The left-commentariat (for want of a better description) is quite pleased with Ed Miliband’s Labour conference address. One of the exciting things about the speech (apparently) was the audacious theft of Tory One-Nation rhetoric and the invocation of Benjamin Disraeli.
There is an article in the Grauniad explaining all this jazz:
Disraeli was devoted to social justice and social cohesion, at least in Britain, in a way that the current Tory crop has never attempted. He loathed the growing exploitation of the workers as the Industrial Revolution burned on and he attempted to "gain and retain for the Conservatives the lasting affection of the working classes".
He established his philosophy in his novel Sybil, where he wrote that England was "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws … the rich and the poor".
Disraeli was supportive of the Chartist movement also apparently. Actually not quite true, he was supportive of the moral force of Chartism, the side that sort to persuade enfranchised opinion to allow universal suffrage. This is consistent with who Disraeli was and what he represented after all.
One Nation Toryism was also known in its time as the Young Englandmovement . Someone we know very well had something to say about this movement:
One Nation Toryism was also known in its time as the Young Englandmovement . Someone we know very well had something to say about this movement:
Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.
In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.
In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.
The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.
The Labour Party conference poses the question, what is the Labour Party for? It is clearly seen as a party of reform. But that leads to the further question, what is reform for, and who is it for? In the case of Young England/One Nation Toryism there were two purposes.
In the initial period of capitalist growth there was lots of plunder. One aspect of this was plunder of the rural population, which was driven out of the countryside, into the city, into the factories. If life expectancy was short and individuals were used up like coal in a furnace, well there was plenty more where that came from. As time passed there was not the same superabundance of labour. While capitalists might have wanted cheap labour from the shires the capitalist class needed hereditary proletarians born and raised in the cities. The capitalist class had to come to terms with the working class, and not just as pitiful victims, but a class with power and “affections” of its own.
The trouble was the shared class interests of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie meant:
In political practice, therefore, they join[ed] in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.
Something similar is true today. Some of the rhetoric of Miliband’s speech was excellent and to the point. The population of Britain is very much divided. Many of us live in Poundland, a world of austerity and ‘tough choices’. The select however live deliriously happy in the Land of Chocolate.
Miliband’s rhetoric is to bind people like you and me to his political project. But what is his project? The Labour Party is a capitalist workers party, committed to the system. In practice this means a pay freeze for millions public sector workers (setting the benchmark for the private sector), a cap for those claiming benefits, thinly veiled union baiting and no return of public services carved up by the current government, services people rely on.
As with One Nation Toryism, we are being bound to a hostile project.