

In this article we will be examining the concept and reality of the "Centre Left" in politics. What motivates them, what are they trying to achieve, what have they actually achieved and how do they fit into the narrative of the coming revolution?



The subject has already been examined briefly in the final section of our introductory article, Countdown to Revolution. Today we will expand on those ideas.

We are defining "Centre Left" as any politician or grouping that seeks to implement their programme through parliamentary means, and who believe in maintaining Capitalism as the means by which we run our economy. This is not to say that some of them are not highly critical of Capitalism, and seek to restrain it to a greater or lesser extent.

In Western Europe such groupings have evolved via 2 separate routes. The first, for example the SDP in Germany, started off as far left socialist parties and then gradually moved further and further towards the Centre as time went on, shedding the Marxist aspects of their programme piece by piece. The second, for example the Labour Party in Britain, did not have a specifically Marxist origin, although some of its members were and are influenced by Marxism. Instead they had a more pragmatic origin - the desire to organise the working class, provide it with representation in Parliament and to act as the Parliamentary wing of the Trade Union movement.

Regardless of their origins both types also attracted, and continued to attract, middle class progressives as well as workers. Both also now occupy the same niche within their polities, as parties that believe in maintaining the current political and economic system but with more emphasis than their opponents on the concerns of the less well off and less powerful.

The Centre Left can itself be split between those who seek to make wide ranging, sweeping and noteworthy reforms of the Capitalist system and those who view such programmes with suspicion. This divide is particularly visible at the moment in Western Europe with the rise of a new set of radical parties or politicians, but it has existed in different incarnations since the start of the 20th Century.





Each side of this divide suffers from its own unique problem. In the case of the radicals this is the contradiction of trying to make sweeping changes to the system while retaining that system, working within its parameters and assumptions. In the case of the "moderates" the problem is, well, what is the point of them at all?

The radicals are motivated by a genuine passion for change, and anger at what they see as the unfairness of society, although what they choose to emphasise may vary - poverty, the harmful effects of profiteering, human rights abroad or workers' rights at home. Their motivation in entering politics is to change society for what see as the better. Their opponents often portray them as either ambitious demagogues or naive dreamers or, illogically, both at the same time but this is unfair. So far, so good.

The problem is that, while instinctively divining the need for change, they only have very vague ideas about how to achieve it. Not quite daring to believe in the replacement of the Capitalist system and its associated political structures, when it comes to actually outlining a significant programme they are usually at a loss.

Furthermore, they suffer from the contradiction that they are trying to change the Capitalist system within the framework of the Capitalist system. That means that their performance is measured according to the parameters of Capitalism - share prices, growth, consumer confidence and how many millionaires want to stay in the country. The result is inevitably a poor performance against these parameters and gleeful headlines in the right wing press along the lines of "Share Price Tumbles on Labour Poll Lead". Which brings us on to the second problem with this type of approach - they are working within Capitalist Power structures, which will always be stacked against them.

Finally, any progressive gains they do make are at some point reversed. From the start Corporate interests will be lobbying against their reforms, using the justification of "competetiveness". Indeed in one sense they would right to do so, because we would still have a Capitalist system that is built and measured around competetiveness. Regardless, eventually the political climate will change, or some crisis will occur, and the lobbying wil succeed and the reforms be reversed.

Taken all in all, the difficulty with this "Parliamentary Radicalism" is that it falsely assumes there is a spectrum moving from ultra Capitalism to extreme Socialism. In fact, really, there is either one or the other with very little in between. This is because the two systems are based on completely different sets of assumptions about what is desirable in society. You cannot have a little of one and a little of the other. If you attempt to reform Capitalism you are still left with Capitallism and all its contradictions, and eventually your reforms will be reversed because they are not good for business.

That leaves us with that even more problematical group of politicians located further towards the Centre, although still belonging to nominally left wing parties. For ease of reference let's call them "the Moderates" (the name they often like to give themselves). These politicians generally harbour a deep hostility to, and mistrust of, their more radical counterparts, above. As has already been noted, there is not a lot of meaningful difference between even the radical Parliamentary Left and right wing Free Market parties. As the Moderates find the politics of the radicals so distasteful we might ask if in their case they are any different at all to Politicians of the Free Market Right.

In terms of general outlook they are in fact no different, and their policy differences are technical rather than ideological. They not only accept the Capitalist system but accept it as currently constituted and are openly hostile to attempts to reform it.

Nevertheless, in doing so they have to perform a difficult balancing act. For although their ideology is right wing they have a need to convince their supporters, and in most cases themselves, that they are progressive. This is partly tactical (ensuring that the party's natural supporters continue to vote for it) but also psychological. For while these politicians and many of their supporters actually favour right wing policies, culturally they very much do belong within the Parties of the Centre Left. For party loyalty amounts to far more than questions of policy and ideology. There are at least equally strong ties of cuture, class, family tradition and deeply subconscious tribal preferences. In short, the party loyalties of many people are in much the same vein as their loyalties towards a sports team. More on this in a subsequent article. The point here is to use it to resolve the apparent contradiction of politicians supporting right wing policies from within a left wing tradition, and opposing other politicians who have the same policies but are in different parties.

These Politicians and their supporters, however, do not recognise that their loyalties are driven by emotion rather than policy - they see themselves as progressive even while pursuing or maintaining reactionary policies.

There are a number of psychological tricks they play on themselves and their supporters to convince themselves of their progressivism.

Firstly, they disguise their purely practical objections to government policy as ideological objections. Naturally, as the opposition their job is to scrutinise what the government is doing, and while the criticisms they make are in fact purely about competence they can make out that they are ideological and that they are being radical in making them. For example if the Ministry of Defence provides insufficient or low quality equipment to the army, the Opposition can make an angry fuss about it and in the process come across as radical. But in fact this is a purely technical criticism. A conservative party could easily make the same criticism if the situation was reversed and they were the ones in opposition. In fact, sometimes the "progressive" opposition party can actually end up criticising the government from the right, and some supporters will still think it radical, purely because it is the other tribe that is being criticised. An example from the UK would be when the Conservative led Coalition government abolished Control Orders (a system of house detention without trial) and Labour attacked this as "endangering national security"

Secondly, they can fudge the issue of what they are complaining about. When a conservative government enacts a right wing policy, the opposition will feel an obligation to oppose it, because they are the opposition and because their supporters will expect them to. The problem for them is that this policy is in line with their own ideological preferences, and to commit to really overturn it would put them way too firmly inside that distasteful radical camp. The way they get round this is to criticise a technical aspect of the way the policy has been implemented. For example when the Coalition Government in the UK privatized the Post Office, right wing Labour politicians such as Chuka Ummuna complained that they had done so at the wrong time, or that they had set the initial share price too low. Or when the Coalition government raised Tuition Fees for university students, Labour complained that they had raised them by too much, or again at the wrong time. Such an approach enables the opposition to claim that they opposed the policy, and gain radical kudos for doing so, without actually committing to reverse it, and without going on record opposing it as ideologically wrong. This approach also has the advantage of being so vague that the "Moderate" politicians can never be held to it if they reach office themselves. If asked when in office why they have not reversed the policy they can simply say "it wasn't the right time then but now it is necessary!"

The third psychological trick they can employ is simply to use vaguely progressive language without following it through to any conclusion and without suggesting any policies off the back of it. Talk of "equality of opportunity", "caring for the most vulnerable", "helping those least able to help themselves","striving for a free, fair and equal society" and so on falls into this category. This has the effect of keeping core voters happy, and in most cases reassuring the politicians themselves that they are nice, progressive people, without the need for policies to match.



Another one is to give supposedly left wing rationales for their right wing opinions. They might say it helps the working class, for example, to be "Pro-Business" because if businesses are boosted this will create more jobs. Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of that argument it is in fact exactly the same argument used by conservatives.

Finally, and in similar vein, they can criticise the opposite party in tribal terms, or on grounds of social class rather than policy. This tactic plays more directly to the tribal instincts of their supporters, and can sound very radical. Again, if they can keep their supporters satisfied in this way it negates the need to have any radical policies. At a rally in Manchester last year, for example, Moderate Labour politicain Andy Burnham described the Tories as " a bunch of thieving, toffee-nosed Tory bastards". But when the Tories introduced the "Snoopers' Charter", which greatly increases governmental control over electronic communications, Burnham as Shadow Home Secretary actually supported it! All the talk in the UK of "the Bullingdon Club", Eton, calling George Osborne by his given name of Gideon and so on also falls into this category.

These, then, are the means by which these Politicians with Thatcherite policies convince themselves and other people that they are on the Progressive side of the political divide. In some cases this is a cynical tactic to keep their core voters, but I think in most cases they actually fool themselves as well. They see themselves as nice, progressive people. Maybe even radical people - just their own safe, clean, sanitised version of radical. This allows them to go happily about their business with a clean conscience - entertaining lobbyists and Press Barons, claiming huge expenses, taking jobs with Consultancies, bashing lefties, accepting peerages and generally behaving like the fully paid up members of the establishment that they are.



To conclude, we will examine the role of of these two branches of the Centre Left in the Fiscal Crisis currently engulfing the Western World.

The theme of this site is that the fiscal crisis is the inevitable result of having a Capitalist system, which concentrates too much of the wealth in private hands, meaning that governments do not have enough money to fulfil their obligations. This has reached crisis point in recent years in the form of the "austerity debate"

Conservative parties, of course, have blamed the crisis on "over-spending" and have responded to it by attempting to rein back on that spending.

Those on the "Moderate" Centre Left, predictably enough, also prescribe the remedy of austerity to cure the fiscal crisis. Ideologically conservative and terrified for some reason of antagonising wealthy voters, they would not dream of raising taxes. Convinced that voters will only ever support right wing policies, they desperately copy any policy the right comes out with for fear that otherwise the right will take the mickey out of them with devastating effect. In the case of the fiscal crisis that means accepting wholesale the right's assertion that "overspending" has caused the crisis, and that ruthless cuts are the only way to solve it.

While their approach to the crisis is actually identical to that of conservatives, they try to have their cake and eat it on this as so many other issues. They openly say that they would in government embark upon a swingeing programme of cuts, while at the same time attacking conservative governments for making individual cuts. They seize on a particular cut and the hardship it brings and use it to lambast the government for their lack of compassion. If asked "but aren't you also committed to cutting public spending?" they can reply "Yes, but obviouly we wouldn't cut that!"

They also make vague criticisms about the "speed" or "depth" of the cuts, which strikes a radical tone, whilst not compromising their own commitment to austerity.

Such action tends to satisfy the supporters of these politicians, who are anxious to be convinced that their man will fight the progressive corner. At the same time, the fact that these same politicians are standing on a platform of also reining in public spending, protects them from the dreaded conservative charge of being, shock horror, a "lefty"

Their approach to this, then, is fairly typical of the "Moderates'" approach to politics as a whole.

The attitude of the more radical sections of the Parliamentary Left (Podemos, Syriza, Corbyn etc) is rather different, although still suffering from a lack clarity and consistency. They dispute the idea that the way to solve the fiscal crisis is to cut back on public spending. What they fail to do is offer any meaningful solution in its place. These politicians, unlike the Moderates, are of a genuinely progressive frame of mind and they therefore hold an instinctive and deep rooted distaste for any cutting of public services. Such policies are anathema to them, both on general principle and because they involve causing hardship to the disadvantaged. This response is a deeply held emotional one, which is fine except that it means there is a lack clarity about its practical implications. All very well to take a moral stand against austerity but, as the Treasury is empty, what woud they put in its place? Here their response is pitifully inadequate.



The policies they do offer - a National Investment Bank, an infrastructure Building Programme, Quantitative Easing - either would not solve the fiscal crisis at all or would only have a very marginal effect on it. Some of these proposals might assist in bringing down the fiscal deficit but they would certainly not dispose of the problem, as Syriza very rapidly discovered in Greece. Furthermore, the underlying structural cause of the deficit (too much money in private hands) would still be very much in place.



