Parliamentary Cretins

The last week or so has provided a bounty of examples of what Marxists call parliamentary cretinism. Parliamentary cretinism is where politicians see what goes on in the corridors and chambers of parliament as the alpha and omega of political activity. It means that they place great store by parliamentary procedure and spectacle, and in the importance of political intrigues, procedural manoeuvres and so on. In the last few weeks, on the one hand, we have seen the parliamentary coup carried out by Boris Johnson in proroguing parliament, and the responses to it, including an amateur theatrical performance by MP's in the Commons, a reference to the courts for adjudication and so on. We have also seen MP's themselves engage in a series of manoeuvres to prevent a General Election, and to try to impose on the government a requirement to ask for an extension of Article 50, against its will. 

For Marxists, what happens in parliaments is one of the least significant aspects of politics. The most important political issues are always settled outside parliament not inside. In the 19th century, when only 3% of the population had the right to vote, and when parliamentary constituencies could be bought and sold, it was never going to be likely that this issue was going to be resolved primarily by parliamentary debate. It was the mobilisation of the bourgeoisie, supported by the urban working-class, via events such as Peterloo that created the social movement that resulted in the 1832 Reform Act. The same is true in relation to Women's Suffrage. More recently, it was not polite parliamentary debates that got the Poll Tax scrapped, but the mobilisation of tens of thousands of protesters, and the mass action of thousands, in refusing to pay, that eventually led to it being scrapped, and subsequently to Thatcher herself being chucked out by the Tories. Indeed, with Brexit itself, its main proponent Farage and UKIP, was unable to get elected to parliament, and yet, with the movement he built, based upon millions of small capitalists, that make up the Tory base, along with a section of lumpen workers, was able to get parliament to hold a referendum, which in turn gave the Brexit vote. 

Ultimately, what happens in parliament is only a reflection of, and a culmination of issues that are decided outside its walls. That decision may arise peacefully simply as a result of a General Election, or it may arise on the back of a more active and possibly violent resolution of the issue. A General Election itself, is really only the physical manifestation of the resolution of the issues fought out within the contending social classes and class fractions of society. Again that process may be more or less peaceful. In 1974, as the post-war, long wave uptrend came to an end, and a period of crisis ensued, the distributional struggle that engendered between capital and labour was manifest in the Miners Strike of that year. It saw the Conservative government of Ted Heath, on the side of capital, with the miners being supported by the massed ranks of the labour movement. As the country ground to a halt with the Three-Day Week, Heath went to the country asking the question, “Who Rules?”. The issue had already been settled outside parliament. The voters answered Heath, “Not you, mate!” 

For Marxists, politics is about the struggle between antagonistic class camps. Classes themselves, although they necessarily assume the form of real human beings, are really classes of property. Different forms of property arise as a result of changes in the productive forces, which creates the development of different types of property. Capital is not something that has always existed, for example. Economics students are often taught that capital is synonymous with means of production, but means of production have existed in all modes of production, and will exist under communism, without them being capital. Means of production are only capital in certain historically determined conditions, where they are separated, as a form of property, from the worker, and where the worker must, therefore, sell their labour-power, as a commodity, to the owner of the capital, and where, the owner of the capital will only buy the labour-power, if the worker agrees to provide unpaid labour, which is the basis of the capitalists profit. Capital and labour here are two separated (a separation which does not exist where the worker owns their means of production) and antagonistic forms of property. The capitalist and the worker are merely the personification of these two antagonistic forms of property. It is not any personal or subjective antagonism between the worker and the capitalist that is at issue here – under different conditions they might be the best of friends – but the fundamental antagonism between the two forms of property that each represents, of which they are the personification, which creates the inevitable conflict between them. 

It was the genius of Marx that identified that this process of the creation and development of different forms of property, and the conflicts that arise between these different forms, are just as much a result of natural laws as is Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and so no recourse to things like morals, or subjective motives, or human nature is required to explain these developments, and the relations that arise upon them. It is what flows from his theory of Historical Materialism. 

Political parties are the synthesis and concentrated form of the interests of these contending class camps. In most developed countries, the political system becomes rationalised into two main political parties that are coalitions of the interests of these two contending class camps. In some countries, where society is characterised by cross-cutting cleavages, for example, where each class is also divided into members of different religions, or ethnic groups that exert a powerful influence, there may be more than the two main parties, as other parties reflect these religious or ethnic divisions. An example of that, is Northern Ireland. 

The two class camps that confront each other currently, in the context of Brexit is one which comprises labour, including that labour that Marx defines as being that of the “functioning capitalist”, plus the owners of fictitious capital, i.e. the rich minority that owns the bulk of shares, bonds and their derivatives, and another class camp that comprises the owners of the 5 million or so small private businesses, plus their families and associated social layers, plus a pool of declassed or backward workers. 

The interests of labour is for capital to accumulate as freely and rapidly as possible, because that is the condition for the demand for labour-power to rise, and thereby for workers wages and living standards to rise. The “functioning capitalists” are today themselves workers, drawn from the ranks of the working-class, who undertake jobs of line management, sales and purchasing managers, technicians, administrators, accountants and so on. As the essential personification of “socialised capital”, their interest is also, thereby to see the freest and most rapid accumulation of this capital. The means for achieving that has been for more than a century via the social democratic state, which attempts to create conditions of long-term stability by the use of methods planning and regulation of the macro-economy. And, for the last 75 years, that has also meant attempting to achieve that at a supra national level. The EU is a manifestation of it. 

These interests are represented by progressive social-democracy of the kind that was seen in the Labour Party of Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson and Callaghan. 

Outside the immediate issue of Brexit, the owners of fictitious capital, have interests that are not coterminous with those of labour. The owners of shares and bonds, obtain their revenues as interest on the money they lend in exchange for these certificates. The more they can obtain in dividends/interest the higher their revenues, but likewise, this means that the amount of profit left over as profit of enterprise, which is what the capital itself requires for purposes of accumulation, is reduced. As Marx points out, the owner of fictitious capital is, thereby, the immediate enemy of the “functioning capitalist”. Moreover, in the last few decades, the owners of this fictitious capital have begun to increase their wealth, and to obtain their revenues not in the form of dividends/interest, but by the inflation of the prices of their assets – shares, bonds etc. They have achieved this with the help of central banks that printed money which was used directly to purchase these assets, and so push up their prices. By pushing up the price of bonds, it meant that companies could borrow money, by issuing such bonds, and then using the proceeds to buy back shares, thereby pushing up share prices. 

This was clearly against the interests of labour, and of real capital, and the economy, because it diverts potential money-capital away from real investment and into this purely speculative purchase of assets, that creates no additional wealth. 

But, the owners of this fictitious capital also understand that, in the end, the dividends and bond interest they obtain depends upon the profits that the companies whose shares and bonds they own, can produce. Especially given that these companies are the largest companies, usually multinational companies that operate across the EU, and depend, therefore, upon it, and the single market it provides etc., they too, therefore, have an interest in maintaining that social-democratic framework, so long as it does not impinge upon their ability to extract dividends and interests, or to produce capital gains from asset price rises. The Labour Party, like other such social-democratic parties is a coalition of these two contending interests. It comprises a progressive social-democratic wing that privileges the accumulation of real capital, and the conditions of planning and regulation required to achieve that, and a conservative social-democratic wing that privileges the control over the real capital by shareholders, in order to be able to ensure the maximisation of shareholder value. 

The Conservative Party was originally the party of the landed aristocracy, and, therefore, the enemy of industrial capital. It was also the party of the financial oligarchy that developed in large part as a branch of the landed aristocracy. Today, the interests of those involved in the movement and management of money-capital, should be separated out from the interests of the owners of fictitious capital itself. The profits of the former comes from arbitraging the transactions of the latter, and the opportunities for such arbitrage are greater where single markets, and currencies do not exist. It is no surprise, therefore, that there is no shortage of supporters of Brexit, and of national markets and currencies amongst the Libertarian/Austrian School adherents amongst the stockbroking fraternity, from which come individuals such as Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg. 

Nor is it any surprise, therefore, that support for Brexit is strong amongst the landed oligarchy, much as there was for the Corn Laws in the 19th century. And, of course, today, the largest component of the Tory Party membership, and voter base comes from the 5 million small private business owners and their families. They are entirely hostile to the large-scale socialised capital, with which they are in competition, and which acts to create conditions for workers that these small capitalists cannot compete with, or even often match in terms of their own living standards. 

Its on this basis that around 75% of Labour voters voted Remain, and around the same proportion of Tory voters voted Leave. The two main parties, in relation to Brexit, reflect this same division of society into class camps, as much as in relation to every other issue. The resolution of that issue will be achieved not in parliament, but outside in society itself. 

So, when a group of MP's jumped up and down, creating a spectacle over the Speaker leaving the chamber as part of the prorogation ceremony, it could only be viewed as the act of parliamentary cretins. No one believed that they were actually going to prevent the Speaker leaving the chamber, because, at the end of the day, these are people who believe in obeying the law, even when, as it turns out in this case the law itself was made illegally. Had they really wanted to stop the prorogation, they would, weeks ago, have voted to prevent parliament going on holiday in the Summer Recess, and insisted that it kept sitting to sort out the issue of Brexit. Instead of amateur theatrics in parliament, they would for the last fortnight have been demanding that the TUC organise a General Strike against the coup and so on. They did not, because their politics extends no further than the parliamentary chamber. 

The same is true in relation to all of the other parliamentary manoeuvres to try to tie the governments hands that I have written about in the last week or so, but the more recent and dangerous example is the use of the courts to have the prorogation ruled illegal. When some Tories have suggested that the decision of the courts to rule the prorogation illegal might be seen as political partiality, opposition MP's have fumed with indignation. But, of course, the truth is that the judges and the courts are not impartial. Every working-class activist, most working-class people, and members of ethnic communities knows it! The courts are part of the apparatus of the capitalist state, there to protect the ruling class from the working-class. 

In the 19th century that might have been far more apparent than it is today, but anyone who has been on a picket line knows that the law is used against workers, and to protect employers. To provide cover for the bosses' courts by suggesting that they are impartial does a grave disservice to the working-class, and again reflects the narrow world view of the parliamentary cretin who sees politics only from the confines of the parliamentary chamber and not from the perspective of how life actually is for millions of workers. Continuing the illusion that the courts and the judges are impartial will do a great disservice to a future progressive Labour government, which will find, at every turn, that its actions are challenged by the courts by a process of judicial review that seeks to have its policies ruled illegal or ultra vires. 

The rather unique conditions today that sees the courts come down against the government, is a result purely of the fact that the government itself is acting against the interests of the dominant section of the ruling class. Johnson's government is acting in the interests of the subordinate but numerically preponderant section of the ruling-class, i.e. the 5 million small private businesses, and against the interests of large-scale industrial capital, and the owners of shares and bonds in it. It is that, which led Rees-Mogg himself, some months ago, to point to the fact that the state is not impartial, and that includes its courts. 

For socialists it is not to the bosses' courts, or to parliamentary manoeuvres that we look in defeating Johnson's coup, or defeating the reactionary agenda of Brexit, but the massed ranks of the organised working-class, and the social movement that it can create.