The entirety of Marx’s writings was essentially concerned with the way industrial capitalism had created the pre-conditions for this takeover, an analysis which included the nature of the increasing socialisation of production and distribution made possible by the factory system which in turn had led to the formation of trade unions and political parties of the producers that would represent and fight for their interests.
Workers’ ‘takeover’ of the machinery of the state was seen as a
stepping-stone to a self-governing society of the producers or
socialism. It was also recognized that during the transitional process
between capitalism and socialism was the vital importance of education
as a life-long pursuit; how else would people have the necessary
understanding to manage a complex, technical society? Mass education,
introduced in the late 19th century was, in theory anyway; the means
whereby working people would gain the skills and understanding needed
for their eventual takeover of the means of production.
However,
state-mandated ‘education’ had a far more limited objective namely
equipping working people with the minimum skills necessary to run the
machines and processes of industrial capitalism. Education beyond this
minimal objective was not only considered unnecessary but dangerous.
The
issue of how this revolution would come about has occupied the left
ever since: would it be through revolution, armed or otherwise, or
through the ballot box, or perhaps some combination of the two?
The
role of education in this process was recognised by my parents’
generation. My father, who left school at 14 or 15 years old, was
entirely self-taught and typical of working class intellectuals of his
time. The bookshelves of our apartment attested to the breadth and
depth of my parents’ interests. Knowledge was seen as a liberating
process and most importantly, they were acquiring knowledge that had
previously been reserved for the upper and educated middle classes, the
erstwhile managers of capitalism.
Marx believed that attaining
socialism was only possible in the most developed of societies, in
Europe, specifically Germany, where the socialisation of production was
the most developed and the consciousness as well as the organisation of
the producers the most advanced. But the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917
entirely transformed the debate, Russia after all was to all intents
and purposes an underdeveloped society composed mostly of peasants
barely out of a feudal existence, not the most fertile of situations
for the creation of a society run by educated workers. The debate has
raged ever since and in spite of the number of countries which have
tried to build socialist economies, virtually all of which have been
under-developed, it would appear at this juncture, we are further away
from achieving that 19th century socialist vision.
This is no
mere academic debate; indeed it can be argued that the survival of our
species hinges on resolving the issue once and for all.
But the
years rolled by and increasingly the employees of the state or
politicians as they are commonly called, have been transformed into a
self-perpetuating caste who rule us more like some kind of priesthood
than facilitators of an inclusive, participatory process. It’s a far
cry from those visionaries of the 19th century who saw themselves as
the inevitable inheritors of the wealth they had created.
Instead
of increasing participation in the actual management of society—which
is the real meaning of democracy, not the ‘vote’ per se—we find that in
creating this managerial elite, people are as alienated from society’s
functioning as they were before they obtained the vote, an ironic twist
don’t you think?
In part this development explains why the
ruling political class expend so much energy on trying to find ways of
‘involving’ the electorate, phoney though they all are, for they have
realised that the fiction of democracy, through the vote, is not
sufficient to maintain the legitimacy and importantly, belief in the
‘system’.
But regardless, with a professional caste of political
managers making all the decisions, divorced from the real needs and
concerns of the citizen, increasingly, the capitalist order is in
crisis. And in fact it can be argued that the ruling political class
have actually made the rod with which to beat themselves by
‘professionalising’ the political process.
They now face an
impossible task, literally one of trying to square the circle for how
can public involvement occur when all avenues of real participation
have been removed? As limited as membership of a political party was
(or membership through affiliation via a trade union), at least it
afforded people some kind of a voice. The Labour Party’s membership for
example, has halved in the last five years, it is no longer a ‘mass’
political organisation with representation at the grassroots level.
Membership
of political parties of all kinds has plummeted, especially since Nu
Labour took power as has membership of trade unions, made all the worse
because the single biggest employer is now the state itself and even
more gigantic if one takes into consideration the public service jobs
that have been ‘outsourced’ or privatised.
Those on the ‘left’
of the Labour Party still believe that they can somehow recapture the
political process but without genuine grassroots involvement at branch
level, in the constituencies for example, such a wish is a fantasy, the
mechanisms no longer exist. Worse still, those on the left of the
Labour Party still operate under the delusion that they can somehow
turn back the clock to those ‘halcyon’ days.
The ‘left’s’
response to this situation is lamentable, firstly because it has not
even recognised that it has taken place and secondly because it has
failed to recognise the limitations of traditional political parties of
the left, all of which have been outgrowths or products of working
class organisations, principally the trade unions which were in any
case mainly involved with economic issues, wages and working conditions
etc.
For the great majority of working people, economic issues
are no longer the central subject, Marx’s classic definition of
alienation now occupies the centre stage and once more highlights the
crucial role played by education, or rather the lack of it for there is
an even more insidious process at work here namely the creation of two
quite distinct groups within the class of producers, the so-called
‘chavs’ [1] and the ‘chatterering classes’ [2], the product of two
entirely different kinds of education and socio-economic backgrounds
(itself not a new phenomenon but now expressed in a new way and
reinforced by the creation of the professional political class
described above).
Both groups are most easily recognised through
the way the mass media addresses them, especially the print media with
the ‘red-tops’ or tabloids targeting the ‘chavs’ (or at least that
segment of the producing class from which they hail) and the ‘quality’
newspapers, the ‘chatterers’.
These two groups are the visible
expression of the fundamental transformation in the way capitalism
maintains control that has taken place over the past 2-3 decades,
largely through the expansion of the ‘education’ system to include
those who have not inherited their ‘place’ in the ruling elite as used
to be the case.
The rest meanwhile, are catered to through rank
consumerism and an appeal to the lowest common denominators that
consists of appeals to patriotism, xenophobia and hysterical ‘news’
headlines about crime, ‘anti-social behaviour’, immigration,
paedophilia or whatever other catchphrase is currently considered
‘newsworthy’.
‘Entertainment’ for the ‘chavs’ largely consists
of the creation of worlds of fantasy and escape from the daily reality
of lives that aside from consuming are totally divorced from any real
involvement or control over the events that affect them. And sensing
the seductive nature of the ‘celebrity’ culture, the state has been
quick to step in and exploit these longings, thus we see Blair and his
henchmen hobnobbing with these ‘stars’ in highly publicised media
events whether it’s to ‘help starving Africans’ or whatever.
The
objective is clear; by participating in these ‘celebrity’ events the
ruling political elite hope to establish a rapport with the ‘masses’.
What
this process reveals is a vast political ‘vacuum’ between the rulers
and the ruled with millions of people bereft of any kind of political
representation whatsoever, a vacuum that has been (conveniently) filled
by the corporate and state-run media in an unholy alliance with the
ruling political class who through judicious reports (and ‘leaks’)
effectively inform the mass media what to focus on.
We need only
look at the hysterical coverage of the abduction of the young girl in
Portugal to get some insight into how the process works, as terrible as
it is for the family of the young girl, its treatment by the mass media
has effectively blanketed out any other news coverage. And indeed,
‘news’ can viewed as a succession of these kinds of events, events that
obviously tug at the heartstrings of people, after all, it is a
terrible event but more terrible than the daily war crimes being
committed against Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian children?
The
“kidnapping†(BBC TV news, 12/5/07 or “abductionâ€, BBC Radio 4, 15/5/07
and occasionally morphed into “captureâ€) of the three US occupation
soldiers by ‘al-Qu’eda’ in the ‘Triangle of Death’ is another example
of the dual standard employed. The kidnapping and hostage-taking by the
occupation forces of literally thousands of Iraqis never gets a mention
compared to the kind of saturation coverage afforded to ‘our boys’.
Thus
events are neatly parcelled out in convenient gobbets to be digested
fast food-style by a public starved not only of facts but also of any
kind of input into government policies.
The ‘chattering classes’
meanwhile not only produce the heavily sanitised versions of reality
for external consumption but also ‘talk to each other’ via their media
mouthpieces revealing the existence of two parallel realities both of
which address the same issues but in entirely different ways.
I
think it’s important to recognise that those who rule this country have
been doing it for close on five hundred years in a virtually unbroken
chain of command, with the experiences passed on from one ruling elite
to the next. The nurseries for this ruling elite are schools,
universities, the armed forces, the legal system, clubs (probably the
most important component) and the latest nest, the media and especially
the BBC that was quick to recognise the power of New Media to
manipulate reality.
They are without a doubt one of the
cleverest, the most devious and above all, self-assured of ruling
elites. The experience gained through the changing epochs, from their
beginnings as merchants and bankers grown fat off the slave trade,
through to today shows in their adaptability and their ability to
predict events. Until now.
I venture to say that starting with
the onset of the Thatcher years (and being continued to its unknown
conclusion under Nu Labour), this ruling elite has been fractured by
the arrival of Blair’s army of geeks, media nerds, hangers-on, carpet
baggers, swindlers, thieves, liars and just plain empty-headed posers.
It is after all, this posse which has single-handedly dismantled the
carefully constructed ‘consensus’ that kept the rulers and the ruled
firmly in their allotted place.
By destroying the illusion of a
democracy that is-allegedly anyway, a thousand years old-the Blair
regime has created a crisis within the ruling elite. Unable to absorb
the changes being thrust upon it by the Blair posse, the established
elite is under-going a crisis of confidence in its political masters.
The
most obvious example has been in its inability to effectively utilise
computer technology within the public service sector. The traditional
relationship between the managers and its technicians has been broken
with the arrival of Blair’s hordes in the form of a bunch of jumped-up
IT companies, not a single one of which has proved to be adequate to
the task, or as Blairspeak would have it, ‘fit for purpose’.
This
may sound trivial, but one the British state’s crowning successes has
been its ability to maintain the smooth functioning of the state
through thick and thin. But I fear that it’s tightly controlled civil
service bureaucracy, a well-oiled machine built over the centuries, has
met its match in Blair’s locusts, who have been let lose to strip the
public purse at will without delivering a single thing of any lasting
use or value, nor have they been able to get any of this ‘new-fangled,
electronic bureaucracy’ to actually work as intended. But then what
does the Blair government know about how bureaucracies actually work,
or care for that matter? Not a damn thing except what the IT
bloodsuckers tell it.
The importance of the above-mentioned
failures to the creation of Blair’s corporate, security state should be
obvious. Without any democratic checks and balances and lack of public
oversight, the state still needs to function effectively, its civil
service must still run the state machine.
Blair’s PC putsch has
come unstuck; the emperor really has no clothes. Instead he has created
a winter of discontent both within and without and it won’t go away
with the crowning of Brown as his successor.
By effectively
disenfranchising the public and then deceiving them with a bunch of
empty and extremely costly parlour tricks and sleights-of-hand,
supposedly as a replacement for what they have lost-principally their
liberty if they but knew it-the Blair Project is faced with a real
dilemma. Without a general consensus to buoy it along its merry way to
who knows where, no doubt those who formulate policy hope that the dour
Brown will give them some breathing space within which to figure out
what to do next, principally win the next election.
As long as
‘business as usual’ can be maintained, the ruling political elite care
only for preserving their own personal power, wealth and influence, we
can expect little from our ‘elected’ representatives no matter what
they call themselves. By removing the last vestiges of even a sham
democratic participation, we have now what can best be described as a
form of gangster capitalism, feeding off the public purse courtesy of
the privatisation of the public domain.
In a very real sense,
the symbol of the state in the form of the Parliament, has not only
lost all legitimacy, sitting in splendid isolation in its Victorian
Gothic pile, which just like the government, masquerades as something
it’s not, it has also relinquished whatever power it had over the
functioning of the state to Blair’s vampires who are in reality
‘asset-stripping’ public resources under the guise of ‘efficiency’ and
‘reorganisation’.
Sooner or later people are going to wise up to
what ‘Blatcherism’ has done, the question is, will we have a voice and
the means to turn the tide?
