Nationalism v Internationalism
In the US,
there was the Tea Party, and now Trump; in Britain there was UKIP,
whose clothes the Tories have now slipped into in their entirety; in
France the main conservative party is now the Front National, and the
Republican Party has been pulled on to almost identical nationalist
and xenophobic territory; in the Netherlands, the ruling conservative
party has again adopted much of the nationalistic and xenophobic
positions of Wilders and the Freedom Party. In all these cases, the
division is no longer one on the old traditional grounds that
commentators superficially deemed to be the determinants of “Left”
and “Right”, i.e. of the role of the state in the economy, but is
between nationalism and internationalism.
Trump in the
US has no problem with proposing large-scale state spending, Le Pen
has no problem proposing large scale state intervention in the
economy, and so on. But, anyone who thought that the real division
between right and left came down to questions of state intervention
should simply be reminded that Hitler was the main proponent of state
intervention during the 1930's, that the Nazi state took over control
of large sections of industry, established a national economic
council to plan and regulate economic activity, that the state
undertook large-scale fiscal intervention to build the autobahns and
so on.
The very
nature of productive-capital means that it increasingly must operate
within the context of larger markets, and intrinsic to that is a free
movement of goods, services, capital and labour. But, as Marx also
said, the basic requirement of all capital operating within such
markets is that there should be a level playing field, and the only
arbiter of the rules governing this playing field is the state. That
is why as capital quickly grew beyond national borders, the smaller
states had to begin to try to create these larger structures. The
United States had to fight a Civil War before it established such a
structure, and Europe fought many such wars during the 19th
century, as different national powers sought to create a unified
Europe under its own dominance, whilst Britain largely intervened to
prevent such unification, which threatened its own global dominance,
and that was true in the two European Wars of the 20th
century that formed a major part of what has come to be called WWI
and WWII.
The large
scale fictitious capital, because it is dependent on this socialised capital for its revenues, must itself support the EU, and oppose
those reactionary forces driving towards Brexit. The Tories are a
declining force, because the economic and social basis for the
ideology they represent is declining, as socialised capital becomes
more and more dominant. The only way they could bolster their
electoral position was to shift increasingly on to the ground of
reaction. That is they had to move further away from that section of
their support that resides within the super rich owners of fictitious
capital, and on to the ground of their core electoral support and
membership base within the ranks of the millions of small business
people, and backward sections of the working and middle classes. As
UKIP started to eat into that section of their electoral support,
they found themselves increasingly driven in that reactionary
direction.
And now, the
Tories have eaten UKIP whole, as they move decisively on to that
reactionary territory, following the Brexit vote. In some ways, this
is a repetition of the early 1980's, when May's idol Maggie Thatcher
wrapped herself in the flag during the Falklands War. As I wrote recently in relation to British threats to go to war with Europe over Gibraltar. Thatcher never
intended to actually end up in a shooting war, believing that her
friend Galtieri, who was wrapping himself in the Argentinian flag for
his own immediate political reasons, would back down. But, wars have
their own dynamic once the antagonisms have been set in motion.
Boris
Johnson and others thought that the threat of Britain leaving the EU,
would bring the Europeans rushing along to plead with Britain to stay,
and offering lots of further concessions to Britain to do so,
enabling him to champion such renegotiations, and Britain then
remaining in the EU. Instead we have increasing verbal war breaking
out between Britain and the EU, as last week demonstrated.
Theresa
May, seemingly now knowing that Britain will get less than nothing
from the EU, in the negotiations, and knowing that the Tories will
bear the responsibility for the economic catastrophe that will
follow, and knowing that in the intervening period, the British
state, along with other political forces will attempt to put Brexit
through the political meat grinder, in the same way that Trump has
faced in the US, has decided to preempt that. The real reason for
calling the election now, is that within weeks, she will declare that
the negotiations are going nowhere, that the EU is imposing
impossible conditions, and so, within six months, she will simply pull
Britain out of the EU, in line with what UKIP and the Tory Right have
been proposing all along.
No comments:
Post a Comment