John McDonnell is portrayed by
his critics as an opponent of capitalism. He goes along with this but
is riding for a fall. An interview with the BBC on 20 May was
reported the next day in the Times
under the headline ‘McDonnell: I’d overthrow capitalism’:
‘The shadow chancellor said
he wanted to transform society “in a way that radically changes the
system”. Asked if his job was the overthrow of capitalism, he
replied: “Yes it is. It’s transforming the economy.” Pressed on
whether there was a difference between transforming and overthrowing
capitalism, he said: “I don’t think there is ... I want a
socialist society.’
These days, this sounds quite
radical but in fact is merely what previous generations of Labour
Party reformists have held. They envisaged the state capitalist
economy adopted as their long-term aim in 1918, and which they called
‘socialism,’ coming into being gradually through a series of
nationalisations and social reforms enacted by successive parliaments
and Labour governments. This is what McDonnell means when he talks of
‘transforming the economy’; this to be a gradual process,
‘overthrowing’ capitalism piece by piece. It’s the classic
reformist position.
This involves presiding over
the operation of capitalism for a long period. However, capitalism
cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of ‘the many’.
Capitalism runs on profits and any government which takes on the task
of presiding over its operation is sooner or later forced to
recognise this and, in the end, to allow and even encourage
profit-making to take priority over pro-worker reforms. This has been
the fate of all Labour governments.
A Labour government, with
McDonnell as chancellor, would be in an even weaker position than
previous ones. His ‘transformation of the economy’ is to begin
while leaving production entirely in the hands of private
profit-seeking businesses:
‘Asked by the BBC what he
would do to private businesses Mr McDonnell replied: “We’d follow
France’s example – they legislate for profit-sharing. We’d
expect companies to profit-share as well as ensure they have a decent
wage policy.”’
Profit-sharing, that old
swindle! It’s what the Tories used to promote as ‘people’s
capitalism’ and as a way to get workers to believe that their
interest was the same as their employer’s. Trade unionists opposed
this as it substituted a contracted wage of a regular amount by one
in which a part of wages varies with the profitability of the
employer’s business.
The best known profit-sharing
business in Britain is the John Lewis 'Partnership ' (as it calls
itself). Its latest annual report shows how profit, and so the
‘profit-sharing’ part of wages, can go down – and down – as
well as up:
‘John Lewis Partnership
(JLP) has cut its annual staff bonus to the lowest level in 64 years
after profit plunged at the group, which owns Waitrose and a chain of
department stores ... Sir Charles Mayfield, the chairman, said it had
been a “challenging year”. He blamed the downturn in profit and
the staff payout – which has been cut for five years in a row –
on subdued consumer demand and “significant changes to operations
across the partnership, which affected many partners”. Mayfield
said the coming year was likely to put further pressure on profit’
(Guardian,
18 March).
McDonnell, apparently, regards
schemes which allow take-home pay to be cut five years in a row as ‘a
decent wage policy’. And, of course, ‘profit-sharing’ implies
that production for profit continues.
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