Abstract
‘There is only one surviving, vigorous ideological strand in British politics, culture and society, beneath the competing managerialisms, spin and rhetorical froth which takes up much of the daily, party political shouting match; and that is Thatcherism’ (p. 87). This well established theme in the literature on New Labour is reinforced by Andrew Pearmain in this volume, with the use of Gramsci. New Labour is established as a continuation of Thatcherism, based on the same historical bloc. Labour is understood to have become embedded within the Thatcherite historical bloc after 1992, when the party became the force capable of regaining ‘popular consent for the “common sense” of neo-liberal market capitalism’ (p. 83). Operating in the shadow of Thatcherite hegemony, Labour abandoned ‘political persuasion’ (p. 188) and internalised the ideology of the social forces behind Thatcherism.
The book is not primarily about the politics of New Labour, but about the social and ideological changes that made it possible. Pearmain is mainly concerned with the intellectual changes occurring within the party and to the left of it – a position influenced by Gramsci, who allowed those within ‘the cultural, social and ideological fields’ to have a role on a par with the more “fundamental” economic clash between classes’ (p. 25). Because of this, Pearmain’s book is as much a history of the Marxist left as it is a study of the Labour Party. He is especially interested In the Communist Party of Great Britain and its magazine, Marxism Today. The role of this magazine in the rightward drift of Labour is heavily stressed, helped by the fact that Peter Mandelson stated to the editor Martin Jacques, ‘we’d never have done what we did without you’ (p. 134). This allows the author to link the magazine to the Labour Party’s conversion to the ideology of ‘new times’. The stressing of the objective reality of ‘new times’ and the declaration of the traditional left as beyond salvage (p. 153) is seen to have had ‘a crucial (and largely unacknowledged) role in the transition from “old” to New Labour’ (p. 8). The magazine did not just play an important role in the creation of New Labour; its relatively small circulation is partly responsible for the demoralisation and disillusionment of the ‘remnants of the political left’ (p. 157). This highlighting of the role of the intellectual left comes at the expense of the social relations of production. Surely the retreat and weakening of the working class within the economic sphere and the formal political sphere of the post-Fordist state is a more important phenomenon and one which had, and still has, massive affects on the common sense of the intellectual left? Pearmain does not sufficiently explore the effects of altered power relations within ideology, which means he fails to place Marxism Today within the widespread changes in ‘common sense’ that are occurring in Britain and throughout the world. Changes in class relations embedded in ‘common sense’ mean that left-wing complicity in neoliberalism is not merely a British phenomenon concentrated around Marxism Today. In France, a significant part of the intelligentsia was equally obsessed by modernity and similarly supportive of right-wing hegemony (Poulantzas, 1979: 10).
The privileging of intellectuals and the progressive middle class in social change seems to justify New Labour, which is portrayed as ‘a search to find a new basis for left-wing politics in Britain that could transcend the tired materialism, tribal sectionalism, broken corporatism, cynical economism, repressive social conservatism and overbearing statism’ (p. 262). The party attempted to move beyond Labourism by ‘looking for ideas in the right social class’ (p. 262), that being the educated middle-class, although Permain points out that in the end New Labour actually went to the less enlightened section of this class: ‘the people with money and no class’ (p. 262). The fact that Pearmain believes that this part of the New Labour project was ‘honourable and genuinely progressive’ (p. 262) is based on a very negative reading of Labourism and trade unionism; even the working class is consistently portrayed as being social conservative without any reference to why it is supposedly less progressive then other social classes. Trade unionism is seen as ‘little more than a sordid squabble over the spoils of capitalism’, which was seen to have increased the poverty and oppression of other unorganised workers (p. 25). Meanwhile, Labourism’s biggest achievement, the welfare state, is seen as ultimately repressive (p. 95). This highly negative view of the past ignores the role class struggle has on society as a whole. The social democratic consensus, its full employment and comprehensive welfare state, were made possible by the strength of trade unionism and capital’s need to contain its struggle within capitalist social relations. It must also be noted that the real inequalities between workers has continually widened now that unionism in the private sector is at a historic low (p. 60). The economic struggle made society aware of the centrality of class, and its demise has left the intellectual middle-class with little around which to base its radicalism. Old Labour was never an anti-capitalist force; but surely Labourism, with its concern for ‘the advancement of concrete demands of immediate advantage to the working class’ (Miliband 1983: 107), offered much more to the left than the politics of New Labour, unconcerned with rising inequality and devoid of any perception of class or class struggle. Pearmain’s critique of old Labour and celebration of the middle class is in its own way reinforcing ‘new times’ and the necessity of New Labour.
Pearmain’s book leaves little hope for Labour and the left as a whole. New Labour was not just the defeat of the Party (p. 87), but the removal of the left from the equation of British politics (p. 252). This is a poignant reminder of the weakness of the left within British society, made clear by Pearmain’s excellent analysis of the rich variety of activity on the left in the post-war era. It is difficult to believe that Labour will fail to regain power. Despite its collapse in membership and historical purpose, it is still the only political force on the left, and it is still seen within society as being left-wing, which is a credit to the flexibility of the capitalist state form and party democracy. New Labour is the political defeat of the working class, but not of the left.