Jeremy Corbyn is the Future of Britain, and his Movement will be the Future for Humankind

British politics and the state of our country is nothing short of appalling, relative to our wealth we appear to be living in some sort of warped dystopian future where it is acceptable that the rich can pay no taxes whilst the poor struggle to survive. We have gone through six years of ideologically fuelled austerity, we are selling off all our publicly paid for services to the Tories wealthy mates, hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to use food banks, Inequality is at a record high, we are seeing what is left of our rights being ripped away by this Tory government, and we can do absolutely nothing about it. The sense of powerlessness is pretty dam overwhelming. 

First of all, we need to identify why the right of the labour party are part of the problem. It appears to be more and more obvious that the liberal media / current political spheres have no real understanding of the true antagonisms in today’s society, and it becomes pretty tedious to argue against all these “well educated” liberals, who do nothing but talk down to you with a bunch of neoclassical economics and tell us that “there is no alternative” or “things aren’t that bad”. For me personally, in the recent past I have fallen victim to devaluing myself and my opinions because they don’t fit in with the current conventional wisdom. But the more I read, and the more these sorts of events, such as Brexit, Trump, and the rise of Corbyn / Sanders happen, the less the political narrative is able to convince.

Neoliberalism has dominated British politics since the 1970’s, and it still dominates politics now. The current right of the labour party, or “Blairites” or whatever you want to call them, are looking to solve societies problems within the parameters of this ideology. Which to put it bluntly is relying on business and the market to come to the rescue and save the country. Whether or not they happen to believe this, or are simply getting rich and laying the foundations for future careers, is kind of irrelevant. What matters is that there is no answer to the current economic crisis within the scope of this strand of thought. 

I mean the argument for privatisation in 2016, what really is it? Do people really believe that only the market can lead to an efficiently ran service? And that the market can only provide innovation and progression? It seems fairly obvious that the major contradiction in privatisation vs publicly ran services is profit. Despite all the reasons they tell you we need to privatise our services, the underlying reason that someone like Richard Branson would want to own our rail network is for profit. Profit comes from one of two places, the consumer, or the worker. Now handing off all our services to a group of people that pursues an ideology that needs to get profit at the expense of the worker and consumer, isn’t going to have a beneficial outcome for either. So already it’s clear that privatisation will not have a beneficial outcome for the people using or providing the services, so what are the other reasons? Innovation and efficiency? Implying the market is the only way to provide an efficient service is ridiculous, there is nothing that current technology cannot do in the sense of planning, that can only arise from the market. Simply monitoring consumption is all that is needed to make projections. As for innovation, just imagine what a team of maybe 10-20 people could do if they were hired for the sole purpose of creating a service which is cheap and beneficial for everyone using it, do people honestly think this is how the market drives innovation?  Capitalism does one thing, accumulates capital and reproduce itself, it will do this at the expense of anything and anyone. 

I think the major problem in today’s politics is that we no longer have democracy, we have an oligopoly of people who either don’t give a shit about normal people, or have no idea of the desperate state of our country and economy. Personally I think it’s the first option, but regardless, the past 8 years has shown that this class of people are incapable of responding to the crisis in a way that normal people don’t suffer at the expense of the rich. Because that part is no longer questionable, it is simply what has happened.

This is where Jeremy Corbyn comes in. He is literally the only person who addresses the true contradiction in society today, and that is capital vs people. There is not a single party other than maybe the greens who if elected would move outside of the current neoliberal paradigm, and moving out of the current paradigm is literally the ONLY way to fix the current problems in our society. We have to remember that Neoliberalism supports the side of the corporations, the bankers, big business. You literally cannot be on the side of those institutions and represent the interest of the people, it is not possible.

Moving forward, the Corbyn / Sanders movements are the only path to a none dystopian future, and that isn’t me being dramatic, it is just hard facts. The pursuit of profit isn’t going to solve climate change, it isn’t going to solve the refugee crisis, it isn’t going to stop war, it isn’t going to stop terrorism, it isn’t going to stop rising inequality, it isn’t going to stop homelessness, and it isn’t going to stop any of the other problems that it is in some way responsible for in society. This is why when I talk to people who don’t like Corbyn, I simply ask “why?”. The responses are all the same; “he is unelectable”, “he can’t be trusted with the economy”, “he is too soft on immigration” and a whole variety of other reasons. However what people fail to realise is these are all reasons within the current paradigm of neoliberalism, and to be honest, nobody could run for any seriously political position on Jeremy’s platform and not get the exact same treatment he has received in the media, which paradoxically fuels the self-fulfilling prophecy of his “unelectablitlity”. 

What the current liberals fail to understand is that the current political establishment, and its mechanisms it has in place to stop anyone like Jeremy Corbyn coming to power, is handing over Brexit to the likes of the Tories, and Donald Trump to America. They seem unwilling to accept that their ideology is failing to the point where people are becoming so disillusioned that Trump and Brexit are the sensible choices. As I have said many times, the left liberals need to join Corbyn, and the liberals on the right need to join the Tories. Anything short of that will lead to a UKIP Tory coalition in 2020. 

Jeremy Corbyn has stepped outside of the current political paradigm, and he has stud up for people that haven’t been represented in nearly 40 years, and for that I am forever grateful. The amount of courage it must have taken to stand up to the whole political establishment and the elite class, whilst not once showing any sign of weakness or hesitation is nothing short of heroic. The space that Corbyn has helped create for a true progressive may change the discourse of our nation, and quite frankly the right of the party should be ashamed of themselves. The constant sabotage of Jeremy Corbyn is a last ditch spineless attempt to put a lid on his movement, and in the mean time they are fuelling fascism and handing off our country to the far right. Right now it appears obvious that these snakes are doing nothing but trying to discredit and hinder Jeremy’s courageous movement, and if they refuse to get on board, they should be shown the same ruthless disregard for the rules that thousands of Labour members were shown during the past two leadership elections.

One thing is for sure, the current events in America have shown that we all have one of three choices; Socialism, Fascism, or more of the same.  Only one of those options has the answer to the problems we face today, and the only thing we have to do is try and get their before it’s too late. The election of Donald Trump has proven that with support our elected leader could do address these problems, and this is what scares the shit out of the establishment. It appears Trump will just be more of the same, but it’s important to realise that the only reason the political establishment was flipping out so uncontrollably was because they are losing their grip on the people, and with the power of solidarity behind a progressive movement, they don’t stand a chance.

Dependency Theory, Immigrants, and Hate

After first discovering Marx a couple of years ago I soon began to realise just how valuable of a tool Marxist analysis is for discovering the antagonisms in today’s society. I’ve never had a problem with refugees or immigrants personally. Often you hear people say things such as “You can walk through town and not hear a word of English bla bla bla,” personally I’ve always thought that was pretty cool, that so many people from around the world have chosen my country to live in. It made me proud to be British. 

I think the shit that immigrants and people of other religions get in our country is nothing short of disgusting. And what annoys me the most is that people can be so blind with hate of “the other” that they will overlook tax avoiding billionaires, and vote for warmongering political leaders, and then lose their shit when people from other countries that we bomb or exploit want to live here. I think the thing that benefitted me most about Marxism is that I no longer see Us (British) vs them (not British), but I see the rich people in each country as a group, and the poor people in each country as a group.

That’s what dependency theory is all about really. The rich countries stay rich at the expense of the poor countries, and whether we like it or not, our lifestyle is upheld by the exploitation of cheaper labour of people the international system deems less valuable than us. I mean I’m not saying we’re all terrible people, It’s not like we have much a choice, it is a lifestyle we are born into, and one that we become indoctrinated and reliant on at a young age.

But the problem I have is our attitude towards our fellow human beings who are also being oppressed by the exact same system that oppresses us.  We as a country only have our wealth due to imperialism, war, exploitation and slavery, we shouldn’t be allowed to carry on exploiting these people whilst turning them away from a better life. The British empire is nothing to be proud of, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of, all we have to do is recognise the imbalance that is currently present in today’s society due to our ancestor’s choices. We need to re-balance the scales, and we need to do our best to help all other nations of whom we colonised, stole resources from, and exploited to develop and progress in any way they see fit, and this should be at our expense.

But I think we’re pretty far from achieving reparations for the countries that we pillaged in the past. Instead we are upholding a system that is just as oppressive as it ever was. Not a single British person can benefit from the wealth we have exploited, and the labour we continue to exploit in the poorer countries in the world, and then tell immigrants and people of whom contribute to our way of life to “fuck off back to their own country”.

After what Europe and America have done to the poorer countries and their governments in the past 70 years, not a single person seeking refuge or a better life from those countries should be marginalized and systemically demonized by large parts of the population. We have staged countless Coup d'état’s in countries with socialist or communist governments, we have destabilized any government who wouldn’t play ball with American capitalism, we are responsible for the rise in terrorism and deaths of countless innocent people in the countries we bomb and invade, and then when people from these countries risk their lives to get to safety, we show them nothing but hate. I can’t articulate just how angry this makes me. To have your whole way of life being upheld by the exploitation and slavery of others, and if they try to seek a better life they become the enemy.

Britain and the West’s imperialist attitude has been instilled so deeply into society and intertwined with liberalism, that the new forms of oppression are appearing in globally accepted norms. The only way to explain this is that the elite class in each country care more about each other and themselves, than they do about the poor in their respective countries. They all collude to maintain this way of life, making sure that their relative gains to people in their country will remain at a maximum at all times. This is why governments and the ruling classes in poorer countries sell their resources cheap, if they are allowed to stay in power by the western governments, they can be free to exploit their country as much as they want. It also explains why anytime a socialist or communist party comes into power, they are soon overthrown with the help of America and Europe. Less wealth will be going to the important nations if those socialist leaders are sharing it all out with their poor people. 

Solidarity is the key. We need to understand the global antagonisms of capitalism are all connected and upheld by the same class of people in each country, and showing solidarity with our fellow 90% in other less wealthy nations is the only way forward for the left. Almost all cultural antagonisms and hate is spewed out by the interests of the top 10%, and as long as they have divided nations and divided populations, they will continue to win the game that is global capitalism.

Corbyn’s Labour, Ukip, Brexit, and the Direction of the Left

Corbyn’s Labour, Ukip, and Brexit

Since last summer something quite magnificent has happened in the British Labour party. Jeremy Corbyn has started a movement that has seen him to victory in two labour leadership elections and saw the party base increase to be the largest party in Europe. Corbyn not only had to battle against the mind numbing press, but also against the entire political establishment, including regular attempts from his MPs to undermine his leadership and sabotage the people’s movement. 

This post is about addressing the values of the movement, and what we as a collective should be striving towards. Also there appears to be a lot of separation surrounding Brexit, so this post will also aim to offer an alternative approach to the situation, one of which unites us all around the underlying antagonisms responsible for the conditions of which people like Donald Trump and Nigel Farage thrive. 

First of all, I think it’s imperative that we all understand that not ALL people who support Brexit and Trump are the enemy. If we hope to unite against the threat of fascism and the extreme right we need to identify the commonalities in the Brexit / Trump movement with the Sanders / Corbyn movement.

Since the US dropped the gold standard and we adopted neoliberal economics as the new norm, there has been a violent contradiction between government and people. Every single party that has been in power since Thatcher has adopted a neoliberal economic stance, and although there is often lively debate within the tiny parameters of Neoliberalism, as a whole the government has become a mediator for the business classes.  The same thing is happening all throughout Europe and the Americas.

Since the beginning of Capitalism people have suffered, and as David Harvey often says, Capital doesn’t solve its own contradictions, it just moves them around. And that is what it has done for the past 40 years. The problem we face is that we now have nowhere to go. We have tried the Keynesian strategy of wage driven growth, and we have tried the neoliberal strategy of debt driven growth, and they both throw up their own contradictions that leads to recession and social unrest. The neoliberal economic order has never done what it was supposed to, even in times of vast growth all the profits were extremely centralized. What we are currently seeing is the public losing trust in the current political establishment, and like what happened in America, we saw just how quickly the false media narrative can come crashing down.

The current political establishment is in direct contradiction with the well-being of the people, you can represent capital or you can represent the people, but you can’t do both. This is what Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders stand for. This is why there are movements going on in most countries in Europe like Podemos in Spain, or Syriza in Greece. These are all responses to the disillusionment with the current political paradigm, and these movements offer real hope for the future.

That being said, as the economic system is decaying, nations are falling into nationalism and fascism. And as it stands, like in America, the neoliberals are successfully sabotaging and stifling the progressive social movements. The DNC screwed Bernie Sanders out of the nomination in the same way the neoliberals in Labour are trying to screw over Jeremy Corbyn.

Now this is where we need to get serious. Trump / Brexit fed off popular unrest and disillusionment with the current political elites, and they ran a campaign of fear and hate against the current neoliberal establishment, and they are leading our countries down an extremely dark path (one of which will solve very little unless you really dislike people who aren't the same as you). Jeremy Corbyn represents the people in this equation, unlike Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson who are a different version of the same oppressive force responsible for the social unrest in society. The leave campaign were all part of the same political class trying to screw over average people, but they were perusing change within the current parameters of the failing system. I mean sure we can leave the EU, but we are still going to be governed by the same business forces that controlled us in the EU, just like Trump is filling his cabinet with big business after running a campaign opposing them. If you voted Brexit or if you voted remain it really doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do next.

I don’t think we should oppose Brexit, or try to overturn it. The reasons for leaving don’t matter, because at the end of the day it represented the cry of an oppressed nation. What matters is 16 million people voted to leave, and we have to respect that. If we overturn it all that will happen is the people who voted Brexit will never vote again, and they are the people we need in our movement. The Brexit argument is pretty irrelevant to be honest. People are going to be worse off, that is a fact. The Eu is by far our largest trading partner, and after all this is said and done it still will be. All that is going to happen is that we are going to get worse deals than we did prior to leaving, and we lose our position of influence. But this is our fault, this is our fault for not reaching those people. We need to make them understand why immigrants and refugees aren’t the problem, and unite them against the Tories of whom are fucking us all. If UKIP and Farage are getting the message to the working class better than we are, it is our fault. We need to come to terms with the current political landscape and realise that complaining about the biased media and corrupt politicians isn’t going to do anything. On that same note, simply telling people they are brainwashed or racist doesn’t really help either. 

The left NEED to bring the underlying social antagonisms to the forefront of the debate, because at the end of the day, people are soon going to see that fascism doesn’t have the answer. This political / economic model cannot provide for the people who are currently struggling in society and things will only get worse. It is either Socialism or fascism going forwards, I’ve said it before, the neoliberals and “centrists” need to make a choice, Classical / Neoliberalism = Tories / Ukip, Social liberalism = Corbyn. There is no time left, if the right is allowed to continue being a cancer within the labour party, we are going to see a UKIP / Tory coalition in 2020. 

Donald Trump, Brexit, A New Left?

I’ve been wanting to start a political blog for a while now, but with lack of motivation and overwhelming sense of hopelessness surrounding my political outlook, I’ve put it off until now. Being British and not really sure what I wanted to happen with Brexit, I was pretty distraught when we left, it seemed that xenophobia and racism had prevailed over the common sense approach to Europe and the single market. At the time the only thing that seemed to matter was that people would be worse off if we left, and the reasons we did leave were constructed in racism, false promises and flat out lies. But like many people at the time, I was preoccupied with the symptoms and consequences of Brexit, but not the underlying cause. I guess this is the reason that I’ve eventually decided to do this blog, as it has become perfectly clear that the current paradigm of contemporary capitalism cannot solve the problems in society that we are currently facing. People are starting to become disillusioned with the current political establishment, they know people like Hillary are corrupt and that she represents the class of people who are benefiting at the expense of everyone else.

I know I am not alone in the way I see the world, and as the liberal narrative has clearly failed, I think there is a conceptual space open for this kind of thought.  I think we really need to value what Marx was saying over 150 years ago, as he pretty much called / predicted / explained everything that is happening with capitalism today. Marx has taken a beating in the mainstream over the past few decades, because even though most neutral academics tend towards the left, Business and Economics are dominated by the current hegemonic ideology, which has been Neoliberalism for the past 40 years. This creates and reproduces the elite class of whom need to follow the accepted political norms if they wish to succeed.

 I won’t go into this here, but one of my main problems with liberalism is that it tries to be this all-encompassing ideology that appeals to everyone. This takes the form of positive and negative freedom. The idea is that negative freedom means you won’t have anything blocking you from achieving your goals, whereas positive freedom would supply you with the means needed to achieve your goals. This takes the form of the welfare state vs the free market. Classic / Neoliberals believe that we should have a meritocracy (which doesn’t exist by the way) in which the strong and intelligent flourish, and that it would be an infringement on their freedom to have their well-deserved money taxed for the less able in society. Then the social liberals argue that money and capital give you a huge advantage in a capitalist society, and the playing field needs to be even to give everyone a chance to succeed. As you can see, these two propositions are in direct contradiction, you can’t have both. This leads to some sort of shitty compromise in which the political class enables the rich to get away with paying as little as possible, and then exploits and divides the population as much as remaining electable allows. 

Politics is such a mess, none of them know what they are doing, they are all just actors defending money interests. As Bill Clinton said over 20 years ago “my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Anyone who tells you “Capitalism is the only way” or “capitalism is the best of bad systems” are living in some sort of utopian fantasy in which Capitalism can overcome its own contradictions. As Zizek often says “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of Capitalism”. I mean if you think about the connotations of that statement, you will not only discover that it is true, but when searching for the driving factors as to why it is true, it comes down to pure greed of the few, at the expense of the many. If we want something better, It’s time to start fighting for it.

Ok now getting to the main point of which this article was supposed to address, which is the Trump / Brexit phenomena. The next step for the left is very important, we need to identify the current antagonisms in society, and we need to form a movement addressing them directly. We need to overlook our cultural differences, and focus our energy on electing people like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie sanders, and not continue to stifle and discredit the movements and the progressive values they represent. As the activist and reporter John Pilger said “the media created Trump,” which I think if you look at the discourse since the beginning of the GOP nomination, is true. The Clinton emails even admit that they pushed for candidates like Trump to lead the republican establishment more to the right. Obviously this is due to the extreme right wing nature of Hillary Clinton and the Neoliberals politics. Hillary needed the GOP candidate to be as far to the right as possible if she had any chance whatsoever to appear as the progressive candidate. To be honest the DNC played a dangerous game and overestimated the strength of the ruling class in a time of mass hardship.  The DNC started the ball rolling, and Donald Trump grabbed it and ran. By the time he was starting to get mass support it was already too late (unless they let Sanders run obviously). The political elites assumed that people would be persuaded by celebrities and all the other rich people in society, acting as if people who have a shit life and no future give a toss what the high flying “winners” of society think. Trump tapped into something, something of which he is going to spend the rest of his presidency trying to supress.

Although Brexit and Corbyn aren’t the same as Trump and Sanders, I think it’s extremely important for the left to understand the similarities on an abstract level, and recognise the underlying antagonisms of which are creating the environment for Trump and Brexit to succeed. These antagonisms stem from the decaying Neoliberal economic order of the past 40 years. This is giving rise to both fascist and socialist movements across Europe, with the current political class unable to offer any form of resolution, as they are an inherent part of the problem.

Seeing the whole political narrative in America collapse overnight may be one of the most satisfying things to ever happen in my lifetime. Not only did it show the lack of control and direction that the current political elites have, but it showed just how easy a media narrative can come crashing down. I genuinely believe that if we can get rid of the people trying to hinder the social movements, we will be able to progress to something beyond Capitalism, and if not, we can definitely achieve some sort of meaningful change.  Although people highlight the differences between Corbyn and Sanders, they are very much the same, they offer the same sort of socialist package, and have mass support among people disillusioned with contemporary politics. People are starting to realise that the politicians don’t represent them, they represent the forces that are directly responsible for their economic oppressions. The right of the labour party need to stop stifling Corbyns movement, because it isn’t going to go away. Neoliberalism will not bring better living standards, these people aren’t going to suddenly forget they are being oppressed and have a shit life.

Although I said the left need to recognise the problems of contemporary politics, the centralists also need to realise the dire situation that we find ourselves in. The ideology of the past 40 years is no longer working, and the liberals need to choose a side, either a progressive form of socialism like Corbyn, or end up with a fascist UKIP Conservative coalition. I very much question the extent to which left wing neoliberals even exist, but for the ones that claim to want to help people, if you continue to stifle Corbyn’s movement, we will end up retreating into fascism.

Alain Badiou hit’s the note on this whole situation extremely well. He argues that the contradiction between Clinton and Trump was a fake one, and that they both represent a future within the current paradigm. Whereas Bernie sanders vs Trump, or even Bernie Sanders vs Clinton was the true contradiction. It was the movement that was addressing the economic antagonisms of which created the conditions for Trump to get elected. But it already appears Trump is going back on everything he said, and is filling his cabinet up with business interests. I don’t like making predictions, but I think that Trump will cut out all the bullshit comments now, he will still be a little different, and break the fourth wall now and again, but ultimately I think we will just see an America drift to the right, and nothing much really change. – However I do foresee a small percentage of Trumps supporters making minorities lives hell, and although I don’t think Trump will support it, I think he will silently let it happen. Hopefully this inspires enough people, of both Republic and Democratic origins to come together and support Bernie Sanders and a brighter future.