Nicos Poulantzas: Capitalism in the next decade

I wrote a series of generally admiring posts about the work of Nicos Poulantzas (here, in declining order of relevance).

I was reading this evening an outstanding recent summary of his work by David Sessions.

Nicos Poulantzas

Generally I'm a huge fan.

Poulantzas tried to break out of the simplistic stereotypes of both the Stalinists and the Trotskyists concerning the nature of the capitalist state and its role in mediating and enforcing capitalist class dynamics.

Poulantzas's great problem, the issue that destroyed his theoretical position, was that he wanted an accurate analysis of contemporary capitalism which also predicted transition to socialism (the supercession of capitalist relations of production) as a reachable goal.

All his analysis kept trying to tell him this wasn't on the cards. It simply wasn't possible.

What does the future hold if not a transition to socialism?

The central political problems 'we' face today: the breakdown of consensus politics, the rise of 'populism', leftist hysteria - these symptoms are all rooted in the obsolescence of the neoliberal phase of capitalism. Neoliberalism has created a gulf between the super-elite beneficiaries of a financialised, globalised capitalism and vast swathes of the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie (old and new - Poulantzas emphasised the distinction) which has not shared in this largesse, which correctly feels abandoned, disrespected, atomised, alienated and futureless.

The problem has been accentuated by 'elite overproduction': the flow of c. 40% of the population through the universities, which has created a febrile petit-bourgeois mass which has internalised neoliberal ideologies and then naively tried to realise them in actuality.

This is the genesis of the SJW, equal-outcome, blank-slate-believing mass movements which self-define as 'left' but which are thoroughly bourgeois-liberal. They have captured the traditional labour parties of the left.

I expect a new capitalist synthesis to arise out of all this turmoil over the next decade. The shape is hard to discern but it will be whatever serves to restore class cohesion - that's the stability point.

Probably a little more socially conservative, a little more redistributive. Only time will tell. The process won't be pretty: I agree with Peter Turchin about that.

It's worth watching the project of Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson in the new UK Government. That's exactly the project they're trying to define.

I expect the Brexit project now to go through, because there's a gathering consensus in the more strategic and hard-headed section of the British political elite that Britain's future is best assured by a strategic alliance with the US rather than being semi-locked-in to a disunited Europe, a power both politically and militarily weak.

In the past there has been the famous 'bridge' or 'straddling' policy, which saw the UK acting as a 'value-adding' middleman between the US and Europe. But in an increasingly multipolar political world resulting from the decay of the naive neoliberal globalisation project and catalysed by the rise of China and an incipent global recession, the UK finally, has to choose sides.

I think the Johnson government understands that, while the Remainers, locked into crumbling, sterile visions of the past, do not.

Such a shame that Nico Poulantzas is no longer with us. I wish I knew what he would have thought.

Forget Boris, it's Gove vs Hunt

Consider this scenario. Boris is one of the final two and wins the leadership election in the party-at-large on a policy of Brexit for sure (I think this means on WTO terms or something like it). Parliament doesn't agree and passes a no-confidence motion. There is an election.

A wavering-leave Tory Party is squeezed between the Brexit Party .. and the Labour and Liberal Parties, all of whom come out for Remain. They hoover up the votes of Conservative Remainers. Despite all of Boris's alleged rabble-rousing charms, the Tories are decimated: welcome to the new Lib-Lab-SNP government.

If Boris prevaricates in October, the Brexit Party continues to grow: a slow motion version of the above.

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Boris is not the strategic thinker to get out of this hole. Logically therefore, he should not be one of the final two.

Hunt is surely the Remainers best bet. Smart, media-friendly, politically adroit.

He met with Trump - normally the mark of a supposed-winner.

Gove, once he gets past his immediate Class-A difficulties, is more Brexiteer-friendly, more ballot credible, a sop to the party-faithful. His problem is that he's too cerebral for these populist times. He doesn't look like a prime-minister: he's better cast as best-friend.

So logically, the process should return Gove-Hunt for the further party-ballot in the hope that either of them has the intellectual and political skills to navigate the very survival of the Tories where no solution currently presents itself.

Will Tory MPs see it that way, or will they panic and put Boris on the list - hope against hope that empty charisma will by some magic pull them through?

See the title of this post.

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Note: this is an analysis of the best options for an intelligent Tory party interested in long-term survival. It does not represent my personal opinions as to who would be best PM.

None of the above would be a start.

Diary: Capital Vol 2 and other stories

Up bright and early this morning. A ten past eight appointment with the dentist to have my new crown fitted. Except that it didn't fit. Apparently this happens one time out of five or six.

The tooth-stub was re-impressed (uncomfortable-to-the-cheek process with a mould) and I have to return in a couple of weeks for the next attempt to fit it.

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I am working through Capital Vol 2 (£2.99 on Kindle .. slightly easier to read than the free PDF) and what a trial the first four chapters are.

Things they don't tell you. Volume 2 was never written as a book by Marx, instead it was assembled from his voluminous notes by Engels. It's dry, insanely-repetitive .. and a less reverential editor would have cut it down to one tenth the size.

There are occasional nuggests buried under pages of Marx pecking away at the same material, over and over again. Marx was clearly just writing this stuff for himself, trying various thoughts out in an obsessive manner.

I'll grit my teeth and persevere, and then let someone else take over the heavy burden of distilling its real content. David Harvey is meant to be the go-to guy and I have his Limits to Capital.

Unfortunately I have to say I side with Michael Roberts against Harvey in the fundamentals of Marx's dynamical thinking, summed up in the reproduction schemes and Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF).

Update: Vol 2 chapters 5 and 6, where Marx reverts to coherent narrative, are considerably more interesting. I'm learning quite a bit and hoping for a continuing trend here.

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BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg has an insightful piece on the BBC website today about the inner decay of the present Tory government.

"The fuss around Boris Johnson is the symptom not the cause. The problem that is increasingly on people's minds at this grisly conference is that the Tories might be only at the start of a decline, which becomes impossible to escape.

"One former minister says, "there is a smell of decay", another, that it is "hopeless, but we are resigned to the nightmare". Cabinet ministers fret that Theresa May simply doesn't have the ideas or imagination to reboot either her leadership or their party. ...

"One of her colleagues says "how did she blow the party up in 12 months?", lamenting how her premiership has paralleled Gordon Brown, who after years of hoping to get to Downing Street arrived there with little to say, bewildered by the sudden challenge of the top job. Another says she looks "bent and broken". ...

"The fear here is not really that Boris Johnson is grabbing all the attention, it's that this party could be dying inside, and it finds itself with a leader who might struggle to stop the downward spiral."

Time to finish up here and go listen to Boris.

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Comment 

Performance-wise, it was a pretty decent speech and the conference standing ovation looked genuine. The message - economically-globalist, politically-liberal, strategically British-Empire-lite - was tailored to appeal to smaller capitalists operating within the national market, those companies aligned with US and other non-EU markets and the culturally-nationalist fraction of the more traditional working class.

Its tragedy: the Boris vision is not aligned with the interests of the dominant financial and industrial wings of the British ruling class, which heavily value economic integration within the European Union. It also fails for the idealistic middle-class young, those who buy into euro-ideology and fill the ranks of Momentum.

So yet again we've seen the deep fissure within the British elite and in the mass of the population, as refracted through the Tory party. Boris, despite his charisma, does not bridge the divide. No-one can.

Tory party dynamics, going forward, should be fascinating.