Britain Heads Towards Bonapartism and Totalitarianism

Britain is hurtling towards totalitarianism and Bonapartism, driven by the combined forces of Sunak's Tories and Starmer's Blue Labour.  In the 1950's, as social-democracy ascended, promoted both by the Tories and Labour, it was referred to as "Buttskellism", combining the name of Labour's Hugh Gaitskell, and the Tories R. A. Butler.  Today, we might talk about "Sumerism", or "Starnakism", but based upon the complete opposite of "Buttskellism".   Starnakism", does not represent the ideas of even conservative social-democracy, or even the liberal bourgeois democracy that preceded it, in the 19th century, as industrial capital became dominant.  It represents a thoroughly reactionary ideology dating back to before that time, which was manifest at the end of the 18th century, beginning of the 19th century, in the Anti-Jacobin, movement that arose in knee-jerk response to the liberal-bourgeois ideas that flowed from the French Revolution.

That reactionary movement led to the introduction of the Combination Acts that outlawed workers forming trades unions, or even meeting in significant numbers on pain of being charged with conspiracy, sedition and so on, and pain of being transported.  Its what led to the transportation of The Tolpuddle Martyrs.  As Marx notes, in The Poverty of Philosophy, those laws and the reactionary ideology that lay behind them, was eventually overturned by the development of that very industrial capitalism, which, in turn, led to the development of the ideology of social-democracy.

"In England, combination is authorized by an Act of Parliament, and it is the economic system which has forced Parliament to grant this legal authorization. In 1825, when, under the Minister Huskisson, Parliament had to modify the law in order to bring it more and more into line with the conditions resulting from free competition, it had of necessity to abolish all laws forbidding combinations of workers. The more modern industry and competition develop, the more elements there are which call forth and strengthen combination, and as soon as combination becomes an economic fact, daily gaining in solidity, it is bound before long to become a legal fact.

Thus the article of the Penal Code proves at the most that modern industry and competition were not yet well developed under the Constituent Assembly and under the Empire."

But, a racist and reactionary Tory Party, indistinguishable from a reactionary, racist, jingoist and Zionist Blue Labour Party, has regressed, following Brexit, logically to supporting those ideas and methods that preceded the rise of large-scale industrial capitalism, and of the social-democracy that emerged from it.  It would be tempting to describe the development of Starmer and Blue Labour in this reactionary nationalist direction as equivalent to the similar previous direction of travel of the Polish national socialists, Pilsudski, or of Mussolini, or the former British Labour Minister, Oswald Mosely into Nazism.  However, all of the former, clearly represented the interests of developed industrial capital; their programmes, as with the Mosely Memorandum, supported by Nye Bevan and others,  were based upon the development of that industrial capital, and, as such, far more radical than anything Starmer's Blue Labour is proposing, as it is hamstrung by its reactionary jingoist support for Brexit, and a desire to get the votes of the petty-bourgeoisie, by not proposing further state intervention, which in turn requires more taxation.

The centre ground has collapsed, because the peculiar conditions that existed from the 1980's onwards, which enabled the development of the delusion that wealth could come from asset price inflation, has itself collapsed.  But, the main bourgeois parties cannot reconcile to that reality.  It had a putative alternative in Corbynism, and Sanders, and similar progressive social-democratic movements in Europe, but the unsound nature of the ideas behind them, the attempts to conciliate the right-wings of social-democracy, inevitably led to their collapse, and the revenge on the working-class by those right-wing, overtly reactionary elements within those parties, whose main concern is to feather their own nests, at whatever cost.

Unable to reconcile their ideas with material reality, they have inevitably resorted, as the "anti-Jacobins" did, to the methods of fore and repression, and of the most grotesque lies against the masses they fear, in order to justify their headlong rush into the development of Bonapartism and totalitarianism.

The Starnakists talk about society being driven into division, but it is they that have stoked that division.  It is the Tories that have stoked the racist hostility to migrants with their endless wittering on about "stopping the boats".  It is they that have talked about "no go areas" in British cities, about the introduction of Sharia Law, and other such blatant lies, who have talked about London being taken over by the Islamist mates of Saddiq Khan, and so on.  Now, when they and their Blue Labour clones get wiped out by the voters in Rochdale, they want in total conformity with the method of such totalitarians, to blame the voters, and to get a new electorate more to their liking, or better still, to restrict the voting altogether, as though having a choice just between two reactionary twins is not bad enough.

But, that bad choice is illustrated by the fact that, much as the Starmer component of Starnakism, makes verbal challenges to the Sunak component, it has no grounds to do so.  It too is racist, and Islamophobic, and equally jingoist, if not more so.  In pursuance of its reactionary nationalist agenda, it has sought to wrap itself even more in the flag than has the Tories.  In pursuit of its Zionism it has expelled anyone even pointing to the genocide committed by its allies in Tel Aviv, as it justifies continuing to support arms sales to them, the better to butcher even more Palestinian babies, whose body parts get flung in all directions, by the huge bombs dropped on them.  The Zionism of Blue Labour inevitably manifests as a racist disregard for Palestinians, and the expulsions of those that object to the genocide being committed against them.

It was manifest in the expulsion of lifelong anti-racists, such as Marc Wadsworth, purely on the spurious statements of Zionist proponents such as Ruth Smeeth, who previously worked for BICOM, itself stuffed full of former members of the Zionist state apparatus.  But, typical of Zionism's approach, which also disparages "the wrong kinds of Jews", i.e. those that oppose Zionism, more Jews have been expelled under Starmer's regime than at any previous time, simply for opposing Zionism.

Society is being divided, but those responsible for that division along ethnic and communal grounds are the reactionary Starnakists, who are desperate to distract from class divisions, and the chaos arising from their continued backing of Brexit.  Even the Torygraph has been forced to admit that Brexit has been a disaster.  The opinion polls continue to show that the majority of the population oppose the genocide that the Starnakists are supporting in Gaza, but the attitude of such totalitarians is to first turn a blind eye to that opposition, then, to libel its visible manifestation on the streets, and in the actual polls, such as in Rochdale, and then to look to the methods of the police state to smash it by physical force.

The Left has been complicit in this development.  For those that ask the question "what is fascism", or how to fight it, look, now to the actions of the Starnakists.