In
the 19th century, the main political forces were those of
the landlord class, represented by the Tories, entrenched in the
House of Lords, but still largely dominant in the Commons, until male
workers obtained the vote, and those of the industrial capitalists
represented by the Liberals. It was manifest in many conflicts, such
as over the Abolition of the Corn Laws. The Tories supported the
Corn Laws, controls over the import of cheaper foreign Corn, because
they saw it as reducing agricultural prices, and thereby rents paid
to landlords. The Liberals opposed the Corn Laws for the opposite
reason. They wanted to reduce the rents paid by capitalist farmers
to landlords, and thereby also to reduce all rents. Moreover, they
wanted lower corn prices, because it meant lower food prices, a
sizeable component of the time of workers expenditure. Reduce the
cost of food, and you thereby reduce the value of labour-power, which
means that wages can be cut, and so profits rise.
In
addition, the flour was not just used for food production. Marx sets
out in Capital that it was used extensively in the textile industry
as size, to give weight to yarn. He sets out how the reduction in
the price of corn, thereby saved textile firms thousands of pounds
each year in size, and by reducing the value of its constant capital,
thereby raised the rate of profit.
The
workers lined up in this class battle behind the industrial
capitalists, and made up a sizeable contingent of the Liberal Party.
A large part of the propaganda of Marxists at the time had to be to
set out that whilst, the policy of free trade was progressive
compared to the policy of protection, neither were socialist
solutions. Marx, for example, in his Speech On The Issue of Free
Trade, set out the way both protection and free trade were utilised
by capital against the workers, but concluded that he was in favour
of Free Trade, because it was the more rational capitalist solution,
the more revolutionary solution, precisely because it drove the
contradictions of capital to a higher level.
This
rejection of nationalism, and the recognition that the interests of
British workers could only be furthered, and could not be separated
from the furtherance of the interests of workers in general, no
matter in what country they lived, is central to developing a response
to the kinds of nationalistic and racist policies propounded by UKIP,
and the Tory right. Yet it is absent from current Labour thinking.
Instead we have the Labour front bench telling us that we should
embrace nationalism and patriotism – once described as the last
refuge of the scoundrel – and its emblem, even though its clear
what reactionary views many of those who drape themselves in that
emblem espouse.
When
it comes to responding to the reactionary views over Europe, instead
of confidently promoting the kind of internationalist views put
forward by Pete Curran above, instead they again frame their responses in nationalistic
terms, only able to justify pro-EU positions on the basis that they
are “good
for Britain”,
or at best good for British workers, as though, in the end, there can
be any policies that are good for British workers that are not good
for all workers, or worse that Labour should only support policies
that are good for British workers, even if that is at the expense of
workers in general!
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