The NHS is now on the chopping block. And it shows why reforming capitalism is an exercise in futility.

Karl Marx, a protester and Jeremy Corbyn
Support us and go ad-free

The Canary recently reported that Tory MPs defeated an amendment which would have committed the government to protect the NHS from privatisation in a new trade deal with the US.

This raises the obvious question of whether we’re about to see the end of the NHS’s founding principle of ‘free at the point of service’. But there’s also a more elementary question worth exploring – whether it’s even possible to maintain social reforms like universal healthcare when economic decision-making remains in private hands. With corporate power over political systems becoming more entrenched and the media serving as its mouthpiece, the answer to this question increasingly seems to be a resounding ‘no’.

Never trust a Tory…

On 20 July, Tory MPs voted down an amendment to the Trade Bill introduced by Labour’s shadow trade secretary Bill Esterson. The measure would have prohibited parliament from voting in favor of a trade deal with the US that “undermines or restricts” the NHS’s principle of universal care. It also contained provisions that would ensure the UK’s ability to set its own medicine prices. This would be an alternative to the US-style system in which the government doesn’t negotiate directly with the drug companies.

Tory MPs claim that the NHS is ‘safe in their hands’, but there are many reasons to doubt the sincerity of this claim. Not least of these is that the Conservative Party has been notorious for attempting to privatise the system by stealth.

…or a Blairite

The Blairite position is that the solution is to offer a ‘credible’ centrist alternative which pledges to safeguard the NHS and increase public investment – sometimes called the ‘Third Way’. This narrative is essentially a watered-down version of ‘social democracy’, which is itself a watered-down version of democratic socialism. Social democracy holds that the negative effects of capitalism can be redressed in the short- to medium-term. This can be done through the provision of social protections and public services, but without immediate nationalisation of large swathes of the economy or the pursuit of widespread economic democracy.

To be clear, Blairites are neither socialists nor social democrats. Because unlike the latter, they don’t view reforms to capitalism as incremental stepping stones towards its replacement. But like social democrats, they believe that social reforms can continue to exist over long periods under capitalism. And they would have us believe that if the Tories do succeed in dismantling public healthcare in the UK, it would simply form part of an ongoing ideological tussle – one between the ‘pro-public services’ Labour Party and the ‘pro-market-based solutions’ Tories.

Because there is an alternative to both of their brands of capitalism

The major rivals to this idea, of course, are traditional democratic socialists like Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn, along with a small number of key allies in parliament such as John McDonnell, has always rejected the ideological tenets of Blair’s Third Way. Corbyn and his allies have continued to argue that building a society that works for all must ultimately involve not just cosmetic reforms, but a fundamental break from capitalism.

Read on...

Support us and go ad-free

According to socialists, this is because social democratic reforms are ultimately unsustainable within a largely privately-owned and managed economy. Rather, we believe that these reforms can only be maintained within a socialist economy and society.

Setting the record straight on Marxism

There are a number of reasons why. Though most socialists in a 21st Century context are not Marxists in any orthodox sense, we nonetheless recognize that many predictions made by Marx, and subsequent Marxist thinkers, have turned out to be accurate. For instance, the Australian Marxist scholar Ashley Lavelle has, for many years, argued that the social gains of the post-war period (1945 and onwards) were only possible under capitalism for a unique and comparatively small period in human history.

For Lavelle, the post-war boom brought about by massive public spending as part of the war effort represented a form of Keynesian stimulative government spending that no capitalist government would ever replicate in peacetime. As time goes by, Lavelle argues, governments that seek only to manage capitalism, including a Blairite Labour government, will always struggle to provide the kinds of social protections and public services that were originally envisioned by the founders of social democratic and labor parties. For Lavelle, this is because capitalism is now entering a terminal phase of decline and ever-worsening crisis.

The threat of growing corporate power

Another factor that Marxist scholars have pointed to is growing corporate power. In advanced capitalist economies, large corporations end up dominating the economy to such an extent that they have more power than governments. In fact, corporate power has become so concentrated in some countries that they have arguably caused a form of state capture. This is where the state acts at the behest of private business interests rather than the public.

This process is particularly evident in the US. Corporations openly buy politicians’ influence to such an extent that practically no one can get elected in the US without corporate support. Socialists believe that these private interests will always work to undermine social democratic reforms like universal healthcare. Of course, this will only get easier and easier for corporations to do as their power continues to increase.

Gramsci and ‘cultural hegemony’

Finally to consider is the issue of the media, along with the wider world of publishing, culture, and entertainment. Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci argued that under capitalism, society’s dominant class builds consent for the continuation of the status quo via a process he termed ‘cultural hegemony‘. Basically, this means that society’s major cultural organs and mass media characterise what is in the interests of that dominant class as ‘common sense’.

Gramsci was writing in the early 20th century, but much of what he described pertains to the situation we find ourselves in today. The classic example is Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. At first, Corbyn was presented as an eccentric aberration from British politics. One caused by a left-wing party membership throwing a temper tantrum after years of disappointment with Blairite leadership. However, following the 2017 election, in which Corbyn presided over the biggest increase in Labour’s vote share since 1945, it became evident that his policies had significant public support.

Turning reality on its head

The ruling class then realised that Corbyn could indeed become prime minister and quickly went into panic mode. With the UK media overwhelmingly controlled by the ruling class, thanks to majority corporate and billionaire ownership, it then launched an all-out disinformation campaign to stop Corbyn and the political insurgency he represented.

In doing so, it literally turned reality on its head. Corbyn, a lifelong anti-racism campaigner and early supporter of the anti-Apartheid movement, got branded a dyed-in-the-wool racist. This was done via a transparently manufactured and politically-motivated smear campaign based on bogus accusations of antisemitism.

Meanwhile, Conservative leader Boris Johnson, a bumbling buffoon of a man whose lifelong racism and other prejudice is very-well documented, and ironically even includes writing a novel with some suspiciously antisemitic tropes, was largely given a free pass. He even had his image transformed from the lovable rogue of his TV and backbench years to that of a serious political figure. Just a few years before, even his own fellow Tory MP Kenneth Clarke had said “The idea of Boris as prime minister is ridiculous”.

Living in a fantasyland

Evidently, any sense of political reality has overwhelmingly given way to a fantasyland. One conjured by the ruling class, and its minions in the media, to keep us blinded to our own interests. And increasingly, this isn’t just an issue of class. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the impending climate chaos caused by unfettered globalized capitalism doesn’t just threaten the wellbeing of the world’s least well-off. It’s also a threat to the viability of continued organized human life itself – which obviously includes everyone, rich or poor.

Make no mistake, aiming solely for cosmetic reforms to capitalism is akin to trying to stop a haemorrhage with a plaster. Tinkering on the edges will only hasten the impending dystopia of climate chaos and the decimation of the few social protections and public services that we still have left.

What next?

Finally, all of the above raises the question of whether those of us who wish to avoid this dystopia should limit ourselves to struggle only within the established constitutional frameworks of the countries in which we live. Being a democratic socialist, in this day and age, is beginning to seem like a contradiction in terms. If the left is not going to get a fair shake at democratically enacting our policies due to a media and cultural landscape that poisons the minds of the masses, then perhaps it’s time we turn to extra-parliamentary forms of struggle – before it’s too late.

Featured image via Wikimedia Commons, Flickr – Pete Birkinshaw, Wikimedia Commons

Support us and go ad-free

We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support

The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.

The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.

So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.

Support us
  • Show Comments
    1. No, it means, actions by workers such as a general strike. If you read this history books from 1920’s and 1930’s that is where we are headed.

      In particular read the information about the workhouse. That is where my Father was born in 1928.

      You never left the workhouse as an adult, you worked until you died, then your body was sold to the hospital for dissections.

      I know because that is what happened to my Grandmother, after my Grandfather died in a steel factory accident. Neither of them have a grave to visit, because their bodies never made it to the undertakers.

      You ain’t seen nothing yet…

        1. Hi Johnny how nice of you to pop in and share your expertise and wisdom. How are things at the integrity imitative ? Or what ever Right wing organisation you work for ?

          Clearly the writer is not advocating violence but the truth has never bothered you before so why change now.

          Ya’ll have a great day now ya hear

    2. Gramsci was wrong. When the Soviet Union imploded with mass uprisings to overthrow the communist party, there was barely anyone still alive who had not been indoctrinated about the evils of capitalism. Cultural hedgemony is an arrogant idea and conspiracy driven.
      If there is no hope of convincing the masses in the age of the internet, in a country where you are totally free to campaign to overthrow the entire system, then you have to consider why socialism might not work.

    3. I thought real democracy began with different ideas by writers, an unconventional kind of person. Like the ones who started eating organic food, worried about the chemicals in our environment which poisoned us, and life.
      It never began in a political junkies mind, and it has been non violent.
      To call it a extra parliamentary force is bizarre.
      Capitalism. Socialism, Anarchism, Communism are all ideals which have a horrendous record of failure in practical terms.
      People are people first, and I think have no real wish to be identified as only an “ism”. Think culture instead its where our real values lie.
      George Orwell had different observations as he was curiuos about what are the people doing? in his writings about “Burmese Days” Down, and Out in Paris and so on.
      In Cuba, my impression is the Cuban’s wanted to be Cubans not Communists, being dissapointed they had to be an “ism” to survive in the insane political world we live in where death, fear is a constant.
      Are they ever musical , and goes it vastly unsupported by the military who rule over the economy.
      I’m in the 3rd dimension very happily, as things take time says Piet Hein in hos book ” Grooks”
      James Lovelock just turned 101, and is still sharp as a tack , and says a lot about what being English is in his understated , original thinking un supported by any establishment in the beginning.
      Definetly unpolitical yet his findings are of immense value to our understanding of the planet without ever taking out a Politcal Membership for us to judge who he is.

    4. The Parliamentary Road to Socialism is dead.
      There is no concept so manipulated and misrepresented by capitalism as the concept of “democracy”. Lenin said of parliamentary democracy “Parliamentarism does not eliminate, but lays bare the innate character even of the most democratic bourgeois republics as organs of class oppression”. In capitalism, parties and elections do not alter the economic and political domination of the ruling class. Capitalism holds all the instruments of power and violence (army, air force and police etc.). It’s quite simple: heads “capitalism wins” , tails “socialism loses”….just look at 1973 Chilean coup, the 2019 Bolivian coup and countless other elections where socialists unbelievably won bourgeois elections, but didn’t understand the Dictatorship of the Bourgeois. The Bourgeois soon dispels of elections if they get in the way of taking power such as Nazi Germany.

    Leave a Reply

    Join the conversation

    Please read our comment moderation policy here.