Carryfast:
Rjan:
[…]What’s the difference between the ( global ) ‘political unification’ of the working classes v the globalists ‘unification’ of both the global government system and the global economy.There obviously is no difference which is why both have historically tried to feed off of and leap frog each other in a continuous winner takes all power struggle all under the same ‘Labour’/‘Socialist’ banner.Which explains why the Labour Party has always had a place of influence for those like Jenkins and Callaghan and Blair and now Starmer but not Shore,Benn or Heffer or now Hoey.
I’m only speaking in generalities, but in general “globalism” is somewhat synonymous with “cross-border trade”, whereas “internationalism” (at least for anyone on the left) is somewhat synonymous with “international democracy”.
In other words, one is an economic concept and the other is a political concept. For the most part we already have the former, but certainly not the latter. Generally speaking, the way socialists understand the world is that class is the main division in society, and that you really have far more in common with the French worker in your experience of daily life, than with the British aristocrat.
The EU project (notwithstanding its faults) is somewhat internationalist - it’s more than just an economic trade project, and seeks political unification over the long term.
On the Labour party, I wouldn’t say the Bennite strand of thought was ever marginalised. I’d say Benn himself is nowadays seen as a treasure of the Labour party, was a minster in the 60s and 70s, and was always seen as a significant figure. Corbyn, coming much later, you might say spent his career marginalised during the ascendancy and zenith of what we now call the Blairites, but in the sweep of history since the second world war, you wouldn’t say the likes of Benn or Corbyn were always marginalised, and of course the left-wing of Labour has come back with a bang since 2015 (and so too has left-wing Euroscepticism since 2016!). By contrast, it was Jenkins that ultimately felt out of place inside Labour and set up the SDP.
As for ‘inter’ ‘Nationalism’ you can’t be ‘inter’ ‘Nationalist’ without first maintaining the idea of the ‘Nation’ State and therefore being ideologically ‘Nationalist’ as part of that first.
I don’t think you have to be “a nationalist” to recognise and employ the concept of the nation. Nobody argues that nations don’t currently exist - the point is to transcend them, having seen them come to their logical conclusion in the 30s and 40s.
The idea then being to use those National borders and Sovereignty as a sort of one way check valve which allows us to co operate with other like minded ‘Nations’ as we choose while at the same time being able to close the gates to counter productive competition and to look after the National interests of our own workers.
But looking after “national interests” is not the same as looking after “workers’ interests”. The UK compensates for the geographic distribution of the private sector economy, for example, by tending to locate large public sector operations in places where the private sector has a smaller presence, and by controlling taxation, subsidies, planning permissions, and so on, all to counter the natural (and counterproductive) tendency of private sector employers to concentrate in narrow geographic areas.
Even within the English region of the UK, there are significant inequalities between North and South, partly because governments since the 1970s have done too little to counter the unequal concentration of economic activity in the South.
Which in this case would obviously mean being able to enforce trade balance with our European trading ‘partners’ and stopping race to the bottom under cutting and artificial rigging of the European/UK labour market.In addition to stopping the situation of people like Merkel and Macron deciding UK immigration policy of flooding Europe with third world immigration as part of their anti Nation State Globalist agenda.
But really what you’re objecting to is the neoliberal elements of the EU. There is nothing intrinsic about the EU which requires it to force workers into undercutting. It could implement EU-wide wage councils, for example, which level-up wages across the entire EU, or otherwise make wages equal in value across all EU nations (i.e. control the market so that, even with open borders, there is no incentive for workers to move around, and capitalists face the same wage bill wherever in the EU they place their factories and offices, and workers receive the same wages relative to the cost of living wherever they live in the EU).
The reason the EU doesn’t do this is not because it cannot be done - the UK used to have a whole host of sector-based wage councils, as well as the power of strong unions themselves to set national wage policies which prevent regional competition and undercutting - but because most national governments in the EU have been centre-right and are hostile to such socialist thinking and democratic control of the economy (as opposed to market control of the economy).
Agriculture is one of the only exceptions that comes to mind, where the EU has always maintained a common external tariff and a system of subsidies set at a level that supports small-scale farming even in the wealthiest countries like France - in the EU, you cannot undercut the French farmer and undermine his livelihood, because the state (both at the EU level and the French national level) has a system of controls to prevent it occurring, and if that means higher prices (so that the consumer pays a price necessary for a farmer to get a fair income), or contrarily if it means low prices and mountains of free butter, then that is considered a lesser evil than mountains of struggling or unemployed farmers yoked into competition, either competition with one another or with third world farmers who will work for a pittance.
But indeed, these sorts of controls on the economy extended generally in order to engineer an equalisation in the EU member economies, would probably make the EU state almost as radical as the Chinese or Soviet states in the economic sphere. Obviously, once the reconfiguration has been managed and completed and the EU-wide economy has been ironed out, it could ease up again (much like the UK does not need to closely manage worker migration between it’s constituent regions or have any special policies or controls).
Nothing new in that argument either.It was at that point when I realised no Eric that is a Nationalist argument not a Socialist argument and ‘inter’ ‘Nationalist’ can never be reconciled with Socialist both being totally contradictory ideologies with Socialist by definition meaning anti Nation State no borders unification therefore Globalist.Which is why the Labour Party has always attracted scumbags like Blair and alienated people like Shore.
youtube.com/watch?v=K1R3TgChPsU 3.27=3.57
As I say, there is nothing inherent in international socialism that requires globalism. Just as a global car company under the common control of a single entity, doesn’t imply that you have to have only one car factory centralised in one place on the globe, or even that each car factory needs to really share their supply chains (or even make the same models of car).
And at the end of the day, the Labour party does to a large extent reflect the views of its members and the state of the labour movement as a whole. It’s worth remembering that the vast majority of workers have never been socialists, and some union bosses (invariably elected by union members) have been fairly right-wing figures. The Eric Hammonds or the Ken Jacksons of the union world, all had the support of their members in attacking the interests of the working class as a whole, and in supporting the agendas of the Thatcher and Blair governments.