Arthur Scargill, the old trade union boss, unexpectedly popped up in the news again yesterday. The reason being, he had given a pro-Brexit speech in which he said that leaving the EU would allow Britain to re-open the coal mines.
“We were not allowed to subsidise pits under EU rules unless we were closing them – that’s the kind of policies that were being dictated to us by the European Union.”
I can see how in the abstract, there is very much a hard left argument for Brexit being a great thing. The EU is very centrist in its approach – it dictates certain workers’ rights on one hand, but is also explicitly free market by design – so it’s obvious why people who want to renationalise everything would not be so fond of Britain’s membership of it. However, Brexit isn’t an abstraction – it is actually happening. And the fact that it is happening under a Tory government that has explicitly said it wants to cut regulation and corporate taxation while continuing the try and balance the books tells you that public services will very probably be cut. This socialist “nirvana” will be put further than ever away from being reality.
I suppose if one buys into the fantasy that Corbyn is actually on course for victory in 2020, then I guess you could think of the hard left positives. But I don’t think the leftie Brexiteers actually think that will happen. They seem to think that the damage they believe will be done by what they would define as a far right Conservative government will cause false consciousness to break and for the masses to cry out for socialism. This theory may be even more mad than the “Corbyn PM after May 2020” one.
Even if all of their assumptions were correct, it’s still a pretty heartless idea. So, the poor of Britain need to suffer in order to grease the wheels for your little revolution? What I’m saying is, even in a world where all of the hard left’s assumptions are true, those lowest down the socio-economic chain are the ones who will feel the brunt of it, while they get to sip their cappuccinos and wait for the new dawn. I suppose when nirvana hits, everyone will be better off, so cracking eggs, omelette, all that, still glad I’m not the poor bastard of an egg that’s getting cracked though.
Although they don’t realise it yet, leftie Brexiteers have become useful idiots for the Eurosceptic Right. I understand why right-wing pro-Brexit people are excited, calling yesterday Brexmas – everything they have ever wanted, a UK free of EU regulation, allowing a shrinking of the state to proceed at speed, is within sight. I have the distinct feeling re-opening nationalised coal mines is not part of Theresa May’s immediate plans.
So, the poor of Britain need to suffer in order to grease the wheels for your little revolution?
But that’s fundamentally what Marxism is about, isn’t it? The working-class have to suffer more and more until, eventually, they rise up and overthrow the owners.
It’s all of a piece with Corbyn’s ‘Parliament is a sideshow, the real politics is on the streets where the revolution starts’ attitude.
And of course you can justify it because it’s the poor’s own fault (for not becoming enlightened, rising up, and revolting) that they are suffering. The poor have it in their own power to end their suffering, which is the fault of the bosses; if they don’t yet see that, then they must suffer more, until they do, and kill the bosses.
Politics, by Wolfie Smith.
Many of the people who support Brexit seem to be either Labour or former labour voters who hate foreigners, especially Angela Merkel and Germans in general and seem to think we can go back to the days when we had an empire although only a minority and certainly not their families benefitted from this.
They say they are taking control of their own country despite clear warnings that the industries and subsidies they rely on will be closed or withdrawn. The only people who will take control are the rich people who want all those subsidies scrapped along with most of the employment rights the EU introduced.
I do not think there is much demand for Socialism but if Brexit is a disaster they will have to vote for someone to get rid of the Tories and Corbyn is the only show in town outside the South and South West and Scotland if it is still in the UK.
A mate of mine is a left-wing Brexiteer, when I pointed out the reality of the situation he acknowledged this & said he didn’t like Tory Brexit, but felt that Brexit created the conditions for socialism.
I said that, while you may criticise the EU, and I do, leaving is always going to be worse, especially for people like him. The fact is, if we didn’t go full-on socialist after the global economic meltdown, what reason is there to think it will happen now?
Theoretically the ground is being cleared for a socialist post-Brexit government, the only hindrance to this “plan” is it will never happen. Because if people didn’t swing to the far-left in 2008, what makes anyone think they will in 2017? That is the central reason why people like Galloway, Skinner, Scargill, Benn and my mate are wrong.
Because Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, so there must always be another crisis, each bigger than the last; and if people didn’t swing to socialism after the last crisis it just means it wasn’t big enough, so you just have to wait for the next, bigger one (and then maybe the one after that, and so on).
In the meantime all you can do is try to ensure that (a) the conditions are right and (b) that there is a proper Marxist in a position ready to take over when society collapses (hence, the importance of permanently capturing the leadership of the Labour party and keep it ideologically pure, so that it is ready to assume command of the (supposed to be transitional, but it somehow never works out that way) dictatorship of the proletariat) in the rubble of the cities.