There is a certain symmetry to the return of David Cameron to government. In 2012, I wrote of the rising challenge of Boris Johnson to David Cameron, and its Shakespearean overtones. It reinforced the points, made earlier that year, in my posts comparing the challenge of Johnson to that of Louis Bonaparte, described by Marx, in The Eighteenth Brumaire. In both cases, what was involved was a rising social weight of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its political reflection. The petty-bourgeoisie, as Marx describes, like the peasantry, is too amorphous, too individualistic, to become the ruling-class. Its power, as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky describe, resides in its numbers, which is most apparent when it can be mobilised electorally. It lacks the ownership of the large scale means of production, and control of the state, of the bourgeoisie, and the concentrated economic and industrial power of the proletariat, arising from its relation to those means of production.
It explains the different tactics and strategies of these different classes. The bourgeoisie, relies on its ability to withhold capital, and to utilise its permanent state, including standing armies, whilst the proletariat uses its ability to withhold labour, to occupy and seize control of the means of production, concentrated in the large urban areas, whereas the petty-bourgeoisie, like the peasantry before it, is forced to resort to individualist acts of terror, and destruction of property, and a strategy of rural and urban guerrilla warfare, as seen in the tactics and strategy of Maoism, Guevarism and other forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism. The proletariat, too, must resort to violence, but, as Trotsky describes, in relation to the Chinese Revolution, that violence, to defend itself, flows, also, from its tactics and strategy.
Having undertaken strikes, it must organise defence squads to protect picket lines; having occupied workplaces, it must defend them against attempts by the state, and/or fascist gangs (be it those of the national bourgeoisie, or those used by some foreign colonial/imperialist state) to recapture them, and that defence involves the creation of proletarian, democratic structures (factory committees, soviets etc.), which, in turn, ensures the arming of the workers, creation of workers' militia and so on. The very workers' occupation of factories, and control of production, in arms industries, becomes, also, the means of arming the workers, and carrying through a process of permanent revolution, in the main urban centres.
As Marx described, in conditions where the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie forms a sizeable social force, however, whilst the other social classes are weak (which may be for a variety of reasons, including both the bourgeoisie and proletariat cancelling each other out), the petty-bourgeoisie can be mobilised under a strong, charismatic leader (Bonaparte), that counteracts the diffuse nature of those social forces, by imposing order and discipline on them, from above, usually on the basis of an appeal against some “other”, requiring a strong state to ensure “order”. Being “against” something, rather than “for” something, is the simplest means of effecting such fragile unity, because it remains vague, whereas, any attempt to present a positive political programme, soon, exposes the diffuse nature of the petty-bourgeoisie, and the contradictions within it (as is also the case with Popular Frontism).
The strength of the petty-bourgeoisie, as stated above, lies in its numbers, which, as Trotsky describes, is most apparent when it is simply a matter of counting up votes. That has been manifest in recent decades, for example, with the mobilisation of the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie “against” the EU, which was really a vote “against” immigrants, and against foreigners in general, who were presented as a threat to the defence of the fatherland, of national sovereignty and national self-determination. It always breaks down, once it becomes a matter of plotting a positive course forward, as happened with the reality of Brexit faced by the Tories, and the reality of Trump's Presidency. The most obvious manifestation, was the ultimate Brexit madness embodied in the few weeks of the Truss government, in 2022.
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