It is impossible to ignore exploitative structures within Corbyn’s New Jerusalem
Changing society and making social progress is a slow process, hence the reason the shortest timescale for a Blue Revolution’s radical agenda to transform and increase democracy and make Britain safe for all is thirty years. The reason progress is slow is that we like to adopt the mean, go for the middle, and so extreme views create shift incrementally and only over time does the mean change. It is as with Ukip often quite capable of shifting back too. Hence the current shift back to the 1970’s with both Labour and Conservatives. The 1970’s provides two well known although out of date operating model for both parties which somehow feels wrong to us in the 21st Century.
What is interesting about the Labour approach to economics is how it mirrors the authoritarianism of what one might call capitalism at its worst. With capitalism at its worst, we had the man with the stove pipe hat ordering exploited workers about and then taking the proceeds of their labour as his profit. The reason socialists deride ‘capital’ is that it is the store of value which rightly belongs to the workers but has been appropriated by the capitalist. The structures within which the appropriation takes place are hierarchical, authoritarian and deny the worker a sense of owning the processes of their labour. They are alienated from the production process and therefore alienated from the economy. They, the workers, exist in an economy over which they have no control.
What Corbyn and the Labour party want to do is replace what they believe to be a system which is like this system, with their socialist New Jerusalem. Jeremy Corbyn, Seamus Milne and John McDonnell at the head of a system that takes tax off people and which pays for services and industry. The means by which they will do this are unfortunately hierarchical, authoritarian and deny the worker a sense of owning the processes of their labour as even the poor have to pay tax for this expensive system and will operate in a hierarchy over which they have no control. The reason why the Socialist New Jerusalem is like this is that it takes its inspiration from the old capitalist system it is so quick to condemn. However where the capitalist system has risk and failure built in so that there is a churn in the market generating lower costs to consumers and improved services, in the left’s New Jerusalem the state halts all of this. It takes on ownership of the means of production and the delivery of services but with no functioning market, the whole system becomes atrophied. What also does not change is the hierarchy which has serried ranks of officials and politicians paying themselves tax payers money so they can enhance their personal wealth, payment to them for running the state and its industries. Unfortunately, this mirrors the exploitation of the worker under capitalism.
The bad news for Britain is that the progressive parties are far from progressive and the Conservatives whilst not wanting to re-implement this taxpayer exploiting model don’t do anything to reduce the people’s tax burden. No wonder we feel alienated, frustrated and ill. No one is arguing for us they are all in various ways looking out for themselves, most notably the progressives of the left.
