Jeremy Corbyn has taken a hard line on so called ‘Hard Brexit’ despite the fact it will mean further attacks on the rights of migrant workers and undermine the living standards of working people. In Parliament he tried to get an amendment to the Queens Speech passed saying that the UK should get a deal with the UK at least as good as what we have now that we are part of the European single market and customs union. That amendment failed, as he knew it would since Labour doe not have a majority of seats in parliament.
Then in the same day another member of the Labour Party introduced another amendment which also failed, which said explicitly that Britain should not leave the Single Market. Corbyn banned Labour MPs from voting for it and punished those that disobeyed him by firing them from their jobs the next day. This was widely reported in the news, but of course many radical Corbyn supporters do not read the news, preferring a view of reality based more on wishful thinking than observable fact.
I did not write anything here about Corbyn’s betrayal over Brexit while the election was going on, because after all I wanted Labour to win the election, and in the highly charged atmosphere of the campaign, any criticism of Corbyn might be seen as a help to the Tories. But the election is over now, and there probably won’t be another one for at least a year, so we can start to get our critical thinking hats on once again.
I have never believed in Jeremy Corbyn’s ideology, despite believing that it is better for someone with his ideology to be leader of the Labour party than someone with an even worse one. I also have never believed that Labour being in government would lead to ‘socialism’ in any meaningful sense somehow coming about, despite the fact I would prefer Labour to be in power than the likely alternative which is of course much worse.
The whole point of ‘Anarchist Momentum’ is to give a space for people to say “I support Corbyn, but…..” and not get shouted at by rabid dogs who feel their master is under threat. Momentum does not seem to offer such a space, and the official Labour party is even worse, being as it is – full of petit-bourgeois liberals.
For those of us who see Socialism as being something that happens despite governments not because of them, whether we call ourselves Anarchists, Autonomists, Libertarian Communists, or whatever, and yet believe that there are tactical reasons for supporting Jeremy Corbyn, it is vitally important that we lay down clearly to what extent we support him, but at the same time also explain our critiques of what he stands for – capitalism. We must make clear to what extent we see him as a traitor, while recognising that he is one we are stuck with for now and have no choice but to support.
The facts are these: we live in a world with a globalised capitalist economy, which has been formed over many hundreds of years, during which time there has been constant class struggle. Revolutionary socialist internationalism played a big role in the history of Capitalism, and influenced the way it developed in positive and negative ways. One of the positive effects of organised working class movements around the world self-consciously working together over many generations based on a shared socialist internationalist philosophy, was that international standards of labour, environmental and other protections exist, which actually materially have improved the conditions of life for many people.
The development of globalised capitalism has therefore been a contradictory one: at the same time as bourgeois liberal internationalism creates a capitalist monster to devour more and more parts of the globe, ripping apart what existed before, working-class socialist internationalism also tries to bring about a positive world based on global solidarity to rip apart capitalism, even before capitalism is finished taking over the world.
But what was there before capitalism? What is it that globalisation destroys so forcefully? Nation-states. Monarchies. Systems based on slavery. Patriarchal villages. All the accumulated ignorance and brutality of 10,000 years of human civilisation, of 100,000 years of savage human culture. So why the fuck would we ever want to go back?
‘Let the bourgeoisie blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history, for we carry a new world in our hearts thats grows bigger each moment’ said Durutti. Capitalism is a nihilistic, destructive vortex smashing apart a world of prisons, and socialism is the weeds and flowers that grow in the rubble.
What has this got to do with Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit? Isn’t it obvious?
Brexit’s ‘Take Back Control’ and Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ were populist slogans. ‘Populist’ is basically another word for “Stupid”. Rich, educated people sit around in rooms and think ‘what do poor stupid people believe in?’ and then they write it down and send it to the t-shirt making companies.
Another word we could use would be ‘reactionary’. If Hitler is getting his head cut off by the axe of a time-travelling Jew from the future, he will probably flinch. This flinching is a ‘Reaction’. Now there is nothing nice about an axe, like there is nothing nice about capitalism. But if it destroys something really bad, that is holding back a beautiful future, you could call it “progressive’.
But just like Jews, Gyspies, Gays and Communists can’t go back in time to destroy Hitler, Britain and America can not go back to the 19th or 20th centuries respectively when they were global empires with loads of poor brown people dying of hunger while working to enable annoying ugly white old people in New England and the Home Counties play golf and listen to bad music.
Brexit is a totally reactionary, stupid, STUPID, reaction against globalisation, wanting to go back instead of forwards. Sometimes you get hit by a car and it totally destroys you whole face. Thats capitalists globalisation, that car crash. You may want to go back to the time when your face was good. But its not going to happen. Socialism is the agonising process of building a new face for yourself out of scar tissue and maybe some prosthetic nose bones.
Britain has to look at where it really is right now, without a face, bloody and bruised on the side of the fucking road. We have cut down most of the trees, made air deadly to breathe in the cities, let grass grow all over land that could feed hundred of millions if used for vegetables, and let most of our factories crumble away. We can perfectly well build some kind of functioning democratic socialist system out of what we have got here, but not without the help of likeminded and generous people all over the world. We’re gonna be living off relief packages from Africa soon, not the other way around.
So how are we gonna get lots of nice foreigners to have solidarity with us poor, despised, self-loathing wretches in the British workforce? Is it by telling them to all fuck off, even if they’ve lived here years? Is it by saying we don’t want to let them sell their stuff to us, or buy ours, unless we can reserve the right to tell them to fuck off in the future?
I really don’t think so. Even if I agreed with Jeremy Corbyn that capitalism is fine as long as the State borrows money from bankers and invests in industry so that enough workers can afford to buy shit they don’t need to keep the rich getting richer forever, i still would disagree with him about Brexit. The economy has to grow if there are going to be taxes raised to pay for investment in industry, and those industries have to have people in other countries to buy and sell things to. The Corbyn plan for capitalism will not work. He does not have a plan for socialism, just for the State tossing us a few scraps.
I want us to have those scraps. Those scraps would be really great, they would. We could use them to empower ourselves to rebel against the system and keep on building structures of solidarity to solve our problems and replace capitalism with socialism one day. I do not think scraps should be sneezed at, but we should not pretend they are a healthy meal.
Corbyn is wrong on Brexit, whether you are a social democrat, keynesian left liberal type, or a revolutionary socialist internationalist. Any ‘socialism’ that aligns itself with a reactionary and impossible project is not worth the name and will only turn more working class people away from even learning what the word really means.
So Vote Labour when there is an election, Vote for the most left wing leader of the Labour party when you get the chance to, but never stop fighting capitalism or identifying people as making stupid fucking decisions when they do.
If you want, write a letter to Labour party leaders urging them to adopt a position where they will stay in the single market and customs union, using less angry language than I have.
But the main point is hopefully clear. Capitalism helped smash a few borders, even though its shit, but it would be more shit to build those borders up again. Lets smash more down, and capitalism itself at the same time. No Brexit, No Borders, No Bourgeois Bullshit.
Anarchist Momentum 