For what it's worth, while some would find the prospect of a Corbyn-led left party exciting this is unlikely to come to pass for several reasons. Chief among which is his close allies in the parliamentary party are unlikely to jump ship with him, and any of those who did, apart from John McDonnell and Diane Abbott, would very likely lose their seats. And getting union support would be difficult. The unions that kowtow to the PLP's supremacy in the labour movement - Unison, Community, USDAW, GMB - they're not going to. And those with a critically distant relationship - Unite, FBU, CWU - have their own priorities and, in the CWU's case, are running their own worker candidate programme committing the union more deeply to Labour (despite pulling some funds). But such obstacles aren't insurmountable, and stranger things have happened. Like the government being brought low by Christmas parties instead of 150,000 deaths and, of course, Corbyn becoming Labour leader in the first place.
Let's think through what a Corbyn-led left party might look like, its opportunities, and the difficulties it would encounter - apart from the horizon-hogging obstacle of the electoral system. Undoubtedly, it would not be short of members. The 150,000 or so reputed to have left Labour since Keir Starmer became leader are a natural constituency, including others still in the party. New and existing small left parties inspired by Corbyn's example would probably flock to his banner too. And while MPs are unlikely to accompany Corbyn into the new party, ex-MPs and sitting councillors are a different matter. Additionally, while affiliated trade unions are very likely to be non-starters, the same cannot be said for those who aren't. The recently resigned Bakers' Union, for example. And thanks to their long record of support TUSC, the RMT. As extra-Labour left wing projects go, because of Corbyn as a figurehead of a popular left-wing, anti-austerity and anti-war sensibility this party would be head and shoulders above any leftwing split or united left vehicle that has existed in recent decades.
How about its support? When the Independent Group/Change UK launched in a blizzard of friendly publicity, YouGov straight away prompted them on their voter intention surveys. Implausibly, 14% said they would back them at an election. Because of Corbyn's profile, his party would get plenty of hostile attention, but in politics there's no such thing as bad publicity. Initial polling figures of around eight per cent would be a good estimate, assuming it was prompted for, and it might eclipse the Greens (while drawing on some of its support, too). Electorally speaking, it would handily retain Islington North for Corbyn, but elsewhere it wouldn't do terribly well. Probably better than the usual run of far left election results, and maybe some deposit saves and relatively respectable results in places (just as Respect managed in 2005), but the danger it poses Labour is the same as the Greens. I.e. pulling just enough votes away from Labour in tight marginal contests and letting the Tory slip through. Obviously, a new party could use local elections, by-elections, and parliamentary by-elections to build its profile. The more consistent it is doing this, the more it may menace Labour.
The problems? There are two big issues a new Corbyn party would face that might soak up energy that would be better directed outwards. The first are entry jobs from the Trotskyist left, who will refuse to disband their organisations or subordinate their ever-so-wise little Lenins to the greater good of the new party as a whole. By far the largest would be the Socialist Party, who recently split because their (now retired) general secretary would not stand for a smidgen of accountability to the wider international organisation. Among other things. And then there are the smaller groups who delight in taking over branches and other positions of authority. Comrades with long memories might recall one of the reasons why Momentum moved quickly to a centralised structure under Jon Lansman's leadership was precisely because of this sort of toy town behaviour. Having followed every left unity/left fusion project since 1996's Socialist Labour Party, what has been built by the "united" far left has consistently proven somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
The second, probably more problematic, hangers on are what you might call, for want of a better phrase, the narcissistic left. These are a ragbag of provocateurs, self-publicists, and big mouth know-it-alls who deliberately try courting controversy and would damage a putative Corbyn project by their association. George Galloway, Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone, and Alex Salmond cheerleader Tommy Sheridan are prominent exponents of this wrecking tendency, but there are plenty of others. Including those who acted as the Labour right's useful tools during their cynical attacks on Corbyn and Corbyn's Labour as antisemitic. If the press don't latch on to their "colourful characters", their presence at party meetings and public events would damage the party and put people off. Unfortunately for a Corbyn party, there's no easy way of dealing with disruptive elements. Membership vetting, bans, or a heavy-handed constitution are guarantees for further rounds of infighting and paralysis.
The last issue is what the party is for. Apart from getting Corbyn re-elected, what else? A movement/party that builds its strength and influence outside of Westminster, like the official Communist Party did in its glory days? Concentrate on elections and become a sort of UKIP-from-the-left that is able to leverage its support to influence mainstream politics? Yes, but that needs a carefully calibrated strategy and seriousness of purpose. And lastly, what about its attitude to Labour and the unavoidable issue of a Labour government versus a Tory government. Would it pull its punches - which Corbyn would likely favour owing to him, when all is said and done, being a Labour man? Avoid certain seats where there are existing left wingers? Or go all out? The question of Labour cannot be avoided, and it's one likely to produce recrimination between members who see it purely as a matter of strategy and others who cannot forget the disgraceful behaviour of the Labour right.
A good job none of this has come to pass and it's all castles in the sky stuff. But if it does, if the Telegraph are more on the nose than they usually are when reporting left politics stuff, these are the issues a prospective Corbyn party would have to face. It might not be pretty, matters might become more fraught. But certainly, politics would be more interesting.
Image Credit
If Jeremy Corbyn did set up a new political party, then it would almost immediately have far more members than the Labour Party, which, beyond a dwindling band of very elderly stalwarts, would be reduced to its MPs, to their paid staff, to its own paid staff, and to a certain number of people who had already been sitting around waiting to lose the councillors' allowances that they had previously assumed were going to be theirs for life.
ReplyDeleteThe new party's age profile would be vastly lower than Labour's, and every member would be highly active. The pressure to switch affiliations in most unions would be so strong, and would in many cases be pushing against an open door, that Labour's only remaining source of funding would be the handful of extremely wealthy individuals who had bankrolled Keir Starmer's Leadership campaign.
But the new party would carry over the fundamental flaw of the Corbyn project. Like Corbyn himself, it never could decide whether it was Red or Red-Green, ultimately based on class politics or ultimately based on identity politics. It knew what it was against, and it was right to be against those things. But it never quite knew what it was for, because it never quite knew what it was.
As for the Potemkin party that the new party would have left behind, so to speak, 50 years on from the triumphant miners' strike of 1972, it is worth considering that a section of that party would seek to claim the mantle of, for example, the sometime Agent of the Durham Miners' Association, General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers (Durham Area), and longstanding member of the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, Sam Watson.
They would be more than welcome to that mantle. Watson conspired to close pits, he opposed all local strikes, he supported the sacking of his own due-paying members, and he secured for the Durham miners the lowest wages in the country, a situation that was not rectified until the strikes of 1972 and 1974. There is a room named after him in the Knesset building, which is not the kind of honour that is conferred on a casual acquaintance. One Struggle, brothers and sisters. One Struggle.
Bringing us to the possibility that the spooky Ruth Smeeth or someone called Mary Creagh might contest Corbyn's seat, apparently because they blamed him for the loss of their own. Of course, they must know that they would only be taking one for the team, although whoever had done so would then be raised to the peerage. But the man who lost Stoke-on-Trent North and Wakefield was the man who abandoned Labour's commitment to Brexit. They ought to be standing in the constituency next door. They ought to be standing against Starmer.
A great piece Phil, and one of the few commentaries I have ever seen to correctly note the effect UKIP has had on a long term basis on politics in this country, despite basically never having any elected MPs in Westminster beyond a few.
ReplyDeleteYou almost have to give the organised right wing in the UK credit for realising the electoral limits of the FPTP system and the fact the Tory Party alone couldn't be the vehicle for bringing about the politics they wanted - especially in the late 90s and early 2000s when their popularity was at relative rock bottom.
Hence the Referendum Party in 1997 morphing into UKIP (not to mention the BNP) and 20 years of chipping away at the discourse through Euro and local elections etc...lo and behold they end up winning Brexit within 2 decades and fundamentally stunting and altering the overall discourse in this country including, of course, the Tory Party itself. And now their aims have been achieved, most of the UKIP and BNP diaspora are happily back in the Tory Party as actual members and/or voters, with some even already back as elected representatives.
Conversely, the "organised" left in this country has always squandered any and all opportunities presented to it to offer a similar populist left alternative to drag the discourse back the other way.
The Iraq war and the deep revulsion felt by millions of people towards Blair's love affair with the warmongering US Republican and religious right wing was a great example of how the left in this country failed spectacularly to capitalise on favourable circumstances. Had a serious and strategic left alternative been born in 2003, patiently working on winning influence in council elections, Euro elections over years etc....it is arguable that by now the discourse in this country would be very, very different indeed. Instead, the sects carried on arguing amongst themselves and we ended up with millions voting in protest for the liberals...and we know what happened then.
After another decade of endless defeat for the left, the Corbyn project came along and re-energised things. But yet again, not only did Corbyn and the other leaders of the left completely and entirely fail to fully realise and plan for what Corbyn was up against, but also entirely failed to plan for the future and organise beyond the 2019 election. Our great and exulted leaders, including Saint Jeremy himself, literally handed the keys back to the Blairites. I had to laugh when Len McCluskey claimed to have been "let down" by Starmer - the fact he had even trusted Starmer in the first place demonstrates the utter incompetence of the people around Corbyn.
As you rightly point out, any "party" set up by Corbyn will end up simply being an electoral vehicle for a few notables, but will almost certainly end up sinking in a quagmire of in-fighting and disappointment. As with Labour under Corbyn, people will join like consumers but then be treated as canvassing footsoliders by the notables and end up burnt out, disillusioned and ultimately angry when they fail to make electoral progress. And as another commentator above points out, it will not know what it is actually for - "peace and justice" makes it sound like a Quaker youth group rather than a serious class-based fighting organisation.
The left in England as it stands is utterly incapable of mounting any kind of serious outside-Labour challenge irrespective of the conditions or circumstances. Until the left begins to work strategically and think long term, beyond thinking about selling this weeks newspaper or whatever protest to attend this week, then this will always be the case.
What I can't understand is that you and others say Corbyn can't stand as a Labour candidate at the next election. He is a member of the party (he is not suspended or being investigated etc). He stood for the party and was elected as a Labour Candidate in 2019, that (to me) makes him a Labour MP. Just because a few members of the party won't let him join their club in Westminster does not mean he is not a Labour MP. Why should the actions of 200 or so MPs override the democratic decision of a CLP (with probably more members) to select a LP member as their candidate for the next election.
ReplyDeleteIf the withdrawal of the parliamentary whip (without any corresponding action from the party) stops someone standing as a LP candidate what is to stop the PLP withdrawing the whip from any left-winger it doesn't like? A clear case of the tail wagging the dog.
So, if he is exiled from the PLP, but then decides to run as a LP candidate, what then? Does the NEC try to fix a selection process which it would probably lose, or bite the bullet and expel him? If so, he would probably run as an independent, and then be a party of one candidate? The temptation to recruit others to the cause would be very strong.
ReplyDeleteOdd that after all these years someone seeks to put the boot into the very late Sammy Watson But then... I think the biggest headache would be as Phil observes, the "ever-so-wise little Lenin's ........and then there are the smaller groups who delight in taking over branches and other positions of authority." They have killed off any attempt to create a left of official Labour movement whether that was, in Sammy Watson's day, Victory for Socialism and the original Young Socialists through to more recent times with the May Day Manifesto group, the Peoples Assembly, Respect, the Labour Left Alliance and this month the crazy situation where two groups of about 20 members each (many of them near-sectionable) are fighting like dogs over the emaciated corpse of 'Labour against the witch-hunt' and the 'Labour in exile network.' You couldn't make it, but daily life in the mindset of a very small clique of individuals does.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason why there likely won't be a "Peace and Justice" party is that Corbyn after so many years inside Labour will not probably refuse to do it: the main priority of Corbyn's leadership was obviously party unity even with (and I think foolishly) the Militant Mandelsoncy wreckers. Perhaps in the long term his priority will look in retrospect as the right choice, or perhaps it will look like a triumph of hope over realism.
ReplyDelete«Undoubtedly, it would not be short of members. The 150,000 or so reputed to have left Labour since Keir Starmer became leader are a natural constituency, including others still in the party.»
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/28/keir-starmer-leadership-labour-leader-left
“Party general secretary, David Evans unwisely asked conference ‘why’ people joined Labour? ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ the audience bellowed”
Corbyn does not have the balls to create his own party. He is a doormat, who has ensured that the left will never ever hold any power within the party. The left will instead continue to operate as the useful idiots of Thatcherite Nulabour.
ReplyDeleteThink of Corbyn as the hacker who hacks into a bank, doesn’t manage to steal a fucking penny but displays to the bank all its security flaws.
Think of any leftist still inside Nulabour as a useful idiot in the service of Thatcherism.
I agree nearly 100% with Phil's article here, but with a pretty big single area of disagreement . There is currently no credible political party in the UK to offer the voters, particularly our now lost Leave-supporting 'Red Wall' , poorer, unskilled and semi-skilled, ex Labour voters, the mildly Leftish social democratic Manifesto policy offer of the hugely popular 20917 Labour Manifesto. Yep, that 2017 one, which also promised to 'Respect the outcome of the EU Referendum' , and hence, even against the then blizzard of MSM misinformation and now well-known internal Party employee and PLP sabotage and collusion with the press and Tories, still won Corbyn-led Labour the biggest vote increase since 1945. For some reason Phil ignores this huge Leftish policy offer vacuum in the UK, now that Starmer's NuLabour is firmly back to offering stale Blair era 'triangulation' Tory lite stuff only.
ReplyDeleteSadly, and nowadays conveniently forgotten by the correctly Starmer-hating 'Left' , is the harsh fact that it was the Corbynite , middle class, 'Left' that also overwhelmingly supported Labour shifting to a Remain and second Referendum position in 2019 - and wanted a ludicrously juvenile 'global open borders' position too. All guaranteed to lose us millions of poorer working class voters , crushed by the EU's unlimited labour supply. It wasn't just Starmer and the Labour Right who foisted this toxic Remain ( by any other name - deliberately slippery as the ever-shifting description of labour's position was in 2019), policy on to the 2019 Manifesto by any means.
And that is the crux of the 'Left's' problem - not just the large number of fractious nutters inhabiting the numerically tiny 'Far Left' entrist grouplets - but the fact that most of the wider so-called 'Left' today, are relatively privileged middle class graduates , with moralistic Left Liberal, identity-obsessed , politics, not coherent socialists with a politics grounded in the centrality of class and the need for state-led socialist comprehensive democratic planning and widespread public ownership. That social composition issue , a result of the UK's now post industrial economic structure , ie, 'a back office' component of global capitalism ie, mainly service sector/banking, with little manufacturing or primary extractive industries , to supply the old 'Big Battalions' of organised labour, may well be a permanent barrier to the emergence of a mass new socialist Left Party, beyond the obsessive nutters, and middle class Left Liberals, to recapture the masses of the super-oppressed poorer working class. The radical populist Far Right though is a different matter - their always flexible opportunist scapegoating divisive politics has proven VERY suitable to capturing that now voiceless huge voting cohort - right across Europe, and , as 'Trumpism', in the USA too ! We should be very afraid what the consequence of the utter failure of the short-lived 'Corbyn Surge' Left led Labour Party 2015 to 2019 will lead to down the track in the UK - as the cost of living crisis for the poorest voters continues to accelerate
"all guaranteed to lose us millions of poorer working class voters , crushed by the EU's unlimited labour supply."
ReplyDeleteCrushed by an unlimited labour supply but happy as fuck to buy up cheap shit produced by even poorer sections of the working class and happy as fuck to take the crumbs from imperialist thievery and happy as fuck to swallow up Murdoch propaganda.
All the while not giving a flying fuck about the destruction of the living environment and biological annihilation.
So swings and roundabouts.
«a ludicrously juvenile 'global open borders' position too. All guaranteed to lose us millions of poorer working class voters , crushed by the EU's unlimited labour supply.»
ReplyDeleteIt is not unlimited, and anyhow there was no real issue with EU immigration before the entry of the eastern european countries, as most other EU countries had similar wage levels (or higher) to the UK. In any case a "centre-left" government can easily accept EU "freedom of movement" by ensuring that wage levels are not affected by it: if a romanian and a glaswegian are paid the same, employers won't have any incentive to hire the romanian.
The reason why immigration from poor countries is unwelcome by many poorer working class voters is that it is used to drive down wages and working conditions and to drive up rents, and that can be prevented.
Conversely, given a "right-wing" government the end of EU free movement will not make it stop using immigration as a tool to push down working terms and push up housing costs, and indeed between 2016-2020 net UK immigration has increased, because while EU immigration shrank a lot, third-world immigration surged by even more (starting in 2020 COVID, not brexit, changed the situation, there are worker shortages in the USA or Vietnam, neither of which exited the EU).
«It wasn't just Starmer and the Labour Right who foisted this toxic Remain ( by any other name - deliberately slippery as the ever-shifting description of labour's position was in 2019), policy on to the 2019 Manifesto by any means.»
ReplyDeletePretty much it was: the "soft exit" compromise advocated by Corbyn had been accepted by a large majority (75% IIRC) of both by the 2/3 of Labour's "Remainers" and the 1/3 of Labour's "Leavers", even if the "Remainers" would have preferred a 2nd referendum, and the "Leavers" would have preferred a harder exit. It was the Mandelson Tendency operatives that pushed with specious arguments the 2/3 of Labour's "Remainers" to reject that compromise and go for the 2nd refendum.
«the wider so-called 'Left' today, are relatively privileged middle class graduates , with moralistic Left Liberal, identity-obsessed , politics, not coherent socialists with a politics grounded in the centrality of class»
While there are many of them, at least 40% of UK workers are still manual working class, and many of the "white collar" working class have the same issues with work casualization, poor wages, miserly pensions, enormous rents, poor quality state services etc.; some people confuse functional class with cultural class or income bracket, and think that graphic designers or software coders or bookkeepers or librarians etc. are "middle class", when they are are best middle income class. In particular people who cannot afford to own a house near-ish their workplace cannot be thought of as "middle class".
So what is the point of your silly , smug, contemptuous comment, BCFG ? I think most socialists have long grasped that the workers in the imperialist old heartlands of global capitalism have historically had it slightly better than the even more oppressed and exploited in what used to be called the 'Third World', ex colonial states. But now these , nominally decolonised, states are the places where things actually get made - as global capitalism has exported its manufacturing to ever cheaper areas of labour supply. Leaving the old capitalist heartlands as the 'back-office', financiakised/service industry, 'coupon clippers' of the global capitalist system - and these old capitalist heartland economies left with a poorer , manual skilled, and unskilled, old industrial working class segment of their populations that is 'no longer needed on voyage'.
ReplyDeleteYour contempt for this vast 'left behind' cohort of our voters and citizens might give you some middle class joy now, but the middle class's time is coming too, as globalised capitalism increasingly globalised and exports previously secure middle class office jobs to cheaper labour supply areas.
Phil's interesting article was pondering the possibility of a new Left Party on any scale in the UK, as Starmer's Nulabour2 veers ever rightwards . Your stupid response, just illustrates how the Labour middle class Left collaborated with the Remainer Labour Right, to destroy our mass working class voter base in 2019 over Brexit - and helped the Right destroy the mildly Left 'Corbyn Insurgency' in Labour too.
«They have killed off any attempt to create a left of official Labour movement»
ReplyDeleteThere used to be something pretty big, "Momentum", and our blogger reminds us that it was not killed off by those people:
“Comrades with long memories might recall one of the reasons why Momentum moved quickly to a centralised structure under Jon Lansman's leadership was precisely because of this sort of toy town behaviour.”
Momentum was even sometimes called a "party within a party", while of course Progress etc. were/are not a Militant Mandelsoncy "party within a party", they are the legitimate New Labour Party fighting off the "entrysts" from the Labour Party. :-)
«So what is the point of your silly , smug, contemptuous comment»
ReplyDeleteThat comment is expressed in flowery language, but I guess it says that too many "proletarians" are happy to be the consumerist accomplices of a system that actually shafts many of them too. A similar argument was made several years ago by the notorious Edwina Currie who wrote in her diary, 1988-02-07:
“Thatcherites to a man, the working classes: lots couldn’t give a damn about the old and sick.”
Indeed there are many like that. For some it is "false class consciousness", for others, those with property, it is in large part "true class consciousness", even if short-sighted.
Blissex - if you really think that :
ReplyDelete" In any case a "centre-left" government can easily accept EU "freedom of movement" by ensuring that wage levels are not affected by it: if a romanian and a glaswegian are paid the same, employers won't have any incentive to hire the romanian."
then you display exactly the same ignorance of how a capitalist economy works as most of the Left Liberal' Left' ! In a capitalist economy all commodities, including labour power, have a price determined by the interaction of supply and demand. Governments can set 'minimum wage' rate laws , but in the absence of 'closed shop' set ups in highly unionised sectors , and other high skill, high educational requirement barriers to entry, an unlimited , or massively increased, labour supply (as the post entry of the old eastern bloc states provided in unskilled and semi-skilled, sectors) , will eventually drive wage rates in those sectors down to this legal minimum level . As happened after the mass entry , in their millions, of lower wage expecting east Europeans after the opening up of their labour pools, first the Poles, then the rest. Only essentially unlimited labour supply in unskilled/semi-skilled sectors enabled the 'Uberised' (casualised), zero hour contract, insecure job phenomenum too.
The current Left Liberal 'Left' don't seem to recall or understand, the primacy in traditional socialist political aims and strategies of comprehensive state-led economic planning - even in a still 'mixed' economy. Labour supply has to be just one component of such a comprehensive national economic Plan. A Plan that prioritises the well-being of all UK citizens/voters - and doesn't seek (as Blair/Brown's Nulabour did), to systematically undercut wage rates and constrain trade union power by enabling as much unlimited labour supply in as many sectors of the economy as they could manage, via the eventually massively extended EU labour pool from Eastern Europe, as a key strategy of their neoliberal agenda - alongside deregulation of the banking sector and continued privatisation and PFI.
"So what is the point of your silly , smug, contemptuous comment, BCFG ?"
ReplyDeleteMy comment was simply the same as your comment but in reverse! Which was the point!
The point was to highlight how silly and smug your pandering to anti immigrant politics is. And to highlight that any politics based on pitting workers against immigrants is not establishing the centrality of class but is playing the game that the bourgeois want you to play.
I also claim that shutting down the borders will not raise the standard of living of the poorer workers, and sowing that illusion is something the left should be fighting, not reinforcing.
“will eventually drive wage rates in those sectors down to this legal minimum level .”
ReplyDeleteThis logic can only hold if everything else remains the same, the thing is everything else never remains the same and cannot possibly do so!
“Only essentially unlimited labour supply in unskilled/semi-skilled sectors enabled the 'Uberised' (casualised), zero hour contract, insecure job phenomenum too.”
No it didn’t! Technological development brought about the Uberised economy, and created an economy that didn’t exist before. Uber, working perfectly within capitalist rules, saw an opportunity to utilise this technology and faced no opposition from the assorted centrist parties.
Uber operate all over North America, which haven’t seen a sudden influx of Poles, it also operates In Nigeria and Norway, which I think is outside the EU the last time I looked!
So the casualised, zero contract economy is not some aberration but is exactly how you would expect a capitalism exchange system to operate, given the technological and historical developments of the past 50 years. Your solution of closing borders is certainly no answer to these problems, and is a reformist illusion.
Incidentally that doesn’t mean I think mass immigration is a good or bad thing, Engels called it social dumping. But what I will not countenance is that closing borders is the answer to the problem of low pay and inequality. The reason for those is much more fundamental than Unknown would have us believe. This is ironic given how rightly contemptuous he is of ‘left liberals’.
Just for a bit of context, I am from a working class family in a former South Yorkshire mining village, my dad worked in a factory and my mum worked on the home help. I still live in the vicinity. So don’t give me your bullshit Middle Class shtick.
I am very sympathetic to extinction rebellion, because and this is shocking news for you Unknown, some working class people cam think beyond a Sun and Daily Mail headline.
Going to have to agree with 'Unknown'. I did badly at school so options were limited. Thankfully, I managed to do an apprenticeship at college, via being on a project for 'NEET' young people, and get into a building trade. This was in the early 2000's. Blair was allowing in many thousands from central and eastern Europe, predominately Poland at the time. Things soon became a race to the bottom in terms of wages - I went from being able to earn £70-£80 p/d, to having to accept £30-£40 p/d, which as you can imagine wasn't/isn't sustainable. I therefore had to stop doing what I trained at for a living, and know others who had to do the same. At the time, and even sometimes now, people, more often than not middle class (largely white) left-liberals, will accuse you of racism for talking about this, despite the fact your clearly not against 'insert ethnicity/nationality' or even against immigration, just critical of the way the capitalists use it to undermine labour.
ReplyDeleteWell said Anonymous ! The very strange BCFG seems to be against 'the exchange system' in a number of his/her posts ! The alternative to 'the exchange system' is a subsistence hunter gather society of an extraordinarily primitive type ! Even in the stone age our ancestors specialised and exchanged. Socialism is still an 'exchange system' but one where democratic PLANNING of the economy and public ownership of the means of production finally abolishes the exploitation of the mass of the population by a ruling class stealing their surplus value.
ReplyDeleteThe emergence on a mass scale of the zero hour 'UBERISED' 'precariat' economy in the old capitalist heartlands over the last twenty five years or so - a return for so many workers to the conditions of the medieval 'hiring fairs' for landless labourers, or the day to day, hiring of dockers outside the dock gates before early 20th century trades unions forced employers to regularise employment, is down to , firstly the thatcher legacy of anti trades union laws , which , in particular, abolished the protective 'closed shop' , and the appearance of an ever increasing huge new labour supply from Eastern Europe , with wage expectations far below those of the indigenous unskilled and semi-skilled , and in some industries (building for instance) even skilled workers too. In London, Polish bricklayers pretty much replaced British workers on most key large projects over the last 20 years. And with the availability of even skilled workers on lower wage rates than British workers, British employers simply stopped training British workers over the last 25 years (hence the lack of bricklayers and HGV drivers now).
The technology which enables the and Deliveroo, etc, 'business model' is not the CAUSE of casualisation and the zero hour economy , but the consequence of the super-availability of pretty much an unlimited labour supply in so many key sectors. Without an unlimited number of workers being forced to work all hours in delivery jobs or taxi services the technology used by UBER, etc, would be worthless .
The sheer economic ignorance of the privileged middle classes , like BCFG not yet in job sectors threatened by unlimited labour supply, in flaunting their 'big hearted Liberalism' in supporting the open borders neoliberal nonsense, have not a scintilla of socialist understanding about how capitalism works , or indeed that a socialist planned economy must include control of its labour supply as part of its holistic economic planning. Nothing to do with 'little Englander ' racism, but this prioritises the benefits of employment to that state's citizens , whilst being perfectly open to inward labour recruitment , with citizenship rights, when gaps in labour availability is identified. The middle class liberal 'Left' open border enthusiasts benefit directly from the cheap taxis and delivery drivers and service industry services that the cheap labour of unlimited labour supply produces, whilst hiding behind their virtue signalling to disguise their indifference to the resulting low wages and job insecurity of their fellow citizens.
BCFG - "And to highlight that any politics based on pitting workers against immigrants is not establishing the centrality of class but is playing the game that the bourgeois want you to play."
ReplyDeleteThats spot on. Some of the left-liberal middle class play into this when they frame conversations like the above through the lens of things like privilege and identity politics. Rather than being understanding of workers concerns, they make assertions, or imply that said workers are being racist or xenophobic. I hate to psychologize, but its as if those elements of the petit-bourgeois left want to deflect from their own class privilege, so place the focus on apparent 'white privilege'.
"The middle class liberal 'Left' open border enthusiasts benefit directly from the cheap taxis and delivery drivers and service industry services that the cheap labour of unlimited labour supply produces, whilst hiding behind their virtue signalling to disguise their indifference to the resulting low wages and job insecurity of their fellow citizens."
ReplyDeleteThe above group (middle class left-liberals) would also believe the narrative about British people being lazy etc, never bothering to engage in conversations about labour being undermined and the deskilling of workers, British and non-British, and how badly exploited both groups are, which in many ways happened more to non-British, especially if undocumented as they have little to no protection. Theres areas where I live that are like stepping into some kind of neo-feudal meets mercantile society - theres a wealthy mercantile and landlord class, who use mostly non-British workers, that they treat like serfs by under/not paying, confiscating passports/documents, providing poor (almost slum like) accommodation, and even prostitution. Its like Rachmanization on steroids.
"The middle class liberal 'Left' open border enthusiasts benefit directly from the cheap taxis and delivery drivers, etc...."
ReplyDeleteThat's pure ad-hominem bullshit. If it matters, I'm working class (currently unemployed, last job was 'operative' in a factory) and I've never used Uber in my life.
Anti-immigrant politics has never benefited the working class. It's classic divide and rule that we've seen so many times before (directed against the Irish, Jews, people from the Caribbean, from India and Pakistan, from eastern Europe, etc...). It's about as valid as religious bigotry or sexism.
If you want to know how a socialist or Marxist should act towards immigrants, see Eleanor Marx (herself the daughter of immigrants, incidentally). Unity is strength. That's fucking basic.
Dearie me, In addition to that old ruse, to claim mega 'poor working class/unemployed' credentials , before spewing out the usual smug middle class bullshit, JN trots out the usual empty Left Liberal virtue signalling to conceal his/her total acceptance of the current rapacious neoliberal status quo, and exhibits a complete misunderstanding of what the , historically unique, EU 'Freedom of Movement' agreement was about. No such 'freedom' (and nowadays only for EU citizens of 'fortress Europe, PLC of course) has ever existed between so many states before of course . And such a purely capitalist-assisting 'freedom' has no place in traditional socialist strategy or theory. Socialists traditionally assume a basic need for socialist comprehensive national economic planning as a basic aim , as was potentially possible before the EU's rules on the 'Four basic freedoms ' were introduced, and destroyed the ability of any national government to PLAN their economy to benefit THEIR voting citizens.
ReplyDeleteIt used to be accepted on the socialist Left , even the mildly social democratic Left, that a Left government will need to plan and control capital movements , AND plan labour supply and enforce and assist the training of its citizens to get the well paid jobs, and not be exposed to the ever falling wage levels that unlimited labour supply automatically produces in those sectors able to buy labour at rock bottom prices. And that , far from this implying a Albanian autarkist closed border state, that there would still be lots of immigrant workers (and refugees) coming in , but in line with the planned needs of the economy AND its citizens , NOT the capitalist class and their insatiable desire for maximising profit through ever-lower wages.
The privileged , virtue-signalling, middle class Left Liberal is always keen to pronounce their deep concern for the abstract global population, but never seem to have any concern at all for the mass of UK citizens, of all ethnicities and genders, who are crushed by the ever lowering wages , zero hour contracts, and lack of unionised workplaces, that unlimited labour supply results in . That the middle classes (with jobs , so far at least, not hugely threatened by unlimited external labour supply) just love the ridiculously cheap UBER taxis, the ridiculously cheap delivery services , the availability of cheap plumbers , nannies, fast food outlets, and so many other sectors where wages and conditions have suffered from the unlimited , or pretty much unlimited, labour supply from the EU, have a personal motive to want this to continue, is quite evident, and quite distasteful.
JN has the nerve to refer to 'Marxists', when he/she is quite evidently just a left Liberal, with no understanding of the traditional socialist /Marxist strategy and core principle of achieving national, and eventually international, rational ,democratic Socialist PLANNING of production , and the economy in general to replace the chaotic amorality of the capitalist market - which ransacks country after country, and leaves their working classes to trek the globe to sell their labour according to the whims of the ever-shifting capitalist market. Spare me your empty protestations of concern for immigrants, JN. Empty Liberal posturing.
Unknown,
ReplyDeleteI presume the only foreigners you would allow into the country are the really highly paid middle class ones as they won't lower the wages of the unskilled. Oh the irony! I am suprised you have not mentioned the Australian points system, so beloved of the middle classes everywhere!
"The very strange BCFG seems to be against 'the exchange system' in a number of his/her posts ! The alternative to 'the exchange system' is a subsistence hunter gather society of an extraordinarily primitive type !"
The alternative to the exchange system is communist planning. There are a few crucial reasons why it doesn't mean hunter gatherer society. Such as, the last 20,000 years of history for a start, with recent developments such as Moon landing, Quantum theory, Computing being small examples of a very large collection.
In your latest post you rail against the chaotic amorality of the capitalist market and yet you still think exchange can be redeemed. Capitalism is the development of exchange, exchange taken to its logical limits, the high point of exchange. It isn’t some type of exchange, which can be cherry picked from.
Your so called planned socialism (with exchange) is an old story, Proudhon based his economic ideas on it. It is nothing but capitalism without the capitalist, which will only resolve into capitalism because, as Marx pointed out, the capitalist is a crucial actor in the exchange system taken to its highest degree.
The only way to achieve communism is to abolish exchange.
So for all your bluster, you are nothing but a Middle Class pro exchange blowhard who desperately seeks to salvage the middle class deep desire to consume material things (which are not needed) into your liberal consumerist exchange society. A society which will not be socialist but will most definitely retain all the key characteristics of capitalism!
You basically want capitalism without refugees. A sort of capitalism in one country (but with cheap imports).
"but never seem to have any concern at all for the mass of UK citizens, of all ethnicities and genders, who are crushed by the ever lowering wages"
Two points here, you include all ethnicities here, but of course if your rule had applied at all times, there would be far fewer ethnicities included in that mass of citizens. It is good to know existing ethnicities have nothing to fear from you, that did need clarifying.
Second point, historically there was great hostility from workers to women entering their professions because women were seen as reducing their wages. Do you believe, in light of this, that women should have been banned from those professions?
It should be noted that with the second point, wages were not ultimately reduced by women entering the field, this was because there is more to this equation than the interaction between demand and supply. Only those with very little understanding as to how a capitalist system works would ever assume this. In other words, people like you unknown.
Finally, as for virtue signalling, you should know that I detest woke as much as the next man, and woman for that matter.