Neo-conservatism and workers

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

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