Socialism in the 21st Century

The meaning of Socialism in modern Britain

What is socialism in the 21^st century? A few years ago the question would have seemed an uninteresting one, but now it is the talk about town. Whatever your associations with that word, there seems to be agreement that following decades of decline, on both sides of the Atlantic it is making a comeback. What is odd, this time round, is the meaning of the term is far from clear. 

In the mid 20^th Century, the definition was fairly straight forward. Socialism was the commitment to the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution, with the aim of widespread improvements in living standards and conditions in the workplace, as well as a reorientation of economic activity towards the some notion of human needs. There were all sorts of disputes about the details of what this would mean. Would socialism entail a centrally planned economy on a national level, or could there be some measure of decentralisation and local autonomy? What role would trade unions or workers play in administration? Could there be such a thing as ‘market socialism’, where administrators of nationalised industries responded to price mechanisms, rather than targets, essentially operating as in a capitalist economy but with profits nationalised? These debates plagued both socialist parties in the democratic world and the communist parties of the Eastern block in times of relative liberalisation.

But no longer. Almost nobody is seriously proposing any form of wholesale nationalisation of the economy, or any form of bringing the economy into ‘collective ownership’ (e.g syndicalism) for that matter. Questions of the meaning of socialism are not primarily about the question of the broad picture of economic organisation. To the extent they are, in the mass media that is limited to people like Paul Mason or Arron Bastani talking about a future without scarcity due to automation. There is a long history of this idea. Marx talked of a future where we could fish in the morning and write poetry in the evening, Oscar Wilde suggested much the same in The Spirit of Man Under Socialism, and even Keynes made similar remarks in his Economic Prospects for Our Grandchildren. Whether or not something like that will eventually come to pass, the point is that what we are really talking about is not the question of how to organize a society economically, but a (hopefully) possible future in which such organization is more or less superfluous anyway, as we have everything we need without really needing to work (in the 21^st Century we imagine this would involve robots and AI; in 19^th Century it was mechanical machines).

This is not to say that left wingers aren’t proposing the nationalisation of certain industries. In Britain, renationalisation of the rail network is something of a rallying call of the left; a move which is politically astute as it is quite popular. Rather, unless a very long game is being played, nobody seems to be that interested in the old question of economic organisation. Not that there is anything wrong this. Planned economies probably aren’t a great idea, for reasons fairly well understood and broadly accepted. Tinkering around the edges, through redistributive tax systems, nationalisation of certain natural monopolies or things deemed to be public utilities has a lot going for it. But at least ostensibly, this isn’t all that different to what mainstream social democratic, or even left liberal parties subscribed to for most of the 20^th Century. This would represent a major organizational change in the economy if it weren’t for the fact that that is already how the economy works, what is in discussion is largely one of extent and degree. This does matter, of course, but it is not the same kind of debate as the one which was played out the last time round. 

The strange death of Liberal Keynesianism

Why does this now come under the rubric of “socialism”, rather than anything else? Partly it’s about who is leading the charge. In the UK this means former backbench MPs who once upon a time really did stand for socialism as it used to be defined, at least some of the time. Partly it’s a to draw a distinction between themselves and is perceived to have come before, be it neoliberalism , Blairism, the Third Way, or even simply the Labour Party before Corbyn. To some extent, therefore, the term ‘socialist’ in the UK may be seen as an identity marker- it is about who you identify with and which side you come down on in internal disputes within the labour party. That the term also seems like a plausible description of political beliefs owes more than anything else to the strange death of liberal Keynesianism in the UK.

In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, a debate raged on both sides of the atlantic over the proper response of fiscal policy to the recession. This played out not just in the academic field, but in politics as well. On both sides of the Atlantic there was a broad (albeit likely inadequate) move towards fiscal stimulus as the appropriate response, with the Obama stimulus package in United States, VAT cuts in the UK and state funded employment subsidies in Germany. In the British context, this meant that Gordon Brown’s Labour party went into the 2010 election taking the Keynesian line on deficits.

Following Labour’s defeat, it became received wisdom within the Labour party that Keynesianism was an electoral nonstarter. While there was some resistance to this from Ed Balls, ultimately Labour would go into the 2015 general election accepting the basic premises of the Conservative line on government spending (Labour profligacy pre-crash caused the deficits, austerity was necessary and growth neutral to positive). This lead to the rather curious situation. The only people of political clout actually making the mainstream Keynesian arguments about the need for stimulus and folly of austerity were old leftists, many of whom actually had little interest in such arguments previously (John McDonnell had at the time of the crisis welcomed the destruction of the crisis as a means of destroying the existing economic order, a number of other left wingers were initially suspicious of Keynesianism as too much in league with business interests).

This meant that, for better or worse, the argument about austerity became essentially an argument about the size of the state, rather than deficits. Anti-austerity advocates are quite rightly concerned primarily with the effect of austerity on the public sphere, and austerity proponents are essentially interested reducing the size of the state in the economy. In a different world the anti-austerity position might well have found representation by centre-left social democrats, who were concerned both by the erosion of public services and of growth, and saw these as interrelated, but distinct. But that is not the world we live in.

It is in this context that Corbynism offered the appearance of something radical and distinct, without actually having to commit to anything more than bog-standard, textbook social democracy. It could claim what social democracy for its own and call it socialism, largely because the social democrats weren’t offering social democracy anymore. And the historical connotations of the word, to its supporters, offers a kind of gravitas, a sense of association with something bigger and different.

Does this matter? Doesn’t the meaning of words change? This is certainly true, but the old connotations die slowly, and for many, they aren’t positive. This certainly isn’t helped by the fact that part of the appeal of the word socialism is precisely its associations with historical developments that can rightly be criticised. It goes hand in hand with claims of radical critiques of capitalism, with often only a vague notion of what, precisely, is being critiqued (Finance? Private ownership of the means of production? Markets? Neoliberal overreach?) And in the British context, it also goes hand in hand with quite questionable measures to buy off sections of the comparatively affluent middle classes (tuition fees). Perhaps over time the connotations and meanings will change. Or perhaps if Labour does form a government, those in the front bench who have more traditional, 20^th Century ideas of socialism, like John McDonnell, will become more dominant. Until then, we will have to wonder.

Does economic self interest explain the policies of the Conservative Party?

One of the most striking features of the modern Conservative party is how little resemblance it bears to many left wing caricatures. And I don't mean that in a good way. If Marx was right, and"the executive of the modern state is but a committee for the managing of the collective affairs of the bourgeoisie" then the British Conservative Party isn't much of a party of government. In the In the last two years, Conservative backbenchers, the Conservative backing press and party membership have forced the government to relentlessly pursue a form of Brexit which will result in profound economic dislocation in the short term in order to achieve a significantly less favourable set of economic arrangements in the long term. One could scarcely imagine a policy less driven by business interests. And it's not as if this is a question of a kind of false consciousness of the high capitalist: with the notable exception of a manufacturer of innovative fans and a pub-chain tycoon, the captains of industry and finance are pretty clear on what their interests, collective and individual are, and boy is this not it.

But it would be a mistake to see this as an aberration which started on June 24th, 2016. The central economic strategy of the Cameron government, the essential raison d'etre of the premiership, was in no real sense a representation of the interests of big money. Austerity, in slowing the recovery from the financial crisis of 2007-2008, has meant excess money chasing limited investment opportunities, and lower real returns on capital than would otherwise have been seen. And since the Keynesian alternative said nothing about the need for increased rates of taxation at the higher end, if the Conservative party were merely a vessel for the interests of capital, fiscal policy since 2010 would have been very different indeed.
In the specific case of Cameron and Osborne, this may have been the result of a genuine intellectual error. In the immediate aftermath of the financial crash, many observers reasonably believed that some of the damage, particularly to financial services may have been permanent and irreversible. This would have meant a supply side shock reducing economic capacity, which would neutralise, at least in part, the case for fiscal expansion. A tell tale sign that this was indeed the correct assessment was a bout of inflation in 2011, though this did, as a number of commentators at the time predicted, turn out to be due to a hike in oil prices rather than a sign that the economy was already operating at capacity. When this all turned out,as the Keynesians predicted, to be completely wrong, Cameron and Osborne were so politically invested in their fiscal approach that a volte face was not possible.
The fact that Conservative Britain at large continued, and largely continues to believe in this folly is unlikely to be explained by an intellectual error in evaluating such technical arguments. That it does so in spite of business and financial institutions pleading for increased investment is a testament to the fact that the contemporary Conservative party is anything but the party of organised capital. That is not to say that many of its supporters, and indeed those who are driving such policies are not wealthy as individuals. But they are not acting in line with anything remotely approximating class interest. Nor, for that matter, is money a sufficient condition for power within the Conservative. Rather, power is defined by and exerted on behalf of the prejudices and opinions of individuals who happen to be wealthy, and may occupy positions which require a high level of wealth, such as proprietorship of a major newspaper, but whose power is not in proportion to that wealth.
What, then, if not financial gain, is the animating feature of the modern British Conservative Party? The American intellectual historian Corey Robin might have a few ideas. In The Reactionary Mind, he argues that conservatism (he primarily means 19th Century British and 20th Century American) is primarily motivated by a reaction against a perceived loss of privileged in a social hierarchy. He does not argue that this has no economic dimension to it; one does not have to be an ardent Marxist to see a rough overlap of social and economic relations. But the key sense of loss and percieved threat is to social status, not material wealth. That the two may tend to coincide is nothing more than a likely and hence frequent coincidence.
This thesis is probably either too universal in its formation, or too obscure in its definition. Clearly not all individuals we would think of as conservative behave in this way. But as a rough picture of something which might often be the case, it seems like a pretty good start, and quite relevant to contemporary Britain. Austerity may not have advanced the economic interests of conservative backers, let alone 'capital' is a whole, but it did follow the prejudices about the efficacy and correct size of the state of a large number of people who tend to be at least somewhat well off. The reaction is perhaps less about perceived financial interests and more a suspicion of state action in the economy as an encroachment on property rights.
If this seems more far fetched than to suppose intellectual error, we might ask why a particular group have proven particularly susceptible to this error. As for Brexit, the best predictor of whether one voted remain or leave in the 2016 referendum are attitudes to thinks like immigration, education and crime and punishment. The picture which emerges is quite clear: those with liberal, pluralistic attitudes voted remain, those with authoritarian, monocultural attitudes voted leave. Brexit is primarily a reaction against social liberalism, and the perceived loss of social status of those with traditional conservative views. The focus of many conservatives on the culture of political correctness and student progressive activism is quite a clear illustration of this. What greater loss of social standing and respectability could one have than seeing ones own views and ideas regarded as immoral and unacceptable, particularly if raised in an environment where moral character had been a defining feature of identity?
Viewed in this sense, the Brexit revolution has been anything but a failure. It has been seen the most swift and thorough elevation of social reactionaries to their old place at the top of the moral and political hierarchy. And one cannot help but conclude that if only that form of bastardised, crude Marxism that might have made old Karl blush were true, and conservatism really had represented the interests of capital and capital alone we might have avoided much of the worst of the political developments after the financial crisis. This is not to say that this would be sufficient, or that the such interests, themselves hardly uniform, would generally be coextensive with the greater good. But, if we are going to have a Conservative government, I'd rather have the mythical Conservative-capitalist party than the actually existing one of Jacob Rees Mogg.