Namby-Pamby Bleeding Heart Liberals

What most of the bleating about violent language in politics comes down to is that politics has been reduced to only what goes on in parliament, and what goes on in parliament has been reduced to merely a cushy, white collar career opportunity for privileged middle-class people, who share a similar set of middle-class opinions, and culture.  They have no real political principles around which they can form any passionate attachment or commitment - just look at the way the Chukas have easily moved from one party to another.  Like Groucho Marx they say, "These are my principles, and if you don't like them, I have others."   The furore over language is simply an expression of the fact that they have no political arguments to utilise, whether it is against Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn, which is why this tactic of weaponising the English language has been utilised by the namby-pamby, bleeding heart liberals against both.  It is an alternative to robust political argument.  And, ironically, given its use by these liberals, it has the effect of strengthening those that would use it for illiberal purposes.  Its logical consequence is to enhance the argument of the censors, of those who would have us believe that violence is the consequence of things like films or computer games, and that we must be shielded from pornographic literature, such as Lady Chatterley's Lover, for fear that our sensibilities and our passions must be uncontrollably inflamed.  It is hogwash, and a return to all of those illiberal ideas we thought we had left behind in the 1960's.

The bleeding heart liberals are happy with politics conducted within the narrow confines of the Overton window that has existed for the last thirty years.  They are unhappy that reality has imposed itself upon it from the outside, as class contradictions have mounted.  The bleeding heart liberals, confronted with the raw politics of Johnson and Cummings, and the social forces that stand behind them, want to respond with appeals for compromise, for polite discussion, and for all to come together and sing kumbaya.  It is unreal.  Give me the honest politics of a John Prescott, who, plastered with an egg, responds with a carefully aimed punch to the offenders jaw, any day of the week.

In parliament itself, the opposing benches are separated by a distance equal to two swords lengths, which reflects the history of parliamentary debate and its antagonistic nature.  Here is the difference between the working-class, Marxists, and the bleeding heart liberal representatives of the middle-class.  We recognise that politics is class politics, it is the outward reflection of class struggle, which must and does manifest itself in class war.  The bleeding heart liberals would have us believe that there is no such thing as class struggle, because there is no such things as fundamentally contradictory class interests.  Indeed, one of the problems that this strand of liberalism, and social-democracy has in confronting the reactionary nationalists, is that their own ideology is implicitly nationalistic itself.  If there is no fundamental contradiction dividing the classes, then, as they believe, we can all get along swimmingly, as part of one nation.  That is why these liberals can frequently also be heard talking about subordinating the party interest to the national interest and other such meaningless guff.

Thousands of communards died in the orgy of
violence unleashed by our class enemies once
the Paris Commune had been crushed.

But, Marxists know scientifically from our analysis of society that what drives history itself are these fundamentally contradictory class interests.  The working-class knows it instinctively from the experience of its daily life.  We know that our class enemies will not simply negotiate away their position as ruling class, on the basis of some supposed shared common interest and a spirit of compromise.  They will use every trick in the book, every lever of power, and ultimately the most vicious use of violence against us to cling to their privileges.  No decent representative of the working-class should seek to deceive the workers by pretending that there is some shared long-term interest between workers and the ruling class that provides a basis for such compromise.  At best, we might have some shared common interest with one set of exploiters against another set of exploiters that we might be able to utilise, tactically, to our advantage, as now with our shared interest with the owners of fictitious capital in defeating the forces of reaction backing Brexit, or as when in the 19th century, workers joined with the industrial bourgeoisie against the old landed aristocracy and the financial oligarchy to secure the repeal of the Corn Laws.

In the Spanish Civil War, the workers
fought valiantly, but they were poorly
prepared and misled.  The Stalinists and
social-democrats asked them to join a
Popular Front with the bourgeoisie, a
bourgeoisie that had already gone over to
Franco, just as in 1848, they had gone over
to the Junkers. 

War is politics by other means, and likewise politics is war by other means.  We know that ultimately, the ruling class will engage in a violent civil war to prevent the working-class from taking power.  How violent that war is depends upon the degree to which the working-class is prepared for it.  We will not prepare the working-class for that by pretending that our differences with our class enemies can be all resolved by amicable debate.  We should expect that our class enemies will not only use violent language, but violence itself against us, and we should prepare the working-class to meet that violence head on with even greater, more organised and effective violence, not with pacifistic calls for every one to be nice to each other!

Boris Johnson and co. knows exactly what they are doing in using the language they use.  It is to ensure that all of those reactionary elements that back Brexit, and who currently have thrown their weight behind the Brexit Party come back to the Tories.  Current polls show that if he can get back even half of the Brexit Party vote the Tories will win 360 seats, giving them a comfortable majority, and the reason he will be able to do that is that Labour's disastrous Brexit stance will mean that the anti-Tory vote is split down the middle.  But, this language about the "Surrender Act", and "Traitors" cannot reasonably be used to explain the actions of violent thugs and fascists, who existed long before Boris Johnson's use of this language, and before Brexit itself.  Suggesting that it can is not just a cop-out, but actually plays into the hands of all those who would close down political debate and exercise a stifling control over society that most of us thought we had overcome in the 1960's.

It means that all those like today's Mary Whitehouses who blame TV for violence, for immoral behaviour, and so on, will be massively strengthened.  Our objection to such measures such as state bans has always been that we know that such actions always rebound badly on the working-class and socialists, against whom these measures are used more effectively.  Are socialists and trades unionists, for example, to be censured for calling strike breakers scabs, or Labour politicians who side with the Tories, class traitors, because such language must lead to some individuals being provoked, uncontrollably, by our words, into physically attacking them?

Such politics is the politics of the kindergarten.  It is not real class politics.  Our answer to the threat of violence from our class enemies is not the namby-pamby, bleeding heart, liberal calls for sweetness and light, for compromise and for all to come together to sing kumbaya, but is to build workers defence squads, to meet violence by superior violence.

The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party could not be held responsible for the terrorist acts of Narodniks and Anarchists, who serially attempted to assassinate the Tsar, because the Russian socialists attacked the Tsarist regime in the most strident terms.  And, as Lenin put it, in decrying the individualistic, terroristic actions of the Narodniks and Anarchists, herein lay the difference between them.  In response to the violence of the Tsarist state the Narodniks and Anarchists, Lenin said, went in for violence retail, "whilst we Bolsheviks go in for it wholesale." 

The job of Marxists, in the current conditions, of an undeclared civil war over Brexit, is not to mislead the working-class by lining them up for slaughter behind a bunch of bleeding heart liberals, bleating and pleading for everyone to be nice to each other, but is to prepare them to meet the violence of their class enemies head on, by mobilising the organised working-class for its own self-defence.