The petty-bourgeoisie, is inevitably nationalistic, because its activities/revenues are constrained within national bounds, and its power resides in its numbers, in determining the outcome of national elections. The Tory government of Thatcher, rested upon the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie, and, as it grew in size, was increasingly dependent upon it. In the past, the Tories, like Labour, had ensured that, in government, they acted in the interests of the ruling class, and large-scale, multinational capital. However, the Tories, now, increasingly dominated, in their membership, by this rising petty-bourgeoisie, were faced with the dilemma of reconciling its small business rhetoric with its big business policies. Its international equivalents, such as the Republicans, in the US, faced the same problem. The rise of the Tea Party, in the US, and of UKIP in the UK, made that dilemma apparent.
The development of Thatcher, during the period, was symbolic. In the early 1980's, Thatcher was the champion of the ruling-class. That ruling-class needed the development of larger single markets, and states, as symbolised by the EU. It was Thatcher that promoted the ideas of the EU Single Market, which, implicitly – because any such single market requires a common currency, a single fiscal regime and so on – requires a single state determining those rules and regulations, and enforcing them, i.e. involved a process of political union. It is only in the late 1980's, as the pressure of this growing petty-bourgeoisie imposes itself on the Tories, that Thatcher abandoned those earlier positions, and becomes increasingly nationalistic and Eurosceptic. However, illustrating the power of the ruling-class, it was also her undoing, as the Tories replaced her with the more EU friendly John Major, instituting the period of internecine warfare that has torn the Tories apart for the last 30 years.
The rise, fall and rise again of Cameron is indicative of these processes taking place in society, and reflected in the political realm, not just within the Tories, but also within the Labour Party. In the post-war period, the Labour Party continued to reflect the past imperialist glory days of Britain, and the delusion that it could stand alone. That baton had passed to the US, and was increasingly, also, taken up by the EEC, as well as Japan, and, in the last twenty years, China and India. As Britain's nearest, and largest, trading partner, the growth of the EEC, represented the most immediate challenge, squeezing British capital. Social-democracy is based on the ideology of the professional middle-class, and its intermediating role between capital and labour (it distinguishes the middle-class from the petty-bourgeoisie, and the latter's ownership of small scale capital).
The reality was that, by the 1960's, British capital was simply too puny to compete with the large economic blocs of the US, EEC, and Japan. The only rational capitalist solution was for Britain to join the EEC. Of course, that did not mean that Marxists had to advocate such a capitalist solution. Our solution was for a Socialist United States of Europe. For workers, “In or Out, The Fight Goes On”. However, that did not mean that we were indifferent on the matter either. A look at Marx's argument in his Speech On The Question of Free Trade, illustrates the point. In it, Marx sets out that both protectionism and free trade are merely strategies used by the ruling class to further their own ends, at any given time, and both used against the interests of workers. However, as Marx sets out in Wage, Labour and Capital, the best conditions for workers exist when capital is able to expand freely, and rapidly. Free trade facilitates that, and heightens the contradictions within it.
“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.”
As, Engels put it in his Preface to Marx's Speech,
“The question of Free Trade or Protection moves entirely within the bounds of the present system of capitalist production, and has, therefore, no direct interest for us socialists who want to do away with that system.
Indirectly, however, it interests us inasmuch as we must desire as the present system of production to develop and expand as freely and as quickly as possible: because along with it will develop also those economic phenomena which are its necessary consequences, and which must destroy the whole system:”
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