Thoughts for the Brain

What is Marxism? It is historical materialism as a means to progressively change the world. Why does Marxism as a political movement centre on the working class? Because of its position firstly as in independent class with its own aims, second because of its essential role in creating wealth, third because it owns no property in the means of production when it assumes power it has no other group to oppress or exploit, therefore workers power can be used as a means to escape to a classless society.

When we define working class we must insist on wage labour being the key determinant and not things like education or dress or personal consumption. Useful though this may be it is paper abstraction . There is no one who is simply a wage worker. People who insist we are working class and working class only get nowhere. Such an idea can pander to various prejudices, i.e. by suggesting women workers, ethnic or religious minority workers, LGBT workers etc must get over their petty oppression and deal with 'real' working class issues.

What defines wage labour? I remember thinking through why socialists advocate class analysis rather than patriarchy theory. The answer being the former relates to economics while the latter relates to ideology and of course men as a whole do not exploit women as a whole (exploit being the key word, rather than oppress). The former is more immediately economic than the latter but we would be abandoning historical materialism to insist there is an ideology without a basis. Wage labour is in part determined by women's oppression, as it is by racism, homophobia or any other systematic prejudice you can name.

So long as we're clear exploitation is the foundation of capitalism there is nothing wrong with trying to incorporate aspects patriarchy theory into Marxism.

I like the cut of Roobin's jib

Especially the Marxist appreciation of Marshal McLuhan. Top notch stuff!

In case you didn't know (but do care)...

Both Keith and I are in full agreement with this and this.

Right-wing sectarianism

Sectarianism is bemoaned on the left. Too many socialist parties not enough socialists. Everyone's sectarian, except me. You get the picture?

It's interesting, actually, but there is a proliferation of groups on the right as well, much less commented on. The breakdown of the Tories popular base is well documented. The decline of Toryism is covered, for now, by the convergence of the mainstream parties. The Lib Dems support the current government and the Labour party doesn't really oppose it. The general logjam in our society stems from the fact all significant civil society groups are, in some way, tied up with the mainstream parties.

The breakdown is also occurring on the right. There is the UKIP which currently has around 10% support in opinion polls. It will take many hard Tory votes but unless something very odd happens it won't win any seats at the next general election however. There is the NF, the BNP and the British Freedom party on the fascist right, the BFP is a splinter from the BNP, which in was a split from the NF. In street fighting of course the Infidels have are a split from the EDL. From the sublime to the ridiculous, former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie has suggested forming a Southern Party to represent, well, people like him living in and around London.

The continual breakdown of political formations possibly lends credence to the idea of petty caesarism as the dominant force in modern politics. 

Tuppence for the war

It's hard to know what to say about the Israeli onslaught in Gaza that hasn't already been said. This is the fourth such assault the Israeli state has carried out on its neighbours I think in ten years. Lenin's Tomb is of course doing a bang up job. Shabogan Graffiti has some excellent posts on the barbaric propaganda coming out of the BBC. 

At a surface level it's an utter paradox why the right would hate such a consistent and successful establishment propaganda tool. We forget sometimes that the ruling class (with its competing empires) is not homogeneous. It needs a state in part to make fractions of the class, such as the network of power round News International, knuckle under for the greater bourgeois good. It needs accepted 'neutral' ideological outlets. The BBC is neutral when it comes to intra ruling class conflicts. It is though fiercely partisan when it comes to class on class conflict, state on state conflict.

Only six or so weeks ago he Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu was in the United Nations shilling for war on Iran. It seems he'll have to make do with kicking the Palestinians, again. He'll get all the help he could ask from the BBC.

This is also a test for the Arab Spring, especially the Egyptians. This is the Egyptian IS statement on the war:

“Today the Zionist enemy is preparing a ground attack on Gaza. But Egyptian gas still flows to Israel, the Rafah border crossing is still closed—and the Camp David agreement remains in force. 

“Why are Morsi, his advisers, ministers and organisation waiting? They should put in practice what they always preached before coming to power—cutting all ties with the Zionist enemy, abolishing the Camp David agreement, deploying the Egyptian army in Sinai and permanently reopening the Rafah crossing.”

Thoughts for the Brain - petty caesarism...

An interesting article on Lenin’s Tomb a few weeks ago on the conjuncture in Britain introduced the idea of Petty Caesarism. It is a fascinating idea, debatable, but better than the continued assertion “this is a weak government”. Oh really, how is a government that is able to carry out its programme almost unencumbered weak?

The definition of Caeasarism, at least on Wikipedia centres on notions of charismatic leadership, personality cults and military rule. It would be transparently mad to apply that definition anywhere in Europe, let alone Britain. Fortunately Antonio Gramsci expanded the term. In his Prison Notebooks the term also can denote the convergence of party programmes, coalition government, national government and technocratic rule, the last is very important in somewhere like Greece.

The key point here is that social conflict either ceases or is brought to a stalemate, allowing an otherwise unrepresentative portion of society, be it the officer class or the banking or political elite to rule without the use of formal or informal democratic means, formerly considered essential. In other words - stasis. In Greece this is the result of rather intense class struggle. In Britain, if it exists, it is the result of weak or at least one-sided conflict. Further elaboration is perhaps needed.

The point I’m getting to is it made me reflect on a fact of the anti-fascist struggle (the following btw is not a justification of the LT article, just inspired by it). Unite Against Fascism and the English Defence League are clear cut manifestations of two different and opposing sides of civil society. The former is urban, multicultural (specifically anti-racist) and collective, the latter is suburban and rural, mono-cultural (racist) and petty.

The two groups represent two significant trains of thought in our society, yet the numbers of people actively battling it out are quite small. It regularly took tens of thousands to defeat the NF and BNP. It took at the most 4,000 to turn the EDL back in Walthamstow, and that has been the high-point of anti-fascist mobilisation this time round so far.

Compare this to ten years ago when Stop the War and the Countryside Alliance held similar marches within a week of each other, hundreds of thousands strong. It is a perverse fact but now the stakes have been raised people seem more reluctant than ever to take action. The Labour Party may have lost the will and the ways to mobilise against the far-right, or against anything, but it still sits there like the biggest boulder in the highway, and there is no sustained effort to remove it or go round.

This reluctance to come out is the basis of Petty Caesarism in Britain, if it exists. Power is so well insulated from the population the ruling class’s response to any challenge is, more or less, “what’re you going to do about it?”

On a weird week in politics...

I was going to post a comment on Lenin's Tomb, that ever fascinating and engaging website, the acknowledged home of internet Bolshevism (thank you: that'll be my usual fee), but something seems to be up with the comment boxes. Here's what I was going to say on the Tories Retreat... what's the odds it's going to be impressionistic and downbeat?

What an odd situation. The big battalions of class struggle supposed to fight these contests seem confused, enervated and perhaps paralysed. This leaves room for little flying squads of electricians and trotskyists to score victories. The trouble is irregular detachments struggle to alter the big picture. The NHS Bill is still alive, the breakup of comprehensive education is still going ahead, the housing benefit cap is still being fitted. Workfare may not be compulsory any more for 16-24 year olds (great!), but it's still compulsory for the long term unemployed and the sick (who can be asked to give unlimited slave labour).

Ye gods, it's going to take a lot to bring down this zombie government.

Wow, it was what the world was waiting for, wasn't it?

I can haz anti-capitalist transition?

Fans of da ant-capitalist transition mites also appreciate this.