Politics is about two things – power and principle. Practical politics is about striking the right balance between the two. It’s not a balance Labour has been good at achieving. We have either been strong on principle and become marginalised (as we did during the disastrous 1980s), or we overdosed on power and forgot for what purpose, drifting to defeat as we did in the late 1960s and again in the late 1970s. It is this latter fate that may confront us again. In part this could be because we ditch too many principles but also because we don’t understand the changing nature of political power.
For the left power has traditionally meant executive control of the state.. The ability to pull the levers of power and enact policy changes has been the modus operandi of the British left for over 100 years. It is a peculiarly monochrome and mechanistic view of winning political change and it has dominated Labour’s thinking to such a degree that its assumptions, analysis and prescriptions have almost been beyond question. Labour’s immediate political future will, in large part, be determined by our ability to understand this particular conception of power, challenge it and adapt to a new political world – and to do so quickly.
The roots of our view of power lie in the formation of the party and the way that initial success was achieved. Politics is always a product of wider economic, social and cultural forces. The economic base, in particular, influenced the social and political superstructure. The dominant economic model when Labour surged on to the scene in the early decades of the last century was Fordism, a method of production that worked exclusively through top down command and control. The processes of life were mechanical and managerial and so, too, were those of politics. As such, the managerial gods of Fabianism and Leninism dominated socialist thinking. Capture of the state and control over the ‘instruments of power’ became the means of change.
At the same time the power of the sovereign nation state was at its zenith. Socialism in one country, by revolution or reform, was deemed both feasible and desirable. In Britain Westminster was the apex of all power structures. Holding all this together was an ideological framework that worked, at least in implicit terms, as a social and political glue. Sacrifice and endeavour were worthwhile because there was an enemy to defeat (the capitalists), and a good (socialist) society to build in England’s green and pleasant land. A culture of hope, certainty, deference and unquestioning loyalty created an era in which power could be won, held and sustained. Politicians were blessed with unparalleled legitimacy by the crusade that they alone could lead. The proletariat, the party and the state provided a holy trinity of centralised power that would usher in a socialist nirvana.
All of these circumstances have now changed – but the way in which we conceptualise power hasn’t. The old Labourist view of power may have worked in 1945. It struggled during the 1960s and 1970s. Today it is past its sell by date. It is time for the old Labour dog to learn new political tricks.
Just as the dominant forces of production in the past drove political formations, so they do now. New information technology and its spread throughout the world have seen the era of Fordism and the sovereign national state crumble. They have brought down with them the fortress of communism – humbled by a global media able to transmit not just news but different and seemingly better life styles at the flick of a switch. Certainty has been replaced by doubt, simplicity by complexity, deference by inquiring minds. The left is devoid of a compliant proletariat waiting for the call to arms. Disorientatingly there is no longer even a conception of the good society. The lure of the gym is now greater than the duty call of the general committee meeting.
In terms of raw political power the state can no longer do it all. The old notion that the left could inhabit a neutral state and use it for its own ends was always a hopeful myth. The state was never neutral. But the levers we were going to pull to enact socialism from above are now no longer even connected to the outside world. Half way down Whitehall someone cut the cords but forgot to tell the politicians. Mechanistic reform no longer works in a complex and differentiated world.
The ability to control and command from the centre for all governments fell with the Berlin wall. Liberal democracy does reign supreme but its victory over actually existing socialism came at a price. Stripped of an evil external foe Western political forces have lost much of their meaning. The threat of annihilation, creeping communism or the dream of democratic socialism focused the mind. Without these threats and challenges politics matters less and so power is less necessary. Legitimacy drawn from collective enemies or dreams is lost. Ideology – the glue of politics in the twentieth century – appears to have melted away. What good is power if there is nothing to be done with it? Politics has becomes less about crusades, more about technocratic solutions. In short, what works.
Today politics has become a frustrating game. Look at Labour, winning with a massive majority in 1997 and looking to win big again, but unable to bring about the transformation of society the centre-left desires. We have all the traditional trappings of power – we control the state, we fill the green benches, infuriatingly we even have the money stashed away in the Treasury. But our scope to act is inhibited by the complexity of the world we face, the global corporations that confront us and the fact that the very people who elected us don’t always seem to be with us. From fuel protests to rail chaos and foot and mouth, a government with an unprecedented majority feels like it is buffeted by events. At the tail end of John Major’s premiership, Norman Lamont taunted him by famously saying: ‘We give the impression of being in office but not in power.’ It is an accusation that applies more widely to governments the world over.
We urgently need to reconceptualise our attitude to power. There are four ways in which progressive social democrats should do it. First, we can practise pluralism. Instead of one society, one state and one party the left now has to confront multiple sites of power, and complex identities. Instead of the force or logic of the party or state we have to recognise that meaningful settlements have to be negotiated, that lasting resolution is only possible through participation, and that delivery only works through diversity. Strength is now measured through the empowerment of others, not by how much a government can store up power for itself. The left must wake up to the fact that the process of change is as political as the policy goal being pursued. Today means matter as much as ends.
Through pluralism politicians can practice accountability and gain legitimacy. Pluralism speaks of a world beyond the gates of parliament, to alliances with other political forces and with civil society. It is the reason why electoral reform makes us more powerful in terms of achieving our goals, not less. The ‘strong government’ promised by first-past-the-post is no longer feasible let alone desirable. It hankers for an age that is now gone. We have to change the electoral system to reflect the nature of our society and the culture of diversity and fluidity that pervades it – or pay the price of politics becoming even more marginalised and meaningless. For a party reared on the certainty of its own uniqueness pluralism is not an easy answer to the crisis of political power but it is an important part of the answer.
Second, we can develop a new internationalism. The cold winds of globalisation have numbed the radical sense of the left. Chastened by the u-turn of Mitterand in France in 1982 the centre-left gave up on the belief in socialism in one country. But we threw the baby out with the bathwater by giving up on the notion of social democracy anywhere. Instead of challenging the power of global capital we trimmed our sails to accommodate it as successfully as possible. From BMW/Rover to Corus we are paying the price for this insularity and lack of ambition. The goal of a more equal society is impossible if transnational corporations are able to act at will. Our powerlessness is defined by our failure to build global institutions to humanise capitalism’s relentless search for profit at the expense of people. Social democracy is itself defined by the goal of making markets fit people. If this is increasingly difficult at the level of the nation state (although I am convinced we can do more) then we need new international centres of countervailing power.
Third, power is hollow and meaningless unless it is wielded for a purpose. Without an ideological compass power takes you in directions you know not of. In a world where politicians believe that every interest can be squared socialism becomes what ‘Labour governments do’. Indeed, democracy itself becomes meaningless if the very choice that democracy offers has no real meaning. It is time we remembered that the left is fundamentally different from the right and not just by matters of degree. There is one principle that drives the left and which it alone owns. It is the goal of a more equal society. As such it is the narrative theme that should run through everything this government does. But here the shadow of Thatcherism still looms too strongly over us. Politically, we were forced to retreat too far during the 1980s and 1990s. That wasn’t a mistake then but will be now unless our swerve to the right isn’t rectified and another more radical course set. We have unintentionally ended up defending territory a party of the left should not be defending – both in terms of ideas and geography. We don’t need a 179 seat majority because it brings with it compromises that take us beyond the parameters of the left.
Finally, and perhaps most problematically, we must resist the belief that politicians have a monopoly of ‘power’ and instead learn to trust the people. Instead of a paternalistic approach we must finally come to terms with the fact that people themselves must be engaged with the process of change and feel some sense of ownership of it. As such the power relationship between politicians and the people must be based on a shared sense of mutualism. It is about the constant search for legitimacy, which cannot be manufactured or spun and is about much more than winning an election once every four years. We can lose consent much quicker than we think. A shallow victory, grudgingly given, can be dramatically withdrawn long before another election is called. For real power rests where is should – with the people. They simply loan it to us on a temporary basis. It must be constantly renewed along with the means of its application. Politics must now be about leadership and education – enacting change with the majority of people – not doing things to them or for them. If traditional institutions such as parliament fail to respond and adapt to these new times then other means will be found. The danger is that through consumerism, the media and other popular protests, the will of the people will be twisted into a reactionary and opportunist force. The challenge for the left is to invent and reinvent appropriate democratic institutions that are accountable, responsive and fair.
Set within the context of global power and the necessary institutions to deal with it, a stronger ideological belief and the practice of pluralism can help us chart a course to the good society. How is Labour preparing itself to overcome this crisis of power? The jury is still out. On pluralism the signs are mixed. Power has been devolved and now the genie is out of the bottle of Westminster it will have an increasingly interesting life of its own. But the fate of electoral reform hangs in the balance and the softer cultural dimensions of pluralism haven’t yet been grasped. Labour has to learn to let go or its attempts to take a grip of events will squeeze the life out of a new politics and with it the ability to effectively deliver better public services. On internationalism there has been little progress yet but it may come quickly. The European stage is the platform for economic reform to begin taming the beast of global capitalism. This is why a referendum on a single currency matters so much and why our future lies in Europe and not with the United States. Progress is also mixed on the ideological front. We have denounced the ‘forces of conservatism’, but our words have not been followed up by consistent deeds. Too many satisfied only by the prospect of a second historic term will soon find that only a third will do. This is not good enough. We have to wield power for a purpose. To do this Labour must recognise that to have friends you must have enemies and that to alienate the right people for ideological reasons will do us a power of good.
Finally, to exert power we have to believe that we can. We must reject the ‘endist’ theories of history, of economics and even of politics itself. In the face of globalisation and massive technological change we must cling to the belief that we are masters of our own destiny. It was Marx who frustratingly told us that ‘man makes history but not of his own choosing’. We are affected by the times in which we live and yet we still ‘make history’. Power also comes from a belief in ourselves.