11 February 2018. Comrade Jeremy Speaks Up… the Righties Misspeak When They Announce Socialism’s Demise

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SHAME on Conservatives Who Ridicule Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders

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Socialism attracts young people because they reject the immorality of corporatism. Conservatives should find solace in this… not ridicule it. For at least 20 years, the mainstream Western political and academic narrative was that socialism is a failure. Many cite production deadlock, strikes, riots, and a punitive taxation system to justify these claims. However, the system that ended up supplanting socialism both as a governing economic force and as a viable mainstream opposition platform in the West has also failed and failed more miserably than any prior socioeconomic system. Corporatism, a logical result of neoliberal economics, rejects the cottage-industry style capitalism of people like Ron Paul and the classical Austrian economists. Therefore, in a true sense, it’s unfair to call it “capitalism”.

Unlike with Austrian economics, corporatism places no value on individual liberty, nor does it decry endless rules, regulations, and bureaucracy either. Corporatism is to capitalism what the Manson Family is to a Norman Rockwell family painting… it’s a sick perversion. Likewise, corporatism doesn’t value the growth of a national economy, the steadying of national wealth, or the protection of national wealth from foreign hands. It’s unlike traditional market-protectionist economics or neo-mercantile thinking or what many now call sovereigntist economics. In this sense, it’s different from what I call conservative socioeconomics.

Corporatism is a series of interlocking oligarchic global corporations where production often occurs on different continents from where the profits are stored; furthermore, products themselves are often sold in multiple third locations. Corporatism has plenty of regulations and bureaucratic red tape, but all of it works in the favour of giant multinationals that often end up paying less tax than struggling middle-income individuals and families oppressed with socialist high taxation, whilst receiving none of the benefits of a real welfare state. There isn’t a moral, a national, or an individualist component in corporatism. In this sense, it rejects the morality of socialism, protectionism, and classical capitalism simultaneously.

While occasionally corporatist economics can result in a trickle-down effect for some ordinary people, if this ever happens, it’s generally short-lived. Corporatism’s Great Recession in 2007-08 was a testament to this phenomenon. The result has been that many middle-income middle-aged people turned to sovereigntist/protectionist conservative politicians who reject the multinationalism of corporatism and the collectivism of socialism equally. In addition, people in all age groups have begun to revisit classic capitalism as defined by the Austrian school of economics. Generally, the connection this school makes between individual liberty and economic liberality attracts these people.

Socialism has had a revival too, and one of the biggest constituent parts of this new socialist coalition has been the young, although it’s a very different kind of youth than those who previously voted for classical leftist parties. Throughout much of the 20th century, leftist voters came from the heart of suburban industry and, of course, the urban proletariat also. In the USA, this was the so-called “Rust Belt” states and in Europe, this was generally in the big industrial cities outside of the more urbane capitals (Marseilles, Calais, Birmingham, Glasgow, etc). It was only logical that working-class voters would vote for parties with an emphasis on the morality of treating working-class people with economic and social dignity and fairness.

However, today’s socialist core voters are very different. Although what remains of a western industrial base still often vote for politicians like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, an increasing amount of young people from struggling middle-income families are turning to ideas that previously had appeal among the working-classes and those of other classes who for moral, intellectual, or spiritual reasons turned to socialism. These young people aren’t classical socialists, but they’re victims of corporatism. They’ve found that the first proper job in life hardly pays enough to make it worth considering and that the comfortable middle-income jobs of their parents’ generation have either gone overseas or become reserved exclusively for a highly connected upper-middle-class set, beyond simply having a decent income and ability to work hard for an honest first-world pay-cheque.

They’ve found that the neoliberal myth that having a university education guarantees good employment was simply a lie to force young people to take out insanely high loans to pay a university, which was, in fact, a business disguised as a place of learning. They’ve also come to the realisation that many of the comforts of middle-income life were because working-class people created wealth. Now, that wealth comes from foreign factories. All of these factors have led young people to turn to socialism for moral and personal reasons rather than more broad economic beliefs.

It is difficult for socialism to work in a non-industrial society. Socialism relies on working-class labour to create wealth in the same way that conservative economics relies on investment into national (rather than global) industry to initially create wealth. However, a healthy working-class is indispensable to proper moral conservative socioeconomics also. One must remember that conservative policies didn’t create the Irish famine of the 1840s and 1850s, but rather the adoption of liberal free trade by the British state, which ruled Ireland at the time.

With few Western countries having any national wealth and with millionaires conveniently and legally offshoring their money, it’s difficult to see how socialism can achieve anything in the 21st century West unless it takes the crucial step to use the resources of the state to build new factories and pass protectionist laws to keep the wealth they generate flowing on the home front. However, these longer-term economic issues are of little consequences to many young enthusiastic supporters of people like Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, who unlike Sanders, will almost certainly attain the highest political office in his country. These voters are drawn to the moral message of socialism and this should not be condemned callously, even by conservative protectionists like myself. Instead, we should praise it.

The only way society can ever retain its traditional values is by embracing anyone who rejects the immoral ideologies of globalism, liberalism, and corporatism. While I personally prefer a mixed system, what Deng Xiaoping called “market socialism”, I’m nevertheless sympathetic to those who turn to classical socialism, even though I fully reject the dogma of radical wealth distribution and the rejection of traditional conservative values that many socialists preach. However, in this case, socialism is a healthy first step towards rejecting neoliberalism and allowing a path back to conservatism to form. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the Marxist historical world view, where we have to go back from corporatism to socialism to then step back to conservatism, in each case along the way one must realise our return to past values while combining such thought with contemporary realities. In this sense, one can be both a reactionary and a pragmatic modernist simultaneously. This is the essence of any mixed socioeconomic system rejecting the dogmas of progressive thinking for the sake of modernity alone.

This obviously assumes that it isn’t full communism but full corporatism that is the final “end” of economics. Here, Marx got it wrong; Oswald Spengler (a conservative) got it right. History has proved this; it isn’t a theory. After Russia attempted communism between 1917 and 1991, Russia then turned to corporatism for the remainder of the 1990s. Today, Russia is taking certain socialist elements of the past such as higher pensions and better funding for public services vis-à-vis the 1990s, while ultimately returning to a modern version of patriotic conservative socioeconomics.

If the West is to attempt to save itself, it must follow the same path. Whilst my view is that the October Revolution was a crime against humanity, I nevertheless wept in the 1990s at photos of old women, too thin for their age, carrying photos of Stalin as they protested the piratical liberal economics of Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais. Indeed, if Russia were ever to return to a fraction of its pre-1917 conservatism, both conservatives and those holding placards of Stalin while protesting the Yeltsin régime would have to oppose the liberal corporatists of the 1990s.

This is why conservatives who ridicule supporters of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn ought to really step back from their position of arrogance. The young people voting for Sanders and Corbyn may often be odd in their appearance and the idea that they’d want to radically redistribute wealth might be horrifying. Their lack of God is also deeply sad for conservative believers. However, in finding Corbyn, these young people are rejecting the same immoral Godlessness inherent in neoliberalism that true conservatives reject. They’re looking for morality, they’re looking for ethics, they’re looking for community, and they’re looking for family. The authentic conservative solution is the best way to find each, but if they support socialism, which for all of its faults is still endlessly more moral than liberalism/corporatism, then we should wish them well whilst respectfully offering them a respectable conservative alternative.

1 July 2017

Adam Garrie

The Duran

http://theduran.com/shame-on-conservatives-who-ridicule-supporters-of-jeremy-corbyn-and-bernie-sanders/

Britain’s Next Prime Minister Could Likely be Jeremy Corbyn

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Jeremy Corbyn has much of the Brexit coalition on his side and more. Brexit, which in many ways put British politics on the international map for the first time since the 1960s, wasn’t supposed to happen. The Establishment in all the major parties, the business sector, academia, the mainstream media, and the arts and science community (which still hold some influence in Britain) were all opposed to it. Likewise, on the night of the vote, the polling data was so set against Brexit that a sober Nigel Farage all but conceded defeat. Several hours and several drinks later, he emerged to give a victory speech. The people who voted for Brexit voted for a number of reasons and even more crucially in a key number of geographical places.

Many people voted for Brexit because they seethed with anger over those who opposed it. The élite were unpopular and the élite didn’t want Brexit, this meant that ordinary people in middle and northern England, as well as most of Wales, voted for Brexit. Other issues ranging from European border policy to trade and nostalgia for empire played far less of a factor than many pundits thought. Brexit was a visceral vote, not a calculated vote. The EU is a élitist institution and Britain’s local élite loved it. For most people, that was enough to make them support it.

While the dishonest and discredited élites ran the pro-EU campaign, Nigel Farage spearheaded Brexit from the right, while its most prominent leftist advocate was George Galloway. Both Farage and Galloway are figures one either loves or hates, but few people can legitimately question their sincerity. After all, neither embraced causes guaranteed to get them invited to Buckingham Palace. Many thought that if two straightforward men on different sides of the political divide both embraced Brexit, it can’t be all that bad for honest ordinary people, and furthermore, contrary to what the neoliberal mainstream media said, Farage’s supporters aren’t all racist obscurantists and Galloways’ supporters aren’t “only Muslims”. Such remarks slander both men and their supporters who are ordinary, decent, and normal people of all backgrounds, who for various reasons are tired of a broken status-quo.

Jeremy Corbyn may well be on the verge of achieving something similar to Brexit, only more. Corbyn, like Brexit, is anti-establishment, and like Brexit, the entire establishment is against him… with this notable exception… small, medium, and even some big businesses. Jeremy Corbyn will certainly appeal to working class Brexit voters in England’s north and midlands as well as Wales (AKA Brexit country) who long for a Labour leader that puts bread-and-butter issues first. Corbyn is all about jobs, funding essential services, and putting hospitals before banks, schools before hedge funds, wages for real people over tax loopholes for foreign companies. This is music to the ears of a Labour base, who are alienated from Labour after years of neoliberal policies first instigated by the war criminal Tony Blair.

However, what about business, will they vote for a socialist Labour leader? Many interestingly will. Generally, most businesses of all sizes benefited from some aspects of EU membership, most crucially from the Single Market which non-EU countries Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland are a happy part of. Corbyn said he’s committed to getting Britain a deal that involves retaining the benefits of the Single Market and this made many in the business community silently sympathetic to a Labour leader who took a stand on the Single Market, whereas Conservative leader Theresa May has a policy which amounts to little more than “Frankly, I don’t give a damn”. Therefore, this means Corbyn has the working-class and wider Midlands, Northern England and Welsh Brexit vote, the anti-establishment Brexit vote, and, ironically, also the business-minded pro-Single Market Vote.

Then, there’s Scotland. Scotland voted in favour of retaining EU membership. What’s more, when Scotland held a referendum on independence from the UK in 2014, one of the biggest selling points on the “Remain Part of the UK” side was that membership of the UK guaranteed membership in the EU. My, how times have changed! Because of this, Scottish Nationalist leader Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Parliament want a new independence referendum. May responded to this call with disdain and contempt. Her refusal to engage in a dialogue with Scotland smacks of a colonial attitude when Scotland is a democratic part of the UK. It’s unreal that someone like May can think this way in the year 2017.

By contrast, Jeremy Corbyn said that he’d listen to Scotland, engage positively with the Scottish people, and, in any case, respect their exercise of democratic self-determination if that’s what they ultimately seek. This means that if the vote in England is a dead-heat, the Scottish Nationalists, who’d almost certainly win every major seat in Scotland, would have the ability to form a coalition with Corbyn and make him Prime Minister. Under this scenario, one sees that Corbyn retained much of the Brexit coalition, with the added bonus of almost all of Scotland’s backing if he eventually needs it, and more members of the business community than many think. Even those in the business community who might not like Corbyn’s tax policies realise that leaving the Single Market is a far bigger problem and one that could take much longer to reverse.

In the wealthy parts of Southern England, the Conservatives might be in for another unexpected shock. Most people in England’s wealthiest areas voted to remain in the EU and many are privately shocked that the once pro-EU Conservative party is taking such an undiplomatic and frankly unknowing approach to Brexit. Many such affluent voters might end up voting for the unambiguously pro-EU Liberal Democratic Party, who in most other policy areas are little different from mainstream moderate Conservatives. The polls that got Brexit and Trump wrong are still saying that the Conservatives will win, but only by a small margin. The reality could be very different. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour might capture most of middle and northern England, all of Wales, and find allies in Scotland. May’s Conservatives might end up losing some seats in their own affluent backyard, amongst those who still cherish the EU as much as they did when they voted against Brexit alongside former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

We could be looking at the most unlikely political revolution in British history… since last year, anyway. Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of a would-be Corbyn victory is that he quietly managed to build an unlikely coalition without sacrificing his principles. Perhaps, this is the real lesson of the campaign.

30 May 2017

Adam Garrie

The Duran

http://theduran.com/britains-next-prime-minister-likely-socialist-jeremy-corbyn/

Jeremy Corbyn Outshines Theresa May in the British General Election

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British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s impressive speech on foreign policy and the West’s failed “War on Terror” illustrated an unreported truth about the current British general election… Corbyn is cutting a far more impressive figure during the election than Prime Minister Theresa May is. Before discussing this, I wish to make one important qualification about Corbyn’s speech. Corbyn bravely made the connection between the Manchester terror attack and the West’s foreign policy… enthusiastically supported by the British political class… of waging régime change wars across the Middle East. However, it’s essential to understand that these wars have exacerbated the problem of Jihadi terrorism because they don’t target it, but rather the Arab governments such as those in Iraq, Syria, and Libya that fight it.

Afghanistan is no different. The war in Afghanistan isn’t against al-Qaeda… the Jihadi terrorist group which the USA said carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks… but against the Taliban, an entirely different group, which though Salafi in ideology, never sought to wage a terrorist Jihad against the West before 2001, or has done so since. Suffice to say, the USA identified none of the 9/11 hijackers as an Afghan. I’d add that prior to the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001, some Taliban leaders and the Muslim clergy in Afghanistan pressed Mullah Mohammed Omar… the Taliban’s erstwhile leader… to expel Osama bin Laden and his followers from Afghanistan; in fact, there was a proposal to hand him over in return for international recognition of the Taliban’s government and on condition that his trial would be in an Islamic court.

I always believed that, with care and patience, a diplomatic solution that might’ve resulted in Osama bin Laden’s arrest and trial was possible, whilst the Taliban’s two international supporters… Pakistan and Saudi Arabia… lobbied hard for such an outcome. Needless to say, had that ever happened, the history of the following decades would’ve been completely different. In the event, the US attack on Afghanistan in 2001, whether intentional or not, meant that this never happened, leading to the disastrous “War on Terror” Corbyn spoke about today. Putting all this aside, Corbyn’s speech showed him ready to challenge Britain’s failed foreign policy orthodoxy, in ways that no other mainstream British politician seems able to do. Of course, he’s done it for years, ever since the so-called “War on Terror” began.

However, foreign policy is only one area where Corbyn cut a more impressive figure during the election than May did. Not only did Corbyn campaign and interact with the media and the public in a genuine way… in contrast to May’s controlled and ritualistic meetings and her stilted language of clichés… but he’s also produced a manifesto that, although left-wing, is coherent and close to voters’ concerns. By contrast, May’s manifesto looks cobbled together, mating contradictory messages of One Nation Toryism with Thatcherite Free Market policies. Unsurprisingly, May has already made an embarrassing U-turn, dropping a manifesto commitment that would’ve introduced costs for the elderly, something that (to my knowledge) never happened in a British general election before.

All this partly reflects a truth about Corbyn… he’s a far more serious and experienced politician than the British political class and news media care to admit. However, it also reflects an important truth about May. Quite simply, she isn’t the strong and decisive leader her supporters in the Conservative Party and the media repeatedly say. On the contrary, what the election campaign did is expose once more her indecision and insecurity, and her lack of ideas. By way of example, May never provided a truly convincing explanation of why she called the election in the first place, despite previously repeatedly ruling the option out. The best she came up with is that she needs a strong mandate from the British people to negotiate a good Brexit deal. That might have been convincing if May had a Brexit negotiating policy to put to the British people for them to support. However… as I’ve repeatedly pointed out… in reality, she has none. The result is that she’s unable to keep the election focused on the issue, allowing Corbyn to move the debate onto ground closer to his own.

The reality, of course, is that May called the election not because she wanted a mandate to negotiate a good Brexit deal, but because she thought she’d win it. That’s a perfectly good and valid reason for a British Prime Minister to call an election. A genuinely strong Prime Minister… Thatcher, for instance… wouldn’t have hesitated to say it and would’ve laughed off criticism of it, saying she had a right to change her mind. May would’ve saved herself a great deal of trouble and would’ve looked a lot more convincing had she said it. However, as long been obvious, she’s temperamentally incapable of saying it.

As it is, I still expect Theresa May to win. Although the latest opinion poll shows her once-stratospheric lead collapsing to 5 percent with two weeks of the election campaign still to go (Conservative 43 percent, Labour 38 percent). I suspect that some British voters presently drawn to Corbyn will switch back to May as polling day approaches rather than face the actual prospect of a Corbyn government, for which I don’t think Britain is ready. There’s simply no precedent in Britain for an electoral upset on the scale that a Corbyn victory would require, and I can’t believe in the end it’ll happen. My guess is that as polling day approaches, the Conservative lead will start to widen again. However, if I were wrong, then, whilst the credit for such a truly astonishing turnaround would have to go to Corbyn, the major cause would be the failure of May to explain convincingly to the British people what point there is in her being Prime Minister.

26 May 2017

Alexander Mercouris

The Duran

http://theduran.com/corbyn-outsines-theresa-may-general-election/