I came across an interesting review of a book by Richard Seymour. The review, by Louis Proyect, is titled Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders and the Dilemmas of the Left. The original book, by Seymour is titled, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics. I have not read the book, because, I don’t buy books and this one is not available as a torrent, yet. So, to be quite clear, this is not a review of Richard Seymour’s book; rather, it is a review of some reviews of Richard Seymour’s book — a meta-review wherein I wonder aloud about the strange love-hate relation the radical Left appears to have for fascism.

Let there be no doubt about this: Jeremey Corbyn is a dyed-in-the-wool fascist. I base this assessment not on his sympathies for Hitler or Mussolini, (despite the insinuation of his detractors in the Labour Party, he has none), but on his program, which has been described this way in a review by Laksiri Fernando:

“As Richard Seymour, the author of the book that we talk about says, “Corbyn’s agenda is not exactly the Communist Manifesto.” He is not even a strong Marxist. He believes in many things and, first and foremost as a rational politician, he believes in the people. Not that he believes in their opinion or what we call ‘public opinion, but their interests and needs. “That is not to say he is indifferent to what people think – but he wants to change opinion.” “His manifesto at the last election was fairly radical. It may be better to quote Seymour on this subject. “‘Labour’s manifesto – above all its core commitments to renationalizing rail, mail, energy, and water; expanded public investment; abolishing tuition fees; building council houses; raising the minimum wage; and rolling out a new menu of workers’ rights – was extremely popular.’ (p. xii). “There is no question about the popularity of such a radical manifesto among the labouring workers who always wait for a raise in minimum wages and among the students and youth who are eager to have tuition free education. But what about the middle classes and the public in general? His ‘renationalization agenda’ (rail, mail, energy and water) was extremely radical, while his ‘expanded public investment’ was equally popular among the party members and supporters without much questioning except among the conservatives. Building council houses was/is a primary necessity in Britain and elsewhere given the housing prices and rents.”

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To put this in no uncertain terms, Corbyn does not seek the abolition of wage slavery, but to manage wage slavery. His intentions may very well be to manage wage slavery in such a way that the basic needs of the wage slaves are met, but, successful on this front or not, they will remain wage slaves. Managing wage slavery is what fascism does; abolishing wage slavery is what communism does. It helps to keep these two incompatible ideas in their proper boxes.

The conflation of fascism with communism is not the only problem facing the radical Left. As a strategy, managing wage slavery on behalf of the wage slaves has best been summed up by Marx in the Manifesto 170 years ago in terms that are frighteningly prescient today:

“[The] bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.

A portion of bourgeois society, Marx and Engels explained, seeks to address social grievances, “in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.” In classical 19th century parlance, the state is the naked dictatorship of capital over the wage slaves for the benefit of wage slaves. Marx and Engels noted that this conception of socialism was already well developed by the 1840s. It proposed administrative reforms that could be accomplished without upsetting existing material relations:

“In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.”

Of course, it is a fairly weak argument to assert Marx and Engels, already in 1848, anticipated the present iteration of radical Leftism in the form of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, or Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialists of America. History is replete with such banal coincidences, not to mention other examples that defy such connections. If Corbyn is a weak Marxist, as Laksiri Fernando argues, his connection with Proudhonism is likely altogether non-existent. We are not tracing the lineage of ideas, nor the genealogy of social movements, but a social process that time and again take familiar expressions or themes.

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History, as Mark Twain once observed, rhymes: which is to say, during times of crisis society turns to similar devices to address the consequences of the crisis. Thus, as Thatcher in Britain found her economic soulmate in Reagan across the pond, political movements like Corbyn’s Labour or Sanders’ DSA find their echo in Proudhon’s Philosophy of Misery, where all the advantages of wage slavery exist without its toxic defects.

The problem with this strategy is two-fold:

First, it has failed — repeatedly. There is no doubt that the radical Left has shown it can mount a vigorous effort to fight for reforms that remain within the bounds of existing society. Yet the radical Left has little to show for its decades of effort. The last really radical reform achieved by the radical Left in Britain was nationalization of some industries and national healthcare, but these crowning achievements of radicalism were won nearly seventy years ago. There has been no appreciable extension of those gains for more than six decades, two generations. A third generations is now coming to maturity at a point in history when Keynes predicted wage slavery should be a thing of the past. Yet radicals are still talking about modest, incremental reforms within the bounds of the system of wage slavery.

Second (and with implications that are far more problematic for the radical Left), the idea of addressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society itself has no necessary political valence. As we have seen, political personages like Trump in the United States or Le Pen in France can exploit the dissatisfaction of the working class for their own Right-wing agenda at least as effectively as Corbyn and Sanders. The radical Left has very often found its own message being lost or garbled as Right-wing politicians appropriate many of its symbols for their own purposes. It is not just that the radical Left strategy has failed for six decades, it has, to a large extent, laid the foundation for an extreme Right anti-globalist, anti-neoliberal agenda. (To give a good example: Trump today is exploiting a decades long practice on the Left of fighting free trade agreements when he imposes tariffs and declares his zero-tolerance immigration policy.)

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What Trump, Le Pen and Brexit and the like have done is call the radical Left’s hand and raise them. For decades now, all sincere criticism of neoliberalism has come from the Left. If on the Right or the Center some politician or another took up that call, the radical Left could pretty much guarantee this was pure window dressing — as was largely the case with Tony Blair or Barack Obama. Now the Left faces Trump in the United States and Le Pen in France, who, all indications suggest, are as seriously critical of free trade as any radical Leftist.

As the radical Left demanded, Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement, placed tariffs on products manufactured in Europe and China and even called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into question. The radical Lefty agenda of the last few decades has been realized, but in a way that certainly must horrify them. As usual, we can only expect this lesson to be lost on them, as has every lesson previously.

But do keep writing and reviewing your silly books; I find them hilarious.