Brexit was an adventure driven by the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, the 5 million small business and self-employed people and their families that make up the core membership and voter base of the Tory Party. As is always the case with such right-wing populism, it was riven with contradiction, and the reality of Brexit has soon exposed those contradictions, and is blowing them apart.
That petty-bourgeois base of the Tories expanded under Thatcher in the 1980's, just as the same happened in the US under Reagan, and created the material base for the transformation of those parties from being mostly dominated by conservative social-democracy, operating in the interests of the share-holding class, to being dominated by petty-bourgeois reaction, seeking a return to old style liberalism, of free competition, and the dominance of the plethora of small capital, backed by a powerful state that protected them. In the reality of the modern world, and of capitalism in its imperialist stage, that was never going to happen. It was a reactionary pipe-dream, and the contradictions it involved were always going to blow it apart. It has done so, in the US, with the demise of Trump, and, now, as the diversion of lock downs, imposed supposedly in response to COVID, is removed, it is happening in Britain. The serial shortages, stoppages, and so on from the fuel pumps to the pig farm, from the care homes to the car makers is making it more apparent by the day.
In Germany, in the 1930's, the same reactionary petty-bourgeoisie that forms the base of the Tory Party, was used by Nazism, to physically break up and destroy the German workers movement, as had also happened, in the 1920's, in Italy. The difference was that fascism was actually a movement being used by the ruling class to that effect, for its own interests, and not the interests of that petty-bourgeoisie, that merely provided it with foot-soldiers. Today, the ruling class has no need of such foot soldiers, because it faces no imminent threat from a revolutionary proletariat. On the contrary, the biggest immediate threat to its interests comes from that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie that has pushed through Brexit in Britain, that put Trump in the White House, and that has given electoral support to a range of similar political forces across the globe.
In Italy, and in Nazi Germany, in order to mobilise that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, the fascists had to present themselves not just as opponents of the organised workers, but also of the big capitalists. Some within those parties even believed what they were peddling – the Strasserites. But, when the ruling class had used them to break up the workers movement, they, and the leaders of those fascist organisations quickly turned on those anti-capitalist forces within their midst. In Germany, it came in the form of the Night of The Long Knives. In the US, the ruling class used its state, as well as its natural political allies within the Democratic Party, to undermine and frustrate the efforts of the Trumpists. The ludicrous January 6th coup attempt, by the Trumpists was a gift for the US ruling-class, because it had no possibility of succeeding, but the very fact it happened created the conditions for the US state to begin open operations against the Trumpists, and the various fascistic forces that formed their entourage.
As I have written from the start, Boris Johnson is not a natural Brexiter – remember the two essays? He is, rather, just an opportunist and and a populist, rather like, as I wrote several years ago, Louis Bonaparte. Louis Bonaparte also used all of those reactionary elements in France to put himself in power, but then, like Bismark in Germany, he used the state to more rapidly develop industrial capital, in the process, thereby, undermining the socio-economic, and political power of the petty-bourgeoisie, and enhancing the power of the bourgeois state. And, the irony is that, whether this was or was not the plan of Boris Johnson, the reality of the contradictions of Brexit, is leading him into exactly the same path.
The reactionary petty-bourgeoisie that voted for Brexit and for Boris did so, because they wanted to be able to free themselves of state regulations that set minimum standards on things like wages and conditions, consumer rights, environmental protections and so on. They expected to be able to cut wages and conditions with gay abandon. But, what does Boris now promise them? He promises them that the real purpose of Brexit was to ensure that wages rise hugely! He and the Tories around him have now declared open war on all those small businesses that have only survived as a result of years of paying low wages, subsidised by a huge welfare state that made up those low wages to a subsistence level by in work benefits, the payment of astronomical levels of Housing Benefit to landlords that charged equally astronomical rents.
During the 1980's, it was the heyday of that small business class, of the small independent truck drivers, or those that hired a few more drivers, who were able to assist the Tories by breaking through miners' picket lines, in 1984-5, or the small companies that ran coach and bus companies ferrying in the scabs, and who benefited from the deregulation and privatisation of public transport. Now, Boris and the Tories are telling all of these former allies that they are all parasites that have been exploiting the workers, by paying them low wages, failing to invest in training or capital to raise productivity, and dependent on state handouts and imported labour. All of these latter statements are, of course, true; the small business class has been doing those things, but the response is not to back Boris's own belated epiphany, and his solution of causing even greater misery and disruption!
The reality is that the immediate cause of all of the shortages the dislocations, and so on across Britain, is a combination of a rapid upsurge in demand, but which the UK economy peculiarly cannot cope with, because of all of the restrictions and constraints that Brexit has imposed on it. The point is well made in this RTE radio interview in which Brexiter Andrew Bridgen is torn apart by Neale Richmond TD. If only Starmer and labour could attack Johnson and the Brexiters so clearly and aggressively, but Starmer has collapsed into the same reactionary nationalism as the Tories. The reality is that it is the shortages caused by Brexit along with the huge oceans of liquidity put into circulation over the last 30 years, that is now feeding into rampant inflation, that is causing prices to spiral, and for wages to scramble to keep up. It is not a deliberate policy of the government, but simply the inevitable consequence of the chaos it has caused, and which it is now trying to justify. And, of course, the immediate beneficiaries of that are not going to be either workers, or that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie.
The latter are inefficient because of their small scale of operations, and because being undercapitalised they employ a higher than average amount of labour. When money wages rise, it hits them far harder than the big capitals, who employ proportionately less labour, and whose market dominance means that, in any case, they can more easily absorb and pay those wages. The firms that go to the all and the small businesses, whilst big capital expands, and picks up the capital of their failed competitors on the cheap.
As all of those contradictions thrown up by Brexit intensify, the more Johnson will find himself facing two ways at the same time.
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