There has never been anything decent about the Conservative Party. Since their formation, they've done what they believe is necessary to push the interests of their corner of the ruling class. Consequences, in every instance, be damned. And they were damned, as long as someone else picked up the tab. Yet whatever the Tories have overseen or done, be it war abroad or class war at home a certain decorum was maintained. Thatcher was, more or less, a stickler for parliamentary conventions while the Met smashed their way into Yorkshire miners' homes. John Major and Dave rarely if ever deviated from polite modes of address, while their policies sundered community ties and plunged hundreds of thousands of families into destitution. It didn't matter how awful the decision, how many victims it created and, in the case of the Tory cuts programme, the number of bodies piled up, convention was observed. The clubbiness of the Commons was maintained, on the whole. And then we have Boris Johnson. Dave may have proven intemperate and May an authoritarian, albeit an incompetent one, but the parliamentary illusio is truly punctured by Johnson's terrible and purposely inflammatory responses at the despatch box. His dismissal of Paula Sherriff's complaint against his contrived surrender-mongery and enlistment of Jo Cox for a flash of rubbish Commons oratory was crass and irresponsible. He knows full well peddling this pathetic rhetoric can rile up his base and put boosters under two-bit extremists, racists, and neo-Nazi fantasists, but he also knows that despite the murder of a MP there are no repercussions or consequences for those pushing it. After all, Leave won. And those who made the arguments, identified the scapegoats, and mobilised discontent and division for entirely miserable ends went on to bigger and better things. What does it matter that people's lives are being put at risk? It's not his neck, their necks, after all. On the narrow point of parliamentary convention and its complete flouting, why now and how now? And, more interestingly, why does the defiance of convention not carry the costs they were assumed to have? It's not as if the country hasn't been up in arms before, and sharply polarised politics haven't stalked the land. Clearly, something has shifted. MPs used to resign from high office if they were literally caught with their pants down. Now resignations are nigh on impossible, and it's almost inconceivable Johnson would ever consider his position regardless of his wrongdoing. How? In his 2008 collection, From Marxism to Post-Marxism?, Goran Therborn argues the cultural tendencies associated with the ascendency of capital (vis a vis labour) in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s were simultaneously corrosive of the authority structures that had fostered and incubated them. Widespread cultures of deference to politicians, monarchs, older people, clergy, celebrities, experts, bosses and union leaders, as a general rule were undermined. Mammon was the goal, and it came via a neoliberalisation of the soul. The atomised, self-activating, indebted and responsible individual is the ultimate source of authority about all things. Irreverence then was the chief legacy of the youth rebellions of the 1960s, but was quickly hitched to consumer cultures and conservative rhetoric as Thatcher and Reagan waged war on classes and institutions in the way of the unhampered freedom of capital. The strategic nous of Thatcher and co. lay in appealing to this irreverence. After her, albeit on a lower level, Blair did the same. There was Dave's austerity populism, and Farage's Brexit populism. Each case, each type chipped away at the legitimacy and convention of the institutions keeping Britain's limited democracy ticking over, culminating in a Prime Minister and his shadowy sidekick seemingly bent on blowing the whole lot up. Their act works, because Johnson is the political instantiation of this irreverence. His cracked support don't care, because he epitomises their contempt, and his trampling of norms, threats to break the law, and kamikaze commitment to Brexit fits with how they like to think their relation to the world. They hate its tolerance, the growth of progressive social values, the binning of old backward norms, and most of all the decentering of the first self-centred generation. i.e. the notion the spotlight is no longer on them. Johnson's calculation, as long argued here, is by playing up to them he thinks he can keep his decomposing party in office, that it would be enough to win an election. It almost worked for Theresa May, so why not Johnson? Therefore, the bull in a china shop performance is exposing the conventions of office and parliament as exactly that. What point is a gentlemen's agreement when neither party to it are gentlemen? The pitch of irreverence is such Johnson knows he's not likely to suffer too much politically for thumbing his nose at precedent, and might even curry favour among the massed ranks of Brexit. Nevertheless, as a strategy it has backfired terribly so far, almost (almost!) radicalising centrist Labour MPs in their outrage against him, raising the costs for Labour rebels and "ex" Tories to back any repainted May deal he comes back to the Commons with. And now he's suffered his seventh Commons defeat in a row over a recess for Tory party conference. And yet he sticks to it, because Johnson reasons it plays well to the dead core of his support and reaches over to the Brexit Party. The people vs parliament is what he craves, and how he thinks the Tories can win the next election. And if that means the effective death of parliamentary custom and practice, so be it. Image Credit
Another day, another disaster for Boris Johnson. In ordinary times, the decision by the Supreme Court that determined his prorogation of parliament was unlawful and, in effect, he lied to the Queen would be career ending. The lectern should be pitched in Downing Street and Johnson is there, crying crocodile tears down the world's cameras. Alas, this is not to be. Downing Street has "leaked" its displeasure to Laura Kuenssberg, saying "We think the Supreme Court is wrong and has made a serious mistake in extending its reach to these political matters." And this is the line most of the right have taken. Despair is stalking the land tonight alright, but this time it's team leave who are left to grieve. You didn't need much in the way of legal training to note the government's case before the Supreme Court was tissue thin, and the position led by Lord Pannick on behalf of centrist celebrity much more convincing. All the government could muster was a plea this was none of the court's business, whereas the remainers arranged documentary evidence of the Prime Minister's intentions and cited precedent to bolster their case. Watching proceedings on Thursday, the clincher for me was the bringing up of the Unison tribunal fees case. Readers will recall the coalition government of the Tories and LibDems (yes, remember, the LibDems) hiked up fees for employment tribunals. Ostensibly to deter bogus claims and tackle the culture of ambulance chasing, the real reason was to strengthen bullying bosses and tilt the balance of power in the workplace even more in their favour. The Supreme Court found it unlawful on the grounds it went against the spirit of justice by restricting the availability of legal redress. As such, while there were no rules preventing Johnson from proroguing parliament, he was hoping to restrict his accountability to parliament as well as frustrate its normal operation ahead of the Brexit deadline. As such he acted against the spirit of a system in which parliament sits supreme. And the court agreed. Does this mean the sky has fallen in, like government supporters and Brexiteers claim? Well, only if your present and future schemes are unconstitutional and depend on manoeuvres dodgoir. If you were ever serious about "taking back control" and affirming the superiority of parliament vis a vis the EU, then our leavers should be cheering that the Prime Minister's accountability to it has now entered the corpus of the UK's ludicrous uncodified constitution. So no, the protestations this is undemocratic and places a dead hand on British politics are complete bollocks. If liberal democracy is your bag, then you need bars against arbitrary powers and their exercise. It is also worth noting the court's judgement does not check the power to make laws. There is nothing stopping Johnson from tabling legislation enhancing the powers of the Royal Prerogative, apart from the hilarious disappearance of his majority. The obvious wider question is if your project for government is transformative, whether the Supreme Court could be used by disgruntled employers and other groups against a programme of the sort unveiled at Labour Party conference this week. And yes, of course it could. If we've learned anything from Labour's own struggle with itself and how the media have systematically defamed and traduced the party and its objectives, every little thing, every avenue to sap our energy and thwart our attempts at remaking the country and redressing the balance of class forces will be leveraged and used repeatedly. You can see it now - cases against Corbynism's disposal of private school property, forcing big pharma to relinquish monopolies on medicine, and the rest. And our strategy in response? It has to be twin track. Observing the constitutional way of doing things, including the proper drafting of legislation that leaves no ambiguities or conflicts with existent and unrepealed legislation. No more half-arsed laws. And the second? Mobilising our movement. Despite its pretences, while no one is above the law the law itself is the product of contradictory social relationships. The lawyers and solicitors who work in it, and the judges presiding over it neither are nor separate from the rest of society. As privileged and, sometimes, literally bewigged members of the ruling class the law is there for the protection of their property and, obviously, their interests. And we have seen plenty of judgements handed down and precedent set confirming this over the centuries. But, as per the Conservative Party, the existence of the bourgeois interest does not necessarily mean a unanimity around what constitutes that interest. If the state is a general committee for attending to the ruling class's common affairs, the apparatus of the courts is another means for securing it - even if it means one sectional interest of the ruling class loses out. Today's judgement was political whichever way you diced it, and the 11 Justices - of different political persuasions and undoubtedly opinions on the vexed question of Brexit - made a decision they thought was best not just in law, but for the relationship between the courts and conventional politics. And, coincidentally, congenial to the social layer most supportive of the rule of (bourgeois) law: the liberal elite. Only a naïf would suggest these were of no consequence. Judges are not immune or insensitive to wider politics. As we transform Labour into an actual party/movement as opposed to just being one on paper, we have to mobilise around our policy areas, raise the temperature, make our cases in the workplaces and communities, online and offline, of helping generate an irresistible head of steam for change. If, for example, the country is decidedly cheesed off with big pharma, rip off prescription charges, and how they've exploited the guaranteed market the NHS has provided them for decades, the less likely the law is going to find for them in cases disputing the legality of whatever Labour is compelling them to do. Because, ultimately, the legal profession wants to stay relevant, wants public support, and wants to sustain whatever legitimacy it has in the eyes of the public. A canny Labour government would recognise this, and leverage its support in the country to neutralise mischief, legal or otherwise, before it properly gets going. A reminder then is mobilisation outside of parliament isn't decorative: it is vital and integral to our plan. Image Credit
In the annals of video gaming, how many titles put you right at the end of the prequel game? A handful to be sure, and the only one parading the stage during our passage through games old and new is Super Metroid. Which is an interesting happenstance, because there are a number of mechanics it shares with another game picking up where its predecessor left off: Wonder Boy III: The Dragon's Trap. Published in 1989 for the Master System and subsequently appearing on the Game Gear, the PC Engine (under a different name) and getting a latter day reskin for the Switch, PS4, and XBox One in 2017, in the pantheon of Sega-sourced mascots the Wonder Boy series of games have tended to get outshone by a certain other character. Nevertheless, the broad consensus among professional reviewers of the day placed Dragon's Trap the nearest the Master System had to a Super Mario game in terms of depth, making it easily one of the best games the machine had to offer. Not to be confused with the light arcade jaunt Wonder Boy III: Monster Lair, Dragon's Trap immediately casts you into said trap. Picking up just prior to the final boss battle in Wonder Boy in Monster Land, you find your way to the room of your nemesis, slay him and ... and ... he curses you, transforming you from a super deformed swashbuckling warrior into a dragon. You escape the castle and your quest begins to lift the curse, change you back into, well, Wonder Boy again. All the while battling to other evil dragons to liberate all the lands from their scaly grasps. Dragon's Trap, despite its cutesy countenance is nothing of the sort when it comes to gameplay. It is a very strategic platformer where you have to think seriously about your next move. Most enemies appear fairly harmless, but a combination of funny attack patterns, occasional dodgy baddy placement, and a propensity to knock your energy bar into the middle of next week can catch you unawares. No curling up into a ball and barrelling through here. Matters aren't helped by your being relatively slow and awkward - at least at first. As you kill more enemies, accumulate more cash, upgrade your gear, and progress further into the game you get a nice treat. Following your defeat of a dragon boss, you are cursed again and assume another form. From dragon you become an anthropomorphised mouse, from a mouse a merman (or, officially, "Piranha Man"), from merman into a lion, and from a lion into a bird. Therefore, in addition to getting access to new equipment to buy you acquire new abilities that unlock different levels. The mouse can climb specially patterned walls, merman can swim up and down and around the screen, lion has good reach with the sword and can smash like Hulk, and I'm sure you'll never guess what the bird can do. As you progress deeper into the game, there are rooms that allow you to switch between different beasties to help clear whatever obstacles are thrown at you next. This is a long game, a very long game. Don't let the YouTube playthroughs fool you. The exploration, getting to grips with each character, hunting down weapons, grinding for cash, seeing what your magic weapons can do, and working out what the hell to do next is enough to head scratch anyone into alopecia. The dozens of hours some would have sunk into trial and error, running back and forth, and beating the game through brute repetition and trying out absolutely everything doesn't bear thinking about. Dragon's Trap is certainly a game, like the best arcade adventures, that makes you work. Is it deserving of its classic reputation though? There are some major annoyances. Tracking backwards and forwards, or proceeding through a level and reaching a boss who's nigh on impossible to defeat because you're not the right animal form is perhaps the biggest gripe. It's bad, because once you reach a certain point in the level there's no turning back and undoing your mistake. Very frustrating. It's also not immediately clear what all your special items can do - without looking at the instructions or a walkthrough, I'm still not sure what the stones you occasionally pick up for your items roster are supposed to do. The major gripe has to be the end of level bosses, though. Once you've got their patterns down most don't offer too much trouble. But the two I hated with a passion is the Pirate Dragon and the Samurai Dragon, both of whom demand pixel perfect precision to take out as well as near endless time to whittle down their energy. Nothing wrong with a strong challenge, but repeat timed buttoned presses for five to ten minutes? It's enough to test the patience of a menhir. Its canonical status in 8-bit Sega circles then rests on standing out from the Master System crowd. Few are the games requiring thought and a significant time outlay, save a celebrated RPG or two. Especially when too many MS games at the time of Dragon's Trap's release were not terribly well programmed, were shallow, and simply weren't very good. This was like a bolt from the blue, and demonstrated the machine could provide the immersive experiences more readily found on its Nintendo competitor. How about now when games past and present are easily available, tastes have moved on, and the series itself has fallen into relative obscurity - though the remake, and its particular success on the Switch and the appearance of Monster World IV on the forthcoming MegaDrive Mini are helping drive interest. Perhaps it doesn't stand up so well. What gamers were willing to accept in the late 80s and early 90s, and what was considered hard and what was considered fair game design has shifted. Getting through Dragon's Trap can be hard work, or perhaps best thought of as a labour of love. Well worth checking out for a challenge, and for geeks wanting to see the adoption and re-embedding of Metroid-style mechanics. Readers looking for accessible retro experiences, particularly on the Master System, might be better off with Sonic or the original wonderful Wonder Boy romp - this one might prove too off-putting.
Owen Jones asks why are groups of hard remainers refusing to acknowledge the victory their marches, campaigning, and consistent pressure have won. If you go back to the so-called People's Vote demonstrations, many a speaker called on, nay demanded Labour ditch its ambiguous Brexit position. "Where's Jeremy Corbyn?" went the mischievous chants. Well, Jeremy Corbyn is where you wanted him: calling for a second EU referendum with an option to remain. But it's not enough, never enough. Some have moved the goal posts and now only revoking Article 50 will do. Others have vowed to never vote Labour with Corbyn as leader, even if the only discernible route to their political objective is through a Labour government. You can fantasise about the hard positioning of the Liberal Democrats winning a majority, and I can dream of winning the EuroMillions jackpot. We've spoken about Corbynphobia plenty of times. The very prospect of Jeremy Corbyn entering Number 10, if only to oversee the calling of a general election, requesting a delay to Article 50, or piloting a second referendum through the Commons (which isn't straightforward), is far too much for the likes of Jo Swinson and the "ex" Tories. They know full well that Corbyn as Prime Minister crosses a Rubicon. The sky won't fall in, the top 100 monopolies won't be nationalised, and suddenly he becomes a much more credible statesman figure. Incumbency robs them of one of their most potent, scaremongering weapons. This is not a post about them, but rather the ordinary rank-and-filers who attended the protests, shared the Jolyon Maugham tweets and have kept a shrine to Lord Pannick since last Thursday. And the rest. So where's this non-elite Corbynphobia "from below" coming from? Some of it can be written off as LibDems, but to put it all down to them is as stupid as those who trying explaining Corbynism by mass Trot entryism. Some can be put down to political disagreements with Corbynism. Not of the polite 'I think this policy has problems, old chap' variety, but visceral disagreement that cuts to the bone. On foreign policy specifically, Corbynism reminds some that transatlanticism is not necessarily a force for good in the world, and that you can usually find the British state in the corners of many an unsavoury regime - provided their interests and "ours" coincide. This disrupts the fiction of a rules-based international order that has never existed. If you take Clinton and Blair as paradigm centrists who respected the rule of law at home and abroad, Clinton was not averse to cruise missile diplomacy and bombing medicine factories to generate headlines. And Blair? The word 'Iraq' will suffice. Because Corbyn draws attention to the power relationships under the piffle of high diplomacy, and shows Britain and the US to be as self-interested and cynical as Russia, China, and the other bogeymen of the international order, it grates. This applies to the near abroad, and the EU specifically. Corbyn has long refused to respect the utopian fantasies of sundry centrists for whom the EU is the incarnation of the spirit of reason. Coupled with a long record of scepticism and solidarity with the EU's victims, especially those suffering unnecessarily in Greece, that is enough to cast him into the outer darkness, and especially so if the only two coordinates of your politics are leave and remain. This uneasiness on sacred cow politics is compounded by the successive hit jobs undertaken on Corbyn. Because he doesn't share the same conservative goals as centrism, it follows he does not respect the same rules either. And so the fall out of the anti-semitism crisis, suggestions Jezza is a puppet of Stalinoid functionaries, and every single smear story from the last four years feeds this unease, this angst. It's not that media content brainwashes people, but exposed consistently over long periods of time it sediments into the consciousness. Their frames become your frames, their natural assumptions, without you noticing, become your assumptions. They can be resisted, but no one is totally free of how they condition our outlook. Least of all liberals and remainers and their emotional attachments to the BBC. Therefore for a layer of people, Corbyn is an instantiation of the political instability we've seen since 2015. It does not matter how many hoops he jumps through - a second referendum, cancelling Brexit, shacking up with Guy Verhofstadt, changing his name to Remainy McRemainyface - nothing will ever suffice. Corbyn is a barrier against where they want to be, the past. A place they knew their place and could relax, leaving the business of ontological anxiety to others away from the public eye. Even if Britain under Corbyn ends up staying in the EU and properly funds the kinds of things they affect to care about, they are still out of joint, their heroes dethroned and the cognitive map of their social environs completely skewed, out of time and irrelevant. This is why there are hundreds of thousands of "progressives" who can never countenance back Corbyn's Labour, despite the party accepting the second referendum position. It's more than a question of identity. It is a matter of being at ease in the world. And these people are very uneasy, to the point political realities have melted for them. They can't go back, but trapped in the past they can't move forward either. Stuck, their hard remain stubbornness symptomatic of a paralysing longing for a world doomed never to return. It means their politics are fundamentally reactionary and self-destructive, a mirror image of the Brexit zealotry they affect to despise. Such figures don't deserve your anger or your social media invective, they are piteous and beyond reasoning. Nevertheless understanding the roots of their extremism is useful for getting to grips with weaker forms of Corbyn-scepticism and left phobia, and how we can go about addressing them. Image credit
For a brief, beautiful moment it appeared as if the stitcher-in-chief had become the stitched. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Jon Lansman's surprise move at Friday evening's NEC to abolish the Deputy Leader post, and therefore dump its awful incumbent fell. Overnight too many people got cold feet, were spooked by the promise of bad press, and fretted it would push more Labour MPs out of the PLP, so instead of an unexpected but welcome defenestration we got a review. And now we will have to endure another episode of wrecking when Tom Watson takes the stand for his slot on Tuesday. Is he going to thank Jeremy Corbyn for saving his bacon, or glory in a confected legend of seeing off the "hard left"? We know him too well to put the answer in any doubt. In his usual disingenuous way on Radio 4 this morning, he called on the members to decide his fate, knowing full well there is no mechanism to recall him and there being as much a chance of refreshing his mandate as, um, him deciding to refresh his mandate. And we all know why: he would lose. Like many others I voted for Tom Watson in 2015, stupidly and naively thinking his battles with Murdoch might mean he'd be more outward facing and combative versus the Tories. This despite living in the WestMids and seeing shenanigans and dirty tricks performed by the regional office at his behest. As Watson has broken the terms on which he was elected in word and deed, if there was a shred of decency about him he'd tender his resignation. There is no such decency. One of the most frustrating aspects of the Corbyn project is its conciliationism. Initially, Jeremy was right to try and forge a shadow cabinet formed out of the differing wings of the party. As a general rule, talent has to sit with factional balance, and giving your opponents to buy-in is a trusted way of keeping them on-side. But after a year of scabbing, counter-briefing and guerilla warfare culminating in the failed coup, keeping these cretins happy should have ended there and then. No more favours, no more olive branches. The left had the opportunity to sweep wide and sweep hard with Stakhanovite enthusiasm following after the election: then was the time to make the necessary changes. Instead, Corbyn proved magnanimous in victory, which was paid back by MPs in the cynical exploitation of anti-semitism and using Brexit as a wedge between Corbyn supporters and the leadership's attempts to pull politics back to other burning questions. Sometimes, literally burning. Why now then, why make the move against Watson after filleting Labour Students? Well, nothing breeds success like success. A double blow against the Labour right while their main support base, the parliamentary party, are facing reselections. Which, it's worth noting, makes Twitter threats of a leadership contest in response nothing but bluster. Timing then was important, and would be long forgotten in the build up to an election a couple of months hence. How about the suggestion of the left's weakness? The argument goes that some in Corbynism's upper echelons fear defeat at the next general election, whenever it arrives, and this is about getting all the left's ducks in a row in time for the next leadership contest. Possibly. Then again, the left does need a succession plan come what may, whether Labour is defeated at the next election and Jeremy steps down or after a successful period of government. The fear has to be the annoying appeal someone like Keir Starmer has for the softer end of Corbynism, the part of the movement who, despite everything, feel the pull back to how things were when politics was "safer". Faced with the likelihood of him becoming leader next, the left's revolution has to be made permanent should he try unpicking it. Which he will. Ultimately though, while Lansman and Unite backed away and are content with the compromise motion, what this episode underlines again is the historic weakness of the Labour right. When Labour Students was cast into the abyss parliamentary alumnus of its ranks cried publicly and made threats, but nothing was forthcoming. Another prop of the right was annihilated. And had the bombing run on Watson released its payload, they'd have complained to the papers, on condition of anonymity of course, and that would be that. No splits, no action, plenty of chuntering, but uneasy quiescence as MPs attend their trigger ballots. Despite all this, my fear is the left will rue the day the move against Watson wasn't followed through. Sharp pain now would, in all likelihood, avoid torture later on. Instead, and not for the first time, the hardest, most pitted road has been chosen. Image Credit
That moment when you're walking to work and remember a point you were supposed to make in last night's piece. And, perhaps, this is the most glaring error in Bolton and Pitts's Corbynism: A Critical Approach. In their book, they answer previous criticism for their being unconcerned with providing an alternative politics or strategy to Corbynism with a shrug of the shoulders and a dismissive meh. All well and good if you're interested in merely writing things and building careers as soi-disant Marxists with a neat little niche. And yet, their book is explicitly located as an intervention in strategic debates about socialism today. Remember, their argument is two-fold: the left should be in the business of defending its gains and holding the centre against the brutish, populist hordes. It's almost as if their declaration is a rhetorical flourish to try and position their critique of Corbynism from within the left for, well, marketing purposes. The second point flows from the first. If we were to hurl Bolton and Pitts into a Tardis and take in a whistle stop tour of important historical mobilisations from below, like the ragged wretched throngs of St Petersburg who begged the "Little Father" Tsar for bread and were shot down for their pains, the civil rights movement in the US who drew heavily on Christianity and American constitutionalism as the ideological inspiration for their campaign against segregation and Jim Crow, and any number of strike movements in the 1970s motivated by pay and and working hours, how would our worldly wise Marxists have approached them? One expects a screed of some length pointing out the faults in their politics and attacking their movements for insufficient Marxism. In other words, they would be treated as the finished product and not as movements in development with trajectories that could head in radical and, gasp, perhaps even Marxist directions. This is how Bolton and Pitts approach Corbynism. If their failure to situate its emergence in the confluence and recomposition of class politics wasn't bad enough, their pen portrait of it as a fully-formed semi-conspiratorial movement is one of the worst takes on Corbynism I've come across. Perhaps they should reflect on their absurd claim Corbynism operates a substantialist theory of value. That is the treatment of money as magic containers of value instead of its mediator. Their criticism certainly missed the mark, but it is suggestive of a projection entirely of their approach to Corbynism. Instead of a mediator of class interests interacting and struggling with other political forces based on opposed interests, Corbynism is a container of essential qualities - two campism, technological determinism, technotopianism, populism - and can never change. A very strange position for Marxists to take. We saw this before in Matt Bolton's essay, widely circulated at the time of the second Labour leadership contest, that made the entirely stupid argument that Corbynism wasn't properly socialist because it didn't measure up to the tight discipline and (doctrinaire) Marxism of the Militant Tendency as was. Alas, the only thing that didn't measure up was Bolton's argument, based as it was on an incredibly crude and zero-nuanced application of Max Weber's ideal typical method. Lenin isn't the most favoured Marxist round these parts, but he was on to something when he wrote ultra-leftism and opportunism are two sides of the same coin. Bolton and Pitts criticise Corbynism not to advance it, or develop the movement in a more consistently socialist direction, but to justify their own sniffy abstention. How very Marxist of them. Image Credit
In his recent interview on Politics Theory Other about the long-term decline of Conservatives and Conservatism, Andy Beckett suggests incuriosity about Corbyn and Corbynism is a symptom of the establishment right and establishment left's disengagement from political reality. It's a point this blog has made plenty of times. Apart from the ridiculous “explanation” favoured by sundry right wingers that a quarter of a million Trots were waiting for their moment to swarm into the Labour Party as soon as Jeremy Corbyn gave them the green light. But the claim of incuriosity does not apply across the board. Gavin Shuker recently had a go explaining Change UK's failure, an endeavour that, euphemistically speaking, left a lot to be desired. And last year we had published Corbynism: A Critical Approach by Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts, which claims to be a Marxist critique of Corbynism. For this reason alone it is worth considering. It begins, as you might expect, with an introduction to Corbynism. As a movement it is comprised of a number of currents who broadly fit into two categories. There is a "trad left" of a renewed Bennism, which is one part "personalised anti-capitalism" (of which more later) and "Leninist central planning". This combines with an anti-imperialist thrust, which manifests mainly as "anti-Americanism" and anti-Zionism. This enters the mix with the "radical life politics" Momentum offers(?). Closely allied to this old left is the "techno-utopian" wing of the movement, a communistic youth insurgency interested in the libertarian possibilities of new technologies. This has informed Corbynism's policy agenda around (experimenting with) the basic income and strategies meeting the challenge of automation. Those who have a hard time fitting into these currents but have influence are the SWP via its Stand Up to Racism front (debatable) and other Trotskyist currents (even more debatable), an academic "old-school Cultural Studies soft left", the acid communist milieu, the "self-consciously intellectual" folks around New Socialist, Polanyian Lexiteers, and municipal-level Corbynism exemplified by Preston City Council. Each of these trends significantly differ, if not sit in tension with one another, but holding the project together is a left populism. Corbynism ties up a political collective united by a clear and discrete "us" versus an equally obvious "them". This, as per the work of Chantal Mouffe and her late partner, Ernesto Laclau, establishes a frontier where you and other political currents and political actors are on one side or the other. There is no middle ground for compromise. Therefore this assumes not a structural (Marxist) critique of class politics but a radical moralism, and why for so many supporters Jeremy Corbyn is incarnated as a morally exceptional figure who has consistently lived on the right side of history. This, for Bolton and Pitts, is why Corbynism is deeply flawed. Contrary to traditional Marxist analysis where contradiction and antagonism are internal to capitalism and constitutive of its operation, this understanding is largely absent from Corbynism. As they put it,
For the Bennite and post-capitalist wings of Corbynism by contrast, here betraying again their shared roots in orthodox Marxism, contradiction and social conflict are grasped as the result of external constraints imposed upon a social force itself regarded as innately 'good' - whether it is the 'working class', the productive forces, or post-capitalist potentiality. (p.13)
This implies that everything would be hunky dory if certain barriers could be removed, and therefore those who prevent it - say nasty capitalists, awful Tories, treacherous Labour MPs - are morally deficient and outright betrayers of the common interest. The real sources of contradiction, the structural underpinnings of capitalism, are therefore invisiblised and left unaddressed, replaced by a narrative emphasising the machinations of evil doers. If you swap out the actors and rework the story, these logics are no different from the kinds of politics peddled by Nigel Farage and Donald Trump. There are good people, and they are held back and hurt by the chicanery of self-interested people. This isn't good enough and throughout the book Bolton and Potts counterpose their Marxist alternative, whose superiority is demonstrated to their satisfaction by offering explanations for Corbynism's success and contemporary positioning. It all sounds jolly interesting then. Sadly, no. In the first place they locate Corbynism as a species of opposition to 'austerity populism' - their characterisation of the politics of Tory austerity. What Dave and Osborne did was frame their programme post-crash in explicitly populist terms. The good people here were the hard working grafters (or, in Osborne's parlance, the "strivers") whose livelihoods were put into jeopardy by Labour profligacy. The solution was first getting Gordon Brown out of office, and then undertaking a moral crusade aimed at national renewal. This crusade was their programme of cuts, coded as a country-wide effort of all pulling together and shouldering sacrifices for a better tomorrow. The gutting of the public sector and mass unemployment was regrettable, but it had a purifying quality. Indeed, it was especially framed as such for that section of the British electorate who happily and repeatedly vote for suffering, provided someone else endures it for them. Besides, a bit of hardship will do them some good - so goes the thinking. As Bolton and Pitts rightly observe, because it was framed in terms that appealed simultaneously to the gut and the memory/nostalgia of a nation under siege, it proved impervious to technocratic arguments against it. Ed Miliband, for instance, made precious little headway nor appreciably turned out voters hit by Tory policy who don't ordinarily vote. Therefore, had Corbynism emerged early it's unlikely it would have made much of a dent in the austerity edifice. This argument forgets recent history. Ed Miliband didn't make a technocratic case against austerity, only against aspects of it. The overall "necessity" for hacking away at the state and letting markets and volunteers step in was mostly accepted. Labour had a programme of kinder, more thoughtful cutting - despite Ed's occasional indulging of populist rhetoric himself (remember producers vs the predators?) - it did not cut through, and actively avoided speaking to senses of grievance and alienation. The emotive content of Labour's pitch was left to the colourless One Nation move, exciting no one but the wonks, speech writers. and careerists. Though counterfactuals are ultimately pointless, when Corbynism emerged its critique of austerity politics was inseparable from gut reactions and a widely diffuse sense of unfairness. Where Ed was taking on the Tories under the inspiring banner of their cutting too far and too fast, Corbynism laid the state of affairs at the collective feet of the financial elite and their paid-for politicians. As we know, because of the glue this provided the 2017 Labour coalition the Tory attacks, were they doom mongering or technocratic, simply bounced off. But why did this happen, what was it about the situation that made politics permissive to populism? We don't get a satisfactory answer, because Bolton and Potts locate the populist moment to the EU referendum and its aftermath, despite constructing a chapter around their notion of austerity populism that significantly pre-dated the Brexit vote. Nevertheless what was exceptional about the victorious leave campaign was how anti-EU populism was something of a convergence of the left and the right: the identification of a big bad the people can unite against (the (austerity-enabling) EU), a preponderance of frightening outsiders here courtesy of the open borders it enabled, and the fetishising of British symbolism from WWII to, infamously, the NHS. Therefore Farage's populism was prefaced by that piloted by Dave, which in turn laid the two-campist ground for Corbynism. A case of different characters and plot, but a similar narrative structure, style, and set of ruses. What distinguished Corbynism from its predecessor populisms was the moral exceptionalism of Jeremy Corbyn himself. Despite a long career, he was virtually unknown to the wider public when he rose to prominence in 2015, and the years he spent in the political wilderness positioned as morally pure oppositionist uncontaminated by the rest of Westminster. For instance, his votes against the Labour whip on anti-war issues and against New Labour's attacks on the working class conferred the mantle of the anti-Blair, whereas The Master of course was not only close to business but actively sought their favour. Therefore Corbyn's opponents in the party were utterly confounded, not least because his politics were defined against the mess of compromise and meltism that epitomised theirs. The warnings Corbyn would be an electoral calamity and the rest failed to dissuade the members from supporting him and, of course, left the right disarmed when it came to explaining the unexpectedly strong 2017 general election showing. In other words, because Corbyn offered populism and populism was of the moment, it paid the Labour Party rich dividends. As an explanation of the rise of Corbynism, this leaves a lot to be desired. For the authors to criticise Corbynism for eschewing Marxism, it's ironic they avoid applying it themselves. This is not a hair splitting doctrinal point. Their emphasis on the discursive strategies employed by Corbynism is ... a description of the discursive strategies employed by Corbynism! As such, it misses out a great deal. For instance, curious is the Marxist critique that skips the relationship between political crisis and class conflict, of the compositions and alliances of classes and class fractions articulated and condensed by parties and movements. There is no attempt to address the resonance, let alone explain why Dave's deficit determinism appealed to enough people to allow him to form two governments. Why UKIP's Faragist populism was able to galvanise supporters of a certain age and class background is passed over. Why they proved resistant to Corbynism while the bulk of the working age population found it more attractive than what the Tories were offering, with the workers essentially returning to the workers' party, this merits no attention let alone explanation. It's not as if arguments and discussions addressing these questions don't exist. Coming out in summer 2018, Corbynism: A Critical Approach is preceded by about a dozen books and hundreds of articles and blogs all over left and mainstream media. The materialist analysis is out there, and the failure to engage with it suggests active avoidance rather than plain ignorance. This leaves us with an analysis of the rise of Corbyn that is incomplete, underpowered, and more descriptive rather than explanatory. Having defined Corbynism as a type of populism, Bolton and Pitts move on from treating its insurgent phase to its politics. And straight away, we find ourselves in populist territory again. They argue Corbynism rests on a naturalistic understanding of socialism. Simply put, the material basis for a socialist society readily exists and everything would be hunky dory if we could just remove capitalism. This implies, contrary to Marxism, that capitalism is exterior to the social rather than constitutive of it. Because capitalism it "outside", it means workers have to be coerced and conned to go along with it. To break workers from capital, workers have to be empowered, and this is by putting checks and barriers on capital and hemming it in. For instance, the authors argue the Bennite Alternative Economic Strategy involved tackling the role international finance played in the British economy, and the means for this is conferring the state more powers to enact capital controls and reinforce national borders. Therefore, central to this project is a certain sovereigntism, of privileging the nation state as the ultimate authority above capital, whether domestic or international. Hence it is necessarily hostile to the single market and the EU. As far as Bolton and Pitts are concerned, the contemporary Alternative Models of Ownership policy initiative is a reiteration of the AES, albeit with an accent on co-ops, workers' control and state investment banks than throwing up borders. However, the main problem with these sets of policies are the substantialist theory of value this operates with. Using Preston City Council by way of a demonstration, its approach to local economic policy emphasises anchor institutions (of the public sector) and how their spending should be kept local. For Bolton and Pitts, the substantialism is based on an assumption money is a container rather than mediator of value. Therefore if we can gather all the money in one spot then we shall reap the benefits, while those over there miss out. For instance, when the council was outsourcing services to the Sercos and Sodexos of this world, their capitals creamed off the profits ensuring the local economy did not get the full benefit on the service spend. By contrast, if matters are taken in-house and local suppliers are favoured, the money stays local and big multinational capital loses out. Writ large to a national economy, this is a recipe for disengaging with the rest of the world and risking an impoverished national autarchy. This is a daft set of arguments. Corbynism isn't treating money as a "thing" that can be saved up and held onto. That was the marker of Dave's Tories. Instead, like most bourgeois parties, councils and governments influenced by Keynes money here is understood as a flow. Preston is not "keeping" money, but is trying to increase the quantity circulating in their local economy, and for longer too. An in-sourced council catering service is usually unionised, so pay is better. This puts more money in workers' pockets, enhancing their spending power locally. And some of that will, in turn, end up in the pockets of local businesses thereby stimulating capital accumulation and, possibly, investment in more jobs, premises, and so on, allowing money to circulate again and doing the same. M-C-M' cycling through, expanding its circuit, but taking place mainly in one location (Preston) than surplus value heading south and profits taking wing to the Caymans. Yes, it's capitalism still, but our sages completely miss the point. This isn't about ultra correct critiques of political economy, but the movement for socialism making improvements now. Preston is referred to as the 'Preston Model' because it demonstrates the practicalities of the Corbyn programme, shows there are alternatives to the neoliberal way of doing things, actually provides a way forward for local government caught in the Tory austerity trap, and shows the party of the workers is much better at running capitalism than the party of the bosses. It is redistribution which, presumably, is something our Marxists favour even if it falls short of the abolition of class society. Ah yes, class. It's weird how their Marxism avoids a class analysis for two thirds of the book before bringing it back to critique Corbynism's left populism. As we have seen, Bolton and Pitts classify Corbynism's socialism as naturalistic, as a spontaneous possibility that would magically happen if the productive forces could be set free from their capitalist fetters. Instead, not only is capitalism constitutive of the social, class is everywhere. It is a relation and an irreducible, inescapable feature of the system. It mediates between formally equal persons, and is neither a culture nor identity location but an organising principle powered by the antagonism between those who own the means of production, and those who own their labour power. Fair enough. In Corbynism, however, the two classes of capitalism are not structurally antagonistic and mediated with varying degrees of complexity in and out of work. Rather, it's just goodies and baddies again. For instance, drawing on the work of Ralph Miliband Bolton and Pitts criticise his work for typifying this. In his books and articles, he made the case for the capitalist character of the state residing in the bourgeois connections, upbringing and acculturation of its leading personnel. If a great broom can be swept through the civil service, the state can be wielded as an instrument for socialist change. This being the case, it's not that there are structural obstacles in the way of a transformational politics but rather leaders without the moral rectitude or courage to see through their convictions and carry out the requisite sackings. In other words, Corbynism substitutes moralism for a materialist appreciation of how the state is embedded in, dependent on, regulates, and finally reproduces capitalism. Bolton and Pitts then take aim at accelerationism, which they identify with Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams's Inventing the Future, and implicitly the politics of fully automated luxury communism. Rather than assuming a moralistic stance versus the capitalist class, this trend adopts an uncritical view of technological development and looks to the state as a means of pushing it further. Moar space, moar computers, moar robots, moar of everything accelerates the coming of the new society. Of course, it doesn't do this but that's by the by. This is where things start getting really weird. If you're a self-described Marxist. What both these approaches to class share is treating it as occupation instead of a compulsion to work based on structural dispossession. In other words, workers have to work because we can only live by selling our labour power. We do not own property or capital that can provide an income for us. This is important, because they argue the Italian operaismo/post-Marxist tradition influencing the 'accelerationist' end of Corbynism mistakes the end of occupational categories with the end of class itself. This is abject nonsense. The rise of immaterial labour and shifts within exploitation and surplus extraction are changing configurations of class within capitalism. It poses questions about the balance between capital and labour, how class struggle operates in economies increasingly dependent on immaterial labour, the species of alienation it engenders, and what this means for politics. What it doesn't do is position the working class, immaterial or otherwise, outside of capitalism. A lack of familiarity with the works of Lazzarato, Negri, Tronti, and Dalla Costa perhaps or, again, a studied refusal to engage? There's more in Corbynism: A Critical Approach I haven't touched on. As you can imagine, they extend two campism to Corbynism's approach to foreign policy, and come up with a "Marxist critique" virtually identical to liberalism. They go on to argue that, in fact, it is a species of conspiracism, which helps explain the anti-semitism stuff and the over-exuberance of keyboard Corbynism. They also argue criticisms of their previous work can be dismissed because they adopt conspiracist logics, of accusing them of capitulating to the appearance of phenomena instead of getting at the essence hiding within. How very handy. The truth of the matter is all the faults of Matt Bolton's original essay are replicated in this book, with added arrogance, scholasticism, bad faith, and political paralysis. The success of Bolton and Pitts, if it can be described as such, is bringing together all the prejudices and banalities of liberalism and right wing Labourism, applying the thinnest veneer of Marxist Mr Sheen, and polishing it up into something that describes itself as a critical approach. It's critical alright, but an approach? That would be flattering this dismal effort. To be fair, the dismalism is front and centre from the very beginning. Bolton and Pitts describe themselves as initially supportive of the Corbyn project, and were involved in Momentum and such like. However, once disquiet set in they came to the conclusion that leftist politics should be about defending the gains of the left and "holding the centre" against what is much worse. And that "much worse" is implicitly, Corbynism itself. A pity then they are only able to convince themselves of this by distorting their object, refusing to analyse it properly, and ascribe positions to it and Corbynism's critical fellow travellers that they don't hold. No wonder bankrupt and bewildered centrist hacks love it. And that, my friend, tells you all you need to know. Image Credit
We've heard the declaration. The Liberal Democrats are now the unambiguous party of remain, having junked any pledge for a second referendum for an outright revocation of Article 50. Since getting wrong-footed by Labour, they had to pirouette into Brexit denialism to keep their coveted - and they believe election-winning - title of the most remain of remain parties. Obviously, I think this is wrong. Simply setting aside 17 million votes is not just anti-democratic, it's potentially dangerous. It does have one virtue, though: simplicity. As Jo Swinson has herself said multiple times in multiple interviews, it's about clarity and understanding where the LibDems stand. And yet. One LibDem MP always guaranteed to fluff her media appearance was your friend and mine, Angela Smith. Taking time out from servicing private water interests, she spoke on Victoria Derbyshirethis morning. According to her, the LibDem position is still holding a second referendum on a deal versus remain basis. Eh? Pushed on her "absolutely bizarre" remarks that most parliamentarians would be inclined to hold a public vote on whatever dog's dinner Boris Johnson brings back from Brussels (which, given the state of the indicative votes earlier this year, is by no means certain), Smith denies the LibDems want to cancel Brexit outright. Double eh? We saw redolent confusionism from our mucker Chuka earlier. What has the "shadow foreign secretary" done? Well, I'm not too bothered about all those times he warned against a second referendum, and then endorsed one while he was still a (nominal) Labour MP. As any good careers guru advises, one of the best skills to have in the modern workplace is adaptability and the wherewithal for seizing new opportunities when they present themselves. When you're a careerist sans a career, you might as well be shameless about it. And yet, here he is, posing with a poster calling for a second referendum and not the (now) democratically-endorsed position of his new party. Okay, I'll give it to you. This one's a bit thin. Are you in the mood for a surprise? Smith is in fact right. And she managed it without a racism too! It is LibDems policy to campaign for a second referendum and revoke Article 50. In a classic fudge, the successful motion reaffirms a commitment to a so-called people's vote with the LibDems favouring remaining in any eventual referendum. Fair enough. But in the event of a general election, this commitment is dumped as they campaign explicitly on the basis of exit from Brexit, and will take their assumption of office as a majority government for proof that the public wish to revoke Article 50. In other words, as Smith notes in her interview, the general election becomes a de facto second referendum and its result trumps the 2016 exercise. What we have here then is an approach that isn't simply hard remain, but is nuanced. It's conditional. If X happens or doesn't happen, the LibDems will then do or not do Y in response. Again, I disagree, but this is a perfectly reasonable way of framing your Brexit, or rather, anti-Brexit strategy. It recognises the fluidity of the situation, and how it might adapt. Why then when Labour demonstrated similar nuance and conditionality this was shot down by the LibDems and melt columnists? "Oh noes!", the wailing went, "cannot comprehend how pushing for an election, and if not that a second referendum to stop no deal is possible. It's too complex!" The interior of the National Liberal Club was basically a scene from Scanners, such were the preponderance of exploding craniums. It wasn't just the LibDems participating in performative stupidity, there was too a good chunk of the Labour right for whom Brexit is a factionally convenient wedge issue. And the unlamented Change UK too. The truth of the matter is our politics media is so pitifully poor it is allergic to depth and substantive questioning, privileges the superficial and the gossipy, and is governed by the conceit it must cut the readers'/viewers' food up for them if their content is to be digested. When it comes to something as difficult and technical as Brexit, the politics of reconciling the two irreconcilable positions is impossible to fit within the framing the media consciously utilises. In practice, it means they are amenable to and can be virtually hijacked by a politics with simple messaging, which is part of the story behind the successes enjoyed in the EU elections by the Brexit Party and the LibDems. By deciding to emphasise revoking Article 50 and "forgetting" their policy commits them to a second referendum still just goes to show the cynicism with which Swinson is playing the politics game. Who'd have thunk it from this particular party? The problem for the LibDems remains, well, remain. Ditching a referendum result because they didn't like it plays into every far right liberal elite fantasy/conspiracy the likes of Arron Banks, Spiked, and sundry political degenerates have peddled since the day after. That's the danger, and woe betide any party flirting with it. But the opportunity? It's difficult to determine who exactly this is going to win over, and what would be worth risking potentially violent, quasi-terroristic repercussions? Apart from, say, voters in Swinson's own East Dunbartonshire who might be tempted by the SNP and Scottish independence as a way of staying in the EU? Hmmm. Funny that. Image Credit
And so the Liberal Democrats have peeled off another right wing MP. After a day heavily hinting their ranks were due to be swelled by another Labour defector, it turns out former Tory minister, Sam Gyimah, was their surprise addition. You might recall he resigned from Theresa May's front bench, and fell out of the Tory leadership contest with zero support. And following his purge during the worst week ever, he's pitched up in the LibDems. He even has the requisite homophobic creds. Reading his resignation note, you find the same crud last polished up back in February. The parties are inhabiting the fringes of political life, and there's this huge middle ground there for the taking. For Gyimah, we need to reject "polarised and divisive politics" and rise to the challenge of "bringing the centre together, through Brexit and beyond". Typical of Westminster people, he is utterly ignorant of the fact parties are responding to real divisions that actually exist, and believes they would go away if the right kind of (centrist) politician and (centrist) party was in charge. To be blunt, we are getting to the point where calling the LibDems a centre party is stretching it. The election of Jo Swinson with her record as Orange Book austerity-enabling former minister reaffirmed the party as the heir to the disastrous economic legacy bequeathed by the Coalition Government and, by extension, taking responsibility for the very material conditions that gave us the leave vote. The party's movement into centre right territory is underlined by the strategy quickly assumed by Swinson; what we might call authoritarian liberalism. On top of retrograde market fundamentalism, we have seen the LibDems pitch to the right to gather up the soft Tory/centre-leaning/pro-EU vote who mostly stuck with May in 2017, but were very positively for Dave in the previous two elections. Having come to the conclusion there were no more pickings from Labour, and totting up the evidence from council by-elections and local elections, it's obvious where they should concentrate their fire. This switch helped win them a by-election, after all. What's this got to do with authoritarianism? We've seen Swinson over emphasise the old anti-Corbyn markers, arguing the Labour leader couldn't possibly command the confidence of the Commons to stop a no deal Brexit because, um, she won't back him. Thereby overriding the wishes of her own membership, who two-thirds support a caretaker deal if it means stopping Johnson's idiocy and a second referendum. The tolerance of homophobia on the basis of incoming MPs peddling remain-at-any-price is another indicator of her elitist distain of the membership. You'll recall a couple of relatively high profile LGBT activists have resigned because of her throwing gay-friendly principles under the bus. But where we go from authoritative to authoritarian is via the party's new position of the EU. During the summer, Swinson was caught off guard by Labour's seizing the initiative of what to do about Brexit. In the common approach all opposition parties have adopted over forcing Johnson to request an extension to Article 50, and denying him a general election has given Labour the mantle of leading the charge against no deal. Having found themselves outflanked, the only place left for Swinson to go was hard remain, and she has done so with alacrity. Asked about this on Andrew Marr, she was very clear those who voted for leaving the EU don't matter and besides, the simplicity of her position meant the whole thing can get filed away as a mistake and forgotten about. A bit like the latter half of the LibDems' name, it seems. While Brexit fatigue is a thing, and Labour should bear it in mind when we head into the general election, this lurch into an outright anti-democratic position is with a view to repeating their success earlier this summer. In a Brexit election polarised around leaving or remaining, she thinks her simple message will resonate. However, general elections are never about just one issue and her gamble could backfire. For instance, while there is a plurality who prefer remain to no deal or a customs union Brexit, that doesn't mean anywhere near the same numbers would like to see the referendum simply cancelled. Recent polling suggests those who voted remain have a greater attachment to the niceties of democratic practice than their leave counterparts. With hard remain going up against another vote, the latter certainly has more swing appeal to leave and remain both than the distinctly un-centre ground and extreme positioning of the LibDem leader. In truth, in recent years our view of the LibDems has been skewed by the turns it took under Paddy Ashdown and Charles Kennedy. They emphasised a weak social democratic-inclined liberalism, and one Nick Clegg paid lip service to, despite the horrors he presided over, along with Farron and Cable. Swinson, by taking the LibDems explicitly to the right in the guise of being the remain party returns them to where they have sat historically, a certain yellow shading into blue. And while her strategy does make sense from a party-building point of view, lurching so quickly and violently to the right to chase those disaffected Tories runs the risk of gaining them at the expense of losing its base of the last 30 years. Let us hope this turns out to be the case.
