Reflections post UK election: is it a real change, or is a true revolution required?

Following the almost euphoria after the crashing defeat of Theresa May’s Conservatives in the UK, most people desperately wish to believe that “real change” in the world is possible and that the change will come soon. I tend to be sceptical and I would suggest that the whole system is broken, and nothing substantial will change unless the whole globalist model is demolished from its roots. The proposed solutions so far are only tinkering at the edges but always leaving the corrupt systemic centre intact. Politicians of all colours and their advisers are experts at developing ‘smoke and mirror’ tactics, trying to confuse the public at large, giving some ‘tasty morsels’ to citizens but ensuring most profits and benefits go to the top 1% Oligarchs and international corporations.

The whole economic structure is rotten to the core and corruption has spread to all sectors. The promises that “trickle-down economics” and privatisation would make ‘ordinary people’ wealthier has proven to be totally hollow. Despite the fact that a proportion of the population became better off (for a short time) with the purchase of shares in all those public sectors that had become privatised and open to ‘ordinary mum & dads’ shareholders. A similar situation occurred when pension funds sought the lure of investments in the stockmarket, many pensioners found that their quarterly dividends obtained were seemingly good returns, but like any Ponzi-style economics, soon the bubble burst and proved to be a quimera, a fantasy, an illusion.

The world banking system headed by the IMF and the World Bank are simply the enforcing tools of Wall St., the Zurich and the London financial sectors; those two International banks were never really designed to help poor countries or the ordinary people, on the contrary, with their system of compound interest over interests accumulating on all ‘borrowings’ they are all designed to literally enslave several generations of people in poor countries and more recently the same is happening with the populations of ‘developed countries’.

I wish to firstly quote from a couple of real progressive economic thinkers:

"For bankers, the economy did seem just right, as their loans were soaring, and their bonuses followed suit. Mainstream economists called the 1990 - 2007 era, the Great Moderation. But then, bankers were in charge of naming it (in this case David Shulman of Salomon Brothers). In reality it was the Great Indebtedness, leading to the Great Polarisation that paved the way for today's Great Austerity. When the bubble crashed, Wall St. blamed "the madness of crowds". This blame-the-victim view depicted borrowers as being immoderate and greedy, and it seemed only moral that the "mad crowd" should now pay the price for its reckless indebtedness, not the creditors. So the most reckless bankers were bailed out, as it were not they and the Federal Reserve that were mad and immoderate".                               ( p. 157; Michael Hudson; "Killing the Host"; 2015)

This is the same rubbish which has been parroted for about 40 years in every single case of corporate financial greediness and their speculation with high-risk ventures. When the Greek austerity measures were imposed twice within two years (2010 & 2012) on pensioners, education, community services, road infrastructure and health services in Greece (the infamous blame-the-victim rhetoric). Janis Varoufakis demonstrated that during both Greek bail-outs, although the money was in "theory" loaned by the IMF & European Bank to Greece, but in reality more than 90% of that money went into the pockets of the reckless gambling banks and financial speculators (both Greek and international speculators) who had lost their money in casino-style gamblings in the first place. 

A very similar massive bank insolvency occurred with the bail outs in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy; "all which were primarily rescue packages for French and German banks". When the German and French banks revealed that "their asset books were weighed down with US-sourced derivatives that had lost 99% of their value...more than 91% of the Greek bail-out went to prop-up the French and German banks by buying back from them the 100-Euro bonds whose market value had declined to less than 20 Euros each".

(pp.153-158, & 182-188; Yanis Varoufakis: "And The Weak Suffer What They Must ?"; 2016)

Let us not forget that in the UK, the Northern Rocks and Lloyds TSB were also bailed out by taxpayer money. At least two Australian Banks --Westpac and the NAB---were also bailed-out secretly after their reckless financial speculations.

It has been widely and accurately reported now that "Australia's banking system is no different to any other. It is inherently insolvent --as are all modern day banks". 

A very similar situation has gradually but certainly occurred with the political system in most western countries. Nowadays, there is hardly any differences between the policies of the Conservatives and Labour in the UK; between the Republicans and the Democrats in the USA; between the Conservatives and Socialists in France; between the Liberal/Conservatives and Labour in Australia. All major mainstream parties have shifted to the centre and decidedly to the far-right of the political spectrum. The Blairite Labour and the so-called Socialist Hollande represent that shift to neoliberal economic globalist policies. There is negligible differences between the ‘older’ Left socialist and Right wing conservative parties any longer, the only reason for Corbyn to have recovered so much ground at the last election was that he invoked to re-introduce some of the “Old Labour” policies of the Left-wing, but apparently he made too many concessions to the Blairite sector of the Labour Party as detailed by the article below.

Now I would like to quote sections from an article written by William Bowles.

  “I have to admit I took my eye off the ball. My desire to see the back of this awful government overwhelmed my powers of reasoning but hopefully it’s only temporary”.

That’s the problem: We want Corbyn to be real.

“So, it’s just wishful thinking on my part and on the part of others, to put so much faith in Jeremy Corby. As I pointed out in my previous article, you’re not voting for Corbyn, you’re voting for the Labour Party, the bulk of whose candidates were utterly opposed to most of Corbyn’s (draft) Manifesto (see below). So the question has to be asked, what chance does Corbyn have of enacting nothing at all but a small part of his manifesto, e.g., funding the NHS or perhaps tuition fees? But once on the slippery slope of compromise in order to save the Labour Party as an agent of capital, it’s game over.”

“But of course, nothing he does, within the straightjacket of existing Parliamentary politics, can address not only our immediate concerns but the already present combined global crisis of capitalism and climate change. The double whammy of the 21st century.

It’s nothing if not a novel situation. A friend has compared Corbyn to Bernie Sanders, Syriza, Podemos and even gone back to Allende’s Chile. And it’s true, all have failed, and mostly, if not all, for the same reasons.”

“He says:    Now we have some experience, called history, to make that determination. So can you point to any example in recent history; say in the last 100 years where supporting such a candidate of such a party that pledges its allegiance to the political institutions of capital has led to anything other than defeat? I mean, Lula? You vote for Rousseff in Brazil and you get….Temer; you vote for Chavez in Venezuela and you get Maduro and the collapse of the economy; you vote for Syriza in Greece and you get the Troika; you vote for Podemos in Spain and guess who they prop up in power? And I surely don’t have to tell you about the path of the ANC.                             

It’s true of course, all of it. I assisted the ANC in its 1994 election campaign, but should I not have done given the results of our collective efforts? Zuma and his gang of thieves. Easily said in hindsight of course.”

Is it over before it’s over?

Of course it is, in the unlikely event of a Labour victory, the deal has already been done and dusted:

Tuesday saw the official launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto for the June 8 snap General Election. The manifesto contained a number of highly significant amendments from the draft version leaked just days earlier.

“The draft, produced by the team around Labour’s nominally left leader Jeremy Corbyn, was subject to ratification by the party’s top officials on May 11. It sought to marry a watery commitment to certain social reforms and a slight relaxation in the Conservatives’ austerity agenda with a raft of measures demanded by the Blairite right wing. In particular, it committed Labour to the ￡200 billion renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, and to supporting NATO, and included a declaration that Corbyn would be prepared to launch a nuclear attack—albeit while being “extremely cautious” about it.”

However, the concessions contained in Labour’s draft manifesto have since been revealed as only a staging post for Corbyn in what his shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, described as a “journey” towards accepting NATO and nuclear war.

The qualification on the use of the armed forces contained in the draft version, “That’s why we will never send them into harm’s way unless all other options have been exhausted,” is removed in the final manifesto. – ‘Labour’s manifesto amended to stress commitment to militarism and war‘ By Robert Stevens, WSWS, 19 May 2017.

It’s not looking good, is it? Further on we read in the same article:

The draft manifesto said Labour would “end support for aggressive wars of intervention.” This also had to be amended so that the final version reads only that Labour will oppose “unilateral aggressive wars of intervention” (emphasis added) so as to reassure all concerned of the party’s support for future wars of aggression under the imprimatur of NATO and the United Nations.

It gets just as worse and depressing the more I read, but at least it disabused me of any illusions I seemed to have acquired:

Corbyn is often portrayed by his advocates as a man of principle—a good man fallen among thieves. His every action since being elected leader in September 2015 confirms that his only “principle” is unswerving loyalty to the Labour bureaucracy.

Corbyn’s infinite malleability is not a personal characteristic, but is an essential feature of the Labour “left” in providing the necessary progressive window dressing to sell what is a capitalist party of big business, militarism and war to the working class.

Heavy stuff, but essentially true. I suppose the real question is whether or not the grassroots movement the various agencies have created for Corbyn (38 Degrees, Momentum, Peoples Assembly and so on), once they realize they’ve been conned will demand some answers? Can something be rescued from the wreckage?

Again, I’m probably fishing for some kind of face-saving feature from the rise of Corbyn and the reality that he is as I’ve long said, a professional politician and his primary objective is saving the Labour Party for the creation of some mythical, nay non-existent socialism at some distant point in the future, just as it did back in 1910.

I was also chided by my NY friend on my exasperated cry to see the back of May and the Tories:

That’s the point. You’re not going to get rid of them by voting for Corbyn. You’re not going to get rid of them without getting rid of the Labour Party. You’re not going to build a thing that can withstand the bourgeoisie for ten minutes when you’re voting to collaborate with the bourgeoisie.

He went on:       Nobody is advocating “purity.” But if the British working class is, in your view thoroughly “imperialized,” the main mechanism for accomplishing that has been the adherence of the Labour Party to the maintenance of imperialism. That’s an institutional allegiance; not a personal one. I have never argued for purity, or all or nothing. I’m arguing simply for the first step, which is opposition to class collaboration. Nobody’s advocating “not acting;” I’m advocating not acting on behalf of the maintenance of British capitalism.

“Which is another way of saying don’t vote for Corbyn, I mean the Labour Party but work toward building an alternative to this awful madness before it’s far too late.”