British labour movement accepted
the 'inevitable'. A number remained within the Labour Party. Some left and
formed the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), referred to with some accuracy by
some who remained within the Labour Party as a 'stillborn Stalinist sect'.

(12)    Strictly speaking, the forms of mediation hankered after by New
Labour are not new at all; New Labour are redefining themselves as an
old-fashioned liberal party.

(13)    The space we give here to links between these groups and
non-workplace struggles should not obscure the fact that the direct links
with other workers were typically far more important. For example, in the
Merseyside case, the boycott actions of dock workers in other countries
regularly put economic pressure on the Merseyside Docks and Harbour
Company.

(14)    The sickie is catching. The UK Cabinet Office recently reported
that public sector sickies cost =A33 billion last year (Guardian, 15 August
1998).

(15)    For example, the London executive of the RMT union, dominated as it
is by the SLP, is politically distinct from the union as a whole; and some
of the link-ups seem due to personal relations between a small number of
individuals rather than reflecting a militant mood in the union membership
as whole.

(16)    Our recent text Dole Autonomy versus the Re-imposition of Work:
Analysis of the Current Tendency to Workfare in the UK is intended as a
further contribution to an understanding of the retreat of social
democracy. See the back page of this issue of Aufheben for details.




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