Brexit versus Corona virus?

As the 'baked in the oven' Brexit pie appears to have collapsed, it is time to get to grips with the emotional beliefs of those who have accepted Brexit at all costs; if you like as a national necessity. Ex Chancellor and expelled Tory MP Kenneth Clarke said on the 10th of December that he accepted Brexit now, but that a no-deal would be a suicidal decision. He seemed incapable of finding any rational basis for such a step. Of course there are plenty of Brexiteers still cuddling the notion that they are being hood-winked by 'project fear'. They simply do not believe that things will get worse. Others, especially several cynics in the Tory Cabinet, including PM Boris, will use the economic result of the Corona virus to hide the consequences of 'no-deal' or an extended bad deal. They, and the banks and economists, know that a no-deal Brexit would be even worse for British capitalism. But there remains millions of mainly white working class English people, in the Midlands, the North East and across a thousand towns and villages, who have decided that whatever else might be said, Brexit for them has summed up their first success, as opposed to decades of their rejected culture. 

On the other hand, in the last 20 years or so the media, the universities, politics, the theatres and parliament - all of the apparent structures that look like the interests of a ruling and upper middle-class culture - have been playing with their 'culture wars!' How did that come about? What does it mean?

Starting from the working class, the destruction of trade unions and traditional work from the 1980s, thereby the reducing living standards, has led to the deterioration of the working classes' in all parts of life. Stemming first politically from Ronald Reagan's Presidency in the US and Thatcher's Prime Ministership in the UK, the self-confidence and the coherent history of working class people was smashed in the Anglo-Saxon West. The sense of purpose and immense historical achievements of the working class were thereby largely lost. A whole majority class in the US and UK appeared to dissolve. 

What was left? In the UK a core of trade unions has evolved over years and gradually radicalised but they are as yet unable to lead a social class, a class that as a whole is now largely detached from unions. In desperation, many English working class families began to look back to the 2nd World War as the only inspirational motif around which they might understand their own place in society. The actual and long gone millions who fought in WW2 did not see themselves as heroes. But the War period became a prevailing fantasy for the lost sons and daughters and the grandsons and grand daughters that swallowed a dream of a working class success in mid 20th century life, tied to the success of a 'national' Britain. In the US, the social gaps had a different evolution culturally, which was filled with criminality, with immense drug use and with hostile detachment from politics in general. (There are some parallels across Britain, at least in terms of the cultural use of drugs, in the West of Scotland for example.)

Politics does not allow permanent gaps. In both the US and the UK a numb irritation surfaced against sectors of working and middle class society that appeared to have achieved successes - or at least some sort of recognition. In the UK the monetisation of housing courtesy of Thatcher, became one avenue of advance at a cost of millions who have to rent. This was, in reality, the only means by which some of the working class might succeed. And, gradually, this and other sectors of the working class were dissembled and defined by the new, self-employed ways. 

Promoted by upper-middle class liberal sectors that dominated the media and defined poverty and oppression in terms of sectoral groups and minorities of society, led to the working class, the largest collective socio-economic part of society, being broken up, not only politically and socially but also culturally. Parts of the women's movement for equality for example, or particular upsurges by black movements against oppression, appeared to be promoted primarily by liberal authorities, which were often presented as against the working class. Liberal ideas peaked in the Blair era. They were used deliberately to determine significant bits of oppression as a worthy improvement in society so long as they maintained the opposite of any general working class resistance. In this period Thatcher's anti-union laws, the privatisation of health, 'freedom' for banks and the start of widespread casual employment were all supported along with the acceptance of the police's institutional racism.   

Also emerging simultaneously were new political forces that deliberately began to try and mobilise white working class people. These forces used the social, liberal 'causes' negatively. Specific challenges by black people, women, gay and gender movements were poisoned; described as the choices of the middle and upper classes. The government and liberal initiatives had become, for many, the symbol of the weakness and marginality of the working class. In the absence of their own history, the rights that had been won, the causes that had been fought, the white working class instead saw specific individuals, promoted and deliberately coupled with the upper middle class's desires, as liberals who wore their cultural badges of honour. Inevitably raw racism surfaced as the response to these 'liberal successes'. The new politics was gathering a revolt in the remains of the traditional white working class against what should have been a common cause. The definition of the referendum for Brexit was thereby created, against enemies who appeared to be part of the cosmopolitan culture and were supported by the predominant, higher classes' in Britain. 

In the US, the mobilisation by Trump of large parts of the smashed-up, working class, has been used to shift liberal capitalism into a para-nationalism. Huge resources of big capital have, momentarily, stopped that flow. But with Biden's victory, there is not yet the slightest opening of any independent working class America. 

While the Biden 'success' means nothing yet for the American working class, with the US Civil War still be resolved, there has, on the other hand, been a substantial shift in the English working class's view since 2016 that supported Brexit. The shift in the Brexit argument has evolved in a definite class direction. The political views of mainly working class Brexiteers moved away from their initial, racist, response to the Brexit referendum, and has shifted its priorities to the desperately required issue of democratic rights. In the course of this development, 'immigration' has been reduced to the third most important issue in the polls that study support for Brexit. And democratic rights, attached to the severe contempt of the current political leadership, has grown into the first issue. Racism remains - in all classes. But it has stopped being waved as the main flag by the white working class regarding Brexit. In fact an opening for a newly reconstructed English working class is tentatively emerging.   

It is perhaps not surprising that a society-wide crisis, that has to involve the testing of politics, economics and of the culture of social classes, opened up with the pandemic Corona virus. As with great movements in the past, new definitions of society are created against the experience of a fragile status quo. There is a large list with large events that can and will be studied, torn down, supported or recreated. Right at the front in Britain is the NHS (and associated carers.). Most significantly, the NHS is mainly a multi-racist, low paid, overwhelmingly female, proletarian, institution. It came to the fore with Corona virus. Even the Tory government desperately praised the NHS denying their obvious future, in monetising health. 

The real shift of consequence regarding the NHS and the care workers is that it was built by working class decision; it was praised to the hilt by the working class in the main (anti-Brexit) cities and in the towns in the Midland and the North. It belongs to the working class, collectively, more than any Tory Minister or modern Labour would-be. The working class has saved the country. A part of the working class, led by health and care, followed by teachers and transport workers, risked their lives for others. PM Boris Johnson became fitter than a 'butcher's dog' after Corona and Trump 'rose again' following his multiple wealth and care. But the heroes are the workers. And millions know it. 

This is the potential new working class history in the UK. Its new collective culture. And from this new working class history comes the need for the class that built this amazing moment, first to defend the NHS and carers against moneymaking and second, to use this moment, this working class victory, as the momentum for a politics and economy.      

Socialism and human nature

Here's a thing. 'We'd all like Communism...' said a friend from the coast. You could hear the 'but' in the air. But - every effort to apply it has failed hasn't it? (Unless you agree to conditions and regimes that most people in the West would not choose.) Communism doesn't deal with real human nature. There are good and bad in all of us - mostly bad when it comes to power and politics. (Those were additions from my friend.) We (human beings) have always been like that. (Another addition.)

Before getting to 'human nature' and communism, we need to grapple with the West's particular version of its own type of socialism, (not communism) which has had its tussles, via 'peaceful', socialist reform, and which promotes the 'reform of the capitalist system'. It has now become pretty obvious that this kind of western socialism, social democracy, has closed down in the last four decades. Social democracy had always been helpless outside the West. And now, in the West, despite the use of traditional but hollow names, social democracy has virtually disappeared in the shape of major political parties. 

Suddenly, this trend appeared to turn over. Contrary to the decline of European social democracy as a whole, on the wave of a new, youth radicalism, the genuinely social democrat - Labour leader Corbyn (loathed by most Labour MPs) got close to recharging real social democracy in 2018. The split of the British working class over Brexit was enough to show what a ruling class can do with an up-to-date, modern, social democracy these days. Britain's rulers' determined the creation of a temporary fusion from all its corners, despite the divisions over the EU (the EU was deeply desired by the UK's big capital) rather than allowing a genuine social democratic government. They created the organised destruction of Corbyn and forced, wherever they could, the removal of Corbyn from mainstream politics. All sorts of lessons apply. Corbyn's destroyed effort is just one of them. It shows what happens in today's capitalism regarding any serious social democratic project.

Social democracy in general has been kicked, or been swallowed, to death across its whole, previously more fertile, western history. Our 21st century rulers, even in the West, perhaps particularly in the West, don't and won't make social democratic reforms and concessions anymore. This will be the norm, whether or not the decaying and increasingly baseless 'Labour Party' in Britain is allowed to take its turn for government. So social democracy as well as communism appears to have failed.

Back now to 'human nature'. Good old Marx can help. He might have avoided speculations of a communist nirvana and neither did he try to study individual minds. What he did do, among the many glorious understandings that he opened up, was to insist that it is existence that proceeds to consciousness. This is a basic and fundamental concept. Of course people of all sorts, from epic philosophers to murderers, might think that they (and we) act otherwise, from the spark of our own brain. And it could be argued, correctly, that consciousness, having proceeded from existence, could itself help create a change in existence, as it evolves through peoples' specific thoughts and actions. A thought can also become the reason for an action, and if an understanding of a thought is shared, then most will comply with that thought. Isn't that human nature? Sorry no. That would be the organisation of humans in the consequence of their conditions. And that opens the real problem of 'human nature'. 

Humans, to exist, need to organise with other humans, from childhood to the grave. That's a truism. But the type of organisation that collective humans live in, in their histories so far, have yet to be considered and then decided on by humans themselves. Small numbers of privileged humans have ended up arranging whole societies over the millennia, often without knowing it themselves. (They simply demanded their own dominance via their gods or by using brute strength or both.) More recently, ruling classes do become more self-conscious. They prepare accordingly their places (as rulers) in society. That's the experience of our history as a species up to now. What utterly bursts the continued fallacy that 'human nature' is fixed is the simple observation that human kind, even without control of its history, has, nevertheless, changed constantly. 'Human nature' shifts and turns in the effort by most non-rulers to find what they see is the best possible available existence for themselves, their families, their friends, alliances and most of all, from their work, throughout the different systems of society that they do not control. Most humans have never been allowed to decide what sort of civilisation that they live in. 

Therefore 'human nature' constantly changes as our societies change, as it flows through the changing contexts that place us in our society. History unfolds unevenly. In the last 100 years for example many (but not yet most) human beings face the expansion of technology and the use of literacy. But these developments are still the same, that is to say they still depend on a social society; one that also forces exploitation, drudgery, violence, incapability and horror. These negative features of society cause humans to try to build their defences. But the world, which has always up to now been run by a small elite, turns its society on its head. For those that defend themselves against the difficulties created by society are presented as the reason for the negative effects of society and are blamed for the problems they face. So called 'human nature' is turned into the opposite of the reality of life and living. Each person is different from everybody else who has ever existed. Theoretically everybody has their own nature. OK. But consciousness does not proceed to existence. Although humans are different they are made in the very earliest aspects of their shared lives in common, by a society. Human natures are responses to society and not a person's original choices, uniquely created, which decide our society. It is the other way round.    

Collective experiences of societies come and go. People become more and more curious, angry, bereft about specific items of their society - including other people; and then they become conscious to a degree, when daily-life forces the decisions of human interventions. This finally has led, in the last hundred and fifty years, to the wavering understanding in very large large numbers of the world's population for the need for a society that meets all human's basic needs. Of course individual humans will continue to be savage, to paint great art and love their neighbours. They are still, albeit odd, responding to society. But a human social society, one which is organised consciously by most people, would inevitably tend toward collective support and shared purposes. Life will still require analysis, singers, law, labour and education. But the overwhelming majority would not, if they really got to choose their own society, want or accept what is happening in their lives and the lives of others like themselves, in the frankly unacceptable here and now. 

Take an example. The pandemic, in the current UK society, has just been served with its cost. In the UK the Tory Chancellor has told the British people that the price is £400 Billion this year. He wants to cut public worker wages (already cut for ten years.) And this is nothing compared with what is to come. Meanwhile, the UK newspaper, the Observer, ran an article that pointed out the Swiss Bank UBS calculated that the world's billionaires have surged to a record $10 Trillion by the end of last July. Talking again about Britain, even the International Monetary Fund (a capitalist thinktank) argues that it is 'absolutely crucial to mobilise revenues in an equitable way.' But our Chancellor is married to a millionaire. His government is run by the most personal political corruption since the 18th Century. And we live as the majority in our (capitalist) society, run by a couple of thousand people, which will now fire a giant blow against the welfare, education and their work (or lack of it) of the big majority of the UK population. 

This is the workings of the new type of modern capitalist society. As western capitalism declines (a key reason why we face the end of Europe's social democracy) so the pressure on the big majority is reflected in the political and economic choices that are emerging from capitalist societies. The manipulation of human nature into its opposite is at at the highest degree, at least in the West. Why? Because the old 'truths' are shaking, and manipulation and corruption are essential to make the regimes work.