by Roger Warren Evans

• first published March 1993
  by the Institute of Public Policy Research at London

The traditional polarities of socialism are fading. The comfortable Marxist antitheses have lost their force.  It makes no continuing sense to think in terms of Capital as in perpetual conflict with Labour, it is impossible to regard the multinationals as a dispensable evil to be replaced by state agencies, new boundaries are emerging between public service and private enterprise, and the Class Ware fails conspicuously to command any intellectual heights.  And as the conceptual polarities weaken, the traditional language of socialism loses it force, manifestos become difficult to draft, speeches become turgid and lose their inspiration.  Even the language of liberty, equality and fraternity has lost is cutting edge.  

This effect is global.  But in the UK, the anomie is crippling the Labour Party, which now faces a further four years without power.  Neil Kinnock defeated the remnants of the Marxist Left, but found no alternative to the language of the Left.  The 1992 Blackpool conference was a colourless occasion, without inspiration and without distinctive language.  It is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit local members, to raise Party funds, and to mobilise the personal enthusiasm of Party members to maintain the fight for power.  

The need is urgent, for a re-definition of the socialist perception.  So much is common ground, and there are many people contributing to that re-definition.  Socialist theory is faced with the need to come to terms with the globalisation of all social and economic systems, with the accelerating weakness of traditional political institutions, the final failure of state agencies to produce consumer goods and services, and the demonstrable success of the corporate sector in adapting to change and mobilising resources. 

In one sense, nothing has changed.  The ethical foundations of socialism, properly understood, have always been individual in character: the end of political action has been the realisation of individual potential.  Institutions have been seen as preventing that realisation: "Man was born free, and everywhere he was in chains". "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath". Even the Marxist perception relates essentially to the enslavement of working people by capitalist institutions.  State institutions are in turn seen as a means of securing their liberation, to personal freedom and fulfilment.  And in the UK, the Labour Party has a proud record of combatting systems that have suppressed individual freedom, or inflicted personal degradation or poverty: it has sprung from the same individualist wells as Oxfam, Amnesty International, English Liberalism, and much of English non-conformity.  It is still perfectly possible to mobilise an English sense of outrage, at injustice and personal degradation.  That ethical foundation is intact.

And it is to that foundation that any re-definition of socialism must return.  The difficulty comes, however, with the next stage of the argument, in extending that perception into the realm of party political action, within a conventional governmental framework.  The old polarities have gone, and the old polarised political language no longer makes sense.  The Devil has all the best words.

Labour is not alone, in searching for a re-formulation.  The Conservatives were equally disconcerted by the aggression of the corporate sector, which so ruthlessly exploited the institutional weakness of the ERM in September 1992.  The search is for a new understanding between governments and the corporate sector, at both national and global level.

Indeed, a new relationship is already emerging.  Governments have already undergone a metamorphosis: they have become, first and foremost, guarantors of their citizens' supply of consumer goods and services.  That is more important to their political survival than the ability to wage war or to promote peace, to conduct diplomatic relationships with skill, or to uphold traditional political freedoms.  And the corporations, operating internationally behind the obscuring screens of company law, have become the most effective suppliers of those goods and services, supplementing their traditional roles as bankers and the suppliers of governmental goods.  With the collapse of state socialism in Eastern Europe, it is no longer arguable that state agencies are capable of meeting consumer demand.  Governments have become wholly dependent upon the corporate sector to meet the imperious demands of their consumer-voters, the consumerate.  The advent of the consumer society has shifted power decisively towards the corporate sector, and it is now impossible to imagine any other outcome.

At the same time, the processes of globalisation have drained power away from national governments, as conventionally constituted.  The nation state is undergoing fundamental changes, as an organising principle, although the process of change is proving extraordinarily painful, and political leaders are reluctant to acknowledge those changes.  It is the very flexibility of the corporate sector that generates its power: each Government is pinned down to the boundaries of its own national territory, but the corporations are footloose, and free to take tactical advantage of their mobility.

The corporate sector has developed  a remarkable ability to transfer resources rapidly from one national jurisdiction to another, aided by the development of global communication networks, and the integration of world financial systems.  The September 1992 European currency skirmish was merely a foretaste of the awesome power of the corporate sector, when arrayed against Governments.  The global corporate sector, hard-pressed to generate profits by normal trading, stole billions of pounds from the UK Treasury by simple extortion.  Similar processes are going on in many other sectors, as enterprises are transferred internationally to take advantage of low wages, low taxes, and low standards of environmental protection.

Consumerism and globalisation have thus combined to produce a very rapid shift of power from Governments to corporations. The principal shift has occurred within the last twenty years, accelerating during the 1980s, in a favourable political environment.  Senior corporate managers now command resources more successfully than politicians or public servants have ever done: they secure for themselves the best of food and entertainment, the best of housing and leisure facilities, the best of salaires and graduate recruitment, the best of education for their children.  Globally, there is a steady seepage of managment talent from the governmental to the corporate sector.  The corporate sector is riding high.

This may sound apocalyptic, but it is not.  For just as every Government needs the corporate sector, so the corporate sector needs the institutional framework which only governments can assure.  For the next generation of managers, on both sides of this newly-defined divide, the task is to get a deal.  Global politics will be dominated by this Wagnerian joust of the Titans, circling, spitting and coupling in a thousand different places.  They may not like it, but both cadres need each other.  It may not prove to be a conventional partnership, but they certainly need an accommodation, even a mutual understanding.

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