Marxism International

The London bombings were practically good news in Bonn,  our correspondent reports.   At least Bush/Blair’s Al-Quaeda fix took people’s minds off of their domestic woes, including an economy determinedly in decline and the growing scandal over at Volkswagen, Germany’s (and Europe’s) largest carmaker. 

Well, not so good news for the Schroder government.  Things haven’t gone very well for the Social Democrats in fact since the last election (when was it?), and now they have another coming up in September which they look to lose (perversely, it was Schroder himself who engineered this one, eighteen months early, but that’s another story).

The Volkswagen imbroglio looks likely to put paid to the widespread German industrial practice of Mitbestimmung (literally, “co-determination”, a scheme designed to give workers an equal say in industrial enterprises), which has been an important part of that country’s “social market” (capitalism plus social welfare).   In truth, that curiosity has been on the way out for the past thirty years (since before Margaret Thatcher, even), and is everywhere either under attack or has been completely junked.  

Why?  Corruption is an issue, but corruption itself is the glue that holds modern capitalism together.   Blaming capitalism’s ills on corruption is rather like holding oxygen in the air accountable when my house burns down.   In fact, buying labor’s aristocrats off with various enticements is a time-honored practice that is practically de riguer in the West.   

No, truth is, capitalism can no longer afford the “social market”.   That is,  the main concomitant of globalization has been the astonishing mobility of capital and labor.    A system that once broke in on the ancien regime and put paid to the medieval superstitions of Christian feudalism is itself now being junked in favor of exploding markets and Chinese-level wages.    The “social market” was a bargain struck between the rich and the workers in order to help the former stave off the bogey-man of Godless Communism.    The modern capitalist has decided that the Social Market will no longer work against new threats (like China) and, besides,  it is way too expensive.

What happens next?   A resurgence of Communist and other opposition parties in the short term, probably.   In Germany, renegade Social Democrats like Oskar Fontaine are hooking up with the Party of Democratic Socialism (the remodeled east german communists) to contest the September elections.   They may do well and perhaps will even decide the color of the next government, but in the long run, it will make little difference whether commies or christian democrats win the fight.   The Social Market is finished.   Communists will only discredit themselves by joining governments whose essential complexion is capitalist.    This has already happened in most of eastern Europe, where reborn Marxists “won” elections only to see their popular support erode and finally collapse when they were forced to implement the policies of the IMF and Deutsche Bank.   And the same thing is happening from Nepal to South Africa, where marxist parties steeled in opposition to oppression have become, once they have tasted power,  practically indistinguishable from their corrupt predecessors.

And it is happening to the parties of all political colorings.   As life goes from bad to worse for the working class, those who run on elaborate promises and fail to deliver will find themselves redundant at the next election.   Or, the one after that.   Only in the US, perhaps, with its curious hybrid of apathy and acquiescence, can the political establishment carry on as before.   But, even here things can’t go on forever.

The future I believe belongs to those who can both credibly create a positive vision of Communism and unite significant numbers around the prospect of its realization.    We should begin not by forsaking electoral activity but by being the most scrupulously honest actors pursuing it.   This does not mean running to win, but running to tell the truth.   Both about capitalism and the lack of prospects for workers as a whole within it.   And, while we are at it, convincing ourselves that the social market is a thing of the past and that we should have no truck in artificial attempts to keep it alive.