Been unfriended by X for expressing opposition to his support for the ending of free movement. Somewhat strangely, however, the debate is continuing via Messenger.
I post it here for comments and observations. X comments are in quote marks; mine are without. Over to you guys…
“We live in a global capitalist order, it’s a concrete material fact that we’re not going to escape within the lifetime of Brexit negotiations. This is not about fish and chip shop nationalism; this is about creating the space for a sea change in the material conditions of our own national framework that will allow us to challenge that order on an international level.”
Indeed we do, yes. But we cannot – and there is certainly no sign of it happening in the near future – ‘create space for a sea change in the material conditions of our own national framework that will allow us to challenge that order on an international level’ when we are atomised and weak, as a class, following 30-plus years of historic defeats, by simply tailing a consciousness that stems from the *right*
“I’m not smearing anything with a left gloss. You’re the one living outside of reality, not me. It’s possible to be anti-EU without being anti-migrant, and I don’t see how anything I or anyone else has said can imply that we’re siding with the Right at all, objectively or otherwise.”
Ironically, we have an opportunity to actually create so-called ‘Lexit’; a left, independent position, by supporting Brexit, opposing the EU while supporting and insisting on retaining the free movement of people. The contradictions inherent therein allow us space to expose contradictions, highlight our material class interests as distinct from those of the ruling class while also demonstrating the inherent humanity of socialism. But we’re fucking it up; by simply, for whatever subjective reasons, adopting exactly the same position, objectively, as the far-right.
“Was Tony Benn with Enoch Powell when he opposed common market entry on the grounds that it would have prevented the Alternative Economic Strategy from being implemented?”
Such a question reveals two things. Firstly, the EU is *not* – or shouldn’t be – a question of principle for the left. It should always and only ever be a tactical question, based on concrete conditions at the time. Were we in, say, the mid-70s, with a militant working class, mass trade union membership and a desire to leave the EU because it is a neoliberal cabal – not just because we hate immigrants and Johnny Foreigner – and then take on our own ‘unelected unaccountable bureaucrats’ then tickety-boo. What half-decent lefty wouldn’t be behind such a position?
But we aren’t. We are at the end of a thirty-year period of historic defeats and anti-EU sentiment is overwhelmingly and indisputably powered by the *right*
There is no ‘Lexit’ nor can there be while opposing the free movement of a section of our class. Neither the material conditions nor the necessary class consciousness is currently present. But even that isn’t really the point, which leads to the second thing I’d say; to paraphrase your own statement, we can be anti-EU but pro-free movement. Because what *should* be an iron principle for the left is not to demand the *state* restricts still further our freedom to live, love and work where we choose! If there is any space at all for a principled left ‘Brexit’ position on the question, then it is there that it will be found.
Harry Paterson
Other contributions:
‘It has been pointed out before, but it obviously needs to be re-said, that immigrants do not “take jobs”. To suggest otherwise, is to imply that they control the supply of labour, which clearly they do not.
National chauvinism, infected (I use that word deliberately) and affected trade union members, before accession to to the EU. The 1905 Aliens Act, was in part meant to put a stop to Jewish immigration for those escaping the Czarist pogroms.
Both then and now, it was said that the ‘other’ was to blame for attacks on wages, jobs, conditions…as opposed to trade union leaders, reps, etc failing to show solidarity with their European and non-European brothers and sisters.
The EU is not our friend, but neither are the home grown bosses here, who’re cutting services both locally and nationally.
I write this as someone whose the sone of afro-carribean immigrants, who voted leave, but who refuses to see those who voted remain or those from other parts of the world that imperialism and capitalism has screwed over as my enemy…It’s not to late to show some solidarity…’
I’ve been having this debate today. We need to uncouple the terms of free movement of people and free movement of capital. We need to argue that the two are not the same. If we continue to allow those that profit in the material sense from this conflation you hold up a system that enslaved. Allowing free movement of people across Europe in order to work in Sports Direct is not in any way a socialist aim (I’m not a socialist and don’t need to pretend to fight a system while upholding it’s values, I’m a syndacalist and anarchist). The whole system has to be challenged, we need to stop conceding ground. And when the capitalist system fails we need to hold open those cracks not make deals for ‘the greater good’ that term implicitly and by its language excludes those who are ‘not good’ and not valued. I’m always surprised the ground people will give up because the fight looks too hard.
