Yesterday, I wrote that "the opposition should enjoy their court win while they can, because the reality seems to be that in all their manoeuvring and games, they have failed to notice that Cummings and Johnson have stitched them up like a kipper". It didn't take long for that to play out. Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, far from being apologetic, or on the back foot, over the ruling of the Supreme Court laid into the Labour benches with gusto. He did so on the basis that it has been quite apparent to me Johnson's Tories would do all along. The parliamentary cretins were so caught up in plying games, trying to tie Johnson in knots, to make him seek an extension of Article 50, that they failed to notice that all they were doing was playing into Johnson's martyr narrative, of seeking to implement Article 50, but being frustrated by parliament, a parliament that does not have the decency, or the confidence, to test its support via a General Election.
And, of course, Johnson, and his spokesman Cox, are absolutely correct. Labour and Liberals claim that the reason they will not put a motion of no confidence in the government is because, they do not trust Johnson not to change the date of that election to be beyond October 31st. But, that is nonsense. It assumes that Johnson's primary goal is to push through a No Deal Brexit. It isn't. Johnson's primary goal is to get an election, so as to be able to form a majority Tory government! Johnson knows that if, in fact, he called a General Election for after October 31st., i.e. after he had pushed through a No Deal Brexit, he would be crushed. He would be crushed because a No Deal Brexit would be catastrophic, so catastrophic that whoever is associated with having brought it about would be hounded from office, and would have destroyed their electoral prospects for at least a generation. The last thing on Johnson's mind is to have to call a General Election under those conditions.
Now, Labour have proved themselves to be pretty incompetent, and lacking in understanding, when it comes to those longer-term strategic considerations, but, even they must know that that is the case, and so too must the Liberals. Strategically, there could be nothing much better than the Tories having to call an election a week or two after such a crash out Brexit, because not only would it gift a landslide win to the opposition, but the reality is that, under those conditions, an incoming Labour government could quickly get a deal with the EU, nullify the Article 50 submission, so as to get an emergency reentry to the EU, and could simply pass retrospective legislation through parliament revoking the Article 50 submission.
No, the truth is that its not fear of Johnson reneging on the election date that is behind the Labour and Liberal fear of calling a vote of no confidence, or supporting a motion for a General Election, it is because they know that, currently, Johnson would win that election, and all their plotting and parliamentary cretinism would have been for nought. On current projections, if Johnson were to call an election, and maintains his strong Brexit position, he will take back most of the Brexit Party votes, and would win around 360 seats, with Labour going back seriously. The truth about Labour's position is exposed because, as Cox continually taunted them today, not only will they not submit a no confidence vote in the government, but nor will they vote for a one line bill that would call an election on a fixed date.
At every stage, transfixed by the paltry question of winning votes in parliament, the opposition do not seem to have realised that, in doing so, they have played into Johnson's hands, strengthening the narrative that a zombie parliament that cannot agree on any positive action, has reduced itself to only voting to express what it is against. It has simply strengthened the view amongst the electorate, and for the Tories, most importantly, its core vote, that this parliament is not just an obstruction towards the Brexit they voted for, and the government that is trying to implement it, but is an obstacle to anything positive being carried forward.
Anyone with a political brain would have seen what line of attack the government would hurl at Labour, in volley after volley, of devastating shot in parliament and across the airwaves, and through the pages of the Tory press. I have set it out over months. It is that Labour are running scared, they say they oppose the government, but they won't even submit a no confidence motion, frightened to their bones that, if they win a no confidence vote, they will have to fight an election they know they will lose. They say the government should go, and that they want an election, but they will not vote for an election to bring it about. And, of course, Labour has absolutely no response to give to these bone shattering volleys of political cannon fire. Yesterday, Labour MP's were fist pumping, but today they provided a pitiful sight of shell shocked victims, not knowing what had just hit them. Like the Charge of the Light Brigade, they launched into the valley of death, not with cannon to the left and right of them, but pointed straight at them.
And here lies the truth that they simply do not understand politics. They certainly do not understand that the politics we now have is not being conducted on the old basis. What we have is an undeclared civil war over Brexit, which is itself a cipher for the real struggle, which is one between reaction and social democracy, just as religion appeared as the surface manifestation of the real class struggle that was taking place in the English Civil War in the 17th Century.
So, far this civil war is being conducted verbally, and through constitutional channels, though those constitution channels are being used in anti-constitutional fashion. The forces of reaction via Johnson carried through a parliamentary coup in proroguing parliament, the forces of conservatism responded via a counter coup implemented by the involvement of the Supreme Court and the ruling class's judges, acting on behalf of the dominant section of that ruling class. But, these very measures, and the language that is being used by the forces of reaction, including through the pages of its press, itself should be warning that this is not politics as normal as conducted by the niceties of polite debate.
The real problem in this respect, is that the forces of social-democracy are themselves divided, as they always are, but that they are also decadent and weak. Social-democracy is always divided, because it encompasses two contradictory class interests. On the one hand, it encompasses the interests of large-scale socialised capital. That is it represents the need for this real capital to accumulate. the personification of that interest is the large middle class of day to day managers, or what Marx called the "functioning capitalists". These managers are themselves workers, and drawn from the ranks of the working-class. They are members of white collar unions, and the kind of people who, in the past helped draw up things like the Lucas Workers Plan. Their function is to maximise the profit of enterprise, from which this capital accumulation is financed. As such, they must also maximise the rate of surplus value extracted from all workers, whilst simultaneously trying to minimise the amount of profits that are paid out in interest/dividends. But, insofar as this accumulation of capital, is also the basis for an increased demand for labour-power, and so also for higher wages, it is a representation of the immediate interests of the working-class. This is the objective basis of the forces of progressive social-democracy.
But, social-democracy also represents the interests of those that also derive their revenue from this socialised capital, i.e. the share and bondholders who obtain dividends and interest from the money-capital they lend to these companies. They know that their long-term interest also depends upon the growth of these companies and of their profits. This is the objective basis of the forces of conservative social democracy.
This latter force has dominated for the last 30 years. But, the economic foundations for it ceased with the global financial crash of 2008. That is the basis for the collapse of the political centre, which it represented. The conditions now should mean that the forces of progressive social democracy become dominant within social-democracy. But the forces of progressive social democracy are ideologically and organisationally weak. On the one hand, it is manifest in Corbynism in Britain, and by the rise of Sanders, and a group of social democrats in the US, but they are politically weak and confused. As seen at Labour conference this week, Corbyn and the forces immediately around him, are dominated by economic nationalism, and other reactionary ideas. Indeed, these ideas chime more with the ideas of the forces of reaction represented by Johnson and Farage than they do with the forces of progressive social democracy, let alone socialism. The most obvious manifestation of that is the Red-Brown front of left nationalists such as from the Communist Party/Morning Star, with Farage's Brexit Party, and with racists associated with it.
Social-democracy, therefore, is, overall very weak, because the forces that give it real strength, ultimately, are the forces of progressive social-democracy, of the massed ranks of the advanced and organised working-class. But, those forces are not being mobilised. Despite Corbyn's promise to focus on building such extra-parliamentary social movements, four years into his leadership, and they are nowhere to be seen. Social-democracy depends, therefore, for its resistance to the forces of reaction, on conservative social-democracy. When it comes to mobilising these large social forces in a meaningful way, i.e. other than the occasional large demonstration, it is useless. These are not the social forces that are going to call on workers to engage in a General Strike, for example, to stop Johnson's parliamentary coup. If it comes to it, they are not going to take up arms to fight reaction. On the contrary, the history of such situations, in the past indicates that they will quickly line up on the other side of the barricades, as happened in the revolutions of 1848, in China in 1927, and Spain in 1936.
But, they do have other strengths. This conservative social-democracy, represents the dominant section of the ruling class, and, the capitalist state represents its interests. Rees-Mogg was correct when months ago he said that the state is not neutral. The civil service fights for the interests of this dominant section of capital, and he was right to describe the intervention of the Supreme Court as a constitutional coup, or what he should rightly have said a counter coup, to reverse the effects of the parliamentary coup that he and Johnson had previously carried out. It is the weakness of social-democracy, in terms of being able to mobilise large class forces, on a principled programme, that has enabled the forces of reaction to proceed to the extent they have, and which forces social-democracy to rely instead on these machinations and utilisation of institutions of the state. The same weakness has encouraged the forces of reaction to press forward, and to believe that it can undertake a political counter-revolution to overturn the social-democratic state that has existed for the last century, and thereby to create the conditions required to meet the interests of the class fraction that it represents.
It is this bitter class war that is going on that dictates the nature of the undeclared civil war that is being undertaken. The social democratic politicians, and the liberal media are totally at sea in trying to understand these conditions. They are wholly unprepared and ill-equipped for being able to participate in such politics. It is manifest in their continual moralistic bleating about rudeness, and their pleading for their opponents to "do the right thing". It has wrong-footed them at every step.
An example of it, was Lisa Nandy appearing on Politics Live, at dinner time, just as Geofrey Cox opened up his howitzers on the cowering ranks of Labour MP's sitting opposite. It was pathetic to witness. Metaphorically, it was a bit like the Battle of Peterloo, with the forces of reaction charging forward, sabres in hand, slashing to the right and to the left, separating heads and limbs from torsos, and in the middle of this carnage, kneels poor Lisa, pleading to the oncoming merchants of death to please compromise, and offering to sing verses of kumbaya with them!
We need better representatives of our class than this.
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