It is easy to spell out the obvious flaws in modern, mainly western, democracy. Huge state institutions are much more powerful than any parliaments, and behind them are the class of people who own most of the world's wealth, land and property. Naturally these people spend their lives defending their dominion in society and preparing its future inheritance. In Mexico, chunks of the armed state are bought by the rich to kill opponents that challenge the status quo. In Britain most of the social crime carried out by the rich, and the more deadly of the state's interventions, tend to happen at points of crisis (Ireland after WW1 and the 1970s and 80's, the 1984/5 Miners Strike, the theft of state property under Thatcher, the general corruption of MPs etc). But the needs of the rich and powerful in Britain are constantly promoted through society, via select public schools, the 'City', the unelected House of Lords, the clubs, the Caribbean and other islands and, of course, the Tory Party.
Although these general features regarding power and wealth are brutally true, they are, nevertheless, remote abstractions for most people most of the time. Daily life for the vast majority, who are without wealth and power, is tricky, worrying, immediate, practical and, often painful. Much thought and effort is required simply to survive. Struggle against social unfairness, when it happens, often starts at a very local level, is family based and specific. As it expands, and workplaces and housing estates mobilise in collective action, the eruption is often inspiring and society is gifted with crucial, eye-opening moments. Such events often win reforms against the wishes of the rich and powerful, and the state. Collective actions are always dangerous precisely for that reason. Large demonstrations and more direct action that challenges 'the system' are immense steps out of the 'norms' of daily life and proportionately more powerful still. They can create new 'norms' and a fresh 'common sense' across the whole of society. For example the anti Iraq war march did not stop that war but it ended Prime Minister Blair's fortunes.
So when millions of people in Britain voted in higher numbers in the Brexit referendum than in decades of General Elections, it was novel, exceptional, and it was to be decisive and sovereign in respect of its results. All this looked as though 'the system' had at last provided some real democracy for the ordinary people. The fresh and untainted referendum was certainly counterposed by swathes of the public to the earlier years in politics where 'the system' had only provided two main political parties that were 'both the same', which was followed by the discovery that a lot of identikit MPs stole large chunks of money for themselves. The mass parties were declining in membership and committed to the same policies and Parliament was in any case just a honey pot. The referendum looked like a complete break from all this.
Except it wasn't
Despite all the discoveries of false claims and dodgy money surrounding Britain's referendum the potential loss of its meaning and power is acutely painful in society as thousands of canvassers in England's local elections are discovering - from both ends of the argument. Those who voted to leave feel that their decision is being overturned by wretched politicians. Those that voted to remain feel that people who voted to leave were cheated and led on by wretched politicians. But in reality it was the offer of Brexit that was the real lie. Staying in the EU solves nothing for the increasingly desperate lives of millions of people whose living standards are continuing to fall, whose lack of housing and welfare is getting worse in Britain. But leaving the EU under the Tories means getting exactly the same, maybe worse - if the Tory right get their way!
This blog has argued before that the 'leaver's' vote should be upheld. But this is not an argument that 'leavers' should have the benefit of 'democracy', which many do argue, from both the left of British politics and from the right (including previous 'remainers'). Tory PM Cameron did not launch his referendum as a democratic gift to the people. He made his decision because he wanted to unify the Tory Party and solidify his own post. The big corporations and Capital want to stay in the EU and, like Cameron, their 'choice' is not about democracy either. It is entirely calculated to the nearest Euro and has nothing to do with the real needs of either the British or of the European people as a whole. The reason to leave the EU, simply put, is that it would be easier for a Corbyn government to carry out its program - having to fight against the EU's rules. That's why leaving the EU is better than remaining in the EU, and that will remain to be the case until and unless political conditions dramatically shift away from the prospect of a Labour government in a big turn to the right.
EU exit is easier for a Labour government, but it is still not decisive. What is decisive in Britain now is the unification of working class people around the possibility of what is a real and fundamental change. The serious, genuinely democratic choice now is building the votes necessary for an opening offered by Labour's proposed reforms that can drive inroads against the system that now rules Britain. Corbyn provides a real context that is democratically worth a real vote. Brexit via Cameron and now May has no real context on its own that would allow the Brexit vote to have any real content. Their empty Brexit is the ultimate abstraction. The rulers would fill its shell with whatever pleased them. Brexit on its own, whether 'yes' or 'no', is the opposite of real democracy. It does not win the vast majority anything. It does not defend the people or provide any of the real choices if it is not tied to a Corbyn led government.
If Brexit is not it, have there been any concrete, practical examples of a real democratic fight, even in a class society, which has been forced from British political system in recent times?
Yes. The 2014 Scottish referendum, which was dug out from the British government, reorganised itself into the opposite of a symbolic enterprise. It became, over the months and with the mobilisations of millions in debate and discussion, a great argument about what sort of society should be built if there were to be the chance of changing the whole Scottish nation. It was a referendum tied to an exciting context. Rich and moving, creating real fear across Britain's establishment, it had the chance of breaking up Britain into countries that would lose their echoes of Empire and create medium sized nations focused on the needs of their people. The Scottish referendum became a model of democratic decision making, despite the immense ruling class pressure.
In the end, the weight of Britain's economic heft stalled a future Scotland (and a future united Ireland, and the possible countries of England and Wales.) All who had participated knew that a possible moment of history had been lost. The British ruling class had prevailed, in part because many of the traditional Scottish Labour Party institutions had feared divisions between the working class of Scotland and the rest of Britain. This was a classic failure to understand that the international unity of the working class is not created by the arrangements desired by the capitalist order. Many on the left make the same mistake when arguing about staying in the EU. And now of course traditional Labour has diminished to a smidgen. The leading strength they once held for decades in Scotland has faded away.
'Democracy' is often used in the West as a useful abstraction, as a 'good thing', as a promise. And inevitably across the West, as the mass of the people have lived with the reality of 'democracy' that is actually offered to them, 'democracy' has become a totally passive, even marginal activity. That can include responding to a particular state's so-called 'democracy' by voting for prank Presidents or supporting playful if bitter mockery as responses to the empty promise of modern 'democracy.'.
What this proves is that the modern structure of democracy has now reached the point where it is merely a facade. Paradoxically, the bitter Brexit battle displays this most vividly. Democracy needs to be recreated, in action, by the mass of the people who need to make decisions and who must have change. In that way democracy becomes real. At the present it is just another poisonous trick which people can become desperate to destroy thus creating the real potential of long term disaster.
Sunday 21 April 2019
Thursday 18 April 2019
Brexit's future - from All Fools to Halloween.
The logic of Brexit's present journey through spring and summer is obvious. But the continuing rage against the 'Brexit saboteurs' and the calls for various mini-Churchill substitutes for Teresa May as Prime Minister, in the Tory Party, in the newspapers and on-line, makes it worth spelling out just what the real possibilities in the next six months are.
The obstacle, which has meant that no Brexit 'deal' with the EU can get any sort of majority among the parties in Parliament, along with the failure of every possible arrangement of the MPs, might only be dissolved in one of four ways. Those four options are familiar but, not surprisingly, two of them also begin to expose the real nature of Britain's democracy.
First (and the worst) is that the chance there will be a long reflection among MPs who will then 'compromise' sufficiently so that a clear majority on Brexit emerges. Some MPs already believe the notion that Easter holidays and the evolution into a languid summer will chill hot-headedness and allow MPs to compromise and vote for PM May's 'deal. Others believe that the Labour Party will make a deal (as amended) with May's Tory supporters.
The second possibility would be the expansion of the plot marked 'the removal of Prime Minister May.' Her departure would pave the way for the unification of the Tories and their little helpers, the DUP. Thirdly, more time must mean that a trend towards a new referendum becomes more likely because the pressure from the public is increasingly leaning that way. And the fourth, the most unlikely and, apparently' the most irrelevant move, according to the mainstream media, the Labour Party's call for for a General Election would succeed and a Labour government would carry out its programme for Brexit.
Going through these ideas using simple logic, there is no reason why extending 2 years by another 7 months would substantially change MPs opinions. The big majority of MPs have worked and thought, both long and hard, as to what their interests are and where they lie, in the past, today and tomorrow.
Equally, the removal of May as leader of the Tory Party does not effect the number of votes in Parliament. Getting rid of May would look like something serious was being done. It would re-scramble the Cabinet. It would also dump any deal that the Labour Party might have foolishly agreed with May. But the numbers are still remorseless. It was not just May's original deal that has been shot down. A Labour influenced deal would entirely regroup the Tories and the DUP against it. A new Tory PM's main purpose would be the destruction of Labour's leadership as his or her's priority - even before Brexit.
The only two remaining routes to break the Brexit block in Parliament, a new referendum or a General Election, are different. Both measures change the face of Parliament. One alters it by the decision of the people's vote and the other, more substantially and cogently, by altering the MPs who are currently in Parliament. And it is the examination of these two potentially successful approaches to remove the Brexit block which lays bare something of Britain's hidden democracy.
Both such initiatives would shake up the now rigid numbers in Parliament. In the case of a new referendum, it would not change MPs but pressurise them, depending on the result. The consequence would be to re-align Parliament on the Brexit issue, according to the size of the vote in the country. The Brexit block would thereby be 'solved.' Hurrah.
But of course it wouldn't. Which now opens up the question of what is British 'democracy'?
It has been decades, three quarters of a century, since the British Parliament has really been able to decide on any major issues of wealth and power in Britain. For British MPs to determine deep questions for the country is extremely rare. The centres of great wealth decide issues of power in the UK. Indeed, the 'free' market', and its autonomy from democratic decision making, is the utterly ludicrous definition of a society in the West, and is offered as a principle of the Western, including the British, democratic system! The acceptance, indeed promotion, of a 'free' market is just one of the extraordinary contradictions the confronts genuine democratic decision making. And yet it is lauded as democracy's finest hour. Membership of the EU internationally reinforces, but does not create, the virtually total independence of Britain's wealth from Britain's democracy.
Why then has Britain and its people been mobilised primarily, and so passionately, around Brexit? Yes, Britain's large scale rulers loath Brexit and savour the reinforcement of the EU. So Brexit has symbolically been represented to the people as the reason for failure of that ruling class to maintain the living standards, the welfare and the social structure that makes life bearable for many. And yes; right wing political forces, from the right of the Tory Party outwards, nail the EU as the cause and centre of the failure of Britain - deliberately. First because a layer of revanchist capital in Britain smells low tax and big money. Second because the single minded focus on the EU, on Brexit, helps distort the reality of a City of London-led social and economic system that is breaking up its past, at least for the population that has to live with it. To that degree Brexit is a simple but gigantic diversion.
It should be understood that the effect of another referendum on Brexit will simply reinforce this diversion from real democracy. Deciding that the decisive issue is membership of the EU is, equally, the avoidance of the real, main source of Britain's malaise. More worryingly, the serious division of Britain's working class will remain and possibly deepen as the decision of the poorest sectors of society are rejected. The final 'success' of the EU option would, under current conditions, strengthen the poisonous class-collaboration in society so desired by ex Blairites etc. Because the Brexit 'solution' has, partially successfully, defined the resistance of the failure of the British economic and political system from the point of view of a large movement of people, a roll-back of of the 2016 referendum would be taken as a defeat by a large section of the British working class. In the narrow and deliberate context created for the British people, one that covers up the real necessities of democracy to change the system that they are forced to live in, a new referendum will simply deepen the fog and make change harder.
That is why the only effective way to remove the Brexit block in Parliament is a General Election. Why? Because the possible success of a Labour government opens the potential of winning, in practise, a different platform, a new 'common sense' over the Brexit block. If and when millions vote for a new government with a broad reform program, Brexit can find its proper place as one aspect of the need for change; a need for change primarily centred in British institutions with their global reach, which the EU reinforces, but does not define or create.
The obstacle, which has meant that no Brexit 'deal' with the EU can get any sort of majority among the parties in Parliament, along with the failure of every possible arrangement of the MPs, might only be dissolved in one of four ways. Those four options are familiar but, not surprisingly, two of them also begin to expose the real nature of Britain's democracy.
First (and the worst) is that the chance there will be a long reflection among MPs who will then 'compromise' sufficiently so that a clear majority on Brexit emerges. Some MPs already believe the notion that Easter holidays and the evolution into a languid summer will chill hot-headedness and allow MPs to compromise and vote for PM May's 'deal. Others believe that the Labour Party will make a deal (as amended) with May's Tory supporters.
The second possibility would be the expansion of the plot marked 'the removal of Prime Minister May.' Her departure would pave the way for the unification of the Tories and their little helpers, the DUP. Thirdly, more time must mean that a trend towards a new referendum becomes more likely because the pressure from the public is increasingly leaning that way. And the fourth, the most unlikely and, apparently' the most irrelevant move, according to the mainstream media, the Labour Party's call for for a General Election would succeed and a Labour government would carry out its programme for Brexit.
Going through these ideas using simple logic, there is no reason why extending 2 years by another 7 months would substantially change MPs opinions. The big majority of MPs have worked and thought, both long and hard, as to what their interests are and where they lie, in the past, today and tomorrow.
Equally, the removal of May as leader of the Tory Party does not effect the number of votes in Parliament. Getting rid of May would look like something serious was being done. It would re-scramble the Cabinet. It would also dump any deal that the Labour Party might have foolishly agreed with May. But the numbers are still remorseless. It was not just May's original deal that has been shot down. A Labour influenced deal would entirely regroup the Tories and the DUP against it. A new Tory PM's main purpose would be the destruction of Labour's leadership as his or her's priority - even before Brexit.
The only two remaining routes to break the Brexit block in Parliament, a new referendum or a General Election, are different. Both measures change the face of Parliament. One alters it by the decision of the people's vote and the other, more substantially and cogently, by altering the MPs who are currently in Parliament. And it is the examination of these two potentially successful approaches to remove the Brexit block which lays bare something of Britain's hidden democracy.
Both such initiatives would shake up the now rigid numbers in Parliament. In the case of a new referendum, it would not change MPs but pressurise them, depending on the result. The consequence would be to re-align Parliament on the Brexit issue, according to the size of the vote in the country. The Brexit block would thereby be 'solved.' Hurrah.
But of course it wouldn't. Which now opens up the question of what is British 'democracy'?
It has been decades, three quarters of a century, since the British Parliament has really been able to decide on any major issues of wealth and power in Britain. For British MPs to determine deep questions for the country is extremely rare. The centres of great wealth decide issues of power in the UK. Indeed, the 'free' market', and its autonomy from democratic decision making, is the utterly ludicrous definition of a society in the West, and is offered as a principle of the Western, including the British, democratic system! The acceptance, indeed promotion, of a 'free' market is just one of the extraordinary contradictions the confronts genuine democratic decision making. And yet it is lauded as democracy's finest hour. Membership of the EU internationally reinforces, but does not create, the virtually total independence of Britain's wealth from Britain's democracy.
Why then has Britain and its people been mobilised primarily, and so passionately, around Brexit? Yes, Britain's large scale rulers loath Brexit and savour the reinforcement of the EU. So Brexit has symbolically been represented to the people as the reason for failure of that ruling class to maintain the living standards, the welfare and the social structure that makes life bearable for many. And yes; right wing political forces, from the right of the Tory Party outwards, nail the EU as the cause and centre of the failure of Britain - deliberately. First because a layer of revanchist capital in Britain smells low tax and big money. Second because the single minded focus on the EU, on Brexit, helps distort the reality of a City of London-led social and economic system that is breaking up its past, at least for the population that has to live with it. To that degree Brexit is a simple but gigantic diversion.
It should be understood that the effect of another referendum on Brexit will simply reinforce this diversion from real democracy. Deciding that the decisive issue is membership of the EU is, equally, the avoidance of the real, main source of Britain's malaise. More worryingly, the serious division of Britain's working class will remain and possibly deepen as the decision of the poorest sectors of society are rejected. The final 'success' of the EU option would, under current conditions, strengthen the poisonous class-collaboration in society so desired by ex Blairites etc. Because the Brexit 'solution' has, partially successfully, defined the resistance of the failure of the British economic and political system from the point of view of a large movement of people, a roll-back of of the 2016 referendum would be taken as a defeat by a large section of the British working class. In the narrow and deliberate context created for the British people, one that covers up the real necessities of democracy to change the system that they are forced to live in, a new referendum will simply deepen the fog and make change harder.
That is why the only effective way to remove the Brexit block in Parliament is a General Election. Why? Because the possible success of a Labour government opens the potential of winning, in practise, a different platform, a new 'common sense' over the Brexit block. If and when millions vote for a new government with a broad reform program, Brexit can find its proper place as one aspect of the need for change; a need for change primarily centred in British institutions with their global reach, which the EU reinforces, but does not define or create.
Thursday 4 April 2019
Stopping the Brexit madness?
Yesterday (April 3) the British Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, the leading figure in the British Cabinet after the Prime Minister, said a new referendum vote over Brexit would be
'A perfectly credible proposition.'
A leading figure from the Democratic Unionist Party, which provides key votes to the Tory Party government in Britain's hung Parliament, suggested a Customs Union with the EU could be
'a staging post' in getting to Brexit.
Both of these 'opinions' are direct reversals of the Tory Government's positions on Brexit 24 hours earlier. They demonstrate chaos.
The video of 'the Paras' shooting Corbyn's poster demonstrates at least one preparation to 'resolve' this chaos.
Meanwhile PM Teresa May has invited the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn to another round of discussions to see if the Labour Party MP's can be persuaded to carry out her policy on Brexit - as her own party will not.
The fact is that there is no real government in Britain now. The PM has already announced her suicide (but has not spelt out the date yet.) Tory Cabinet ministers are providing their own manifestos as their party falls more deeply into its different Brexit factions. Paradoxically, while many Labour MPs and shadow Cabinet would-be ministers would get rid of Corbyn and McDonnell in a trice (if the vast Labour Party membership let them) Corbyn now 'leads' the British Parliament over Brexit.
How long this particular shake of the Brexit kaleidoscope will continue is not predictable but it is unlikely to be long while. There is a social and political core here that will soon determine the shape of Britain's politics in the next years. Whether or not basic truths and their related opportunities are grasped by socialists inside and outside of Parliament is, however, yet to be seen.
What are these key messages?
(1) Brexit is not the most important issue in British politics. On the contrary, a huge part of working class people in Britain (and in Europe) are moving against their traditional rulers because their lives are getting worse and the political and economic systems don't work for them. Brexit will not answer that problem in Britain.
It is true that the main international obstacle (the US will come larger and second) to a radical Labour government is the EU rules against state reform of the economy. And stopping the EU's legal powers now would be sensible from a socialist perspective. But preventing a new right leadership in Britain, based on a Trump tax break and a Singapore tax haven, would be more critical. Brexit could become a route to popular misery. Brexit could still go either way as neither of the main social classes have the political momentum.
(2) Despite lots of studies that imply Brexit is a working class based revolt, and despite the fact that big Capital in the British and European ruling class promoted the EU, Brexit is not the critical determination in the evolving class struggle between the main social classes.
The Brexit vote in Britain took place after the immediate rise of a new, mass right wing party and movement. That meant the British working class were severely split. In Scotland, in most of the big cities, virtually universally among black, asian and other minority heritage working class people and among the youth, the vote was 'no' to Brexit. Why? Because of a reaction to Britain's right wing surge. The middle and upper classes were for the status quo and many working class leavers (including Corbyn) opposed the EU for anti-capitalist reasons, but it cannot be denied that the British working class was split.
Today, while a dangerous rise in fascism is emerging, the previous major right wing surge has been forced to retreat. It is wise therefore to use the opportunity today to deny the domination of the EU's legal, globalist menu and Labour's three-part policy, with a second referendum as a last resort, is sensible. But it is wiser still to unify all sections of the working class people on a platform that changes Britain. Brexit is not at all the centre of that program.
But, in reality, doesn't Brexit swallow everything before it? Surely everything depends on yes or no to Brexit? You can't change reality, can you?
You can. You must.
The decisive step to open out a radical dynamo to Britain's politics and economics, today, now, albeit in the maelstrom of Brexit, is to get a Corbyn led Labour government. It is that way round.
This is not at all a view that a Corbyn led government will be able or willing to solve the battles to come. Nor is it any pretension that such a government would be able to 'solve' the national issue in Scotland, or Ireland, or the City of London for that matter. But such a government will at least start from some of the key realities of Britain's society. From there, everything becomes possible. From there is the the potential of the mobilisation of the people behind the defence of the real issues which they need to change. And without that step society, including any Brexit, will make a serious shift to the right.
'A perfectly credible proposition.'
A leading figure from the Democratic Unionist Party, which provides key votes to the Tory Party government in Britain's hung Parliament, suggested a Customs Union with the EU could be
'a staging post' in getting to Brexit.
Both of these 'opinions' are direct reversals of the Tory Government's positions on Brexit 24 hours earlier. They demonstrate chaos.
The video of 'the Paras' shooting Corbyn's poster demonstrates at least one preparation to 'resolve' this chaos.
Meanwhile PM Teresa May has invited the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn to another round of discussions to see if the Labour Party MP's can be persuaded to carry out her policy on Brexit - as her own party will not.
The fact is that there is no real government in Britain now. The PM has already announced her suicide (but has not spelt out the date yet.) Tory Cabinet ministers are providing their own manifestos as their party falls more deeply into its different Brexit factions. Paradoxically, while many Labour MPs and shadow Cabinet would-be ministers would get rid of Corbyn and McDonnell in a trice (if the vast Labour Party membership let them) Corbyn now 'leads' the British Parliament over Brexit.
How long this particular shake of the Brexit kaleidoscope will continue is not predictable but it is unlikely to be long while. There is a social and political core here that will soon determine the shape of Britain's politics in the next years. Whether or not basic truths and their related opportunities are grasped by socialists inside and outside of Parliament is, however, yet to be seen.
What are these key messages?
(1) Brexit is not the most important issue in British politics. On the contrary, a huge part of working class people in Britain (and in Europe) are moving against their traditional rulers because their lives are getting worse and the political and economic systems don't work for them. Brexit will not answer that problem in Britain.
It is true that the main international obstacle (the US will come larger and second) to a radical Labour government is the EU rules against state reform of the economy. And stopping the EU's legal powers now would be sensible from a socialist perspective. But preventing a new right leadership in Britain, based on a Trump tax break and a Singapore tax haven, would be more critical. Brexit could become a route to popular misery. Brexit could still go either way as neither of the main social classes have the political momentum.
(2) Despite lots of studies that imply Brexit is a working class based revolt, and despite the fact that big Capital in the British and European ruling class promoted the EU, Brexit is not the critical determination in the evolving class struggle between the main social classes.
The Brexit vote in Britain took place after the immediate rise of a new, mass right wing party and movement. That meant the British working class were severely split. In Scotland, in most of the big cities, virtually universally among black, asian and other minority heritage working class people and among the youth, the vote was 'no' to Brexit. Why? Because of a reaction to Britain's right wing surge. The middle and upper classes were for the status quo and many working class leavers (including Corbyn) opposed the EU for anti-capitalist reasons, but it cannot be denied that the British working class was split.
Today, while a dangerous rise in fascism is emerging, the previous major right wing surge has been forced to retreat. It is wise therefore to use the opportunity today to deny the domination of the EU's legal, globalist menu and Labour's three-part policy, with a second referendum as a last resort, is sensible. But it is wiser still to unify all sections of the working class people on a platform that changes Britain. Brexit is not at all the centre of that program.
But, in reality, doesn't Brexit swallow everything before it? Surely everything depends on yes or no to Brexit? You can't change reality, can you?
You can. You must.
The decisive step to open out a radical dynamo to Britain's politics and economics, today, now, albeit in the maelstrom of Brexit, is to get a Corbyn led Labour government. It is that way round.
This is not at all a view that a Corbyn led government will be able or willing to solve the battles to come. Nor is it any pretension that such a government would be able to 'solve' the national issue in Scotland, or Ireland, or the City of London for that matter. But such a government will at least start from some of the key realities of Britain's society. From there, everything becomes possible. From there is the the potential of the mobilisation of the people behind the defence of the real issues which they need to change. And without that step society, including any Brexit, will make a serious shift to the right.
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