Grayling's Ignorant and Ridiculous Argument

Tory Transport Minister, and Brextremist, Chris 'Failing' Grayling, is arguing that another referendum over Brexit would give rise to a potential for extremism in a way not seen in Britain since the Restoration of the Monarchy, in 1660.  This argument is ignorant, and ridiculous.  It is historically false, and logically unsustainable.

Firstly, what Grayling's argument amounts to saying is that Brextremists like him, if they do not get their way, have a right to be offended, and to report to violent, and extreme measures, but all those who feel, equally passionately, for Remain, that their rights and opinions have been ignored, have no such right to respond in that manner.  Yet, the fact is that, according to all opinion polls, and simply on the basis of the logic of the transformation of the electorate since 2016 - around 1.5 million young voters joining the rolls, and around 1.5 million old voters leaving the rolls - those supporting Remain are in the majority.

If we were to take it purely on the basis that those in the majority camp have a right to be offended, and to react violently to being ignored, then it is Remain supporters who would have every right to do so, in the face of being denied a democratic vote on the issue, not the Brextremists.  In what rational universe is support for democracy, rather than rule of the mob to be defended, by refraining from a democratic vote, for fear of provoking a violent reaction from the mob?  The supporters of Brexit claim that there is no majority for Remain today, any more than there was in 2016.  That matter is open to debate, and the only democratic way of deciding that issue, is by holding a vote!  Those who believe that there is a majority for Remain have every democratic right, therefore, to demand such a vote, and the argument that to hold such a vote would lead to violence is no argument at all for anyone who has any credible claim to being a democrat.

For all the reasons I have set out previously, here, I do not believe that the appropriate means of holding such a vote is via a referendum, which is the chosen vehicle for all demagogues, dictators and Bonapartists.  The preferred way is to hold a General Election, but if such a General Election is not possible, or if Corbyn continues to ignore the view of 80% of Labour Party members, and pushes ahead with his crazy backing for Brexit, then another referendum, might be the only credible alternative.

But, Grayling's claim that such sharp divisions in society, as opposed to some cosy centre-ground consensus, is alien to British politics is an historical fabrication.  For example, after the Restoration, there was the Glorious Revolution of 1689, when the rising bourgeoisie, put its own chosen candidate, William of Orange, on the British throne, symbolising the fact that the British state, if not yet the political regime had become dominated by the interests of capital, and not landed property.  The subsequent struggle of that rising bourgeoisie to capture the political power, via a political revolution, continued over the next 150 years, as the bourgeoisie, as a whole struggled to obtain the right to vote, culminating in the 1832 Reform Act.  But, on the way to it, that bourgeoisie, supported by a growing urban proletariat also had to engage in violent political clashes, with the old order, such as that which occurred in the Peterloo Massacre.  At that time, only the owners of landed property, constituting just 2% of the population, and excluding many of the bourgeoisie itself, had the right to vote.

After the 1832 Reform Act extended the franchise to most of the bourgeoisie, a number of sharp political battles raged, more sharp, indeed, than that currently over Brexit.  Firstly, the industrial bourgeoisie, backed by the urban proletariat, demanded a Repeal of the Corn Laws, which kept food prices high, and directly benefited the landed aristocracy, and the sections of the bourgeoisie amongst the financial oligarchy connected to them.  The issue split the Tory Party.  But, also at this time, following the extension of the franchise to the whole of the bourgeoisie, the working-class now also demanded the right to vote, and as Engels pointed out, the industrial capitalists, the middle-class realised that, in order to hold political power themselves, such an extension of the franchise was necessary.

"The revival of commercial prosperity, natural after the revulsion of 1847 had spent itself, was put down altogether to the credit of Free Trade. Both these circumstances had turned the English working class, politically, into the tail of the ‘great Liberal Party’, the party led by the manufacturers. This advantage, once gained, had to be perpetuated. And the manufacturing capitalists, from the Chartist opposition, not to Free Trade, but to the transformation of Free Trade into the one vital national question, had learnt, and were learning more and more, that the middle class can never obtain full social and political power over the nation except by the help of the working class. Thus a gradual change came over the relations between both classes... And, practically, that horrid People’s Charter actually became the political programme of the very manufacturers who had opposed it to the last. The Abolition of the Property Qualification and Vote by Ballot are now the law of the land. The Reform Acts of 1867 and 1884 make a near approach to universal suffrage, at least such as it now exists in Germany; the Redistribution Bill now before Parliament creates equal electoral districts-on the whole not more unequal than those of France or Germany; payment of members, and shorter, if not actually annual Parliaments, are visibly looming in the distance and yet there are people who say that Chartism is dead.” 

(Preface To The Second German Edition of “The Condition Of The Working Class)

But, as Engels says, here, it had not always been the case that the bourgeoisie had supported that demand.  In the 1840's, the bourgeoisie took fright at the idea of giving workers the vote.  As revolution spread across the continent, the Chartists, from whom both Marx and Engels, separately grasped the nature of the working-class as the vehicle of social change, fought violent battles, as the bourgeoisie had done before them, for the right to vote.

Where Brenda From Bristol, found democracy to be way too taxing, and time consuming, even when limited to the requirement to spend just a few minutes every few years putting a cross on a ballot, the Chartists engaged, on a mass scale, in political debate, activity and a struggle not just for the right to vote every few years, but for a series of political rights, including Annual Parliaments.  The Chartists found themselves imprisoned, deported and their allies continually attacked by the local dragoons of the old ruling class.  Here, in Stoke, which was a main centre for Chartism, it led to dozens of workers being shot and killed, and many more wounded.  One demonstrator in Burslem was decapitated as a result of being caught in the lash of a bull whip, wielded by one of goons sent in by the local ruling-class.  No wonder, that in the pubs of Hanley, the Chartists began to arm themselves, in the run up  to the General Strike of 1842, which began in the Potteries coal mines, and spread into the potbanks, and then across the country.

Grayling also seems to have removed from his tiny mind the struggles over Women's Suffrage at the start of the 20th century, or the violent actions of the state against the working-class during the 1926 General Strike, or of the violent confrontations to defeat Mosley's Black Shirts, at Cable Street, when his nationalist gang was promoting many of the same ideas of xenophobia couched in anti-capitalist rhetoric that today's Brextremists promote.  

Indeed, there is a lesson for today of those who blindly look at "traditional" Labour seats and seek to tail the prejudices of the most backward sections of workers in those seats.  In the 1920's, the Stoke parliamentary seat (what is now mostly Stoke South), was held by John Ward.  Ward was originally a member of the "Marxist" SDF.  He quickly moved right.  Initially, he was involved in the creation of the Labour Party, but in 1905, objected to the inclusion of Socialists, and socialist principles in its constitution.  By 1918, he was recruiting "Labour Battalions" to go to Russia to fight against the Bolsheviks!

Ward was succeeded in the Stoke parliamentary seat, in 1929, by Lady Cynthia Mosely, wife of Oswald Mosley.  She was elected under a Labour ticket, but soon after followed her husband into the New Party.  In 1931, Mosely himself stood, in the seat, under the New Party banner, getting 24% of the vote.  In the 1970's, I worked with someone who lived in Longton at the time Mosely stood, and he recounted all of the packed meetings and social events he attended, as a teenager, organised by Mosely's mob.  Just because, people are part of the working-class, and because they feel left behind, or alienated, or antagonistic to the status quo, does not mean that they are "traditional" or "core" Labour voters, or people whose bigotry we should appease, let alone give backing to.

And, more recently, Grayling's failing history also forgets about the way the Tories used the full might of the state to oppose the Miners in the 1984-5 strike, including the imposition of effectively martial law on large areas of the country, the use of troops, disguised in police uniforms to break strikers heads, at Orgreave and elsewhere, and the use of undercover police as agents provocateurs to infiltrate workers and other oppositional movements, promoting illegal acts, and sometimes themselves taking part in those illegal acts, so as to maintain their cover, and provide grounds for prosecution of others of those involved in them.

No, British political history is not one of peaceful coexistence, and centre-ground consensus, but of bitter political differences fought out sometimes literally to the death.  No one should be under any doubt the extremes that the ruling class will go to to hold on to power, and the extent socialists will need to be prepared for it.  But, for now, the dominant section of the ruling class is opposed to the Brextremists like Grayling, who stand not for the status quo, but a dangerous, reactionary turning back of the clock even from the advances that have been made over the last century.  It is why people like Grayling are led to look to the men of violence from that same kind of reactionary swamp, because they do not have the backing of the state and its monopoly of violence.  It is the Brextremists that have their back against the wall, which is why their incitements to violence, like those displayed by the bullies outside parliament have become all the more frantic, as they try to make up for their small numbers, by more intensive, and more threatening behaviour.

As with their refusal to allow another vote, it simply reflects the fact that they know that they are a minority, and a minority that is rapidly shrinking in size.

Why I Don't Oppose Grayling's New Private University - Part 1

Most, if not all, of the Marxist Left have fallen in behind the Liberal objections to the new private University of the Humanities, being proposed for London, by A.C. Grayling and others.

In fact, there is no reason for Marxists to oppose it. Indeed, doing so, simply perpetuates the myth, propounded by Liberals, that there is something progressive, or egalitarian about the existing State Capitalist Education system. There isn't. It also misunderstands the issue of Marxists' attitude to privatisation.

Let's take the question of Education in general first, before looking at Higher Education specifically, and then look at Marxists and privatisation. Marx's attitude to Education was quite clear, and set out in a number of places. Marx was completely opposed to the State or Church being involved in the provision of Education. He called it “wholly objectionable”.

The only role for the State, he argued, was in the setting of Minimum Standards, and the employment of Inspectors to check they were being implemented, in the same way that was done with Factory Inspectors. He supported something along the lines of what existed in the US, where small communities got together to establish their own schools, and to finance and control them. Marx certainly did not believe that Education was a means of workers obtaining any kind of meaningful equality with Capitalists.

In the Gotha Programme the Lassalleans had raised the demand, accepted by the Eisenachers:

"The German Workers' party demands as the intellectual and ethical basis of the state:

"1. Universal and equal elementary education by the state. Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction."

Marx points out that “free” education existed in a number of places. In fact, of course, its not free. Its paid for by taxes deducted compulsorily from workers wages by the State, in the same way that employers used to force workers to buy from the Company Store via the Truck System. The Monopoly of the Truck System meant that provision was poor quality, limited in range, and high priced. It was one of the reasons workers got together to create their own Co-operative stores.

Whether Capital could facilitate such “free” education depended upon the extent of development, in just the same way that workers consumption of any other commodity depends upon the extent to which Capital has reached a stage of needing to extend the horizons of workers consumption. The more Capital is accumulated, as Marx points out, in the Grundrisse, the more it satisfies workers basic demands, and is led to develop an ever wider range of commodities, to sell to workers, in order to realise Surplus Value. Things such as education and healthcare are just such commodities. Moreover, as Capitalism develops, and its initial huge Reserve Army of Labour, created by the pushing of peasants off their land, is used up, and as Capitalism becomes more technological, it has a need for workers with a Minimum level of Education and Health in order to ensure itself with a secure Supply of Labour Power.

Capital has a direct interest in having its State take control of these functions to force workers into expending this Minimum level of their income, on these areas of consumption, and in controlling the quality and content of what is provided, via its large scale, Education Factories. Moreover, as I've demonstrated elsewhere, in creating large, State run, Health and Education industries, producing commodities for workers, (and as Marx points out in the Grundrisse simultaneously producing Labour Power itself) Capital also established the bases of Economies of Scale, in training, Research and Development, etc. that extends into the versions of these commodities it consumes itself, thereby massively reducing its own costs of consumption. If only Capitalists consumed cancer drugs and treatments, for example, just think what the unit costs of that for them would be? As Marx points out, to the extent that Higher Education was dominated by kids from rich families, free, State Higher Education meant workers subsidising the rich. In opposing the Lassallean formulation, Marx writes,

“"Equal elementary education"? What idea lies behind these words? Is it believed that in present-day society (and it is only with this one has to deal) education can be equal for all classes? Or is it demanded that the upper classes also shall be compulsorily reduced to the modicum of education — the elementary school — that alone is compatible with the economic conditions not only of the wage-workers but of the peasants as well?

"Universal compulsory school attendance. Free instruction." The former exists even in Germany, the second in Switzerland and in the United States in the case of elementary schools. If in some states of the latter country higher education institutions are also "free", that only means in fact defraying the cost of education of the upper classes from the general tax receipts...

"Elementary education by the state" is altogether objectionable. Defining by a general law the expenditures on the elementary schools, the qualifications of the teaching staff, the branches of instruction, etc., and, as is done in the United States, supervising the fulfillment of these legal specifications by state inspectors, is a very different thing from appointing the state as the educator of the people! Government and church should rather be equally excluded from any influence on the school. Particularly, indeed, in the Prusso-German Empire (and one should not take refuge in the rotten subterfuge that one is speaking of a "state of the future"; we have seen how matters stand in this respect) the state has need, on the contrary, of a very stern education by the people.

But 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.”

Critique Of The Gotha Programme Chapter 4

But, the point is not whether it could be provided free or not, the development of Capitalism, and change in the regime of accumulation, meant that not only could Capitalism provide it, but, as part of developing Welfarism, and to meet its needs for the reproduction of Labour Power it had an incentive to do so, which is why Bismark established a National Insurance Scheme in Germany in the 19th Century, and why his measures were copied by Tories such as Chamberlain, and Liberals like Lloyd George in Britain. It is also what formed the basis of "Fordism", the raising of workers wages by Henry Ford, and the provision for them of various forms of Welfare. It is marked a sharp change in the regime of accumulation from extensive to intensive accumulation.

The point is that such education could never be “Equal”. Even if it were not the case that education varies greatly from school to school, and, like healthcare, is better in more affluent areas, then the advantages that kids, from more affluent backgrounds, have, outside school, will always mean that they are advantaged in terms of their educational experience, and achievements.

But, also, the focus on this question, by the Left, itself is wrong. It suggests that inequality and access to wealth and power are a function of educational achievement. They are not. The ability to “consume” education, like the ability to consume any other commodity is a distributional issue, that is it is dependent upon the ability to purchase and exercise control over a portion of society's production. But, that ability, as Marx points out, is not determined by things like what job you do, or how clever you are, but by your ownership or non-ownership of Capital. As he puts it in the CGP,

“Any distribution whatever of the means of consumption is only a consequence of the distribution of the conditions of production themselves. The latter distribution, however, is a feature of the mode of production itself. The capitalist mode of production, for example, rests on the fact that the material conditions of production are in the hands of nonworkers in the form of property in capital and land, while the masses are only owners of the personal condition of production, of labor power. If the elements of production are so distributed, then the present-day distribution of the means of consumption results automatically. If the material conditions of production are the co-operative property of the workers themselves, then there likewise results a distribution of the means of consumption different from the present one. Vulgar socialism (and from it in turn a section of the democrats) has taken over from the bourgeois economists the consideration and treatment of distribution as independent of the mode of production and hence the presentation of socialism as turning principally on distribution. After the real relation has long been made clear, why retrogress again?”

Critique Of the Gotha Programme, Chapter 1

To paraphrase Marx, the ownership of Capital makes even the most dull-witted person into a genius, because the ownership of Capital, means that whatever skills or ability are required, can simply be purchased.

To suggest that it is access to education, which is the solution to workers problems is to leave the ground of Marxism, and to move to the ground of Liberalism. Workers problems do not stem from the fact that they do not have the same access to education as Capitalists, but from the fact that they do not have the same access to Capital! If every single worker in the country was the proud possessor of a good quality Ph.D., it would not change their position one jot, as a class. It would simply mean that the Capitalists had a huge number of very well educated workers to exploit in a much wider range of uses of their labour.

Unfortunately, also what it essentially does is again to focus on the wrong target. It focusses on the Middle Classes, and their marginally better access to Education, rather than on Capital. As such, the measures and demands raised, are then against the Middle Classes rather than Capital, and, like much of the rest of the Left's Fabian, redistributive, Socialism, acts to drive a wedge between the working-class, and its natural allies amongst the Middle Classes.

Its no wonder the Tories have such an easy job then in winning the support of those sections of society, and the sections of the working-class whose outlook, lifestyle and aspirations tend to mirror it.

The reality is that if the rich want to buy a better education for their kids they can already easily do it. They can send their kids to Eton, Harrow, Westminster or any of the other top Private Schools, as a conveyor belt into Oxbridge.

For those unable to get into Oxbridge, then they can simply go to one of the U.S. Private Universities such as Harvard. So what would be proposed then? Should we ban freedom of movement to stop them going to these overseas Universities? Perhaps we should build some kind of Berlin Wall to restrict movement? The reality is that these kinds of proscriptive solutions are not Marxist but Stalinist in nature. They aim to establish such proscriptions as a means of defending existing Monopolies, and the inefficiencies and deficiencies that go with them, rather than seeking to go beyond those Monopolies, and to generate something better, and more efficient.

Forward To Part 2

Dannatt & The Doughnut

There are some times when things happen that really you couldn't have anticipated, like if you buy a Jam Doughnut, and what do you find inside - Jam! The announcement that former head of the British Army, General Dannatt, is to become an advisor to the Tories is just one of those occasions. Who'd have thunk it? One of the Capitalist State's Military Top Brass, who like all the Military Top Brass comes from the top drawer of society, was all along a closet Tory. Everyone has to be amazed. In fact, who could have seen that coming after the last few days and weeks when the General has been hogging the headlines with criticism of the Government that would get the lower ranks brought up on a charge, and as seen in the past few weeks gets low level Civil Servants the sack!

It had first been mooted he'd be a Minister sitting in the Lords. But, its bad form to announce your Government before the electorate have actually voted, and given the Tories criticisms of Labour Ministers sitting in the Lords it perhaps would not have been a wise move. So instead the Tories rowed back, and now he's just to be an advisor.

Dannatt



The news also obviously came as much of a shock to Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Grayling.

Doughnut



Interviewed by the BBC's Emily Maitlis, and asked about Dannatt's appointment, Grayling expressed his concern that such appointments amounted to nothing more than gimmicks!

See: BBC News

A sensible person, and a Party with any brains having realised they'd made a gaffe would have kept schtum. But, no doubt instructed by the Tory Parties PR people he then went on TV again to compound the gaffe. If Gordon Brown had appointed Dannatt he said then this would be a gimmick, but as its the Tory Party appointing him it is clearly a wise and statesmanlike move!!!!

You know when kids drive cars they've knicked around Car Parks in mad frantic circles, going nowhere but raising lots of heat and smoke, what do they call that? Oh yes, a doughnut.