Blue Labour has spent the last year acting as apologist for the Zionist state in Israel as it openly committed genocide in Gaza, and continued to violently steal land from Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including the use of organised rape and torture of Palestinians. When the ICJ ruled that there was a prima facie case that genocide was being committed by the Zionist state, Starmer and Blue Labour continued to deny it, and that holocaust denialism was emphasised by their suspension, and subsequent expulsion of Labour candidates and members for merely stating the truth about that genocide already announced by the ICJ, and subsequently ICC, as it issued arrest warrants for the main Zionist butchers, hopefully to be followed with warrants for the arrest of its accomplices in the governments of the US, EU, and Britain.
Its no doubt with this latter possibility in mind that the facilitators of that genocide in the US, EU and Britain have, more recently, tried to provide themselves with some fig-leaf of cover against future prosecutions and incarceration for their part in what is the worst atrocity, so far, of the 21st century, and, on a proportional basis, already ranks as one of the worst atrocities committed in the last hundred years, exceeding those in Rwanda, Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, Kenya and elsewhere.
The US, of course, simply used its power as world hegemon to attack and sanction the ICJ and ICC themselves, illustrating that its so called “democratic imperialism”, and international rules based order, is just a mask covering the iron fist of its own global interests, and intent on enforcing them, militarily, irrespective of any concept of freedom or democracy, or morality. Like the absolute monarchs of previous centuries, it believes that, when it comes to global relations, it is the law, it is the state, and “apres moi, la deluge”. It is why, the US never accepted the jurisdiction, and never signed up to the ICC.
But, it is clear that these holocaust deniers in the governments of the US, EU and UK, and even more those that may soon be ejected from those positions, recognise that, across the globe, they are in an increasing minority, and, now, at risk of having some other country, slap the bracelets on them for their nefarious acts, and drag them in front of the world's court, in a way they thought they had so structured things that it would only be the politicians of their enemy states that faced such action. The pictures of that happening to one of their favourite dictators of the last century – Pinochet – must flash before their eyes, as they go to bed at night.
So, Biden/Harris have tried to give themselves a fig-leaf of a court defence, by claiming that they have pressed the Zionist state to accept a ceasefire. But, that is as meaningless as their statements, over the last 50 years, that they were seeking the chimera of the Two State Solution. Without the support of the US, the Zionist state would collapse, and so, if they really sought a Two State Solution, they would simply have told the Zionists to stop preventing it.
There are already two states on the territory of Israel-Palestine. It has proven no solution, simply because the more powerful Zionist state, militarily prevents the Palestinian state from functioning, and it is supported in doing that by US imperialism, backed by British and EU imperialism, and their hangers on in NATO. No Marxist can have any excuse for not understanding that that was inevitable, because it is the way imperialism works, of the bigger more powerful states, inevitably dominating the less powerful states, just as larger capitals dominate and eventually eliminate smaller capitals.
As Trotsky put it more than a century ago.
“Capitalism in its international relations pursues the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. Competition is the means of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of Big Capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and the greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital, and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the Great Powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps.”
But, of course, the US and Western imperialism, has no interest in a two-state solution, and it has used it simply as a sop to bourgeois, Palestinian and Arab politicians, and to gullible liberals and moralists in the West. The Zionist state is its vehicle in the Middle-East, alongside its other client states in the Gulf, and yet, even they, as well as those in Egypt and Jordan, have shown themselves not to be dependable, not least because of their lack of stable support from their own populations, as seen in the downfall of Mubarak in Egypt, and election of Morsi, requiring yet another military coup to remove him.
And, in the Gulf, as the BRICS+ imperialist bloc rises in significance, with the driver of Chinese industrial capital, opening up the world, so too those Gulf economies are being lured away from the US, and towards that alternative pole. As I noted recently, its why Trump has merely said openly what the policy of US/western imperialism is, in that regard, when he called for Netanyahu to be left to finish the job of exterminating the Palestinians, much as European settlers did against American natives, and Britain did against the aborigines in Australasia.
So, as the Zionist state implements that genocide and extermination of the Palestinians, and as western imperialism not only stands by and watches, but provides it with the weapons, finance and technology to do it, those politicians in the governments of western imperialism, also, need to keep a weather eye on their own necks, and potential for being hauled before the world court at some future time. The epitome of it was the action of Blue Labour at the point where its continued opposition even to a ceasefire was becoming untenable and an albatross around its neck ahead of the General Election. It could not be seen to be backing the SNP motion that called for a ceasefire, on the basis of noting the genocide being committed by the Zionist state, and so used its muscle over the Speaker, to have him prevent the SNP motion being discussed, and have the watered down Blue Labour motion discussed instead, which made no reference to the genocide.
That bureaucratic method is typical of the Bonapartism of Blue Labour. Blue Labour is a representative of the same reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist interests and ideology that stand behind Zionism. As Marx set out, in The Eighteenth Brumaire, the petty-bourgeoisie are too amorphous to become the ruling class, but they are large in numbers, even today. As I have set out recently, since the 1980's, in Britain, they have grown by around 50%, reversing a two century trend of relative decline.
It is that increase in their relative social weight that is the material basis of the movement of the Conservative Party from being a conservative social democratic (neoliberal) party, based on the petty-bourgeoisie, but representing the interests of large-scale, socialised capital, to being a petty-bourgeois, nationalist party, representing the interests of that petty-bourgeoisie, as indicated by Brexit. That same process is seen with the Republicans in the US, and similar parties across Europe.
Blue Labour has sought to also occupy that ideological and electoral space. But, precisely because the petty-bourgeoisie cannot form the ruling-class, and because the interests of petty-bourgeois nationalism are antagonistic to those of large-scale, socialised capital, the petty-bourgeoisie can only govern on the basis of Bonapartism. It requires that the main classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat are themselves weak and divided. Bonapartism itself can take numerous forms on a spectrum of superficial democracy that looks a lot like bourgeois democracy, to at the other end outright military rule, and dictatorship. Those features are seen in Starmer's approach inside the Labour Party, and are, now, transferred into the realm of government itself.
So, when Blue Labour's David Lammy, the Foreign Secretary, announced the pitiful restriction of just 10% of Britain's arms sales to the Zionist regime, it was no surprise that he spent most of the time reiterating his own Zionism, and support for that Zionist regime, even as it carries out that internationally recognised genocide, as well as trying to pretend that the lack of equivalence between that Zionist state, and Hamas was all on the side of the Zionist regime!
Of course, there is no equivalence, but contrary to Lammy, it is the Zionist state, a huge permanently mobilised, military regime, a clear manifestation of Bonapartism, backed by the world's most powerful military machine, which has all of the power, and which has used it continuously, over the last 80 years to impose itself on the Palestinians, and surrounding Arab states! To try to claim some lack of equivalence, based on the false notion that this reactionary, Bonapartist regime is “democratic” is ludicrous, and were it to be true, would only demolish completely the old argument that “democratic” states do not carry out genocides! Lammy's argument is, not surprisingly, the same argument of non-equivalence that Farage, and the other reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists used in relation to the policing of the recent riots by far-right thugs, of two-tier policing.
Blue Labour is a manifestation of those class relations. It represents the interests of reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism. That petty-bourgeois nationalism is antagonistic to the interests both of the ruling class of speculators, whose revenues ultimately depend upon the profits of large-scale socialised capital, which itself depends on the free movement of that capital, as manifest in the growth of the EU, and of the process of globalisation, and of the working-class, which is the collective owner of that socialised capital. The ruling class is itself tiny, amounting to only around 0.1% of the population, and its power comes from its ownership of the vast majority of fictitious-capital, and control of the state, through which it also controls the real industrial capital. The working-class, is currently weak, having suffered a severe defeat in the 1980's, and relative diminution in its social position, from which it is still recovering.
But, the petty-bourgeoisie represents only around 30% of the population, and is amorphous. Blue Labour required the vote of the working-class, and professional middle-class, at the same time as seeking to attract to it the votes of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, symbolised by the “white van man”, and its attendant layers of lumpen proletarians, visible in the ranks of those that turned out on the streets to riot in the recent weeks. The multiple contradictions it faces in trying to hold that electoral coalition together are more than obvious. And, in the election itself, it was apparent in the fact that Blue Labour got less votes than Corbyn's Labour obtained in 2019, and only around the same share of the vote, whilst its share of the vote, and number of votes cratered compared to Corbyn's Labour in 2017.
Yet, the propagandists of Blue Labour have continued to present this as a landslide of historic proportions. That is only true if, like a good Bonapartist, you are not ashamed to achieve those results on the basis of what amounts to an electoral system based on ballot-rigging. So, its also no surprise to see Zionists and right-wing Labourites such as Eric Lee, defending Blue Labour's performance against criticism from consistent democrats and Marxists, as he set it out in the Zionist rag of the AWL. He wrote,
“American astronauts did not set foot on the Moon in July 1969. In 2001, the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were brought down by a controlled explosion, and not by hijacked airliners that flew into them. Russia did not invade Ukraine but merely launched a “special military operation” in self-defence against the threat of a Nazi regime in Kyiv. Climate change is not real. The earth is flat.
Let’s add one more to that list: the Labour Party did not win the general election last week.”
Even Lee can't claim that critics of Blue Labour do not recognise that, in terms of Britain's corrupt undemocratic electoral system, it won the election. But, his whole argument is based upon the defence of that lack of democracy of the system! He rightly criticises Trump for claiming that he didn't lose the 2020 election, but, on that basis, you might also justify the election of George Bush against Al Gore, even though Gore obtained more votes in total, or the election of the Tories in 1951, even though they polled fewer votes that Attlee's Labour Party, and won a smaller share of the vote.
Lee tries to justify this by claiming that it was all about utilising the system effectively, even though, as I've shown, that argument is flawed, also, because even where Blue Labour was supposed to have targeted its efforts in particular seats, it still didn't improve its support over 2019, in most cases, and in pretty much every case, did worse than in 2017. In reality, Lee's argument is that of every Bonapartist, or bureaucratic, basing themselves on manipulating the system, rather than building real majority support. It is the method of Stalin, who said its not the casting of the votes that determines elections, but who counts them.
This is a house of cards that has been built on rotten foundations. Its collapse is inevitable.
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