Bernstein’s Folly

“The Communist Manifesto was correct, but we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding to democratic organisations. In my judgement, success lies in a steady [peaceful] advance [rather] than in a catastrophic crash.”

Eduard Bernstein

We start our story with a catastrophic crash. 2008, with the collapse of the Fukuyamist dream and global financial institutions, signaled the End of the End of History. Capital and it’s godlike status were exposed for the world to see in the Global Financial Crisis, and it’s state protectors were thrown into chaos. The United States, centre of Capital’s hegemony, saw it’s Republican actors begin banking bailouts and serving no consequences to the elite leaders of the crisis, handing this policy over to the neoliberal Democrats who expanded this policy. The Obama administration, and what constitutes the American ‘left’ was blamed by the working class for this tragedy, with over $626 Billion USD being gifted by the government in bailout measures.^[1] Starting in 2010, the Democrats began to lose ground to the Republicans within the working class electorate, with the latter party seizing on the chaos and capitalising on anti-establishment rhetoric, ending with the election of the consumer-tyrant Donald Trump to the White House at the end of Obama’s 8-year term.

America was, of course, not the only place affected by the downfall of Capital. The European Debt Crisis followed soon after the GFC, leading itself to many political crises in the Union. These often took the form of compromises from the European ‘left’ (light Social-Democrats and definite neoliberals), perhaps characterised best with President François Hollande, elected in 2012 directly after the crisis. His presidency achieved the impressive title of least popular^[2] in the whole history of the French Fifth Republic, with Hollande passing legislation in 2013 which gave employers expansive abilities to layoff their workers, and decreasing the rights of the employees as a whole.^[3] Unemployment in France peaked at 10.5% under Hollande,^[4] with the OECD also reporting that 24.6% of the labour force between 15-24 was unemployed in 2016.^[5] Hollande’s ‘Socialists’ were decimated by the neoliberal populist Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 elections. However, a strengthening of neoliberalism only led to weaker labour laws for the French working class, such as those that allowed employers to more easily hire and fire workers and limited the legal resistance of unions to such actions,^[6] which, along with the proletariat-targeted fuel taxes instituted by Macron, led to the Gilets Jaunes protests of 2018-2019. In response to this, the fascistic National Rally of Marine Le Pen, like the radical American Republicans, capitalised on the crisis to attempt electoral victory against Macron, and in the European Parliamentary elections of 2019, essentially succeeded.^[7] Beyond France, similar events have played out successfully to the right-wing in Italy, Poland and Hungary, with even the open Neo-Nazis of Golden Dawn holding parliamentary seats within the Hellenic Republic. The 2019 European Parliament elections left the right-wing Eurosceptic coalitions with approximately 15% of seats.^[7]

The rise of fascism has not seen it’s end, and has not limited itself to the Euro-American world, and the West’s peripheries have not been saved from this global trend. Brazil has become host to it’s own Mussolini, Jair Bolsonaro, who came to power on the back of a disgraced Social Democracy, with the superior popularity of left populist Lula De Silva being behind bars after a corruption scandal. In our own Australia, the Liberal Party won the unwinnable election against a light social-democratic Labor Party, largely because of the influence of the far-right One Nation and United Australia parties on the apathetic working class.

And so around the world we have seen the failure of the Left project in general. Even the most tame of social democracies or the most farcical of neoliberal regimes are being directly challenged, usually successfully, by a resurgent fascism. This, then, leaves us with the question: why?

The Failure of the Left

The first question requires firstly a brief analysis of what the Left is.

The Left, for our purposes, is a stand-in term for the political, economic and social forces who seek to bring equality and freedom to the oppressed in opposition to the forces of the State and Capital. A loaded definition, I know, and a biased one perhaps at that. However, on philosophical grounds, the Left, no matter whether we are talking about vanguardists, syndicalists, primitivists, or social democrats, seeks to challenge the bourgeois State and the hegemony of the capitalist market in order to benefit the proletariat. Vanguardists seek to do this through a politically active vanguard party for the proletariat that would replace the state and facilitate the ‘withering away’ of capitalism that Friedrich Engels described. Syndicalists seek to do this through the forming of massive industrial union networks and directly seizing the economy in a general strike to do away with capitalism effective immediately. Primitivists seek to utterly abolish the entirety of organised, technical and bureaucratic civilisation to free humanity to live in natural harmony. Finally, the moderate social democrats wish to achieve freedom through slow reform and electoral process, peacefully chipping away at the hegemony of State and Capital. In these examples we can note a trend between these various beliefs, and that is the aforementioned collective goal of liberation and justice for the masses.

The Left fights forces of State and Capital (the Right, or more precisely, the Establishment), in two areas; the Infrastructure and Superstructure. The Infrastructure, also the Base or Foundation, is composed of the Means of Production (technology), Mode of Production (economic arrangement) and the Relations of Production (the class structures that result from this). The Infrastructure is protected by a Superstructure of non-production related mechanisms that serve to defend and maintain the integral economic and class components of capitalist society, which can be in turn divided into the structures of;

• Pacification (propaganda efforts to pacify the population and legitimise its rulers; television, social media, mainstream media, education etc.)
• Institution (bureaucratic classification, monitoring and controlling of every component of life; surveillance, surveys, elections, parliaments etc.) and
• Aggression (the use of armed force against enemies of the State and Capital; police, military, mercenaries etc.).

A successful Left must utterly destroy the Infrastructure in order to achieve victory, and in most cases they will have to destroy, challenge or replace the superstructure before they can achieve the final goal.

It is worth noting that the largest, most popular and most legitimate of these approaches to ‘Leftism’ in the modern West are in the form of what we will term left neoliberals (Blairites, Clinton’s Democrats, Merkel’s CDP etc.), light social democrats (the Labor Parties in Australia and New Zealand), and what we might be able to call the radical social democrats (Corbynites, Sanders’ brand socialism, SYRIZA etc.). When we talk about the failure of the Left, the western irrelevance of communist movements, anarchist federations and any staunchly militant and anti-capitalist components of the Left mean that the approach that is being criticised is precisely that of the Liberal-Social Democratic zeitgeist. In fact, the irrelevance and decline of these more radical movements is the reason the Left is failing. The ideas and tactics that grew the Left and nearly pushed it to victory in the 19th and 20th centuries have been ignored, even ridiculed, by the modern western ‘Left’.

And so, with the necessary context established, let us finally analyse where the Left has failed.

Failure #1: Embracing the Grounds of Capitalism

In other words, the modern Left refuses to challenge the Superstructure.

It is an open secret that billionaires control our representative ‘democracy’.^[8][9] Studies done in the United States have shown that the opinions of average citizens have next to no correlation with how likely a piece of legislation is to be adopted, while that of economic elites has an obvious correlation. In Australia, only a handful of companies control the entirety of popular media, primarily dominated by Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp and the competing Nine Entertainment. Private control under capitalism essentially necessitates monopoly, as market forces drive competing companies to annex each other until few remain. Beyond just the monopoly on media and the proven influence of the billionaire stratum, the private control of these companies by economic elites then necessitates that there is a class of very few rich and powerful individuals that control politics. The means of production, the means of communications, and every other politically important institution is controlled by the capitalist class, and thus if parliamentary representatives wish to keep their position and popularity, they must appeal to these barons.

The western Left have in essence accept this fact.

On the first grounds, the modern Left is dominated by the Structures of Pacification. The mainstream media, the education system and the corporate internet obstruct any ability for truly Left and anti-establishment voices to be heard. In Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Company is often characterised by the reactionary establishment as ‘left-wing’ with some charlatans even going as far as to characterise it as ‘radical’. Any analysis of the ABC’s actual content will establish this farce for what it is; the Australian Broadcasting Company is the media instrument of the state and acts accordingly, spouting generally ‘centre’ (neoliberal) to ‘right’ (libertarian/conservative) talking points. The only particular feats of progressivism that the ABC (or SBS) accomplishes is occasionally putting a minority social liberal on their panels, and the fact that they aren’t as blatantly reactionary and right-biased as the rest of the corporate dominated media. The corporation-dominated newspaper and radio platforms have similarly structured political spectrums. Outside of the mainstream, the completely privatised platforms of the social media system have complete power to squash any Left-wing voice; Facebook and Google constantly censor and ban pages and accounts with opinions that they deem ‘extreme’ or that violate their terms and services. While this is often used to silence Nazi types, it is also used to silence particularly radical anti-corporate or anti-war voices on the internet. Finally, the education system functions in the same brainwashing manner as any other instrument of pacification. To prevent any accusations of me being a nutter that thinks everyone should be homeschooled, I obviously understand the necessity for building the fundamental academic knowledge and concepts allowed by the education system, and do not propose that it is an entirely corrupt institution. However, there is no denying that education as it stands is primarily a means of indoctrinating the young by the State and establishment; in Australia, neoclassical economics is taught as fact and a Euro-Australian view of history is enforced.^[10] Social democrats, despite these grounds being obviously dominated and controlled by the right wing and corporate power, continue to use them as the only legitimate sources to get their message across. Where were Shorten’s rallies in working class communities? Where is the Labor Party’s newspaper? Where are the proletariat’s own debate conferences? The answer is an assumed ‘nowhere’. Social democrats instead pander to the middle class, use the mainstream media systems of corporate power and accept the institutional control of communications by capitalism. As such, the modern Left concedes the realm of political information to their enemy.

On the second grounds, the Structure of Institution, the social democrats attempt to fight, in vain, against capitalism in a parliament that is controlled by their antagonists. Social democrats have of course made government in many instances. Labour parties across the West have succeeded, with great leaders like Michael J. Savage of New Zealand, Clement Attlee of Britain and Australia’s Curtin, Whitlam and Hawke making great efforts for the working class and implementing policies to provide welfare and rights to the oppressed. However, the nature of the parliamentary system, and the complete domination of corporate power in institutions, means that these governments do not last, and do not see their projects to completion, with a (neo)liberal party always poised to destroy whatever progress the social democrats have made. Lobby groups and special interests control major parties in the West (and, really, everywhere that Capital touches) through funding and bribes (sometimes called ‘donations’). In addition, the aforementioned forces of the mainstream media have monopoly over the information that the average citizen in Western Capitalism observes, and when those corporate bodies are obviously going to favour a neoliberal or fascistic government over a social democracy, much less a radical one, that information is going to favour right governments in turn. There is always a Murdoch to convince a damned working class that they should vote for a Morrison over a Shorten, even when the latter’s efforts have been deliberately thwarted or misconstrued by the same corporate tyranny that causes the proletariat’s woes. Due to electoral cycles, every truly social democratic government has had it’s projects torn down and it’s progress shattered by the capitalist defenders that came after it; the established system is controlled by and serves a capitalist class, and thus a genuine Social Democracy can never fully succeed, or realise the electoralist transition into socialism.

On the third grounds, the Structure of Aggression, the western Left has completely abandoned any meaningful struggle with state power. Where once militant trade unions fought the Pinkertons at Blair Mountain, where the Black Panther Party and their Rainbow Coalition protected the poor, and where the working class was armed and organised, the proletariat now exist unprotected and at the whims of the state’s forces of violence. The western Left now shies away from any mention of illegal action or effective civil disobedience. Social democrats, liberals and the like hold up the examples of Martin Luther King Jr., Tank Man, Nelson Mandela and other Tolstoyan examples of nonviolent disobedience as the only legitimate path to achieving extra-parliamentary goals. What the social-liberal narrative ignores, however, is that these nonviolent protesters may seem apt metaphors and figureheads for their movements, but it was not peaceful actions which achieved their goals. Civil rights, labour rights, and all other manner of human rights were not won through peaceful negotiation, but by forcing the hand of the State and Capital, often with the threat of violence and organisation. The ‘I Have a Dream’ speech may have been an eloquent description of the hope and struggle of New Africans, but it was the threat of a black working class organising, arming and rallying in the United States that prompted the state to grant rights to minorities. Does the Left need to engage in genuine violence to struggle with the Structures of Aggression? No, but the Left does need to defend itself and prepare for potential threats from the capitalist class, and it needs to appear powerful to struggle with Capital on even grounds. When the Left has given up these grounds and accept the authority of the State and Capital’s monopoly on violence, they leave the goals and members of the working class unprotected. This popular rage then manifests in briefly organised and always failing moments like Occupy Wall Street and the Gilets Jaunes; potential forces of revolutionary change that are left to fizzle and die without a Left to support them.

The failure of social democracy to challenge the grounds of capitalism directly led to the rise of the opposing neoliberalism, in turn leading to the present resurgence of fascism. When the social democratic experiment was ousted between the late 70s and early 90s (in the form of the Thatcher-Reaganite regimes taking hold in the UK, USA, Chile, Australia and elsewhere, accentuated by Deng Xiaoping and Mikhail Gorbachev’s ousting of vanguardism in the East), the market liberal forces moved in and secured their grip on the West, and to a large (and more Orwellian) extent in the East. The liberalisation and mass privatisation efforts employed by the capitalist class removed what State and popular authority there was in the economy by completely moving every industry (with very few exceptions) into the hands of the bourgeoisie. After that, the now omnipotent capitalist system does as it always has done; boomed and crashed with every cycle more exaggerated and damaging than the last, from the recession in the 70s all the way to the New Depression of 2008.

Failure #2: Abandoning the Working Class

After the neoliberal seizure of power, the social democratic parties of the West did not resist the new corporate takeover of politics. They did not defend the working class which was now, moreso than ever, being brutally crushed by capitalist forces. Instead, the social democrats abandoned the workers.

Social democrats often outright embraced neoliberalism, sometimes deceivingly titled embracing the ‘Third Way’ (between capitalism and socialism). This entailed abandoning any economic struggle with Capital for the purposes of sating the bourgeoisie and keeping power. The most iconic of examples of this shift to the right perhaps comes in the form of Britain’s Tony Blair and New Labour. Instead of challenging the neoliberal corporate-state that Margaret Thatcher had implemented before him, Blair and New Labour decided to continue the route of privatisation, maintain neoclassical economic platforms that favoured the free market and press further anti-union legislation directly antagonising the working class. In 1979, during the social democratic era, the Labour Party’s manifesto rejected the ‘the concept that there is a choice to be made between a prosperous and efficient Britain and a caring and compassionate society’.^[11] New Labour and the Third Way usurpers of the socialist moniker fully accept this dichotomy as legitimate, and preferenced the ‘well being of the economy’ (read; the largest profits for the rich) over the well being of their own citizens and working class supporters. Further than just a politically asinine tactic, the embrace of Capital removed the final block of mainstream force against full-scale corporate dominance, and allowed the bourgeoisie to go unchecked in their seizure of every institution and apparatus in society. New Labour was not the only social democratic party to undergo this transformation. Clinton’s embrace of the Third Way in the USA mimicked this, as, almost in a more volatile fashion, did the actions of Paul Keating in our own Australian Labour Party, with this trend generally seen across many social democratic parties in the West. In the 21st Century, what Robert Reich calls ‘the New Gilded Age’ has emerged, and arguably it is more all consuming than the last. Corporate power with no checks or challenges from the largest part of the modern Western Left has penetrated every sector of our lives, and the economic struggle that underpins this has been abandoned.

Along with the moral, grand fight against the forces of Capital by the social democrats, the working class that they long defended have also been abandoned. With no economic struggle, the working class have had their rights stripped and their conditions declined. Wage changes in Australia have been decreasing, while productivity has been increasing. Between 2016 and 2017, wage growth in Australia has been described as the slowest since the Wage Price Index started being recorded.^[12] In addition, the general trend of underemployment (as of 2019 at 8.3%) and underutilisation (as of 2019 at 13.8%)^[12]has been increasing over the past two decades, with these statistics highlighting a combination of instability, overworking and low rewards for workers. This comes with massive attacks by the State on the rights of unions and workers in general, with disparate treatment given to misconduct by unions and employers. Unions must ask the government in the form of the Fair Work Commission to strike, and the government has every power of the State to decline a unions appeal for ‘protected industrial action’ leaving it open to orders from the court, and even when the Fair Work Commission does protect industrial action, they can still repeal this protection at any point in time.^[13] Courts then provide blatantly unfair sentences favoring employers. In 2013, in a site controlled by Australian construction company Grocon, a wall collapsed killing three passers by, which followed the death of a worker on another site a month earlier. The courts, after four deaths, fined the company only $250,000, which pales in comparison to the almost $4,000,000 in fines levied against the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union in a similar time frame.^[14] Even with the blatantly anti-union legislation in place, the State insists on attacking further, with the new ‘Ensuring Integrity Bill’, in it’s second reading in the Australian Senate as of 2019, provides the ability for the State to dissolve unions at will.^[15] The trend is clear; the conditions of workers are worsening, the rights of workers are being stripped away, and the State is complicit and enforcing of this. When they should be providing radical opposition to this, instead the social democrats in the Labor Party stay moderate, complicit, and sometimes (like in the case of the Fair Work Commission), actively assisting in the oppression of the working class. Instead, the identities that the Left is most determined to protect are the identitarian interests of students and the upper middle class, leading to a characterisation of the Left in general as elitist and not focused on assisting the working class, creating apathy within them and alienating them. We see similar treatment toward the workers in France from the ‘Socialists’, and almost worse policies from the Blairites and other Third Way parties of the modern faux-Left. In this, we can see that the once champions of the working class now either ignore their people, or have betrayed them.

When the Left fails to confront capitalism on economic grounds, and when it fails to protect the working people, it loses on the fight of the Infrastructure. The Western Left has simply let Capital win control of all institutional power and all economic power, and then let Capital crush any power the workers still had. When Capital seizes the apparatus of the state, and the proletariat are driven to misery with no model to save them, the world is opened to a hidden spectre; fascism.

References

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