UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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Another one, huh?
There is one Labour party and that is the party that is actually funded by the labour movement. Everything else is just another bourgeois party because it draws its money and its activists from people who have money and time to spare, i.e., middle-class people. It doesn't matter what it calls itself or how it describes itself. It doesn't matter what it says it's going to do in the near-impossible scenario in which it gets elected. The material reality of such a party is that it's middle-class. By contrast, the Labour party is the Labour party. It is imperfect because it's real. It might not even be the best that a party-of-labour hypoethically could be. But it is the party of labour. Everyone else is just a poser. That's it.
Middle-class people are not the bourgeoisie. The division of the working class into upper/middle/lower classes by the ruling class (i.e. the actual bourgeoisie) is one of the many tools they use to distract us and to divide us.
I may be misunderstanding, but doesn't Labour get it's funding from a few different sources, not just the labour movement? Lobbying by the ruling class controls a lot of the policies that Labour chooses to adopt. For just one of many examples, see: How big business took over the Labour Party
"Since becoming leader in 2020, Starmer’s Labour has struggled for money. Membership – and the revenue it provides – has dropped by 170,000 in the past three years, while trade union contributions have fallen by more than a million since 2018."
"But the party’s latest accounts, which came out this week, show that the shortfall has now been more than bridged by large donations from rich people and companies. In 2018, the party took £700,000 in donations above the £7,500 reporting threshold (or £1,500 for local parties and the like). So far this year, it’s already taken £12m."
I personally think it would be better if Labour only took money from the unions and from co-ops, but that would be a really quick way to go bankrupt, unless lots of other unions decide to affiliate. So, while Labour doesn't get enough of its money from unions, this new party will get literally all of its money from middle class people. I think a party funded in part by the unions is better than one funded entirely by middle-class people.
There is no point in continuing to strictly adhere to Marx's language when understanding our society. When Marx was writing, the proletariat were majority wage (not salary) earners who didn't have bank accounts. Virtually none of them were property owners, almost by definition. They didn't have the vote and collective bargaining was basically illegal. The material conditions - what Marx actually cared about, to his great credit - have changed completley. The idea of a 'working-class' made up mostly of people who drew salaries, had bank accounts, pensions, and even owned their own homes would have been quite alien to Marx. I think he'd have been impressed but not entirely surprised to find just how flexible capitalism was in this regard!
The unions, however, do represent the actually existing working class, and the only party they fund is the Labour party.
Yeah. This is a huge problem, because whilst lobbying exists not everyone in this country has equal power during elections. People with money have more influence, with the bourgeoisie having the most power as they can throw millions into policies which serve their own interests (versus the middle class where individuals may have hundreds or thousands of pounds to throw around).
I don't really know what the solution to this would be in the short term. Whilst we live in a capitalist system, political parties need money in order to exist. As it stands, it seems the best place that money can come from is from unions rather than individuals.
I can understand this perspective. Your distrust of the middle-class isn't completely unfounded, I don't think, as it's easier for middle/upper-class folks to be manipulated into believing that policies designed to benefit billionaires/corporations are also of benefit to them. That said, all of us vulnerable to similar manipulation. The amount of underprivileged folk voting for right-wing parties always shocks me.
It's worth noting that no single middle-class person has the money or power to influence any party's policies on their own,funding comes from a large amount of different people with different perspectives, people who I would argue are more likely to work in the interests of the underprivileged versus a single average billionaire/corporation who may have more money and power than all unions combined.
For that reason, personally, I think I would find it easier to trust a party funded entirely by the middle-class versus one which receives any funding from billionaires/corporations. But I suppose that ultimately comes down to how many middle/upper-class folks have been manipulated into working in the best interests of billionaires/corporations. My trust will be badly placed if the majority of middle-class folks are not working in the best interests of the lower-class.
It's not about people being manipulated; it's about the fact that in aggregate people will vote for their class interests. This is why the country's most successful left wing bourgeoisie party, the Greens, is basically a NIMBY party who spend most of their time strongly opposing green development. Their members haven't been manipulated, they're just voting in their own interest as, by and large, wealthy homeowners. Labour, because it still has some funding from the working class as working class people is capable of proposing policies that will, e.g., allow more housing and green developments, while the Green party just isn't. That's class politics at work, and that's why we need Labour.