Saturday, 13 June 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 17
The last Innovation Cycle, which brought the microchip revolution, peaked in 1985. It acted to raise productivity, create a relative surplus population, release capital, and massively raise the rate of profit over the next 20 years. As Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, such periods are marked by net output rising faster than gross output. But, eventually, as all of the old fixed capital has been replaced by the new machines/technology, that basis of raising productivity dissipates. In the period of intensive accumulation, one new machine replaces two or three older machines, as these older machines wear out. The new machine also requires only one operator, often less skilled, than the two or three operators of the old machines, who are now also replaced. But, now, in the period of extensive accumulation, to increase output, requires not the replacement of existing machines/technology and workers, but the addition of more machines/technology and workers. Productivity growth slows, the relative surplus population stops growing, net output no longer grows faster than gross output. Both net output and gross output rise at a faster pace than in the earlier period, but, now, that is because gross output itself grows faster, capital accumulation expands at a faster pace.
As I have described before, this could be seen clearly, in the late 1990's, and into the early 2000's. The catastrophists, of course, could not accept the idea that capitalism/imperialism could ever be in a condition other than impending crisis, as they anticipated “the next recession”, induced by a continually falling rate of profit. I also, detailed why they were wrong, despite the global financial crisis of 2008, which actually disproved their theories. The 2008 global financial crisis, rather like that of 1847, was a consequence of rising interest rates causing asset prices to drop sharply, and the reason interest rates rise, in such a period, as Marx sets out in Capital III, is because the system has entered a period of more rapid growth, and capital accumulation. It is that, which explains the actions of the global ruling-class, since 2008. It also, explains the real basis of NATO's illegal war on Iran.
The global ruling-class, as owners of fictitious-capital, over the last 40 years, became addicted to speculative capital gains. Those capital gains were simply the other side of the coin to falling interest rates/yields. The revenue produced by the ownership of loanable money-capital is interest, just as the revenue produced by the ownership of land is rent, and the revenue produced by the ownership of industrial capital is profit. Dividends are just the name given to the interest paid on the money-capital loaned in the form of share purchase. As set out earlier, as interest rates fell in a secular downward trend after 1982, the ruling-class saw, on the one-hand, its paper wealth, in the form of financial and property assets, expand astronomically, as huge asset price bubbles were inflated. On the other hand, it saw the yields on those assets drop significantly, as the other side of those higher asset prices.
That did not require the actual revenue to fall, whether it was rent or interest/dividends. If you get £100 of interest/dividends on a bond/share that costs you £1,000 to buy that is a yield of 10%. But, the same £100, if the price of the bond/share rises to £2,000 is a yield of only 5%. The same thing with rent. If you own land/property that produces £10,000 of rent a year, it is a yield of 10% if the property cost £100,000 to buy, but only 5% if the price of the property rises to £200,000. Considering Marx's point referred to earlier, if a disproportionate amount of money goes into the ownership of loanable money-capital (i.e. into the purchase ownership of shares, bonds etc.) then this money-capital is devalued, and manifest in a corresponding rise in the price of those assets, and fall in yields/interest rates.
If you are part of the ruling-class, and your ownership of those financial and property assets runs into billions of Dollars, the fact that yields drop to insignificant levels does not matter. Even a yield of 1% on $100 billion is $1 billion of revenue per year. But, if you are a pensioner from the working or middle-class, a pension pot of $250,000 would, on the same basis, provide you only with an annual revenue of $2,500, and so inadequate to live on. But, the other side of those low yields, was the rise in asset prices. If you could cash in a part of the value of the asset, or borrow against it, that appeared to be as good as getting a yield from it, and, in the case of property, with less effort. It appeared there was no need, even to have the trouble of having tenants in properties, if year after year, the property rose in price by 10%, giving a notional £10,000 on a £100,000 property. Nor did it seem to matter if the money used to buy shares was used by companies to invest in real capital accumulation. Indeed, the latter itself became a hazard to those rising asset prices.
Thursday, 11 June 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 16
Marx noted, in Capital III, Chapter 23,
“It would be still more absurd to presume that capital would yield interest on the basis of capitalist production without performing any productive function, i.e., without creating surplus-value, of which interest is just a part; that the capitalist mode of production would run its course without capitalist production. If an untowardly large section of capitalists were to convert their capital into money-capital, the result would be a frightful depreciation of money-capital and a frightful fall in the rate of interest; many would at once face the impossibility of living on their interest, and would hence be compelled to reconvert into industrial capitalists.” (p 378)
It is precisely that problem that the ruling-class of rentiers has faced. On the one hand, the microchip revolution of the 1980's, brought a huge rise in productivity, and the rate of profit. It brought a huge moral depreciation of the fixed capital stock, and with it a huge, global release of capital. All of these realised money profits fed into money markets, causing global interest rates to enter a secular decline from 1982 onwards, and a consequent rise in global asset prices.
In the US, stock markets rose by around 1300% between 1980 and 2000, more than 4 times the rise in GDP. Stock and property markets across the globe followed suit.
In Britain, house prices quadrupled in the 1980's. No wonder, in this “loadsamoney” culture, this inflation of asset prices, seemed to amount to the creation of wealth out of thin air.
Of course, ownership of speculative assets is neither the same as ownership of productive-capital, nor the same as ownership of a durable commodity. If you own bonds or shares, for example, if the market price of those assets rise sharply, you can sell them, and simply pocket the capital gain. You don't have to buy other bonds or shares to replace them. If you own property as a speculative asset, or as a landlord, you can similarly, sell those properties, if property prices rise sharply, without needing to replace them. In both cases, you can simply bank the realised capital gains, and wait until asset prices fall again. But, that is not the case if you own a property as a durable commodity/fixed capital.
If house prices rise, as a homeowner, that is of little benefit to you, for the simple reason that if you come to sell your home, you still need somewhere to live, and so must replace it with an equally more expensive house. If you are a commercial business that owns the commercial property in which you operate, the same applies, the building constitutes a piece of fixed capital. In fact, a rise in property prices, generally operates to your disadvantage, rather than advantage. If house prices across the board double, but wages remain the same, then, the house you paid £50,000 for, when you sell it for £100,000, appears to have provided you with £50,000 for free. But, to move to a better house, means that, this better house, which previously cost £75,000, will now cost you £150,000. In reality, you will have lost £25,000, compared to had house prices not risen.
Of course, had you not been a homeowner to start with, you would have lost out even more, which is why so many people, now, cannot afford to buy a home. Yet, the bourgeois media portray any fall in asset prices as being catastrophic, despite the fact that, for the great mass of society, they would be hugely beneficial. Indeed, for industrial capital, they would be hugely beneficial too, as I have set out, elsewhere. Its not just those who cannot afford to buy a home that are adversely affected by high house prices. One solution to the inability to pay the high prices, would be, for example, for wages to rise. But, a rise in wages, means a fall in industrial profits. Many unable to buy, are led to rent, but, that leads to higher rents, which again, means either higher wages, or else higher levels of housing benefits. Those higher benefits require higher taxes, which again, reduces industrial profits.
As I've set out, elsewhere, the same is true with inflated bond and share prices, which form the basis of workers' pension funds. The delusion referred to earlier, in which money-capital is seen as the only real capital, and the interest on which is seen, not as a deduction from industrial profit, but as some kind of natural fruit of that capital, leads to the assumption that if asset prices rise, the fruit of those assets increases along with it, like a bigger plum tree, producing more plums. But, as Marx set out, interest/dividends are simply a deduction from profit, and if the mass of profit does not rise, there is no sustainable basis for interest/dividends to rise. If interest/dividends do rise, without the mass of profit rising, then, rent, tax or profit of enterprise must fall, as Marx set out in Capital III, Chapter 15.
But, unless capital is accumulated – more labour employed – the only way to increase the mass of surplus-value/industrial profit, is to raise the rate of surplus-value. In the conditions of the 1980's, and 90's, as the huge rise in productivity created large relative surplus populations, which pushed down relative wages, and also reduced the value of labour-power, and so raised the rate of surplus value that was possible. Indeed, by raising the rate of turnover of capital, it also raised the annual rate of surplus-value, and average annual rate of profit. It, also, as set out earlier, created a release of capital that appeared as a mass of realised money profit. But, that was then, and this is now. Those conditions began to change when the new long wave upswing began in 1999, just as they have done in previous long wave cycles.
Saturday, 6 June 2026
Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 6
The failure to address that property question, indeed even to understand it, has left the working-class effectively leaderless. On the one hand, social-democracy and social-democratic parties, in the 20th century, emphasised the common interest of labour and capital. Indeed, as Marx sets out in Wage-Labour and Capital, so long as you assume the continued existence of capital, that is true. The workers interest is that of capital too, for a continued accumulation of capital, so that more labour is employed, which creates the best conditions for their wages to rise, not only from the fact of being fully employed, but also because of rising social productivity and an expansion of the range of goods and services they can consume, as Marx describes in The Civilising Mission of Capital. It also means that, as their employment expands towards full employment, their bargaining position is strengthened, so that not only do nominal and real wages rise, but also relative wages.
However, as Marx describes, in Wage-Labour and Capital, and in Capital III, Chapter 15, it is, then, precisely this rise in relative wages, whose concomitant is a fall in relative profits, i.e. a profits squeeze, as seen in the 1960's/70's, which creates a crisis of overproduction of capital. The first consequence is that the smaller, least efficient capitals, the plethora of petty bourgeois producers – whose profit margins were already below the average – go bust. To the extent they employ workers, they are laid off. The consequence is, the, also, an overproduction of commodities, even where none existed previously, because the firms that have gone bust no longer buy from their suppliers (as Marx puts it, capital itself is physically composed of commodities), and their workers no longer have wages to finance their own consumption.
So, the affluence of the workers, in these best of all conditions, turns, for many of them, into the cause of their own misery. Moreover, the underlying cause of the crisis of overproduction of capital was the shortage of labour, causing relative wages to rise, and so relative profits to fall. To respond to it, capital is led to engage in a technological revolution, to raise productivity, and to replace labour with machines. Again, that was seen in the 1970's, with the microchip revolution. Consequently, as long as capitalism continues, and so long as the working-class does not have control over its own collective property – the large-scale socialised capital – it is doomed to repeat the cycle of prosperity, full employment/boom, crisis, and unemployment.
Social-democracy, and reformist socialism/Menshevism, cannot offer any solution, therefore, but, at the other pole there are the “revolutionary” sects, who can only offer the illusion of some repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, or worse a version of the Peasant Wars, such as that in China in 1949, of Vietnam, Cuba, and so on. All of which are based on the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and not the industrial proletariat. But, that petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry can never form the ruling-class, because of its atomised and heterogeneous nature. It always results in chaos, crisis and Bonapartism. It can be see as a result of Brexit and Trump, today. But, the victory of Trump, Brexit and other petty-bourgeois nationalist movements is, itself, a consequence of the failure of Marxists to offer a real analysis and solution to the property question, turning themselves, simply, into more militant wings of social-democracy, and proponents of bourgeois, trades union consciousness.
Thursday, 4 June 2026
Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 5
The 1832 Reform Act was a victory for the bourgeoisie as a whole, but the workers were left to pursue their own interests and demands for political rights and freedoms via the Chartist Movement. The large-scale, industrial capitalists, again, required the support of the workers to consolidate their victory, in 1848, against the other sections of the bourgeoisie – the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy – and its political reflection was the creation of the Liberal Party, in which the big industrial capitalists sat side by side with the trades union representatives of the workers.
The same was true in France, but its political revolution was far more thoroughgoing than its British equivalent. The Monarchy, and large sections of the aristocracy faced the criticism of the guillotine.
“To be sure, the bourgeoisie had already developed rapidly during the Revolution, partly by speculation in the lands of the nobility and of the Church which had been confiscated and then sold, and partly by frauds on the nation by means of army contracts. It was precisely the domination of these swindlers that brought France and the Revolution to the verge of ruin under the Directorate, and thus gave Napoleon the pretext for his coup d'etat.” (p 331)
For Saint-Simon, rather like with the Physiocrats, the “workers” were not just the labourers, but also the capitalists, be they industrial capitalists or the merchants and bankers. The Revolution set this mass of “the people” against the idlers of the old aristocracy, but the idlers were not confined to them, but, also, all those that simply lived off their incomes without taking any part in production. At a time when capitalist production was still relatively undeveloped, compared to the later large-scale production, it is easy to see why this distinction was made.
For Saint-Simon, The Reign of Terror showed that the actual workers, the great mass of labourers and petty-bourgeois, did not have the capacity to lead the country.
“Who then was to lead and command? According to Saint-Simon, science and industry, both united by a new religious bond destined to restore that unity of religious ideas which had been broken since the Reformation – a necessarily mystical and rigidly hierarchical “new Christianity”. But science was the scholars; and industry was, in the first place, the active bourgeois, manufacturers, merchants and bankers. Of course, these bourgeois were to transform themselves into public officials, into trustees of society, of a sort; but they were still to hold a commanding and even economically privileged position vis-a-vis the workers. The bankers especially were to be called upon to direct the whole of social production by the regulation of credit. This conception was in exact keeping with a time when large-scale industry and with it the chasm between bourgeoisie and proletariat were only just coming into existence in France.” (p 331-2)
Here can clearly be seen, even before the development of large-scale, socialised capital/imperialism, the basic outlines of social-democracy. A shared interest between capital and labour, but with the professional middle-class representatives of capital “functioning capitalists”, managing national production on behalf of “society”. Along with it goes the required planning and regulation of production and credit. All of this is contained in the statist ideas of Lassaleanism and Fabianism.
“But what Saint-Simon especially lays stress on is this: what interests him first and above all other things is the lot of “the largest and poorest class” (la classe la plus nombreuse et las plus pauvre).” (p 332)
Unfortunately, that same kind of moralism pervades much of today's Left. It confuses “the poorest” with the working-class, just as it confuses “the rich”, by which if often means the affluent, with the bourgeoisie, and worse, the owners of capital. As Marx set out in relation to the hand-loom weavers, and Lenin set out in relation to the poorest peasants, the poorest (actually the least affluent, i.e. least net income) are not the workers but, setting aside the paupers and chronically unemployed, the great mass of the petty-bourgeoisie. These layers, the breeding ground of reaction and fascism, and which, today, is the foundation of Trumpism, Faragism, Starmerism, Bolsonarism, and all the other reactionary nationalist movements, can never be the prime concern of Marxists.
Our concern, today, can only be with the organised working-class, which is, itself, now, the collective owner of all the socialised capital that dominates production, and, via its pension funds, also, the collective owners of a large part of the fictitious capital, which draws its revenues from that socialised capital's profit. But, in neither case is the working-class allowed, by law, to exercise control over its own property. That, today, is the property question that Marxists must address in their programmes.
Tuesday, 2 June 2026
Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 4
Marx makes the same point in Value, Price and Profit.
“They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerrilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"” (p 93)
The contradictions arising from capitalist production were only taking shape, in 1800, when the utopians were setting forth their observations. The first, generalised crisis of overproduction of commodities did not occur until 1825. It was another quarter of a century before large-scale industrial capital asserts its dominance, and another quarter century before that large-scale industrial capital, predominantly, takes the form of socialised capital, in the shape of the co-operatives and limited liability companies that flourished after the passing of the Limited Liability Act of 1855. So, the Utopians could not see such development, and the means of achieving their goals. Rather, they relied still on the pervasive power of reason and belief that, if only society could have its eyes opened to such reason, a harmonious development could be undertaken.
“During the Reign of Terror, the propertyless masses of Paris were able to gain the mastery for a moment [and thus to lead the bourgeois revolution to victory against the bourgeoisie itself]. But, in doing so they only proved how impossible [it] was [for] their domination [to last] under the conditions then obtaining. The proletariat, which was only just separating itself from these propertyless masses as the nucleus of a new class, and was as yet quite incapable of independent political action, appeared as an oppressed, suffering estate, to which, in its incapacity to help itself, help could, at best, be brought in from without from above down.” (p 329-30)
The Utopias dreamed up were incapable of becoming real, not because the productive forces were not developed sufficiently, but because there was no reason that the capitalists were going to voluntarily abandon their own advantages and position as ruling-class. In 1800, it was still the case that many of the private industrial capitalists were former skilled labourers themselves. The majority of production was undertaken, still, by petty-bourgeois, independent commodity producers, like the hand-loom weavers But, as the fate of the latter showed, described by Marx in Capital I, those conditions were rapidly changing, as machine industry drove them out of production, and concentrated the means of production in the hands of private capitalist families, whose lifestyles were transformed along with it.
Marxist theory is not a theory that starts from the individual seeking to turn each one into a clone of another. So, of course, some of these individuals caught a glimpse of the future, but Marxist theory, historical materialism, is a theory based on the interests of given forms of property, and so the behaviour, in aggregate, of the social classes based on it. That some of these individuals did obtain a glimpse of the future, albeit expressed in their various fantastical forms, is still a mark of their own genius.
“Saint-Simon was a son of the great French Revolution, at the outbreak of which he was not yet thirty.” (p 330)
That revolution was carried out against the old aristocratic ruling class, a class of parasites and idlers that leached off the great mass of society engaged in the production of the nation's wealth – the Third Estate. But, this Third Estate was soon revealed to, in fact, be a contradictory whole, comprising, at one pole, the rising bourgeoisie, and, at the other, the emerging proletariat. Much as with the political revolution in Britain, in which the bourgeoisie conducted its struggle for political rights and freedoms, whilst drawing behind it a large mass of petty-bourgeois producers, and the emerging proletariat, as symbolised by the gathering in St. Peter's Fields in Manchester, it soon became apparent that this political revolution was one that the bourgeoisie sought to contain within strict limits.
Sunday, 31 May 2026
Saturday, 23 May 2026
Wednesday, 20 May 2026
Burnham's Brexit Baloney
Its like deja vu all over again! The liberal Left and soft Left, having chosen their next potential saviour, and reduced themselves, again, to essentially passive onlookers of the historical process (class struggle), cheerleaders of whoever (or whatever) might be the current lesser-evil, had great expectations in the King of the North, Prince Across the Water – choose your appropriate aristocratic metaphor – Andy Burnham. But, 7 years ago, they had similar hopes for Starmer, who stood on an almost identical platform to that, now, put forward by Burnham. At least, Starmer had stayed in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, when Burnham ran off to Manchester.
Of course, even before that, the same passive, hapless role of what passes for “the Left” - an increasingly less than meaningless term – had, at least, formed up to cheer on Corbyn, into the same role. Its epitome was the less than useless, Momentum. But, as far as “the Left” is concerned, we could go back further than that. In the 1960's, Tony Benn, as a government Minister, had no great Left-wing credentials. If Burnham wants a precedent to answer the questions of those like Owen Jones who have noted Burnham's journey back and forth from Blair-right, to soft-Left, he could point to Benn, who, in the 1970's and 80's, became a champion of that “Left”.
Benn, like Foot before him, became a figurehead for “the Left”, but he could be so, much as with Corbyn, only because of the deeply inadequate nature of “the Left” itself. “The Left”, has become simply code for those that favour greater roles for the capitalist state, both in the economy, and society in general, as well as those that favour, and attach themselves to whatever the latest “progressive”, social movement is thought to be. In other words, “the Left”, is a vague, middle-class, liberal mush, the result of a long-term search for the broadest “progressive” coalition of forces.
It is a manifestation not of Marxism, but of Hegelian Idealism. By defining “the Left”, in terms of state ownership and intervention, its no wonder that it opens up the line of argument of the bourgeois centre that the Left and Right, meet up at their extreme points. How much more state interventionist could you get than Nazi Germany, for example. If that is the definition of “Left”, then, Marx and Engels, but, also, the likes of Lenin and Trotsky, would not have considered themselves to be “Left”. It completely leaves out of consideration, any question of the class character of that state.
As Marx and Engels put it.
“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”
(Anti-Duhring)
It is, on that basis, a “progressive” development of capitalism, in the Marxist, scientific sense of the term “progressive”, as against the middle-class, liberal, idealist and moralistic sense, of being the latest social movement crusade. It is progressive, only, as an inevitable development of capital, into larger, more concentrated blocs, as with the previous development of monopolies/oligopolies. In fact, large sections of “the Left”, driven by a sense of petty-bourgeois moralism, show their confusion, by seeing those monopolies/oligopolies, not as, also, being progressive, but, as being akin to the devil incarnate. Not surprisingly, they see the appropriate response to that being, not, as Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin and Trotsky argued, the need for the workers to exercise their rightful control over them, but, instead, either to argue for the state to break them up/limit them, in favour of the smaller capitals, or else, for the capitalist state (the national capitalist) to assert its control over them! Socialists, argue that to expect this current state, the capitalist state, the national capitalist, to act in workers interests, is to mislead the workers, with bourgeois idealism. As, Marx put it,
“The German Workers' party — at least if it adopts the program — shows that its socialist ideas are not even skin-deep; in that, instead of treating existing society (and this holds good for any future one) as the basis of the existing state (or of the future state in the case of future society), it treats the state rather as an independent entity that possesses its own intellectual, ethical, and libertarian bases ...
the whole program, for all its democratic clang, is tainted through and through by the Lassallean sect's servile belief in the state, or, what is no better, by a democratic belief in miracles; or rather it is a compromise between these two kinds of belief in miracles, both equally remote from socialism.”
In the modern parlance, such demands might be described as “Left”, but they are certainly not socialist. But, that confusion that misrepresentation is what has characterised “the Left”, including those that call themselves “Marxists”, for around 80 years. So, in the 1970's, “the Left” made itself into cheerleaders for the likes of Benn, and his statist ideas. But if that “servile belief in the state”, and “democratic belief in miracles” is to be pursued, then, it is clear that this state, can only be the current capitalist, nation state, and the democratic miracle can only be performed by the existing, bourgeois-democratic national parliament. Its no wonder, therefore, that, in the 1970's, when the question of the EEC/EU again dominated the political debate, the opposition to the EEC/EU saw “the Left”, and the Far-Right, indeed, meet up to defend the fiction of this nation state. Ironically, I watched, yesterday, a 2025 TV programme on how, in 1940, Churchill made a “bid to abolish Britain”, and merge France and Britain.
This servile belief in the state, and democratic belief in miracles that characterises “the Left”, is simply an extension of its petty-bourgeois, nationalist mindset that has also dominated it in the post-war period, which has seen it prioritise struggles for national self-determination, which means the national self-determination of bourgeois states, over the self-determination of the working-class across those states, and for whom, those bourgeois states are their main enemy. So, the opposition to the EEC/EU, becomes a utopian, idealist, and so reactionary quest, to insist on national self-determination for the “British” capitalist state, so that a “British”, reformist, Labour government can implement “Left” policies.
As in the 1970's, foreigners, i.e. the EEC/EU are used as the scapegoat, the excuse for why the British capitalist state, even when it was far more powerful, and with far greater room for manoeuvre, despite several Labour governments over the last century, most of them markedly to the “Left” of the current Labour government, failed to bring about any radical, meaningful change in the interests of the working-class, at the expense of capital. Over and over, the logical, reactionary dynamic of that is witnessed. If its Europe that limits a Westminster government from acting in workers' interests, then, in Scotland and Wales, it must be an English parliament in Westminster that is stopping the possibility of the Scottish and Welsh nations from acting in the interests of Scottish and Welsh workers. But, similarly, the problem in the Regions, in Manchester, Birmingham and so on, must be the need to “take back control” into local hands. The very logic of nationalism, every time it necessarily fails to deliver, leads to the argument to take back control to a smaller, less rational unit, which, also, inevitably fails. Nationalism destroys the basis of the nation state.
What is more, who is to say that having freed itself from the supposed constraints of some larger, more rational political entity, the nation state would act in the interests of workers, or be more “progressive”? That is not why the likes of the National Front, Enoch Powell, or the likes of Farage, Truss, the BNP and so on argue for national self-determination for Britain. On the contrary, they see such national independence as the necessary condition to pursue the interests of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, whose political representatives they are. They want to opt out of all those rules and regulations that go along with the EU. They want to be able to give all of those small traders and employers every opportunity to go back to the days of cheating and swindling that characterised the early days of capitalism, to be able to utilise sweated labour, unlimited rights to hire and fire at will, to ignore any consumer or environmental standards, because its only in that way that their dwarf capitals can make a profit. And, the concomitant of that was seen under Thatcher in the 1980's and 90's, with the introduction of Enterprise Zones, and so on, and the pitting of one region, local authority area against another, competing tooth and nail for resources for its area, at the expense of others.
The other logical conclusion of that is not greater democracy, but the handing over of political control to local Bonapartes, to act to attract those resources to that area, at the expense of others. That is the role that the Metropolitan Mayors played. At least in the 1960's, when development was pushed ahead, in places like Tyneside by powerful local figures, such as T. Dan Smith, and all the corruption that went with it, it was at a time when British capital was far less decayed than it is today.
So, it is no wonder that, today, we have Burnham continuing to argue that, although Brexit has been extremely damaging – and not even the hard line Brexiters, now, try to deny that – he will not do the obvious thing, and reverse it. Instead, just as with Starmer, he wants to continue to peddle the same old snake oil that somehow, Brexit can be made to work, that Britain can have a “closer relationship” to Europe, and that “Britain's” problems can be resolved, outside the EU. That is the same cakeist agenda that was put forward by Corbyn in 2019, and led to the dissolution of the coalition of support that had made him Leader, and came close to winning the election in 2017. It led to the disaster of 2019.
Starmer, of course, became Leader only by playing on his role in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet, and by adopting, as part of the strategy put forward by Labour Together, his ten point pledge to pursue the Corbynite, social-democratic agenda. That is the same Labour Together that used Starmer as their cypher, and ditched that agenda as soon as he became Leader. It is the same Labour Together of which Josh Simons was a Director. That is the same Josh Simons who has just stood down in Makerfield for Burnham, and who Burnham has said, he would find a place for.
But, the reality is that Brexit cannot be made to work, and the longer it continues, the greater the damage it will do. Its like saying I realise drinking this poison is really bad for me, but I decided to open the bottle, and so have to keep drinking. The difference with Brexit is that its a bottle that never runs dry. As I wrote in 2019, and after, the idea that you can pursue any kind of even radical social-democratic agenda, without reversing Brexit, and re-joining the EU, is utopian and reactionary. Its a form of Stalinoid, theory of Socialism In One Country. For one thing, Britain is losing around £40 billion a year in tax revenues, as a result of the reduction in GDP growth that has resulted from Brexit. As I pointed out, in relation to the fantasy agenda of Blue Labour in 2024, if the key to your programme is growth, how on Earth are you going to get that growth without a) having the fiscal space to spend on infrastructure, and b) without renewing the free movement that comes from being a part of the EU?
As I've noted before, its not that joining, or now re-joining the EU is the answer to workers problems, but it is that re-joining is the basis of being able to create the conditions for doing so. Blair-rights such as Streeting, for all of their conservative, social-democratic agenda, at least have the advantage over the likes of Burnham that they recognise that the future for Britain, and in the immediate future at that, must reside in the EU. Without that perspective, the decay will continue, a Burnham government, even were he to be serious about carrying out some kind of progressive social-democratic agenda, would quickly have to face the reality that, outside the EU, the prospects for growth are dire, and without that growth, there is no prospect of carrying out even the agenda of Starmer, let alone anything more progressive. It is a recipe for further political chaos, opening the door even wider for the likes of Farage.
Burnham says he does not want to campaign for re-joining the EU, because to do so is divisive, but its equally divisive, and even more destructive not to do so. What is more, God forbid that even bourgeois-democracy should involve the electorate in a heated debate! Far better to keep the voters quiet for 5 years, and only ask them to passively place a cross every so often. So speaks the voice of the entitled, bureaucratic politician who just wants to be left alone to do their job. If that is the case, moreover, then there is a simple answer to that objection. As I noted prior to 2019, rather than a second referendum, Labour could simply put it in their next Manifesto that they intend to re-join the EU. In the meantime, a Burnham Labour government could be getting on with the job of negotiating with Brussels for such re-entry after the next British general Election. That is the best way they can “form closer ties to the EU”.
Burnham's supporters, of course, argue that Streeting, by raising the issue of re-joining the EU is seeking to sabotage Burnham's by-election chances. That assumes that arguing for re-joining the EU is damaging to Labour, and to Burnham. All the evidence shows that not to be true. The vast majority of the electorate, as a whole, know that Brexit has been a disaster, and the even vaster majority of Labour, Green and Liberal voters know that to be the case. In 2017 it was that coalition that gave Corbyn's Labour a 40% share of the vote, and saw the Labour vote, in every constituency, including those that voted “Leave”, rise dramatically, as against 2015. It took away the Tories parliamentary majority.
In 2024, when Starmer had committed to sticking with Brexit, he was able to get only 34% of the vote, and the lowest number of votes ever for any party winning a general election. In local and regional elections, Blue Labour has been haemorrhaging votes not to the reactionaries of Reform, but to the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP. Continuing the Brexit lie that to win in the “Red Wall” seats requires pandering to the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie and its attendant layers of backward workers will be disastrous. In the main those Reform/Brexit voters were never part of the core Labour vote, and so they could never be “won back”. The describing of the reactionary poor as working-class, is a bourgeois sociological terminology that confuses income and social status with class, and relation to the means of production. The petty-bourgeois traders and self-employed are frequently poorer and more precarious than the majority of wage workers, but that does not make them working-class. It is the basis of their desperate individualism, and often hatred of the organised working-class and its progressivism. They are reactionaries.
Its true that one result of Thatcherism and de-indstrialisation since the 1980's, has been a 50% growth of that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and Burnham has pointed to some of the symptoms and consequences of that in the decayed urban centres, and the growth of asset inequality, based on the serial asset price bubbles in property, and financial assets. But, it is a crude opportunism and electoral politics that simply responds to that by chasing after the votes of that petty-bourgeoisie. If its true that, in Makerfield, the composition of the electorate is such that this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its associated layers of urban poor is so large that it outweighs the votes of the working-class and progressive middle-class, then, rather than blaming Streeting, Burnham should blame himself and his advisors for choosing such a seat in which to make their stand. But, there is no evidence that is the case. Makerfield, has lower levels of deprivation than the surrounding towns, and higher levels of home ownership with a mostly skilled working-class population.
Its MP, between 1987-2010 was the Blair-right, Iain McCartney. Given Blair's enthusiastic support for the EU, during all that time, when, by contrast, the Tories were torn apart by their support for Brexit, goaded along by the likes of Farage, there was no indication that the voters in the constituency were put off voting for EU supporting Labour candidates, winning around 60% of the vote in each election. In 2010 and 2015, McCartneys successor in the seat Helen Fovargue, secured around 50% of the vote, whilst the reactionary nationalists of UKIP/BNP and Tories never got more than a combined 42%. In 2017, under Corbyn's Labour, as it won over large numbers of young voters, opposed to Brexit, Fovargue secured an increased 60% of the vote, whilst the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories, who still could only secure 31% of the vote.
Only in 2019, when Corbyn retraced his steps towards backing Brexit did Labour's vote in the seat decline, from that 60% to just 45%. Another factor, here, was that the Corbyn wave, saw turnout in 2017 rise by 3.6%, whereas, Corbyn's return to Brexitism, in 2019, saw turnout drop by 4.1%, as Labour voters sat on their hands. In 2024, Simons won the same share of the vote as Fovargue in 2019, but the turnout was down a further, 6.2%, as Labour voters reacted to Starmer's support for Brexit, and his abandonment of even social-democratic positions. So, despite the same vote share, Simons got 2,000 fewer votes than Fovargue. The reason was not Labour voters going to the Brexit Party/Reform, but Labour voters staying home, or moving to other progressive parties such as the Greens or Liberals.
The Greens saw their vote rise by 50%, in Makerfield, in 2024 compared to 2019. The Liberals saw their vote rise by a third. Reform more than doubled the vote for the Brexit Party, but the reason for that, as elsewhere, was simply that Reform has replaced the Tories. In 2024, the Tory vote collapsed by 75%, in the constituency, compared to 2019. Taking that into consideration, the combined reactionary nationalist vote going to Reform/Brexit Party/Tories fell from 21,000 in 2019, to just 17,000 in 2024, which is hardly a ringing endorsement of the argument that the Labour voters of the constituency are abandoning Labour in favour of Reform.
It is far more likely that, this latest weak-kneed, cowardly approach from Burnham, typical of his vacillations over the years, will simply lead to even more Labour voters staying home, or continuing to move to the Greens.
Tuesday, 19 May 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 15
This is the backdrop to the conditions we have, today. The ruling-class of rentiers/coupon-clippers have become, over the last 40 years, not only parasitic on the very capitalist system that brought them into existence, but have become a fetter on its further development, just as previously, the monopoly ownership of private industrial capital, became a fetter on the expansion of industrial capital, and was burst asunder, in the latter half of the 19th century, as the monopoly owners of that private industrial capital were expropriated by, large-scale, socialised industrial capital (the expropriation of the expropriators, as Marx and Engels described it).
That ruling-class of rentiers, now, represents a fetter for two reasons. Firstly, as Marx describes, in Capital III, the interests of interest-bearings capital, are antagonistic to those of industrial capital. The former seeks to maximise the amount of interest/dividends it can extract from profits, whilst the latter seeks to minimise that interest/dividends, and to maximise the profit of enterprise/retained profit so as to maximise capital accumulation. That was, always the case, but, as Marx describes, it is objectively limited, because, the rate of interest is determined by the interaction of the supply of money capital, as against the demand for it. The owners of loanable money-capital, will not lend it for nothing, whereas the demand for it, is limited by the average rate of profit, which sets a ceiling on how much industrial capitalists will pay to borrow it.
As Marx puts it, capital itself – i.e. the social relation, as opposed to the physical elements of capital – becomes a commodity sold on the market, and its "value" is determined by this social relation, by the average rate of profit. The functioning capitalist, does not own capital themselves, and so must “buy” it, i.e. borrow it from those that do. If, the average rate of profit is 30% p.a., then the “value” of £1,000 of capital is £1,300. In other words, £1,000, used as capital, to buy machines, material and labour-power, at the end of the year, turns into £1,300. The use-value of “capital”, as Marx sets out, is this capacity to produce the average rate of profit. There is no reason, therefore, why industrial capitalists, which, in the era of imperialist capital, means socialised capital, would pay a 30% rate of interest to borrow money-capital, in the above example, because it would consume all of their profit.
In Capital III, Part V, Marx and Engels explore these relations between what were then the two antagonistic classes of capitalist, the owners of interesting-bearing capital, and the owners of industrial capital, and how this antagonistic and contradictory relation determines, firstly the coming into existence of the category of interest, and how it determines the rate of interest in different phases of the economic cycle. This analysis by Marx and Engels sets out the true relation, and can be contrasted with the arguments put by bourgeois economists, who view the world and the relation through the lens of the owners of interest-bearing capital. Indeed, as Marx and Engels describe, they see “only” this loanable-money-capital as capital, and interest as being some kind of natural fruit produced by it.
Profit, by contrast, is seen as not deriving from capital, but from entrepreneurship, by the cunning and skill of the entrepreneur, in buying low and selling high, in bringing the factors of production together efficiently, and so on. In other words, the entrepreneur or “functioning capitalist”, is characterised not by their ownership of “capital”, but by their functional role in production, and profit is, then, reduced to being just a special kind of “wages” for their labour-power. The only real capital, is, then, portrayed as interest-bearing capital, and the only real capitalists are the owners of this interest-bearing capital, whose epitome, and agent becomes the bankers, and large financial institutions, stock markets and so on, that provide this capital that makes production possible.
In the 18th and early 19th century, in the era of the monopoly of private industrial capital, Marx and Engels' analysis shows that it is the laws of capital, of competition and capital accumulation, played out over the long-wave cycle that determines the demand for and supply of loanable money-capital, and so the rate of interest. A key factor, both in the supply of loanable money-capital, and the demand for it, as they set out, in Capital III, Part V, is the rate of profit. The supply of loanable money-capital is comprised of two main sources. Firstly, realised money profits, and secondly accumulated savings. In respect, of the latter, it is why they note that older bourgeois societies, tend to have lower rates of interest, because they have greater levels of accumulated savings.
Those savings can also take the form of various money reserves, i.e. money destined to be used to buy commodities, but which has not, yet, been so used, for example firms amortisation funds, or the money received by workers, and capitalists they will use to buy the necessities required for their personal consumption, but which they have not yet spent. Marx notes that the development of banking, so that small amounts of savings by workers and the middle-class can be aggregated into large sums, facilitates that. Today, we have huge amounts of workers pension savings both in their private pensions, and those accumulated by the state directly in taxes.
But, the largest source of additional loanable money-capital is from realised money profits. Profit is the money form of the surplus product. If the amount of the surplus product/profit going to unproductive personal consumption remains the same, then the amount available as loanable money-capital rises, when the mass of profit rises. If the demand for that money-capital does not rise, then, interest rates must fall. But, the demand for that loanable money-capital is also a function of the amount and rate of profit, as Marx and Engels set out.
“On the whole, then, the movement of loan capital, as expressed in the rate of interest, is in the opposite direction to that of industrial capital. The phase wherein a low rate of interest, but above the minimum, coincides with the "improvement" and growing confidence after a crisis, and particularly the phase wherein the rate of interest reaches its average level, exactly midway between its minimum and maximum, are the only two periods during which an abundance of loan capital is available simultaneously with a great expansion of industrial capital. But at the beginning of the industrial cycle, a low rate of interest coincides with a contraction, and at the end of the industrial cycle, a high rate of interest coincides with a superabundance of industrial capital. The low rate of interest that accompanies the "improvement" shows that the commercial credit requires bank credit only to a slight extent because it is still self-supporting.”
It is, industrial capital, and its cycle that determines the supply and demand for loanable money-capital, and so the rate of interest. But, for orthodox, bourgeois economics, it is only interest-bearing capital that constitutes capital, and it is its supply, which somehow manifests out of the ether, into the hands of money lenders, which determines the state of the economy. So, orthodox bourgeois theory sees the rate of interest as being the regulator, along with its concept of a natural, or neutral rate of interest, with rates below it causing economic expansion and the potential for overheating and inflation, and above it, contraction and the potential for recession and deflation. I have set out, elsewhere, why this is nonsense.
Sunday, 17 May 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 14
The conflicts arise where one bloc, and its regulatory regime butts up against another, the example of the border in Ireland, being a minor, but recent and local example. The same applies with the way the EU butts up against the developing Eurasian bloc. The petty-bourgeois moralists, again, try to portray these conflicts as being about peoples seeking national self-determination, or seeking to be part of a modern bourgeois-democracy, but, that is never the real basis of such conflicts, which are always driven by the interests of capital, by the interests of the bourgeois ruling-class, and its state. On the periphery of the large economic blocs, those interests are always less clearly determined, because, the economies on that periphery, also, have historically and geographically determined trading relations with other economies outside the bloc. The relation between Britain and the US, as identified by DeGaulle, is an example of that.
Where the economies on the periphery are weak, and the pull of the economic bloc they seek to join is strong, the dynamic towards centralisation is obvious. It is an obvious advantage of the EU, particularly seen, after the fall of Stalinism in Central and Eastern Europe, which brought about the rapid expansion of the EU in the 90's, and early 2000's. But, as I have set out, elsewhere, the further East you go, the weaker this dynamic operates. The more a rising Chinese imperialism drives forward a burgeoning Eurasian bloc, encompassing Russia, and large parts of Central Asia, the more the existing trading relations and draw towards the East asserts itself. It is being played out in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere, as well, as in Hungary and the Balkans. But, it is also playing out in the Middle-East and North Africa.
As Trotsky noted, in the age of imperialism, the process of combined and uneven development within the global economy is massively accelerated. Huge reserves of loanable-money capital slosh around financial markets, which can be used to finance real capital investment/accumulation of industrial capital, as well as being diverted into financial speculation. In Capital III, Marx and Engels describe the way huge reservoirs of loanable money-capital, in Britain, were used in these various ways. British capital, for example, was used by British companies, in India and elsewhere, to develop industrial capital. The capital took the form either of money-capital used for direct investment, or of actual capital equipment. In addition, British loanable-money-capital was sent overseas to be loaned to foreign capitals, and states, who then used it to accumulate their own industrial capital.
In the first instance, the British company uses the money-capital to accumulate industrial capital, and so, obtains profits from its exploitation of the Indian or other labour it employs. It might produce, steel or coal and so on, as well as locomotives. The profits, in whole or in part might return to Britain. In the second instance, British money-capital may be loaned to an Indian company, or the Indian government, who use it to accumulate industrial capital. As part of that, they make profits on their operation, and it is only the interest on the loan that returns to Britain. But, the Indian company or government, might, also, use the money to buy British locomotives, to be used on their own railroads. A large part of development aid, and loans to governments has been used, in this way, to provide markets for producer goods from developed economies.
In 1847, the opposite was true. There were huge profits, not an overproduction of capital, which is a consequence of a sharp drop in profits, as capital is overproduced relative to labour supply. Rather than an overproduction of commodities, the crisis was sparked by crop failures, which meant that food had to be imported, and as a result of the misguided banking regulation, introduced by the 1844 Bank Act, saw the outflow of gold to pay for it forcing the Bank of England to curtail the currency supply, leading to a credit crunch, and sharply rising interest rates. As soon, as that error was corrected, the crisis ended, and the real capital accumulation, and expansion of the railway network, proceeded apace, once more.
A similar thing applies to the financial crash of 2000. There is a sharp rise in profits and the rate of profit, from the 1980's onwards, generated by the technological revolution created by the microchip. The huge rise in the supply of loanable money-capital causes interest rates to fall, and asset prices to rise, creating a financial bubble that grows ever larger in the 1990's, marked in the astronomical rise in stock markets, but also in property and bond markets. It was again a rise in interest rates that sparked a crash in those asset prices, but, as with railways, in the 19th century, once the effects of the financial crash had dissipated, the accumulation of industrial capital, and expansion of the global telecommunications networks continued apace, at least until it was interrupted by the global financial crash of 2008.
Friday, 15 May 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 13
The same objective historical laws have driven the formation of large, multinational economic blocs across the globe. These blocs of neighbouring states often begin, as the EU did, as a formalisation of the fact of their existing dependence on trade with each other. But, the very fact of this formalisation and recognition of their dependence on trade with each other, also, emphasises their separation as a bloc, from other similar blocs. A free trade area, i.e. a geographical formation in which different states place no restrictions, on the import or export of goods and services within it, by definition separates it, likewise, from the states outside it.
But, again, as with the EEC, this free trade, also, necessitates that those doing the trading do so on a level playing field. In the Brexit debate, and, now, with all of the delusory talk from Blue Labour about having a closer relation with the EU, let alone being “at the heart of Europe”, whilst, in reality, still being only on its external periphery, there was and is, a failure to understand that. It is, indeed, a weakness of the EU itself that it has not yet become a full political union. In the Brexit debate, for example, stress was put on the concept of the Customs Union. A Customs Union, means that those within it, agree to apply no tariffs, or quotas to members of it, and to agree a set of tariffs and quotas to be applied in relation to trade outside it.
The logic is obvious. If country A negotiates a deal with some country outside the Customs Union, in which it buys, say, chicken, on the basis of a zero tariff, whereas other countries in the Customs Union apply a common 10% tariff, on chicken imports from outside it, country A gains an advantage over them. At the very least, it reduces the cost of the food it consumes, and so of the wages it pays to its workers. It boosts profits, as a result of the lower wages. But, if it, then, as a member of the Customs Union, sells on these chickens, inside the Customs Union, either directly, or having processed them into chicken pies etc., it gains a further competitive advantage. When British industrial capital sought to get rid of the Corn Laws, which imposed tariffs on the import of corn, and other agricultural products, it was precisely for that reason of boosting their profits.
It is why, as I pointed out, long before the argument broke out in public, the question of the border in Ireland was going to be a severe, intractable problem, in relation to Brexit. But, that problem, as I explained, is not mainly a question of the Customs Union, because, in the modern world, the question of tariffs, and quotas is only a small element of the frictions on trade, and the need to establish a level playing field. The much bigger issue is the question of standards, and regulations. That is the realm of the creation of a single market, with a requirement that trade within it is conducted according to a set of agreed and common rules. It is not just a matter that, for example, Britain applies an agreed tariff on the import of American chicken, but that the American chicken it imports is not itself cheaper simply because the chickens had been kept in insanitary conditions, and their carcases, sprayed with chlorine.
The best that Blue Labour can offer, now, as it ridiculously claims to be seeking to put Britain “at the heart of Europe” whilst, in reality, sitting impotently on its outskirts, is that it will agree to common Phyto-sanitary regulations imposed by the EU, to facilitate such trade in animal products. But, that example, is just the tip of the iceberg. If companies in one country, say Britain, are allowed to deprive their workers of basic rights and freedoms, to work them all hours of the day, to have fewer holidays and so on, then, at least for a time, they will have a competitive advantage. I say for a time, because, as Marx and Engels showed, in the end, such means of undercutting your opponents, fail. This example, given by Marx, in relation to the pottery manufacturers, in my home city of Stoke, shows why. The pottery manufacturers had objected that being brought under the limitations of the Ten Hours Act would destroy them.
“In 1864, however, they were brought under the Act, and within sixteen months every “impossibility” had vanished.
'The improved method,” called forth by the Act, “of making slip by pressure instead of by evaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for drying the ware in its green state, &c., are each events of great importance in the pottery art, and mark an advance which the preceding century could not rival.... It has even considerably reduced the temperature of the stoves themselves with a considerable saving of fuel, and with a readier effect on the ware.'
In spite of every prophecy, the cost-price of earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such an extent that the export for the twelve months, ending December, 1865, exceeded in value by £138,628 the average of the preceding three years.”
But, again, here, can be seen the importance of scale of production, and of a large market to sell into. Making the investment in new fixed capital, required large-scale production. For much of the last century, by contrast, workers in the pottery industry were low paid. The pottery firms relied on those low wages, whilst they clung to their established markets, including those export markets developed during the period of the British colonial empire. In the mid 1970's, I worked for a large pottery company, and remember, the complacency, at the time, that the rising Japanese ceramic companies, despite using all sorts of mechanised production, would not be able to replace British pottery, because they were only good at copying. The same is being said, today, of China, even as, in one industry after another, it is dominating production.
The petty-bourgeois nationalists that backed Brexit sought to defy that reality, and to obtain competitive advantage by undercutting workers' wages and conditions, as well as deregulating consumer and environmental standards. This article shows why it is dangerous for workers, and short-sighted for capital, and why socialists should see the need to drive in the opposite direction, not because we see a bourgeois EU, or other such formation, as the answer to workers problems, but because it is, the fundamental basis, in the age of imperialism, for workers to build the solidarity between themselves, and create the conditions and social relations required for Socialism.
Wednesday, 13 May 2026
The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 12
British imperialism lost the war against German imperialism, just as it lost the war against Japanese imperialism. The defeat against Germany, forcing the humiliating retreat from Dunkirk, was replicated by an even more humiliating defeat against Japanese imperialism, in Singapore. It was not alone. What was seen was the defeat of those old European imperialist states, like Britain, France, Belgium, Netherlands that had dominated the era of colonialism, and which, consequently, rested upon the pillaging of their colonies, many of which were thousands of miles away. They were defeated by the new imperialist powers such as Germany and Japan, which rested upon the development of industrial capitalism. In the process, the imperialist power that most symbolised that industrial capitalism, the US, became the new world hegemon.
Hitler did not immediately get drawn into a war with the USSR, as the British ruling-class would have liked. Stalin, having tried to cosy up to Britain and France, by sabotaging revolutions in China, and Spain, saw that, instead, Britain and France, stood by while Germany and Italy enabled Franco's fascists to violently overthrow the elected, Republican government. Stalin had also sucked up to the British imperialists, via the British TUC Leaders, in the hope that they would recognise that he sought to limit the Chinese Revolution, within the bounds of a purely bourgeois-nationalist, not socialist revolution, and, as in Spain, was rebuffed.
Seeing the creation of an “anti-Comintern” alliance, of Germany, Italy, and Japan, Stalin had swung from the Menshevist, “stageism” and popular frontism of the 1920's, to the Third Period ultra-leftism, and back to Popular Frontism. All had failed. The decision to seek a non-aggression pact with Hitler, therefore, as Stalin saw the imperialist powers, once again circling around the USSR, was not unforeseeable. Similarly, when Japanese imperialism engaged with the USSR, in 1939, it was decisively defeated at Khalkin Gol. It acted to shift the Japanese imperialist strategy away from a war with the USSR, and towards a war with US imperialism, in the Pacific.
Consequently, German imperialism was able to focus on resuming the resolution of the contradictions left unresolved in Europe, i.e. the need to create a large multinational, European state, to meet the needs of imperialist capital, and to be able to compete against its equivalent in the US. In large part, by 1940, it had done that. It was not British imperialism that defeated German imperialism, but the USSR, after 1941, and, after 1941, US imperialism, which entered the war after Pearl Harbour.
The consequence was that, German imperialism was not only drained as British imperialism had sought, from it being engaged in a war with the USSR, but decimated. But, so too was French and British imperialism. The big winner, again, as in WWI, was the US. Its own industrial base was untouched, and now, its hegemony was manifest not just in the fact that its multinational companies had vast swathes of labour-power to exploit across Europe, but it created a global economic architecture, after Bretton Woods, to facilitate it. It was in those conditions that the EEC was formed, and the inevitable path towards the EU was established. Britain had always played Germany and France off against each other, using their ambitions to dominate a European state, as the means to do so. Now, that period of history was gone, but, as DeGaulle recognised, Britain still played a subverting role, and had one foot in Europe, and the other stretching out dangerously towards the US.
As the post-war, long wave uptrend began to fizzle out, in the late 1960's, the effect it had of lifting all boats, also, came to an end, and illustrated starkly the relative decline of British industrial capitalism. That was what made it imperative for Britain to join the EEC/EU, and is what makes Brexit such an idiotic adventure. As an aside, to illustrate that point, one of the first actions of the EEC as it was forming was to create the European Coal and Steel Community, to rationalise those industries across Europe. As the British steel industry has collapsed, as it is too small to compete on a global scale, the decision of the Blue Labour government, now, to nationalise it, is again an expression of its petty-bourgeois nationalism driving a utopian and reactionary/populist agenda, which amounts to pouring money down the drain, which could have been better utilised in capital accumulation in other industries. The only way steel production in Britain makes sense is as part of a European steel industry, but that is not possible with Britain outside the EU.
Sunday, 10 May 2026
Two Party Politics Is Not Dead, Its In Transition
Pundits have been claiming that two-party politics in Britain is dead, as the vote for the two main parties, Conservative and Labour has collapsed. It isn't, and cannot be so long as Britain retains the first past the post-system, and remains a bourgeois state. All that is happening, as I have set out before, is that the labels on the two parties are changing, as, indeed, they have before, when, for example, the Liberal Party was replaced/relabelled as the Labour Party, at the start of the 20th century.
Reform is just the Tory/reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, wing of the Conservative Party relabelled. It is pretty much a reversal of the transformation, in the second half of the 19th century, of the old Tory Party of landowners, into the modern Conservative Party, created by the Peelites, after the Repeal of the Corn Laws. The emblem of that reversal, is the rise and domination of the Conservative Party by its petty-bourgeois, nationalist base, and its carrying through of Brexit. Ideologically, Reform is identical to that reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist, Tory wing of the Conservative Party that grew during the 1980's, and asserted itself in the 1990's, as a reflection of the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, in Britain, during that time, by around 50%, at the same time that British large-scale industrial capital saw a continuation of its relative decline, compared to its growth elsewhere, and the working-class, also, was weakened along with it.
That core petty-bourgeois membership and voter base, of the Tories has simply burst out of the Conservative Party, as the means of resolving the underlying contradiction within that party, as a party of the petty-bourgeoisie, which finds itself having to implement bourgeois policies, when in government, because the petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda is utopian and impossible, as the consequences of Brexit showed. Its not just that the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its associated layers amongst the urban poor have simply switched from voting Tory – or often not voting at all – to just voting Reform, a look at Reform shows that the same failed, ex Tory politicians have simply relabelled themselves too. Jenrick, Widdicombe, Jenkyns, Dorries and so on are some of the most obvious.
There are now more ex-members of Liz Truss' Cabinet in Reform than there are on the Tory front bench! At a local level that is simply repeated, as Tories just label themselves Reform. Some pundits, like James O'Brien, have frequently posed the question of whether the reason for this is that these ex-Tories take the voters for idiots, and so offer up new policies for old, simply repackaged, as though the voters having voted for those reactionary policies, and see them fail, need to be conned into voting for them again. No, that is not the case. The reactionary nationalist, petty-bourgeoisie, and their attendant layers in the urban poor/lumpen elements, do not see the failure of Brexit and all of the other garbage as being a failure for them. It is the problem of not understanding that the electorate is divided into different classes, with different class interests.
There are some petty-bourgeois, like for example, the Youtuber, Michael Lambert, whose businesses were orientated towards the EU, who see Brexit, and everything that goes with it as disastrous. But, most of the petty-bourgeoisie is not like that. It is thoroughly parochial and nationalist. The petty-bourgeoisie is and always has been characterised by its lack of income and precarity, its inability to compete with large-scale capital, or even to achieve the kind of living standards of organised wage-labour. If you have to work all hours of the day, but get little income, you are not going to be too bothered about whether Brexit has reduced growth, made trade more difficult or expensive, or travel for holidaymakers more inconvenient, and so on. Even more is that the case if you are part of those associated layers of the urban poor.
So, although the large majority of the electorate, now, see that Brexit has been the disaster it was always going to be, leading nearly 70% of them to want to reverse it, and re-join the EU, that other 30% of the electorate, the hard-core of the petty-bourgeoisie that pushed it through, in the first place, – mostly the same layers that opposed the EEC in the 1975 Referendum, but then unsuccessfully – have not changed their view, because that view aligns with that petty-bourgeois nationalist outlook, itself conditioned by their own class position. The same applies to the identical social layers in the US that back Trump. It is why, even O'Brien has had to change his opinion that we should have contempt for the con-men, and compassion for the conned. They were not conned, they got what they wanted, and mostly still want.
The ideology of the petty-bourgeoisie is reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism, as represented, now, by Reform. It is utopian and so must lead to disaster. Precisely because the petty-bourgeoisie is itself a disorganised, atomised and heterogeneous mass, with its own internal contradictions arising from its diversity and interests, it is unstable and liable to blow itself apart at any point, once it is forced to go beyond what it thinks its against, and begin to focus on what it is for. Even what it is for starts off as simply a negation of what it is against, e.g. against foreigners, and so for Brexit, for immigration controls, repatriation and so on. When that inevitably fails to bring what it expected, it simply moves to the next level. To impose any kind of order on it, the petty-bourgeoisie always requires a strong, charismatic leader, and so tends towards Bonapartism and authoritarian rule as Marx describes in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
The ideology of the owners of large-scale capital is, and since the end of the 19th century has been, social-democracy. The owners of large-scale industrial capital, since that time, has been “the associated producers”, i.e. the workers within each large-scale enterprise. As Marx describes, in Capital III, and he and Engels describe in “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” and “Anti-Duhring”, except in the worker cooperatives, the workers, in the main, do not yet understand that this is their collective property, and so, do not exercise conscious control over it. That control is exercised by the old bourgeois ruling-class, which has become a parasitic, class of rentiers/coupon clippers, living off the interest/dividends and rents it obtains from its ownership of the other form of large-scale capital – fictitious-capital – and which provides it with its continued huge wealth and power, and control of the state.
Precisely because the “associated producers”/working-class, do not, yet, understand that they are the collective owners of this large-scale, socialised, industrial capital, they continue to be dominated by the ideology of social-democracy, rather than socialism/communism. They continue to be dominated by the bourgeois/reformist idea that, in some way, the interests of labour and capital are, not antagonistic but reconcilable via negotiation. In other words, they remain trapped in a bourgeois, trades-unionist consciousness of simply bargaining within the system, just for a better price for the commodity they sell, labour-power, an outlook, which always leaves them on the losing side of those negotiations. Its epitome is corporatism and co-determination.
Objectively, the very nature of this large-scale, socialised industrial capital (imperialist capital) means, as Marx and Engels set out in the above works, that it demands planning, regulation, and so becomes tied to the state, which must organise that planning and regulation of capital, i.e. the economy, on an increasing scale. As they put it,
“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.”
(Anti-Duhring, p 358)
Why is that, still to their benefit? Because, this very process, which enables this large-scale socialised capital to continue to operate on an expanding scale, and so produce more profits – but also to employ more labour, and so benefits workers to that extent – provides the capitalists, the owners, now, not of industrial capital, but of fictitious-capital, with the source of their own increased revenues, and wealth and power. Even if the capitalists – the owners of fictitious-capital – only drew their revenues from that ownership of fictitious-capital, i.e. interest/dividends, they would, thereby, be the main beneficiaries, initially, of this planned production. Even if all of the industrial capital became statised, as part of that process, they would be the main beneficiaries, because, as the owners of fictitious-capital, loanable money-capital, they would be the ones loaning money to that state, i.e. buying its government bonds, and so deriving huge amounts of interest/coupon from them.
It is why the ruling-class of owners of fictitious-capital, support the EU, and oppose Brexit, just as it is in the interests of the working-class, as the collective owners of that large-scale, socialised capital. Who it is not in the interests of is the petty-bourgeoisie, whose parochialism and nationalism, is accompanied by their own commitment to red in tooth and claw competition, and all the petty perks that it relies upon to survive, which, also, make life hell for wage-labour.
But, the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, precisely because they have been enabled to continue to exercise control over capital they do not own, by the state they control, and by a socialist movement that, itself, does not understand, as Marx and Engels did, that the owners of this large-scale industrial capital, are, already, the workers, do not just draw the revenues they are entitled to as owners of loanable money-capital. They also, use that control to appropriate to themselves additional revenues. They appropriate to themselves not just interest, but a part of what is, economically, profit of enterprise, and so, economically the revenue that should be appropriated by the collective owners of the industrial capital, i.e. the workers.
As Marx points out, in Capital III, economically, the revenues of this socialised capital, amount to the wages of labour, whether the wages of the actual workers, or the salaries of the professional managers; the rent paid to landowners; the interest paid to the lenders of money-capital; and the profit of enterprise, which is objectively the property of the associated producers/workers, and at their disposal for capital accumulation; and taxes to the capitalist state. But, because that state has created company law that gives shareholders a right to exercise control over property they do not own, and denies the actual owners of that property – the workers – that right, the shareholders use that control to appropriate to themselves a portion of the profit of enterprise. It is why, as Haldane reported, the share of profits going to dividends has risen from 10% in the 1970's, to 70%, today.
The reason this is significant is that it underpins the nature of the crisis of social-democracy. Social-democracy is the dominant ideology of the owners of large-scale capital, both the collective owners of socialised industrial capital (the workers), and the private owners of fictitious-capital (the bourgeois ruling-class). But, the very fact of these two types of large-scale capital, and their different owners, with antagonistic interests, means that social-democracy, itself, has always been divided into a conservative social-democracy (representing the owners of fictitious-capital), and progressive social-democracy, which represents the owners of the socialised industrial capital. As I have set out before, in the period after 1980, in particular, the ruling-class became addicted to speculative capital gains, as falling interest rates, resulting from a huge rise in productivity, caused asset prices to soar. It is now in a trap, in which, if it accepts the need for greater economic growth and capital accumulation, to expand the mass of profit, it will, simultaneously cause interest rates to rise, and so asset prices to crash.
Conservative social-democracy, therefore, has reached a dead-end, in which it can only protect the long-term interests of the ruling-class, by damaging the short-term interests of that ruling-class, by forcing it to go cold turkey, and accept a collapse of its paper wealth, as asset prices crash, perhaps by as much as 90%. Given the fact that social-democrats have also sold the delusion to society at large that it can create wealth out of thin air, by such asset price inflation, it is obvious why they have not been able to face that reality. In fact, although a 90% crash in house prices, and other asset prices, would benefit the vast majority of society, it is not easy to explain to them why that is the case, in conditions where they have been, for decades, gulled into the delusion that they have somehow become wealthier as a result of the price of their house rising, even though a moment's thought should show that, so has the price of any other house they want to buy!
Britain has suffered more, because the one thing that mitigated that objective reality was the EU. The objective reality, drives towards the conditions that stand behind the ideology of progressive social-democracy, an increase in planning and regulation, an increase in capital accumulation, and so of an increase in the size of the single-market/state. That is why, as conservative social-democracy hit a dead-end, after the 2008 global financial crash, across the globe, there was a rise in the forces of progressive social-democracy, albeit in a very confused manner. The forces of conservative social-democracy have tried to defy the reality, by trying to again inflate asset prices, via QE, and have also sought to quash, by authoritarian and bureaucratic means that resurgence of the kind of progressive social democracy that formed the consensus of the post-war period of capital accumulation.
What was the social-democratic consensus of the period 1945-80, is now portrayed as some kind of dangerous, left-wing extremism. Consequently, as the centre has collapsed, the petty-bourgeoisie has asserted itself. Reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism now stands in opposition to social-democracy, the reactionary, private owners of small scale capital, versus the owners of large-scale capital. It is not the end of two-party politics, but simply its transition, and simplification. A number of analysts have indicated that in terms of blocs of “right” and “left” there has been no change, just a shift within each bloc. The transition in the “Right” bloc, i.e. the bloc of the reactionary petty-bourgeois has been completed, but it is not yet complete on the “Left”, i.e. the bloc of the working-class.
In 2019, as I pointed out at the time, Corbyn's Labour lost, because the anti-Tory vote was split between Labour, Liberals, Greens and so on, as well as Plaid and SNP. It was facilitated by Corbyn's own reversion to the Stalinoid notions of economic nationalism of the 1970's, as well, of course, as the deliberate sabotage of Labour by the forces of Blue Labour in alliance with the Blair-Rights, using the weaponization of anti-Semitism. Johnson won the election, because he was able to hoover up the votes of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, with the aid of Farage. But, Johnson could not carry through the deluded notions of Brexit and, as it became apparent that it was a disaster, he was forced out, followed by the idiocy of Truss's attempt, and, finally, Sunak became nightwatchman, prior to the Tories being thrown out.
In 2024, with the Tories discredited, Farage began the process of rebranding Toryism as The Brexit Party, now, Reform. The only reason Starmer's Labour won in 2024, was the reversal of the conditions of 2019, i.e. the Right bloc was split down the middle, and the Left bloc, sort of, lined up, reluctantly behind Blue Labour. It was a mirage, a pyrrhic victory that was bound to collapse in short order, not least because Blue Labour attempted to adopt the clothes of Brexit, to turn itself into a pale version of Reform, with all of its flag-waving jingoism, whilst promising the same kinds of illusory growth that would only be possible by re-joining the EU. The baton of social-democracy passed from its hands into those of the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP. The inertia has retained a vote for Blue Labour, but it is inevitably going the same way as, on the Right, has already been traversed by the Tories.
A look at Thursday's elections shows that to be the case. In numerous cases, the collapse of Labour seats has been simply mirrored in the rise of Green seats on particular Councils. Elsewhere, as in 2019, a residual Labour vote has split the anti-Reform vote, enabling Reform candidates to take the seat. It is no longer credible to ask Green, Liberal, Plaid or SNP voters to vote for a reactionary Blue Labour Party, in conditions where that really means asking them to vote for a slightly modified version of the reactionary ideas of Reform, just wearing a red rosette. So, even where Labour candidates came second, or would have won with the addition of Green votes, the reality is that it is the reactionary politics of Starmer's Blue Labour that made that impossible.
A look at the data for England shows that Reform have more or less simply rebranded Tory seats as Reform seats. Reform are up by 1,442, and the Tories down by 557. The additional 900 seats, are not, by and large, the result of Labour voters switching to Reform, but are, as set out above, the result of the anti-Reform vote being split between Labour, Greens and Liberals. A look at Wales and Scotland, shows that even more starkly, as two party politics remains, but now, as I predicted before the elections, it is Reform and Plaid, or Reform and SNP that constitute the two contenders. That is despite those assemblies utilising forms of PR. Had they used first past the post, Labour and Tories would have been totally wiped out.
The argument put by Blue Labour, for example expressed by Deborah Mattison, that the results show Reform picking up traditional Labour voters in “Red Wall” seats, is clearly disproved in Scotland and Wales, the latter in particular. You could not get much more of a symbol of “Red Wall”, i.e., old industrial working-class than Wales. Yet, the Labour vote collapse in Wales, clearly did not go, in its vast majority to Reform, but to Plaid, and in some places the Greens.
In England, the Greens, as well as simply replacing Labour in various mayoral elections, such as Hackney, and taking over every Labour seat on Councils in some contests, have quadrupled the number of seats held. They have gone from 141 seats to 587. By contrast the Liberals, who started with 683 seats, have risen to only 844, a rise of only 155, or about 25%. In large part that is because the Liberals have attempted, themselves, to stay on the ground of conservative social-democracy, and even there, their one main selling point, their opposition to Brexit, and support for the EU, they have voluntarily gagged themselves on, for the last 7 years. In addition, they have been almost as bad as Blue Labour in seeking to gain sectarian advantage over the Greens, by joining in the weaponization of anti-Semitism. In addition, in some seats, there was more than one vacancy, but where the Greens only stood one candidate, meaning that some voters would vote Green, but use their second vote for a Labour candidate.
Blair-rights, like Liz Kendall have claimed, still, despite all the evidence, that the majority of voters do not support the “extremes”, but are in the “centre”. What is clear is that that centre was simply an abstraction, a mathematical construct amounting to a small minority in the middle that was able for a time to exercise a disproportional influence, by holding the balance of power between the two “extremes”. Kendall seems blind to the fact that they have branded Reform as the “extreme” on the Right – whilst themselves being a pale, unconvincing version of it – and the Greens as “extreme” on the Left – even though their programme amounts to nothing more than the kind of social-democratic consensus of the post-war period – and yet, it is precisely these two “extremes” that have been the big winners!
What is shown is that the class division of society has reasserted itself, as the centre has collapsed. It is, in the era of imperialist capital, no longer a division between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, when it comes to elections, because the bourgeoisie is numerically a de minimus factor. It is a division between the reactionary, nationalist petty-bourgeoisie, and the working-class. The political representation of the kind of social-democratic, bourgeois nationalism that Labour used to promote is now the preserve of the Greens, Plaid and SNP. In the case of the last two, their bourgeois nationalism, is in the context, as most European bourgeois nationalism now is, of the recognition of the need to be within the framework of the EU, which makes it progressive compared to the kind of jingoistic, English nationalism/Brexitism now promoted by Blue Labour.
Starmer has now made a show of inviting back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman, but even for a return to that kind of Blair-right, conservative social democracy, will require a purge of Blue Labour, of the likes of Glassman, Reed and Co., as well as Starmer as their stooge. Or it requires, as I suggested some time ago, it will mean that the Blair-Rights will split to join with the Liberals, and the social-democratic wing of the Conservatives, to form a new European style centre party. It may now be too late to save Labour ahead of the next election. It would have been a perfect time for a socialist alternative, or at least a progressive social-democratic alternative party to emerge, but again Corbyn and those Stalinoid elements behind him have destroyed, for now, that possibility. The fact that the PLP is stuffed to the gills with Blue Labour placeholders, and Zionist cronies, means that no new Leader can overcome that reality, prior to the party itself, in the country being renewed and democratised, with widespread mandatory reselections, which will require the trades unions to impose themselves.
For now, it looks like the Labour Party is in its death throes.
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