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Where I grew up on the Sussex coast the Labour Party didn’t exist. All the available work was casualised and seasonal and as a result there was no working class organisation of any kind. No class consciousness. As a result everyone voted, against their interests, for the Tories. https://twitter.com/MirrorPolitics/status/1205507165890498561
They voted Tory because they didn’t want to stick out, because of their deference, because of their fear of freedom, and because of their desire to hurt those marginally poorer and weaker than themselves.
They had voted Tory forever and they are still voting Tory now. They will always vote Tory because they desire their own oppression.
Now exactly the same attitude has grown up in the north of England. This is what has given Johnson this victory. This total collapse of class consciousness amongst the casualised workers on zero-hours contracts in the gig-economy.
The so called ‘red wall’ seats lost this time will never be coming back to labour. Ever. Worse, more of them will be lost, permanently, unless very radical change happens to Labour as party and movement.
It won’t be enough to go back to fighting the Tories in the media (the key to Blairite success), even though that will be necessary, because the collapse of class consciousness cannot be reversed by the action of the media.
The more intense casualisation becomes the more Tory the poorest and most oppressed get. The more they resemble the poor Tory voters I grew up with.
First of two anecdotes from Paulo Freire:
Second:
Both from Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
In the first anecdote primary school teachers are burned to death by the very community they are serving and in the second the people cannot see their own place in the world. Both caused by total absence of class consciousness.
In the first anecdote primary school teachers are burned to death by the very community they are serving and in the second the people cannot see their own place in the world. Both caused by total absence of class consciousness.
The spectacular nature of the leadership cult during the Corbyn period was never going to address this issue (Corbynism - not Corbyn himself - is The Spectacle after all) because it was all just pop music marketing masquerading as politics and everyone could see it.
You can see the spectacular nature of Corbynism in its adherents and propagandists on the platform media. Their YouTube channels, magazines, Patreon accounts, and TV appearances are proof enough.
Corbynism does not exist in the way Thatcherism or Blairism existed. It is pure hyperreality. It only existed in the platform media discourses of crowd size, Glastonbury, radicalism, and and in the simulacrum of leadership.
In truth the Labour Party of Corbyn was not very left wing. The shell shocked John McDonnnell was absolutely correct to say that Labour were in the political centre. Their programme was perfectly boring centre-left politics. The problem was the spectacle of radicalism.
The simulacrum of radicalism constructed by the inventors of Corbynism was for them. To make themselves feel better about being averagely centre-left. When they were so very desperate to be seen, in line with their self image, as the hot blooded cadres of revolution.
As a result Labour has just spent four entire years screaming at the terrified atomised oppressed that they, Labour, are the true agents of revolutionary change.
A cry that was not true (Corbyn’s Labour, because less internationalist, was slightly less left wing than Milliband’s) and absolutely counterproductive.
These atomised oppressed voted Tory because they didn’t want to stick out, because of their deference, because of their fear of freedom, and because of their desire to hurt those marginally poorer and weaker than themselves.
The Labour Party will not return to government in the UK (or whatever the fuck is left of it) until they find a way to win those very seats on the Sussex coast that I grew up in.
Labour has to do this because their is no working class in the UK (or whatever is left of it) anymore. The total collapse of class consciousness in the face of absolute casualisation means that there is just the atomised &terrified oppressed.
The mass and platform media acolytes of Corbynism (the hyperreality of Corbyn they all preferred to the reality of class analysis) will never ever realise this and they (with McCluskey’s baleful help) will paralysis the Labour Party for at least another election cycle.
They all want to talk about the working class and class politics because it is central to the stereotyped social role they are seeking to perform. The fact that the working class no longer exists is irrelevant to them.
For these acolytes of ‘Corbynism’ the working class has to exist (hyperreally) because otherwise they would have to confront the hideous social reality of the oppressed and they really don’t want to do that.
It is much safer for their very fragile personalities to hide within a phantasy. Either of a misremembered Keynesian past or a misunderstood radical present. That way they are never confronted by their own role in enacting that very oppression.
Who wants to be confronted by the reality of the oppressed when one has stage to appear on (be it Glastonbury or a TV studio), a camera before one, a book coming out, a podcast to record, a YouTube channel to populate with content, or a blog you are calling a magazine?
The novara mob are aware of the existence of the Sussex coast but only as a source of entirely disinterested examples of deprivation and not as a potential Labour target. A kind of poverty tourism.
None of the other acolytes appears to know that Britain, as an island, has a coast.
Corbynism (& indeed the actual Corbyn) has absolutely no interest in these massive zones of oppression where the oppressed vote, against their own interests, Tory.
‘Corbynism’ was a phantasy of a world in which the working class still existed and was riding to the rescue of the Labour Party. The apeal of this phantasy to the creature of The Spectacle is quite obvious. It is a great story to tell, especially now it is a tragedy.
This phantasy of radicalism is absolutely divorced from reality and that is why the acolytes gobbled it up and spat it back us.
This, therefore, is the existential crisis for Labour. Not Leave/Brexit, which is of course just a symptom of the total collapse of working class consciousness, but the complete eradication of the class the Labour Party was created to be the political expression of.
Any Labour Party that is not actively trying to WIN Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Worthing West, East Worthing and Shoreham, Hastings and Rye, and similar seats IS NOT even trying to form a government. Not now, not anymore.
Those very atomised terrified oppressed who now form the population of the so called ‘red wall’ seats HAVE ALWAYS been the people of the Sussex coast. Only when Labour can win on the Sussex coast, can win the votes of the atomised oppressed, can they form another government.
A Labour Party that rants and raves in its opium dreams about the working class and being the most radical ever IS NOT even trying to form a government. Not now.
This is why nationalisation means nothing to the voters. They are so atomised and terrified into their oppression that even the nation means nothing to them.
Similarly setting out to rebuild the steel industry is equally meaningless because those kinds of specialised technical working class jobs with proper unions and actual working class culture and consciousness are utterly and bewildering alien to the atomised oppressed.
Only when Labour is the Party not of the working class but of the atomised and terrified oppressed will they be able to form a government again.
If that happens (and the chances of another Labour government EVER AGAIN are currently zero) then perhaps in that process the working class might just be reborn. Possibly.
Labour never learned the lesson of the Sussex coast, which is that normally (throughout ALL human history) class relations were asymmetrical. That is a ruling class confronted an atomised and terrified oppressed. An oppressed who WERE NOT a class.
The symmetrical class relations that began (as EP Thompson so very clearly showed) to appear in the C18th and went on to be so significant in the C19th and early to mid-C20th WERE ABNORMAL. Where historically unique.
That even when they did exist they did not exist in a uniform and evenly distributed way. Symmetrical class relations NEVER existed in Sussex even in the late C19th.
Worse Labour REFUSED to see the historically contingent CONSTRUCTION of the working class in those HISTORICALLY ABNORMAL symmetrical class relations (which given they are supposed to be about the social and historical construction of reality is a shocking crime).
Could the acolytes of ‘Corbynism’ have known about this historical abnormality of symmetrical class relations? Why yes they could easily have worked it out. Especially if one had read Michael Mann’s The Sources of Social Power because this is key point made on P7 of volume 1.
Now Mann’s work is not for everyone. It is very long and highly technical historical sociology. Not everyone will have read it. Not everyone will have even heard of it. Yet one Dr Aaron Bastani has claimed to have read it. So perhaps he could have pointed this out to someone.
@threadreaderapp unroll
PS the New Socialist types are now indulging in an orgy of ‘working class this’ and ‘working class that’ and ‘extra-parliamentary the other’. Which is absolutely disgusting to watch but is of course entirely to be expected.
They and the Novara mob WILL NEVER catch on.
They and the Novara mob WILL NEVER catch on.
PS
It is a great book.
https://twitter.com/rykalski/status/1273740638077452291?s=21 https://twitter.com/Rykalski/status/1273740638077452291
https://twitter.com/rykalski/status/1273740638077452291?s=21 https://twitter.com/Rykalski/status/1273740638077452291
yet more working class this that and the other ...
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (who is an idiot Tory’s idea of what Gordon Brown was) is playing directly to this absence of the ‘working class’ with his horrendous restaurant food discount idea.
This ‘up to £10 off food per person’ gimmick maliciously excludes those unable to afford any sit down food because even though it is a pittance the atomised labourers will snap it up and feel good BECAUSE a large minority will not be able to have any.
Sunak understands this disintegration of the working class into an atomised mass of labourers far, far better than the so called left in the UK do. Sunak is literally feeding their hate of the poorest.
Let us be clear Sunak is economically incompetent (he would not be in Johnson’s government otherwise) but this is not a question of economics but of the hate the poor have been taught to feel for the immiserated.
It would have been cheaper and infinitely more effective for Sunak to have HMRC send everyone in the country some £50 restaurant vouchers so that EVERYONE could participate.
Sunak has done it this way because this is not about stimulating the economy. The economy is a secondary (at best) issue. The heart of this is harming the poorest.
Sunak is rubbing the noses of those who can’t afford restaurant food even with this discount coupon even further into the shit that the Tories have dumped all other us since 2010.
This is why Sunak’s approval ratings are high. Not because he is doing something (or even appearing to do something) for the economy but because he is grinding the protest into the dirt.
Consider this:
https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456?s=21 https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456
https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456?s=21 https://twitter.com/helenpidd/status/1281285770192531456
The section of society represented in this article is exactly the formation this thread started out with. What has the response been?
Have any of the reactionary pseudo-leftists with delusions of grandeur about their blogs, YouTube channels, and (bizarrely an actual zine) pieces any of it together? No of course not. Far to busy worming their way to a spot on Andrew Neil’s sofa.
This thread attracted the attention of a very odd account called Tinkerbell32112 which retweets the grotesquely disgusting SocialistVoice account and also had odd things to say about Jewish people. Go and have a look at their petulant ignorance to see a part of what went wrong.
Here is a Labour ‘metro mayor’ and former (Brownite) cabinet minister try and failing to work this all out.
https://twitter.com/andyburnhamgm/status/1290598882884431874?s=21 https://twitter.com/AndyBurnhamGM/status/1290598882884431874
https://twitter.com/andyburnhamgm/status/1290598882884431874?s=21 https://twitter.com/AndyBurnhamGM/status/1290598882884431874
... and another:
https://twitter.com/smithsmm/status/1290352031929184259?s=21 https://twitter.com/smithsmm/status/1290352031929184259
https://twitter.com/smithsmm/status/1290352031929184259?s=21 https://twitter.com/smithsmm/status/1290352031929184259
The disparity and exclusion IS THE POINT. The whole purpose of Tory policy is turn the weak on the weakest so that the weak don’t acknowledge how pathetically marginalised they are. The weak feel better because they get what the weakest don’t.
The Tories have been playing this same card for decades (this is what was erroneously called Thatcherism) but now they play it into a game where they are the only player.
By accident this simple technique is now magically effective because there is no working class consciousness to oppose this simple deflection of attention away from ones own pitiful positions on to the wretched.
Thatcher had to use the nuclear option of ‘the right to buy’ but Sunak can just chuck 12-15 days of slightly cheaper restaurant food at the same atomised masses to get the same support.
In the replies to the linked tweet there is pure denial of the problem. All that was necessary, according to this branch of magic, was for Remain not to exist and then the masses would flock to Corbyn and his Labour Party. https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1298865106252693504
The savagery of the hatred of the immiserated and atomised masses embedded in that magical thinking is repulsive.
All of those accounts flocking to announce how much they despise the atomised majority for being fearful and terrorised. Enacting that terror and fear as they do so.
Corbyn’s nativist propaganda around Leave/Brexit was a partial admission that the working class no longer exists. If only Corbyn, his office and the Labour Party could have realised this.
the whole anti-‘eastern’ European racism that fuelled Leave was more evidence of this end of the working class
The entire problem of Labour under Corbyn was that it could not see the world as it is. It could not see the world because it did not want to. For it to actually look at the world would have meant it having to give up on its phantasies.
They wanted to lead the working class (into what was never clear) and that would be impossible if there was no longer a working class. Best for them to shut their eyes and shout their slogans.
None of the jokes about Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Thomas Sankara were jokes. That is exactly how far, far too many of the people around Corbyn saw themselves. As revolutionary messiahs in waiting.
Having to look at the world and see that there was no working class to lead, indeed no coherent group of any kind to lead, would have meant ego death.
It is not as if by magic that this ‘working class’ bullshit appears. It actually is magic. The phrase ‘working class’ is as though an amulet or talisman through which the power can be wielded.
Cf: https://twitter.com/philipvasey1/status/1303656477396291585
Cf: https://twitter.com/philipvasey1/status/1303656477396291585
By intoning the mystic phrase ‘working class’ the golden future can be invoked and all actual work to understand the world can end.
It is absolutely essential that we all recognise that the working class no longer exists and that we have all moved back to the historical norm of asymmetrical class relations.
Anyone intoning the magic phrases ‘working class’ or ‘the working class’ is divorcing themselves from the world and retreating into comforting phantasy.
More of this here: https://twitter.com/Rykalski/status/1319660624490758145
The pattern is made even clearer by the Biden victory. The Populists know that their opponents are appealing to the wrong thing. Their is no working class vote to get out anymore because there is no working class. Just workers.
In recent elections in the UK and USA the more years of formal education a voter had the more likely to vote Labour or Democrat they were. This also held true for the 2016 Referendum in the UK.
People with fewer years of formal education voted, against their own interests, for Leave, for Trump, for Johnson. In the USA these very people have lost an astonishing amount in the four years of Trump. In the UK there were already loosing and will continue to do so until 2025.
The Tories will be in power in the UK until at least 2025 because the voters in the UK do not speak the same language as the Labour Party. By the time of the next scheduled UK election they will have been in power for 15 years and will have a very good chance of five more.
A Thatcher-Major period of dominance
Here two siting Labour MPs and one former one explicitly argue that Labour must not try to win new seats but only try to reclaim lost ones because of ‘the working class’. https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/without-working-people-on-our-side-what-does-labour-even-mean
This is a loosing strategy and they are quite explicit that they know it is a losing strategy.
The three of them specifically reject the idea of trying to win seats in the south east of England. Blissfully unaware that because of the annihilation of Labour in Scotland and its disintegration in the north east Labour has to win seats in the south east. It has to.
I do not blame the Morning Star for publishing this rubbish. After all they know that the radical devolution Lavery, Trickett & Smith call for would make the Labour Party even more open to penetration by the very groupuscules the newspaper represents.
