The Political Situation (8/14)
The existence of the Johnson government in Britain, and of Trump in the US, is then rather an inconvenience for the dominant section of the ruling class, of the owners of fictitious capital, because it has no need of fascism, or even Bonapartism to quell a revolutionary proletariat, or to suppress demands from progressive social-democracy for an expansion of workers control. The demands of Syriza in 2015, of Podemos, of the Left Bloc in Portugal, or of Corbyn after 2015 did not amount to that, let alone of Bernie Sanders in the US. They amounted to little more than the kind of mild, progressive social-democracy presented by Wilson in the 1960's, or of LBJ in the US, and wholly acceptable to the needs of large-scale socialised capital in its growth phase, and, therefore, to the shareholders in those companies. The issue for these shareholders is not one concerning their continued control over these vast swathes of capital, but that the kind of progressive social-democratic policy proposed by Corbyn, Syriza, Podemos et al, by stimulating economic growth, would lead to rising wages, and an increased demand for money-capital causing interest rates to rise, and asset prices to crash; the very thing it seeks to avoid. The irony is that the government imposed lockdowns, in response to COVID19, are going to lead to exactly that scenario.
But, this illustrates the point about the kind of Popular Front type strategy that Paul seeks to promote currently. Whenever such arrangements are undertaken as a form of “lesser-evilism”, allying with representatives of the bourgeoisie, and watering down your own programme, in order to have unity against some potential reactionary threat, the consequence is always a continual ratchet to the right, which leads eventually to a destruction of your own forces, and a victory for that very reaction. In 1848, the demands of workers were seen as “utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put”. The same was true of the soft lefts and Blair-rights, let alone the hard right elements of the Labour Party, who viewed the Corbynites in the same way, and continue to do so. In 1848, the social democrats and liberals allied themselves with the conservatives in order to re-establish order. But, Marx describes the consequence.
“They had given out the watchwords of the old society, “property, family, religion, order,” to their army as passwords and had proclaimed to the counterrevolutionary crusaders: “In this sign thou shalt conquer!” From that moment, as soon as one of the numerous parties which gathered under this sign against the June insurgents seeks to hold the revolutionary battlefield in its own class interest, it goes down before the cry: “property, family, religion, order.” Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rulers contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an “attempt on society” and stigmatized as “socialism.”
(The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Chapter 1)
In other words a ratchet to the Right is established. That was the consequence of the alliance between conservative social-democracy and reaction in the 1980's, so that today, even “the simplest bourgeois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow democracy, is simultaneously castigated as an “attempt on society” and stigmatized as “socialism.”"
Marx goes on to describe the consequence.
“And finally the high priests of “religion and order” themselves are driven with kicks from their Pythian tripods, hauled out of their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison vans, thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of religion, of property, of the family, of order. Bourgeois fanatics for order are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunken soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their houses bombarded for amusement – in the name of property, of the family, of religion, and of order. Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero Crapulinski [a character from Heine’s poem “The Two Knights,” a dissolute aristocrat.] installs himself in the Tuileries as the “saviour of society.””
(ibid)
In the 1980's, it takes the form of a strong state, Tory government, in Britain, that has the SPG, to control protest, as well as the armed forces that it dresses up in civilian garb to beat down the Miners in 1984, at Orgreave etc. But, just in case its not enough, standing alongside them is the growth of the National Front and other fascist groups. And, alongside this the representatives of big industrial capital become increasingly weaker, as the representatives of small capital grow stronger. Thatcher herself moves in that direction, and the Tory Party becomes increasingly the property of the petty-bourgeoisie, with its parliamentary party, still reflecting the interests of fictitious capital, increasingly out of step with its rank and file membership.
The dominant section of capital, the top 0.01% that owns its wealth in the form of fictitious capital is in a bind of its own making. In order to defeat the forces of progressive social democracy in the 1970's and 80's that had the potential for going beyond the bounds of social-democracy into socialism, it allied with the forces not only of conservative social-democracy (right wing of Labour, SDP/Liberals, social-democratic/wet wing of the Tories), but also with the forces of reaction, i.e. the Thatcherite wing of the Tories. To be fair, Thatcher herself did not appear, initially as a reactionary, but as a conservative. Her policies could be seen as perfectly in line with the needs of big capital, and of fictitious capital, rather than of small capital, both from her time in Heath's government, and in her initial positioning as Tory Leader. She starts as a pro-European conservative, rather than a Brexiteering reactionary. Its Thatcher that promotes the policies for the creation of an EU single market, for example.
Thatcher, like Reagan, fulfils, at the time, the function of a strong state leader, required to beat down the working-class, and its organised battalions, so as to enable the restructuring of capital, the introduction of new technologies to replace labour, and so raise productivity, and the rate of profit, thereby overcoming the crisis of overproduction. Even, the policies of privatisation are not a main aspect of her programme at the start, but when they are, they can easily be seen by the owners of fictitious capital as their golden opportunity to extend such ownership in shares of a wide range of nationalised industries, which they can acquire on the cheap, guaranteeing them sizeable capital gains. Even the fact that many of these privatised companies get taken over by foreign companies is not a problem for the dominant section of the ruling class, because they are already a global class, not a national class, a change which had begun with the creation of the multinational corporation after WWII. They own shares in BT as easily as in Orange, or Deutsche Telekom.
The problem for the middle-class representatives of the interests of big socialised capital, and of the owners of fictitious capital, dependent on the profits of these large companies for the payment of interest/dividends, is that, instead of this process resulting in a strengthening of their position, it results in a weakening. It is a weakening not in relation to organised labour, but in relation to small capital, and the reactionary ideas and forces it represents, and in terms of numbers, that petty-bourgeoisie is far more numerous than is the top 0.01%. In Britain, it comprises around 5 million small business owners and their family, or around 15 million people. When all of the associated layers are included, it represents a formidable opposition even to the working-class. It creates a ratchet to the right.
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