What's the root of this? After all, think about it for a moment. In his open letter to other parties, independents, and "rebel" Tories, Jeremy Corbyn proposed a temporary caretaker government. This wouldn't implement any Labour policy, and be limited to requesting an extension to Article 50 (which the PM can do without a Commons vote) and organising a general election. What. Then. Is. The. Problem? Dismissing idiot suggestions Corbyn's sojourn in Downing Street would end in the Russians parading down The Mall, and the violent overthrow of the capitalist class, their reasons for preferring a no deal Brexit are as self-interested and tawdry as you'd expect.
First off, there is normalisation. As Chris Dillow suggests, having Corbyn in position automatically makes him Prime Ministerial. The great taboo is broken and as the sky won't fall in, his stature grows. It gets people used to the idea of Corbz in the top job, even if he's there for a few weeks and sticks by his word, and that is a weapon Labour must never be allowed to wield.
Again, why? Looking at Labour's 2017 manifesto, while it was a welcome departure from the programmes of preceding decades it didn't portend the liquidation of private property. Nevertheless, it marked a change in political climate by offering a strategy aimed at rebalancing capitalism. Forget the nonsense Osborne used to trot out about public/private, London/the regions, manufacturing/finance, the only balance that truly matters is between labour and capital. If implemented the whip hand employers have enjoyed over employees would be reversed. The looting of public property stopped. The subordination of all to market logics ended. Add to this the Corbynist programme of renationalising the utilities and the rail on the basis of mass participation, and you can grasp the horror this presents capital and its satraps. In order to save and rejuvenate British capitalism, not only is making inroads to prevailing class relations necessary, Labour's institutional blueprint presents a launch pad for the further erosion of bourgeois class power. You don't get to be the longest lived capitalist class in the world without instinctively having a feel for existential threats, even if you can't articulate it in anything but the crudest, red-baiting, Cold War-nostalgic terms.
How is this sense of threat sublimated through the rest of the mainstream body politic? For the Tories, it's obvious. It's a direct attack on their interests (literally so, seeing as most of the parliamentary party have business and rentier interests of their own) and creates a political economy they'd have a hard time adapting to. Hence the likes of Dominic Grieve and Oliver Letwin saying no to a caretaker government. A pro-EU Tory is still a Tory, after all. But others? Considering the sole service Gordon Brown's photocopier rendered to the labour movement is his summation of centrist/liberal thought it's hard to see where these enthusiasts for cutting social security and privatising public assets would have in a world after Corbyn. Because their careers were handed to them on a plate, they lack the wherewithal and the will to make a political argument and organise accordingly - as the muppet show of Change UK attested. To save their wretched niche in the political ecology, opposition to Corbynism comes first, even if it means a no deal Brexit. Saving their own skin and "ideology-free" ideology is a reactionary medium that serves as well as any type of Toryism.
It was always going to be like this. For the bulk of centrism and liberalism, class interests trump all other considerations. It's their narrow, minority concerns determining their Corbynphobia. A no deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for British capitalism and an international humiliation greater than even the Suez crisis, but is a price these frauds are happy to pay because, well, you're going to pay it. To the contrary the Corbynist programme would transform the country and lift the living standards and life chances of millions of people, but it would be at the expense of the Tories and their centrist mini-mes giving up their overweening power and influence. We can't very well have that, can we?
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19 comments:
Is this the liberal elite then?
I had thought that my social & economic position made me working-class, but Nigel Farage says I'm one of the liberal elite so it must be true.
Re first paragraph. Did you ever consider that the majority of LP members wanted a second vote and that Corbyn was not delivering
..
So they looked elsewhere. the
'For the bulk of centrism and liberalism, class interests trump all other considerations.,
Yes, and this is really the nub of it. The EU is a capitalist organisation. It seeks to confer benefits and preferential treatment to its members countries. It is a more humane and regulatory institution than (m)any other probable trading partnerships that the U.K. could engage with and in its time has undoubtedly protected and enhanced the livelihoods of many working class people. However, the EU is still a monolithic capitalistic organisation which promotes neoliberalism with a smiley face. It allows for a centre/liberal hegemony across its member states and to all extents and purposes is the continuation of the Blairite project. It is no wonder then that the anti-Brexit crew are led by centre/left/Lib Dems/soft Tories/dyed in the wool New Labour.
Corbynism is a negation of this neoliberal project and therefore something greater to fear than a trans-Atlantic version of the EU. Any support for his anti-austerity position and his demand for greater regulation of capitalism would disrupt their class interests. It's an easy decision for centrists and liberals to make, and you begin to see the true face of their opposition to Brexit.
have struggled throughout the whole Brexit debacle to see the advantage of membership
"Writing last October, I argued that a chunk of the so-called People's Vote campaign were motivated less by the case for a second referendum and reversing Brexit and more about driving a wedge between Jeremy Corbyn and the (mostly) pro-EU base of Corbynism. And this argument has been conclusively proven over the last few days."
That may well be true, but I think you give way, way, way too much credit to the Liberals or Chukas ability to achieve that aim, which requires a very high degree of gullibility on the part of Labour's members and voters to have any chance of success. It wasn't some brilliant tactical ruse by the Liberals and Chukas that acted to drive a wedge between Corbyn and the Labour members that got him elected as Leader, (60% of whom voted Liberal in the Euro Elections), or Labour voters, who did the same, but Corbyn's own idiotic and reactionary nationalist policy of pursuing Brexit!
Its good that he has now - seemingly - changed position, but its still hardly a convincing militant oppositional stance towards Brexit, which would require him to come out for an immediate revocation of Article 50. Its enough, for now to give him critical support, and demand that parliament back him as caretaker PM, but that's about all.
Moreover, to suggest as you did in a post the other day, that Corbyn's change of stance was some brilliant tactical manoeuvre on his part - which even if it was represents a collapse into parliamentary cretinism as opposed to the advocacy of revolutionary socialist mass politics - itself stretches credulity beyond normal bounds. Corbyn didn't change position as part of some clever strategy, but because he was forced into it as Labour faced oblivion without such a change of stance!
This is quite honestly the kind of sophistry that the Stalinists used to engage in to justify their continual zig-zags in policy as they were forced upon them by events, as they tried to present the new course which was 180 degrees in the other direction to the previous course, as being somehow a tactical manoeuvre they had planned all along. It shows what happens when you lay down with Stalinist fleas.
The half-hearted and reluctant change of stance now, in no way does it compensate for the disastrous reactionary nationalist stance taken by Corbyn and his advisors over the last three years. This is not the time for it, but at some point, those that promoted that disastrous policy, and who facilitated it will need to be held to account.
"The EU is a capitalist organisation."
And what, Britain under May or Johnson isn't???!!!
"Any support for his anti-austerity position and his demand for greater regulation of capitalism would disrupt their class interests. It's an easy decision for centrists and liberals to make, and you begin to see the true face of their opposition to Brexit."
Actually, it doesn't. The interests of conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) is based on the interests of the owners of fictitious capital, i.e. shares and bonds in large corporations, but the interests of those large corporations long ceased being dependent on the unconstrained free market, and became dependent upon planning and regulation, as Marx and Engels predicted must inevitably become the case, as the methods of the new mode of production encroach on the old.
The whole of the EU project from the start was based upon an extension of planning and regulation, not just in depth but in breadth, i.e. not just more of the economy subject to it so as to create the stable conditions required for longer-term investment by those corporations, but its extension across a wider geographical area, and economy.
The concern of the owners of fictitious capital over the last thirty years to seek speculative capital gains, as an alternative to revenue from real economic growth, is an anomaly created by specific conditions during that period. But, it is precisely because that is unsustainable, and shown to be unsustainable by repeated financial and property crashes despite massive levels of money printing, that it cannot last, and the conservative social-democratic model of the lat thirty years cannot survive.
To prevent asset prices crashing, you ultimately need more profits from which are paid interest/dividends, and to get more profits you need an expansion of real capital, more labour employed, producing more surplus value, which means more real capital accumulation, which now requires, more planning and regulation to create the conditions under which such capital accumulation can occur.
The problem for the owners of fictitious capital is that because the prices of their assets have been inflated by low official interest rates, and yields on those assets caused by state buying of those assets to inflate prices, leading now to the ridiculous situation of negative yields on trillions of dollars of assets across the globe, the consequence of the increased real investment, which the laws of capital is bringing about anyway, will mean that interest rates rise, and asset prices crash catastrophically.
But, that is the short term price they will have to pay for the future revenues from those assets, and is itself a consequence of the conditions they have created over the last thirty years. Their longer-term salvation actually comes precisely from the kind of progressive social democratic policies of extended planning and regulation that Corbyn proposes!
Broadly I endorse all said in that article....though not all proponents of a People’s Vote are anti Corbyn.
However, as it clearly states, the interim government would not carry out any Party Policy.
Does it really matter then WHO the interim PM is, as long as he/she delays Article 50, promises a referendum
and calls a general election? I would accept Mickey Mouse if that was carried through.
Though I would prefer the People’s Vote before the election
To land us with a no deal Brexit for the sake of political purity seems st the best very inept.
When I voted for Corbyn I just wanted Labour to stop attacking poor people, the disabled, and the immigrants. I didn't think it would cause a major crisis for global capitalism, or the complete implosion of the UK's entire political system. That said, I'm still sure I did the right thing.
No because Labour Policy always included the possibility of a second vote
Apart from class interests, my guess of a big reason why the *elites" hate the idea of a Corbyn government could be that he is uncompromised and likely unblackmailable; this could mean that as Prime Minister, having access to the "real" files about the dirty stories of the past couple of decades, from Iraq to Skripal, he may be so revolted that he would not keep the the lid on them. This is a very serious political problem: he is not "one of us", a trustable operator, in that respect. Perhaps he should make "bygones are bygones" one of his most frequent phrases to reassure the "elites" that no matter what skeletons he were to find in the Prime Minister's closets he would not expose them, despite being uncompromised by them. But I doubt that would be enough even if he were believed, because he would not be able to promose credibly he would be willing to compromise himsellf by participating in new dirty stories; just ignoring old ones is most likely not enough.
One of the biggest problems in realpolitik is the age-old "there is no honour among thieves", which can be at least be partially solved if they all are compromised or blackmailable; and that's I reckon the point of clubs and cabals like the Bullingdon at Oxford University or the one around Epstein.
«When I voted for Corbyn I just wanted Labour to stop attacking poor people, the disabled, and the immigrants.»
And as our blogger says, ensure that "capitalist" power is more popular by making it less harsh.
Which is something that I support under the "lesser evil" doctrine and a realistic assessment that the end of "capitalism"'s era of history is not imminent, and as long as we got deal with that, improving its outcome for the many is what we can achieve.
«However, the EU is still a monolithic capitalistic organisation which promotes neoliberalism with a smiley face.»
That's a common myth, as the EU simply promotes whatever policy flavour is supported by a majority of member state governments. Most of them are currently centre-right, which means that our far-right tories consider the EU a communist plot, and centre-left people a conservative cabal.
Consider a classic example, "state aid": that is not forbidden by the EU treaties, and indeed quite a lot of "state aid" is done by EU programmes, again confirming the far-right tories that the EU is a communist plot. But the EU treaties forbid *unilateral* "state aid" by a single member state, it is only allowed if all members agree, and most are run by centre-right governments and they don't agree, so centre-left people claim that the EU is against "state aid".
I believe my initial observation that the Tories would not support Corbyn proves my point. The rest is hot air - even the Lib Dens etc could be convinced to follow if the Tories did but they don't need to. Corbyn knows all this. All the piety and outrage is disingenuous and cover for a disgrace - no deal brexit enabled by Corbynites. It's not complicated, though you like to make it seem that way.
If you take anything that pseudo 'man of the people' Farage says, you're a bigger fool than he is.
Planning seems like such an innocent word doesn’t it? Such a neutral, objective word, implying diligent application to meet a noble goal. It barely scratches the surface of the sheer corruption, ruthlessness, greed and disregard for basic decency, disregard for the planet we live on and the things that live on it. No according to Boffy they simply plan and regulate. This is truly in keeping with how this monumental idiot has reduced Marxism to the very basest and servile level.
I used to work for IBM, when Boffy talks about large corporations, their planning and regulation actually translates into lobbying governments to ensure their own specific interests are reflected in policies and that they are capable of dominating and if necessary killing off any competitors. In fact IBM has bought up well over 200 smaller companies, all operating in the market, since 2000. The same applies to other large corporations, who often, let’s be generous and say procure ideas from the market. They also rely on a pretty large slice of the labour market from Brazil to India!
There was an outstanding documentary on RT recently which showed the extent to which Coca Cola was lobbying governments to ensure its interests were met, this documentary said a million times more about the shady and downright destructive policies of large corporations than the servile lackey claptrap that spews like a cesspool from the cesspit mouth of Boffy.
Link to that fabulous RT documentary can be seen here:
https://archive.org/details/RT_20190210_093000_Documentary
I urge all comrades to ffs switch off the BBC and switch off Boffy!
Its great when the Russian trolls and bots whip themslves up into a frenzy of ineffective, unintelligible rage. So satisfying.
It is even more satisfying when a servile imperialist lackey gives the perfect servile imperialist lackey response.
Incidentally, I urge comrades to view that superb documentary.
Ignore what Boffy the BBC bot is telling you.
1) You cannot just casually avoid the fact that a substantial chunk of the populace (whether reasonably or not) and plenty of MPs very strongly dislike or distrust Jeremy Corbyn, which causes problems for a unified anti-Brexit position. He's divisive in ways other options would not be on Brexit, that's just political reality.
2) Many Remainers have been disappointed by Corbyn's stance: why do they want to be led by someone who has seemed so ambivalent and they don't trust?
3) Putting Brexit in the hands of an existing party leader makes it look like a partisan operation more than a co-operative, nationwide one.
The flipside of this accusation against the Liberal Democrats and others that they'd rather risk No Deal than let Corbyn be seen as "Prime Ministerial" is that Labour could be accused of being happy to risk No Deal so that he can. It is not like Labour is devoid of cynical politicking and advisors who likely have the ambitions of their party and Corbyn ahead of resisting Brexit.
This is essentially where I stand, for instance. If Corbyn wins a general election, I'll be okay with that. As leader of an anti-Brexit or pro-referendum campaign, no: he and to an extent Labour generally squandered that trust long ago.
"The flipside of this accusation against the Liberal Democrats and others that they'd rather risk No Deal than let Corbyn be seen as "Prime Ministerial" is that Labour could be accused of being happy to risk No Deal so that he can. It is not like Labour is devoid of cynical politicking and advisors who likely have the ambitions of their party and Corbyn ahead of resisting Brexit.
This is essentially where I stand, for instance. If Corbyn wins a general election, I'll be okay with that. As leader of an anti-Brexit or pro-referendum campaign, no: he and to an extent Labour generally squandered that trust long ago."
This times infinity.
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