A Future That Works

A Future That Works
NO2aTory/Liberal coalition - Vote with your feet for an alternative to a neo-liberal economy and neo-conservative state Yes2aLeftFront and a Red/Green Left Alliance

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Left-Unity

What is needed is broad ‘‘Left-Unity’’ that encompasses Marxist and Non-Marxists, red and green socialist. Whether through the Coalition of Resistance or the Peoples Charter whichever has the most popular support and is most effective, it’s not about who sells the most socialist newspapers or whose interpretation of communist, socialist and social-democratic theory we agree with or whether we are pro or anti-EU. It’s about privatization, deregulation, marketization and anti-working class anti-democratic social and economic politics versus social-ownership, democratic social and economic politics that benefit the working classes and petti-bourgeois small business families against the interests of the bourgeois capitalist classes, international finance capital and the capitalist state and super-state.

Sectarian Marxist/Leninist ideological bureaucrats on the left are as much a problem as careerist right-wing new-labour neo-liberal/neo-conservative Blairite ideologists. The neo-liberal/neo-conservative ideology has lost its authority since 2008, there is no longer a consensus for privatization and deregulation or marketization of health care, education, welfare and pensions in Britain, so the ‘‘Left’’ needs to get its act together and join forces it’s now or never. To not do this in the face of the Tory/Liberal coalitions assault on the living standards and working conditions of the people of Britain would be a monumental failure of theory and practice for Marxists and Non-Marxists alike. Now is the time to form a broad ‘‘Left-Unity’’ group of communists, socialists, red and green parties and groups across Britain and with similar organizations and groups across Europe against the reactionary right-wing neo-liberal/neo-conservative capitalist parties, groups and the state and super-state institutions that promote and defend the interests of the capitalist classes of Britain, Europe and globally.

3 comments:

  1. What we need is to form what Antonio Gramsci called a ‘‘historic bloc’’ that can oppose the capitalist state and super-state. The new-right formed such a ‘‘historic bloc’’ in the 1970’s based around the ideology of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism to overturn the hegemony of Keynesian welfare capitalism in the advanced western bourgeois democracies and to oversee the dismantling of 20th century social-democracy along with socialism in the former Soviet bloc. Capitalism has become global through the institutions of finance capital and global governance through the World Bank, IMF and WTO and regionally through blocs such as the EU. Therefore the dialectical reality of the material history of the late 20th century means if the British Road to Socialism is to have any chance it also has to encompass a European and Global Road to Socialism as parts of an overall strategy towards socialism.

    The role of the Marxist/Leninist vanguard is to lead the ideological battle for a new consensus for socialist polices just as the right-wing theorists of the 1970’s led the ideological battle for a neo-liberal/neo-conservative consensus which created the hegemony of the new-imperialism we know as globalization. Therefore there will only be a new-hegemony for socialism if we have both theory and practice that can create this new ‘‘historic bloc’’ that is capable of confronting the right-wing hegemony of capital and the ideology of a neo-liberal market and neo-conservative state and super-state. This is the historic role of Marxism and Leninism and therefore it’s the role of the British Left to form promote a hegemony of the working classes that can overthrow the hegemony of the capitalist classes and the capitalist institutions at the national, regional and global level. This requires an alliance of the British Left with the European Left parties.

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  2. Who will form the next ‘‘historic bloc’’

    Thatcher and Reagan and the theorist of new-conservatism had successfully trashed the post-war consensus for the Keynesian model of capitalism, now thirty years on its time to trash the consensus for the barbarism that is capitalism and create a new consensus for socialism.

    As a Marxist I argue we make our own history so it’s down to the theorists of Marxism and the leadership of Marxist/Leninists to take up the historical-dialectical challenge of the material conditions of 21st century capitalism and make this the century that choses socialism rather than the barbarism that is capitalism.

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  3. My argument is that the current crisis of capitalism has created a similar moment historically in which we can bring together theory and practice as they did sixty years ago when the left built the ‘‘historic bloc’’ that created the hegemony of welfare capitalist and thirty years ago when right built the ‘‘historic bloc’’ that created the hegemony of free-market capitalism. The question then becomes who will lead the next ‘‘historic bloc’’ and create the hegemony that comes next.

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