The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy

verfasst von: Dr. Baris Tufekci

Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book provides the first book-length study of the political and economic ideas of the British left’s Alternative Economic Strategy in the 1970s and early 1980s. Discussing the AES’s approaches to capitalism, the nation state and the working class, it argues that existing academic accounts have significantly overstated the radicalism of the strategy. Perhaps more notable, especially in the light of its stated ‘revolutionary’ aims, was the extent of its moderation – its continuities with post-war Labour revisionism, its marked reluctance to look beyond the market economy, the degree of its preoccupation with Britain’s global-economic status, and its inability to break with Labourist politics of class co-operation in the national interest. While the book argues that the AES was the last ‘class politics’ socialist initiative in mainstream British politics, it also explores the ways in which its ideas perhaps prepared the way for New Labour in the 1990s, and its relationship with 'Corbynism' since 2015.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction: A New ‘Marketplace for Ideas’

Abstract

This chapter outlines the book’s purpose and main perspective, and provides a brief overview of existing academic and non-academic views on the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES). It situates the discussion in the context of growing interest in 1970s Britain, agrees that this period saw the expansion of the marketplace for political ideas, and suggests that the AES has been mischaracterised by academics as well as commentators from the left and right.

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Chapter 2. Class and Party: The Historical Context of the Rise of the AES

Abstract

This chapter discusses the historical context in which the Alternative Economic Strategy emerged, focusing on what was arguably the central development in 1970s British domestic politics—the breakdown of the relative stability of post-war industrial relations. This breakdown occurred amid a decline in working-class support for Labour. This decline was significant for Labour because the eruption of industrial conflict from the late 1960s increased the political importance of its working-class ties. By the time of Labour’s first AES-derived party programme in 1973, it had become clear that industrial relations would be a central issue around which governmental legitimacy would be sought. It was in this political context that the left developed its ideas to ‘re-class’ Labour, to reaffirm its identity as a working-class party, against the post-war revisionist drive to ‘de-class’ Labour and extirpate its ‘cloth cap’ image.

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Chapter 3. Reform or Revolution: The AES as Socialist Strategy

Abstract

There were tensions in the Alternative Economic Strategy’s view of itself as a socialist strategy—the ways in which its proponents understood it as a programme for socialist transition, how they perceived that this transition would occur, and how they positioned themselves against other strategies for socialist transition. As shown, prominent advocates of the AES attempted to bridge the gap between reform and revolution, espouse revolutionary aims, reject a purely parliamentary road, while also dismissing the ‘insurrectionist’ politics of those to their left. However, as one former proponent of the AES put it in 2015, the AES ‘never resolved a contradiction at the heart of it: was it designed to make the capitalist economy work better, or was it designed to destabilise it?’ This basic unclarity pervaded AES approaches to socialist strategy.

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Chapter 4. Planning the Market: The AES and Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter discusses the extent and nature of the Alternative Economic Strategy’s break from Keynesianism, as well as the AES’s own anti-capitalist alternative. It focuses mainly on Stuart Holland, the strategy’s dominant economic theorist, and argues that it is inaccurate to suggest that he ‘jettisoned’ Keynesianism. In fact, Holland built upon ideas previously associated with Labour’s right. Arguably the most distinctive feature of Holland’s socialism was its lack of the old Labour left’s faith in state ownership and planning as viable alternatives to private capital and market competition. This pessimism about anti-capitalist alternatives also prevailed among other AES proponents. Although frequently noted for its radical demands for state control, arguably the AES represented a moderation of Labour-left thinking since the 1950s.

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Chapter 5. A Britain Oppressed: The AES and the Nation

Abstract

Unlike today, when support for transnationalism is posed as a key marker of progressive politics by many on the British left, the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) was a deeply nation-centred outlook strongly opposed to Britain’s loss of national sovereignty. The AES depicted Britain as a country oppressed, subjugated by foreign interests and under the control of a national elite selling out to powers abroad. However, the idea that the AES sought a ‘siege economy’ is inaccurate: its protectionism was motivated not by an anti-free-trade principle but mainly by practical considerations of economic necessity. At the same time, the AES’s protectionism reflected longstanding anxieties about Britain’s relative decline. In their dialogue with Marxist theory, AES proponents rejected charges of nationalism. However, their depiction of Britain as subjugated by global interests indicated strongly their orientation towards a left-wing nationalism focused upon enemies abroad and traitors at home.

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Chapter 6. Class Conflict and Class Collaboration: The AES and the Working Class

Abstract

The Alternative Economic Strategy’s heavy focus on industrial democracy reflected the extent to which it grappled with a dilemma at the heart of its socialism: whether it was to be a strategy to encourage workers’ resistance in industry, or for industrial stability in the interests of Britain’s economic productivity. Although the AES contained both ideas, it was ultimately guided by the latter objective. The AES sought to incorporate industrial democracy into its ‘social contract’ for economic co-operation, proposing a new settlement between capital and labour for economic efficiency and to the advantage of the working class. Others on the AES left questioned the class-collaborative foundations of such proposals. Yet they failed to resolve the central tension in their approach: their reluctance to break with the AES politics of ‘viable’ reforms undermined their express opposition to ‘class collaboration’.

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Chapter 7. Conclusion: The AES, New Times and the Death of British Socialism

Abstract

If Labour’s increased proximity to ‘class politics’ in the 1970s was associated with an economic need to moderate the wage claims of an emboldened workforce via closer union-government co-operation, by the 1980s the viability of this approach was called into question. A powerful new ideology of ‘Thatcherism’ was seen to have emerged, necessitating a fundamentally adjusted type of left-wing strategy. While New Labour did represent an outlook distinct from the social-democratic tradition to which the Alternative Economic Strategy belonged, its ideological ‘realignment’ did not emerge in a vacuum but, to an extent, out of the ideological shifts already established by the AES. Contrary to the academic view that the AES stands out as a markedly radical strategy in between 1950s revisionism and the ‘modernisations’ of Kinnock and Blair, in some ways the AES provided a bridge between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Labour.

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Correction to: The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy

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Backmatter

Titel: The Socialist Ideas of the British Left’s Alternative Economic Strategy
verfasst von: Dr. Baris Tufekci
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-34998-1
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34997-4
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34998-1