Budapest December 2016: Is Nationalism the New Socialism?

We arrived at twilight; the icy black depths of the Danube were glistening under the full moon. A few naked trees stood together in pockets; some lit up along the main shopping routes. We drove through the city making small talk. Row upon row of cold Soviet era prefab concrete; block upon block of voided lives that, we guessed, were now filled with a certain brand of Swedish flat-packed furniture; the standard grid repeating itself indefinitely. Reaching the commercial centre the cubist uniformity gave way to iron and stone arches in crumbling 'belle epoch' facades. Bistro males collected in dimly lit wooden bars: wearing wire spectacles, smoking long thin cigars and sporting large bovarian moustaches. Can diversity and equality grow together like this? As long as we all dream the same dream and slumber on; the dream is good; the dream will keep us warm.

We entered the apartment. I made myself comfortable and switched on the TV. The state channel had an obligatory suit interviewing part-time footballers; video images of hostile pink nostrils flaring between local rivals began to spill onto the screen; a medieval sporting contest erupting across the floodlit terraces. The BBC World Service endlessly repeated its chant: Russian bombs are dropping in Allepo; Russian doping has cheated the Olympics; Russian hacking has corrupted the US presidential election. It seems Vladimir Putin has succeded where 100 years of Marxist-Leninism had failed? The Soviets had a dream that became a nightmare. We know. The truth afforded by victory was the first casualty of war. Whether the first truth was made of love or not, all of its offspring were condemned to die from some variation of abuse and neglect.

We saw a city at a crossroads of many different cultures; battling feelings of isolation and inequality. Shadowy figures crossing; too close to us on this path. We have felt their cold and their warmth, our hearts have been broken too. Standards kept, but conversations witholding truth, throwing only more shadows out into the dark. Behind me. Young aspirants and guilt ridden grandparents; a history of facism and secret police; silent screams from torture chambers beneath the expensive hotel; an uncertain future with no unifying direction of travel. Now we appreciate. Material wealth will only grow from the roots of emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

The old Palace houses the national gallery with nothing but Hungarian artists on display; even though they copy the styles from all the corners of continental Europe, the other artists are all nameless. The exhibition has its own internal language, meant for private Hungarian consumption, but I thought I understood 'a little'. "What did the Nazis think of Hungarian art?" I asked the custodian. "Did they steal or destroy any of the paintings?" A blank face met my gaze and stared back at me, eyes motionless searching my face for clues to meaning. I blinked first: "You know,  1945?". Finding a question he can answer, and my ignorance, he is jolted into action, "ah yes post-1945 is on the next floor". "And the nazis?" I insist. He turns mute again and walks away looking blankly at his freind. "No" he states unequivocally. His freind looks at me and can say nothing. He walks off after him.

Later after we have descended into the streets below the Palace, into the Western shops, where the new money in Budapest, is attracting the young, I look back. There is no nationalism down here. Foreign money is buying up the streets and peddling dreams to those thirsty for a globalised popular culture. Fame and fortune not history nor citizenship is being made and sold here. In the chrome and glass and marbled stone; every size and colour you could wish for; all of your pleasures are catered for. I see the Palace on the hill become a castle. Standing out in the dark, cold and alone, against an imperial capitalism, against an invasion of the infidel, against the enemies of Christendom. Is Putin's brand of Nationalism the new Socialism? The Woodsman turning the arts and crafts movement to pit its wit against the nihilism of mass production. In the epoch of post-industrial austerity; post-truth; post-modernism. Calling to the disenfranchised working class to return to waive a flag from the Palace-on-the-Hill. We know. The Russian eagle has two heads: but the icy black Danube can only flow in one direction.

Out of Touch?

So the Country has chosen to leave the EU. As I travelled on the London tube in the morning, past the City, (who got their predictions massively, entirely wrong as b##### usual) and Westminster (where Cameron was probably explaining his career prospects to his wife over a Continental breakfast) the mood seemed to be amazingly sanguine: it was a surprise, but it wasn't entirely unexpected. Of course, the sluice gates of another round of vitriolic witch-hunting were suddenly re-opened: torrents of radical revolutionary fervour were swirling amidst stoic institutional pillars of the status quo. But that was nothing unusual, those are the normal undercurrents of London life; tidal flows as old as the frothy brown sewers of the Thames.

I was attending a conference at the Tavistock. Nearly every speaker commented on the previous night's events. This was an interesting vantage point, from which to view the unfolding drama. But my attention was drawn to one important theme that was close to my heart. How could the Labour Party have got its 'traditional voters' so wrong? So I would like to try and answer that question. But I want to try and avoid rehashing the same old worn out rhetoric about 'young Oxbridge career politicians who have never worked a day in their life.....'. They are not going anywhere and they are still in need of an education. So let us look at some of the rhetoric from the Leave campaign that seems to have 'won the day' and try and explain that.    

First up: "it's all about immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs" comes from the sort of protectionism that has characterised both sides of American politics for decades. Protectionism is considered to be the default position for the American consumer, even if the rest of the world sees America as an imperialist power. Looking at the official statistics for the UK, the number of immigrants who are working in this country is almost exactly equal to the number of British workers who are actively looking for work. So there is a political argument here. However, this is not a reason to leave the EU because during the campaign it was revealed that 70% of immigrant workers are from the Commonwealth countries, the old British Empire. Thus, if the Leave campaign were serious about reducing immigration they would have been trying to undo our links with the Commonwealth, not the EU.

Second: "it's not racist to want to discuss immigration". No, it's not, but it is xenophobic to blame immigration for your child not getting into the school of your choice, you getting stuck in traffic on the way to work, the price of milk in the shops, and your grand-daughter not being able to afford a mortgage. And it is narcissistic to believe that you have a right to something that should be denied to others based on their place of origin. Taken together, xenophobia and narcissism are powerful emotional tools that can be used to overcome the intellect during a democratic campaign. People who study the history of conflict in Europe, and I assume there are a few of them who have passed through the doors of the Tavistock in their time, have written about how xenophobia and narcissism were important parts of the racist ideology of National Socialists of 1930s Germany, aka the "Nazi" Party. What makes Farage's rhetoric different to Hitler's is the absence of fascism, the belief that power comes from military power not the exercise of democratic choice; I suspect Farage, like the rest of us, does not want to repeat the mistakes of history; but others, like Boris, are much more aware of what a dangerous game he is playing.    

Third: "I don't want the EU controlling our country and telling us what to do all the time". This issue is generally referred to as nationalism. Fair play - the British have an honourable and noble tradition in deposing foreign dictators and promoting 'liberal free market democracies' across the British Empire, I'm sorry, I mean, across the known World, including the rest of Europe. As a citizen of the UK you are bound to feel a certain loss, or a massive gain, of sovereignty, if you have moved from a democracy of 60 million to a democracy of 500 million in the last few years, depending on who was in charge in your own country previously. What I think amazes Corbyn and the rest of International Socialism, is that the Leavers blamed the EU for all the things that have gone wrong with this country rather than those in charge, i.e. the Conservative Party. The Old Etonians must be laughing all the way to the bank as their mates in the City reap the rewards of the post-war Austerity Agenda. It wasn't the EU that caused the credit crunch, it wasn't even New Labour, it was the greedy psychopaths who rule the international money markets through Machiavellian subterfuge and a forensic mastery of the detail. It wasn't the Bullingdon Boys who had to go to the Food Banks, it was us; in the same way that the Polish, the Romanians, the Syrians, etc, came to this country to escape the poverty and terror that had been caused by our honourable and noble pursuit of our own "national interests".

So here we are, alongside the Thames in an old Roman settlement, with its French nobility and German monarchy, trying to vote our way out of, what has the potential to be, one of the most powerful democracies this world has ever seen. Perhaps it is the madness of the British that gives us our humanity, our humour, our freedom. I hope that, just like the Thames, it never stops, only that its rolling thunder will respect the stone monuments that our ancestors erected in its honour.

The European Union: To Leave and/or Remain?

The political rhetoric over the UK referendum on EU membership is reaching its peak. For anyone who has any kind of interest in politics it is fascinating to see how the different institutions and individuals are aligning themselves with the Leave or Remain campaigns. With the party political allegiances put on the back burner it is a good time to test one's Marxist assumptions about how power is distributed and maintained in the UK social system.

The Upper Class Leaves seem mainly to be from the old aristocracy who have been in power since William the Conqueror crushed the Anglo-Saxons. They are the traditional power in the South of England: Canterbury, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Windsor. You name it, they hold all the main strategic political and economic high ground. The idea that we give too much money to the EU is their favourite argument but it is a bit of a red herring. They will always complain about the redistribution of wealth from rich people to poor people, whether its through the EU or elsewhere. What they really fear is a loss of power that comes from a federal Europe with a broader democratic base with a greater mandate for social and economic justice.

The Upper Class Remains are akin to the industrial capitalists who grew rich in the provincial cities of the UK during the Victorian era. They need to maintain their access to the massive EU markets that come with the broader democratic base. Greater federalism as a political model is not really a threat to them; but only so long as they can keep their financial interests safe, and that means keeping the pound. This is their main area of weakness because the pound is obviously the property of the old aristocracy, not the new. The main problem here is that whereas UK exports are heavily affected by strength of the pound against the euro; the people who own the money don't care about that. The financial services in the City of London are just as happy if UK exports are falling as they are if they are rising; they make their money out of variations in the market, they are not bothered which way that variation goes.

The UK Middle Classes are net gainers from Europe and they tend to want to Remain. The UK Middle Classes can be portrayed as professional people (i.e. anyone who needs a qualification to do their job, which I agree, in the UK, is a very broad constituency indeed) who have had to borrow most of their money from the Upper Classes to 'get on in life'. These loans are used to fund their education, finance their homes, and keep the wheels of capitalism turning through various credit-worthy addictions including holidays, cars, clothes and digital technologies.

This UK Middle Classes' capital assets are mainly its knowledge, skills and abilities, i.e. its human resources. They gain from having a wider market to sell their assets to because this increases demand for their specialist skills; with English as the main language for business in the EU at the moment, they would appear to have everything to lose. As a group they were probably hit the hardest by the recent 'credit crunch' so they may have a fear of a more federal Europe. But they were also the group upon who most of the responsibility fell for sorting out the mess; for most of them this meant more cooperation with their partners in Europe rather than less. Thus, they have a considerable amount of political capital to spend and it is probably their vote who will count the most in any UK election/ referendum.  

The UK Working Classes are net losers from Europe and as such they tend to want to Leave. As a group they do not attract the same sort of investment in their knowledge, skills and abilities that the Middle Classes do. Thus, the bigger market tends to drive their net value to the economy down. Their own need for cheaper products is going to keep their potential wages down. The only way for them to protect their interests is to maintain trading tariffs with external markets. The EU does offer them the potential to do this, but so did the Old British Commonwealth, so there is some uncertainty here about the relationship between these two markets.

The UK Working Class Leavers fall into two main social groups: the traditional indigenous workers, who tend to want all the benefits of global capitalism (such as low cost commodities) and none of its costs (such as full economic migrancy); and the first generation immigrant workers who's jobs and living conditions are most at threat from the cheaper labour coming in from abroad. These groups can easily become divided along racial, ethnic and/or religious lines, and this complicates the competition for scarce resources. The issues of organised crime across international borders, slavery and terrorism are clearly important here. But so is the extended family and traditional versus progressive models of the welfare state.

After having reviewed the scene across all the UK Classes another issue looms large in my mind. The UK's relationship has and always will be a paradox. We are part of Europe but we are also isolated from it. We can never exist fully in Europe and we can never exist fully outside of it. This might seem like an irrational conclusion but actually it is a more accurate representation of the geographic, economic, and political facts than either the Leave or Remain camps can muster. If this referendum is about the National Identity then the country will need to decide what its identity actually is.            

Labour's Crisis Over Anti-Semitism

Anti-semitism is not anti-Judaism. I am no expert, but I believe that the semitic language was used by Jews and Arabs. However, most people use the term to mean anti-Judaism. Contests over the meaning of language become political conflicts when people invest emotions in a narrative. Rather than being able to decide on the validity of a narrative based on its congruence to external events, its internal logic, or the authenticity of its author, the validity becomes decided upon which opponent can raise the greatest emotional force to back their argument, e.g. which opponent has 'God on their side'.

Ken Livingstone has said that it is a historical fact that when Hitler came to power in 1932 he wanted to relocate Germany's Jews to Israel. Is that true? I don't know. However, by his own logic Naz Shah was therefore on decidedly dodgy territory suggesting that the Israeli State should be relocated anywhere. The most charitable position on her comments that the State of Israel should be relocated to America suggest that she was only making the point that the US should stay out of Middle Eastern politics. This sort of statement is typical of the pro-Palestinian, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, left-wing militants that Jeremy Corbyn has been assumed to be attracting into the Labour Party: Hence its political interest and its potential for division within the party.

As I understand it the pro-Israeli lobby would not necessarily have a problem with the US keeping out of Middle Eastern politics. But what they do object to is the political assumption that the US is only involved in Israeli politics, and not Egyptian, Libyian, Syrian, Iraqi, etc. politics; or that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that has a problem with external influence of its internal democratic power structures. That's a fair enough point and an argument that has value in terms of laying a pathway towards peace within the region and away from 'tribal' conflicts. Within this context it is perhaps fairer to say that Ken and Naz's statements were condemnable because they were 'anti-Peace' rather than being 'pro-Nazi'. Portraying them as 'pro-Nazi' could, in itself, also be deemed as inflammatory. Such condemnation could also be construed as attempting to influence the internal democratic power structures of the UK Labour Party. It is probably no coincidence that Tony Blair was the UN's Middle East Peace Envoy from 2007-2015. So perhaps the position he has now vacated has become something of a political battleground within (and outside of?) the Party.

In the end I don't believe anyone seriously believes anyone in the Labour Party is actually intending to try and relocate the Israeli State to down-town USA. But I think plenty of people are trying to relocate the reasons for the current crisis in the Middle East intellectually to some other place in space-time. From my reading of history I can see a clear historical link between the current wars in the Middle East and turn of the century political life in Vienna (involving Hitler, Marx, Freud and the then Mayor of Vienna, apparently); the First and Second World Wars; the subsequent Cold War; and the eventual creation of the European Union. Thus, in this context the current 'crisis' is actually just another aftershock of the 'Arab Spring'. That it should erupt on the streets of London at a time when the country is trying to decide its role in Europe through the referendum is probably to be expected. But it is not a conflict that is restricted to the Labour Party. The Labour Party has been debating these problems for years; it has been a significant part of many difficult peace processes, in many different regions in the world, for many years. That it has the honesty to face these challenges is to be commended. In the end, "jaw-jaw is better than war-war" as Winston Churchill, one of the founding fathers of the European Union once said.