The progressive social-democrats failed in the 1970's and 80's, and opened the door to the conservative social-democrats, and, over the following forty years, the model of the conservative social democrats, also consumed itself, as the interests of fictitious-capital were privileged over the interests of the real industrial capital upon which it depends.
Here is the irony. Conservative social-democracy – represented in Britain by the Blair-Rights, Liberals, et al – recognises the need to go beyond the limitations of the nation state. If you want to advance the interests of fictitious-capital, then, currently, its necessary to boost profits with the minimum amount of investment of additional capital. In other words, you don't want to expand production, for fear of raising the demand for labour and capital causing relative wages and interest rates to rise, and you don't want to spend lots on technological innovation. What you do need is to reduce costs, to boost profits so that more can be diverted to dividends/interest, and that can come from removing all of the restrictions that come from the existence of national borders. Progressive social democracy, seeks to advance the interests of the real industrial capital, which means real capital accumulation, an extension of planning and regulation, but refuses to understand that its impossible without the demolition of existing national borders.
In every case, they failed, or, as in the case of Hollande, never even made the attempt, having talked Left, and then acted Right. The fundamental failure is ideological, a failure to address the real problem – the property question – and an underlying petty-bourgeois, nationalist outlook that prevented, as with the Second International, the creation of an effective international organisation, mobilising the working-class as a global class against the ruling-class, as a global class.
The consequence has been that with social-democracy, in both its forms, having ignominiously failed, and with no credible socialist alternative available – in large part because socialists have presented themselves as nothing more than a militant brand of social-democracy – workers have had to try to fight a rearguard action to defend their living standards, which itself, as trades unions have been weak for the last 40 years, means finding individualist, rather than collective, class solutions. The fact that the average rise in pay resulting from changing jobs has been about double the average from pay rises for workers staying in the same job, is a symptom of that.
That was changing in the early 2000's, as the new long wave upswing got underway, but one of its consequences was to cause interest rates to rise which led to the crashing of asset prices, and the global financial crisis of 2007/8. Its why the ruling class, and its state have been so determined to limit economic growth, and capital accumulation ever since. Its also why, following the consequent policies of fiscal austerity, implemented across much of the globe, after 2010, that rise in the strength of organised labour declined again, and only slowly grew as the inevitable laws of capital, ground away in the background, until the explosion in demand for labour, following the lifting of lockdowns.
In these conditions, and with a 50% rise in the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, compared to the 1980's its no wonder that the representatives of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie used their main strength, numbers, at the ballot box, not to provide any positive solutions, but to simply mobilise a sufficient electoral coalition to vote against the status quo. That is what UKIP, and its later manifestations did, in Britain, and what its equivalents, internationally, have done. But, reality inevitably imposes itself. Having persuaded the petty-bourgeois masses to vote for Brexit, they were faced with the reality of trying to implement it, a process that itself dragged out for more than four years, and, in the end, simply proved that all of the promises made could not be kept. For sections of that petty-bourgeoisie, and lumpen proletariat, the fact that those promises could not be kept, by Johnson, Truss et al, led to thee further delusion that the impossible could be achieved, by instead turning to the font of all of those lies – Farage!
Most, even of them, recognised that Brexit has been a disaster, but, now, turn to a further lie and delusion that, rather than the EU being the source of their problems, it is immigration, in reality, the target of many of their complaints to begin with. Good old Nige will rescue them, they think, even though the reality is that, following Brexit, immigration has risen, and far from it being “illegal immigration”, or refugees crossing he channel on small boats, that immigration has been, legal immigration of tens of thousands of workers with visas and work permits that British firms have brought in to fill jobs. Farage cannot change that, even in the unlikely case that he became Prime Minister. If he tried to prevent such migration, the consequence would simply be even greater labour shortages, and a further rapid decline in the UK economy, compounding the damage done by Brexit, so far.
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