Keir Starmer should have been on the Tories Leadership contest. His recent speech in Liverpool could have come from Sunak or Truss. He set out his economic vision as “growth, growth, growth”. He could have been a bit more precise as a capitalist politician by arguing for “profit, profit, profit” or better still “Accumulate, Accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets” (Marx).
After his turgid speech he was berated in a local café by a Labour supporting pensioner. She told him, he was a disgrace for writing an article in the Sun newspaper due to the paper’s coverage of Hillsborough under its former editor Kelvin Mackenzie and a liar for not keeping his promises; ditching nationalisation policies and emptying the Labour Party of activists. He was no socialist, she told him. He just sat there like a plank of wood (the confrontation can be seen on Robespierre’s You Tube channel July 26th 2022).
Starmer claims one of his heroes is Clement Attlee who was returned to power in 1945 with an overall majority. Wishful thinking! Attlee had a personal representative at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. He was also the architect of NATO which has waged war in Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001), and Libya (2011). Starmer supports NATO and Ukraine in the war with Russia.
Unlike Labour nostalgists who like to believe that the Labour victory of 1945 saw the dawn of socialism in the United Kingdom with the nationalisation of the railways, the steel industry, gas, electricity, coal mines, the Tripartite educational system and not least, the establishment of the NHS. Of course, this was not the case at all and Attlee’s 1945 government continued administering the needs of the capitalist system just as before – the relationship between labour and capital did not change in anyway. In fact, the government retained war-time legislation banning strikes; it sent troops into the docks to break strikes; it put gas workers and dockers on trial; it imposed wage restraint and then a wage freeze; it introduced peace-time conscription for the first time; it began the development of the British atomic bomb; it sent troops to help United States imperialism in Korea and it did not solve the housing problem facing the working class.
Given the historical failure of the Labour Party to do anything about the social and economic problems facing the working class why is the pensioner, who verbally attacked Keir Starmer in the YouTube clip, still a member of this capitalist party? And why does she believe that nationalisation would solve the economic problems of the working class when it failed miserably the first time round? Nationalisation is state capitalism and does not change the labour-capital relationship.
Workers are still exploited in the nationalised industries, forced to defend themselves in trade unions and struggle for more pay and working conditions. Nationalisation has nothing to do with socialism and the free and direct access to goods and services which people need to live worthwhile lives.
Starmer’s speech on the keynote theme of economics in Liverpool showed he did not understand economics at all. Apparently, he has to be tutored in economics by the likes of Ed Miliband and Lord Falconer ( ‘i’ July 27th 2022); the blind leading the blind. All three do not accept that social wealth comes from the exploitation of the working class. They have no idea of the cause of the trade cycle, the class struggle, inflation and unemployment. The ideas of Karl Marx are a closed book to them. Starmer cannot dissect or explain why capitalism is not working for the working class majority and why, if he was in power, he would be unable to do anything about their class position of poverty and insecurity.
Journalists criticise Starmer for being vague. Every new agenda-setting speech Starmer makes, they opine, ends up with him making it less clear what Labour stands for. There is nothing in the Tory policy menu he would be uncomfortable with. He is also against strikes and his Shadow Ministers standing in support on picket lines. Starmer writes articles on VE day in the Telegraph, on Memorial Sunday in the Mail and chases the ethno-nationalist vote in the Sun. Starmer wants to be more patriotic than the Tories and is keen to wrap himself up in the Union Jack.
Unfortunately for Starmer, Tories do Tory policy better than second division Tories like the Labour Party and the Liberal Party.
For socialists, it is very clear what the Labour Party stands for. Like the Tories and other capitalist parties, Labour stands for the interest of the capitalist class. It stands for British capitalism and it stands for the private ownership of the means of production and distribution to the exclusion of the majority of society.
Why do people like the pensioner who saw through Starmer stay in the Labour Party? Why do they waste their lives in a Party unable to influence its political and economic direction? They are told what to do and what to think by leaders who set policies in the interest of though who own the means of production and distribution – it beggars belief.
Socialists might be thin on the ground, yet we adhere to a set of socialist principles and a socialist object which, given a socialist majority taking democratic and political action, will replace capitalism and the profit system with the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production by all of society. Workers should be with us thinking and acting for themselves not the Labour Party.
