Barry Hindess - Parliamentary democracy and socialist politics

Routledge Revivals

First published in 1983, this book is concerned with the prospects for socialist politics in contemporary Britain, in particular with the limitations of political analysis produced both by Marxist socialism and the non-Marxist socialism of the Labour left. The author suggests ways in which socialist political analysis and strategic thinking should be reconstructed if socialism in Britain was to survive political as a force. The major Marxist debates on, and the limitations of, socialist politics under conditions of parliamentary democracy are examined, as well as what is involved in a politics of democratisation. The dominant forms of strategic thinking on the Labour left are also analysed.

Barry Hindess

First published in 1983
by Routledge & Kegan Paul

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1983 Barry Hindess

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 8216152

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-28177-6 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-27096-8 (ebk)

PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY AND SOCIALIST POLITICS

BARRY HINDESS

First published in 1983
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Plc
39 Store Street, London WC1E 7DD,
9 Park Street, Boston, Mass. 02108, USA,
296 Beaconsfield Parade, Middle Park,
Melbourne, 3206, Australia, and
Broadway House, Newtown Road,
Henley-on-Thames, Oxon RG9 1EN
Set in Linotron Baskerville, 11 on 13pt
and printed in Great Britain by
T.J. Press (Padstow) Ltd
Padstow, Cornwall
Barry Hindess 1983
No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the
publisher, except for the quotation of brief
passages in criticism

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hindess, Barry.

Parliamentary democracy and socialist politics.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
Labour Party (Great Britain) 2. Socialism
Great Britain. 3. Labor and laboring classes
Great Britain Political activity. I. Title.
JN1129.L32H56 1982 324.24107 82-16152
ISBN 0-7100-9319-5

Many people have helped in the preparation of this book, discussing some of the issues that it raises or commenting on draft chapters and on the articles and papers from which the chapters have been derived. I am particularly grateful to Julian Clarke, Lorraine Culley, Jack Demaine, Sheila Goodwin, Paul Hirst, Phil Jones, Elizabeth Kingdom, Nikolas Rose and Sheila Smith.

Much of chapter one originally appeared in Alan Hunt (ed.), Marxism and Democracy , published by Lawrence & Wishart. Parts of chapters two and three are based on papers published in Politics and Power. I am grateful to Alan Hunt and Messrs. Lawrence & Wishart, and to the editors of Politics and Power and Messrs Routledge & Kegan Paul for permission to reproduce the material.

This book is concerned with the limitations of the political analyses produced by marxist socialism and the non-marxist socialism of much of the Labour left, and with the prospects for socialist politics in Britain today. The first two chapters consider general questions of political analysis under conditions of parliamentary democracy and the remaining chapters take up some of the implications of their arguments for socialist strategy, concentrating on the non-insurrectionary socialism of the Labour Party and trades union left. Perhaps the best way to introduce the arguments of this book is to refer to two others: first, my The Decline of Working Class Politics, which retains a certain notoriety, although it was published just over a decade ago, and secondly, Marx's Capital and Capitalism Today , a two-volume reappraisal of the marxist theory of capitalist economies by Antony Cutler, Paul Hirst, Athar Hussain and myself, published in 1977 and 1978.

The Decline of Working Class Politics (hereafter: Decline) examined political support for and activity within the Labour Party and argued that there had been two interrelated processes of decline in working-class politics. One concerned the participation of working-class individuals in political activity and the other concerned working-class identification as a reason for political activity. The two processes were connected, I argued, because the fall in participation of working-class individuals made the Labour Party less of a class party, so that its policies became less oriented to specifically working-class concerns, thus leading to a further fall in working-class participation. This argument was based on a sample of Labour Party branches in Liverpool which had shown that local parties in working-class and middle-class areas differed significantly in their personnel and in the political interests of their active members. I argued that these differences in interests reflected differences in the class composition of the local population and in social conditions, for example, in the character of the housing stock. As for personnel, figures on age and length of membership suggested that in working-class areas parties were unable to recruit and retain new active members and were, therefore, in a process of decline, while parties in middle-class areas were in a process of growth. The argument then was that these changes in party membership led to corresponding changes in the interests represented in city party policy-making, making the party less attractive to actual or potential working-class members and thereby leading to further changes in the pattern of party membership. Finally, I suggested that these changes at the local level corresponded to changes in the party nationally towards a more middle-class party, gradually less able to attract working-class members and support.

There are many problems with Decline, most of which need not detain us here. The most important points raised by critics concern the dangers of generalizations about British politics based on a study of Liverpool and the book's construction of a mythical golden age of Labour politics in which local parties sustained significant working-class activism (Baxter, 1972; Forester, 1976). There is much to be said for both objections, although too much can be made of the distinctive character of Liverpool politics. As for the golden age of Labour politics, what evidence there is of local party activity and membership does not support the view that branches in the working-class areas of British cities were quite the centres of political activism that my argument implied (Forester, 1976; Minkin and Seyd, 1979a). Two further weaknesses should be noted here, neither of which received much critical attention. The absence of critical comment on the first of these is particularly surprising, for the book ignores what are perhaps the principal channels of representation of working-class interests in the Labour Party, namely, those provided locally and nationally by the affiliated trades unions.