A socialist kind of social democracy

No doubt the factions of New Labour will attempt some kind of ideological reconstruction of The Project, hopefully in opposition to each other, prior to the general election. That is all the much proclaimed death of New labour will mean. New Labour is dead, long live New Labour.

It actually has to be defeated, along with all those other political forces who exploit the working class for their own gain. For those of us who remain in the Labour Party, for various reasons, the defeat of neoliberalism remains our ongoing task. The struggle, as always, will take place at various levels, organisational as well as ideological. It seems to me that, most immediately, the struggle over ideas is salient. The probability is that the reconstruction of New Labour will involve a revival of the notion of social democracy, in order to differentiate the Labour Party from the Tories, for narrow electoral reasons.

The struggle for ideas is an inherent part of political struggle. It is not about reaching an agreement on the meaning of terms for the sake of clarity. It is about defeating a political project which seeks to misuse the historic labour movement to defeat the material interests of those who labour.

We choose to use the term 'social democracy' to oppose neoliberalism. All political terminology has a history. It would be difficult to find a political label which has changed its meaning over time as much as 'social democracy'. It was originally associated with the Left, it came to be associated with an evolutionary approach to socialism, with gradualism, with 'moderation' and then with a new form of political reaction, the Gang of Four, the Owenites, and then the awful neo-cons in the USA and New Labour.

Historically, it undoubtedly belongs to the Left. We reclaim it as our own. It expresses precisely our opposition to that extreme form of market capitalism, neoliberalism, which has become dominant in recent times. In opposition to this we stand for a social democracy in which the useful members of society run their own affairs in a democratic way.

The struggle to make the Labour Party an authentic social democratic party is under way. The Blairites and Brownites are not, in any authentic sense, social democrats and they should never be allowed to get away with describing themselves as such, without being challenged.