From: "George Pennefather" <poseidon-AT-eircom.net> Subject: AUT: Neo-conservatism and workers Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 07:29:41 +0100 The Canadian Alliance is a right wing party that is growing in popularity apparently because its programme includes tax cutting policies by way of reducing the state budget deficit. Clearly cutting taxes by reducing the budget deficit can only mean cuts in state social spending which reduces the standard of living of the working class particularly its lower layers. Why is it that support for such anti-working class policies can lead to an increase in electoral popularity? The Republicans in the U.S., the Tories under Thatcher and the PDs in Ireland are parties that have made this policy their clarion call. Clearly it is an indication, among other things, of the changes in the social composition of the working class over the years. In the West there has emerged a layer of comparatively highly paid skilled intellectual workers who gain almost nothing from state social welfare spending and yet pay high taxes. This layer is an upper layer within the working class. It is, in some degree, a transitional layer in the sense that some elements within it are in a fluid condition whereby there is a flux back and forth between the working and middle class. Consequently there obtains ambiguity within this layer as to its social identity --its definition in class terms. This condition provides rich fertile ground for the blossoming of petty bourgeois ideas. Much of this layer may not feel the need to unionise. Sections of it tend to the view that welfare spending is of no benefit to it while such spending is supported by their fiscal contributions. Their ideology tends to support the belief that many of the beneficiaries of state welfare don't want to work or are fraudsters who scam by working in the black economy while availing of welfare payments and whatever else. Many elements from this upper layer are very often involved in private health care systems. Consequently they have little sympathy for even middle ranking workers who may be earning a comparatively reasonable wage yet must avail of some of the state welfare benefits. These neo-liberal policies also strike a chord with the middle class, many of whom have small enterprises, who don't, in large part, qualify for state welfare. The upshot is that neo-liberal or neo-conservative parties draw support from sections of the middle class together with the upper stratum of the working class. In that sense these parties draw from a constituency that straddle two classes in addition to the bourgeoisie. In this way the middle class and a relatively privileged layer of the working class are particularly utilised by the bourgeoisie to undermine the class cohesiveness of the working class. Neo-conservatism is a clever bourgeois strategy, anchored in specific objective developments, to undermine the working class economically, politically and even ideologically. Much of this layer of the working class would have had its origins in the middle to lower strata of the working class. Due to the growth of the welfare state, in particular from the sixties onward, much of the offspring of the working class would have been able to avail of third level education --free education, college grants etc. This education would have qualified them for admission to the upper layer of the working class in a period when enormous technological changes have been in progress. Consequently this stratum has grown in size and has become largely more affluent. This element was not so prevalent in the fifties and sixties because the composition of the upper layer of the working class possessed a different character then. The upper layer, then, principally consisted of highly skilled tradesmen. Later it increasingly included highly skilled technicians and commercial workers with a residue of highly skilled craftsmen. Later again it increasingly included a technical intelligentsia engaged in the electronic and financial sectors. The growth of this new element of intellectual worker in this layer led to the emergence of a correspondingly different culture within the upper layer. They lacked the trade union culture of the proportionately diminishing traditional element within this layer. This element came from a different background in the sense that it was college based bearing the particular petty bourgeois culture entailed by college life. Consequently it did not see themselves as forming a cohesive layer within the working class. Consequently their allegiance to the trade union movement, and labour politics generally, was less certain. By virtue of its particular education and environment its conception of social being bore a more individualist or egoist character --their consciousness was less collectivist. Its education and college experience led them to question much of traditional labour politics. However this questioning was grounded in a negative reactionary perspective rather than in the perspective of critique. We see then that the very welfare state, that much of this layer now seek to have undermined, was one of the very conditions of its crystallisation as a prominent and significant section of the working class higher layer. It is this section that has been the decisive condition in facilitating the destruction of the cohesiveness of the working class by the bourgeoisie. Much of this layer likes to think of itself as good as the bourgeoisie. It likes to think of itself as cool, cultured and "where its at". It likes to imagine --hence the significance of "the imaginary" in this ideology that envelops them-- that there is some assumed guarantee that things can never be as they were in the "bad" past. It never even considers that living standards, rights etc can be invaded by the bourgeoisie or that if they are it will not be adversely affected. It imagines that there is some natural scheme of things that guarantees that today will always be so --and even get better. For it fiction is reality and reality is fiction. This is tantamount to blissful superstition --a new religion, a new ignorance, the post-modern. It entertains a superstitious belief in capitalism. Even when it shows an interest in radical ideas it does so in a way that lacks any sense of urgency --any urgent sense of the need for real change. Radical ideas are a form of entertainment --literature and hence the growing significance of literary criticism as a cannibalistic ideology that has been increasingly dominating much of the universities. This layer emerges from an entirely new objective conditions entailing a "new" culture and mindset. It did not directly crystallise out of the working class and trade union movement. Instead it is a product of the schools and colleges --the ideological apparatus of the capitalist state. The emergence of neo-conservatism as a populist form is an acute reflection of the failure of the working class movement to win this section of the working class over to the side of labour. It is a reflection of the reactionary character of the politics of the leadership of the working class. The reformist leadership of the working class has betrayed the working class by handing this upper layer over to the bourgeoisie lock, stock and barrel. This reformist leadership, then, created the conditions that rendered possible the emergence of neo-conservatism as a populist force. Reformism promoted, then, the loss of cohesiveness of the working class as a class. This new section by, in a sense, disconnecting itself from its own class has further sowed confusion within the entire class as to its class identity. Conditions have reached such a sorry stage whereby the working class virtually does not even know what it is --a virtual working class that lacks class consciousness. This centrifugal development lead to the proletariat splintering out in all different directions to all different parties --loosing its class cohesiveness. This development has significantly affected the way in which the working class perceives itself which tragically reflects itself in the particular way the trade unions, and the labour movement generally, have developed over the recent past. The emergence of New Labour in Britain is an expression of these developments. Here the Labour Party transmuted itself in order to accommodate the worse practices of this upper layer and in the process openly abandoned the lower strata of the British working class. To conclude: Objective developments in the character of capitalism have led to changes in the social composition of the working class which has essentially thrown up a new section within the upper stratum of the working class. These developments opened up new challenges and possibilities for the labour movement. Instead the existing leadership of the working class has facilitated these changes in such a way as to assist conditions that led to this new section forming the necessary popular base for the emergence of the neo-conservative politics and ideology of imperialism. Instead of a struggle being waged to ensure that this new section of the working class was won over politically and ideologically to the cause of labour the reformist leadership of the labour movement actively facilitated its forming a popular platform for neo-conservatism. As a consequence the working class is in an increasingly weaker and demoralised state rendering its ability to defend its class interests even more questionable. The fate of this upper section of the working class is proof that the working class when left to its own spontaneity tends to become prisoner to essentially reactionary politics and ideology. To prevent or eliminate such developments it is necessary to create and develop a communist vanguard party. Comradely regards George Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ Subscribe to Revcommy Mailing Community at rev-commies-subscribe-AT-eGroups.com --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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