PostIndustrialPolitics

Quora Answer : Why is the crisis in the Labour Party even larger than the leadership candidates are letting on?

Feb 5, 2020

Why?

Because the crisis was never about Jeremy Corbyn. Although Corbyn's enemies tried to claim that it was.

The crisis was never just about Brexit. Although Brexit was the hammer blow that has smashed Labour.

The crisis isn't even about Labour's working-class and middle-class wings having divergent interests and goals. Labour's always been an uneasy coalition of working class activists and middle-class do-gooders, since the time of Keir Hardie and Beatrice Webb.

Really, the crisis in Labour is about the decline of industry in Britain, about the "post-industrial" economy; and the failure of organized labour to figure out how to adapt to that and hold its own in modern times.

Labour was created by a coalition of working class activists drawn to socialism, and middle-class do-gooders who were basically liberal in orientation. But both wings were held together by trade unions : union money, union membership, union consciousness raising.

But the unions were largely a function of capitalism itself. Capital brought the workers into the mines and factories. Turned them into a proletariat who were treated as interchangeable cogs in a machine. And therefore helped them to see their common interest and establish solidarity.

As Marx himself noted, capital organized labour into being an opposition to capital. Marx based some of his hope for the future revolution on that very principle.

Unions had their power and influence, primarily, because they could shut down capitalism, simply by calling for a strike.

But in the 20th century, the era of cybernetics and control systems and information technology, capital is increasingly able to organize the proletariat, NOT by bringing them together into the same physical spaces, like the factory floor and the mines and treating them alike. Not in areas where a couple of hundred angry men can down tools and shut off production.

But through more abstract and diffuse means. Through manipulating data.

Supply-chains are now spread across the world. Across multiple companies and many small third-party suppliers. Not just one large company that everyone can be pissed off at and which everyone can negotiate a single pay-rise with. Just-in-time means that stock isn't held in expensive warehouses, so it's less vulnerable to being shut-down. If factory X goes on strike, a retailer can just switch to buying an equivalent product from factory Y which isn't.

Uber is employing hundreds of thousands of people, but they never need to meet or see each other or even know about each others' existence. They only come "together" in Uber's databases. (Unions HAVE managed, to an extent, to organized Uber drivers. But it's much harder. And it's just one high-profile example of the challenge facing unions.)

Workers are more fragmented, more vulnerable, and have less perception of their common interests.

Meanwhile, the explosion of media, radio, television and now the internet, means that people have more ways to construct their identities and loyalties. Identities are constructed around football teams, and preferred musical genres, and fandom.

And suddenly, a return of old-tribalisms : nation, religion and race.

People are turning to these tribalisms because they are desperate to find and belong to some community that gives them identity and meaning and status, now that work no-longer gives them that. And, to an extent, in declining towns, local community no longer gives them that.

The irony here is that it's capitalism and its enticing treats of virtual identity : globalized cinema and pop music and fandom is what broke the the work-related identity and the local community. Why be a boring old miner when you can dream of stardom as a rock star? Or at least wear the uniform of a heavy metal fan. Which will alienate you from your neighbour and coworker who's a mod.

Capitalism thrived by burning up real organic identities and replacing them with manufactured dream identities.

Until the 2008 crisis blew up the world economy, and as the crisis and austerity started to squeeze, people came back looking for an authentic identity.

There was none to be had in your job. As most businesses had just become outlets for products manufactured elsewhere.

There was no civic pride to be had on the depressing high-street of your town, which had been decimated by the out-of-town shopping centre and Amazon.

So you went looking for an authentic identity which you could claim was your own. And the only people who seemed to be offering you one were the right. You could be a far-right Muslim, fighting against the Christians. Or a far-right Christian fighting the Muslims. You could be a British nationalist, freeing yourself from the oppression of Europe. Or a Scottish nationalist, fighting for escape from England. Or you could be "white" ... rightful heir to civilization. Or black. Proud and unbeaten by the horrors of slavery and colonialism.

Where does a "labour" party fit into this political landscape where the identity of "worker" constructed through shared toil and exploitation in the same factory has evaporated?

Yes, there's Labour as an identity for do-gooders, the party of people who worry about all the problems in the world, the environmental destruction, the ongoing racism, the plight of disabled people. Yes there's an identity for the political activist. And the Quora pontificator who somehow still thinks he's saving the world by ranting on social media. All those are good in themselves; as far as they go.

But clearly these don't seize the imagination so easily and viscerally as "us Brits need to stick together".

An identity based on who your parents were and where you were born is really easy to adopt and cheap to maintain. To keep my head up as a social justice warrior takes some actual social justice warring. If I'm satisfied with an identity of "being British" I literally have to do nothing at all. No work involved. No special skills that need to be learned and applied.

It's not surprising that such an identity spreads easily among people who are so overworked and underpaid that they have little spare capacity for a more demanding identity. As Oscar Wilde said pithily : the problem of socialism is that it takes up too many evenings.

Labour's crisis, like that of similar left-wing parties around the world, is to figure out how to build a sense of purpose and identity that people can buy into, which is simultaneously benign and popular enough to win elections, in our current society with its increasingly casualized and precarious and fragmented conditions for workers. And its increased range of cultural distractions.

Addenda :

Now, ultimately, I believe that the Labour Party is not an end in itself. It's the political arm of the wider Labour movement which is principally articulated through the unions. The Labour Party exists to do politically what workers, as organized in unions, want done in parliament.

It's not clear that a Labour party floating free of that historical role, really has any meaning or place.

Labour's problems are really an echo of the failures of the unions to adapt. Unions should be representing and helping to organize all workers in the country. (And by "all workers" I mean all workers. Everyone who works for a living, even the people we think of as "middle-class" and who might have a few assets in the form of houses and pension funds) Unions should be helping formulate the policies of those workers, and communicating it to the Labour MPs.

Labour's crisis stems as much from the unions failing in that role.

Unions are failing to identify ways to help all workers and therefore failing to reach and include all workers, in both their decision making and their identity building. If they weren't, far more people in the country would see and understand that the Labour party represented them. And they'd see that because they'd see the process by which their union participation influenced Labour. It's no wonder that when this link is broken, people complain that Labour is "out of touch". The mechanism for being in touch has crumbled as fewer and fewer workers are engaged in and by unions.

So any renewal for Labour has to start with renewal in the unions. I think movements like Momentum are innovating new ideas and new ways of communicating and engaging. And bringing in and energising new activists. And that's great. But by focusing on the parliamentary Labour party they are putting the cart before the horse. My suggestion for everyone is that Momentum needs to shift its attention to the unions. Momentum activists need to start working with unions to figure out how unions can change to bring in more members, particularly ones from more casualized industries. The demand is there. The mechanisms by which unions can put pressure on these employers are not. So unions and everyone on the left needs to figure those out. But that's the work which is going to bring Labour back.

tl;dr : Labour JUST IS the parliamentary arm of organized workers. If the workers aren't organized then any Labour Party is going to be drifting aimlessly.