Attacks on Scottish independence.

A second referendum for Scottish independence is looming. It could start in a practical shape on Thursday 6 May. The May elections in Scotland will determine whether or not the SNP wins a majority in the Scottish Parliament. The SNP's leader, Nicola Sturgeon, has insisted that she would set up a new referendum for Scottish Independence immediately should the SNP succeed in achieving a majority. 

This blog, and previous activists across the whole UK, that went on to associate with this blog, have argued for the right of independence for Scotland since the Thatcher years onwards. At the most basic UK level, Scottish independence would mean the start of the break-up of the UK. It would finally dump 'Great Britain's' historical, imperial-based ambitions and instead create the opening of new set of radical countries close to Scandinavia. It would deliver a gift, led by Scotland's working class and its youth, into a new direction for these currently benighted islands at the edge of Europe.

The complexities, including Boris's' intentions if the SNP do win their majority in May, are serious and manifold. But before that stage starts, two serious obstacles are already emerging rapidly over the horizon. The first, and by far the most immediate danger for the May elections, is the role that Alex Salmond has chosen. 

Salmond, as all know, was the SNP's leader before Sturgeon who broke the lock of the Scottish Labour Party over the West of Scotland and won the main part of Scotland's working class voters. Salmond resigned when the first Scottish independence referendum produced a majority against independence in 2014. He was subsequently acquitted from rape and other related charges after a trial in 2020. 

The Scottish government eventually admitted it had botched its own investigation and after the trial it had to pay Salmond's legal fees of £520,000 when it admitted it had acted unlawfully. Earlier, before the trial, Salmond had complained that Sturgeon asked for new government policies on sexual harassment to be put in place in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Salmond believed the policy was aimed at him. Salmond and his supporters also claimed that Sturgeon has misled parliament over the government inquiry into the allegations. They have accused officials close to her of conspiring against Salmond. The government inquiry, majority SNP, is now generally described as a farce.

The most recent poll, undertaken by Savanta ComRes by the newspaper 'The Scotsman', interviewed 1,002 adults aged 16 or over online between February 4 and 9. Support for independence has dropped below 50 per cent when 'don’t knows' are included for the first time since December, with 47 per cent of Scots intending to vote Yes, 42 per cent voting No, and 10 per cent undecided.  This is the first serious shift against the vote for independence for months.

Salmond and his coteries have put their factional campaign against Sturgeon above the momentous fight to come, the requirement to win an SNP majority in May; a sign, if nothing else, that the Scots want to go for a second referendum. The SNP is by no means a radical left party. It will, in due course fall away or be defeated in the context of a serious change in society, economy and politics. But in the next few months it is the one and only mass platform for working class people, the youth and their allies to take the first step towards radical change. Salmond supporters suggest that Salmond is tougher than Surgeon. But we can only see who really does what - if and only if - there is a May SNP majority. Salmon, with his £ half a million, is only poison in the here and now. 

Much less immediately disturbing, but a longer-term mistake, printed on the 1st of February, is an article written in the 'The Nation', a new and fascinating newspaper supporting independence in Scotland. A columnist, George Kerevan, writes an article with the title 'Here is a primary reason we need independence - and need is now.'

The article starts with the question 'Is Scotland a colony?' Tom Arthur, an SNP MSP took exception to protesters that dubbed a Scottish Office called Queen Elizabeth's House a colonial outpost. He argued that Scotland was not a colony. Social media called him a 'quisling.' Kerevan objected to the term but turned to the 'vexed issue of whether or not Scotland is a colony.' 

He starts with the 1707 union with England and adds that the union was 'only at the behest of its ruling aristocratic elite and not the general populace..' Kerevan knows that the formation of nations in general was a process in that period associated with the rise of mercantile capitalism and that it was inevitably and entirely in the hands of the ruling classes - everywhere where it happened. Nobody in the world created a new nation at that time which arose via 'the populace.' 1707 was not a colonial trick; it was the mutual rise of capitalism. 

Kerevan shares the colonial activity by the English and Scots. But he goes on to say that there were 'elements' of Scottish colonial experiences under the English such as the 'ethnic cleansing' of the Scottish Highlands; the fake history of Scotland based on the English 'civilising mission', the colonial minded approach in Scottish universities etc. He sums up 'Can one really maintain that the power relationship between Scotland and England is one of equals?' 

After some to-ing and fro-ing Kerevan decides 'colonialism is about economic exploitation.' He states that during the industrial period in Scotland 'Scottish capitalists did their own exploiting.' But after that, from the 1950s money flooded south and Thatcher de-industrialised Scotland, to the extent that Thatcher carried out 'ethnically cleans(ing) a non compliant Scottish working class.' 

But virtually all of the drastic, savage and violent thoughts and actions, led by the ruling classes, that Kerevan mentions can be mirrored across many parts of Britain at different stages after 1707. From the enclosures across England to Wellington's comments about his 'savage and criminal' working class army, to Waterloo, to indentures, to Thatcher's destruction of Miners and the North of England, Kerevan's comments about Scotland are not describing colonialism but rather they share the extremity of class war across many parts of Britain.

But again Kerevan swings back. 'That is not to say that Scotland is suffering under the yolk of the genuine colonialism...We are still an exploiter nation.' But wait, Kerevan has another 'however...'. 'However, two developments are clear in modern Scotland. First the relentless opposition of London to Scottish self-determination has reached the stage where we can be considered an oppressed nation.' ...'Secondly, there is no doubt that domestic control of the Scottish economy has declined precipitously over the past two or three decades of globalisation. Whatever you want to call that process - colonialism or no - it has to be reversed.' 

But most socialists across the world would not call that Kerevan's description as colonialism. And neither would Scotland be called an 'oppressed nation' by any people who were actually battling to overthrow colonial domination. The failure of globalisation applies in every square-inch of the vast majority of England and Wales and in large parts of the West including the US, Italy, etc etc. (Northern Ireland is a different issue. See below.) Globalisation and its effects was the main mechanism for international Capital. 

And turning to the definition of oppressed nations, initially formulated by Lenin, they are fighting to overthrow their specific under-development, economically, politically and in their societies.  (Northern Ireland is different because it is, genuinely, a part of a real 'oppressed nation' in that British colonialism ran Ireland and then split Ireland still preventing the political and economic national formation of a single country.)

The point of all this is not to make comments about Kerevan's confusions. The point of criticising Kerevan's article is to prevent a serious error about Scotland's independence. 

Scotland is completely right to decide what sort of country and society it should be. But of course, there will be very different versions of such independence and that needs to be clear. So far the momentum for Scottish independence is (as 'The National' newspaper and Kerevan hope will be) the means of creating a more social society with much more democratic politics and shared wealth, and which is open to all. That is why Scots need to be independent. These ambitions are the opposite to 'separation' as such. Scottish independence would fail should the goal of independence become mainly 'my flag and my country above all.' Such ideas have been emerging in many parts of the West. And this is where the definitions of 'colonial domination' and of 'oppressed nations' comes in. Scotland does not need independence in order to overthrow English colonialism. Scotland is not as such an oppressed nation, despite all of its difficulties. Scotland needs to be independent to be able, in the current conditions, to overthrow the politics and economics that are failing Scottish people and their future. 

UK crash ahead.

After Covid, two huge facts for Britain-

Number one:

The top 10 countries that have done the most to spread corporate tax avoidance, breaking down what there is of the 'global corporate tax systems':

1. British Virgin Islands (British territory)

2. Bermuda (British territory)

3. Cayman Islands (British territory)

4. Netherlands

5. Switzerland

6. Luxembourg

7. Jersey (British dependency)

8. Singapore

9. Bahamas

10. Hong Kong

These 10 jurisdictions alone are responsible for 52 per cent of the world’s corporate tax avoidance, as measured by the Corporate Tax Haven Index. Over two fifths of global foreign direct investment, reported by the International Monetary Fund, is booked in these 10 countries, where the lowest available corporate tax rates averaged 0.54 per cent. The top three ranked jurisdictions are part of the British-controlled network of satellite jurisdictions. (See Tax Justice Network.) 

Number two:

The 25th November 2020 the UK's Office for Budget Responsibility revealed that government expenditure, from April 2020 to April 2021, will be nearly £400bn. This amounts to 20% of the Gross Domestic Product - the total money created by the whole of the UK in a year. (Normal government costs are generally around £50bn.) 

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has published the expectation that taxes will need to rise by 40% or equivalent expenditure cuts, over 4 or 5 years. (See Financial Times.)

The UK has the lowest corporation tax rate in the whole G20. It has the lowest income tax than most developed countries. Additionally, in 2016/17, tax gaps from UK based corporations were estimated as £33bn. (See New Statesman.)   

Some obvious results from one and two. 

The terrible death toll in the UK (estimated by many highly considered medical experts as more than 120,000 rather than the 20,000 set up by government 'experts') is a dark crisis across the British society and it is far from finished yet. Nevertheless, the 'results' of Covid for Britain's future are potentially far worse. 

Already Covid in the UK exposes the lies and hidden realities of Britain's real conditions, for the two thirds that live in the country now. The carving up of what remains of the acceptable, let alone the positive, requirements of society, is inevitable and will create raw destruction. 

Some would-be Churchills and many would-be Attlees suggest that post WW2 shows how well managed society was organised after the devastation and the huge financial losses. The highest rate of income tax peaked in the Second World War at 99.25%. It was then slightly reduced and was around 90% through the 1950s and 60s. Following World War II, tax increases, top marginal individual tax rates, stayed near or above 90%, and the effective tax rate at 70% for the highest incomes, until 1964 when the top marginal tax rate was lowered to 70%. Inheritance tax was raised to 80% for years after WW2. A purchase tax of 33% was placed on all luxurious purchases from 1940 up to 1973. In other words, the UK governments from 1945 to the 1960s redistributed wealth to prevent bankruptcy from the cost of the war. 

Is there the slightest possibility that the decisions post WW2, under the immense pressure of millions who fought the war and defeated fascism, could be replicated in any sense today? 

The meaning of the UK's main wealth today is locked in tax-havens, in the assets led by housing and organised globally, going from Amazon to Boots the Chemist. It is an utter fallacy to imagine that the Tories are going to destruct and reconstruct the wealth of Britain as it stands today. Their only plan, if it amounts to anything, is 'tax free docks' in the north and employment through 'fire then re-hire' wage cuts. It is even more pathetic to imagine Sir Keir overwhelming anything at all. 

The middle and working classes in Britain today are sadly not led by the 1.5 million fighters that poured back into 1945 Britain. But anger and action are growing. The only step away from rapid deterioration  now is to take our own health and welfare services, our schools, our transport, our assets, including housing, and our energy -  away from the control and ownership of the rich. We have to support the reunification of Ireland and the separation of the Scots, and the Welsh if they want to. England could be a smaller, more gentle country, more attached to the importance of its citizens and less stuck in its Disney land history. We won't take the tax havens, but we can change the currency. We have, no less, to turn the countries in what is now the UK's bit of the world completely upside down. The alternative is unacceptable.  

Revolt in the West

The West, including the US, has not been so fragile at any time since WW2. But is that true? You could argue that the Cold War, when the Soviet delivered atomic missiles into Cuba (and the prior installation of the nukes were installed in Turkey by the US) were the most dangerous moments for the whole of humanity. Both sides backed down and both sets of the missiles were withdrawn - at the last minute. (Although the West's leaders never mentioned their own retreat.) But the point of the 'success' which stalled nuclear war was that both governments in the US and the USSR were able to shift these issues. The leaderships in both countries could manage their risk. So the nuclear risk could be manageable, or at least substantially reduced, in the context of the politics and the economics of the day. And that is the difference with the crisis of the West now.

We all know the ticking time bomb that festers in the centre of western politics and economics. It has been constantly hidden for decades. It is still regularly distorted by governments and political parties, for example through organised racism, but is now more and more exposed as the real failure of the West. It is simple. Working class people, the majority of national populations, are having their lives more and more reduced and their conditions are worsening. Wealth is more and more centralised and is generally not used to support social advance. In Britain, owned-assets (houses, rents, land, foreign and local tax havens, etc) are six times the size of the British GDP. (The gross domestic product or GDP is a measure of the size and health of a country's economy over a period of time, usually one year). Britain is not alone. There are a hundred and one examples of the modern growth of poverty in the West and the concentration of wealth.

Our rulers now work within a system of politics and economics that does not, that cannot, provide a context which allows much of a turn-around, even if they wanted to. Historically, the mechanism of capitalism and its national and international engine could be tinkered with, or even considerably altered by 'reformers'. (These who thought capitalism could be permanently turned to the good and others, who were frightened of change but sought shifts. See examples of both Roosevelts or Keynes or Lord Hailsham, he who warned in 1943, 'If you don't give the people social reform, they will give you social revolution.') These 'heroes' could not deliver now. And most of the social democrat parties in the West have long gone giving up any challenge to capitalism. The context of today's capitalism, of globalisation, is organised via not so much by production, more by day-to-day monetisation and most of all by the global creation of wealth, by building debt!

All of the western 'powers' loan wealth massively more than they produce riches. Production, aside from super-rich items and communication kit, do not mainly come from the West anymore. Reforming big corporations and banks, as the Roosevelts did in the 20th century when they broke the 'trusts', or latterly used the state to create mass jobs, no longer applies. Capitalism does not work like that these days. The battle with China (that Biden will continue after Obama and Trump) is, ultimately, an attack on the main centre of production in the world (and its resulting exports.) The battle will use finance and withdrawal of investments, despite the huge US national debt, as a means to stall foreign production. Since 2008, America's national debt has surged nearly 200%, reaching $27 trillion as of October 2020. The debt is owned by banks and the state. The banks sell the debts for profit via the stock exchanges and the moneterising of assets. The expanding and remaining debt and interest on the debt is used to run the US, from pensions to soldiers. 

So we get to the time-bomb. Many commentators and politicians now shout loud about the the need for a redistribution of wealth in most Western societies. And here we can see the political barbed wire as well as the economic invincible structure preventing any terms of structural reform. The EU has been called many things, including the extension of the brotherhood of 'man'. It, apparently, has stopped European wars and now stands up to the US as well as China. Less talked about is the extraordinary, completely undemocratic and corrupt lid that has been built, like a ceiling of concrete, across the European nations. This is in respect of the absolute requirement for saving the banks in 2008/9 and crushing any and all nations in the EU into various types of austerity. The EU saved their banks and stock exchanges as a globalist structure that could not even be questioned by 446 million European people.   

What's happening? What's happening is a period of revolt and revolution. The left in the US has taken the lead, at least initially, in the struggle in the US. Biden's opposition to Trump will go nowhere, but the anger in a country that is failing large parts of its society will continue to rise from both the right and the left. There will be a modern battle that has to remove the unfinished US's historical civil war. And only a massive shift between wealth and poverty will now be able to carry through a new economics and politics based on the rights of the whole of society. Besides the US, the upheaval across the West takes other forms but all arise from the same source. 

The UK government has just allowed the highest proportion of Covid deaths anywhere. Its abysmal failure over the Pandemic and the results of its cock-handed economy based on services, is already breaking up  the doubtful success offered by the Tory Brexit among all sections of the working class. Meanwhile Scotland is preparing for the break up if Britain. History goes fast when the fundamental rot in society comes clearer and clearer. 

The forward momentum for Irish nationality is now opening another stage because of the weakening of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the UK controlled North of Ireland. This follows from the combined Irish government (of the ex-mutually hated) Fianna Foil and Fianna Gail - which has not so much doubled their strength, but rather sliced these old corrupt parties in half - in an effort to block Sinn Féin. The clock is ticking fast for a united, radical Ireland. 

In France a continuous battle by sources across the country have first cut away the far right's leadership as the main beacon for change. That now continues with a semi-permanent street-led battle against the police and, behind that, the tipping over of Macron's state as yet another mini-napoleonic failure.

These and many other western crises all share two inexorable facts. First, there are no obvious answers in the present system of society, or in the present economics and the politics in the West, that are currently able to provide any clear and sincere answers. Second, a revolt is rising across the West. 

Many revolutions

Trump hailed his rag-tag and bobtail army into action on the 6th of January - only to march them down again. Not a pleasant sight. I'm sure it felt scary at the time and in the place but, besides some baseball bats, no armaments were waved by the would-be revolutionaries. A Trumpite shouted herself to death-by-cop. Some dodgy hearts popped. After a couple of hours the insurrection gently dissolved. Trump told his latest lie that he opposed the attack on the government that he never used the words to set the mob up in the Capitol in the first place - and suggestively, that he (alone) would allow a successful presidential inauguration. A serious hint about who will really decide the next game. 

Nobody believes a single word, including Trump's followers, as Trump claims he is now for peace and harmony. Everybody in the US understands that he has to prepare for the Senates' trial for impeachment, which could include his denial for future office. It's touch and go. Trump would lick Biden's feet to block that. First because he insists he is the genuine President and not least because of his personal financial disasters now looming as a private citizen. 

Trump intends to carry on pretending he is the genuine President. He'll spend his time building his social base in the next period. But, unlike requiring the domination of the Republican Party inside the Capitol, he will instead emphasise the proper organisation of 'the folks' outside of the Capitol. Trump wants his army. His first military effort was wet and windy. Trump's citizen-military will be organised and lead properly. He believes that the Republican Party or a good part of it, will continue to follow his public and his votes anyway. The implication, for the next political period, is that the main domestic politics in the USA, will happen on the ground, in the streets, following action-led mobilisations and mass movements. So, you could say that a US revolution of sorts is starting now. We will return to this US revolution later.

For now, we can look at a whole lot of self-defined 'revolutions' that are offered on TV or in radio programs, as well as the specific actions and events that expose the need for radical changes, including a footballer forcing a government to feed impoverished kids! Is this the result of Covid? Partly. In fact many of the arguments and discoveries over 'life after Covid' have actually emerged from a long period of unhappiness and dissent, particularly across the West. 

The fundamental basis of the crises coming to a head in the West (and in developing countries) is the decades of the constant reduction of the living standards for the great majority of people - coupled with an obscene eruption of vastly increasing wealth among a tiny minority. Now the Covid crisis has begun to offer a clearer view. Covid has happened, in the open, death by death, and it turns out that welfare and health organisations are barely functioning for the old and poor, millions of care workers and health workers are on their knees, millions of children go hungry. Even the multiple minimum wage jobs are sliding away. And this is in the 'rich West. 

So, besides the growing movement for climate change, it is many of the more petty 'revolutions' have been examined by the various media. The real crux of the failures in Western society is emerging from time to time, but like an iceberg, with only a tenth in sight. The revolutions that seem to be offered most, stem from big digital based companies whose fans tell us that their revolution has already happened; that the digital revolution has pushed society (in the West?) ten, fifteen even twenty years ahead. We are already in 2041. Big shops are gone. Work from home is sooo much better. Digital conversations between doctors and the ill can be a useful step sometimes - at least to get more time, but is already being used to reduce 'costs' of national health. That's the health revolution!

All of this clutter of 'revolutions' offers little in a desperate future. The essence of change comes from the substance of the economics and politics of society. That has to change. And, so far, it is Trump that is going for it.

Trump (and his egregious presidential followers across the globe) understand that a real revolution is potentially at hand. So they are playing with it. It is a very serious play. The winner in the Trump-type politics is the one who offers to defend the great corporations in their nations, against the simmering revolution. To do that you have appear that you lay down with those most who are in poverty, in desperation, who seek visible enemies, who feel their lives have been broken, and who are in their millions. It's an old record. Hitler and Mussolini played it. 

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.