Blair-Rights & Soft Left Carry Out Their Counter Coup

The Blair-Right/Soft Left counter coup against the Blue Labour/Zionist faction that took control of the Labour Party in 2019, has now begun. In 2019, the Blair-Rights were not strong enough to displace Corbyn's supporters inside a massively expanded Labour Party. The soft-left were not going to actively support the kind of actions required to bring about the kind of blood-letting to achieve it, though, as in the past, they could be relied on to simply keep their heads down, and wait until it was over, rather than resist it. The Blair-Rights, allied with the petty-bourgeois nationalists and Zionists of Blue Labour, seizing upon the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as a convenient weapon to first undermine Corbyn, and then launch the witch hunt in the party. They chose Starmer as a cypher for their coup.

At the time Starmer won the Leadership, I noted that, the Blue Labour/Zionist faction would inevitably drag him further and further into the swamp of the petty-bourgeois nationalist Right, and so it has been, with the inevitable disastrous consequences for Labour, leading to the situation, today, and the equally inevitable counter coup by the Blair-Rights and soft Left, who have now chosen their own cypher, in the form of Burnham. Its ironic that the pro-EU Blair, has himself, now, become an apologist for the petty-bourgeois nationalists, and for his rich associates in the Trumpf gang, whilst the once soft Left and anti-EEC Kinnock, has taken over that vacant slot. On Saturday, Kinnock was even heading up the speakers at the Rejoin EU Rally in London, and its no coincidence that as Starmer gave another empty speech announcing his departure, this morning, in Downing Street, the strains of Ode To Joy, the EU Anthem, wafted through the air, almost drowning him out.

The media pundits have talked about the fact that in the last ten years, Britain has had 7 different Prime Ministers. But, they fail to mention that between 1990, and 2005, the Conservative Party went through 6 different Leaders. The reason is the same. Superficially, that reason is Brexit, or the relation between Britain and the EU, but that is itself simply the manifestation of the real underlying cause, which is the division between the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie and those of the bourgeoisie and working-class. Again, the media pundits, at least the better of them, like to present this division, in electoral terms as that between a Left or “progressive” bloc of Green, Liberal and Labour voters, as against a Right or “reactionary” bloc of Restore, Reform and Tory voters, without considering that these divisions are not simply arbitrary alignments of voters within an amorphous electorate, but are themselves a reflection of aggregated class interests.

The media pundits have tried to claim that Makerfield was a classic seat in which Reform should have won, but they based that simply on the fact, of it being a “Red Wall” seat, and on the fact that in the recent local elections, Reform won every council seat. But, that was a typically lazy, and superficial analysis that was inevitably going to be proven wrong, as I pointed out before the by-election.

I noted,

“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, McCartney's 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.”

The idea that Burnham has, somehow, won over working-class Reform or Tory voters, is as ludicrous as the idea that the Tories or Reform won elections by winning over working-class Labour voters. That is only very marginally the case. Burnham won because he managed to get working-class Labour voters to turn out to vote for him, whereas, in the local elections, many of them simply didn't vote, or else have been voting for other progressive parties such as the Greens, Liberals and so on, as they have rejected the reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism of Keir Starmer's Blue Labour/Zionist agenda.

As I have pointed out many times over the last ten years, the vote for Brexit, even in those “Red Wall” seats, was based, not on working-class, Labour voters voting Leave, but on a the petty-bourgeoisie voting for it, a petty-bourgeoisie that had grown by 50% since the 1980's, and which was also the basis of the internal strife inside the Conservative Party, of which it comprised the vast number of its members and voters. That the media, and the bourgeois political pundits confuse this petty-bourgeois mass of poorly educated, precarious and impoverished with the working-class is simply a feature of their superficial, sociological definition of class. The fact remains that despite having grown by 50% since the 1980's, as a consequence of deindustrialisation, that petty-bourgeois mass still only constitutes around a third of the population/electorate, and it is that which places a cap on its electoral fortunes.

The reality, however, is clear. Burnham will face the same economic realities that Starmer and Blue Labour faced. Starmer has tried to claim that, in the last two years, he has defied those realities. Its nonsense. His claim about stabilising the economy is only a claim that he has stabilised it in the same way a corpse is stabilised in a graveyard. As Kinnock pointed out, the claims about trade deals are hugely exaggerated, and do not come close to the deals the UK already had as a result of being in the EU. Does anyone who has had to use the NHS really believe the claims about its improvement? Likewise, a look at the continued crumbling of the roads, and other infrastructure give the lie to Starmer's claims in that regard to. In the meantime, inflation remains high, and is likely to rise, whilst government borrowing is rising, and interest rates are following suit.

That reality, drives towards the obvious course of action, of a rapid re-joining of the EU. Burnham should be open about that reality, and get it underway. The Labour landslide in 2024 was a fraud, with Labour getting a third fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour secured in 2017. But, it would be ridiculous for Burnham to ignore the fact that he will take over a huge parliamentary majority. The venality of the Blue Labour/Zionist faction is already being shown in their snarling comments, as they are hoist by their own petard. They may seek to undermine a Burnham government, but his majority will be such that they can be dealt with. Beginning the process of negotiation to re-join the EU is the best basis on which a Burnham government can rebuild the economy, and remove the constraints it faces, and on that basis, rebuild the voter base of Labour for the next election in 2028/9. A General Election fought in 2028, with a commitment to formally re-join, would leave the option for the UK holding EU elections in 2029.

SNNS 48

 

Northern Soul Classics - Tighten Up - Archie Bell & The Drells

 

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 18

I have set out, elsewhere, why all of the liquidity injections of the 1990's, and QE of the 2010's, whilst depreciating the world's currencies/standards of prices, did not result in large-scale commodity price rises. The reason is that to do so requires that these money tokens and credit went into general circulation, as part of a rise in economic activity. But, in fact, a look at what happened shows that this liquidity was never designed to stimulate economic activity, but was designed only to protect the immediate interests of the ruling-class owners of fictitious-capital, by cutting short the bursting of asset price bubbles.

The huge rise in asset prices of the 1980's, was interrupted by the global financial crash that occurred in 1987. It wasn't just a bubble in financial markets that burst, but, also, in property markets. In 1990, house prices in Britain dropped by around 40%, in Japan, some property prices fell by up to 90%. In the US, the Federal Reserve, responded to this fall in asset prices by pumping liquidity into the system. That was quite a reversal for its newly installed Chairman, Alan Greenspan, who as an apostle of Ayn Rand, had previously been a staunch advocate of sound money.

It turned out that Greenspan was an even more staunch advocate of the immediate interests of the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital. In 1987, stock markets dropped by 25% in a single day, but, as central banks, led by the Federal Reserve, depreciated currencies by injecting huge amounts of liquidity, the result was that, when the year ended, those stock markets were up by around 50%! This was, now, a casino, in which it appeared the gamblers could not lose. If it were an actual casino, it would go bust, on that basis, and, essentially that is the relation to the real economy, and to the industrial capital that produces the profits out of which the interest/dividends, rent and taxes are paid. Interestingly, if you watch many of the current adverts, today, for online gambling sites, they have adopted a similar approach. If you win, you do not get paid in actual money, but only in tokens that you can use to make further bets. To further encourage that, they provide punters with additional tokens in the form of “acca boosts”. The use of incentives provided by governments, such as “Help To Buy”, in Britain, do a similar thing, to further inflate house prices.

A look at the last 30 years, in particular, has seen the situation described by Marx unfold precisely, but with this difference. When yields fell, as money-capital was devalued, an alternative was found in the speculative capital gains that were the other side of that process. Normally, as Marx notes, the fall in the amount of interest would lead the owners of money-capital to be forced to become industrial capitalists, when the amount of interest no longer covered their needs.. Instead, they, now, cashed in a part of the capital gain, and treated it like revenue. As with every Ponzi Scheme, provided the amount of new liquidity coming into the paper chase, pushing up the asset prices, exceeds the amount being taken out, the illusion continues, and that is what governments and central banks sought to do over the last 40 years. Rachel Reeves is at it again in the UK with the insistence that you can get your tax-free ISA (which acts like the equivalent of an “acca boost”), but only if you plough your savings into a stock market ISA, not if you simply keep your money in a cash savings account.

A number of other factors facilitated the illusion over the last 40 years. The huge rise in productivity, created by the microchip revolution reduced the unit values of commodities, so that even where liquidity did get into general circulation, it only acted to prevent what would have been significant falls in commodity prices. Even when productivity gains began to wain by the end of the last century, other developments such as globalisation, and the creation of large single markets such as the EU, acted as cost free means of expanding trade, reducing costs, and so, increasing the mass of realised profits. So long as the mass of profits continued to grow, the disproportionate growth of interest/dividends and rents was obscured.

But, 2008 showed that had reached its limit. Thatcher's Britain, and Reagan's US were the frontrunners and classic example of the relative decline of industrial capital, and simultaneous rise of fictitious-capital. Both saw deindustrialisation, and both saw a huge rise in asset prices, based on speculation. In the following decades, however, Asia, in particular, saw a corresponding growth of large-scale industrial capital, with similar things happening in Latin America, former Warsaw Pact countries, and later in parts of Africa, and the Middle-East. The US had always had a large petty-bourgeoisie comprised of small traders, as well as its large number of small farmers. It still bears some of the characteristics of its history as a location for European settler colonialism. Its advanced industrial capitalism is concentrated on its East and West Coasts, and large metropolitan areas, whilst its interior remains rural and largely backward. The deindustrialisation of the 1980's exacerbated that, and the same was true in Britain, as its old heavy industries disappeared.

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SNNS 47

 

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.

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Northern Soul Classics - You Turned My Bitter Into Sweet - Mary Love

 

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.

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SNNS 46

 

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.

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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.

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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.

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