History Repeating As Farce - Part 7

“But it is precisely with the maintenance of that extensive state machine in its numerous ramifications that the material interests of the French bourgeoisie are interwoven in the closest fashion. Here it finds posts for its surplus population and makes up in the form of state salaries for what it cannot pocket in the form of profit, interest, rents, and honorariums. On the other hand, its political interests compelled it to increase daily the repressive measures and therefore the resources and the personnel of the state power, while at the same time it had to wage an uninterrupted war against public opinion and mistrustfully mutilate, cripple, the independent organs of the social movement, where it did not succeed in amputating them entirely. Thus the French bourgeoisie was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power, and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresistible, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it.” (ibid Chapter 4)

Here is a clear statement of Marx's view of the Capitalist State, and its function. In fact, as stated above, today, in addition to this description, of that State, would be added those elements of Social Democracy that enable Capital not only to maintain itself in power, but also to ensure the necessary reproduction of Labour Power i.e. the modern Welfare State. The operation of this State is always a matter of leaning at one time on the former repressive means, and at others on the latter, sometimes a mixture of the two at the same time.

So, Cameron's shift from “hug a hoody”, to gaol a looter shows a willingness to speak in terms of social conscience, whilst being prepared to resort to repressive state measures. The latter was no doubt founded not just upon an attempt to crush such action, but also a populist appeal to those reactionary elements across society that form the electoral base of the Tories. Yet, the currently dominant section of the Tories represent the biggest looters, the Money Capitalists, whose actions have thrown millions into severe debt, and came close to collapsing the global financial system. They are the same Money Capitalists, who are still paying themselves millions of pounds in salaries and bonuses and dividends. The same political stance can be seen in the Tories position on Immigration, which is designed to appeal to those same reactionary elements. In doing so, it cuts some of the ground from beneath forces to their Right such as UKIP, and the BNP. They are policies that appeal to the “scum, offal refuse of all classes” as Marx describes the lumpen proletariat. Yet, daily, representatives of Capital declare how these policies are undermining its need to recruit suitable Labour Power.

In France, the Party of Order was comprised of Orleanists and Legitimists, representatives of the two Royal Houses, the former representing Money Capital, and the latter representing Landed Property. Today, the Tory Party is made up of elements who represent the Aristocracy of Finance and of Landed Property, as well as representatives of industrial capital. The latter are, in effect, those elements who would in the 19th Century have been represented within the Liberal Party. The Tories Liberal partners, are comprised of Orange Book Liberals, (representatives also of Industrial Capital), and more openly Social Democratic elements, whose positions are determined by the need to win votes in more working-class areas. They reflect the essentially schizophrenic nature of the Liberals, seeking here to win the votes of workers and the Liberal intelligentsia.

Campo, Foggy Osbourne & Cleggy

In France, the divisions split apart the Party of Order, which had relied on a a coalition with bourgeois Republicans, and the Social Democrats of the Montagne. Unable to control events, the Party of Order allowed itself to be controlled by events. As Marx put it, it became subject to the “mere power of the calendar.” The Liberals find themselves similarly in alliance with a Party of Order, and trapped by it, unable to control events, and thereby allowing events to control them. The only thing they can do is to watch the Calendar as the days to their own “complete disintegration” are ticked off.

“The parliamentary party was not only dissolved into its two great factions, each of these factions was not only split up within itself, but the party of Order in parliament had fallen out with the party of Order outside parliament. The spokesmen and scribes of the bourgeoisie, its platform and its press — in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the representatives and the represented — faced one another in estrangement and no longer understood one another.” (ibid Chapter 6)

As yet, this conflict, within the ranks of Capital, has not broken out into open warfare, but proceeds along diplomatic channels. The austerity measures being pursued by Cameron – and by like minded right-wing populists elsewhere – are increasingly recognised as counter-productive to the interests of Big Industrial Capital. The US, which has used Keynesian intervention on a large scale for the last three years, has managed to grow its economy, and create jobs, despite the drag that European austerity and recession has exerted on it. The ideologists and managers of international Capitalism, in the IMF, in the OECD, in Standard & Poor's, and in national bodies such as the NIESR, all openly proclaim that austerity is killing the patient, but they will not openly attack any individual country's policy, or tell them to change course. In Britain, even the City, whose interests Cameron sought to defend, in his walk-out from the EU, told him that his actions, in isolating Britain, were counter-productive. Big business repeatedly warns that the Tories Immigration policies are damaging their interests, because they cannot recruit the labour-power they need. But, as yet, this is all low key. If the current measures continue, and threaten the interests of Big Capital it may not remain that way.

“Far more fateful and decisive was the breach of the commercial bourgeoisie with its politicians. It reproached them not as the Legitimists reproached theirs, with having abandoned their principles, but on the contrary, with clinging to principles that had become useless.” (ibid)

Big Capital is content with Labour Governments. They most closely represent the ideas of the Social-Democratic consensus. It is merely a political form of the compromise it has reached with the Trades Unions, which act as a safety valve, for the working-class, in one direction, and a conduit of bourgeois ideas in the other. But, Big Capital, although economically and politically strong, in the sense that it can use its resources and connections and ideologists, to shape the actions of States, is weak, precisely because of its tiny size, comprising perhaps just one hundredth of a percent of the population. It was precisely for that reason it needed the working-class electorally. Its problem with bourgeois democracy is that it cannot, even then, guarantee to win. Its further problem is that its smaller brethren, are more numerous, and more able, therefore, to exert political influence upon the natural Party of Capital.

“The French bourgeoisie balked at the domination of the working proletariat; it has brought the lumpen proletariat to domination, with the Chief of the Society of December 10 at the head.”(Chapter 7)

Bonaparte represented the small holding peasants. Cameron represents their modern equivalent. He represents the small capitalists, the middle class, and backward sections of workers. It is their ideas that are reflected in the Tories policies, it is they who make up the bulk of the Tory Party members, and its electoral base. And, just as Bonaparte represented not the revolutionary elements within the peasantry, but the reactionary elements, it is not the Guardian reading petit-bourgeois that Cameron attracts, but the reactionary Mail and Express reading middle class.

“The bourgeoisie, in truth, is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses so long as they remain conservative, and the insight of the masses as soon as they become revolutionary.” (ibid)

Of course, a major reason for the stupidity of the masses, is the failure of Big Capital to carry through its own revolution to a conclusion. Big Capital has means of disseminating its ideas through its own house journals, such as the FT, The Economist and their equivalents. It is able to develop its ideas through its Universities. But, at the same time, the very functioning of Capitalism, and the search for profit, means that, alongside this, exists the gutter press, which garners readers by appealing to the basest instincts. Not only do these vile organs promote the most crass individualism, but they promote all of those ideas that are the very antipathy of the ideas of “Egalite, Fraternite, and Liberte”, that were the slogans under which the bourgeois revolution was fought. Instead, they promote bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia and all the other shit of ages that the bourgeois revolution should have swept away forever.

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