Going beyond Pilger and Monbiot
Another day another banker receives another obscene bonus. We are being constantly reminded, even recently and in part by Mervyn King the Director of the Bank of England, that the international financial crisis had a structural cause deep in the way capitalism works maximising the rate of return to maximise corporate accumulation. The old adage is right: production is just for profit and that doesn’t mean for you and me. As this Tory government swings into action to make the working class pay for crisis of their fellow rich, we can see that those who control the state and the economy are very powerful.
Changing how the economy works and in whose interest means challenging the power of capitalism: the question of the balance of forces is back on the agenda. Again, daily, we are being reminded internationally how this power can be challenged by mass mobilisation across the Arab world and is starting to emerge again in the US, across Europe and in the UK. Is it possible to continue to generalise this mobilisation? How does it relate to other forms of challenge such as cooperatives and social movement like transitional towns? And finally, this is an extra parliamentary struggle, how can it relate to social democracy?
Collective mobilisation is the way most of us first think about how to challenge power. As a trade union, political and community activist since about 1963 I’ve helped to organise many collective mobilisations and there has been a particular cycle to the activity. A moving forward phase where the issues or grievances are seen to be important to an increasing number of people; a standoff phase where the mobilisation has been maximised and some gains made; a tail off phase where gains are secured but the mobilisation declines. The moving forward period can be difficult to get going, shifting people from an individual approach to a collective approach, but is inspiring once started as all sorts of possibilities open up. The standoff phase is fraught with difficult judgements. Can we mobilise more? Who is going to blink first in negotiation? Are the leaders going to be accused of selling out? Have we gained enough? You get the picture. Then finally, in the tail off phase, it is clear to all the mobilisation is at an end and either defeat awaits or the gains provide a starting point for further improvement in the future. Some argue that movement is in abeyance at the end point.
In a trade union context I was always conscious of this cycle of activity and the absolute necessity of constantly discussing with members about what we wanted from the action and where we were within the cycle. Anything less would be manipulative and selling out. But it was still not easy. The key thing was to be clear about what we wanted and the nature of the balance of forces so we could measure our gains or success and what could be achieved.
Many disputes were over preventing management from doing something, redundancies, dismissal, sacking, changing contracts etc, clearly the gains in the situation was to stop or ameliorate the management action. Some disputes were about improvements pay, workloads etc. The key point was at the end to secure a collective agreement that improved or sustained collective control over an area of management autonomy. It was about collectively controlled space. In a partial sense this is close to Gramsci’s idea of a war of position and a war of manoeuvre, although he was referring to state power. Going forward is a time of manoeuvre tailing off is a war of position.
The idea of an alternative and challenging space is also common to social movements such as cooperatives and transitional towns. In this type of situation alternative space is what is aimed for is not just a result of a decline in the ability to mobilise. As a result they have been criticised as being ‘islands of socialism in a sea of capitalism’ doomed to eventually sink or be eroded away. They are seen as inherently reformist. One set of commentators has described this type of movement as ‘contained contention’ as opposed to the ‘transgressive contention’ of collective mobilisation. A more recent debate about this type of movement has been over the direction of the European and Global Social Forums which seemed to be aimed at establishing alternative and liberated space or ‘autonomy’ as opposed to mobilising to challenge the power of capital. John Holloway has contrasted the two types of social movement as either aiming for ‘power over’ revolutionary mobilisation or ‘power to’ the autonomist typed movement.
As you can see the debate enters into very dangerous territory of reform v revolution. Well I’ll rush in like the proverbial fool and suggest that actually the two types of social movement can be part of same challenge to capitalist power as twin strategies not as alternative ‘roads’: the key is in the idea of what happens within and what is the purpose of the alternative and liberated space. Both in the trade union example and in say the case of cooperatives, the space they have control and influence over is dependent on collective membership. As such this provides the basis of a terrain of struggle between the reformist trajectory of accommodation with capitalism and the revolutionary trajectory of challenging the power of capital with which I started the article. The key difference over whether there is contained or transgressive contention is not in the organisations themselves but over the purpose of the strategies that the organisations follow.
Transitional demands as the basis of such a strategy have a long root in British labour history. I’ve tracked down a Transitional Charter drawn up by Robert Owen in 1842, but the most recent work stems from Trotsky where he described a transitional demand as
‘This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.’ 1938
The key is the idea of a bridge between where we are and where we would like to be. So for example the current demand that the Tories clamp down on tax evasion, forcing Vodafone for example to pay £6bn of unpaid taxes is transitional as it directly attacks the source of the speculative profitability of a global company and poses the tax to spend on the public against the market interest.
Making the link to the space controlled by social movements I would suggest a different form of a bridge: a transitional action. Instead of demanding those with power do something we do it ourselves through self activity such as making capital less alienable through cooperative ownership and control; taking direct steps to live without oil and affecting climate change; supporting fair trade; and demonstrating that workers control can work. John Holloway I think describes these types of actions as ‘building the future in the present’. These are only examples and George Monbiot recently in the Guardian (08.03.2010) had a list of alternatives, some of which could be seen as transitional demands and actions.
The final key to this argument is that developing a strategy based on transitional demands and actions for the current situation is a collective process which has to be started by an analysis of the capitalist context we find ourselves in. Demands and actions can only be transitional if they are a bridge to seriously challenging the power of capitalism and putting alternatives in place. Elsewhere I have described this as a process of ‘deviant mainstreaming’ and if you wish to look at the text and it is at: https://znetwork.org/how-to-resist-continually-deviant-mainstreaming-by-len-arthur where many of the references used in this piece can be found.
Quite a list of tasks and it does require political coordination to move the debate about capitalism and how it can be challenged, from an eclectic response of good ideas, to a strategic list of transitional demands and actions aimed specifically at providing a bridge between where we are now and were we would like to be. The balance between demands and actions also shifts over time with the balance of forces – like Gramsci’s war of position and manoeuvre – and currently I would argue the need to prioritise transitional demands to maximise collective mobilisation and generalisation of struggle.
It seems to me that I’ve answered my first two questions but I’ll have to leave the relationship with social democracy to the debate or some future thoughts. I’ll leave you with this one: the discussion in the Labour Party is currently very open and do you think it may be possible to have some serious thoughts about transitional demands and actions?
Born 12.10.1947 near St Pancras in central London. I was a post war social statistic, baby bulge - now boomer - lived in flats in Stoke Newington North London until 7, then Hemel Hempstead new town, Basildon new town, then bungalow land in Thundersley Essex, near Southend. Went to a Secondary Modern School in that area and left school as early as possible in December 1962 just 15 with no formal qualifications. Secondary modern school was a good basis for knowing what working class meant as we were the factory fodder, the brighter ones being creamed off into the local grammar school. However mum and dad were fairly active at work and in community stuff like the Scouts and we knew what collective organisation was about and had a friend whose dad was a local Labour Councillor. One of very few in the very Tory dominated bit of Essex.Started work as an office boy in a solicitors office (lawyer) in New Square Lincolns Inn just off the Strand in January 1963. Around the same time largely through friends and connections with the Labour Councillor's son started going to Young Socialist - part of the LP - and CND meetings. Went on the Aldermaston marches at Easter and YS conferences and generally got involved with the left. At that time all the bits of the old Trotskyist RSL were active in the LP and I think I went to all their meetings. Politics were seriously honed at work with constant arguments with the working class Tories that I worked with - all Daily Mail and Express readers. Nothing like it for sharpening the mind! Also connections with CND offered contact with anarchist leaning organisations like Solidarity. All this politics and being a teenager in the 60's with access to all the Soho clubs with my 7 day a week rail season ticket up to London was a wonderful time to be around and alive. I was one of the youngest sub agents at 16 in the UK for the LP in the 1964 general election.Early that year I purchased a copy of the three volumes of Capital for 3/6d old money from the Chinese bookshop near the British Museum. I remember devouring it in a park nearby reading a couple of the chapters on commodities, use and exchange value before going back to work. It was my lunchtime. It made complete sense and fitted my experience of being a worker and still does. The other eye opening and formative experience was really quite strange. I was so keen on the first Wilson Labour Government that I went out and purchased their first White Paper which was about the economic crisis. I don't know what I expected to read but my heart feel into my boots when they hitched themselves to solving the balance of payments crisis which to me was a problem of how capitalism worked: they were going to prop it up as a priority! That was it for me for Parliamentary socialism. Early in 1965 I moved to Paignton Devon with my parents, partly for health reasons, still worked as a solicitors clerk but also working on the beach and in hotels. I quickly got involved in the local YS and CND, virtually the same people, and for a few months strayed into the Young Communist League. The following year 1966 I went to Russia with the old CP Progressive Tours staying in Leningrad and Moscow. We spent quite a bit of time hunting out young people and it became very clear that the Soviet Union had little to do with socialism. I came back a total convert to Trotsky and got involved in Young Guard which was part of the International Socialist Group that later became the SWP. I produced a little magazine for the local YS typing and duplicating the thing as you did in those days. It was noticed by a member of the LP who had some connections with the Mirror Group who owned the local papers in Torquay and shocked that I didn't have any qualifications suggested that I should take shorthand, typing, English language and literature 'O' levels at evening classes and I may get a start in journalism. I started these in 1965 and discovered that it was possible to get a grant and go to college full time if I stuck with the evening classes for a year. I managed to do this and started full time in 1966 doing O levels and an A level in one year and three As the following years. So within 2 years left clerking behind for ever and started doing Sociology and Social History at Durham University in 1968, getting married in the same year.After Durham I started PhD research in Swansea but although I gathered some really useful stuff - history it was - trying hard to be a professional revolutionary and a parent led to it not being written up. Still it was good enough to just about get a job at Llandaff Technical College in Cardiff where I started in January 1974 teaching day release apprentices Liberal Studies. My goodness that was hard! I moved on to teaching and then running the TU training provision for the TUC at the College until 1989 when Thatcherism saw it off. The College had by that time become the Cardiff Institute of Higher Education and eventually became the University of Wales Institute Cardiff. I finally complete a PhD in the 1990s and retired from the University in 2007 ending my career supervising PhDs and running a research institute into Cooperatives.During the 34 years at UWIC I was active in the lecturers union NATFHE at all levels from being branch secretary to being a member of the national executive and a UK negotiator. To me it was always essential to practise what you preach trying to unite theory and practice so the key was to link the reality of trade union struggle with the practice of building a revolutionary party and winning people to socialism by building organisation like the ANL and Rock Against Racism. Until 1984 this was through the SWP and organising all sorts of rank and file groups within the union. I didn't see the problem but the SWP decided that the 1980s downturn would compromise members so it was decided that we should not hold lead trade union positions. I could see the problem but didn't think pulling out of the struggle as the right answer. So, in the middle of a struggle over 40 compulsory redundancies I was expelled from the SWP. Of course I continued to fight the Tory Government through the union and through community activity such as trying to stop our local school from closing. In the end I had to have some political links so rejoined the LP in 1987.I'm no longer a member as the Labour Party now has little to do with socialism. I'm now a member of Left Unity and my reasons for joining are here: http://leftunity.org/labour-party-resignation-letter-joining-left-unity/ . During the 1990s I became interested in forms of struggle and direct action other than that through trade unions. Partly if was having to teach management at work which was awful and in desperation to retain some sanity and consistency with a Marxist analysis I became involved in the debates around critical management theory. I soon realised that they were heading for abstraction so thought we should explore the extent to which cooperatives and social movements could actually be seen as an alternative way of organising, owning and controlling value and its production. This led me to work with colleagues and comrades in the cooperative and green movement both in terms of research and political activity. I'm particularly interested in the issues involved with bringing the analysis of Marx and the green movement together both in theory and practice and have been working on the possibility that the concept of a transitional demand can have a parallel one of a transitional action and how the two may work together. See the first discussion piece.
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