The following is the first of a two-part series of posts, providing a critical assessment of some of the views expressed in the 2019 British Labour Party’s Manifesto, It’s Time For Real Change.
The British Labour Party seemed to be more concerned with jumping on the bandwagon of climate change than really addressing the core issue of the power of employers as a class (and its relation to the rape of the Earth).
Thus, the very first section is entitled “A Green Industrial Revolution.” Climate change is a buzzword these days, but I doubt that it has the holding power necessary to make fundamental change. For many people, climate issues have little immediate concern for their daily lives as they proceed to drive to work for an employer, or take the bus, the subway or light rail transit. They then subordinate their wills to the employer (and try to get as much fulfillment as they can out of such work) and then return home to recuperate from their use as things at work (or go to malls to compensate for their less than fulfilling lives at work).
Furthermore, the whole issue of climate change that sidesteps the nature of the capitalist economy and the need to eliminate the power of the class of employers as such (and the associated economic and social structures) will never solve the problem of climate change. The issue is: Can climate change really be adequately addressed without addressing the power of employers as a class?
Can we continue to treat the Earth as unlimited and resolve the problem of climate change? The capitalist economy necessarily is a process that is infinite. Consider the money circuit of capital (see The Money Circuit of Capital). If we look at the beginning and the end of the process, there is a quantitative difference between the two. This quantitative difference is profit, and that is the goal of the whole process. Thus, if you invest $1,000,000 at the beginning of the year and receive $1,100,000 at the end of the year, you receive $100,000 profit. This difference has arisen from a process of exploiting workers (that is where the $100,000 comes from–the workers produce more value than what they themselves cost to produce). However, once the capitalist process has ended through the sale of commodities and the capitalist has $1,100,000, this money is no longer capital. Capital is a process, and once it is finished, it no longer is: its birth is simultaneously its death, so to speak. The capitalist who now has $1,100,000, to remain a capitalist, must invest the money again–but because of competition with other capitalists, he will have to invest more than $1,000,000. There is thus an in-built infinite process of continuous expansion (interrupted by economic crises due to the impossibility of obtaining an adequate profit rate). Such an infinite process in the context of a finite Earth hardly bodes well for efforts to eliminate the causes of climate change.
The so-called “Green solution” that sidesteps the contradiction between an infinite economic process and a finite Earth will not likely be able to address the problem of climate change. The Labour Manifesto does just that–it sidesteps the power of employers as a class and the associated economic, social and political structures needed to maintain that power.
If workers are unwilling to oppose the class of employers at present, why would climate change motivate them to engage in such opposition? But then again, the purpose of the Manifesto is not to really challenge the power of employers as a class.
Of course, compared to anything proposed by the main political parties here in Canada, the Manifesto seems radical, such as a minimum wage of 10 pounds per hour, expansion of social housing, a pay raise of all public sector workers of 5%, nationalisation of key industries (such as energy and water), free tuition and so forth. Measured by the standard of the major political parties in Canada, it is a radical manifesto.
However, measured against the standard of a socialist society (see, for example, the series of posts on socialism on this blog), the Manifesto is just one more expression of the lack of dealing directly with the class power of employers.
There are many other problems with this Manifesto, only some of which will be addressed in the next post in this series.
The Abolitionary 