Ed
Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is turning into an elaborate
parody of the emptiness of reformism. With capitalism unable to afford
any reforms, he is like the school pupil who works extremely hard to
avoid working whilst giving the impression of being studious. He is
trying very very hard, tossing and turning, to give the impression that
reformism can work without any actual reforms. Unfortunately for Ed, in
this case the illusion does not work.
Ed
Miliband’s leadership of the Labour Party is turning into an elaborate
parody of the emptiness of reformism. With capitalism unable to afford
any reforms, he is like the school pupil who works extremely hard to
avoid working whilst giving the impression of being studious. He is
trying very very hard, tossing and turning, to give the impression that
reformism can work without any actual reforms. Unfortunately for Ed, in
this case the illusion does not work.
He
has recently announced that social democracy, or reformism, can (and
will have to) provide the same quantity of ‘fairness’ and all-round "
well-being" without actually spending any money, in fact whilst cutting
enormously. Translated into English, this means that Miliband is
offering no credible policies whatsoever to deal with the crisis and
improve living standards. That is the only reason why Cameron
outperforms him in polls and why, in some respects, the Tories, despite
being so roundly hated, manage to be more trusted in economic matters.
If people are only going to be offered cuts, it may as well be done by
the guys who really know how to dig the knife in.
In
the desperate search for a distinguishing policy Miliband has decided
to cash in on the general hatred for bankers and the disgust at the
gross inequality in British society. He is selling the idea that we can
achieve the desired fairness and equality by reforming business
practice, rather than through taxation and public spending or even (God
forbid!) through nationalisation.
He says “Does
anyone really believe that David Cameron came into politics to create a
more responsible capitalism? The public are not going to buy it." The
real question is, does anyone really think there can be such a thing as
responsible capitalism? People do not take this seriously, and rightly
so, for capitalism is inherently irresponsible and crisis ridden. To
speak of conjuring up such a system whilst the world economy once again
teeters on the brink of the abyss is utopian.
Accepting
capitalism, as both reformism and Ed Miliband do, means adapting to its
inner laws and implementing policies that are in the interests of
capitalists and capitalism. Hence the fact that, in good New Labour
tradition, Miliband is trying to sell this policy as not only fair and
good for the poor, but also as in the interests of business, saying “There
is nothing anti-business about cleansing cheats, asset-strippers and
vultures from honest savings and good business enterprise.”
Unfortunately,
there is something anti-business about that, since business, or
capitalism, is the law of the jungle. Of necessity capitalism develops a
culture of cheating and asset-stripping.
The concrete policies he has proposed are the following, “[We
would] put an employee representative on every remuneration committee,
make firms publish their pay ratios, empower pension companies and
investors and have another year of the bank bonus tax to get some of our
young people back to work.”
These
policies are pretty thin for someone wanting to completely transform
the way an entire economic system works and to restructure society.
Investors are not interested in curbing executive pay, they are only
interested in getting their dividends, and those who are charged with
managing investment portfolios to achieve high returns are themselves
extremely lavishly paid. Small shareholders are far too scattered and
their assets too small to have a chance of dictating company policy,
moreover they too are only concerned with getting their dividends in.
The buying and selling of shares, and all other financial speculation,
takes place internationally, in accordance with the laws of capitalism
and determines the fate of the world economy. Empowering some of these
investment companies engaged in this to become champions of fairness and
equality is farcically ironic.
Putting
employee representatives on company committee’s whilst, thanks to the
global economic crisis, those companies will inevitably be making
decisions to sack thousands of workers and attack terms and conditions,
will either result in the buying off of the relevant worker, or in a
breakdown of this class collaboration into open class struggle.
Indeed
class struggle is on the order of the day for Britain and the world.
2011 showed that and 2012 will see even more. Capitalism inherently
increases inequality and crisis ridden capitalism is the least able to
overcome this tendency. If workers are to engage in holding their
employers to account for obscene executive pay levels, it can only be
through the workers having real, democratic control over those
companies. But you cannot control what you do not own. To appear
credible in this epoch of crisis and vast inequality, the Labour Party
needs to offer a socialist programme of nationalisation and workers
control.
