They do, but the Left is principled enough not to have any illusions in such demonstrations organised in support of the EU (unlike the SU editorial team)
“The most ardent supporters of the UK staying in the EU are center-right New Democracy voters (79%) and the socialist Democratic coalition (76%) while Syriza voters are marginally in favor (52%).”
anticapitalista on said:
Actually, since that poll (over a month ago, and since the Brexit result, it is probably the case that the majority of the working class in Greece is now for exit.
John on said:
anticapitalista: probably the case that the majority of the working class in Greece is now for exit.
‘Probably’: Many a general has lost a battle on the basis of this word.
John on said:
anticapitalista: They do, but the Left is principled enough not to have any illusions in such demonstrations organised in support of the EU (unlike the SU editorial team)
You are clearly confused. Brexit is a far right political project, supported by the sects of the ultra left along with various opportunists of a type well known.
The broad left is behind Remain – i.e. the majority of Labour members and voters, the bulk of the trade union movement, SNP in Scotland, Sinn Fein in ireland.
As Marx himself wrote: ‘The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other.’
anticapitalista on said:
So if the broad left is mainly behind Remain, (I don’t doubt this), ask yourself why they couldn’t be bothered to turn up on this pro-EU demo.
I’m sure they will turn up in their thousands on the 16 July demo in London.
There were many socialists on this demo. As you can see from the pictures there were many anti-racist slogan. It was cheered migrant workers from restaurants and hotels – as there would have been from hospital workers had the march past any. What none of us anticipated was the enormous numbers this demo attracted. By the way many joined from earlier pro-Corbyn meetings and rallies.
anticapitalista on said:
According to the title, the march was in support of the EU. Why on earth any socialist would go on a demonstration in favour of this totally corrupt, anti-democratic, capitalist institution is beyond me.
My point in my first point is that here in Greece, the left (from SYRIZA to the abstentionist KKE and the far left) did not go on any rallies ‘in support of the EU’ even if they were against Grexit.
You’re right, idealising the EU is a mistake, certainly in the long term.
That said, the situation in Greece is obviously very different from what it is in Britain. Brexit has been overwhelmingly dominated by the right to far-right, and by the issue of anti-immigration. It has to be understood in relation to those specific circumstances. And without idealising the EU at all, it’s collapse led by the likes of UKIP, FN, AfD, etc can only be for the worse.
Havent really said much on this forum for a while but in all the years I have read the posts on it I have always ignored yours, a Greek Markvictorystooge. On the anniversary of the Somme, Lions led by Donkies is a much used phrase, and there are those on the Left who will happily lead the WC up the garden path. I think you are one.
Every person I personally know who voted Brexit did not have a political bone in their body. The nephew is a licensed taxi driver. his earnings have been slashed from competition from unlicensed cars driven by Eastern Europeans. Simple direct economic threat and to him a secondary threat as he is more worried about UBER
anticapitalista: According to the title, the march was in support of the EU. Why on earth any socialist would go on a demonstration in favour of this totally corrupt, anti-democratic, capitalist institution is beyond me.
This is so ridiculous. The organised left and far left is non-existent. That means when outbursts of anger and solidarity happen, they won’t fit into the moulds we choose. A movement is developing that is “in support of the EU” entirely because that is how the issue has been framed – for or against the EU.
The people going on these demos are using the EU as a proxy for solidarity, internationalism and anti-racism. In this context, they are saying the EU is a force for good in comparison to what else is on offer. That this has completely gone over your head is indicative of just how much the far left’s politics have failed it.
You’ve been around for a long, long time. You’re supposed to be a Marxist. You’re supposed to know how to analyse the world. It should be blindingly obvious to you that all this “support the EU” stuff has come about in opposition to the ‘little England’ mindset that has been the dominant expression of politics for ages and because of the framework in which politics is operating right now. Similarly, the huge outbursts of support for Jeremy Corbyn aren’t because people simply like him.
A year ago, people wouldn’t have come out on a demo in favour of the EU. It wouldn’t have happened.
The ‘pro-EU’ stuff, the reason it has generated so much support, is obvious to everyone except the far left. They – and you, given that you’re a member – have absolutely no theoretical framework within which to understand it. They have no deep analytical ability. If things happen outside their own ‘theories’, they just can’t understand it.
But 100,000 people did. Those people have, like the rest of us, never been on pro- or anti-EU demonstrations before. But they’ve been presented with a reality: the country is going to radically change, politically as well as economically, because of the vote of 51.5% of people who voted. They are against that. We should all be against it. It’s not democracy when such a tiny minority can enact such a big change.
I’ve spoken to tons of these people. They’re all anti-racist, they are all horrified by attacks on Muslims. They are the people who donated so much clothes and money to refugee charities.
We should be on their side. Thankfully we are. It’s only the tiny far-left groups which are campaigning against them.
Yesterday a leading member of Counterfire posted on Facebook, really being angry at the demo, saying that people should laugh at it – and even saying that the assembly point was a “posh” place, despite it being the same assembly point used in loads of other demos. And of course counterposing it to the ‘pure’ anti-racist demo that her organisation just happens to be organising.
And an RS21 member said yesterday that the demo was racist. Yes, he actually said that the demo was a racist demo.
The far left has, thankfully, made itself completely irrelevant by choosing the wrong side and then digging in. Thankfully, a new left-wing politics is being born and most of the old far left is completely absent from it.
The broad left WAS at the demo. The far left is going to have to learn that you can no longer judge a demo by how many official placards and banners were at it. I know it’s going to be hard, but it’s life.
And the left was behind ‘remain’ on an anti-racist, solidarity basis – we campaigned on the basis of defending immigrants and Muslims and refugees, and we said that a ‘remain’ vote was an act of solidarity, which it was. Most of us very clearly said we don’t like the EU. But our analysis was that in this fight, there’s only one side to pick – and thankfully, every single decent militant person I spoke to, at work or in my community, came to the same conclusion and voted ‘remain’. It was obvious to them. None of this isn’t hard to grasp, unless your head has been so warped by far-left sects for so long.
The anti-racist thing to do was vote & campaign for remain. The demo yesterday was an anti-racist, pro-immigrant, act of solidarity. And the ‘vanguard’, the people who think they are the most advanced working class people, sat back attacking it.
John on said:
Tony Collins: And the left was behind ‘remain’ on an anti-racist, solidarity basis – we campaigned on the basis of defending immigrants and Muslims and refugees, and we said that a ‘remain’ vote was an act of solidarity, which it was. Most of us very clearly said we don’t like the EU. But our analysis was that in this fight, there’s only one side to pick – and thankfully, every single decent militant person I spoke to, at work or in my community, came to the same conclusion and voted ‘remain’. It was obvious to them. None of this isn’t hard to grasp, unless your head has been so warped by far-left sects for so long.
The anti-racist thing to do was vote & campaign for remain. The demo yesterday was an anti-racist, pro-immigrant, act of solidarity. And the ‘vanguard’, the people who think they are the most advanced working class people, sat back attacking it.
For a delusional, factually inacurate article- They really are kidding themselves, I thought the actual result and the obvious empowerment of racists might temper thier argument- but no, none of it, they really do see the vote as a ‘victory’ for working people.
They can’t afford a mea culpa, as it would cover them in such discredit nobody could ever take them seriously again. I arrived at this point long before now but amazingly they do still retain a membership and following.
This bunker-down mentality is also evident in the case of Galloway, who on his latest Press TV phone in TV show shouts down a caller from London when he asserts an upsurge in racism and hate crimes post Brexit. The caller btw identifies himself as non white British.
This is where these people are now – in a state of complete and utter denial.
Havent really said much on this forum for a while but in all the years I have read the posts on it I have always ignored yours, a Greek Markvictorystooge. On the anniversary of the Somme, Lions led by Donkies is a much used phrase, and there are those on the Left who will happily lead the WC up the garden path. I think you are one.
I always ignore your posts *roar*
anticapitalista on said:
… and thankfully, every single decent militant person I spoke to, at work or in my community, came to the same conclusion and voted ‘remain’.”” the decents eh – Damn those indecent exiters!
Maybe you need to get out of your workplace and community a bit more and head to those working class areas that voted exit. Many/most did not do so for racist reasons – but that wouldn’t tie with your narrative would it.
Here’s anecdotal evidence from me. My family live in a town on the East coast that overwhelmingly voted exit. All of them and their friends (I would say they are all decent anti-racists) voted exit for reasons of lack of democracy in the EU and that the money should be better spent on helping the poor and underprivileged in the UK including refugees. What are the left remainers offering to them?
“..It’s not democracy when such a tiny minority can enact such a big change.” – (you mean majority) – this is an extremely dangerous argument that the Tories and bosses can use against the left, trade unions etc to halt strikes, union policies. Just keep voting until the members agree with us. Nice – didn’t that happen in the Irish referendum a few years ago on the Lisbon treaty?
Oh, don’t lecture me about how to intervene in spontaneous movements. We have had a few here you know – the enraged/square movement. Started off as totally apolitical and anti-political, but the far left did intervene and participate and push the movement leftwards ie in supporting immigrant rights (originally the organisers wanted to limit the movement to Greeks only, no political banners).
Anyhow, 16 July is an opportunity for anti-racists and the left, regardless of how they voted, to come together and demand an end to austerity and racist policies.
Anticapitalista, please consider what you are defending in the leave camp.
After the Tory right (not the SWP!) negotiate an exit agreement there would be nothing undemocratic about this being put to a referendum. Or should this be just decided by a Tory dominated parliament?
Just over a year ago the General Election led to a Tory government. Are those of us opposing it “undemocratic”, or are those campaigning for a new General Election “undemocratic”.
In denying the Brexit vote was dominated by racism you are ignoring reality, and the opinions of the majority of leave voters. Ashcroft’s poll of 12,369 voters is a big poll. The results are clear. “Is multiculturalism a force for good?” – remain 71%, leave 29%. “Is immigration a force for good?” – remain 79%, leave 21%. “Is feminism a force for good?” – remain 60%, leave 40%.
All indicators are clear. Young voters were for remain – 73% aged 18-24 years; 62% aged 25-34 years; 52% aged 35-44 years. Aged 45 and above had a majority for leave, with the majority increasing with age.
Ethnic minorities were for remain – 67% amongst Asians; 73 amongst black voters. The only ethnic group registering a majority for leave were white voters. Seven out of ten Muslim voters were for remain.
The majority of workers were for remain. Working full time/part time – 60% of remain voters; 51% of leave voters. Remain had a majority amongst students. Leave had a majority amongst unemployed, pensioners, etc.
Based on how people voted in General Election 2015 – 58% of Tories were for leave; 19 out of 20 UKIP voters were for leave. 63% of Labour voters were for remain; 64% of SNP were remain; 70% of Lib Dems were remain; and 75% of Greens were remain.
All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.
I will be on the demonstration on July 16th. The five-fold increase in reported racist attacks following the vote should prompt all socialists to support the action. But we must not dilute the struggle against racism, in the manner in which the slogans of the demo do. Fortunately the Stand Up To Racism rally on the 14th has a better pitch – “United Against Racism and Hatred”. But be there at both, if you can make it!
Vanya on said:
#19 “Leave had a majority amongst unemployed, pensioners, etc…
…All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.”
So f### the elderly and the unemployed.
StevieB on said:
Vanya:
#19 “Leave had a majority amongst unemployed, pensioners, etc…
…All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.”
So f### the elderly and the unemployed.
Such quality of polemic! Is this because you cannot tackle the analysis ?
By the way, I am in receipt of my pension, and regard myself as unemployed.
Vanya on said:
And?
If you’re a self hater isn’t that your problem rather than mine?
Or are you not saying that elderly and unemployed people are reactionary compared to younger people and those in work?
If you didn’t mean that, you should have expressed yourself a bit clearer.
Vanya on said:
#22 Arthur Scargill’s quite elderly. As would Tony Benn be if he was still alive.
Vanya on said:
If we want this sorting out democratically let’s demand a general election asap.
Or do we prefer John Wight’s solution that Corbyn resigns and one of the coup plotters that nobody has heard of then makes a deal with Teresa May to subvert the democratic will of the people?
StevieB on said:
Vanya – the analysis is that the remain camp was supported by the majority of Labour/SNP/LibDem/Green voters; a majority of ethnic minorities voters; a majority of those in work; a majority of young people and students. The leave camp was supported by the majority of Tory/UKIP voters; a majority of older people, pensioners and unemployed.
Funnily enough I think the first camp looks like progress, the second like reaction. This was an important struggle where people took sides. This does not mean I have assigned the unemployed, older people and pensioners to eternal reaction. But we should try and understand why their particular vulnerabilities pushed their majority to the reactionary position.
The AB group backed Remain by 57% to 43%, while the poorer C2DE category was almost two-thirds in favour of quitting, voting Out by 64% to 36%
Around two thirds of council and housing association tenants voted to Leave
But Labour’s heartlands united with Tory shires to scuttle the UK’s 43-year EU membership.
Traditional working class voters in South Wales, the Midlands and across northern towns revolted against Labour’s pleas for Remain
So, it is not anywhere near as simple as you claim of reactionaries versus progressives.
StevieB on said:
Anticaptalista – The ABCDE class characterisation is completely inadequate. The bulk of AB is made up of highly skilled people who make their living by selling their labour power. Do Richard Branson, the Duke of Westminster and the Queen really belong to the same social class as a barrister?
Those in paid employment voted in a larger proportion for remain than leave – as attested to by both the Ashcroft and IPSOS/MORI poll. The working class in cities like London, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, etc voted remain. What is with this “traditional” bit? The real difference is that remain was strongest in working class areas where there has been immigration, and weakest in areas where there has been less.
No one says it is “simple”. But the majority of leave votes came from Tories and UKIP, while the majority of remain came from Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, Greens. Check out the attitude of voters on a range of social questions in the Ashcroft poll, if you still doubt which camp has the more progressive stance.
anticapitalista on said:
The real difference is that remain was strongest in working class areas where there has been immigration, and weakest in areas where there has been less.
Again this is only partially true.
Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bradford, Luton, Nottingham, Peterborough, Rochdale, Salford, Sheffield are just a few places with relatively high immigrant populations that voted exit.
Vanya on said:
#28 Exactly.
Vanya on said:
#25 Patronising nonsense.
Andy Newman on said:
anticapitalista: Traditional working class voters in South Wales, the Midlands and across northern towns revolted against Labour’s pleas for Remain
So in the context of a racist exclusion by the UK government that disqualified 3 million EU citizens living in the UK from voting, despite the fact that many of them have lived and worked in the UK for years, have paid taxes, sent their children to school here, and participated in the rich social life of their host communities.
What am I to make of your adjective “traditional” to describe the other parts of the working class who were able to vote?
Do you think that the actually existing working class of the Uk, including the millions of EU migrants who work alongside us, are in our unions, and are our friends and neighbours, had a majority for Leave?
It is of course also a nonsense to discuss these “traditional working class” communities without acknowledging the way that they are differentiated by age, professional qualifications, and ideas and ideology. Not least, that we have always had working class Tories and working class racists.
George Hallam on said:
John: ‘Probably’: Many a general has lost a battle on the basis of this word.
And quite a few have suffered defeat because they prepared to fight the last war instead of the one they were actually in.
To change metaphors: have you considered the possibility that your guns might be pointed in the wrong direction?
George Hallam on said:
Marco:
It is either self delusion or blatant dishonesty to claim the exit vote was anything other than a combination of racism, ignorance and prejudice.
Marco: If you are a left brexiter then delusional, probably.
I’m not really sure if I’m self-delusional or dishonest, but I think that the treatment of Greece might have made one or two people think that the EU is not too good for working class living standards.
Now that the Greeks have been sorted out, who’s next?
“If the Commission wants to preserve its credibility on upholding budget rules, we have to approve sanctions against Spain and Portugal,” Germany’s EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told Bild this morning.
“If we give ourselves common rules, they must be kept to.”
George Hallam on said:
Nigel Farage says he is standing down.
As I expected, a victory for Brexit has created more problems for UKIP than a defeat.
StevieB: Based on how people voted in General Election 2015 – 58% of Tories were for leave; 19 out of 20 UKIP voters were for leave. 63% of Labour voters were for remain; 64% of SNP were remain; 70% of Lib Dems were remain; and 75% of Greens were remain.
All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.
Does this mean that the 37% of Labour voters, 36% of SNP voters and 25% of Green voters who opted for Brexit are not ‘socially progressive” while the 42% of Tories who voted Remain are?
Vanya on said:
George Hallam: f you followed my posts on this site you would know that classifying me as ‘left’ is problematic.
Vanya,
Sorry Vanya
,
It’s only problematic for you George. Unless you make an issue of it just to be contradictory, in which case it’s possibly less of a problem for you than anyone else!
Vanya on said:
Nick Wright: Does this mean that the 37% of Labour voters, 36% of SNP voters and 25% of Green voters who opted for Brexit are not ‘socially progressive” while the 42% of Tories who voted Remain are?
I think one of the admins on this site needs to answer that one.
Given the condemnation of Corbyn and his supporters as an ultra left sect and support for a cross-party vote in the Commons to subvert the will of the majority of the British people I think I can guess the answer.
Remind me now. Didn’t the Remainers warn us the Brexit would lead to Boris Johnson in No 10 and new successes for Nigel farage?
While the brexiters promised that the status of present EU immigrants would be defended while leading Remain Tory Teresa May is now putting that into question.
The same Teresa May who wanted Britain to ditch the ECHR while now saying that wouldn’t be possible because no parliamentary majority exists for it.
Vanya on said:
#45 Then again they also promised that there would be billions for the NHS.
On this question, on this occasion, yes. A concrete analysis of a concrete situation – not a set of alliances fixed for all times on all issues.
And here is a concrete question. How does as class divided form an alliance with another class similarly divided. The question arisies because the attempt to subvert the vote to leave the EU risks casting some left wingers into a more enduring allaince with the most reactionary and most powerful sections of our ruling class in a manouvre that will inevitably be perceived by important sections of the working class – the most exploited and opressed – as a a betrayal.
Being on one side or the other in a referendum is one thing entering into a strategic alliance with the princile class enemy is another.
The “most exploited and oppressed” sections of the working class voted to remain. The only ethnic group supporting leave was white people. All the categories of BAME voted for remain.
It is unclear to me what you mean by “subvert the vote”. I support a referendum on the result of Brexit negotiations. I don’t accept the decision resting with a Tory government and a Tory dominated parliament. Who do you think should make the decision?
On this aspect you are correct, i believe. The various manouvres to subvert the outcome of the referendum, whether by legal challenges, calls for parliament to overturn the result, etc, are potentially disastrous
For sure, leave would not have won without the underpinning of racism, but it was also a rebellion against the establishment. It would be disastrous for the left to be seeming to collude in the thwarting of the democratic will by that same establishment.
Vanya on said:
StevieB: The “most exploited and oppressed” sections of the working class voted to remain.
Yes those privileged layers facing benefit sanctions and workfare are clearly part of the labour aristocracy.
By the way, the majority of the young didn’t vote at all.
The “most exploited and oppressed” sections of the working class voted to remain.The only ethnic group supporting leave was white people.All the categories of BAME voted for remain.
It is unclear to me what you mean by “subvert the vote”.I support a referendum on the result of Brexit negotiations.I don’t accept the decision resting with a Tory government and a Tory dominated parliament. Who do you think should make the decision?
Get real. These are not absolute categories. No social group was homogenous. Every group was split including every group of party supporters. Only UKIP supporters demonstrated any serious measure of homogeneity.
Social categories C2, DE voted 35% to Remain and 65% to Leave.
AB,C1 voted 57% to Remain and 43% to leave.
Only people earming over £40,000 (an absolute and quite small minority of people in Britain where the average income is around £23,000) voted in their majority to Remain
StevieB: Who do you think should make the decision?
A Corbyn-led Labour government. He is the only political figure with enough credibility – as a critic of the ‘actually existing’ EU and with the nous to insist on a speedy implementation of the decision – to reach out to the working class majority that is needed to win a general election.
It is not at all clear that the Article 50 process would leave the choice of whether to accept or reject the terms either in the hands of the UK parliament or people via referendum.
As stated earlier, according to Ashcroft and IPSOS/MORI polling, remain had a higher proportion of those in full and part time employment. The working class is defined by being dependent upon selling their labour power to live. This definition covers some sections of all the ABCDE categories, which is why this is an inadequate method.
I am “real” enough to understand why left Brexiters are uncomfortable with the fact that remain was more popular amongst Labour voters, young people, ethnic minorities, Irish and Scottish people, and the majority of large cities. But, facts are stubborn things, and stating the obvious “no social group was homogenous” doesn’t change them.
A decision on the result of Brexit negotiations by a Corbyn led government would be a wonderful thing. But concretely, do you prefer a vote by a Tory led parliament on the result of negotiations to a referendum on them?
Vanya on said:
#57 (a) Most young people didn’t vote at all. (b) What makes young people inherently more progressive than those older than them? Because it looks like a circular argument to me- brexit was reactionary, remain progressive, the older generations voted leave and the “youth” voted remain. Ipso facto young people are more progressive.
And your definition of the working class includes people in higher management but not the unemployed. I’d say that was a bit worse than inadequate.
Which as someone who is involved in organising a Unite Community branch and against benefit sanctions etc I find quite interesting.
We still frequently get arguments that unions are for those in work, particularly from non Unite members. Which of course was one of the problems the National Unemployed Workers Movement had in the 20s and 30s in trying to get the support of the TUC.
The working class does not simply exist at the point of production but in communities as well. Which brings me back to the issue of young versus old.
Vanya on said:
StevieB: A decision on the result of Brexit negotiations by a Corbyn led government would be a wonderful thing. But concretely…
Do you mean by “but concretely” you are sceptical about the chances of us getting a Labour government?
Because to me the collapse of huge sections of the left into supporting the EU reflects a long term defeatism born out of the experience of being battered in the 80s and 90s.
A defeatism that I would have thought should have been countered at least a little bit by the mass movement that led to the election of Corbyn as Labour leader.
And a defeatism that is used by many of those opposing Corbyn to justify their flinching and sneering.
Apologies if that’s not what you meant.
George Hallam on said:
Nick Wright: Social categories C2, DE voted 35% to Remain and 65% to Leave.
AB,C1 voted 57% to Remain and 43% to leave.
Only people earming over £40,000 (an absolute and quite small minority of people in Britain where the average income is around £23,000) voted in their majority to Remain
Post-referendum personality test for Leftists
1. With the way the economy and society are changing, there will be [ a) less threats b) more threats] to my standard of living in future than there will be opportunities to improve it
2. For most children growing up in Britain today, [ a) life will be better b) life will be worse] than it was for their parents.
3. Overall, life in Britain today is [ a) better b) worse] than it was 30 years ago.
4. a) If you work hard, it is possible to be very successful in Britain no matter what your background
b) In Britain today, people from some backgrounds will never have a real chance to be successful no matter how hard they work.
Score 4
Subtract 1 for teach of the following answers:
1. More threats than opportunities
2. life will be worse tor most children growing up today
3. life today is worse than it was 30 years ago
4. hard work isn’t always enough for success
If you scored 4 then please go to the nearest police station and turn yourself in because you are Tony Blair.
If you scored 3 then congratulations, you nothing to worry about. Your score gives no indication of how you voted in the referendum but it does indicate that you have a very sunny disposition so you will be happy even if the sky falls in.
If you scored 2 then you probably voted Remain.
If you scored 1 then you probably voted Leave.
If you scored 0 then you’re a miserable sod. If you voted Remain then you will be even gloomier when you learn that your outlook is more in tune than most Leave voters. Provided you can tolerate their racism, you should get on well with them.
Andy – nothing is clear about a process that has yet to be tested anywhere. However, what is clear is that a decision on the final negotiations has to be taken through some form of democratic representation in Britain. If a referendum was an appropriate popular process to create these negotiations then why isn’t it an appropriate one to end them?
It is members of ethnic minorities who are the most oppressed people in our society. These can be found disproportionately amongst the low paid, unemployed, and every category of social disadvantage and discrimination. Amongst ethnic minority voters there was a large majority supported remain.
On the generation issue, since 2010 the Tory government has placed a disproportionate weight of austerity measures upon the young. That is why we have seen successive waves of radicalisation amongst young people – revival of student protests, Occupy movement, anti-austerity and pro-refugee demonstrations and a large part of the Corbynista movement. Buffering the relative position of pensioners has been a goal of Tory policy – as for example seen in maintaining the value of pensions.
Pay is not a definition of class, except in bourgeois sociology, like the ABCDE schema. Are the people concerned dependent upon their ability to labour or not (albeit highly skilled and paid)? If they have huge share options , or rent out houses, etc. then clearly not. If they can find themselves unemployed next week with no immediate income outside of state benefits, then clearly so. Unemployed workers are part of the working class, but social categories DE also cover “self-employed” (many desperately poor) and the lumpen-proletariat.
Vanya – Brexit is going to be negotiated by a Tory government. The candidates to the Tory leadership have ruled out an early General Election. The ruling class does not want an early election if Labour is led by Corbyn. So it is most likely that the deal on Brexit will be done before 2020, and the next scheduled General Election. In these circumstances, it is appropriate that there is a referendum on the deal, rather than leave the final decision to a Tory dominated parliament.
I want a Corbyn led government as much as you. I doubt that this is weeks/months away – but the opening of Brexit negotiations is most likely weeks/months away.
Vanya on said:
StevieB: It is members of ethnic minorities who are the most oppressed people in our society.
I would agree that most members of most ethnic minority groups are oppressed, but it is entirely far too wide sweeping to say that ethnic minorities as a whole are the most oppressed in society.
And in any case, how people voted is not an indication that they voted in the right way.
There’s no guarantee that people will vote (or act generally) in their class interests. We might have socialism by now if they did consistently.
Andy Newman on said:
Vanya: it is entirely far too wide sweeping to say that ethnic minorities as a whole are the most oppressed in society.
It is significantly true that 3 million EU citizens in the UK did not get a vote in whether the constitutional arrangement whereby they reside in the Uk can continue, and it is significant to me that not a single person who advocates Brexit hass responded to this point
Andy Newman on said:
StevieB: If a referendum was an appropriate popular process to create these negotiations then why isn’t it an appropriate one to end them?
Ture, but there is no provision for that in the Article 50 process, and it would require the agreement of the EU commission and 27 other EU member states. Once Article 50 is triggered they have no obligation to show the UK any favours.
George Hallam on said:
Andy Newman: It is significantly true that 3 million EU citizens in the UK did not get a vote in whether the constitutional arrangement whereby they reside in the Uk can continue, and it is significant to me that not a single person who advocates Brexit hass responded to this point
I didn’t respond because I didn’t think that it was a sensible point.
EU citizenship doesn’t disqualify a person from voting it’s just not required. If you want to vote then all you need to do is become a British subject.
If you look round the world being a citizen is the standard requirement for voting in national elections.
Think it through. Supose we tried imposing such a rule on India or countries in Africa. Do you imagine that they would agree to let foreigners vote?
I was in South Africa in 1994, working with the ANC, and remember my comrades expressing outrage that I didn’t have a vote. I put it down to their lack of experience of bourgeois democracy. I was British and retained all the rights of a British subject. The only way that I would become entitled to a vote in South Africa is if I became a citizen. That’s how it works and I think most people, including EU citizens in the UK, understand that.
JN on said:
George Hallam: I didn’t respond because I didn’t think that it was a sensible point.
EU citizenship doesn’t disqualify a person from voting it’s just not required. If you want to vote then all you need to do is become a British subject.
If you look round the world being a citizen is the standard requirement for voting in national elections.
Think it through. Supose we tried imposing such a rule on India or countries in Africa. Do you imagine that they would agree to let foreigners vote?
Firstly, it’s interesting the way you elide the distinction between “subject” and “citizen”. Not quite the same thing. Personally, as a socialist, I do not consent to being a “subject” to any king or queen. Fuck the individual monarch and the anachronistic and anti-democratic institution of monarchy. Let’s have a referendum on that undemocratic institution!
Secondly, CONTEXT FUCKING MATTERS. Thus, it may well have been justifiable for the ANC to have excluded “subjects” of the colonial and imperialist British state from voting in South Africa, but that is a very different thing than the UK excluding European inhabitants of Britain from voting in a British referendum.
Petter Matthews: I was British and retained all the rights of a British subject. The only way that I would become entitled to a vote in South Africa is if I became a citizen.
This is not eliding the distinction between subject and citizen. It is making that distinction. British citizenship makes you a subject of Mrs Saxe Coburg. (Now she is someone who really does have a reasonable claim to be a citizen of another EU country)
JN on said:
Nick Wright: This is not eliding the distinction between subject and citizen. It is making that distinction
I don’t see how. I can see an argument from the left as to why a “subject” of the UK should not have been allowed to vote in South African elections, but I can not see one as to why a European living in Britain should not be allowed a vote in a referendum over the UK’s membership of the EU.
Again, the circumstances are fundamentally different. If the Scots can not be considered as an “oppressed” people in the context of the UK, then by the same logic but to a much greater extent the British (that is primarily the English) can not be considered as a people oppressed by the EU.
And I’d love to see the abolition of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha monarchy, but I don’t see the majority of rural/suburban England voting for it, even if they had the chance.
Andy – Agree there will be no favors shown by Merkel, but they will want to keep the door ajar.
A referendum on the results of negotiations is entirely a British decision, and outwith Article 50. Made by a Tory parliament or by a popular vote – that’s the issue.
JN: I can not see one as to why a European living in Britain should not be allowed a vote in a referendum over the UK’s membership of the EU.
Extending full voting rights to all EU citizens living in states other than the one in which they exercise the full rights and responsibilities as a citizen is a large step in the direction of making the EU a federal superstate.
The left wing objection to this process is based on the understanding that the most effective route to winning state power by the working class lies in confronting the ruling class on the ground in which it is most easily isolated and defeated.
By the same token, the decisive and most powerful section of our ruling class see membership of the EU as the most congenial environment in which to implement their chosen policies of privatisation and austerity and protect their wealth and power. That is why the vote to leave the EU has confounded them and why they are so desperately seeking solutions to subvert it.
Only those innocents who think that organising a synchronised assault on entrenched capitalist powers across a continent is a more easy option favour federalism.
JN on said:
Nick Wright: By the same token, the decisive and most powerful section of our ruling class see membership of the EU as the most congenial environment in which to implement their chosen policies of privatisation and austerity and protect their wealth and power.
Very evidently sections of the ruling class (as represented by Johnson et al’s faction of the Tory Party and by UKIP) supported Brexit, just as other sections of the ruling class (as represented by Cameron and Blair) supported Remain. Would it be possible to discuss the matter in relation to the undisputed reality rather than in terms of abstractions and generalisations that occlude more than they clarify?
Clearly elements of the Tory Party (including some who supported ‘Remain’) see Brexit as yet another opportunity to advance ‘austerity’ for the working class and increase profits for the employers (IE: Osborne cutting corporation tax).
Whatever, the referendum has been held, and Brexit won, albeit by a very narrow margin. A second referendum is arguably justifiable; an over-ruling by parliament or lawyers may be justifiable in terms of technical legality but not in terms of democracy. In real politics it would be a disaster.
Sorry if you think tried to “elide” the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘citizen’.
It’s just a generational thing. My passport always used to say I was a British subject. Am I now a citizen? My current one is not to hand so I haven’t checked.
If iI’m a ‘citizen’, then does that mean I have extra rights? If so, what are they?
No, you are not a citizen and neither am I. That’s the whole point. The UK’s constitution is unwritten and sovereignty is technically based in the reigning monarch. What that means in effect is that the constitution is whatever the ruling class (with the fig leaf of the monarchy) say it is, unless a very large section of the population is willing to really fight them for it.
Do you not get how POWER works?
If you want a lesson, take what’s happening in the Labour Party right now (IE: 172 MPs trying to undemocratically over-rule hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members) and extrapolate it to the country at large.
JN on said:
Obviously neither a republic nor a written constitution would in themselves solve Britain’s problems (before some straw-man fighting fool wastes his and my time by pointing that out). Both would however represent steps forward, as would the abolition of the House of Lords, electoral reform (some kind of proportional representation), and a political realignment so that there was a straightforwardly left-wing Labour party undiluted by people who have essentially accepted Thatcherism as an ideology.
JN:
Obviously neither a republic nor a written constitution would in themselves solve Britain’s problems (before some straw-man fighting fool wastes his and my time by pointing that out). Both would however represent steps forward, as would the abolition of the House of Lords, electoral reform (some kind of proportional representation) ..
I agree.
Perhaps you might add “leaving the EU” to the list?
Andy Newman on said:
George Hallam: EU citizenship doesn’t disqualify a person from voting it’s just not required. If you want to vote then all you need to do is become a British subject.
Yes, all they have to do is pay £1200 and nearly £1000 for every child, speak English (or Welsh or Gaelic) and pass a difficult test on British life, that is very challenging for many people who have been brought up abroad, and have limited educational attainment.
The actually existing British working class includes a high proportion of EU citizens, who are our work colleagues, neighbours, and fellow trade union members.
The unity and independence of working class organisation requires we do not accept a political division of the actually existing working class based upon what passport they carry
Andy Newman on said:
George Hallam: If you look round the world being a citizen is the standard requirement for voting in national elections.
Yet EU citizens had a vote on the Scottish Independence referrendum
Vanya on said:
#82 And only Irish citizens had a vote in their referenda on the Nice treaty while Irish citizens had a vote in the recent British EU referendum.
And the thing about citizenship is that while the rules for getting it may be onerous to one extent or another in different countries, and may need to be reformed in this country, it does mean something. If it didn’t you may as well say that countries don’t have any meaning.
I can imagine there’s no countries and it isn’t hard to do.
But imagination only helps deal with the real world to a very limited extent.
Andy Newman on said:
Vanya: But imagination only helps deal with the real world to a very limited extent.
Yes the real world is that the British working class includes among its number some millions of EU citizens, who work alongside us, live with us in our communities, work and pay taxes, and are our trade union colleagues.
BTW, citizenship clearly meant very little for the some 2 million UK citizens living in the EU, who also did not have the vote in the referrendum.
Andy Newman on said:
Vanya: And the thing about citizenship is that while the rules for getting it may be onerous to one extent or another in different countries, and may need to be reformed in this country, it does mean something. If it didn’t you may as well say that countries don’t have any meaning.
The issue is that the Leave vote in working class communities prevailed because many working class people who have lived and worked in the UK for years, did not have the vote.
You can Lexplain that away as much as you like, but class unity, class organisation, and class independence requries that the left recognise that EU citizens working here are an actually existing and important component of the British working class. their voices should have been heard.
Andy Newman: You can Lexplain that away as much as you like, but class unity, class organisation, and class independence requries that the left recognise that EU citizens working here are an actually existing and important component of the British working class. their voices should have been heard.
Yes, Brexit for the left posed the choice between British nationalist consciousness or class consciousness.
Britain’s right-wing media call for creation of new pro-European Union party
By Robert Stevens
6 July 2016
In the last week, three of Britain’s major right-wing publications have published articles supporting the formation of a new pro-business, pro-European Union (EU) party if the ongoing coup being organised by Labour right-wingers against party leader Jeremy Corbyn fails.
Last week, Phillip Stephens wrote in the Financial Times that in the aftermath of the referendum vote for the UK to leave the EU, “Many centrist Tories have more in common with their counterparts on the Labour side than with English nationalist Brexiters; and, likewise, middle-of-the-road Labourites are closer to pro-European Tories than to Mr Corbyn’s brand of 1970s state socialism … the space may be opening up for a new, pro-European, economically liberal and socially compassionate alternative to pinched nationalism and hard-left socialism.”
This call has been echoed by other columnists in the Financial Times, the Economist magazine and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. All three view the founding of a new party as a means of reversing a referendum result…
Vanya on said:
#87 If there was a class conscious choice it was to vote against the EU.
The fact that many people may have reached the correct conclusion for wrong reasons doesn’t alter that.
And to coin your expression, I won’t take lectures from someone who only last week was essentially siding with the rebellion by elements in the PLP against Jeremy Corbyn.
Your new found enthusiasm for the imperialist bosses’ club seems to trump the merest semblance of class consciousness.
Vanya: If there was a class conscious choice it was to vote against the EU.
It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
John on said:
Andy Newman: It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
This is the heart of the matter. The gulf between the bulk of the organised working class and the far left on Brexit does pose the question of relevancy.
, CONTEXT [..] MATTERS . Thus, it may well have been justifiable for the ANC to have excluded “subjects” of the colonial and imperialist British state from voting in South Africa, but that is a very different thing than the UK excluding European inhabitants of Britain from voting in a British referendum.
Quite so. This isn’t about principles, it’s just a matter of judgement.
One has to weigh up a lot of factors and knock-on effects. There’s plenty of scope for debate about what will be the best (or least worst) course in each case.
When important interests are at stake then the issue of divided loyalties will almost certainly be raised.
During the Cold War it was not uncommon for people with anti-establishment views to be told to “go back to Russia”. In earlier times Roman Catholics were often seen as agents of the Pope.
During the referendum campaign a number of foreign leaders made statements in support of the UK remaining in the European Union. To many that was interference in the internal affairs of another country. This was bad enough, but at least it directed at British voters.
If the result had gone the other way and had been close then there would have been the suspicion that Brexit had been defeated by the 600,000 Irish community.
I think that there would have been a tremendous surge in British nationalism of the most unpleasant kind.
Fortunately, this didn’t happen, but it shows the potential dangers of giving non-citizens the vote in national elections.
Andy Newman: It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
It seems probable that a very large number of trade union members actually voted against the advice of those leaders who urged a Remain vote.
At the same time I am sure that a very large proportion of trade union activists were persuaded to follow their leaders. I also know from personal contact that at least two of the trade union leaders who fell in behind the Remain position did so against their personal opinion and, in my opinion, were constrained by a variety of factors including the policy of their union and loyalty to Corbyn.
Petter Matthews on said:
JN: Secondly, CONTEXT FUCKING MATTERS. Thus, it may well have been justifiable for the ANC to have excluded “subjects” of the colonial and imperialist British state from voting in South Africa, but that is a very different thing than the UK excluding European inhabitants of Britain from voting in a British referendum.
The ANC didn’t exclude anyone because it was’t in power until after the 1994 election. As far as I can remember however, the ANC retained the rules relating to voting rights in subsequent elections and didn’t just apply them to “subjects of the colonial and imperialist British state”, but also to citizens of the former Frontline States which worked with the ANC to achieve majority rule and to all other foreigners.
Vanya on said:
#91 The issue of people considering loyalty to the EU before loyalty to the most progressive leader that the Labour Party has ever had poses a very serious question of relevancy.
Again, you are not in a position to give lessons.
On this question you have taken the side of Blair, Kinnock and Cameron.
Against, “white trash”. How impressive!
Vanya on said:
Andy Newman: It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
So you’ve done a detailed survey of “trade union activists” have you?
My experience is that most people who fall into this category were extremely doubtful as to which side to take.
Probably the majority voted remain, but not enthusiastically, and by and large because that’s what their leadership and that of the Labour Party were advocating.
But guess what. That position was wrong.
Thankfully we are largely saved from the backlash from all that by the fact that Corbyn is respected as a leader who went along with the position of his party while being ultimately a eurosceptic, and who has made it clear that the result of the referendum must be respected.
And that’s why he’s the best person to be leader of the Labour Party and PM.
John on said:
Vanya: On this question you have taken the side of Blair, Kinnock and Cameron.
No, I have taken the side of UK migrants and minorities, the victims of Brexit as I have been predicting for months they would be.
I have never and will never defend racism or racists.
Andy Newman on said:
Vanya: So you’ve done a detailed survey of “trade union activists” have you?
I take as a starting point the democratic decision of the unions themselves, but within my own union there has been a lot of discussion and consultation that I have been involved with at branch, area, regional and national levels, which has indicated to me convincing levels of support for EU membership from activists.
On the basis of the officials and activists i know in other unions, which covers a wide range of lay member activists and officials, then I would still say there was a very convincing margin for Remain.
John: Andy Newman: It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
This is the heart of the matter. The gulf between the bulk of the organised working class and the far left on Brexit does pose the question of relevancy.
Andy and John make important points in this discussion, each with a rational kernel of truth within them, or at least a partial correspondence with reality.
However, I think from a strategic point of view, both miss the point.
If we use class consciousness is used in two ways – firstly, to signify a range of attributes: understanding of one’s class position, identification with a set of values and behavioural norms, feelings of collectivity and solidarity with others in the same situation, identification with class organisations (parties and unions, coops etc) and secondly, the existence or absence of a collective sense of historical mission (working class power, socialism some other, perhaps short term goal) – it is clear that the consciousness of trade union activists can easily be our of step with the class as a whole.
The same goes, in traditional marxist thinking, for the revolutionary vanguard. In fact, for most of the time it is a necessity for the vanguard to have a more advanced consciousness otherwise, at best, trade union consciousness would predominate.
For Andy to argue that his experience (perhaps specific to the particular culture of the GMB?) that trade union activists were mostly in favour Remain tells us more about the particular world in which he operates than the state of working class consciousness as a whole.
It is clear that leadership in trade union circles is critical and intersects with the class composition of the membership as a whole and of the activists. The rail unions and the bakers being a case in point. I might venture the opinion that the traditional hostility of many Unison activists to the leadership of that union did not come very actively into play on the referendum because of the substantially petit bourgeois character of many of the activists put them in the same camp as Prentice etc even though very many of Unison’s rank and file members must have voted to leave the EU.
If by ‘organised working class’ we mean ordinary union members John may be wrong in suggesting on this issue that ta gulf exists between them and the far left. As far as the working class as a whole is concerned, ie union members and non members, he is quite wrong.
On this issue they were in agreement on the issue if, in the case of many workers, for a complex of sometimes contradictory rreasons.
That is the working class for you. Created by capitalism.
A question for people. My understanding of the phrase “white trash” is that it is specific to the USA. I’ve never been to the USA. Are all such persons or persons deemed to be such, racist? Or is it that they are just poor? or both?
I suspect that there is a certain amount of bandying around of controversial terminology here for emotional effect, but without any content.
Vanya on said:
#103 My understanding is that in the US context it originated as a term of abuse aimed at the poorest sections of the white population in the South by those “higher up” the social scale, for whom “white trash” were little more worthy of respect than Blacks, if not less so.
It tends to be used by lefties and middle class elements in this country to denigrate working class white people in the States or at home who exhibit various traits that they disaprove of, or who they believe to exhibit those traits.
Clearly in the case of actual racism, whether the terminology may be wrong the denigration is deserved, but to be honest I feel that the term is almost as dodgy as “chavs”. A closely related term is “trailer trash”.
I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable (while clearly sympathising with his sentiments on the subject) when George Galloway described the woman soldier from West Virginia at the heart of the scandal about torture and humiliation of prisoners in Abu Graib as “trailer trash”.
John on said:
Vanya: It tends to be used by lefties and middle class elements in this country to denigrate working class white people in the States or at home who exhibit various traits that they disaprove of, or who they believe to exhibit those traits.
Sociology and socialism are two entirely different things. I am someone who does ‘disapprove’ of the ‘trait’ of racism.
You don’t?
Andy Newman on said:
John Grimshaw: My understanding of the phrase “white trash” is that it is specific to the USA. I’ve never been to the USA
I beleive that the term was first coined by the right wing satirist HL Menken, the so-called Sage of Baltimore, who had a particular contempt for the rural lifestyle of the South, which remember in the early twentieth century had yet to go through the process of industrialisation.
Nick Wright: For Andy to argue that his experience (perhaps specific to the particular culture of the GMB?) that trade union activists were mostly in favour Remain tells us more about the particular world in which he operates than the state of working class consciousness as a whole.
In your whole long post, you really just make the point that the views of trade union activists may be different from the rank and file members. GMB may be more europhilic than some other union,s after all the only union to have a Brussels office, but my experience is that similar views are held by a majority of officers and lay activists I know in other unions as well.
The polls BTW show that a majority of those in employment voted to remain.
No human being is ‘trash’ and it strikes me as misanthropic to suggest that they could be. If individuals of any class are racist, much better just to refer to them as ‘racists’.
Marx used the term ‘lumpenproletariat’ to describe individuals who have become disconnected from their class interests. The lesson for us is that those who drift away from traditional working class institutions, or were never involved in them in the first place, are particularly prone to reactionary ideologies.
Vanya on said:
#111 In the case of the unemployed and claimants in general this is a vindication of atempts to bring non working sections of the working class (not a contrdiction) into the organised workers’ movement. Be it the largely communist led nuwm of the 20s and 30s or today’s unite community membership.
As for the unemployed largely voting leave, perhaps in many cases an understanding of how little if at all the EU, much lauded for being nice and fluffy has helped fight the vicious sanctions regime and the wholesale denial of disability benefits under this and previous governments.
In marked contact to the UN I might add.
George Hallam on said:
Vanya: As for the unemployed largely voting leave, perhaps in many cases an understanding of how little if at all the EU, much lauded for being nice and fluffy has helped fight the vicious sanctions regime and the wholesale denial of disability benefits under this and previous governments.
This piece in the New Statesman by Charles Leadbeater may be of some interest.
The liberal left has gone through various forms of disbelief since the Brexit vote. (I include myself in this.)
First, we thought, let’s try to have another vote.
Second, let’s try to subvert the outcome of the first vote through parliament.
Third, let’s hope enough Leave voters wake up feeling remorseful, see the light and switch sides, especially when they realise how unattractive Britain will become.
Fourth, let’s try to belittle the working-class people who voted for Brexit by suggesting:
a) they are racist;
b) we will all go to Stoke-on-Trent to listen to what they have to say (because being listened to by us will make them feel better);
c) they fell for transparent lies because they are a bit gullible;
d) we will give them some more money through state transfers, because if they had more money, they would be happier – that is what a new, fairer political settlement amounts to.
Such responses seem to underestimate the scale of the challenge. People voted Leave for many different reasons. At one end were people who are clearly racist; at the other were utopian liberal internationalists. For much of the working class, however, I think that it came down to five things. These are made for the left to respond to – if only we could work out how to bridge the gap between metropolitan, cosmopolitan progressives and working-class voters who believe in solidarity and community.
I’m not a great fan of the New Statesman, but it so happens that the same issue has another article that I found worth reading:
I know I’m middle class, because the day I needed to claim benefits and burst into tears because the queue was too long and I knew I would be going home without the money to pay the overdue electricity bill..
I know the family in front of me were not middle class because the buggy they were pushing was a lesser brand than the one I was pushing, and because they were smoking, and because they had strong Sheffield accents..
George Hallam: Perhaps you might add “leaving the EU” to the list?
Perhaps I might, under different circumstances, but not these. That’s the whole point. While leaving the EU might well be a good thing in some other, hypothetical context (with a different government, a different campaign, and different reasons for doing it) in this actually existing context it has very, very clearly benefited the right and the far right. To say that the EU is in many respects bad does not preclude the possibility of there being something significantly worse: IE, a collapse of the EU on the specific basis of anti-immigration and markedly right-wing nationalism.
That said, the referendum is now in the past, and the government has rejected the possibility of a second referendum. Thus the two probabilities are either a Brexit on a very markedly right-wing basis or an extremely dubiously democratic overruling of the referendum in Parliament. Again this is a case of bad versus worse.
JN on said:
Also, these stupid generalisations (IE: “the working class voted Leave; the Scots voted Remain; the young voted Remain while the old voted Leave; etc, etc”) are absurd and only serve to further confuse the issue rather than illuminate it. Could people just stop doing it, and if they want to make those arguments at least be precise about it? At the very least specify “a majority of… voted… while a sizeable minority voted the opposite”.
George Hallam on said:
JN: Also, these .. generalisations .. are absurd and only serve to further confuse the issue rather than illuminate it. Could people just stop doing it, and if they want to make those arguments at least be precise about it?
Well said.
While all polls should be treated with caution, the Ashcroft survey does allow one to begin to estimate the size of majorities/minorities in the way you recommend.
I see that researchers from LSE have refuted the idea that young people didn’t vote, turnout based on polling now suggests some 65% of 18 to 24 yr olds voted, the earlier suggestion that less than 35% voted came from Sky news who had simply assumed the turnout in this age group would be the same as The 2015 GE
I see that researchers from LSE have refuted the idea that young people didn’t vote, turnout based on polling now suggests some 65% of 18 to 24 yr olds voted, the earlier suggestion that less than 35% voted came from Sky news who had simply assumed the turnout in this age group would be the same as The 2015 GE
Presumably it’s theoretically possible for a country’s population to consist of capitalists plus unproductive workers paid out of surplus value. The only sci-fi element is whether robotics could replace even the unproductive workers. In capitalism such a society could only exist as an enclave, with the production of surplus value going on outside.
If something like that existed on a global scale (i.e. the entire working class replaced by robots) it would no longer be capitalism. For a detailed argument on this, see Michael Roberts:
From an economic point of view there is little distinction – following your argument – between AI robots and slaves, provided they are subaltern to a dominant capitalist mode of production?
I don’t think conscious AI very likely but if it existed and was used in the same way as any other means of production, yes it would be slavery. But mindless robots used to replace service workers (say) like the ‘robot butler’ of old-fashioned SF would no more be slaves than coffee machines are. Economically they would be means of production or consumer goods.
Vanya on said:
#133 All very naive and blasé if you ask me.
What happens when they get more intelligent than us?
I don’t think conscious AI very likely but if it existed and was used in the same way as any other means of production, yes it would be slavery.But mindless robots used to replace service workers (say) like the ‘robot butler’ of old-fashioned SF would no more be slaves than coffee machines are. Economically they would be means of production or consumer goods.
arguably the slave worker is a commodity that is traded in the same way as a coffee machine, or a mule, whereas, a free labourer sells only their labour power? Hence the slave labourer adds no surplus value, it is a perishable commodity used in the production process.
So I am not sure there is an economic difference between a coffee machine and a mule, or for that matter a slave
jock mctrousers on said:
Yes, there’s hours of fun to be had out of speculating around theories of surplus value (or whatever), but back on planet Earth our new Great Helmsman may be in trouble…
Excuse me for harping on about this but… Andy!!! Brother! Comrade! Fellow Labour Party member! Have you ever tried to donate to Momentum (as in ” Momentum is funded entirely by membership fees and donations from thousands of supporters across the UK.”)?
I seem at some point in the past to have registered somehow my details with them so they send me emails. But the site is totally unresponsive for joining or donating, and I can’t find any way to communicate with them. It’s been like this since I’ve been aware of it.
There’s a local meeting coming up soon, but ill health precludes me from attending, so I wonder if anyone who reads this site has ANY concrete experience of Momentum?
Think! All local Labour constituency branches have been closed down till the election’s over…
Andy Newman: the slave labourer adds no surplus value
Debatable. The slave needs to be given the means of subsistence – food, clothing and shelter – in order to continue to work. If slavery is heritable, sufficient means need to be provided to ensure reproduction. Any value the slave produces over and above the value of these means of subsistence could surely count as “surplus value” in the same way as with a free worker. And in the real world, the varied institutional forms of unfree labour blur the distinction between slaves and “free” workers even further.
Francis King: Debatable. The slave needs to be given the means of subsistence – food, clothing and shelter – in order to continue to work. If slavery is heritable, sufficient means need to be provided to ensure reproduction.Any value the slave produces over and above the value of these means of subsistence could surely count as “surplus value” in the same way as with a free worker. And in the real world, the varied institutional forms of unfree labour blur the distinction between slaves and “free” workers even further.
This is also true of mules, horses and oxen that work. Do they produce surplus value?
If you can’t go to the meeting have you tried contacting them on Facebook?
Vanya on said:
Just been at the Corbyn launch rally in Salford. Absolutely brilliant. Not just JC but all the other speakers.
jock mctrousers on said:
JN: If you can’t go to the meeting have you tried contacting them on Facebook?
Well, I found a page on facebook for Momentum Wandsworth,, but that was as opaque as everything else. I admit though I’m not well tuned in to Facebook.
jock mctrousers on said:
Andy Newman: I would say that it is not transparent how you get to join the JC campaign.
Thanks. ‘ not transparent’ is very diplomatic, as also in ‘not transparent’ how Momentum can be solely member-funded in it’s ‘not transparent’ how members or anyone else can fund it. Please tell me if you hear of anyone who’s got the ‘donate’ option to work!
Vanya on said:
Vanya:
Just been at the Corbyn launch rally in Salford. Absolutelybrilliant. Not just JC but all the other speakers.
By the way Vanya my point about linking to that article was not to indulge in sectarian mud slinging and as you know I’m not a member of the WW. Rather it was to seek comrades thoughts on this issue of an LP split and their response to it. The WW clearly thinks that people on the left should seek to join the LP at this time. Others might call it entryist. For what it’s worth I know of some on the left who I think are effectively being entryist but not very many. Ironically of course despite being called this by the right wing media and some on the PLP, the SP and SWP, are not as far as I can see operating in this manner.
John Grimshaw on said:
Andy Newman: This is also true of mules, horses and oxen that work. Do they produce surplus value?
Do you mean that there are some horses, mules and oxen that don’t work? Disgraceful!
Vanya on said:
#149 What I will say is that the actual story is correct in that Rob Griffiths did write the letter in question.
And for what it’s worth I agree 100% with the decision to send it.
The fact that Rob G is being attacked over it speaks volumes about those making the attack.
All this stuff about entryism is so much nonsense in any case.
100s of 1000s of people have joined the Labour Party recently, clearly at the very least a bare majority of them supporters of Corbyn.
What’s really scary to the establishment, be it the Blairite or various liberal or tory factions, is not that loads of them are Communists or trotskyists but that they are overwhelmingly new layers, particularly of younger people inspired into participating in what is both a social movement and a mass political party for change.
And part of the duty of Communists (ie members of the Communist Party) is to support this movement as respectful and comradely allies.
“… in the middle of a civil war, with the Labour Party rank and file struggling with the bureaucracy over who should be the arbiter of matters such as suitability for membership, Griffiths is prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with McNicol and suggest that it is a Labour bureaucrat who is the final arbiter of any such issues; and, worse, is prepared to scab on any CPB member who has taken out Labour membership and do McNicol’s job for him.”
I read this on Thursday when it come out, and recall being irritated by this. It would take an extremely ungenerous stretch of the imagination to interpret anything Rob Griffiths said as ” Griffiths is prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with McNicol “, but that’s what WW DO too often unfortunately.
It seems that the undeniably excellent pieces that often crop up there, just serve as a cover for their drip, drip,drip of poison about al other left of Labout orgs . Same too, even more unfortunately, for the WSWS, but on a more impressive scale.
jock mctrousers: It seems that the undeniably excellent pieces that often crop up there, just serve as a cover for their drip, drip,drip of poison about al other left of Labout orgs . Same too, even more unfortunately, for the WSWS, but on a more impressive scale.
This is a difficult issue. I read WW, but I’ve only very rarely linked to even its good stuff (such as articles by Moshe Machover or Lars T. Lih). I read WSWS, and sometimes put up a link on Twitter to a WSWS article — usually arts or history related, but now and then a political article that I think hits the nail on the head. But in doing that, of course, I throw a mite of credit in the general direction of their overall sectarian (to put it no more strongly) politics. Unfortunately, sharp Marxist insight in particular areas is entirely compatible with utterly ineffective and wrong-headed political lines.
On the point about the CPB and Corbyn, I thought Rob Griffith’s letter was entirely principled and a well-judged intervention.
John Grimshaw:
Just a thought Vanya. If Corbyn wins and the LP splits will the CPB dissolve itself?
No, A victory for Corbyn in the leadership election is but one stage in a very long battle to remake the Labour Party an instrument of the working class. But this will be in the context of a country where the objective and subjective conditions do not yet favour a tranistion to socialism and where the working class movement needs to reach a much higher level of political and class consciousness even to win what is possible within capitalism.
That this will come about as Corbyn-led movement comes to office and begins to effect change is what we all hope and work for.
But winning state power is an immeasurably more complex task for which no class or political formation is yet ready.
All precedent and experience suggests that he labour movement needs a marxist leninist party if power is to be won and held even if such a party is made and remade within that process.
But don’t be surprised if I fail to comment on an article that describes the General Secretary of my party as a scab.
The main function the WW’s attempt to join the Labour Party (just the latest in its chameleon-like entryist tactics) is to provide the bourgeois press with an opportunity to redbait Corbyn.
Undoubtedly, if the Communist Party were to send its members into the Labour Party it might have an impact somewhat greater than if the Weekly Worker were successful in getting is baker’s dozen in.
However, the Communist Party operates under democratic centralism. It took a principled decision – based on long-established grounds, and consistent with the basis on which it works with its allies in the trade unions and other mass organisation – not to join the Labour Party and this is binding on all its members without exception.
In writing to the Labour Party’s general secretary Rob Griffiths was doing what is possible to disrupt the red scare tactics of the mainstream media and the labour right.
In contrast the WW tactic, even though it involves a tiny handful of people, is aiding the right.
anticapitalista on said:
LOL – Greek right-wing doing the same against SYRIZA http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eurozone-greece-protests-idUSKBN0OY2O620150618
and supporting the Yes vote in the referendum here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUC8x_alzUM
while No had this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69TlGrGLlfk
Any trade union or anti-racist banners anywhere?
John on said:
anticapitalista,
Interestingly, opinion polls show a majority of Greeks desire to remain within the EU
http://www.euractiv.com/section/uk-europe/news/poll-majority-of-greeks-against-a-brexit/
anticapitalista on said:
They do, but the Left is principled enough not to have any illusions in such demonstrations organised in support of the EU (unlike the SU editorial team)
“The most ardent supporters of the UK staying in the EU are center-right New Democracy voters (79%) and the socialist Democratic coalition (76%) while Syriza voters are marginally in favor (52%).”
anticapitalista on said:
Actually, since that poll (over a month ago, and since the Brexit result, it is probably the case that the majority of the working class in Greece is now for exit.
John on said:
‘Probably’: Many a general has lost a battle on the basis of this word.
John on said:
You are clearly confused. Brexit is a far right political project, supported by the sects of the ultra left along with various opportunists of a type well known.
The broad left is behind Remain – i.e. the majority of Labour members and voters, the bulk of the trade union movement, SNP in Scotland, Sinn Fein in ireland.
As Marx himself wrote: ‘The development of the system of Socialist sects and that of the real workers’ movement always stand in inverse ratio to each other.’
anticapitalista on said:
So if the broad left is mainly behind Remain, (I don’t doubt this), ask yourself why they couldn’t be bothered to turn up on this pro-EU demo.
I’m sure they will turn up in their thousands on the 16 July demo in London.
John Palmer on said:
anticapitalista,
There were many socialists on this demo. As you can see from the pictures there were many anti-racist slogan. It was cheered migrant workers from restaurants and hotels – as there would have been from hospital workers had the march past any. What none of us anticipated was the enormous numbers this demo attracted. By the way many joined from earlier pro-Corbyn meetings and rallies.
anticapitalista on said:
According to the title, the march was in support of the EU. Why on earth any socialist would go on a demonstration in favour of this totally corrupt, anti-democratic, capitalist institution is beyond me.
My point in my first point is that here in Greece, the left (from SYRIZA to the abstentionist KKE and the far left) did not go on any rallies ‘in support of the EU’ even if they were against Grexit.
JN on said:
anticapitalista,
You’re right, idealising the EU is a mistake, certainly in the long term.
That said, the situation in Greece is obviously very different from what it is in Britain. Brexit has been overwhelmingly dominated by the right to far-right, and by the issue of anti-immigration. It has to be understood in relation to those specific circumstances. And without idealising the EU at all, it’s collapse led by the likes of UKIP, FN, AfD, etc can only be for the worse.
jim mclean on said:
anticapitalista,
Havent really said much on this forum for a while but in all the years I have read the posts on it I have always ignored yours, a Greek Markvictorystooge. On the anniversary of the Somme, Lions led by Donkies is a much used phrase, and there are those on the Left who will happily lead the WC up the garden path. I think you are one.
jim mclean on said:
JN,
Every person I personally know who voted Brexit did not have a political bone in their body. The nephew is a licensed taxi driver. his earnings have been slashed from competition from unlicensed cars driven by Eastern Europeans. Simple direct economic threat and to him a secondary threat as he is more worried about UBER
Tony Collins on said:
This is so ridiculous. The organised left and far left is non-existent. That means when outbursts of anger and solidarity happen, they won’t fit into the moulds we choose. A movement is developing that is “in support of the EU” entirely because that is how the issue has been framed – for or against the EU.
The people going on these demos are using the EU as a proxy for solidarity, internationalism and anti-racism. In this context, they are saying the EU is a force for good in comparison to what else is on offer. That this has completely gone over your head is indicative of just how much the far left’s politics have failed it.
You’ve been around for a long, long time. You’re supposed to be a Marxist. You’re supposed to know how to analyse the world. It should be blindingly obvious to you that all this “support the EU” stuff has come about in opposition to the ‘little England’ mindset that has been the dominant expression of politics for ages and because of the framework in which politics is operating right now. Similarly, the huge outbursts of support for Jeremy Corbyn aren’t because people simply like him.
A year ago, people wouldn’t have come out on a demo in favour of the EU. It wouldn’t have happened.
The ‘pro-EU’ stuff, the reason it has generated so much support, is obvious to everyone except the far left. They – and you, given that you’re a member – have absolutely no theoretical framework within which to understand it. They have no deep analytical ability. If things happen outside their own ‘theories’, they just can’t understand it.
But 100,000 people did. Those people have, like the rest of us, never been on pro- or anti-EU demonstrations before. But they’ve been presented with a reality: the country is going to radically change, politically as well as economically, because of the vote of 51.5% of people who voted. They are against that. We should all be against it. It’s not democracy when such a tiny minority can enact such a big change.
I’ve spoken to tons of these people. They’re all anti-racist, they are all horrified by attacks on Muslims. They are the people who donated so much clothes and money to refugee charities.
We should be on their side. Thankfully we are. It’s only the tiny far-left groups which are campaigning against them.
Yesterday a leading member of Counterfire posted on Facebook, really being angry at the demo, saying that people should laugh at it – and even saying that the assembly point was a “posh” place, despite it being the same assembly point used in loads of other demos. And of course counterposing it to the ‘pure’ anti-racist demo that her organisation just happens to be organising.
And an RS21 member said yesterday that the demo was racist. Yes, he actually said that the demo was a racist demo.
The far left has, thankfully, made itself completely irrelevant by choosing the wrong side and then digging in. Thankfully, a new left-wing politics is being born and most of the old far left is completely absent from it.
The broad left WAS at the demo. The far left is going to have to learn that you can no longer judge a demo by how many official placards and banners were at it. I know it’s going to be hard, but it’s life.
And the left was behind ‘remain’ on an anti-racist, solidarity basis – we campaigned on the basis of defending immigrants and Muslims and refugees, and we said that a ‘remain’ vote was an act of solidarity, which it was. Most of us very clearly said we don’t like the EU. But our analysis was that in this fight, there’s only one side to pick – and thankfully, every single decent militant person I spoke to, at work or in my community, came to the same conclusion and voted ‘remain’. It was obvious to them. None of this isn’t hard to grasp, unless your head has been so warped by far-left sects for so long.
The anti-racist thing to do was vote & campaign for remain. The demo yesterday was an anti-racist, pro-immigrant, act of solidarity. And the ‘vanguard’, the people who think they are the most advanced working class people, sat back attacking it.
John on said:
Superbly said Tony. Absolutely spot on!
non-partisan on said:
13 Agree, good post. Just looked at counterfire.
http://www.counterfire.org/articles/analysis/18397-this-vote-was-about-far-more-than-immigration
For a delusional, factually inacurate article- They really are kidding themselves, I thought the actual result and the obvious empowerment of racists might temper thier argument- but no, none of it, they really do see the vote as a ‘victory’ for working people.
John on said:
non-partisan,
They can’t afford a mea culpa, as it would cover them in such discredit nobody could ever take them seriously again. I arrived at this point long before now but amazingly they do still retain a membership and following.
This bunker-down mentality is also evident in the case of Galloway, who on his latest Press TV phone in TV show shouts down a caller from London when he asserts an upsurge in racism and hate crimes post Brexit. The caller btw identifies himself as non white British.
This is where these people are now – in a state of complete and utter denial.
anticapitalista on said:
jim mclean,
I always ignore your posts *roar*
anticapitalista on said:
… and thankfully, every single decent militant person I spoke to, at work or in my community, came to the same conclusion and voted ‘remain’.”” the decents eh – Damn those indecent exiters!
Maybe you need to get out of your workplace and community a bit more and head to those working class areas that voted exit. Many/most did not do so for racist reasons – but that wouldn’t tie with your narrative would it.
Here’s anecdotal evidence from me. My family live in a town on the East coast that overwhelmingly voted exit. All of them and their friends (I would say they are all decent anti-racists) voted exit for reasons of lack of democracy in the EU and that the money should be better spent on helping the poor and underprivileged in the UK including refugees. What are the left remainers offering to them?
“..It’s not democracy when such a tiny minority can enact such a big change.” – (you mean majority) – this is an extremely dangerous argument that the Tories and bosses can use against the left, trade unions etc to halt strikes, union policies. Just keep voting until the members agree with us. Nice – didn’t that happen in the Irish referendum a few years ago on the Lisbon treaty?
Oh, don’t lecture me about how to intervene in spontaneous movements. We have had a few here you know – the enraged/square movement. Started off as totally apolitical and anti-political, but the far left did intervene and participate and push the movement leftwards ie in supporting immigrant rights (originally the organisers wanted to limit the movement to Greeks only, no political banners).
Anyhow, 16 July is an opportunity for anti-racists and the left, regardless of how they voted, to come together and demand an end to austerity and racist policies.
http://www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk/
My last post on this subject
Petter Matthews on said:
#13
It’s not correct that what you call the ‘far left’ have no analysis of why we should leave the EU. This pamphlet by John Foster is amongst the best.
https://issuu.com/communist_party/docs/eu_exit_2016_inners_406b6a3c54f4f1
Brian Denny has also provided his own excellent analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9Tgj39HdyQ
StevieB on said:
Anticapitalista, please consider what you are defending in the leave camp.
After the Tory right (not the SWP!) negotiate an exit agreement there would be nothing undemocratic about this being put to a referendum. Or should this be just decided by a Tory dominated parliament?
Just over a year ago the General Election led to a Tory government. Are those of us opposing it “undemocratic”, or are those campaigning for a new General Election “undemocratic”.
In denying the Brexit vote was dominated by racism you are ignoring reality, and the opinions of the majority of leave voters. Ashcroft’s poll of 12,369 voters is a big poll. The results are clear. “Is multiculturalism a force for good?” – remain 71%, leave 29%. “Is immigration a force for good?” – remain 79%, leave 21%. “Is feminism a force for good?” – remain 60%, leave 40%.
All indicators are clear. Young voters were for remain – 73% aged 18-24 years; 62% aged 25-34 years; 52% aged 35-44 years. Aged 45 and above had a majority for leave, with the majority increasing with age.
Ethnic minorities were for remain – 67% amongst Asians; 73 amongst black voters. The only ethnic group registering a majority for leave were white voters. Seven out of ten Muslim voters were for remain.
The majority of workers were for remain. Working full time/part time – 60% of remain voters; 51% of leave voters. Remain had a majority amongst students. Leave had a majority amongst unemployed, pensioners, etc.
Based on how people voted in General Election 2015 – 58% of Tories were for leave; 19 out of 20 UKIP voters were for leave. 63% of Labour voters were for remain; 64% of SNP were remain; 70% of Lib Dems were remain; and 75% of Greens were remain.
All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.
I will be on the demonstration on July 16th. The five-fold increase in reported racist attacks following the vote should prompt all socialists to support the action. But we must not dilute the struggle against racism, in the manner in which the slogans of the demo do. Fortunately the Stand Up To Racism rally on the 14th has a better pitch – “United Against Racism and Hatred”. But be there at both, if you can make it!
Vanya on said:
#19 “Leave had a majority amongst unemployed, pensioners, etc…
…All of which demonstrates that the social forces behind remain were much more progressive.”
So f### the elderly and the unemployed.
StevieB on said:
Such quality of polemic! Is this because you cannot tackle the analysis ?
By the way, I am in receipt of my pension, and regard myself as unemployed.
Vanya on said:
And?
If you’re a self hater isn’t that your problem rather than mine?
Or are you not saying that elderly and unemployed people are reactionary compared to younger people and those in work?
If you didn’t mean that, you should have expressed yourself a bit clearer.
Vanya on said:
#22 Arthur Scargill’s quite elderly. As would Tony Benn be if he was still alive.
Vanya on said:
If we want this sorting out democratically let’s demand a general election asap.
Or do we prefer John Wight’s solution that Corbyn resigns and one of the coup plotters that nobody has heard of then makes a deal with Teresa May to subvert the democratic will of the people?
StevieB on said:
Vanya – the analysis is that the remain camp was supported by the majority of Labour/SNP/LibDem/Green voters; a majority of ethnic minorities voters; a majority of those in work; a majority of young people and students. The leave camp was supported by the majority of Tory/UKIP voters; a majority of older people, pensioners and unemployed.
Funnily enough I think the first camp looks like progress, the second like reaction. This was an important struggle where people took sides. This does not mean I have assigned the unemployed, older people and pensioners to eternal reaction. But we should try and understand why their particular vulnerabilities pushed their majority to the reactionary position.
anticapitalista on said:
StevieB,
According to the Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/who-voted-brexit-how-eu-8277077
The rich and middle-classes were more pro-EU.
The AB group backed Remain by 57% to 43%, while the poorer C2DE category was almost two-thirds in favour of quitting, voting Out by 64% to 36%
Around two thirds of council and housing association tenants voted to Leave
But Labour’s heartlands united with Tory shires to scuttle the UK’s 43-year EU membership.
Traditional working class voters in South Wales, the Midlands and across northern towns revolted against Labour’s pleas for Remain
So, it is not anywhere near as simple as you claim of reactionaries versus progressives.
StevieB on said:
Anticaptalista – The ABCDE class characterisation is completely inadequate. The bulk of AB is made up of highly skilled people who make their living by selling their labour power. Do Richard Branson, the Duke of Westminster and the Queen really belong to the same social class as a barrister?
Those in paid employment voted in a larger proportion for remain than leave – as attested to by both the Ashcroft and IPSOS/MORI poll. The working class in cities like London, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, etc voted remain. What is with this “traditional” bit? The real difference is that remain was strongest in working class areas where there has been immigration, and weakest in areas where there has been less.
No one says it is “simple”. But the majority of leave votes came from Tories and UKIP, while the majority of remain came from Labour, SNP, Lib Dems, Greens. Check out the attitude of voters on a range of social questions in the Ashcroft poll, if you still doubt which camp has the more progressive stance.
anticapitalista on said:
The real difference is that remain was strongest in working class areas where there has been immigration, and weakest in areas where there has been less.
Again this is only partially true.
Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Blackburn, Bradford, Luton, Nottingham, Peterborough, Rochdale, Salford, Sheffield are just a few places with relatively high immigrant populations that voted exit.
Vanya on said:
#28 Exactly.
Vanya on said:
#25 Patronising nonsense.
Andy Newman on said:
So in the context of a racist exclusion by the UK government that disqualified 3 million EU citizens living in the UK from voting, despite the fact that many of them have lived and worked in the UK for years, have paid taxes, sent their children to school here, and participated in the rich social life of their host communities.
What am I to make of your adjective “traditional” to describe the other parts of the working class who were able to vote?
Do you think that the actually existing working class of the Uk, including the millions of EU migrants who work alongside us, are in our unions, and are our friends and neighbours, had a majority for Leave?
It is of course also a nonsense to discuss these “traditional working class” communities without acknowledging the way that they are differentiated by age, professional qualifications, and ideas and ideology. Not least, that we have always had working class Tories and working class racists.
George Hallam on said:
And quite a few have suffered defeat because they prepared to fight the last war instead of the one they were actually in.
To change metaphors: have you considered the possibility that your guns might be pointed in the wrong direction?
George Hallam on said:
Could you be more specific, please.
Am l self delusion or dishonest?
George Hallam on said:
If you followed my posts on this site you would know that classifying me as ‘left’ is problematic.
Vanya,
Sorry Vanya
,
John Haylett on said:
I’m not really sure if I’m self-delusional or dishonest, but I think that the treatment of Greece might have made one or two people think that the EU is not too good for working class living standards.
Now that the Greeks have been sorted out, who’s next?
“If the Commission wants to preserve its credibility on upholding budget rules, we have to approve sanctions against Spain and Portugal,” Germany’s EU Commissioner Guenther Oettinger told Bild this morning.
“If we give ourselves common rules, they must be kept to.”
George Hallam on said:
Nigel Farage says he is standing down.
As I expected, a victory for Brexit has created more problems for UKIP than a defeat.
Nick Wright on said:
George Hallam,
Remind me now. Didn’t the Remainers warn us the Brexit would lead to Boris Johnson in No 10 and new successes for Nigel farage?
George Hallam on said:
Sounds like false memory syndrome.
Is it likely that people who have a window into men’s souls and can know the reasons for they way they voted could get things so wrong?
Nick Wright on said:
Does this mean that the 37% of Labour voters, 36% of SNP voters and 25% of Green voters who opted for Brexit are not ‘socially progressive” while the 42% of Tories who voted Remain are?
Vanya on said:
It’s only problematic for you George. Unless you make an issue of it just to be contradictory, in which case it’s possibly less of a problem for you than anyone else!
Vanya on said:
I think one of the admins on this site needs to answer that one.
Given the condemnation of Corbyn and his supporters as an ultra left sect and support for a cross-party vote in the Commons to subvert the will of the majority of the British people I think I can guess the answer.
Vanya on said:
While the brexiters promised that the status of present EU immigrants would be defended while leading Remain Tory Teresa May is now putting that into question.
The same Teresa May who wanted Britain to ditch the ECHR while now saying that wouldn’t be possible because no parliamentary majority exists for it.
Vanya on said:
#45 Then again they also promised that there would be billions for the NHS.
Vanya on said:
https://www.facebook.com/events/997373007038180/
JN on said:
You really are deluded if you believe that. This is just maneuvering and trying to figure out how best to take advantage of the situation.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/04/nigel-farage-resigns-as-ukip-leader
StevieB on said:
Nick Wright,
On this question, on this occasion, yes. A concrete analysis of a concrete situation – not a set of alliances fixed for all times on all issues.
Nick Wright on said:
And here is a concrete question. How does as class divided form an alliance with another class similarly divided. The question arisies because the attempt to subvert the vote to leave the EU risks casting some left wingers into a more enduring allaince with the most reactionary and most powerful sections of our ruling class in a manouvre that will inevitably be perceived by important sections of the working class – the most exploited and opressed – as a a betrayal.
Being on one side or the other in a referendum is one thing entering into a strategic alliance with the princile class enemy is another.
StevieB on said:
Nick Wright,
The “most exploited and oppressed” sections of the working class voted to remain. The only ethnic group supporting leave was white people. All the categories of BAME voted for remain.
It is unclear to me what you mean by “subvert the vote”. I support a referendum on the result of Brexit negotiations. I don’t accept the decision resting with a Tory government and a Tory dominated parliament. Who do you think should make the decision?
Andy newman on said:
Nick Wright,
On this aspect you are correct, i believe. The various manouvres to subvert the outcome of the referendum, whether by legal challenges, calls for parliament to overturn the result, etc, are potentially disastrous
For sure, leave would not have won without the underpinning of racism, but it was also a rebellion against the establishment. It would be disastrous for the left to be seeming to collude in the thwarting of the democratic will by that same establishment.
Vanya on said:
Yes those privileged layers facing benefit sanctions and workfare are clearly part of the labour aristocracy.
By the way, the majority of the young didn’t vote at all.
Nick Wright on said:
Get real. These are not absolute categories. No social group was homogenous. Every group was split including every group of party supporters. Only UKIP supporters demonstrated any serious measure of homogeneity.
Social categories C2, DE voted 35% to Remain and 65% to Leave.
AB,C1 voted 57% to Remain and 43% to leave.
Only people earming over £40,000 (an absolute and quite small minority of people in Britain where the average income is around £23,000) voted in their majority to Remain
Nick Wright on said:
A Corbyn-led Labour government. He is the only political figure with enough credibility – as a critic of the ‘actually existing’ EU and with the nous to insist on a speedy implementation of the decision – to reach out to the working class majority that is needed to win a general election.
Andy newman on said:
StevieB,
It is not at all clear that the Article 50 process would leave the choice of whether to accept or reject the terms either in the hands of the UK parliament or people via referendum.
StevieB on said:
Nick Wright,
As stated earlier, according to Ashcroft and IPSOS/MORI polling, remain had a higher proportion of those in full and part time employment. The working class is defined by being dependent upon selling their labour power to live. This definition covers some sections of all the ABCDE categories, which is why this is an inadequate method.
I am “real” enough to understand why left Brexiters are uncomfortable with the fact that remain was more popular amongst Labour voters, young people, ethnic minorities, Irish and Scottish people, and the majority of large cities. But, facts are stubborn things, and stating the obvious “no social group was homogenous” doesn’t change them.
A decision on the result of Brexit negotiations by a Corbyn led government would be a wonderful thing. But concretely, do you prefer a vote by a Tory led parliament on the result of negotiations to a referendum on them?
Vanya on said:
#57 (a) Most young people didn’t vote at all. (b) What makes young people inherently more progressive than those older than them? Because it looks like a circular argument to me- brexit was reactionary, remain progressive, the older generations voted leave and the “youth” voted remain. Ipso facto young people are more progressive.
And your definition of the working class includes people in higher management but not the unemployed. I’d say that was a bit worse than inadequate.
Which as someone who is involved in organising a Unite Community branch and against benefit sanctions etc I find quite interesting.
We still frequently get arguments that unions are for those in work, particularly from non Unite members. Which of course was one of the problems the National Unemployed Workers Movement had in the 20s and 30s in trying to get the support of the TUC.
The working class does not simply exist at the point of production but in communities as well. Which brings me back to the issue of young versus old.
Vanya on said:
Do you mean by “but concretely” you are sceptical about the chances of us getting a Labour government?
Because to me the collapse of huge sections of the left into supporting the EU reflects a long term defeatism born out of the experience of being battered in the 80s and 90s.
A defeatism that I would have thought should have been countered at least a little bit by the mass movement that led to the election of Corbyn as Labour leader.
And a defeatism that is used by many of those opposing Corbyn to justify their flinching and sneering.
Apologies if that’s not what you meant.
George Hallam on said:
Post-referendum personality test for Leftists
1. With the way the economy and society are changing, there will be [ a) less threats b) more threats] to my standard of living in future than there will be opportunities to improve it
2. For most children growing up in Britain today, [ a) life will be better b) life will be worse] than it was for their parents.
3. Overall, life in Britain today is [ a) better b) worse] than it was 30 years ago.
4. a) If you work hard, it is possible to be very successful in Britain no matter what your background
b) In Britain today, people from some backgrounds will never have a real chance to be successful no matter how hard they work.
Score 4
Subtract 1 for teach of the following answers:
1. More threats than opportunities
2. life will be worse tor most children growing up today
3. life today is worse than it was 30 years ago
4. hard work isn’t always enough for success
If you scored 4 then please go to the nearest police station and turn yourself in because you are Tony Blair.
If you scored 3 then congratulations, you nothing to worry about. Your score gives no indication of how you voted in the referendum but it does indicate that you have a very sunny disposition so you will be happy even if the sky falls in.
If you scored 2 then you probably voted Remain.
If you scored 1 then you probably voted Leave.
If you scored 0 then you’re a miserable sod. If you voted Remain then you will be even gloomier when you learn that your outlook is more in tune than most Leave voters. Provided you can tolerate their racism, you should get on well with them.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
StevieB on said:
Andy newman,
Andy – nothing is clear about a process that has yet to be tested anywhere. However, what is clear is that a decision on the final negotiations has to be taken through some form of democratic representation in Britain. If a referendum was an appropriate popular process to create these negotiations then why isn’t it an appropriate one to end them?
StevieB on said:
Vanya,
It is members of ethnic minorities who are the most oppressed people in our society. These can be found disproportionately amongst the low paid, unemployed, and every category of social disadvantage and discrimination. Amongst ethnic minority voters there was a large majority supported remain.
On the generation issue, since 2010 the Tory government has placed a disproportionate weight of austerity measures upon the young. That is why we have seen successive waves of radicalisation amongst young people – revival of student protests, Occupy movement, anti-austerity and pro-refugee demonstrations and a large part of the Corbynista movement. Buffering the relative position of pensioners has been a goal of Tory policy – as for example seen in maintaining the value of pensions.
Pay is not a definition of class, except in bourgeois sociology, like the ABCDE schema. Are the people concerned dependent upon their ability to labour or not (albeit highly skilled and paid)? If they have huge share options , or rent out houses, etc. then clearly not. If they can find themselves unemployed next week with no immediate income outside of state benefits, then clearly so. Unemployed workers are part of the working class, but social categories DE also cover “self-employed” (many desperately poor) and the lumpen-proletariat.
StevieB on said:
Vanya,
Vanya – Brexit is going to be negotiated by a Tory government. The candidates to the Tory leadership have ruled out an early General Election. The ruling class does not want an early election if Labour is led by Corbyn. So it is most likely that the deal on Brexit will be done before 2020, and the next scheduled General Election. In these circumstances, it is appropriate that there is a referendum on the deal, rather than leave the final decision to a Tory dominated parliament.
I want a Corbyn led government as much as you. I doubt that this is weeks/months away – but the opening of Brexit negotiations is most likely weeks/months away.
Vanya on said:
I would agree that most members of most ethnic minority groups are oppressed, but it is entirely far too wide sweeping to say that ethnic minorities as a whole are the most oppressed in society.
And in any case, how people voted is not an indication that they voted in the right way.
There’s no guarantee that people will vote (or act generally) in their class interests. We might have socialism by now if they did consistently.
Andy Newman on said:
It is significantly true that 3 million EU citizens in the UK did not get a vote in whether the constitutional arrangement whereby they reside in the Uk can continue, and it is significant to me that not a single person who advocates Brexit hass responded to this point
Andy Newman on said:
Ture, but there is no provision for that in the Article 50 process, and it would require the agreement of the EU commission and 27 other EU member states. Once Article 50 is triggered they have no obligation to show the UK any favours.
George Hallam on said:
I didn’t respond because I didn’t think that it was a sensible point.
EU citizenship doesn’t disqualify a person from voting it’s just not required. If you want to vote then all you need to do is become a British subject.
If you look round the world being a citizen is the standard requirement for voting in national elections.
Think it through. Supose we tried imposing such a rule on India or countries in Africa. Do you imagine that they would agree to let foreigners vote?
Petter Matthews on said:
Andy Newman,
I was in South Africa in 1994, working with the ANC, and remember my comrades expressing outrage that I didn’t have a vote. I put it down to their lack of experience of bourgeois democracy. I was British and retained all the rights of a British subject. The only way that I would become entitled to a vote in South Africa is if I became a citizen. That’s how it works and I think most people, including EU citizens in the UK, understand that.
JN on said:
Firstly, it’s interesting the way you elide the distinction between “subject” and “citizen”. Not quite the same thing. Personally, as a socialist, I do not consent to being a “subject” to any king or queen. Fuck the individual monarch and the anachronistic and anti-democratic institution of monarchy. Let’s have a referendum on that undemocratic institution!
Secondly, CONTEXT FUCKING MATTERS. Thus, it may well have been justifiable for the ANC to have excluded “subjects” of the colonial and imperialist British state from voting in South Africa, but that is a very different thing than the UK excluding European inhabitants of Britain from voting in a British referendum.
Nick Wright on said:
This is not eliding the distinction between subject and citizen. It is making that distinction. British citizenship makes you a subject of Mrs Saxe Coburg. (Now she is someone who really does have a reasonable claim to be a citizen of another EU country)
JN on said:
I don’t see how. I can see an argument from the left as to why a “subject” of the UK should not have been allowed to vote in South African elections, but I can not see one as to why a European living in Britain should not be allowed a vote in a referendum over the UK’s membership of the EU.
Again, the circumstances are fundamentally different. If the Scots can not be considered as an “oppressed” people in the context of the UK, then by the same logic but to a much greater extent the British (that is primarily the English) can not be considered as a people oppressed by the EU.
And I’d love to see the abolition of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha monarchy, but I don’t see the majority of rural/suburban England voting for it, even if they had the chance.
StevieB on said:
Andy Newman,
Andy – Agree there will be no favors shown by Merkel, but they will want to keep the door ajar.
A referendum on the results of negotiations is entirely a British decision, and outwith Article 50. Made by a Tory parliament or by a popular vote – that’s the issue.
Nick Wright on said:
Extending full voting rights to all EU citizens living in states other than the one in which they exercise the full rights and responsibilities as a citizen is a large step in the direction of making the EU a federal superstate.
The left wing objection to this process is based on the understanding that the most effective route to winning state power by the working class lies in confronting the ruling class on the ground in which it is most easily isolated and defeated.
By the same token, the decisive and most powerful section of our ruling class see membership of the EU as the most congenial environment in which to implement their chosen policies of privatisation and austerity and protect their wealth and power. That is why the vote to leave the EU has confounded them and why they are so desperately seeking solutions to subvert it.
Only those innocents who think that organising a synchronised assault on entrenched capitalist powers across a continent is a more easy option favour federalism.
JN on said:
Very evidently sections of the ruling class (as represented by Johnson et al’s faction of the Tory Party and by UKIP) supported Brexit, just as other sections of the ruling class (as represented by Cameron and Blair) supported Remain. Would it be possible to discuss the matter in relation to the undisputed reality rather than in terms of abstractions and generalisations that occlude more than they clarify?
Clearly elements of the Tory Party (including some who supported ‘Remain’) see Brexit as yet another opportunity to advance ‘austerity’ for the working class and increase profits for the employers (IE: Osborne cutting corporation tax).
Whatever, the referendum has been held, and Brexit won, albeit by a very narrow margin. A second referendum is arguably justifiable; an over-ruling by parliament or lawyers may be justifiable in terms of technical legality but not in terms of democracy. In real politics it would be a disaster.
George Hallam on said:
JN,
Sorry if you think tried to “elide” the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘citizen’.
It’s just a generational thing. My passport always used to say I was a British subject. Am I now a citizen? My current one is not to hand so I haven’t checked.
If iI’m a ‘citizen’, then does that mean I have extra rights? If so, what are they?
JN on said:
George Hallam,
No, you are not a citizen and neither am I. That’s the whole point. The UK’s constitution is unwritten and sovereignty is technically based in the reigning monarch. What that means in effect is that the constitution is whatever the ruling class (with the fig leaf of the monarchy) say it is, unless a very large section of the population is willing to really fight them for it.
Do you not get how POWER works?
If you want a lesson, take what’s happening in the Labour Party right now (IE: 172 MPs trying to undemocratically over-rule hundreds of thousands of Labour Party members) and extrapolate it to the country at large.
JN on said:
Obviously neither a republic nor a written constitution would in themselves solve Britain’s problems (before some straw-man fighting fool wastes his and my time by pointing that out). Both would however represent steps forward, as would the abolition of the House of Lords, electoral reform (some kind of proportional representation), and a political realignment so that there was a straightforwardly left-wing Labour party undiluted by people who have essentially accepted Thatcherism as an ideology.
George Hallam on said:
JN,
#77 Thank you for pointing this out.
To save you further trouble of explaining yet another topic, here is a link you may find useful.
http://regimentalrogue.com/papers/egg.htm
George Hallam on said:
I agree.
Perhaps you might add “leaving the EU” to the list?
Andy Newman on said:
Yes, all they have to do is pay £1200 and nearly £1000 for every child, speak English (or Welsh or Gaelic) and pass a difficult test on British life, that is very challenging for many people who have been brought up abroad, and have limited educational attainment.
The actually existing British working class includes a high proportion of EU citizens, who are our work colleagues, neighbours, and fellow trade union members.
The unity and independence of working class organisation requires we do not accept a political division of the actually existing working class based upon what passport they carry
Andy Newman on said:
Yet EU citizens had a vote on the Scottish Independence referrendum
Vanya on said:
#82 And only Irish citizens had a vote in their referenda on the Nice treaty while Irish citizens had a vote in the recent British EU referendum.
And the thing about citizenship is that while the rules for getting it may be onerous to one extent or another in different countries, and may need to be reformed in this country, it does mean something. If it didn’t you may as well say that countries don’t have any meaning.
I can imagine there’s no countries and it isn’t hard to do.
But imagination only helps deal with the real world to a very limited extent.
Andy Newman on said:
Yes the real world is that the British working class includes among its number some millions of EU citizens, who work alongside us, live with us in our communities, work and pay taxes, and are our trade union colleagues.
BTW, citizenship clearly meant very little for the some 2 million UK citizens living in the EU, who also did not have the vote in the referrendum.
Andy Newman on said:
The issue is that the Leave vote in working class communities prevailed because many working class people who have lived and worked in the UK for years, did not have the vote.
You can Lexplain that away as much as you like, but class unity, class organisation, and class independence requries that the left recognise that EU citizens working here are an actually existing and important component of the British working class. their voices should have been heard.
jock mctrousers on said:
Bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley dead at 89
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/06/stan-j06.html
John on said:
Yes, Brexit for the left posed the choice between British nationalist consciousness or class consciousness.
jock mctrousers on said:
You’re not alone, John!
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/06/part-j06.html
Britain’s right-wing media call for creation of new pro-European Union party
By Robert Stevens
6 July 2016
In the last week, three of Britain’s major right-wing publications have published articles supporting the formation of a new pro-business, pro-European Union (EU) party if the ongoing coup being organised by Labour right-wingers against party leader Jeremy Corbyn fails.
Last week, Phillip Stephens wrote in the Financial Times that in the aftermath of the referendum vote for the UK to leave the EU, “Many centrist Tories have more in common with their counterparts on the Labour side than with English nationalist Brexiters; and, likewise, middle-of-the-road Labourites are closer to pro-European Tories than to Mr Corbyn’s brand of 1970s state socialism … the space may be opening up for a new, pro-European, economically liberal and socially compassionate alternative to pinched nationalism and hard-left socialism.”
This call has been echoed by other columnists in the Financial Times, the Economist magazine and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. All three view the founding of a new party as a means of reversing a referendum result…
Vanya on said:
#87 If there was a class conscious choice it was to vote against the EU.
The fact that many people may have reached the correct conclusion for wrong reasons doesn’t alter that.
And to coin your expression, I won’t take lectures from someone who only last week was essentially siding with the rebellion by elements in the PLP against Jeremy Corbyn.
Your new found enthusiasm for the imperialist bosses’ club seems to trump the merest semblance of class consciousness.
This isn’t a parlour game you know.
Andy Newman on said:
It is a funny sort of class consciousness where the majority of trade union activists take the other view
John on said:
This is the heart of the matter. The gulf between the bulk of the organised working class and the far left on Brexit does pose the question of relevancy.
George Hallam on said:
Quite so. This isn’t about principles, it’s just a matter of judgement.
One has to weigh up a lot of factors and knock-on effects. There’s plenty of scope for debate about what will be the best (or least worst) course in each case.
George Hallam on said:
Andy Newman,
When important interests are at stake then the issue of divided loyalties will almost certainly be raised.
During the Cold War it was not uncommon for people with anti-establishment views to be told to “go back to Russia”. In earlier times Roman Catholics were often seen as agents of the Pope.
During the referendum campaign a number of foreign leaders made statements in support of the UK remaining in the European Union. To many that was interference in the internal affairs of another country. This was bad enough, but at least it directed at British voters.
Kenny, the Irish PM, urged Irish citizens living in the UK to vote Remain . The argument he used was that keeping Britain in the EU was in Ireland’s national interest. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kenny-urges-irish-expats-to-vote-remain-m8295sfmv
If the result had gone the other way and had been close then there would have been the suspicion that Brexit had been defeated by the 600,000 Irish community.
I think that there would have been a tremendous surge in British nationalism of the most unpleasant kind.
Fortunately, this didn’t happen, but it shows the potential dangers of giving non-citizens the vote in national elections.
Nick Wright on said:
It seems probable that a very large number of trade union members actually voted against the advice of those leaders who urged a Remain vote.
At the same time I am sure that a very large proportion of trade union activists were persuaded to follow their leaders. I also know from personal contact that at least two of the trade union leaders who fell in behind the Remain position did so against their personal opinion and, in my opinion, were constrained by a variety of factors including the policy of their union and loyalty to Corbyn.
Petter Matthews on said:
The ANC didn’t exclude anyone because it was’t in power until after the 1994 election. As far as I can remember however, the ANC retained the rules relating to voting rights in subsequent elections and didn’t just apply them to “subjects of the colonial and imperialist British state”, but also to citizens of the former Frontline States which worked with the ANC to achieve majority rule and to all other foreigners.
Vanya on said:
#91 The issue of people considering loyalty to the EU before loyalty to the most progressive leader that the Labour Party has ever had poses a very serious question of relevancy.
Again, you are not in a position to give lessons.
On this question you have taken the side of Blair, Kinnock and Cameron.
Against, “white trash”. How impressive!
Vanya on said:
So you’ve done a detailed survey of “trade union activists” have you?
My experience is that most people who fall into this category were extremely doubtful as to which side to take.
Probably the majority voted remain, but not enthusiastically, and by and large because that’s what their leadership and that of the Labour Party were advocating.
But guess what. That position was wrong.
Thankfully we are largely saved from the backlash from all that by the fact that Corbyn is respected as a leader who went along with the position of his party while being ultimately a eurosceptic, and who has made it clear that the result of the referendum must be respected.
And that’s why he’s the best person to be leader of the Labour Party and PM.
John on said:
No, I have taken the side of UK migrants and minorities, the victims of Brexit as I have been predicting for months they would be.
I have never and will never defend racism or racists.
Andy Newman on said:
I take as a starting point the democratic decision of the unions themselves, but within my own union there has been a lot of discussion and consultation that I have been involved with at branch, area, regional and national levels, which has indicated to me convincing levels of support for EU membership from activists.
On the basis of the officials and activists i know in other unions, which covers a wide range of lay member activists and officials, then I would still say there was a very convincing margin for Remain.
Vanya on said:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-e290-Exit-to-socialism#.V35fUbgrLIU
One apparent typo I’ve noticed. I think the reference to the general election should have said 2015.
Nick Wright on said:
Andy and John make important points in this discussion, each with a rational kernel of truth within them, or at least a partial correspondence with reality.
However, I think from a strategic point of view, both miss the point.
If we use class consciousness is used in two ways – firstly, to signify a range of attributes: understanding of one’s class position, identification with a set of values and behavioural norms, feelings of collectivity and solidarity with others in the same situation, identification with class organisations (parties and unions, coops etc) and secondly, the existence or absence of a collective sense of historical mission (working class power, socialism some other, perhaps short term goal) – it is clear that the consciousness of trade union activists can easily be our of step with the class as a whole.
The same goes, in traditional marxist thinking, for the revolutionary vanguard. In fact, for most of the time it is a necessity for the vanguard to have a more advanced consciousness otherwise, at best, trade union consciousness would predominate.
For Andy to argue that his experience (perhaps specific to the particular culture of the GMB?) that trade union activists were mostly in favour Remain tells us more about the particular world in which he operates than the state of working class consciousness as a whole.
It is clear that leadership in trade union circles is critical and intersects with the class composition of the membership as a whole and of the activists. The rail unions and the bakers being a case in point. I might venture the opinion that the traditional hostility of many Unison activists to the leadership of that union did not come very actively into play on the referendum because of the substantially petit bourgeois character of many of the activists put them in the same camp as Prentice etc even though very many of Unison’s rank and file members must have voted to leave the EU.
If by ‘organised working class’ we mean ordinary union members John may be wrong in suggesting on this issue that ta gulf exists between them and the far left. As far as the working class as a whole is concerned, ie union members and non members, he is quite wrong.
On this issue they were in agreement on the issue if, in the case of many workers, for a complex of sometimes contradictory rreasons.
That is the working class for you. Created by capitalism.
John Grimshaw on said:
https://trialbyjeory.com/
FYI
John Grimshaw on said:
A question for people. My understanding of the phrase “white trash” is that it is specific to the USA. I’ve never been to the USA. Are all such persons or persons deemed to be such, racist? Or is it that they are just poor? or both?
I suspect that there is a certain amount of bandying around of controversial terminology here for emotional effect, but without any content.
Vanya on said:
#103 My understanding is that in the US context it originated as a term of abuse aimed at the poorest sections of the white population in the South by those “higher up” the social scale, for whom “white trash” were little more worthy of respect than Blacks, if not less so.
It tends to be used by lefties and middle class elements in this country to denigrate working class white people in the States or at home who exhibit various traits that they disaprove of, or who they believe to exhibit those traits.
Clearly in the case of actual racism, whether the terminology may be wrong the denigration is deserved, but to be honest I feel that the term is almost as dodgy as “chavs”. A closely related term is “trailer trash”.
I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable (while clearly sympathising with his sentiments on the subject) when George Galloway described the woman soldier from West Virginia at the heart of the scandal about torture and humiliation of prisoners in Abu Graib as “trailer trash”.
John on said:
Sociology and socialism are two entirely different things. I am someone who does ‘disapprove’ of the ‘trait’ of racism.
You don’t?
Andy Newman on said:
I beleive that the term was first coined by the right wing satirist HL Menken, the so-called Sage of Baltimore, who had a particular contempt for the rural lifestyle of the South, which remember in the early twentieth century had yet to go through the process of industrialisation.
Andy Newman on said:
Nick Wright,
In your whole long post, you really just make the point that the views of trade union activists may be different from the rank and file members. GMB may be more europhilic than some other union,s after all the only union to have a Brussels office, but my experience is that similar views are held by a majority of officers and lay activists I know in other unions as well.
The polls BTW show that a majority of those in employment voted to remain.
George Hallam on said:
This issue came up on the “Those who plunge Labour into civil war..” thread.
I posted this on 2 July
The book was published in 1852.
Henry Louis Mencken – born: September 12, 1880 died: January 29, 1956
Vanya on said:
Read my third paragraph.
John Grimshaw on said:
I can see it. 🙂
Petter Matthews on said:
No human being is ‘trash’ and it strikes me as misanthropic to suggest that they could be. If individuals of any class are racist, much better just to refer to them as ‘racists’.
Marx used the term ‘lumpenproletariat’ to describe individuals who have become disconnected from their class interests. The lesson for us is that those who drift away from traditional working class institutions, or were never involved in them in the first place, are particularly prone to reactionary ideologies.
Vanya on said:
#111 In the case of the unemployed and claimants in general this is a vindication of atempts to bring non working sections of the working class (not a contrdiction) into the organised workers’ movement. Be it the largely communist led nuwm of the 20s and 30s or today’s unite community membership.
As for the unemployed largely voting leave, perhaps in many cases an understanding of how little if at all the EU, much lauded for being nice and fluffy has helped fight the vicious sanctions regime and the wholesale denial of disability benefits under this and previous governments.
In marked contact to the UN I might add.
George Hallam on said:
This piece in the New Statesman by Charles Leadbeater may be of some interest.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/07/five-ways-left-can-win-back-leavers
The opening suggests a glimmer of self-awairness.
The liberal left has gone through various forms of disbelief since the Brexit vote. (I include myself in this.)
First, we thought, let’s try to have another vote.
Second, let’s try to subvert the outcome of the first vote through parliament.
Third, let’s hope enough Leave voters wake up feeling remorseful, see the light and switch sides, especially when they realise how unattractive Britain will become.
Fourth, let’s try to belittle the working-class people who voted for Brexit by suggesting:
a) they are racist;
b) we will all go to Stoke-on-Trent to listen to what they have to say (because being listened to by us will make them feel better);
c) they fell for transparent lies because they are a bit gullible;
d) we will give them some more money through state transfers, because if they had more money, they would be happier – that is what a new, fairer political settlement amounts to.
Such responses seem to underestimate the scale of the challenge. People voted Leave for many different reasons. At one end were people who are clearly racist; at the other were utopian liberal internationalists. For much of the working class, however, I think that it came down to five things. These are made for the left to respond to – if only we could work out how to bridge the gap between metropolitan, cosmopolitan progressives and working-class voters who believe in solidarity and community.
Vanya on said:
#113 Thanks George, that’s an interesting piece.
George Hallam on said:
Vanya,
Thank you too for your many useful links.
I’m not a great fan of the New Statesman, but it so happens that the same issue has another article that I found worth reading:
I know I’m middle class, because the day I needed to claim benefits and burst into tears because the queue was too long and I knew I would be going home without the money to pay the overdue electricity bill..
I know the family in front of me were not middle class because the buggy they were pushing was a lesser brand than the one I was pushing, and because they were smoking, and because they had strong Sheffield accents..
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2016/07/jeremy-corbyn-risk-middle-class-can-afford-take
I don’t endorse everything in it but, at the very least, it’s an interesting piece of empirical sociology.
Vanya on said:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/08/jeremy-corbyn-labour-negotiations-europe-tories-exploit-cheap-labour?CMP=share_btn_tw
JN on said:
Perhaps I might, under different circumstances, but not these. That’s the whole point. While leaving the EU might well be a good thing in some other, hypothetical context (with a different government, a different campaign, and different reasons for doing it) in this actually existing context it has very, very clearly benefited the right and the far right. To say that the EU is in many respects bad does not preclude the possibility of there being something significantly worse: IE, a collapse of the EU on the specific basis of anti-immigration and markedly right-wing nationalism.
That said, the referendum is now in the past, and the government has rejected the possibility of a second referendum. Thus the two probabilities are either a Brexit on a very markedly right-wing basis or an extremely dubiously democratic overruling of the referendum in Parliament. Again this is a case of bad versus worse.
JN on said:
Also, these stupid generalisations (IE: “the working class voted Leave; the Scots voted Remain; the young voted Remain while the old voted Leave; etc, etc”) are absurd and only serve to further confuse the issue rather than illuminate it. Could people just stop doing it, and if they want to make those arguments at least be precise about it? At the very least specify “a majority of… voted… while a sizeable minority voted the opposite”.
George Hallam on said:
Well said.
While all polls should be treated with caution, the Ashcroft survey does allow one to begin to estimate the size of majorities/minorities in the way you recommend.
The summary is here: http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2016/06/how-the-united-kingdom-voted-and-why/
For anyone with the time, there is work to be done on the original data.
http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/How-the-UK-voted-Full-tables-1.pdf
George Hallam on said:
OK. That’s fair enough.
There is some truth in this, so I’m not saying you’re wrong.
The main reason why I think that Brexit will, on balance, be positive is that it will change the economic terrine.
Andy Newman on said:
George Hallam,
I am sure there is a good joke about economic terrines
Andy Newman on said:
George Hallam,
I see that researchers from LSE have refuted the idea that young people didn’t vote, turnout based on polling now suggests some 65% of 18 to 24 yr olds voted, the earlier suggestion that less than 35% voted came from Sky news who had simply assumed the turnout in this age group would be the same as The 2015 GE
George Hallam on said:
We are all in the soup and you want to make jokes?
John Grimshaw on said:
Duck Soup?
John Grimshaw on said:
The self same has just been pointed out on Marr.
George Hallam on said:
No, bouillabaisse. Our task is to reconstruct the aquarium.
George Hallam on said:
Here is a take on the Brexit vote by a US-based academic. I found it thought provoking.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/13/amazing-brexit-identity-and-class-politics/
John Grimshaw on said:
George Hallam,
Can a capitalist country of beyond a certain size exist without a working class?
George Hallam on said:
‘Yes’
or ‘No’, depending on how one defines ‘capitalism’ and ‘working class’.
Sounds like a sci-fi plot. Try asking Ken MacLeod.
John Grimshaw on said:
George Hallam,
I will. Ken?
Ken MacLeod on said:
Ask a Marxist economist!
Presumably it’s theoretically possible for a country’s population to consist of capitalists plus unproductive workers paid out of surplus value. The only sci-fi element is whether robotics could replace even the unproductive workers. In capitalism such a society could only exist as an enclave, with the production of surplus value going on outside.
If something like that existed on a global scale (i.e. the entire working class replaced by robots) it would no longer be capitalism. For a detailed argument on this, see Michael Roberts:
https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2015/08/29/robots-and-ai-utopia-or-dystopia-part-two/
Andy Newman on said:
Ken MacLeod,
From an economic point of view there is little distinction – following your argument – between AI robots and slaves, provided they are subaltern to a dominant capitalist mode of production?
Ken MacLeod on said:
Andy Newman,
I don’t think conscious AI very likely but if it existed and was used in the same way as any other means of production, yes it would be slavery. But mindless robots used to replace service workers (say) like the ‘robot butler’ of old-fashioned SF would no more be slaves than coffee machines are. Economically they would be means of production or consumer goods.
Vanya on said:
#133 All very naive and blasé if you ask me.
What happens when they get more intelligent than us?
Have you not seen The Terminator?
Think about it.
I’ll be back.
Andy Newman on said:
arguably the slave worker is a commodity that is traded in the same way as a coffee machine, or a mule, whereas, a free labourer sells only their labour power? Hence the slave labourer adds no surplus value, it is a perishable commodity used in the production process.
So I am not sure there is an economic difference between a coffee machine and a mule, or for that matter a slave
jock mctrousers on said:
Yes, there’s hours of fun to be had out of speculating around theories of surplus value (or whatever), but back on planet Earth our new Great Helmsman may be in trouble…
Excuse me for harping on about this but… Andy!!! Brother! Comrade! Fellow Labour Party member! Have you ever tried to donate to Momentum (as in ” Momentum is funded entirely by membership fees and donations from thousands of supporters across the UK.”)?
I seem at some point in the past to have registered somehow my details with them so they send me emails. But the site is totally unresponsive for joining or donating, and I can’t find any way to communicate with them. It’s been like this since I’ve been aware of it.
There’s a local meeting coming up soon, but ill health precludes me from attending, so I wonder if anyone who reads this site has ANY concrete experience of Momentum?
Think! All local Labour constituency branches have been closed down till the election’s over…
John Grimshaw on said:
Andy Newman,
Except of course a slave can rebel. Coffee machines don’t. I’m Spartacus!
Vanya on said:
#137
This is no coffee machine:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=terminator&espv=2&biw=1093&bih=534&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiOrYXtsInOAhWIAMAKHTwLBAQQ_AUIBigB#imgrc=_SCjKUvgA3MXmM%3A
Francis King on said:
Debatable. The slave needs to be given the means of subsistence – food, clothing and shelter – in order to continue to work. If slavery is heritable, sufficient means need to be provided to ensure reproduction. Any value the slave produces over and above the value of these means of subsistence could surely count as “surplus value” in the same way as with a free worker. And in the real world, the varied institutional forms of unfree labour blur the distinction between slaves and “free” workers even further.
Andy Newman on said:
jock mctrousers,
I have not personally had much to do with Momentum. Though I do know various momentum activists who are good people.
I would say that it is not transparent how you get to join the JC campaign.
Currently I have been very busy organising our CLP nomination meeting
Andy Newman on said:
This is also true of mules, horses and oxen that work. Do they produce surplus value?
JN on said:
jock mctrousers,
If you can’t go to the meeting have you tried contacting them on Facebook?
Vanya on said:
Just been at the Corbyn launch rally in Salford. Absolutely brilliant. Not just JC but all the other speakers.
jock mctrousers on said:
Well, I found a page on facebook for Momentum Wandsworth,, but that was as opaque as everything else. I admit though I’m not well tuned in to Facebook.
jock mctrousers on said:
Thanks. ‘ not transparent’ is very diplomatic, as also in ‘not transparent’ how Momentum can be solely member-funded in it’s ‘not transparent’ how members or anyone else can fund it. Please tell me if you hear of anyone who’s got the ‘donate’ option to work!
Vanya on said:
http://morningstaronline.co.uk/a-8fa5-Jez-reaches-millions,-100-there-for-Smith#.V5X1ILgrLIU
John Grimshaw on said:
Just a thought Vanya. If Corbyn wins and the LP splits will the CPB dissolve itself?
John Grimshaw on said:
http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1116/which-side-are-you-on/
FYI obviously
Vanya on said:
#148 Yes John, thanks for that.
But don’t be surprised if I fail to comment on an article that describes the General Secretary of my party as a scab.
John Grimshaw on said:
Vanya,
Of course.
John Grimshaw on said:
By the way Vanya my point about linking to that article was not to indulge in sectarian mud slinging and as you know I’m not a member of the WW. Rather it was to seek comrades thoughts on this issue of an LP split and their response to it. The WW clearly thinks that people on the left should seek to join the LP at this time. Others might call it entryist. For what it’s worth I know of some on the left who I think are effectively being entryist but not very many. Ironically of course despite being called this by the right wing media and some on the PLP, the SP and SWP, are not as far as I can see operating in this manner.
John Grimshaw on said:
Do you mean that there are some horses, mules and oxen that don’t work? Disgraceful!
Vanya on said:
#149 What I will say is that the actual story is correct in that Rob Griffiths did write the letter in question.
And for what it’s worth I agree 100% with the decision to send it.
John Grimshaw on said:
Vanya,
Why. Out of curiosity.
Vanya on said:
#153 Because it’s the appropriate response.
The fact that Rob G is being attacked over it speaks volumes about those making the attack.
All this stuff about entryism is so much nonsense in any case.
100s of 1000s of people have joined the Labour Party recently, clearly at the very least a bare majority of them supporters of Corbyn.
What’s really scary to the establishment, be it the Blairite or various liberal or tory factions, is not that loads of them are Communists or trotskyists but that they are overwhelmingly new layers, particularly of younger people inspired into participating in what is both a social movement and a mass political party for change.
And part of the duty of Communists (ie members of the Communist Party) is to support this movement as respectful and comradely allies.
jock mctrousers on said:
John Grimshaw,
“… in the middle of a civil war, with the Labour Party rank and file struggling with the bureaucracy over who should be the arbiter of matters such as suitability for membership, Griffiths is prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with McNicol and suggest that it is a Labour bureaucrat who is the final arbiter of any such issues; and, worse, is prepared to scab on any CPB member who has taken out Labour membership and do McNicol’s job for him.”
I read this on Thursday when it come out, and recall being irritated by this. It would take an extremely ungenerous stretch of the imagination to interpret anything Rob Griffiths said as ” Griffiths is prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with McNicol “, but that’s what WW DO too often unfortunately.
It seems that the undeniably excellent pieces that often crop up there, just serve as a cover for their drip, drip,drip of poison about al other left of Labout orgs . Same too, even more unfortunately, for the WSWS, but on a more impressive scale.
Ken MacLeod on said:
This is a difficult issue. I read WW, but I’ve only very rarely linked to even its good stuff (such as articles by Moshe Machover or Lars T. Lih). I read WSWS, and sometimes put up a link on Twitter to a WSWS article — usually arts or history related, but now and then a political article that I think hits the nail on the head. But in doing that, of course, I throw a mite of credit in the general direction of their overall sectarian (to put it no more strongly) politics. Unfortunately, sharp Marxist insight in particular areas is entirely compatible with utterly ineffective and wrong-headed political lines.
On the point about the CPB and Corbyn, I thought Rob Griffith’s letter was entirely principled and a well-judged intervention.
Vanya on said:
http://www.pcp.pt/en/victory-exit-european-union-referendum-held-united-kingdom
Nick Wright on said:
No, A victory for Corbyn in the leadership election is but one stage in a very long battle to remake the Labour Party an instrument of the working class. But this will be in the context of a country where the objective and subjective conditions do not yet favour a tranistion to socialism and where the working class movement needs to reach a much higher level of political and class consciousness even to win what is possible within capitalism.
That this will come about as Corbyn-led movement comes to office and begins to effect change is what we all hope and work for.
But winning state power is an immeasurably more complex task for which no class or political formation is yet ready.
All precedent and experience suggests that he labour movement needs a marxist leninist party if power is to be won and held even if such a party is made and remade within that process.
Nick Wright on said:
The main function the WW’s attempt to join the Labour Party (just the latest in its chameleon-like entryist tactics) is to provide the bourgeois press with an opportunity to redbait Corbyn.
Undoubtedly, if the Communist Party were to send its members into the Labour Party it might have an impact somewhat greater than if the Weekly Worker were successful in getting is baker’s dozen in.
However, the Communist Party operates under democratic centralism. It took a principled decision – based on long-established grounds, and consistent with the basis on which it works with its allies in the trade unions and other mass organisation – not to join the Labour Party and this is binding on all its members without exception.
In writing to the Labour Party’s general secretary Rob Griffiths was doing what is possible to disrupt the red scare tactics of the mainstream media and the labour right.
In contrast the WW tactic, even though it involves a tiny handful of people, is aiding the right.
Vanya on said:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-dcdb-A-positive-vision-for-Britain-outside-the-bosses-bloc#.V6hO-7grLIU