Labour or Ownership

I had an interesting time yesterday, revealing myself at the conference of the UK Society for Co-operative Studies (of which I am an Executive member) as not being a member of the Labour Party. I was invited to address a political panel as the Green Party economics speaker. The other parties declined the invitation, which left me hitting it out with Co-operative Party researcher Robbie Erbmann.

The curious thing was how Robbie felt bound to defend The Labour Party, in fact New Labour, which should be even more troubling for a co-operator. The arcane relationship between The Co-operative Party and The Labour Party has been the best kept secret on the British Left since Mandelson was revealed as gay on Newsnight.

The Co-operative Party was set up by co-operators, whose aim was to take direct control of the productive forces of the economy and thus undermine the power of the capitalists to extract their labour as surplus value. The party, set up in 1917, was their political wing, to lobby for a supportive environment to build co-operatives. But in 1927 it made the fateful mistake of signing an agreement not to stand against Labour candidates. Although there are 29 MPs today who are officially Co-operative/Labour, nobody would tell the difference. They are probably more likely to raise questions about the killing of innocent civilians as a result of resource wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they are still there at Westminster keeping the government who made the decision to launch those wars in power.

Why is it assumed that if you support co-operatives you must support Labour? Way back in the mists of the dawn of the last century the genuinely political working people of this country who were busy organising their own alternative economy (which made up some 30% of the economy during the 1930s) were utterly shafted by the Webbs and their ilk, who sold them out to a political party which took their power in return for a vote once every five years. But there is no reason why today's co-operators should support New Labour.

At a time when it is clear that the interests of working people in reclaiming control of the value of their labour, rather than merely their pay and terms and conditions, are coinciding with those of the planet, which cannot take the pressure from the extraction of surplus value, I find it bizarre that co-operators are still unquestioning about their commitment to Labour. Co-operatives are clearly a part of the future sustainable economy; the Labour Party is not. My proposal for the stranglehold that Labour has on the Co-operative Party was not favourably received, but may perhaps resurface during the bloodbath that will follow the next election. Tweet

Hell fire or a bottle of Bulgarian red on the beach?

The early industrial workers were faced with a stark choice: a joyless life of work or an eternity of hellfire. It is unsurprising that so many took Kierkegaard's way out and struggled to keep a faith in eternal life. In a similar way many lives are being stolen today by an economic system which finds its own supportive ideology in the forced-work ethos of New Labour.

Like the beliefs of their Protestant antecedents, Labour's apparent belief that work is a universal panacea to solve all our social and economic problems can only have its source in faith. It has no basis in either fact or experience. As Brother Gordon intones from his postmodern, designer pulpit to the faithful journalists, the glint in his eye gives a clue to the messianic origin of his political project.

In fact the obsession with work pervaded Christianity for only a small part of its 2000-year history. Despite the odd desperate Biblical reference to his training as a carpenter, it is obvious that Jesus Christ himself was the prototype hippy. It was Jesus who advised his disciples to "Consider the lilies of the field; they toil not, neither do they spin". He spent most of his adult life telling stories, discussing the meaning of life, begging food from friends; and he had long hair and wore sandals.

The problem with religious commitment, however, is that it does not allow this sort of argument. We are not permitted to take issue with our Prime Minister about how we would like to spend our short span here on earth, either we take up our oars on the slave-galley of the economy or we are wicked sinners to be cast into outer darkness. Like Torquemada, enforcing belief in an insane ideology with the fire of the Inquisition, to be acceptable in New Labour Britain we must spout the litany of holy work: yes, I enjoy my job; since beings made redundant I have spent every hour on my bicycle seeking work; I don't enjoy being unemployed; I wish I could spend all my waking hours licking up toxic waste like you do (melody available on request).

The political commitment to work for all is taking on totalitarian dimensions. It is becoming almost blasphemy to suggest that we might not want to work, might not enjoy work, might rather sit on the beach and listen to the sea, or even (out come the garlic and crucifixes) prefer to stay in bed with a bottle of Bulgarian red. But New Labour ideology, like all religious ideology, is no diversity. Those who use their own energy to bolster an impossible belief cannot afford to listen to opposition. They will not enter the arena of rational debate. If it makes Blair, Brown and their brethren feel good to work hard all day then not I would not wish to stop them. What I would challenge is their right to impose their choice on the rest of us.

My own view is that most of the work that is carried out in a modern, advertising-led, consumption-based economy is both environmentally and socially destructive. Would we really rather that the uncountable unemployed all found jobs in the factories of transnational corporations making cars? Aside from the corporations' profits, who benefits from their work? Wouldn't they be better off living on a citizens' income and enjoying their lives? As I sit patiently at my postmodernised "work-station", watching my life tick away on the office clock, I think venomously of this crusade for jobs. And I rage against the New Jerusalem Labour has led us into.

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