Afterword: Corbyn---A Socialist Rebirth?

Afterword: Corbyn---A Socialist Rebirth? At the time of writing, Labour is led by Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour-left figure who did not join Blair, unexpectedly elected as leader in 2015 in a leadership contest otherwise comprising ‘Blairites’ and former New Labour Ministers, i.e. figures associated with the ‘post-left’ project discussed in the chapter above. Encouraged by Labour’s strong (albeit second-place) performance in the 2017 general election, numerous figures on the left have interpreted ‘Corbynism’ as representing something of a socialist revival in British politics, as a break with a previously dominant New Labour ‘neoliberalism’, a re-emergence of class politics and Labour as a mass party, and evidence of the broad popularity of ‘traditional’ Labour-left policies for public ownership, wealth redistribution and workers’ participation in economic ownership and workplace decision-making.1 To what extent, there- fore, does the emergence of ‘Corbynism’ challenge this book’s assertion of a ‘death of British socialism’ upon the demise of the AES in the 1980s? Is Corbyn’s rise evidence that socialist politics is again a major force in British politics? AES Parallels Insofar as Corbyn, often called Tony Benn’s protégé, has looked to the policy repertoire of Labour-left tradition, his attempts to forge a political platform credibly distinct from New Labour have to an extent involved a © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under 207 exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 B. Tufekci, The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34998-1 208 AFTERWORD: CORBYN—A SOCIALIST REBIRTH? reiteration of some of the old AES themes. Echoes of these can be found in For the Many, Not the Few, Labour’s manifesto for the 2017 general election, which has pointed to the decline of Britain’s manufacturing base, the weak growth of British productivity and underinvestment in infrastruc- ture.2 Alternative Models of Ownership, a Labour-commissioned report also published in 2017, has repeated these concerns and identified the ‘predom- inance of private property ownership’ as a cause of Britain’s economic prob- lems.3 John McDonnell, Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and close ally, has called on Labour to ‘oversee a flourishing of…alternative models of ownership, from worker-owned businesses to local energy cooperatives’.4 With a nod to the ‘new revisionist’, post-AES left discussed in the previous chapter, McDonnell seeks to draw on ‘the best traditions of the labour movement’ and show that ‘forty years after Eric Hobsbawm wrote of “the forward march of labour halted”’, Labour has ‘an incredible opportunity to put our economy on a new and better path’.5 While many have maintained the radicalism of the Corbyn agenda, others have pointed to its relative moderation. They have argued that the 2017 manifesto represents a limited departure from Ed Miliband’s manifesto in 2015 and that its Keynesian proposals are markedly less drastic than those of the manifestos of the AES period.6 In 2015, Andrew Gamble described ‘Corbynomics’ as so far representing ‘only a very pale reflection’ of the AES.7 Stuart Holland has himself highlighted the differences between his version of the entrepreneurial state and that of Marianna Mazzucato, the UK-based economist who has worked as advisor to Corbyn and whose ideas have had some influence among Corbyn’s colleagues. Mazzucato has called on states to acknowledge their entrepreneurial role as leaders of innovation- led economic growth.8 As Holland points out, however, what distinguishes his AES model of the entrepreneurial state and Mazzucato’s is that the latter is not based on state ownership but is ‘about sharing knowledge and promoting links between concepts and practice’.9 Indeed, there has as yet been little in ‘Corbynomics’ to suggest that a Corbyn government would take state ownership beyond previously nationalised ‘key utilities’ and ‘natural monopolies’ like rail, energy and the postal service. As one recent book argues, the Corbyn-led Labour Party has thus far offered ‘mild social democratic objectives’ to the British electorate, ‘a fully costed, tax- and-spend manifesto depicting a return to a mixed economy and a more equitable form of capitalism—in short, Keynesianism’.10 The leaders of Corbynism have at times employed radical rhetoric, but they have also expressed an awareness of the limited radicalism of the actual AFTERWORD: CORBYN—A SOCIALIST REBIRTH? 209 content of their policies. McDonnell has described ‘Corbynomics’ as hav- ing ‘floated a number of ideas that weren’t politically radical’ but which ‘demonstrated how you can move the debate forward’ in a mainstream British political landscape dominated by ‘neoliberalism’.11 Corbyn has also qualified the radicalism of his economic ideas in the wider context of Euro- pean capitalism: ‘If I was putting forward these ideas in Germany I’d be called depressingly moderate, depressingly old fashioned as they have a national investment bank already and they invest in public services.’12 This has been one area in which Corbynism’s similarity with the AES has been pronounced: as had Holland and other proponents of the AES, Corbynism has taken inspiration from examples of ‘best practice’ elsewhere in the capitalist world economy, whether Norway, with its nationalised oil industry, or France, Spain and Italy, with their state-backed co-operative sectors.13 The ‘new political mainstream’ that Corbynism has sought to establish has not so far expressed an intention to take British politics very far beyond successful models of administration in capitalist countries abroad. ‘We’ll look to at least double our co-operative sector’, McDonnell has stated, ‘so that it matches those in Germany and the US.’14 There is, however, another area in which Corbynism’s parallels with the AES have been marked. Like the old Labour left, Corbynism has stressed the need to foster the closer involvement of workers in a national project for economic revival. In fact, the primary similarity between the AES and Corbynism is arguably found less in their specific proposals than in this general ideological approach that underlies both sets of politics. Yet, as suggested in this brief afterword, a closer reflection on this similarity in ideological approach perhaps also reveals what in fact most fundamentally distinguishes the AES from Corbynism. Corbynism has arisen in an industrial landscape radically different from the one to which the British left had attempted to relate in the 1970s and early 1980s. The kinds of industrial struggles that gave rise to the AES in the early 1970s have not been a feature of the period of Corbyn’s rise. The British working class as an organised social force, insofar as it still exists, does not have the political significance today that it possessed in the AES era. It is this difference which perhaps most clearly separates Corbynism from its Labour-left predecessor, and which also raises interesting questions as to the former’s political and historical significance as a self-described socialist project. While it is, of course, beyond the scope of this short discussion to attempt to provide any in-depth or comprehensive comparison between Corbynism and the AES, 210 AFTERWORD: CORBYN—A SOCIALIST REBIRTH? it will aim nevertheless to tentatively highlight a few points of significant divergence between the two Labour projects. The Continued Absence of Class Politics In raising the importance of establishing a new class partnership in the British economy, the new Labour leader has to an extent continued where the previous party leadership had left off. As part of his ‘one nation’ idea, Ed Miliband had pledged employee representation on committees for company executive remuneration to encourage ‘employers and employees to build partnerships for improving both business performance and job quali- ty’.15 Indeed, on becoming the Conservative Prime Minister in July 2016, albeit with a Corbyn-led Labour Party to her left, and in the context of corporate controversies involving the multi-millionaire retailer Sir Philip Green and alleged tax evasions by Apple and Facebook, Theresa May her- self went further than Miliband by announcing plans (later abandoned) for the appointment of employee representatives on company boards, as part of her policy to ‘reform capitalism so that it works for everyone’.16 Cor- bynism, however, has gone beyond both Miliband and May. It has placed ‘economic democracy’ at the centre of its policy and rhetoric. As McDon- nell told the 2018 party conference, at the heart of our programme is the greatest extension of economic democratic rights that this country has ever seen. It starts in the workplace…After decades of talking about industrial democracy, Labour in government will legislate to implement it.17 It terms of concrete reforms, this would resemble the Bullock proposals in the 1970s: according to Corbyn’s plans, workers at public and private companies with a workforce of 250 or more employees would have the right to elect a third of the seats on the company board.18 It would also involve, according to the Shadow Chancellor, an ‘inclusive ownership fund’ to give workers at large companies a stake in the company’s returns and ‘the same rights as other shareholders to have a say over the direction of their company’.19 As with the left-wing proponents of the AES, Corbynism has seen this ‘democratisation’ as key not only for achieving Labour’s

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