Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • Prospects for a new left party

    Last week, Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced she was leaving the party to set up a new left-wing party with Jeremy Corbyn. It’s fair to say that this new party has not got off to the most auspicious start: according to The Times, Corbyn was ‘furious’ that Sultana had gone ahead announced the formation of a new party before he was ready to. The story is somewhat difficult to believe, as it is hard to imagine Corbyn being furious about anything, and even if he was, it seems unlikely that he would have exclusively told Gabriel Pogrund at the Times; but nonetheless, it does appear that Sultana jumped the gun on this. Presumably she knew that her vocal support for the Palestinian cause would soon get her kicked out of the Labour party and wanted to walk before she was pushed.

    Alternatively, it may simply be that Sultana got fed up waiting for Corbyn to get his act together and made the announcement to try and speed things up. It is not entirely clear why Corbyn has been dragging his feet on this. One explanation is that he has a plan and wanted to to get everything in place before officially launching the new party; a more likely explanation is that he is simply dithering, as a lack of decisiveness was unfortunately a key feature of his time as leader of the Labour party, and was one of the factors that ultimately led to his and Labour’s downfall. Whatever is going on behind the scenes, this rather shambolic beginning does not exactly inspire confidence. But perhaps we shouldn’t be too downhearted; as the saying goes, it’s not how you start that matters, it’s how you finish.

    So what are the prospects for this new party? On the face of it there are reasons for optimism. First and foremost, there is clearly a huge latent demand to tap into: this hypothetical party is already polling above the Green Party, at least in some polls; and just a few days after Sultana made her announcement, over 70,000 people had already signed up. Not bad for a party with no name, no infrastructure, and no policy program. Another reason for optimism is that, unlike the Labour party, a new left party would not have to worry about being sabotaged from within. Of course, any moderately successful left-wing party will have to deal with the same smears from the establishment that the Labour party had to deal with, particularly the charge of antisemitism. But these accusations seem much less likely to stick this time around.

    The antisemitism smears were largely a deliberate conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism. The general public has now woken up to the true nature of Zionism and the genocidal intentions of the Israeli state, having had the massacre in Gaza transmitted directly to our phones for the past two years. That is not something people will forget in a hurry. There is clearly a huge groundswell of support for the Palestinian cause and this is only increasing over time. Moreover, there has been a widespread debunking of the Labour ‘antisemitism crisis’, exposing it as the scam it really was. People may have been fooled by this once, but I don’t think they’ll be so easily fooled again (although I’m sure the establishment will try).

    So those are some reasons for optimism; however, there are reasons for pessimism too. As already mentioned, the new party has not got off to the best start, and currently has no name, no infrastructure, or policy program. Can it really get its act together in time for the next general election? It seems unlikely at this point. It also seems unlikely that the unions will disaffiliate on mass from the Labour party and throw their weight behind this new party (although some might), which is what needs to happen in order for the new party to be successful. But perhaps the biggest reason for pessimism, at least among us socialists, is that the new party is unlikely to push a truly socialist agenda and will instead take a more social democratic approach.

    It might seem that I am splitting hairs in making a distinction between social democracy and socialism. But there is a world of difference between someone who believes that capitalism can be reformed from within – i.e. a social democrat – and someone who believes that capitalism is fundamentally un-reformable and must be torn down and replaced with something better – i.e. a socialist. In fact you could argue that these views are diametrically opposed. Corbyn and Sultana are both ultimately establishment politicians, albeit principled ones, and as such are unlikely to pursue a truly radical agenda. So, regardless of whether this new party gets its act together or not, it will not bring about the systemic change that is so desperately required, at least not by itself. Only a socialist revolution can do that.

  • Why did America elect Trump, again?

    In January this year, Donald Trump began his second term as President of the United States. Unlike last time he was elected, when he had to rely on the hopelessly antiquated electoral college system to get him over the line, this time he won by a landslide, winning the popular vote. Immediately upon taking office Trump made clear that he wouldn’t be hanging around this time and that there would be no sacred cows during his second term. Most worryingly for the Palestinians living there, he began referring to Gaza as ‘real estate’ and made clear (via a bizarre AI-generated video) his intentions to ethnically cleanse the area, raze it to the ground, and build a resort on the ashes. Clearly, the man is a dangerous buffoon. So why did the American public elect him for a second time?

    It should be noted first that the majority of Americans do not support Trump or his policies; although he won the popular vote, less than one in three Americans actually went out and voted for him. But still, nearly 80 million Americans did go out and vote for him. To understand why, we need to take a Marxist approach and look at the material conditions facing ordinary Americans today, which have been deteriorating for many years. These voters are understandably fed up with the status quo and are looking for an alternative; but America’s anti-democratic political system cannot provide them with one. The closest it can provide is a populist like Trump, who pretends to be against the status quo but is really just an extreme version of it.

    It’s important that we place this result within a global context. Far-right politicians are enjoying success across the western world, with six EU countries — Italy, Finland, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and the Czech Republic — currently having hard-right parties in government, and France, Germany, and the UK likely to follow soon. (It was notable that the main reaction to Trump’s election this time round seemed to be a kind of weary resignation, in contrast to the indignant ‘how could this happen?!’ that greeted his first election as president.) Again, the explanation for this trend lies in the worsening material conditions of ordinary people in these countries, and the lack of anywhere else to turn other than to right-wing populists.

    It’s also important that we place this result within a historical context. The parallels with the rise of fascism Europe around 100 years ago, although not exact, are nonetheless striking. The Nazi slogan ‘make Germany great again’ now sounds chillingly familiar, as does the fact that many people thought Hitler should be allowed into power on the basis that he would be booted out again as soon as everyone realised he was a fool. Trump and his fellow right-wing populists today may not be fascists in the same way Hitler and Mussolini were, but they aren’t far off. The rise of fascism in the 1930s is again attributable to the material conditions of the time; it is no coincidence that both times support for the far right has significantly increased, it has been off the back of a global financial crisis.

    Another striking parallel is the way that the tech oligarchs all lined up to support Trump, similar to the way business leaders of the 1930s supported Hitler. However, this election has highlighted a rift in the American capitalist class, with the tech oligarchs supporting the Republicans and the ‘rank-and-file’ capitalists mainly supporting the Democrats. The explanation for this rift lies in the fact that whereas most capitalists worry about the instability a Trump presidency could bring, the oligarchs are unlikely to be negatively affected by this instability and may even gain from it. They can see that change is coming and are backing the side that will benefit them – namely, the far-right. Hence Elon Musk’s now infamous Nazi salute (although as I write this the bromance between him and Trump appears to be over).

    This rift in the capitalist class gives us revolutionary socialists reason to be cheerful. A split in the ruling class was one of Lenin’s three preconditions for revolution, the other two being the suffering of the oppressed classes growing more acute than usual, and an increase in the activity of the masses. All three of these conditions seem to pertain at the present moment, and we seem to be witnessing a growth of class consciousness the likes of which has not been seen for a long time. At some point people will surely realise that right-wing populism will not improve their material conditions and will again look for an alternative. We just have to hope that Trump and his cronies don’t blow up the world in the meantime.

  • Why (some) people hate the left

    Being a leftist feels like a thankless task sometimes. Over the years I have been called naive, ignorant, intolerant, arrogant, racist, a cultist, a terrorist, and probably many other things I have chosen to forget, simply for putting forward and defending left-wing views. It’s bad enough when these insults are made by strangers, but often they come from friends and family, the very last people you would expect to attack you in this way. I know many on the left have had similar experiences – which is all the more baffling when you consider that the vast majority of us are motivated by trying to make the world a better place. In fact my fellow leftists are generally some of the nicest people I know. So what’s going on here? Why such vitriol?

    It’s important to say first of all that not everybody hates the left. Over 12 million people voted for Labour at the 2017 General Election when they stood on a leftist platform, which suggests that at least a quarter of people in the UK are willing to vote for a left-wing party. I also want to make clear that I am not complaining about people disagreeing with me when I put forward left-wing positions; everybody is allowed to have an opinion on anything, and we should welcome challenge as it forces us to check that our opinions are backed up with evidence. The problem is that when presented with a left-wing view, critics will often refuse to even engage with the argument and will instead launch into sometimes vicious ad-hominem attacks.

    One thing I think characterises the left is an unwillingness to take arguments at face value and a desire to understand the root causes of social and political issues; this entails a kind of humility and an acceptance that you might not already have all the answers. Conversely, those most critical of the left seem to lack this humility. I’m thinking particularly here about a subsection of society that might be referred to as ‘bourgeois centrists’: well-off middle-class people, usually white, usually with a degree from a prestigious university, who believe that their superior education, intellect, and social standing make them uniquely qualified to comment on political matters. Their arguments usually take the form: ‘I think X, and I am clever, therefore X must be true’.

    Faced with someone who presents them with a counterargument backed up by facts and logic, these people feel affronted. ‘How dare this lesser-qualified person challenge me! And not only that, they have the temerity to do so using facts and logic! Don’t they understand that to have an opinion on politics you need to defer to an expert like me?!’ To them, a well-thought-out counterargument isn’t just a challenge to their opinion; it’s a direct assault on their ego. Faced with such an assault, and with no way to combat it intellectually, they resort to ad-hominem attacks as a subconscious way of to level the playing field and bring the debate down to an emotional level where think they might still be able to win.

    What’s particularly interesting about these ad-hominen attacks is that the people who make them are almost always guilty of very the things they accuse us leftists of. They accuse us of naivety, but take articles they read in the mainstream media at face value; they accuse us of ignorance, but never bother to check whether their views are backed up by evidence; they accuse us of intolerance, but are unwilling to accept any challenge to their opinions; they accuse us of arrogance, but believe they are uniquely qualified to comment on political matters; they accuse us of racism, but often seem indifferent to the suffering of dark-skinned people; they accuse us of being a cult, but then idolise obviously corrupt politicians like Tony Blair; they accuse us of being terrorist sympathisers, but support governments that spread terror around the world. As the saying goes, when someone points a finger at you, they are really pointing three fingers back at themselves.

    I think as leftists we need to understand that as soon as someone starts attacking us in this way, they are subconsciously signalling that they have lost the argument. We can then learn to see straight through these attacks to the insecurities they mask. So the next time somebody calls you naive, ignorant, intolerant, arrogant, racist, a cultist, or a terrorist, simply for expressing your views, don’t sweat it – in fact, take it as a compliment.

  • How close was Labour to winning in 2017?

    The 2017 UK General Election wasn’t that close in terms of seats: the Conservatives won 317 and Labour 262. This result, along a with Labour’s subsequent and even heavier defeat in 2019, has led many to conclude that a socialist party could never realistically win a General Election in the UK, or that Labour was unelectable under Corbyn, or both. However, within a few days of the 2017 election, some on the left were pointing out that Labour had been just a few thousand votes away from potentially being able to form a government. As this does not fit the prevailing narrative it is generally ignored by mainstream commentators, and to the extent that it is discussed at all, it is usually dismissed as misleading or irrelevant. But is it really?

    The first thing to note about this is that however much some people may not like it, it is simply a fact that in 2017, Labour were a few thousand votes away from being able to deny the Conservatives a working majority. What would have transpired after this is anyone’s guess, but whatever conjecture you make about that does not alter this basic fact. It is just a feature of our electoral system that a few thousand votes in key constituencies can alter the overall result of an election. The second thing to note is just how small a few thousand votes is: there are around 50 million people of voting age in the UK, and few thousand votes represents around 0.005% of these people. In the context of a UK General Election, a few thousand votes is basically rounding error.

    Critics often retort that the claim relies on the smallest number of votes changing in a specific way, and that this is astronomically unlikely to have occurred in practice; but this is a straw man. Whilst it is indeed true that the probability of the votes changing so as to give Labour exactly the minimum votes in exactly the right consituencies is astronomically unlikely, this particular example is used to only to illustrate just how tight the result was. There are many plausible scenarios involving marginal gains to Labour that would have resulted in the outcome swinging in their favour. For example, a 1% increase in the number of people voting Labour distributed roughly evenly across the country would probably have been sufficient to alter the result in those key constituencies.

    Something else critics like to point out is that based on the same logic, the Conservatives needed only a few hundred additional votes for a majority, and that this scenario is more likely to have occurred. Again though, whilst it is true that the Conservatives were within a few hundred votes of a majority, this does not alter the fact that Labour were also within a few thousand votes of being able to deny them a working majority. All this demonstrates is that the 2017 election was on a knife-edge, which is precisely the point. It doesn’t make any sense to argue that a reconfiguration of votes resulting in an advantage to Labour was astronomically unlikely, whereas a similar reconfiguration in favour of the Conservatives was possible or even likely.

    The final argument critics like to make is that had the polls been closer in the period prior to the General Election, it would probably never have been called in the first place. This seems a fair assumption, as we may recall that the reason the  Conservatives called the election was that they assumed they would win comfortably against a Labour party led by the supposedly hapless Jeremy Corbyn. The problem with this argument is that if we accept the possibility that the polls could have been closer in the lead-up, to the extent that the Conservatives would not have been convinced of their victory and would therefore not have called the election, then we must accept the possibility that Labour could have won the election,  which then contradicts the whole ‘socialism is unpopular’ / ‘Corbyn was unelectable’ narrative.

    Listening to political pundits talking about the 2017 election is a bit like listening to a football fan who just watched his team draw a cup game 3-3 after extra time, then win on penalties, with a referee who was obvious biased in his team’s favour, going around telling everyone that the other team was always going to lose and that the result was never in doubt. Any football fan making such a ridiculous claim would be laughed out of the pub, and rightly so. Nobody would accept such shoddy analysis in the world of sport – so why do people accept it when it comes to politics?