On Thursday, Vote Against Reactionary Nationalists

The most pernicious political force in the world, currently, is reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, reflecting the fact that the petty-bourgeoisie, itself, has grown, by 50%, over the last 40 years. Its social weight has risen, and its reflection is found in the development of Right-wing populism, both in the form of new Far Right parties, and the take over of existing conservative parties, by their fellow travellers. It comes at a time, when the social weight of the working-class has been reduced, in the developed economies, and where the social weight of the bourgeoisie itself, which is always tiny, in terms of its numbers, has had to rely increasingly, on its control of the capitalist state, and consequently, increasing bureaucratism. Even large parts of its popular ideological apparatus, in the media, has succumbed to the pull of the populist Right, as it sought to attract audiences.

So, on Thursday, in the various local elections in Britain, it is important in the absence of any significant international socialist campaign or alternative, to vote against reactionary nationalist candidates, whether they be standing as Reform, Conservative, or Labour. Marxists obviously, are not going to advocate voting for Reform candidates, but also, not for Conservatives, even if the individual Conservative candidate, is one of the very few who oppose Brexit, and the drift to the Right. However, nor can we simply advocate a vote for Blue Labour candidates, standing on the platform of a reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda, especially at a time when a Blue Labour government is also actively attacking workers rights and living standards. Where Labour stands candidates that oppose the actions of Starmer, and his reactionary nationalist agenda, we can vote for them, but firstly, the authoritarian regime within Labour is likely to have rooted out any such progressive candidates, and secondly, Labour should not be able to simply count on votes for its candidates just as an alternative to Tories or Reform.

The reality is that both Labour and Tories are going to get smashed in these elections, as Professor John Curtice has set out. A large chunk of Tories are abandoning to Reform, and no doubt, some of the 25-30% of Labour voters, who backed Brexit, will be drawn in that direction too, despite the fact that many of the problems they face, today, are a direct result of the Brexit that Farage was able to engineer. In the same way, as Trump's own Brexit, in the US, is causing chaos, and damaging the rights and living standards of millions of Americans, most notably the poorest, a dwindling, but sizeable number of them, continue to hold illusions in him. But, that reactionary nationalist vote will continue to be spread, on Thursday, between Reform, Tories, and Blue Labour. In total, it accounts for less than 40% of the electorate, meaning an even split would give each of these reactionary parties 13% of the reactionary nationalist vote.

The Tories retain some of their vote, however, from the professional middle-class, but it is disappearing rapidly towards the Liberals, and even Greens, as well as, in some places, where they stand, the Rejoin EU Party. Blue Labour will suffer most, as the polls indicate, because the vote it got in 2024, as voters held their noses, to vote for it to get the Tories out, will no longer be there. So, in addition to that 13% of the reactionary nationalist vote (about 5% of the total vote), Labour won the vote of progressive voters that took it to its 30% vote share. The current polls show that support has cratered. As well as middle-class Conservative voters moving towards the Liberals and Greens, the local elections will even more see, progressive, former Labour voters head in that direction. In short, the reactionary nationalist vote amounts to around 40% of the electorate, leaving a 60% majority up for grabs. The idea that it will be Reform that will be the big winner, is, then, not at all inevitable, if progressive voters vote for the best placed anti-Brexit candidates in each seat.

Does this advice contradict the idea that, Marxists are in favour of working inside the Labour Party? Not at all. The issue of working inside the Labour Party, or any other large Workers Party, is not a question of principle, but, merely of tactics. It simply reflects the fact that our own numbers and resources are tiny. When Trotsky drew up the theses on the United Front, agreed by the Communist International, he noted that, the United Front could only be considered, in conditions where the Communists had around 40% of the working-class backing them, whilst the reformist socialists had the other 60%. If the Communists already had a clear majority behind them, they would not need to propose a United Front, whilst if they had less than 40%, there would be no reason why the reformists would bother with them. Today, Communists have less than 4%, let alone 40% of the working-class behind them, and so, working inside the existing main workers' parties, no matter how reactionary they may be, is simply a fact of life forced upon us, as a tactic, if we are to be able to speak to the most advanced sections of workers, on a day to day basis, other than to offer them nothing more than support for their industrial struggle that amount to noting more than bargaining inside, and so accepting the continuation of capitalism.

Being members of the Labour Party, and all of its continued connections to the rest of the Labour Movement, particularly the trades unions, and so being able to continually engage in such political struggles, is not at all the same thing as simply backing Labour candidates in elections. For Marxists, elections to bourgeois parliaments, are not even that significant, as Lenin set out, in “Left-Wing Communism”, and "State and Revolution". In the latter, Lenin quoted Engels' comment that they act merely, as an index of the development of workers' class consciousness, and nothing more. At the present time, its clear that the index is at a very low level indeed. In the former, Lenin set out that bourgeois elections are important events that enable the Communists to raise political ideas, but he notes that, important as this is, it is never as important, as their activity in supporting strikes, and the self-activity of workers.

“... action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation.”

(Left-wing Communism)

We are not dupes of bourgeois-democracy that believe elections to such parliaments are important in themselves that, they offer the possibility of socialism, and so we certainly have no truck with the idea that we should simply aim at winning a majority of seats for its own sake, irrespective of the programme and ideas upon which that majority was won, which itself can only further sow illusions in bourgeois-democracy, and so, inevitably demoralise the working-class when the promises made to them fail to materialise. We engage in elections for quite the opposite reason, to expose the illusion of bourgeois-democracy, and to offer revolutionary alternatives to workers to the bourgeois solutions of the social-democrats, and reformist socialists. How we do that depends upon the given material conditions of the time, in other words, it is a question of tactics not principle. Ideally, we would have a mass Communist Party to stand in elections, but we don't.

So, we have to relate to workers where they are, in the main workers' parties, which in Britain, means the Labour Party. Unlike the Liberals or Greens, it is the Labour Party that is still connected to the trades unions, and so on. It is in the Labour Party that the mechanism exists for challenging its programme, and fighting to change it. That political struggle, drawing in millions of workers, of itself is important, indeed, far more important than whether this or that candidate gets elected to parliament, or some toothless local council. Only parliamentary cretins can think otherwise. But, its precisely for that reason, of engaging in political debate, and challenging the reactionary nationalist agenda on which Blue Labour is now engaged, that we can say to workers vote against reactionary nationalist candidates whichever party they represent.

Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy, XIII – Dialectics. Negation of the Negation - Part 6 of 18

Lenin continued to explain that Russia was dominated by the petty-bourgeois, commodity producers and peasants, whilst the Bolsheviks had created a state-capitalist shell, “(grain monopoly, state controlled entrepreneurs and traders, bourgeois co-operators)” which sought to plan and regulate those aspects of the economy, and which, characterised its nature during this transitional phase, much indeed, as any other state-capitalist economy would do. But, in the developed economies of Western Europe and North America, where that large-scale monopoly capital dominated, and had dominated for several decades, not only the petty-bourgeoisie, but also the remnants of the small private capitals were subordinated to the interests of that monopoly capitalism, and its state. That was not the case in Russia, or in other developing economies. The petty-bourgeoisie, and the small private capitals still predominated, and it was their existence and activity that continually threatened the further development of that planned economy.

It “is pierced now in one place, now in another by profiteers, the chief object of profiteering being grain.”

Indeed, as Engels noted in his Prefaces to The Condition of The Working Class, this kind of “profiteering”, of relying on petty, thieving and cheating, is characteristic of the behaviour of the petty-bourgeois, methods that were abandoned as counter-productive by large-scale, industrial capital. It is one reason that this petty-bourgeoisie, and the small private capitalists, form the most vicious and reactionary oppressors of the workers. Yet, it is with those enemies of the working-class that the petty-bourgeois socialists have sought to ally the working-class to oppose “monopoly capitalism”, and “imperialism”.

Lenin continued,

“It is not state capitalism that is at war with socialism, but the petty bourgeoisie plus private capitalism fighting together against both state capitalism and socialism. The petty bourgeoisie oppose every kind of state interference, accounting and control, whether it be state capitalist or state socialist. This is an absolutely unquestionable fact of reality, and the root of the economic mistake of the “Left Communists” is that they have failed to understand it. The profiteer, the commercial racketeer, the disrupter of monopoly—these are our principal “internal” enemies, the enemies of the economic measures of Soviet power... We know perfectly well that the economic basis of profiteering is both the small proprietors, who are exceptionally widespread in Russia, and private capitalism, of which every petty bourgeois is an agent. We know that the million tentacles of this petty-bourgeois hydra now and again encircle various sections of the workers, that, instead of state monopoly, profiteering forces its way into every pore of our social and economic organism.”

It is seen again, today, in conditions where, since the 1980's, the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by around 50%, with a consequent rise in its social weight, and manifestation of that politically, in the rise of petty-bourgeois nationalism (Brexit, Trumpism, Starmerism etc.), and has similarly been accommodated to by the petty-bourgeois Left and its “anti-capitalism”, which really means anti-monopoly capitalism.

Lenin notes,

“To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics (bold AB), and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.

Socialism is inconceivable without large-scale capitalist engineering based on the latest discoveries of modern science. It is inconceivable without planned state organisation, which keeps tens of millions of people to the strictest observance of a unified standard in production and distribution. We Marxists have always spoken of this, and it is not worth while wasting two seconds talking to people who do not understand even this (anarchists and a good half of the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries).”

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Trump's Brexit

Trump was a big supporter of Brexit. Those behind Trump, such as Steve Bannon, built a powerful international organisation dedicated to spreading the ideas of petty-bourgeois nationalism, facilitated by their access to various maverick billionaires. Some of that also came from Russia, along with the use of teams of people and bots intervening in elections, facilitated by organisations such as Cambridge Analytica, to target voters, and swing elections in favour of these reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalist ideas. The trouble was that, as Brexit showed clearly, winning an election or a referendum did not change the underlying reality, it only meant that it now had to be faced squarely.

Farage could gloat, as he stood on numerous occasions alongside Trump, but, having won the referendum, with the support of Boris Johnson and others, it didn't change the fact that there was no majority in parliament for it, and, indeed, no majority of voters either. Only 37% of the electorate actually voted for Brexit, and that was on just one day, with every subsequent poll showing a clear majority in favour of remaining in the EU, and, now, of re-joining the EU. For four years after the Brexit vote, the minority of Brexit supporting MP's, could not get a deal through parliament.

Another reason for that was that all of the delusional talk about EU countries rushing to do a deal with Britain, was shown to be a load of tosh. The idea that the EU needed Britain more than Britain needed the EU was shown to be hogwash, and when it came to the question of Britain doing deals with the rest of the world, the reality was again exposed with hogs playing a part again, in Liz Truss's hilarious speech at Tory conference, about selling pork to China. In the end, Boris Johnson could only get a withdrawal agreement with the EU that did not amount to a no deal, which would have been devastating for Britain, by basically capitulating all along the line to the EU. Thar involved agreeing to abide by its rules and regulations, so as to retain access to the EU single market, and keeping Northern Ireland inside the EU single market and customs union, so as to avoid a border with the Republic, and instead, placing the border down the Irish Sea, between Northern Ireland and Britain.

But, having eventually, obtained this Brexit in name only, which was the worst of all worlds, apart from a devastating no deal option, the idea that Britain was somehow going to do lucrative deals across the globe was also exposed. The Tories kept telling us that deals were being negotiated as they spoke, but day after day, week after week, month after month, they failed to appear. Even the much vaunted deal with the US disappeared from the horizon. When deals were done with Australia and new Zealand, they were worse than the deals Britain already had with them, as a member of the EU!

But, now, we see all of the same delusions playing out in relation to the US, as Trump and his regime make all of the same claims about the rest of the world rushing to kiss Trump's arse, desperate to make a deal. Even Starmer who disappeared up Trump's arse on his recent visit, desperate to try to salvage some credibility for the idea that his support for Brexit gave Britain some privileged position, has had to face the reality. In a recent comment, Reeves has had to admit that maintaining Britain's trade relation to the EU is more important than its trade with the US, and the fact is that there is a clear contradiction between the two.

If Britain does a deal with the US to allow in chlorinated chicken, hormone treated beef, and other such crap, which would be detrimental to British consumers, it would also, mean it would cut itself off from Britain's main trading partner, the EU, because all of those things would conflict with EU standards and regulations. Currently, Brexit has caused its trade with the EU to fall significantly, just as a result of all of the increased costs, delays and red tape that it brought with it, it has reduced GDP by around 4%, and is costing Britain around £40 billion a year in cost taxes. But, if it cut itself off from the single market even more, by doing a deal with the US, the effect would be even more immediately damaging.

And, now, all of those same delusions put forward by the petty-bourgeois bourgeois nationalists, in respect of Brexit, are playing out even in relation to the US itself, despite its own huge internal market. Trump's regime has found that, big as it is, the US economy is not an island. It depends on trade with the rest of the world, including with its neighbours in Canada and Mexico. Having claimed that the rest of the world was beating a path to Trump's ass, and his inner circle, despite all of the same claims seen during Brexit, that new trade deals were about to be signed any day now, the reality is that no new trade deals have materialised.

The reality is that, although the US depends on China for a large part of the manufactured goods that appear on the shelves of its stores, such as Wal-Mart, the US accounts for only 15% of China's exports, and merely 2.5% of Chinese GDP.  As the US has cut itself off from the rest of the global economy, as a result of its tariffs and trade wars, China is the one that has been able to fill the resulting void, doing trade deals with others, stepping in with soft power, where Trump's cuts to USAID, have led to its isolation and so on.  In other words, all of the damage done to Britain by Brexit, is now being done to the US, as a result of Trump's own version of it, but on a much larger scale.

Starmer's Trumpist Trajectory On Scunthorpe - Part 5 of 6

Its not the job of Marxists to advise the capitalist state, and certainly not to advise a reactionary nationalist government. So, we have no reason to oppose that state, or the Blue Labour Government nationalising “British” Steel, when the immediate issue, also, affects the jobs of 2,700 workers at the plant. We do, however, have a responsibility to explain to the working-class, as a whole, and not just the workers at the plant, what is involved, and why what is being proposed is not for their benefit.

According to reports, the plant is losing £700,000 a day, or around £300 million per year, even before the effect of Trump's tariffs come in. There is no prospect that that loss is going to get reduced, let alone turned into a profit, for all the reasons set out above. Quite the opposite, so it is not just £300 million a year that the state would be pumping into the plant – the majority of which, also, does not, then, go to the workers at Scunthorpe, as wages, but would go to a series of other capitalist companies supplying the plant – but an indefinite commitment to do so. Let us say, not an indefinite number of years, but just ten. That would be £3 billion. But, if the government has £3 billion to spare, which it continually says it doesn't, as Rachel Reeves embarks on another round of austerity, and cuts payments to pensioners, children, the sick and disabled, it would be better to simply hand it over to the 2,700 workers at Scunthorpe, and let them use it as they see best. That would mean you could give each of those workers, more than £1 million. If I was a Scunthorpe steel worker, I know that would be a far better prospect than having to schlep away for years to come, with the future still uncertain.

After all, if Blue Labour really is worried about national security, and the need to have control over strategic supplies of things like steel, coal, coke, and so on, then, the rational solution is not trying to defend the indefensible, and propping up industries, in Britain, that long ago were shown to be too small, too undercapitalised to operate on any kind of efficient basis, as against the large-scale operations made possible by larger single markets such as those of the EU, China, or the US, but is to reverse Brexit, and gain all of the advantages of being, again, within the protective umbrella of the EU, and its huge, single market, the biggest, by value, in the world! But, Blue Labour has rejected that option, and, in the process, is losing £40 billion a year in tax revenues, as the UK sees its GDP shrink, as a result of cutting itself off from the EU.

But, the reality is even worse than that. If Blue Labour nationalises the Scunthorpe steel works, and, then pumps £700,000 a day, £300 million a year, into keeping it afloat, whilst that may be a welcome lifeline for those 2,700 workers at Scunthorpe, it also has a negative affect on all other workers in Britain – let alone the global working-class, as a result of growing protectionism. In order to obtain that £300 million a year, the government has to raise it, ultimately, from taxes. Those taxes, as Marx showed, are all a deduction from surplus value/profit, and so from the ability of capital to accumulate. Put another way, in addition to the huge hit to UK growth from Brexit, it would mean reducing UK economic growth further, as surplus value rather than going to accumulate capital, and employ additional workers, in industries that are profitable, would instead go to keep afloat an industry that is not efficient.

In terms of the grand scheme of things, this £300 million a year reducing overall economic growth is small beer compared to the damage done by Brexit to growth, and the consequent £40 billion a year loss of taxes. But, as set out above, the logic of the Trumpist, economic nationalist agenda, means that it could never simply be a question of just this £300 million a year for Scunthorpe. The logic would be to also nationalise and bail out every other failed, and inefficient, “British” industry out of taxes that are a drain on the profits of those dwindling number of globally competitive and efficient “British” industries and firms. At the very least, it would act to encourage the share owners of those firms to exercise that “control” over the real capital of those firms, discussed at the start, to shut up shop, in Britain, and move those operations to the EU, or elsewhere.

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 15 of 27

Blue Labour, and its isolationist Brexit adventure, offers no way forward either for British capital, or for workers in Britain. That the delusional ideas of Brexit are now propounded by a reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, Blue Labour government, dependent politically on Trump, and on US imperialism, militarily and strategically, does not change that reality. Far from it, because the US, in its own Quixotic attempt to rewind history, by Trump, is only playing out the same course as Brexit, simply delayed and prolonged, given the nature of US imperialism, compared to that in Britain. The contradictions in that are correspondingly more pronounced, and the consequences, seen in the dramatic falls in global financial markets, and other assets, reflect it, and that is far from over.

As I set out recently, the effects of tariffs will be to raise costs of production, but, in conditions of still tight labour markets, workers, particularly in the US, and increasingly in China, Asia, and the EU, as governments engage in fiscal expansion, as they respond to US trade wars, will continue to spend, and will respond to the higher prices of wage goods/services by simply demanding higher wages. This is not the 1980's or 90's. The effect of the rising costs, leading to higher wages/value of labour-power, will be manifest, not in a recession – though growth may well be less than it would have been – but in reduced profits. In other words, a reversal of what happened as global costs of production were reduced by globalisation, and, as happened, described by Marx and Engels, resulting from the Repeal of the Corn Laws.

Faced with that squeeze on profits, as relative wages rise, the consequence, as in the period of the 1960's/70's, will not be, as Michael Roberts claims, a reduction in capital investment, as the basis of his perennial prediction of slump, but will be that firms have to finance that investment from retained profits – reducing the amount they pay in dividends, and so also reducing share prices – or by additional borrowing from banks, additional bond and share offerings, and so on, again reducing share and bond prices. Rising global interest rates will cause all asset prices to fall, in real terms, as happened between 1965-85.

Financial analysts are currently assuming that company earnings in the US will fall by around 10%, as a result of Trump's trade war, causing a slow down in growth. But, as set out above, even if growth does not slow by that amount, company earnings, i.e. their profits, will fall, as workers wages rise to compensate for higher prices. Company revenues, i.e. sales may rise – especially if increased credit, or liquidity injected by central banks to counter a squeeze on profits leads to renewed inflation – whilst earnings/profits fall in real terms. Certainly, under such conditions, the rate of surplus value would be reduced, and that, along with a higher cost for constant capital, will reduce the rate of profit. If the amount paid out as interest/dividends is checked, as more has to go to finance capital accumulation, whilst this same process raises the demand for money-capital, causing the rate of interest to rise, the inevitable consequence of that is a fall in share, bond and other asset prices, so that the yield on those assets rises accordingly.

If US corporate earnings are reduced by 10%, and this new environment of falling asset prices brings back some semblance of normality, and a reversion to the mean, the current astronomical price-earnings ratios will also crater. Even the pessimistic forecasts for the S&P 500, continue to foresee a p/e ratio of around 18, itself considerably lower than current levels. But, historically, in a bear market, that ratio has fallen to around 8, or less than half the current most pessimistic estimates. On that basis, the S&P 500 could be expected to fall to around 2,000 or less, compared to its current level of 5000. Other asset prices would follow suit. A look at the gyrations of US government bonds over the last couple of weeks illustrates the point. As US stock markets sold off heavily, the money flowed from stocks to bonds, reducing bond yields, but, within days, bonds also sold off, causing yields to rise. There has been a marked steepening of the yield curve as longer dated bonds sold off more aggressively, on the basis that the Federal Reserve has greater influence on short dated bonds, via its policy rates.

Across the globe, yields have surged, as bonds have sold off along with stocks, whilst gold continues to play its role as a long term store of value. By contrast, crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, which have no value whatsoever, have fallen by more than 20%. All of that compounds the problem of Blue Labour and Brexit Britain in trying to resolve its problems based upon the policy of wishful-thinking that was behind its plans for growth, at the same time as implementing austerity, and isolating itself further from its largest trading partner, via the continued pursuit of Brexit, and support for Trump. It is losing £40 billion a year in taxes as a result of being outside the EU, and its attempts to cuddle up to Trump to get a trade deal based on Trump's desire to sell genetically modified crops, chlorine washed chicken, and meat stuffed with antibiotics, growth hormone and other stuff, will only isolate Brexit Britain even further from the EU.

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Northern Soul Classics - Don't Turn Away - Willie McDougal

 

Friday Night Disco - Hey America (Instrumental) - James Brown

This is the B-side, instrumental, to James Brown's Hey America, on the US, King release, and also known as Part 2, or the Singalong version.  In the UK, Hey America was released on Mojo, for Xmas 1970, and played at The Torch, by Keith Minshull at that time.  I bought my copy then, in early 1971, from Bews, in Burslem.  The UK Mojo release, however, had Brother Rapp, as the B-side.

Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy, XIII – Dialectics. Negation of the Negation - Part 5 of 18

As Engels set out in The Critique of the Erfurt Programme, this planned production was already the characteristic of the large-scale socialised capital of the late 19th century, and, increasingly, from then, became the characteristic of developed economies, in the age of imperialism. As Lenin described in Left Wing Childishness, the ultra-Lefts had failed to assess the nature of economic reality in Russia, as still dominated, not even by small private capitals, but still by petty producers and peasants. So, when they accused he Bolsheviks of a “Right deviation” that was leading back to state-capitalism, they simply illustrated they had no compass, because, Lenin points out, in Russia, state-capitalism would represent a huge step forward!

“It has not occurred to them that state capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic. If in approximately six months’ time state capitalism became established in our Republic, this would be a great success and a sure guarantee that within a year socialism will have gained a permanently firm hold and will have become invincible in our country.”

Of course, that would not be the case in the developed capitalist economies of Western Europe and North America, where that process of the development of large-scale, monopoly capital was already a fact of history, and in the era of imperialism, became manifest as, already, state monopoly capitalism, with those huge monopolies/oligopolies and trusts and cartels, via the stock markets and financial institutions, the central banks and so on, increasingly planning production, and planning and regulating the economy itself, as Marx and Engels set out in Capital III, Chapter 27, and later, in more detail in Anti-Duhring, and Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.

As Lenin continued, it is imperialism/state monopoly capitalism which is the material basis of socialism.

“Here we come to the root of the economic mistake of the “Left Communists”. And that is why we must deal with this point in greater detail.

Firstly, the “Left Communists” do not understand what kind of transition it is from capitalism to socialism that gives us the right and the grounds to call our country the Socialist Republic of Soviets.

Secondly, they reveal their petty-bourgeois mentality precisely by not recognising the petty-bourgeois element as the principal enemy of socialism in our country.

Thirdly, in making a bugbear of “state capitalism”, they betray their failure to understand that the Soviet state differs from the bourgeois state economically”.

Of course, in the years following the Stalinist degeneration, and its impact on the global labour movement, as it sank into social-democracy, this “petty-bourgeois mentality” became pervasive. In the form of the Popular Front, it subordinated the working-class to the interests of petty-bourgeois nationalism to oppose “imperialism”, and also subordinated the working-class to the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie to oppose “monopoly capitalism”, and “fascism”, despite the fact that the petty-bourgeois nationalists are, as with all petty-bourgeois, the most reactionary oppressors of workers, and also form the foot soldiers of fascism. In the 1960's, as a New Left arose, often describing itself as Trotskyist, in the student milieu, and in the various anti-imperialist movements of that time, this petty-bourgeois mentality, and popular frontism became pervasive, and has continued since, in the form, also, of “anti-capitalism”, as well as all of the alliances with vicars, such as the Anti-Nazi League, and, today social-imperialist, popular fronts such as The Ukraine Solidarity Committee.

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Starmer's Trumpist Trajectory On Scunthorpe - Part 4 of 6

As Trotsky set out, the demand for nationalisation, itself, is only one that Marxists can advocate, in certain specific conditions. That is, in conditions of general revolutionary upheaval, of essentially, dual power, or impending dual power in society. It is only then that such a demand is transitional in nature, and the demand is then addressed not to a capitalist state, but to a Workers Government of centrists (elements wavering between reformist and revolutionary Socialism), Stalinists, and Mensheviks (I use the term Menshevik, deliberately, to differentiate such reformist socialists from the bourgeois social-democrats of today that dominate the main workers parties). As Trotsky says, this demand is, then, raised not because we have faith in such a Workers Government carrying it out, and certainly not in the interests of workers, but precisely to expose the fraudulent nature of such formations that vacillate, and always refuse to actually seize power, and use it against the bourgeoisie. It is the method of permanent revolution, also spelled out by Lenin, in his April Theses, and Letters On Tactics.

It is used in conditions, where the revolutionary situation enables the Marxists to expose the inadequacy of the Workers Government, and to win over the masses, still under the sway of bourgeois-democracy, to the politics of revolutionary socialism, and to demand that power, then, pass to those revolutionary masses organised in workers councils, factory committees, and other such organs of direct proletarian democracy, and state power. Just to set this out, is to show how far it is from the current conditions of a petty-bourgeois, reactionary, nationalist, Blue Labour Government, under Starmer, being led into the proposal to nationalise “British” Steel, and doing so, whilst a nationalistic, and racist campaign is being waged, in the capitalist media, to blame China for the failure of the "British" steel industry. Of course, the Chinese company that came in to rescue “British” Steel, in Scunthorpe, was, itself, the fourth company brought in to try to make it viable.

We, now, hear that, in order to operate efficiently, the Scunthorpe plant must not be hamstrung by all of the “woke” (whatever that means) concerns over the environment that are, also, supposed to explain the inefficiency of “British” steel production, as it has to abide by environmental policies for Green energy, and reduction of carbon emissions. To be honest, I don't think you have to be in the least “woke”, if you or your kids suffer from asthma or emphysema, or COPD, and other health conditions, as a result of living near to some hugely polluting industry, to recognise the need to clean it up! But, already, we are told that to save Scunthorpe all of those woke, green policies will have to be ditched, just as to do a trade deal with Trump, we will have to eat chlorinated chicken, GM food and other such stuff, all of which would, of course, mean that the possibility of having any kind of closer trading relation with our main trading partner, the EU, on which Britain relies for its economic future, despite Brexit, would disappear.

The coke and coking coal, itself, of course is imported. Thatcher, as chief shareholder in the "British" nationalised coal industry, in the 1980's, having defeated the miners, started the process of closing down all of the remaining coal mines, so, without the coal mines, and associated coking plants used to power not just steel production, but also power stations and so on, it must be imported. A rumour then circulated in the media, as anti-Chinese racism, and war hysteria is whipped up, that the Royal Navy was going to have to be used to ensure the safety of the ships bringing in the coke for supply to Scunthorpe. Safety against what, of course, was never spelled out, but the implication was clear. If we need “British” steel for national security reasons, to protect us from the “inscrutable” and untrustworthy Chinese, and their connections to the “mad” Putin, then, obviously, we need the “British” Navy to protect those vital imports of coke from the impending attack.

But, the logic of that is also clear. If we need “British” Steel for security purposes, to produce the tanks and so on, then, if the steel can only be produced economically by abandoning all of the green “nonsense”, and using coal (even lovely, “clean” coal, as Trump calls it, in his own version of this logic), then, it, also, means that the coal and coke should be produced in Britain, too, for reasons of national security, and so all of the coal mines should be reopened, and so on. This is the Trumpist, reactionary, economic-nationalist logic that flows from the trajectory of Starmer and Blue Labour's argument in relation to Scunthorpe, and is consistent, also, with their economic nationalist ideology when it comes to Brexit, and to sucking up and kissing Trump's ass, to try to get a deal.

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 14 of 27

The idea, now presented by the Brexiters, and petty-bourgeois nationalists of Blue Labour, that, as the world heads for WWIII, and all of these contradictions intensify, Brexit Britain can act as some bridge between the interests of an EU, still clinging to the ideas of conservative social-democracy, and the idiocy of the petty-bourgeois, nationalism of Trump, and his regime, is ridiculous, because, Britain has already, over the last 40 years, increasingly moved away from the relative rationality of that social-democracy, based upon the interests of large-scale, state monopoly capital, and embraced a Quixotic chase after petty-bourgeois windmills, seeking to slay the dragons of the impending future. It began under Thatcher, who was removed, and the proceedings checked, first by Major, and then, by Blair/Brown/Cameron, but, the underlying material conditions, the growth of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and the consequent ideas arising from it, creating the electoral coalitions that arise from it, had its own dynamic that is playing out.

This Quixotic adventure is only capable of having any connection to the real world, because conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) has also run out of road, manifest in the global financial crisis of 2008, and the surreal world it created, after that, in trying to perpetuate itself. That Germany has abandoned its fiscal rules, as it embarks on a program of large-scale state spending on infrastructure, as well as on arms, for which it will require a much higher level of borrowing, pushing real interest rates higher across the EU, and consequently putting the nail in the coffin of the era of astronomical asset prices, simply shows that the recent era of the model of conservative social-democracy (neo-liberalism) is over.

The alternative to that is not the kind of petty-bourgeois nationalism of Brexit and Blue Labour, which increasingly becomes dependent on, and subservient to, Trump's regime in the US, as seen by the way that Starmer disappeared up Trump's arse, even looking weak and spineless compared to the wretched Zelensky, on their recent visit of supplication to the White House, and, now, seen in his inability to stand up to Trump's tariffs, or to join with the EU, to present a common front in advancing the interests of European (which inevitably means also British) capital. Brexit's idiocy is again manifest in the effects on Northern Ireland, which the Brexiters told us was not a problem.

In trying to claim some benefit of Brexit by facing only 10% tariffs, as against the 20% on the EU, Starmer faces the problem that Northern Ireland, under the deal agreed with the EU, is treated as still being part of the EU Single Market and Customs Union, and so, will face, not the 10% tariffs of UK exports, but the 20% on EU exports. Of course, the whole narrative about Brexit Britain's supposed advantage, in that regard, is nonsense anyway. Trump's “reciprocal” tariffs were nothing of the sort, and were simply calculated on the basis of each country's trade surplus with the US. In fact, given that Britain has a trade deficit with the US, the fact that it has, still, had a 10%, across the board, tariff placed on it, means that it has been treated worse than the EU, which has a large trade surplus with the US.

Moreover, Trump has slapped the same 25% tariff on UK car exports to the US that he has done on all other countries' car exports to the US. That appears to be the basis of the spike in UK GDP in February, as manufacturers ramped up production for export to the US, ahead of the imposition of tariffs. SMMT figures show that auto exports from Britain to the U.S. jumped 38.5% from a year earlier in December, 12.4% in January and 34.6% in February. But, that will rebound in coming months. Unlike EU based car producers, however, those in the UK, like JLR, do not have the same huge domestic single market, to sell into as an alternative. For one thing, exported cars are left-hand drive, whereas cars sold into the domestic UK market are right-hand drive.

No wonder, on Starmer's propaganda visit to the JLR factory, recently, the workers could be seen behind him, ignoring him, as they got on with their work, and the cameras studiously avoided any images of those arranged in front of him. JLR has suspended shipments of its cars to the US, reminiscent of the way that, following Brexit, UK fishing communities found they could no longer sell their fish. Brexit was supposed to “bring back control”, but, already, Blue Labour has had to abandon parts of its agenda to ban new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030, just as it abandoned the bulk of its Green Agenda, even before taking office. Against that, Starmer's claim that Brexit Britain was free to chart its own course, and make its own decisions rang out clearly as entirely hollow.

Trump has also slapped 25% tariffs on UK steel and aluminium exports to the US, spelling doom for a UK steel industry that, like fishing and agriculture, was also bound to be devastated as a result of Brexit. It was already dependent upon financing from foreign capitalists, such as the Indian conglomerates of Tata, Mittal and so on. Again, so much for taking back control! Now, those foreign capitalists are recognising reality and pulling out, leaving Starmer with the choice of seeing that happen, and thousands of jobs lost, or else to adopt the “Corbynite” solution of steel nationalisation. Of course, that nationalisation will not change the material reality of the inability of a British steel industry to compete on a global scale, outside the large single market umbrella of the EU. It will simply be a drain on surplus value from those British based capitals that still are competitive, and so reduce potential capital accumulation in Britain further.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy, XIII – Dialectics. Negation of the Negation Part 4 of 18

The idea that the bourgeois social revolution, the expropriation of the small producers, is more violent and prolonged than the transformation of that private capital into socialised property, of course, contrasts with the view equating the latter with the socialist revolution itself. The period of the first negation, began in the 15th century, and continued for 400 years, with millions thrown forcibly from the land, and so on. But, the transformation of this large-scale private capital into socialised capital, i.e. the second negation, began in earnest only in the middle of the 19th century, and was, more or less, completed by the end of that century.

Private capitals continue to exist, and to be created, but, as Marx set out, in Capital I, they are subordinated to that large-scale, socialised capital. The large majority that come into existence quickly go out of existence again. They depend, as a whole, on the economy created by the large-scale, socialised capital, and its state.

But, this socialised capital, as a transitional form of property, is still capital, whether the capital of a worker cooperative, or a multinational corporation. The difference between these two, as Marx sets out in Capital III, Chapter 27, is that, in the former, the workers exercise control over their collective property, whereas in the latter they, currently, do not. Yet, inevitably, this latter form of of socialised capital predominates. The matter, once the workers become a class for themselves, and consciously address this “property question”, as Marx and Engels call it in The Communist Manifesto, should, prima facie, be a simple matter. It requires only that the workers/associated producers assert their legitimate right to control their collective capital, which could be simply legislated, just as, in the 19th century, they asserted their political rights.

Of course, this simply legislated is not so simple at all, just as the demand to simply legislate to provide workers with their political rights required a prolonged struggle. Any such attempt would be met with the determined and violent opposition of the ruling class of speculators and coupon clippers, and their state. It would require the active mobilisation of the working-class, now, fully conscious of its role, to put down such a slave-holders rebellion, arms in hand.

If we move forward to this further development of the socialised capital, therefore, to this period after the slave-holders rebellion has been put down, i.e. to the first period of socialism, we can contrast Marx's description of it to the version presented by Duhring. Engels quotes Marx.

“In order to make the matter comprehensible even to children of six, Marx assumes on page 56 “a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community”, that is, a society organised on a socialist basis; and he continues: “The total product of the community is a social product. One portion of this product serves as fresh means of production again. It remains social. But another portion is consumed by the members of the community as means of subsistence. A distribution of this portion among them is consequently necessary.”” (p 166)

In other words, at this initial stage of Socialism, as set out in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, the means of production are socialised – the socialised capital, which presumes continued commodity production and exchange, and so competition, has metamorphosed into socialised means of production, on the basis of the gradual withering away of commodity production, based on competition, and its replacement by an organic development of planned production that arises naturally from the planned production of the existing monopolies, and planning and regulation of the economy itself by the bourgeois, social-democratic/imperialist state. Trotsky made a similar assessment in talking about the way commodity production and competition would not be abolished straight away, but would pass through various stages of the workers state seeking to increasingly utilise the market, whilst regulating it, through to the replacement of commodity production and competition, as the state increasingly took production out of the realm of exchange-value, and into the realm of the production of use-value, and real wealth.

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Starmer's Trumpist Trajectory On Scunthorpe - Part 3 of 6

Of course, dealing with that problem, of lack of workers' control, is not resolved by simply handing over that control from one group of shareholders to another, and, that includes the capitalist state as shareholder, which is what happens with nationalisation. The simple proof of that is to look at what happened with other nationalisations. When the capitalist state nationalised coal, steel, transport, and other industries after WWII, it did not give any additional control over that capital to workers. Rather the opposite, as the workers soon found, as the state closed down hundreds of coal mines, throwing the miners on the dole, a process that continued for decades after, until they were all gone. As Karl Kautsky noted,

“If the modern state nationalizes certain industries, it does not do so for the purpose of restricting capitalist exploitation, but for the purpose of protecting the capitalist system and establishing it upon a firmer basis, or for the purpose of itself taking a hand in the exploitation of labour, increasing its own revenues, and thereby reducing the contributions for its own support which it would otherwise have to impose upon the capitalist class. As an exploiter of labour, the state is superior to any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, ii can also bring to bear upon the exploited classes the political power which it already wields.

The state has never carried on the nationalizing of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demanded, nor will it ever go further than that. So long as the property-holding classes are the ruling ones, the nationalization of industries and capitalist functions will never be carried so far as to injure the capitalists and landlords or to restrict their opportunities for exploiting the proletariat.”

(The Class Struggle)

There is, as Kautsky, and before him Marx and Engels, set out, nothing socialist about nationalisation, per se, and certainly not when it is done by the capitalist state, as I set out some time ago, That is why Marxists do not propose such nationalisation by the capitalist state. But, as I also set out, the fact that we do not propose such nationalisation by the capitalist state, and explain why there is nothing remotely socialist about it, that does not mean that we oppose such nationalisation, when it occurs, as the ultra-Lefts, and sterile sectarians would have us do. Marx dealt with such sterile nonsense, in his article, “Political Indifferentism”, in which he notes that, as Marxists, we are not in favour of such state ownership, and interference, by the capitalist state, we are in favour of collective workers ownership and control, via cooperatives, and ultimately, as part of a cooperative commonwealth, but does that mean that if the capitalist state intervenes and provides “free” state education, or healthcare and so on, that we would tell workers not to use it, and to oppose it? Of course not. We would, however, continue to set out the limitations, and real nature of such nationalistic and statist solutions, and, although we might argue and support demands and struggles for the “democratic control” of such state enterprises, we would also point out why the capitalist state will never agree to any such control, short of it being forced on them by a proletariat in the throws of seizing state power, arms in hand.

We also, tell workers that going on strike will never, ultimately, resolve their problems, because those problems reside in the lack of their control over the means of production, i.e. the property question. But, we certainly do not tell them, therefore, not to go on strike, in the meantime, to defend their wages – as, for example, the likes of Proudhon did – because, as Marx sets out in Value, Price and Profit, if workers cannot even do that, they have little chance of developing the class consciousness, and organisation required to assert their right to become the ruling-class. And, as Lenin, wrote later, for example, in On Strikes, whilst strikes over wages and conditions are not acts of class struggle, but only distributional struggle, the fact of the workers' organisation within the trades union, and the lessons learned during such strikes, combined with the intervention of Marxists within them, provide the basis for real class struggle, for the workers, as a class, to address the property question.

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 13 of 27

Conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) reflects the interests not of the real socialised industrial capital, or, therefore, its collective owners – the working-class – but the interests of the non-owners, the shareholders, i.e. the ruling class of coupon clippers and speculators. As Marx showed in Capital III, this fictitious-capital stands in opposition not to the workers as workers, but to industrial capital itself, which, in the era of imperialism, of socialised, monopoly capital, is, objectively, the collective property of the workers. It is why Marx and Engels, themselves felt happy about engaging in gambling on stock markets, because, as they saw it, it was only, if they were successful, taking money away from the ruling-class parasites, not from workers.

Marx wrote to his uncle Lion Philips, on 25th June, 1864, for example,

“I have, which will surprise you not a little, been speculating—partly in American FUNDS, but more especially in English stocks, which are springing up like mushrooms this year (in furtherance of every imaginable and unimaginable joint stock enterprise), are forced up to a quite unreasonable level and then, for the most part, collapse. In this way, I have made over £400 and, now that the complexity of the political situation affords greater scope, I shall begin all over again. It's a type of operation that makes small demands on one's time, and it's worth while running some risk in order to relieve the enemy of his money.”

Engels had shares in the London and Northern Railway Co., South Metropolitan Gas Co., Channel Tunnel Corp. and Foreign and Colonial Government Trust Co. As with Marx's comment above, he noted, that trading stocks “simply adjusts the distribution of the surplus value.”. It doesn’t expropriate it from the workers.

It was the idea of conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) that wealth could be created out of thin air, from asset price rises, which formed the new global order of the 1980's and 90's, including in the proposed constitution of the EU, as set out in The Lisbon Treaty.. All those elements that facilitated the free movement of capital and labour, as well as creating a level playing field for capital, within the EU, which provided the kind of macroeconomic planning and regulation, required by large-scale capital to invest, over the long-term, were retained, because that facilitated a growth of profits, and, thereby, the payment of interest/dividends/rents/taxes out of those profits, but all of those elements of progressive-social democracy, of greater industrial democracy, and so on, were ditched.

No wonder that Thatcher was, initially, such an enthusiast for the creation of the EU, and its single market. But, those solutions, created their own contradictions, and sowed the seeds of the destruction of that conservative social-democratic (neoliberal) model. The technological revolution, by raising productivity, created a relative surplus population, the basis of a reduced value of labour-power/wages, and rise in the rate of profit. But, it, also, by the same token, meant that any given level of output was produced with less labour, or that any given increase in output, required less labour than previously. This is the nature of intensive accumulation, which, also, corresponds to the stagnation period of the long wave cycle, producing lower than average growth of output. It is characteristic of such periods, described by Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, in which net output expands relative to gross output. That was exacerbated by the process of deindustrialisation in developed economies, as the production of mature products, requiring only cheap unskilled labour moved to China, and other parts of Asia, etc.

Large numbers of workers, in developed economies, particularly in Britain and the US, where this model was championed by Thatcher and Reagan, found themselves unemployed – it was, also, during this period, that Thatcher introduced 20 changes to the calculation of the number of unemployed, including encouraging the over 60's to declare they had no intention of getting another job, in return for not having to regularly sign on, and encouraging the unemployed to register as sick, rather than unemployed! It was, also, during this period, that large numbers of the unemployed were encouraged to become self-employed, petty-bourgeois, with schemes such as the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, as a Thatcherite application of the reactionary ideas of a Universal Basic Income.

It went together with other such policies to encourage the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, such as the introduction of Enterprise Zones, in which such small firms were encouraged to take advantage of workers, to a greater extent, by the removal of even the most basic rights. The result was an inevitable growth of this impoverished petty-bourgeoisie, and, where they employed small numbers of workers, an increase in their exploitation, whilst doing so in conditions of low levels of productivity. The same thing had been seen in the 19th century, in the form of the sweat shops. It was a more cultured, western version of the same attempt to revert back to some society based upon the rampant free competition of a society of individual peasant producers attempted by Pol Pot, and inevitably, also, collapsing in short order, but having created large scale social destruction.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy, XIII – Dialectics. Negation of the Negation - Part 3 of 18

Engels sets out the way Duhring, again, misrepresents what Marx says, so as to turn it into nonsense, consistent with his characterisation of Marx as simply fitting history into the context of the Hegelian dialectic. He has Marx saying that the private property of the individual commodity producer, i.e. their means of production, which were expropriated from them, in the first negation, are restored to them in the second negation, but, now, in the form of collective property. In other words, he has Marx saying that this private property is preserved, and, at the same time negated.

But, that is not what Marx says. What Marx says, as Engels sets out, is that the means of production become socialised, collective property – not individual property – whilst the product – means of consumption – is private property, once it has been distributed. Marx is not saying that the worker, who is paid their wages by the cooperative, for example, must treat the food they buy, their clothes, or even their car and house, as also, collective communal property. This line of attack on communism has been common for bourgeois ideologists, and can be seen in Marx and Engels response in The Communist Manifesto, to the charge that the communists would introduce “the community of women”.

That is certainly true, currently, in relation to this socialised capital, but, as Marx, also, sets out, in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, even when we move beyond this transitional phase, when the working-class ceases being a class in itself, and become a class for itself, consciously taking control of all of that socialised capital and the state, it will still bear all the scars of such a society, as it emerges from capitalism.

“What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.”

To begin with, workers will still be paid what, for all intents and purposes, appear to be wages, in return for the sale of their labour power, as the means of distributing the products of their labour.

“Marx says: “It is the negation of negation. This re-establishes individual property, for the producer, but based on the acquisitions of the capitalist era, on the co-operation of free workers and on their common property in land and in the means of production produced by labour itself. The transformation of the scattered private property of individuals, arising from their own labour, into capitalist private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted, violent, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private property, already actually resting on socialised production, into socialised property.”” (p 165-6)

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Northern Soul Classics - The Duck - Willie Hutch

 Willie Hutch (William McKinley Hutchison),  aka Richard Temple, and Jimmy Conwell.  This record was also known as "Let's Do The Duck", and covered up as Richard Temple.

Friday Night Disco - No Matter - Jack Radics

 

Starmer's Trumpist Trajectory On Scunthorpe - Part 2 of 6

In terms of the arguments in relation to “British” Steel in Scunthorpe, this is vital to understand. One of the arguments being used to justify nationalisation is that steel production is a vital, strategic industry, because, in the case of war or conflict, the state needs to be able to ensure that it can produce steel, for armaments and so on. Of course, had the UK still been in the EU, an EU state would have been able to produce such steel on an efficient and planned and regulated basis, which is one reason why the EU was created in the first place. But, Britain cut itself off from that with Brexit, which Starmer and Blue Labour have committed to pursue. Blue Labour, however, have argued that the immediate issue is that the company that currently owns “British” steel is Chinese. In reality, what this really means, is that the group of shareholders that control “British” Steel are Chinese. What this illustrates is not what is being claimed, therefore. If companies were actually controlled by their collective owners, i.e. the associated producers within them, then whether the people who simply lend those companies money, be it in return for shares, bonds, or other debt instruments, are Chinese would be irrelevant.

Take another such socialised capital, say a workers cooperative producing coal. Would it matter if the workers in that cooperative took out a bank loan from a Chinese Bank, for example? Of course not. Having agreed the loan, with a stated rate of interest, and period of return, the workers in the cooperative, would then use the money, as money-capital, to buy means of production and so on, they would operate their collective capital, produce surplus value, out of which some would go to finance further capital accumulation, and part would pay the agreed amount of interest on the loan, in the same way part might go to pay rent to a landlord from which they leased the land, and taxes to the state The Chinese Bank would have no legal right to tell the workers how they could use their capital, or any other legal right over the workers' property. Nor, having agreed by contract, the terms of the loan, could they demand its immediate return. But, because capitalist states, acting in the interests of the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, have guaranteed, in law, the right of shareholders to exercise control over capital they do not own, that is not the case that workers, as the collective owners of the socialised capital, find themselves in.

The real issue is not whether the particular group of shareholders/creditors of a company are Chinese or simply “foreign” - in fact capitalist states across the globe, themselves, depend on huge amounts of money being loaned to them by Chinese capitalists, and the Chinese state, which buys the bonds of those countries - but the fact that the control over all socialised capital is given to a select group of creditors, i.e. shareholders, other than in the case of worker cooperatives. Is Britain, saying it does not want Chinese citizens, financial institutions, or the Chinese state, to buy UK government bonds? Of course not. In fact, in the latest statements, government ministers have even had to refuse to rule out allowing another group of Chinese speculators/shareholders to lend the money to rescue the Scunthorpe plant.

If even bourgeois property laws were upheld, then, shareholders should have no more right to exercise control over the capital of a company than any other creditor. Control, even under bourgeois property law, should reside with the owner, not the non-owner, and the owner of socialised capital is the company itself, i.e. the associated producers within the company. The real problem in relation to “British” Steel, in Scunthorpe, and other similar instances, is not that the shareholders/creditors are Chinese, or any other foreigners, but that control over the capital itself is unjustly given by the capitalist state to its non-owners, and denied to its actual collective owners, i.e. the workers within the company.

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Brexit Britain's Bridge To Nowhere - Part 12 of 27

So, it is no wonder that, in Britain, Brexit, as with the EEC Referendum of the 1970's, or, as with the Mosley Memorandum of the 1930's, brought together forces on both the Right and Left, around what was a reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist agenda. The conditions that enabled this delusional set of ideas to flourish, essentially, come down to the inevitable failure of social-democracy, and the failure of socialists to provide a programme around which the working-class could move forward, Instead, socialists were dragged down by the centripetal force exerted by the petty-bourgeoisie, and by the weight of social-democracy and Stalinism in the labour movement.

They settled into a routinism of reformism and economism, falsely equating purely industrial, distributional struggles for class struggle, ignoring the property question, and this process was further encouraged, as they became diffused into a multitude of competing sects, each trying to “build the party” on the basis of a more or less one to one recruitment of militants, based upon their ever more frantic involvement in these day to day activities, and also, reflecting their petty-bourgeois/studentist nature, also seeking quick recruitment by orienting towards those other sectional struggles, and petty-bourgeois nationalist struggles that mobilised large numbers of students and the middle-class, largely on a moralistic rather than class basis. In itself that encouraged the development of popular-frontism.

The progressive social-democracy of the 1960's and 70's, reflected the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and its transitional nature as capital, but, now, capital collectively owned by the “associated producers”, but which was controlled by shareholders. So long as capital expanded, and profits grew, making possible a corresponding increase in dividends/interest/rent/taxes, the ruling class of coupon-clippers were content to simply let those revenues roll in. Its ideological reflection was the increasing planning and regulation of the economy – including, increasingly, the global economy – via state planning bodies such as NEDO, and, at an international level, via para state bodies such as the IMF, WTO, World Bank etc. It was also reflected in the parallel development of corporatism, of the idea of industrial democracy, as already existed in the vanguard of such social-democracy in Germany, and proposed in the EU's Draft Fifth Company Law Directive, and in the 1975 Bullock Commission Report, in Britain.

As Marx and Engels described it in Anti-Duhring,

"In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists."

That reached its limits in the 1970's, as the long wave cycle reached the stage at which labour shortages became so acute that rising relative wages squeezed profits, to the point that a crisis of overproduction of capital occurred. Socialists, still enmeshed in the ideas of the previous 20 years of industrial struggle, bargaining within the system, had no adequate programme, to respond to the changed material conditions. They recognised that the programme of that social-democracy offered no real solution, but other than their own continued engagement in distributional struggles, their only other alternative was an ultimatistic call for revolution, along the lines of 1917. Large sections of that Left combined with the Left-nationalist social-democrats, such as Benn, to oppose even the rational extension of that process, i.e. the EEC/EU.

Having pinned their colours to that mast, they inevitably dissipated their influence when the workers proved to be in advance of them, voting 2:1 in favour of remaining in the EEC. But, the consequent victory of conservative social-democracy over them, was also severely limited in the solutions it could offer. The expansion of the EEC/EU certainly facilitated those solutions, however. It meant that large-scale, socialised capital could operate on a more rational basis, provided by the size of the EU single market, saving British capital from its particular set of restrictions. The further resolution of the global crisis of overproduction of capital of the 1970's, and early 80's, has been described earlier, as also set out in my book, on Marx and Engels Theories of Crisis, which also sets out the inevitability of the current financial and political crisis facing the ruling class owners of fictitious capital, and their state. Capital engaged in a technological revolution to solve the problems faced by a shortage of labour. The microchip revolution, created a relative surplus population, pushed wages and the value of labour-power down, raising the rate of surplus value, and rate of profit. The supply of money-capital from profits exceeded the demand for it for capital accumulation, pushing interest rates down, and setting in train a huge rise in asset prices.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I, Philosophy, XIII – Dialectics. Negation of the Negation - Part 2 of 18

This socialised capital is not only the form that corresponds to production based upon large-scale, cooperative labour, and the use, by that labour, of means of production that are so large that they are beyond the means of individuals, including even the biggest private capitals, but, thereby, imminently becomes social property.

The productive-capital – buildings, machines etc. – in the joint stock company or cooperative, belongs to the company itself, as a corporate entity. But, in practice, what does that mean other than that this corporate entity is comprised of real human beings – workers and managers (associated producers) – engaged in its activities? After all, the corporate entity must make decisions on its operations. Moreover, in order to obtain the money-capital required to purchase the commodities that comprise this capital, the companies borrow, and this money, too, is now required on such a scale that it can only come from the mobilisation of funds from society itself, rather than  the individual.

The borrowing comes from banks that mobilise the scattered savings of millions of people, and from financial institutions that mobilise the savings of millions in pension funds and so on, as well as coming from the issuing, directly of bonds and shares. As Marx sets out in Capital III, this process of “the expropriation of the expropriators” of private capital by socialised capital, represents the “abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself”. The socialised capital, be it a cooperative or a joint stock company/multinational corporation, is still capital, but it is, now, no longer privately owned capital. It is the collective property of the associated producers, and so, already, a fundamental change, a social revolution, in the relations of production has occurred, but is not yet completed. A chrysalis is not a caterpillar, but is not yet a butterfly.

As Marx notes, therefore, this socialised capital represents the transitional form of property between capitalism and socialism.

“The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new, although they naturally reproduce, and must reproduce, everywhere in their actual organisation all the shortcomings of the prevailing system. But the antithesis between capital and labour is overcome within them, if at first only by way of making the associated labourers into their own capitalist, i.e., by enabling them to use the means of production for the employment of their own labour. They show how a new mode of production naturally grows out of an old one, when the development of the material forces of production and of the corresponding forms of social production have reached a particular stage. Without the factory system arising out of the capitalist mode of production there could have been no co-operative factories. Nor could these have developed without the credit system arising out of the same mode of production. The credit system is not only the principal basis for the gradual transformation of capitalist private enterprises into capitalist stock companies, but equally offers the means for the gradual extension of co-operative enterprises on a more or less national scale. The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories, should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other.”

(Capital III, Chapter 27)

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