The Conservative Party conference, this week, was the backdrop to the implosion of its leader Bad Enoch. The two former main parties – Conservative and Labour – have entered themselves into an ugly competition with Reform, and, boy, are they all ugly!
The conditions for the implosion of Bad Enoch stem from that, as the Conservatives have already seen their reactionary, petty-bourgeois, Tory wing be simply metamorphosed into Reform. The word is that, following the conference, as Bad Enoch loses the protection against a leadership challenge, the letters are ready to go in, and she will be replaced by “honest” Bob Jenrick, who has used the conference platform, to show that he is ugly enough to compete with the racists of Reform, following his comments about the lack of any white faces to be seen on a recent trip to Handsworth, in Birmingham. But, the word, also, is that when he takes over as leader, he will merge what remains of the Tories with Reform.
And, it is a question of what remains, because Reform has already picked up large numbers of Tory activists, councillors and so on, as well as some of their donors, whilst, at the same time, the party has lost significant numbers from its opposite wing to the Liberals, and in Scotland to the SNP. The implosion this week, as Bad Enoch sought to simply say whatever outlandish, racist thing she could think of, such as the pledge, plucked out of the air, to repatriate 150,000 UK residents a year, is simply a desperate attempt to compete with the ugliness of Jenrick inside the party and Farage outside. It also seeks to outdo the ugly, racist politics of Starmer and Blue Labour, as they also responded to Farage's NF-like comments on repatriation. Indeed, Jenrick's comments, only mirror the comments of Starmer a few weeks ago that, also, used the imagery of the original Enoch, in his “Rivers of Blood” speech.
The Conservative Party is dead and buried. Labour looks to be next. Starmer has survived for now, but Blue Labour has lost credibility, along with lots of its voter base to the Greens, and Liberals. The Deputy Leader contest has been turned into a typical, meaningless, stage-managed farce. Its only saviour, at the moment, is the usual failure of the Left to organise itself, and this from people who for decades claimed to have studied the tactical and strategic genius of the likes of Lenin and Trotsky! But, despite them, history will move on, and if the current regime inside Labour continues into the Spring, it will be destroyed in the elections, forcing the unions to act in one way or another.
The ruling-class cannot continue to rule in the old way, of the last 40 years, and the working-class is not prepared to continue in the old way, but is, currently, leaderless, and unable to clearly assert its own interests either. The petty-bourgeoisie voted for Reform, and, in places, the Tories, but the working-class and middle-class, desperate to remove the Tories, was left with the choice of Blue Labour, Greens, and Liberals (as well as SNP and Plaid in Scotland and Wales). As Blairism/neo-Liberalism collapsed, and the petty-bourgeoisie was able to congeal around Brexit, we got Boris Johnson, and ultimately Truss, just as, in the US, it led to Trump, and is leading back to him, and in France led to Macron, and, now, increasingly towards Le Pen.
Starmer was put in place by the forces of the Right, around Blue Labour. He is their prisoner. But, Blue Labour no more than Johnson and Truss can deliver the fantasy of Brexit. So, what is the game of the Blair-rights inside Blue Labour, of sticking with its agenda? The ambition of Blair, and his allies was to free itself from the restrictions of the link to the unions, and wider labour movement. He never managed that, because, docile and compliant as the union bureaucrats are, they had no reason to vote to sever the link, and undermine their own leverage. That remains the case, but, if Blue Labour continues on its doomed, reactionary nationalist trajectory, and as, inevitably, its “Labour Brexit” nonsense collapses, increasingly, the progressive, working-class base of Labour will desert it, at least when it comes to voting, for the Liberals and Greens, where no such link to the unions and wider labour movement exists. That is occurring already, as seen in the last election, despite the massive pull to vote Labour to ensure the removal of the Tories. It is also happening with the progressive, middle-class Conservative voters too, as the Tories move like Lemmings in the direction of Reform, and ghettoization.
The Blair-Rights are sitting tight in their government positions, and in the party's machinery, local councils and so on, waiting for that process to play out. They may stage a coup inside the PLP, at the appropriate time, to oust Starmer, and simply link up with their counterparts within the Conservative Party, to make a formal alliance with the Liberals, as the abortive Change UK attempted, or they may simply split, en masse, to join up with the Liberals, leaving a rump Blue PLP, that would lose its majority. Next year's local elections, and any by-elections will provide a basis and catalyst for such tactics to be worked out.
At that point, with an obviously failed Brexit totally discredited and loathed, the resultant, centre-right Liberal-Conservative Party, would be in a position to fulfil the wild dreams of Swinson, in 2019, to win a vote of no confidence against Blue Labour, and become the government, pushing forward the legislation to re-join the EU. I would be amazed if discussions had not already occurred to ensure that any such legislation was welcomed and supported by the EU, despite Streeting's protestations to the contrary. It does not change the fact that the neo-liberal agenda of the last 40 years is dead, but, membership of the EU, at least, reduces the constraints on the government, as it seeks to tackle the problem. The additional £40 billion of government revenues from ending Brexit would go a long way, and the additional growth and removal of restrictions, boosting profits ameliorates any falls in real asset prices.
The addition of billions of pounds into the government coffers, as a result of ending Brexit, lends itself to a removal of austerity, and the growth that the government claims is central to its agenda. A return to the EU, and continued move towards political union, removal of existing barriers and so on, facilitates a rise in profits. But, also, as seen in the 1960's, the ruling class can be persuaded to accept a fall in the real value of their fictitious-capital, provided it means the continuation of their position as ruling-class, and a rise in their revenues from interest/dividends and rents. To save the ruling-class, and its system, the state will have to move away from neo-liberalism (conservative social-democracy), and back towards the kind of mildly progressive social-democracy of the 1960's. It is only possible to do that within the context of the EU.
Especially in conditions of “deindustrialisation”, in western economies, this rise in asset prices, and availability of cheap credit, increased by the abolition of credit controls and financial regulation, in 1986, facilitated the financing of continued consumption, even as real wages stagnated. The idea that “wealth” could be simply created out of thin air, by printing “money” (in reality only money tokens) attempted many times in history before, with disastrous consequences, took hold, not just amongst the population, but amongst politicians too. Many years ago, I wrote about my experiences of talking to Blair-Right politicians who lauded the fact that all of this easy money was enabling hundreds of thousands to “buy” houses they could not afford, and that the subsequent inflation of the price of those houses was making them rich. I told them it could not last, and a couple of years later, it ended. One effect, today, is seen in the fact that young workers, even with low interest rates, can't afford houses, and prisoners released early from gaol, can't find affordable housing, and so, are led to re-offend, to get a roof over their head back in gaol.
In the 1960's, as relative wages rose, and real capital expanded, the result was also that interest rates rose, and asset prices fell, but it was hidden by two facts. Firstly, economic growth was, itself, occurring, but secondly, the state created inflation, so that, although asset prices fell in real terms, they continued to rise in nominal terms. It stored up trouble for later, as broke out in the stagflation of the 1970's, and early 80's, but, it smoothed the path, in the 60's, and early 70's. The reality is that real capital is currently driven to expand, as a consequence of the long wave cycle. It is that, which led to the 2008 GFC, as interest rates rose, causing asset prices to crash. Only by the most extraordinary measures, after 2010, has that drive for real capital expansion been suppressed, using a combination of fiscal austerity, and even greater liquidity to funnel money into asset markets and away from the real economy. One consequence of that has been an even greater relative advance of China, in relation to the western economies, which itself is now fuelling the desperate attempts to constrain it, by US imperialism and its subordinates.
So, we are back at the reality described above, and which I set out after 2008, that the conditions that enabled the ideas of the Third Way/neoliberalism/conservative-social democracy to dominate, in the twenty years prior to that, have gone. Since, 2008, the attempt by governments to act as though they have not has led to increasingly surreal conditions, such as, at one point, $20 trillion of global bonds having negative yields, as a result of QE by central banks, to buy up worthless paper. It led to the implementation of austerity to slow down economic growth, and capital accumulation, as well as to the introduction of protectionist measures, such as Brexit and Trump's global trade war, continued by Biden. When even that failed to prevent global trade and growth expanding, after 2018, economies were locked down, on the basis of a response to COVID, that was totally irrational, and based on a lie, as Professor Woolhouse noted. But, as I wrote at the time, whilst lockdowns slowed economies, and enabled another huge rise in asset prices, they had to end at some point, and the result would be that the huge mass of liquidity injected by central banks would lead to a huge rise in inflation, as, indeed, it did.
The options, then, have closed. Blairism/neo-liberalism is no longer possible. It means ever more surreal conditions on the basis of QE, which, also, requires fiscal austerity alongside it, to prevent economic growth, capital accumulation, and inflation. Those policies, also mean that, as large-scale capital is constrained, small private capital fills the void, expanding the size of the petty-bourgeoisie, whose own production is inefficient and is the basis of the low levels of productivity in the UK and other economies. It also means that other developing economies fill the void, diminishing the power of the imperialist economies, and leading them to try to respond to that with even more mercantilist and protectionist measures, such as Brexit, now pursued by Blue Labour, as well as by Trump/Biden/Harris. As always, such trade wars lead to shooting wars, as now seen, also, in relation to Ukraine and the Middle-East, as US imperialism seeks to assert its dominance.
The Labour Right, are thoroughly dishonest, and disreputable, but they are clearly not stupid, and certainly not stupid enough to actually believe any of the bullshit they have been pedalling as excuses for their current attachment to Brexit.
And, that applies to the idea that they are afraid of losing votes and seats in the so called “Red Wall”. A clear majority of Labour voters, in those seats, even in 2019, did not back Brexit, and that majority is even larger today. In fact, part of the reason that Blue Labour polled fewer votes than Corbyn's Labour did in 2019, and failed to increase its vote share, even as the Tories collapsed, on an epic scale, is that Blue Labour's, pro-Brexit stance, as well as its reactionary pro-imperialist stance in relation to the genocide in Gaza, and its lacklustre offering in terms of socio-economic policies, saw lots more of those progressive, particularly younger, Labour voters, desert to the Greens and Liberals that have continued to increase their support, despite the problems they face given the current electoral system. Blue Labour has failed to win the reactionary, nationalist vote of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its lumpen allies, in the Red Wall, but, like the Tories, has been haemorrhaging its progressive voters to the Liberals and Greens.
The Greens and Liberals, now, stand in second place to Labour in an unprecedented number of seats, (and the same is true in relation to Tory seats), and as Blue Labour's already abysmal level of electoral support has dropped even further, now even surpassed by the Tories, it is not opposition to Brexit that risks them losing seats, but their continued, irrational support for it.
And, that support, on the face of it, does seem irrational, not just in these electoral terms. Even Blue Labour's uninspiring programme is unachievable, given the fiscal box it has placed itself in, by the supposedly wizard like genius of Rachel Reeves, who we have been repeatedly told was being prepared for this role of Chancellor ever since she was 14. Already, its collapsing support in the electorate is being shredded even further by its attacks on Winter Fuel Payments to pensioners. But, these amounts, along with the measures on non-doms, taxing private school fees, and so on are chicken feed compared to the 4% of GDP that is being lost each year as a result of Brexit! That is more than enough to wipe out the £22 billion fiscal deficit. It is equal to around £40 billion to the exchequer, in additional revenues. So, why doesn't Blue Labour simply point to the disaster of Brexit, and need to re-join as soon as possible, and benefit from the huge unpopularity of Brexit, amongst the electorate?
One reason could be that Britain always had one foot in and one foot out of the EU, as it continued to have memories of its former imperial glory, but, also, because, since WWII, it has nearly as much seen itself as the 51st state of the USA, and its agent within the EU. But, the ruling class certainly don't see things in that way, and Britain can only act as the US's agent in the EU, if its actually in the EU, and not sitting impotently, isolated on its Atlantic shore, drifting aimlessly further out into the mid-Atlantic. The other reason is that, it may see another political campaign based on rejoining the EU, as giving grist to the mill of international socialists, and progressive social-democrats to engage in political activity that will undermine the Labour Right, simply by opening up debate. Blue Labour's modus operandi is bureaucratic manoeuvre, and back room dealing, not open political struggle, at which it is very, very bad.
But, there is another reason. Its unlikely that the Blair-Rights such as Streeting have actually changed their views, about the need to rejoin the EU. That's not the case with the likes of Glasman, and certainly not of those reactionaries, such as Baroness Fox, Frank Furedi, and Brendan O'Neill with whom he is associated via Spiked. Incidentally, this domination of Blue Labour, by this reactionary tendency, itself reinforces that it is not neo-Liberal, given the general characterisation of Spiked as Libertarian/anarcho-capitalist, and their affinity with the likes not only of Farage, but with his co-thinkers and allies within the camp of the Trumpists in the US.
But, Blairism, as with Clintonism in the US, represented the high-point of that conservative-social-democracy (neoliberalism). Its failure opened the door to the Tea Party, and then Trump in the US, and to Farage and Brexit in Britain, and similar trends across Europe. It enjoyed a, perhaps, one-off, historical set of conditions, after WWII, and specifically from the 1970's, that ended with the global financial crisis of 2008. In the 1970's faced with a crisis of overproduction of capital/fall in relative profits, capital responded by engaging in a new technological revolution, like that of the 1920's/30's, aimed at replacing labour, and raising productivity. It peaked in 1985, and the result was that labour was undermined, the rate of profit rose sharply, masses of capital was released, and as the mass of available money-capital, thereby grew as against the demand for it to finance capital accumulation, interest rates dropped, and asset prices rose.
The arguments used to justify that position are pathetically weak and superficial, indicating that these are not the real reasons. The obnoxious Wes Streeting, who has been seen as the current epitome of Blairism, for example, has been as dogmatic as Starmer in his recent refusal to countenance any re-joining of the EU.
His argument, as with that put forward by Starmer is that the referendum voted for Brexit, and there have been two elections since the referendum (there have, of course, been three, but Blue Labour like to ignore the 2017 election, as it destroys their criticism of Corbynism). So, what? The referendum was seriously flawed. It disenfranchised not only the 16-18 year-old, section of society who had most to lose, but also tens of thousands of EU citizens who have been living in Britain for years, as well as tens of thousands of British ex-pats, living in the EU. Moreover, it was shown to have suffered from not only interference from Putin's Russia, but also, from election fraud, that, had it been a parliamentary election, would have voided the result! Even with all of that, it secured only a tiny majority of the vote, and only 37% of the electorate.
But, also, the 2016 referendum is no more sacrosanct, or final, than any other such vote, such as the 1975, referendum that resulted in a 2:1 majority to stay in the EEC/EU. Indeed, it was less sacrosanct than a parliamentary election, because the legislation for it, made clear that it was only an advisory referendum, not a binding referendum. Given that, when the Tories, who were the party that had called it, and who were attempting to legislate for Brexit, called an election in 2017, they lost their parliamentary majority, and Corbyn's Labour that had pulled in all of these pro-EU young voters saw the biggest increase in its vote, and seats since 1945, the weak case for supporting Brexit on that basis is manifest. The fact that May's government repeatedly failed to be able to get a parliamentary majority for her Brexit proposals again shows how weak this argument is.
It is rather understandable that the likes of Streeting et al, should want to gloss over all of this, because, had they not put all their efforts, after 2015, and particularly after 2017, into trying to remove Corbyn, and undermine Labour's electoral success – as well as the role of the likes of Umunna and co., and their alliance with the delusional Swinson, in 2019 – the replacement of May by Johnson, could have been avoided. It may even have been avoided in 2017, but could certainly have been avoided in 2019. The actions of Corbyn in trying to appease the Labour Right, during all of that period, and his failure to adopt a principled opposition to Brexit in 2019, certainly facilitated his demise, but the major responsibility for the election of Boris Johnson, and all of the Brexit chaos that ensued, lies primarily with the Labour Right, and their campaign to remove Corbyn, and undermine Labour's electoral hopes. Indeed, when challenged, Margaret Hodge made clear that for the Labour Right, and the funders of Labour Together, in all of those tax havens, even Boris Johnson was preferable to Corbyn.
But, even taking all of that into consideration, the argument that the Labour Right are just being good democrats in accepting the referendum, and subsequent elections is untenable. Starmer and co. led the charge for a second referendum, after 2016, so upholding that 2016 decision does not hold. Moreover, its now, nearly a decade since that vote, a quarter of the time that elapsed between the 1975 referendum, and the 2016 referendum. What is different there is that, support for the EU remained solid after 1975, whereas there was only a slender, and fraudulent majority for Brexit on the day of the Brexit referendum, which has disappeared in every subsequent poll. Current polls show, not only around 80% of Labour voters opposing Brexit, and supporting rejoining the EU, but also, around two-thirds of the electorate, as a whole, holding that same position.
A look at the experience of what happened to Allende's government in Chile, when it tried to do that, shows the recklessness of such demands, without first having ensured, as the Bolsheviks did in 1917, that real power in society, already rested with the working-class, outside parliament, in the form of a network of organs of workers power, in workers councils/soviets, factory committees, workers militia, and so on.
As Trotsky described, in relation to the Chinese Revolution, it was the failure, indeed refusal, of the Stalinists to do that, for fear of frightening their bourgeois allies in the KMT/Popular Front, that resulted in the subsequent coup, and slaughter of the communists, and period of counter-revolution. On an entirely different scale, and in a different context, as I have set out before, the failure of Corbyn and his Stalinist advisors to break with the bourgeois forces inside the Labour Party, and to build the structures to defeat them, instead, simply creating superficial propaganda bodies and events, led to a similar result, and the counter-revolution that has put the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalists of Blue Labour at the helm. The fact of Starmer's current dogmatic adherence to Brexit, however, seems, ironically, to be a lasting achievement, both of Corbyn's Stalinist advisors, and of Putin, and their endeavours to bring about Brexit!!!
The dogmatic adherence to Brexit by Blue Labour, at first sight, seems impossible to fathom. The Conservative Party, had always been a party, whose membership and core vote was based on the petty-bourgeoisie, even though, until the 1990's, they were always subordinated to the interests of the ruling-class, and had to suck it up, as, until the arrival of UKIP, they had no other viable home for their votes. In reality, UKIP was not even that, then, as it got nowhere in parliamentary elections, and only did well, as with the BNP, in conditions of a low poll, such as in local elections, and the European Parliament elections, where it was, also, aided by the operation of PR. But Labour has never faced that contradiction. It came into existence as a social-democratic party geared to promote the interests of large-scale industrial capital, and the ruling-class, and to limit the horizon of workers to a simply bourgeois-trades union consciousness of bargaining within the system, on the basis of “jam tomorrow”.
That working-class base of the Labour Party has never had any reason to support the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism that is the basis of Brexit, and, time and again, it has not done so. Despite the attempts of the likes of the Communist Party and its fellow travellers, in the 1975 Referendum, the vast majority of Labour voters voted to stay in the EEC. The Labour Party itself, had to drop the calls for leaving the EU, after 1987, as the working-class continued to oppose such a reactionary policy. Labour's core vote, and membership has been overwhelmingly opposed to Brexit ever since. In 2016, despite Labour's campaign for a Remain vote, led by Alan Johnson, who disappeared without sight after having been appointed by Corbyn, being almost as lacklustre as that of Cameron, around 60% of those that had voted Labour in 2015, voted Remain.
Following the referendum, and as Corbyn's Labour grew massively in size, attracting in large numbers of young workers, including many enthused for the first time, as well as those that had previously been drawn to the Liberals and Greens, it appeared to offer the only chance of opposing the actual implementation of Brexit. That is shown by the fact that, of those that voted Labour in 2017, an even larger proportion than those that voted Labour in 2015, voted Remain, around 70%. The support for Remain, and for re-joining the EU, is even greater amongst Labour's members, even after the right-wing Blue Labour coup has decimated its membership. Moreover, in 2019, that was even clearer still. As Corbyn, again, slid back towards the old reactionary agenda, in the form of the delusional idea of a “Labour Brexit”, or making Brexit work, all of those young workers that had been drawn to Labour, abandoned it again, in favour of more overtly pro-EU parties, such as the Greens, Liberals, Plaid and SNP.
Even 60% of Labour members, in the local elections and and EU elections, in Spring 2019, voted for these other clearly anti-Brexit parties, creating the conditions for Labour's disaster in the General Election. Of course, the fact that the Labour Right had tried, with all means, to undermine Corbyn, from 2015 on, and used their continued control of the party machine, access to the right-wing media, as well as to large amounts of funding, from various tax havens, and use of the fake, Anti-Semitism panic, which Corbyn capitulated to, once again, played a significant role, in 2019, to that disaster, in a way it did not in 2017. So, the dogged, irrational support for Brexit, now exhibited by Starmer, the main advocate of a second referendum, under Corbyn, seems unfathomable, at first sight.
Statists always see things in terms of the amount of actual state involvement in production that exists. Its why they were so obsessed with Clause IV of the Labour Party Constitution, and its removal, by the epitome of neoliberalism (conservative-social democracy), Tony Blair. But, the role of the state, for capital, and so for social-democracy does not reside in how much the state itself engages in production of goods and services. (Marx and Engels noted that an indication of the growth of large-scale socialised capital, was actually that former state run enterprises were taken over by it).
The role of the state resides in protecting and advancing the interests of capital, by whatever are the most effective means at the time. Sometimes that requires the state to nationalise industries, sometimes to privatise them, sometimes to directly provide services such as healthcare, social care and so on, and at others to simply provide a National Social Insurance Scheme, whilst facilitating non-state companies to provide the actual services. The statist Left, and others have always fetishised the NHS, but, across Europe, social-democracy developed much better, more efficient social health care systems, that do not rely upon the state running hospitals, and so on, with that being undertaken by a range of providers from cooperatives, mutuals, and private companies.
In the post-war period, Fordist production was still the most efficient means of production, based upon large-scale, assembly lines. State provision of healthcare and public education, followed the same format. But, as Aglietta described, many years ago, changes in technology made possible different, more efficient methods of production, and what came to be called Post-Fordism. It creates new conditions of regulation for capital accumulation. The role of the social-democratic state, is to simply provide the best framework, via the planning and regulation of the economy for capital accumulation. It is also, why, at times, that role involves not reducing the size of the state, and provision of welfare, education, healthcare provision and so on, or as with Blair's proposals for 50% of the population to go to university, to increase it. In either case, its done not for the benefit of “society”, but for the interests of capital, given the specific conditions of the time.
However, as stated earlier, it is necessary to distinguish between the state, and the government, but also to distinguish between the immediate interests of real, socialised capital, and fictitious capital. Socialised, industrial capital is, objectively, the collective property of the “associated producers” (workers and managers in the given company), as Marx calls them.. As it is, also, this capital that produces the surplus-value/profits out of which capital accumulation/economic growth arises, as well as out of which is deducted the revenues of the ruling class (rent, interest/dividends, and taxes) so, ultimately, it is the interests of this capital, that must determine the actions of the state.
In the short-term, however, the state is the state of the ruling-class, and the ruling-class is not a class of owners of real industrial capital, but of speculators, owners of fictitious capital. It merely, continues to exercise control over the real industrial capital, via its monopoly ownership of fictitious-capital. Similarly, the highly fungible nature of fictitious-capital, and footloose nature of the ruling-class, today, as a global class, with no necessary tie to any given nation state, means that it can utilise its monopoly ownership of fictitious capital, to control global financial markets, and so the cost of borrowing for states, value of currencies and so on. It is a fact that Syriza discovered in Greece, on the Left, and Truss found, in Britain, on the Right.
Indeed, the examples of Syriza, and of Truss indicate this difference between the government and the state, which also indicates the idiocy of those calls, in the past, by some on the Left, such as “Labour Take The Power”, a version of which, today, is the even more ludicrous calls for a “Workers Government”, by which is only meant for a social-democratic government, to act in the interests of the working-class, as though real power in society ever resides in the government, rather than in the hands of the permanent state, its officials, bodies of armed men, judiciary and other institutions of control, as well as in the power of the ruling-class, in the financial markets.
Its notable that, in all of this debate, about membership of the Common Market those in favour were, again, the majority of the Conservative Party, as well as of the Labour Party, and Liberals. Those opposed were, again, the representatives of the petty-bourgeoisie be they the National Front, or the Powellites in the Conservative Party; the Communist Party, which had made its Popular Front policy of tailing the petty-bourgeoisie the cornerstone of its politics, and consistent with its reactionary nationalist concept of “Socialism In One Country”, and the Bennites, in the Labour Party, that pursued a similar course, consistent with their own statist and nationalist politics. The revolutionary socialist Left, at that time, rejected that reactionary, nationalist opposition to the EEC, and argued an abstentionist position based on the fact that the problem was capitalism, whether British or European. Only later, in the 1970's, during the 1975 Referendum campaign, did sections of that Left capitulate, as they feared being marginalised amongst the industrial militants, and Labour Left.
Its notable that, in the referendum, their was a 2:1 majority to remain in the EEC, and, today, having seen the idiocy and failure of Brexit, there, is, again, a 2:1 majority in favour of rejoining, reflecting the fact that, although the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by 50%, since the 1980's, and they were able to utilise that inside the Tory Party, and in the 2016 Referendum, they still only account for around 30% of the electorate, and, typical of that class, they are themselves heterogeneous, and riven with contradictions. Its why they never had an electoral majority, in any parliamentary election for Brexit.
Joining the EEC, in 1973, did not mean that the problems of British capitalism were ended, and certainly not that the problems of British workers were ended. But, it did mean that the specific problems of British capital, as a relatively declining economy, outside the EEC, were ameliorated. And, as part of the EEC, it meant that the potential of the British labour movement, to unite with the labour movement across the EEC, to wage a struggle that would address the problems of the working-class, was opened up. Unfortunately, large sections of the British labour movement, remained trapped in that old, Little Englander, nationalist mindset for another ten years or so, and, indeed, many, like Corbyn, the Communist Party and so on, never escaped it. Also, unfortunately, the entry of Britain into the EEC, came at the time when that post-war period of prosperity and boom, that made possible the growth of social-democracy, itself came to an end.
The rational development of social-democracy, in the 1970's, was a continued planning and regulation of the economy, on a larger scale, including the incorporation of the labour movement in that process. The national planning bodies already did that, by having representatives of both the TUC and CBI etc. The reflection of that in the realm of ideas, came in the form of the development of Eurocommunism, as Stalinist parties were transformed into simple social-democratic parties. Usually, the Eurcommunists were aligned with Liberals, and many made a natural progression into the camp of Blairism. The rationale of Eurocommunism, as it sank into this social-democratic corporatism, was the acceptance that, if the capitalist state was to plan economic activity, that included bureaucratic planning of prices and wages, as with the Social Contract, but also of immigration. It fitted the Stalinist, Popular Front idea of tailing the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie, and, consequently of nationalism.
At the level of large companies, the ideas of “profit sharing” were popularised, which, of course, ties workers and their unions into a continued acceptance in managing their own exploitation. The systematisation of those ideas came in the form of the Alternative Economic Strategy, and, as the Labour Government set up the National Enterprise Board, included ideas of “Planning Agreements” with firms seeking government support and so on.
Its notable that Thatcher did not abolish the NEB, when she became Prime Minister, but combined it with the NRDC, to form the British Technology Group. Also, Thatcher did not smash the unions, but created a new tier of full-time lay bureaucrats (convenors and so on) that separated the shop stewards from the members, which had been the strength of workplace organisation since the 1950's. They facilitated the creation of single union agreements, with the large businesses.
For several days, last week, in what was clearly a pre-planned series of attacks across England and Northern Ireland, by small fascist organisations, hundreds of far-right thugs ran rampage, with, in many places, little response from police, who were to be seen retreating down streets, whilst the fascists attacked local communities, burned cars, and, as such fascists have done throughout history, burned books, this time an entire library, as well as entering a building where frightened children and families of refugees, were in danger of violent attack and being burned alive.
All of this continued for several days, and yet far right politicians like Fartage, as well as their mouthpieces at GB News, and Talk TV, not to mention the racist, gutter press such as The Daily Mail, and even disgustingly a journalist at Sky News, talked about, and gave credence to, the idea that the police were treating these fascists more harshly than they do the black and Asian community, or those protesting about the genocide taking place in Gaza, that has been supported by the British government under Sunak, as well as by, the, then, Blue Labour Opposition that is, now, in government, and has still to stop its arms sales, or condemn that genocide, or to commit to arresting the Zionists for whom the ICC is issuing arrest warrants.
Capitalist police thugs occupied mining villages during the miners strike. Where were those numbers against the fascist thugs?
Of course, there is two-tier policing, but not that which the likes of the above complain, as I set out previously. The police have repeatedly been found to be guilty of institutional racism, and the same can be seen in relation to its misogyny, homophobia, and, of course, as an arm of the capitalist state, its fundamental role in beating down the working-class as a whole. In the last week, there has been the inevitable hypocrisy not only from those far-right mouthpieces, but also from the likes of Blue Labour politicians and liberal pundits. We see them attacking the far right thugs on the streets, as well as the likes of Fartage and Tommy Robinson, but have stayed silent about the role of the gutter press. They talk about biased and false information transmitted over the Internet, as though the information transmitted by the mass media is not, also, guilty of bias, and that mass media has been pumping out this racist bilge for as long as it has existed.
In one TV discussion, it was said that false information had been transmitted via the internet about immigrants being given free houses, cars and so on. But, there is nothing new about such lies being spread. It goes back way before the Internet had ever been thought of. Back in the 1980's, I frequently had arguments with people who had read such lies, literally the same lies about free houses, cars and so on, in the likes of The Daily Express, and took it as gospel. No matter how you tried to rationalise with people that absorbed such garbage, they were just as steadfast in wanting to continue to believe it as they are now. And, that continued after the 1980's, just as much as, I'm sure it occurred before the 1980's. The Daily Mail after all was one of those papers that welcomed Mussolini and then, Hitler, to power, and routinely spread the dominant form of racism of that time, anti-Semitism.
In the 1980's, Thatcher undermined a growing National Front, by adopting many of their clothes, and, of course, many National Front members simply joined the Tories, when their own political fortunes were on the wane. When New Labour took office after 1997, even as it took in 2 million EU migrants, to deal with a drastic shortage of skilled labour, in Britain, its Home Secretaries, like Clarke, talked tough on immigration and refugees. Cameron did the same, when the Tories returned to government, in 2010, and the Liberals, who present themselves as the voice of reason, today, of course, never held him to account over that, just as they supported the austerity measures that have undermined the fabric of society, and just as, in that coalition, they paved the way for the disastrous Brexit referendum.
Blue Labour, with its jingoistic, sovereigntist flag waving, and appeals to patriotism in all of its worst, monarchical, anti-democratic forms, is riddled with racism and Islamophobia, as The Forde Report indicated, made worse by its support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza, as part of its commitment to the aims of US imperialism. It prevented Faiza Shaheen from standing, simply for speaking out against genocide! When it lost thousands of Muslim votes across the country, it described it as “shaking off fleas”! During the week, Labour MP for Tamworth, Sarah Edwards, even after days of far right thuggery attacking refugees, pointed to the Holiday Inn, where refugees were being housed, and claimed that the people of Tamworth wanted their Holiday Inn back. Not surprisingly, the far-right thugs heard the message loud and clear, and responded in the same way they had to the identical message coming from Fartage, Robinson and co., by heading to the hotel, and attacking it. Imagine if it was someone on the Left that had acted as Edwards did.
The criticism of the far-right thugs and fascists by these Blue Labour nationalists and populists, who have tried to follow Thatcher by covering themselves in the clothes and the flag of the racists and bigots, in search of cheap votes, is gut-wrenchingly hypocritical. The same is true of the Tories, and of the mass media, in general, and not just the gutter sections of it. For decades they have scapegoated migrants for the problems of British capitalism, and for the failures of successive governments that have attacked workers rights and living standards in the interests not even of real industrial capital, but in the interests of a tiny group of parasites who no longer play any useful role in society, and yet, drain billions of pounds a year out of the economy, in the form of dividends and other interest payments, as well as direct capital transfers to them. The top 4 billionaires in Britain, alone, have a net worth of £51 billion! Yet, Blue Labour will not be taxing that wealth, as Reeves insists that there is no money, and again cuts public services, once more fuelling the conditions that will lead to the next conflagration.
It took several days, but, eventually, it was not the mealy mouthed words of Blue Labour politicians, nor the actions of police that stopped the fascist thugs, but the working-class itself, as it has done before, for example, at Cable Street in the 1930's, where Jeremy Corbyn's parents were amongst those that stood fast to protect the local Jewish community against the threatened pogroms of Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists. Today, it is the jingoists and populists of Blue Labour that more closely resemble the politics of Moseley, but without its economic radicalism. Even the police, and the gutter press had to acknowledge that the promised far-right rampage that was promised was stopped in its tracks by the mobilisation of tens of thousands of workers, organising in their own communities, via a range of organisations from faith groups, to the trades unions.
Yet, almost immediately, Starmer and Blue Labour were quick to distance themselves from this effective, grass roots community action and self-defence. Blue Labour sent out instructions that no MP, and no councillors were to take part in any such activities. So, its okay for a Blue labour MP, like Edwards, to talk about the need to take back refugee centres, which is then used by the fascist thugs as justification for their thuggery, but not okay, for Labour members to actively stand with those communities AGAINST the fascist thugs!!! Why would anyone be surprised. This is a Blue Labour Party that supports genocide by Zionist thugs in Gaza, but expels those of its members that oppose that genocide.
In the 1970's, as the NF was on the rise, the leaders of the Labour Party also opposed Labour members joining with others on the Left, mobilising to defend communities and oppose the fascists. Again, that was nothing new. At Cable Street, in the 1930's, Clement Attlee had been one of those who also opposed the labour movement mobilising to stop the fascists. The message has always been the same. On the one hand, it is a call for us to rely on the racist, anti-working class police to deal with the fascists, and on the other we are told that if we ignore them they will go away!
Every time, it has been the mass mobilisation of the organised working-class to physically confront the fascists that has actually stopped them. In the last week, even the fascists themselves, online, admitted that it had been these massive counter-mobilisations that had kept them off the streets, with some of them calling for the actions, then, to be organised in secret, off-line, as though, that had not been the case all along, as the real planning must have been done weeks ago, as they waited for an opportune moment to act.
But, that shows why the labour movement has to remain in constant mobilisation against them, ready to have quick response units, to bring out thousands, in each area, of trained and disciplned units of workers and community defence. It needs democratic control via, local workers councils, which given the nature of Blue Labour, will probably best be organised via, local Trades Councils/TUC's, or the most advanced workers in large workplaces, via factory committees. The mantra should be, as established more than a century ago, that of “March separately, strike together.”
The organised working-class, needs to retain its political and organisational independence from any bourgeois forces that seek to confront the fascists, be they faith groups, or liberal, green and other such parties. If they want to turn out in support, to physically stop the fascist thugs, fine, they can stand alongside us in that effort, be we cannot allow our immediate tactics to be dictated by accommodating them, and we certainly cannot limit our longer-term, political response by their bourgeois agenda.
The fascist thugs cannot be reasoned with, they have to be physically stopped by the full might of the organised working-class. The abysmal response of Starmer, Cooper, and their apologists in the media, including the latter's obnoxious husband, Ed Balls, should be enough for ordinary Labour members to see, already, where Blue Labour is headed, and to begin to organise against it. The same is true with the trades unions, as Reeves prepares to again slash public spending, and inflict the same measures of austerity that stoked the current levels of dissent, upon which the far-right have built their hatred of migrants, and anyone who is not white.
Rank and file LP members need to ignore Starmer, and turn their branches outwards to their communities to build these workers defence squads. Joint committees of Labour branches/CLP's, and Trades Councils and union branches should be established to democratically control, and train our own Red Guards, to protect workplaces and communities against the fascist thugs, as well as to protect workers, in shops etc., against violence from the increasing attacks by the criminal elements, which themselves form part of that lumpen element in society in which the fascists swim and recruit.
But, whilst the thugs must currently, just be stopped, we need to drain the swamp from which they emerge. That swamp has swelled from the 1980's, as the petty-bourgeoisie grew by 50%. It is comprised of some of the least educated, most backward elements, and whose self-employment, and precarious conditions of dwarfish capital, makes them isolated and atomised, encouraging reactionary, individualist ideas, and also makes them dependent on the worst forms of exploitation of labour, including the labour of their own family members.
That growth of these elements arose as a result of the deindustrialisation policies of Thatcher and Major in the 1980's/90's, which were also continued by Blair/Brown up to 2010. It went along with the idea that wealth could be generated from speculative capital gains, as property prices and financial asset prices were inflated. The symbol of this casino economy was the creation of the National Lottery, whereas, in the 1960's, Harold Wilson was even very loathe to establish Premium Bonds, as a means of national savings, because of the encouragement of gambling. A look at any TV commercial break, shows a plethora of other lotteries, scratch cards, online bingo, tombola, slot machines, gambling, not to mention all of the actual casinos set up in cities across the country.
No wonder people think that they must gamble on house prices rising, rather than seeing high house prices as a terrible thing, if you really want a house to live in, rather than to use as gambling chip. This is the sign of an empire in decline and decay. Yet, Britain remains a wealthy country. If workers controlled all of the actual industrial capital, which is their collective property, they would use it more effectively. They would not drain it to simply hand money to stock market wolves and speculators. If workers in Britain, combined with workers across the EU, to demand not just real political democracy, but also industrial democracy, as they were starting to do in the 1970's, then all of that real industrial wealth and capital could be properly put to use to raise living standards, and to grow the economy. It would drain the swamp of despondency out of which the monster of fascism periodically slithers forth.
The Tory media have had a field day covering the riots of a few hundred far-right thugs, over the weekend, in several cities in Britain. Of course, they never make the connection between these far-right thugs, and the fact that, for years, they gave huge amounts of air-time, and column inches to the likes of Fartage, and other ultra-nationalists, and themselves focused on immigrants and refugees, as convenient scapegoats for the problems of British capitalism, for which neither they nor the Tories, Labour, and certainly not the likes of Fartage, had any solutions.
The gutter press, when they were not attacking nameless, fictional benefit scroungers, ran lurid stories about immigrants being given houses, cars and all sorts of ludicrous concoctions that a gullible readership of bigots and gammons, who appear to be addicted to the cortisol rush from being driven into ever greater degrees of irrational rage, sucked up. Now, of course, sections of that media, seeing the violence of these far right thugs, who themselves are clearly not the brightest of people, even when it comes to thuggery and violence, are full of moral indignation.
The images of these morons, is reminiscent of the morons that took part in the farcical coup attempt of Trump on January 6th, farcical in its amateurism, and removal from political reality, and also farcical in the nature of the clown like characters involved, in their animal skin head ware and so on. But, as Austin Powers noted, even clowns and carnies can be scary!
As Trotsky noted, back in the 1930's, fascism is a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie, which rails at its own impotence, in the face of imperialist capital, on the one hand, and the organised working class on the other.
“Fascism is a form of despair in the petty bourgeois masses, who carry away with them over the precipice a part of the proletariat as well. Despair, as known, takes hold when all roads of salvation are cut off. The triple bankruptcy of democracy, social-democracy and the Comintern were the prerequisites for the successes of fascism. All three have tied their fate to the fate of imperialism. All three bring nothing to the masses but despair and by this assure the triumph of fascism.”
It has all of the weaknesses of the petty-bourgeoisie, based on the internal contradictions of its heterogeneous nature, and individualism, which can only be held together on the basis of adherence to some authoritarian, charismatic leader. It drags along with it, similar individuals from the lumpen proletariat, and criminal elements, and at its height, when the labour movement has failed to provide adequate solutions, even sections of the workers, who look on in despair as their own leaders line up behind the bourgeoisie and imperialism, rather than offering an independent, socialist solution. Indeed, the subtitle of the essay by Trotsky is “Trotsky Urges Firm Revolutionary Defeatist Policy as Only Way to Fight Hitlerism”.
But, Trotsky, also notes the weakness of such fascist movement resulting from its nature.
"It is stupid to believe that the Nazis would grow uninterruptedly, as they do now, for an unlimited period of time. Sooner or later they will drain their social reservoir. Fascism has introduced into its own ranks such dreadful contradictions, that the moment must come in which the flow will cease to replace the ebb. The moment can arrive long before the Fascists will have united about them even half of the votes. They will not be able to halt, for they will have nothing more to expect here. They will be forced to resort to an overthrow."
That was in the context in which the Nazis, in Germany, were winning millions of votes, and representation in parliament, though far from being a majority. The Nazis, in Germany, only became the government with the support of the conservative bourgeois parties, in the face of rising support for the communists and socialists. In reality, it was only when the ruling class saw an imminent threat from the working-class that they resorted to fascism. In current conditions, everywhere, including Britain and the US, no such threat exists from the working-class, and the ruling class sees a greater danger from the fascists themselves, and other far-right representatives of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie.
Fartage and his Reform company won 4 million votes, but, in the process, decimated the Tory Party. So, far from the traditional bourgeois parties, like the Conservatives, Liberals or Labour being a source of enabling a Nazi Party to take office, as happened in Germany, in the 1930's, the opposite conditions exist! That is what leads to the frantic despair of that reactionary and immiserated petty-bourgeoisie, and its far right political representatives. Its that they know that, despite the reactionary nationalist rhetoric of Starmer and Blue Labour the gig is up for Brexit, and their nationalist agenda. As is indicated in this video, the material conditions and political pressure, on Starmer and Blue Labour now comes from the other side, from a progressive internationalism that will ultimately force it to face reality, and reverse course on Brexit.
In the riots over the weekend, the morons could be seen picking up heavy objects to throw at the police, obviously not realising that the bigger and heavier the object, the harder it is to throw it with any force, speed or direction at the intended target! As the earlier video shows, they are so stupid, and probably drunk, as not to know to that its not a good idea to stand between your own side hurling those objects and the police, or you are likely to get hit in the nuts by your own side!
Of course, the far right thugs would like everyone to believe that they represent some serious threat, just as did those that turned up to support Trump. To sections of society, such as the immigrants, refugees, and to anyone these morons consider not to be “British”, i.e. white, they do represent a threat, just as the racists and fascists in the US pose a threat to black and Hispanic people there. In fact, given that the far right morons went on a drunken rampage, damaging the cars and other property of all residents in the areas they went through, its not just those sections of society that have a reason to fear them.
That is why Marxists seek to defend those sections of society, as well as organised workers themselves, and their communities, who at some point will come under attack from such thugs, by encouraging workers to form Defence Squads. Rather than the liberal calls for more police power, and reliance on the forces of the capitalist state, we need our own Red Guards to protect us both from the fascists and racists, and from the capitalist state itself, whose own bodies of armed men, in the police for example, have repeatedly been shown to be institutionally racist, misogynistic, homophobic and anti-working class.
Such Defence Squads need to be organised and democratically controlled by workers themselves via their workplace and community organisations. They need to utilise the strength of the working-class, of its numbers and discipline. They need to be trained to fight, not as individuals but as a disciplined unit.
The last thing we should do is to rely on the institutionally racist capitalist police force to provide such defence. In the US, the experience of racist cops killing black people is the most obvious manifestation of that, but every black and Asian community in Britain, has its own experience of it too. Every worker that has been on strike, and been involved in picket duty, knows that this police force is not just institutionally racist, and attracts into its ranks, individuals predisposed to such behaviour, but is also institutionally anti-working-class. The extent of that was shown in the 1984-5 Miners Strike. In South Yorkshire this weekend the response of the police contrasted very badly, in confronting the far-right thugs, compared to its massive numbers and cavalry charges organised against miners at the Battle of Orgreave!
But, Trotsky also pointed out why the far-right fascist thugs are not, currently, a threat to “bourgeois-democracy” whatever the bourgeois liberals, and the social-democrats would have us believe. Precisely because fascism is a movement of the impotent, and angry petty-bourgeoisie, whose interests are imminently contradictory to those of the bourgeoisie, and specifically the imperialist bourgeoisie, and its state, that state will always be mobilised to smack them down, and to keep the lid on their activities, up until such time that it itself feels threatened by the organised working-class, at which time it will first ensure that its state steps aside, and then actively supports the actions of the fascists, to physically break up the labour movement.
As I have set out previously, the petty-bourgeoisie has grown hugely, since the 1980's, its numbers have grown by around 50%. It is comprised of immiserated declassed elements, that have fallen into a range of self-employment, and precarious small businesses, often only a couple of steps away from the criminal classes, and fringe behaviour. What we are seeing at the moment is a petty-bourgeoisie, whose most politicised elements, in the far-right groups, that is in a state of desperation manifest as a spiral of rage. That those like Fartage who promoted the false solutions of nationalism and Brexit for that petty-bourgeoisie, should now appear on TV, and try to claim that these riots are in some way a response of the working-class, betrayed by the Tories is nonsensical in the extreme, and yet, exactly what could be expected from them.
The reality is that the petty-bourgeoisie and its agenda was tried and failed. It reached its peak with Truss and Kwarteng, and collapsed – in large part because the ruling class responded by using its own power within the financial markets to crash the Pound, and send interest rates into a spiral. If the labour movement had decent leadership, it would have seized that opportunity to present a real, socialist alternative to that chaos, based on reversing Brexit, and building workers unity across the EU. Unfortunately, we do not have decent leadership, and Starmer's Blue Labour, with its own reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda, bears as much responsibility for fanning the flames of racism, and immigrant scapegoating as does Fartage and the Tories.
Not only is Blue Labour riddled with institutional racism and Islamophobia, describing the loss of support from Muslims, in response to its support for the genocide in Gaza, as “shaking off the fleas”, but it has itself continued to talk about the need to limit immigration and so on, echoing all of the dog whistles of the Tories. A clear majority of voters support re-joining the EU, and 71% of Labour voters support it. Yet, Starmer continues to oppose it. Having set his face against his own working-class voter base, he is bound to disillusion them, as the fantasy of a “Labour Brexit” goes up in smoke. But, especially given that a large majority of MP's, themselves, now oppose Brexit, particularly Labour, Green, Liberal and SNP/Plaid MP's, its not surprising that the petty-bourgeoisie, and their hangers on, are not convinced by Starmer, and, whipped up by the likes of the Telegraph, Mail and Express, see only a further dashing of their hopes ahead.
Certainly, Starmer did not convince them, or more or less anyone else, in the election. Those that voted Labour did so with no enthusiasm, and largely to get rid of the Tories. Rather than turning to Blue Labour, those disillusioned, reactionary nationalist Tory voters went to Fartage and his Reform company. In terms of parliamentary influence, they have none, and none for the foreseeable future, though Fartage has used his position for propaganda purposes, effectively. The riots by the far-right over the weekend are not some spontaneous outburst by betrayed workers, as the likes of Oakshott would have us believe. They are clearly organised attacks by small far-right organisations. They are typically aimless and terroristic in nature, seeking to get the oxygen of publicity which the sensationalist media has certainly given them. They are a forlorn hope to win others to their cause, whilst the reality is that they have already seemed to do the opposite.
Those involved are like those supporting Trump, moronic and so appear as clowns, but that doesn't mean that these clowns are not dangerous to those they currently target to vent their anger upon. It is a reason the labour movement must provide its own protection for those communities, and must put forward its own independent socialist solutions to the problems being faced by them, and by workers in general. As Sraid Marx has written, the last thing we should be doing, at the moment, is liquidating our own independent organisations and programmes, in order to create popular fronts with the same bourgeois forces that have created the conditions, in the first place, that have enabled the far-right to flourish.
Listening to those that the media have interviewed over the weekend, they have all reflected that wishy-washy liberal agenda. Sky interviewed the Chief Executive, the job title says it all, of Hope Not Hate, the moralising, apolitical name of which, also, says it all. The fact that such people come on, and openly state that they do not want to engage in political debate, indicates precisely the pointlessness of such organisations, because, as I pointed out, many years ago, in 2008, at a time when the BNP was on the rise, the real means of defeating racism and fascism, is precisely by dealing with the conditions that enable it to thrive, and that requires a principled, independent, socialist programme. It is certainly, not enough just to take the fight to the streets, or to rely on building a bigger demo, and, following the defeat of Corbyn, by the right-wing, Starmer-rights, it has become difficult to present such a political alternative via Labour either.
However, over the last ten years, the forces that developed that brought Corbyn to power inside Labour, are still a potent force, if properly organised and directed. Most of the organisations through which they operated, such as Momentum, were themselves politically bankrupt to begin with, and proved so, very quickly. But, experience is never lost, and can be built upon. Organising an independent, working class defence of communities against the far right thugs, is a basis for beginning that regroupment and organisation. It can be done via the trades unions, and cooperatives.
As Marxists, we do not fetishize the Labour Party in the way the Grantites and Pabloites have done. But, the reason we argue for working inside it, currently, is that it remains the mass party of the workers, despite its reactionary nationalist leadership, and because, unlike, say, the Liberals or Greens, this open valve into the rest of the labour movement, and vice versa, primarily the unions, exists. Starmer may ban or expel individual members, even on a large-scale, but, ultimately, he cannot ban the role and involvement of those members via the trades unions, without breaking the link with them, which would create new conditions for the establishment of a new mass workers party. We can organise within local Labour Parties, to turn them out to such activities, and begin to argue for the international socialist solutions required to provide a real alternative to the dead-end politics of nationalism, whether it is spouted by the far-right, Fartage, Braverman, or Starmer.
Those that argued for Brexit, and more importantly those that voted for Brexit did so on the basis of hostility to immigrants. Its easy to see why, if you are a self-employed plumber, or run a small plumbing business, enjoying high prices for plumbing work, you will be hostile to an influx of plumbers. But, governments always find that economic reality imposes itself upon them. The Tories repeatedly claimed they would reduce immigration to the tens of thousands, and repeatedly failed to do so, because labour shortages demanded that immigration fill those gaps.
Rather than net migration falling, after Brexit, it has risen, and the 800,000 workers that entered the country in the last year did so on visas issued by the government, because those workers were needed. But, whilst Brexit, and the ending of free movement has not reduced the economy's need for immigrants, it has prevented British workers gaining employment elsewhere in the EU. It has also made it much more difficult for pensioners to retire to Spain, Portugal, Italy, France and so on, itself raising the net migration figure for Britain, as people remain imprisoned, here, and, in respect of pensioners, become an increasing burden on the health and social care system, as well as occupying houses that could have been used by younger workers with families.
Yet, the extent of reactionary and magical thinking on behalf of Starmer and Blue Labour is seen, not only in his reliance on growth arriving out of thin air, but in the fact that this growth is to come whilst committing to never re-joining the EU, and to also reducing net migration. In other words, the same racist scapegoating of foreigners for the problems of British capitalism as utilised by Fartage, the BNP, Tories and so on. Of course, for a party riddled with systemic racism and Islamophobia, its no wonder that Blue Labour adopts these positions with no second thoughts.
So, there is no policy issue at stake in the election that is separable from Brexit and the need to re-join the EU. Starmer continues to promote the delusion of a Labour Brexit, i.e. cakeism. He talks about renegotiation, but no such renegotiation is possible. The talk of side deals and agreements is possible, but it will involve further concessions by Britain, and all will be to its relative disadvantage precisely because of the greater power of the EU. The phyto-sanitary and veterinary agreement is possible, but it really means Britain, again, accepting EU regulations and the jurisdiction of the ECJ. In fact, in one area after another, where Britain proposed establishing its own regulations and regulatory bodies, it has had to more or less abandon them, because not only did the EU require conformance with its standards and regulation, but other countries, around the globe, did not recognise the new British standards. That is necessarily the case, because these countries are more concerned with their trade with the EU than with Britain.
There is, also, now, ridiculous talk that Starmer, when in office, will seek to re-join the single market. But, that, now, is not possible without re-joining the EU. The case of Switzerland is cited, but the EU has said it regrets that arrangement with Switzerland, and would not do it again. Moreover, the UK is not Switzerland. Although its market and economy is small compared to the EU, it is large compared to Switzerland. The EU has now said that no country can become a member of the single market without being a member of the EU, or EFTA. But, EFTA has also said it would not let Britain in, because of this problem that its economy is too big compared to the other countries in EFTA. So, the reality is that, if Britain wants closer ties to the EU, it will mean yet further concessions, further subordination to the EU, or re-joining the EU.
Any realistic policy seeking to increase UK growth, meanwhile, depends on that closer relation to the EU, and without growth, all the other policies, minimal as they are, cannot be achieved.
The final option, of course, is for any incoming government to balance the books by renewed austerity. But, this is not the early 2000's, nor even the period after 2010. Across the globe, as relative labour shortages have arisen, even without workers needing to take industrial action, competition for labour, between firms, has raised wages, putting workers in a stronger position, and that has encouraged and facilitated workers in rebuilding unions, and, where necessary, engaging in industrial action. That, of course, does not mean that some workers have far from benefited from that general trend. Even in Marx's day, it was the case that, even as wages rose in general, there were still paupers whose relative position, thereby, declined, and the absolute numbers of paupers themselves might rise. In those old decayed urban areas, the unskilled workers, the unemployed and sick, continue to suffer in misery, and their relative position falls, as the majority of other workers see a rise in their real wages. Its one reason the former are prone to fall under the spell of right-wing populists.
Often, it has been in the state sector where unionisation has remained strong, that workers lagged behind, as governments sought to implement their policies by placing the burden on those workers. That is why it has been in those sectors, or sectors nominally in the non-state sector, but dependent on state finance, such as the railways, that workers have had to take industrial action. The tailist and timid nature of the union bureaucracy has facilitated that as they have restricted industrial action to one or two day protest strikes, rather than all-out action. Inevitably, some state-sector workers have simply moved to take up better paid jobs in the non-state sector. The shortage of lorry drivers, for example, saw entire fleets of council bin lorry drivers recruited by haulage firms.
But, state-sector workers are unlikely to put up with these attacks, falling behind the private sector, and the inadequate response of union leaders for long. At some point, they are likely to pressure union leaders, were a Blue Labour government, even one in which so little expectation exists, were to try to impose further austerity. Indeed, its precisely this link of the unions to the Labour Party and the options it opens up, which is why Marxists must operate though it, to engage in that political struggle, irrespective of the ephemera of elections and electoralism.
The contradictions developed over the last 40 years have reached the point of crisis, Brexit has sharpened those contradictions and enhanced that crisis for Britain. That crisis is not a crisis of overproduction of capital, as in the 1970's, but a financial and political crisis for the model of conservative social-democracy dominant for the last 30 years, based on asset price inflation. That “centre-ground” can no longer hold, as seen not just in Britain, but in the US, in France, Germany and elsewhere. The radical right-populist solutions, like Brexit, of the petty-bourgeois nationalists, have also demonstrated their utopian and reactionary nature, and also failed. It is down to workers, with the help of Marxists, to chart the future, and the road to international socialism.
There are other ways of encouraging growth. As noted earlier, Ireland attracted multinational companies by offering low rates of Corporation Tax. However, that goes against the proposals of Blue Labour, Liberals and Greens to raise Corporation Tax. Moreover, any such attempt would be seen by the EU as a hostile act, likely to provoke a response that would not be favourable, and would be particularly problematic for a Blue Labour government trying to sell the snake oil of a “Labour Brexit” in which it would gain the benefits of EU membership without any of the costs or obligations.
Another measure that could be adopted would be to give a substantial, one-off, grant to local authorities to repair roads. This is literally, a shovel ready project that would pump a significant impulse into local economies, employing labour and creating demand for materials. It would generate a positive, feel-good response from voters. In addition, because such projects are capable of being completed in weeks rather than years, there is a strong multiplier effect, and the cost of the projects is quickly recovered, as well as giving a boost to national productivity.
However, the problem, here, as with many other such projects is that it arises at a time of existing relative labour shortages that have, themselves, largely, been created by Brexit, and exacerbated by lockdowns, and consequent effects on healthcare etc. Would local authorities be able to recruit the additional workers to carry out the work; would suppliers and contractors be able to recruit the labour they required? If so, at what cost in higher wages? Local authorities already lost workers, who have gone to higher paid jobs in the private sector. The economy is still suffering from the fact that for forty years, there was a relative shift away from wage labour in large-scale industry, to self-employment, and employment in small businesses, where productivity is very low, and that shake-out of that small private capital has not yet reversed, to provide the required labour supplies.
The response of Starmer in the health service is instructive. He has point blank said he will not meet doctor's demands even to restore real wages to their 2008 level. So doctors are moving to the private sector, which Blue Labour doesn't mind as it plans to privatise the NHS, in favour of all the private healthcare companies many of its MP's and Shadow Ministers are associated with. But, many are also moving overseas. As a result of Brexit and the ending of free movement, which Starmer also will not reverse, its impossible to recruit the necessary workforce. Starmer makes pie in the sky promises to reduce waiting lists, provide more GP appointments and so on, but how without the doctors to provide it?
Moreover, the main reason that governments have not engaged in such obvious projects – the Tories could easily have funded and improved their approval by ensuring that all the potholes were filled over the last several years – not just in Britain, but all developed economies, but rather implemented austerity, was to constrain economic growth, so as to constrain employment and wages, to boost profits, and to constrain the demand for capital, so as to hold down interest rates, in order to avoid another crash in asset prices.
As with all developed economies, Britain's slow growth in the last fifteen years has been part of a deliberate strategy aimed at holding back the demand for labour and capital so as to hold back wages, boost profits, and reduce interest rates to defend inflated asset prices. But, even with that deliberate policy by governments and central banks, the model of conservative social-democracy of the last forty years ensures that slow growth. There is no reason for the company executives who act in the interests of shareholders, rather than the company, to use profits to accumulate real, industrial capital, when using those profits to buy back shares, or buy the existing shares of other companies results in a greater return from capital gains. When the state underwrites that via QE, that is even more the case.
It is then only the smaller private capitals that have an incentive to fill gaps in the market, and to accumulate capital, as well as the capital in those newly industrialising economies. Hence the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and of China etc., on the other, over that period. So long as governments and central banks seek to keep interest rates at artificially low levels, so as to try to prevent another huge crash in asset prices, that will continue, thereby, further sharpening the underlying contradiction, and making such a crash even more inevitable, and on an even larger scale.
But, again, as 2008 demonstrated, when such a crash inevitably materialises – in 2018, as global growth and interest rates rose, asset prices fell by 20%, and last year, as, again global interest rates rose, asset prices fell around 20-30%, in nominal terms, and 40% in real terms, before recovering on the hope of slower growth and central bank rate cuts – it will require co-ordinated action on a multinational basis. Large economies, like the US – itself part of the larger bloc with Canada and Mexico – China, and the EU will be able to address that, but the relatively small UK economy will be left on the sidelines, and suffer as a result.
The problem for the UK economy is similar to that of emerging economies of being able to access adequate capital, leading to its description as a submerging economy. Its not that industrial capital operating in Britain does not produce enough profit to fund such real capital accumulation, but that the profit is diverted, by shareholders, and the executives acting on their behalf, into unproductive activity to buy back shares, hand money to shareholders in inflated dividends and so on. Former Bank of England Chief Economist, Andy Haldane, noted that in the 1970's, dividends accounted for 10% of profits, and now account for 70%. Similarly, the rise in asset prices means that an increasing proportion of surplus value is tied up unproductively.
Land accounted for only 10%, after WWII, of the price of a house, but now accounts for 70%. That, also, impacts rents, meaning a large part of surplus value goes to fund higher wages to cover those housing costs of workers, as well as into tax to fund Housing Benefits, all of which drains profit that would, otherwise, have funded real capital accumulation, and, so, growth. Blue Labour's plans to artificially boost housing demand by underwriting mortgage deposits, along with its proposals on planning reform, which if they have any effect would further boost demand for building land, only exacerbates that problem.
Moreover, even if the housing problem could be resolved by simply building more houses – it can't because the problem is the price of those houses, which is a function of inflated land and asset prices, not supply per se – the consequence of Brexit is that there are insufficient skilled workers to build them. Nor is that addressed, certainly in the short-term, by training British workers. In the early 2000's, as the effects of the onset of the new long wave upswing took hold, Britain also found itself short of skilled labour. Plumbers, electricians, joiners, bricklayers and plasterers could not be found for love nor money. So wages for such workers rose sharply, and as is normal in such trades, there was an even greater rise in the number that became self-employed, or started their own small business, taking advantage of the soaring prices that could be charged for such work.
Significant numbers of workers from other jobs, including teachers, trained to become plumbers etc., but, the consequence of that was, then, to mean that there was an outflow of labour from these other areas, creating new shortages. That was at a time when there was a greater supply of labour than there is now, because, at that time, there were still reserves built up from the previous period of stagnation and unemployment in the 1980's, and 90's. Even so, the solution to the problem came in the form of the immigration of the “Polish plumbers”. Britain saw immigration from the EU of 2 million workers, most of them young and already skilled. But, contrary to the claims of Fartage and other nationalists, the consequence was that the economy was able to grow as the frictions were removed, and unemployment also fell as the economy grew. Indeed, that growth is precisely what created the conditions for higher interest rates that sparked the crash of asset prices in 2007/8.
