Ed Milliband And His Phony Populism
by Gilad Atzmon
Friday, June 22nd, 2012
In a desperate attempt to capture the imagination of patriots and nationalists, Labour leader Ed Miliband today promised new measures to prevent the British people being “locked out” of their own jobs by foreign workers. But what jobs is he talking about? Everyone knows there are no jobs. For forty years now, all British governments have gone out of their way to dismantle any manufacturing in this country and with devastating results – British industry and engineering belong to the past and the British governments have done little to change the situation.
Desperate to maintain his political relevance, Milliband distances himself from his predecessor, Gordon Brown’s, rhetoric. He (Brown) went on record saying: “I am not going to promise ‘British jobs for British workers’”. Here, I must mention, that the reference to ‘British workers’, used so often by Labour politicians, is obviously and completely out of date. Our elected politicians care nothing for the ‘worker’. They are far more interested in transforming those who used to be workers, into consumers. In fact, all Western governments are there to regulate consumption and are therefore, openly and completely submissive to big monopolies and global interests. Accordingly the rest of us, immigrant or a native, have but one simple role in life: to buy, or more accurately, to spend money we don’t have.
‘Immigration’ is obviously another spin. The real problem in Britain and in the West in general is pretty obvious. We are paying a heavy price indeed for the fatal collapse of manufacturing. We hardly produce anything and, as time passes, lose any chance to ever produce anything again.
So Miliband diverts our attention from the real issues. He blames Brown for being “disconnected from the concerns of working people.” Now, I wonder, what could Ed Milliband, that political toddler, possibly know about ‘working people’ or for that matter, work in general? Did Ed Milliband ever spend one day of his life in a factory or farm? Did Ed Milliband ever produce anything except empty rhetoric?
Milliband picks on immigration because he is, quite simply, a banal populist. He longs to appeal to some imaginary British national collective. At first he is apologetic: “Why didn’t we listen more?” he says as if he, Ed Milliband, could ever manage to listen. Then, he ‘empathises’ with the weak: “We lost sight of who was benefiting from that growth – and the people who were being squeezed. And, to those who lost out.” As the son of an immigrant Jewish cosmopolitan socialist, I would expect nothing less of Milliband than to transcend himself beyond any such fake, righteous British tribalism. If Ed Milliband really cared about the ‘squeezed’ then he would be perhaps a universalist and care about all those who fall behind – both indigenous Britons and immigrants.
Ed Milliband speaks about ‘immigration’ today because to him, the very concept of production and manufacturing is alien. It is so much easier for his lame mind to appeal to the lowest form of British xenophobic feelings. But the truth is, as ever, quite simple: if Britain wants to save herself and to stand again on her own two feet, she must flee the service economy and pursue real production that would imbue the presently archaic notion of ‘British worker’, with a new and vibrant meaning.
Posted by Gilad Atzmon
on June 22, 2012. Filed under Politics.
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48 Responses to Ed Milliband And His Phony Populism
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redscribe
June 22, 2012 at 11:27 pm
Interesting. Though I think that the rebirth of manufacturing within this country is not a feasible project. Its not that manufacturing has ceased, its just that the bulk of the more labour intensive manufacturing has migrated to developing countries where labour is much cheaper, and much of what remains is very capital-intensive and does not employ many workers. The clock cannot easily be turned back.
This is still one of the wealthiest countries in the world though, though that wealth is increasingly derived from a parasitic function on the world economy. This comes from Britain’s vaunted financial industries which basically make lots of money from speculative-related activities world wide; and Britain’s ‘invisible earnings’ which are basically the remnants of its imperial income, now protected by Uncle Sam in return for services rendered as an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Indeed, that is the role that British capitalism plays now internationally, as a parasitic petty backup for the US. Its a third-ranking country, and always going to be so, once its empire ceased to be a viable concern.
Even the ‘service economy’ could be turned into something useful in an international division of labour, if capitalism were to be abolished on an international scale. Production needs to be planned for social need, not profit, across borders, and if much of the effort that is currently devoted to financial manipulation were instead devoted to helping other parts of the world with such planning, a ‘service economy’ could play a role in helping create a new, socialist international economy from which all peoples would benefit.
There are a lot of things that this country’s productive and high-tech capabilities could bring to the world division of labour if that fundamental change were made to its purpose.
Gilad Atzmon
June 23, 2012 at 12:15 am
I missed you brother red.
The next thing is to find out what is the role of Milton Friedman in all of that..what is the role of our beloved Russian oligarchs and how is it linked with the fact that LFI and CFI are dominating our leading party’s politics via funding and proxy donations.
Don’t you think that even as a National Socialist, Red Ed is pretty lame? His message is totally convoluted…What does he have in common with the British worker or even the Brit in general? I am clearly a ‘johnny foreigner’, but I live here long enough to know that he is even more foreign than me.
You are right about the UK being wealthy yet what do we see of this wealth?
redscribe
June 23, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Friedman is important in this much more than any Russian oligarchs or Israeli lobbyists, I think. Britain as the oldest of the advanced capitalist countries, is the most decayed, that is no accident, as Britain shows all the advanced capitalist countries their future.
Capitalism depends on the working class as its source of wealth, but at the same time it fears the working class so much it would like to escape from it. That’s what they have exported so much of labour-intensive manufacturing. Its only a temporary solution – eventually they will come up against an organised working class in China, India, etc, but in the meantime they make a mint from exploiting cheap labour so they can soft-soap workers here with cheap goods and try to buy social peace.
But the current crisis has played havoc with that project.
Miliband is certainly lame, not any sort of a socialist (though certainly not a National Socialist – with caps!). He’s part of the professional political class, possibly one of the best of a very bad lot. They all have little in common with working class people. Though it was trade unionists who put Ed in his job since he did make some sympathetic noises in their direction when he stood as leader. Which was quite a novelty after all those years of Blair and Brown who would not give trade unionists the time of day.
He is weak and cowardly. But that’s not new for the Labour Party and its leaders. Its always pandered to nationalism, supporting workers slaughtering each other in both world wars and all manner of crimes of British imperialism all over the place, including the Middle East. Its never been a universalist party, it always was nationalist.
Labour always rejected Marxian socialism in favour of basically a slightly modified liberalism with some verbally socialist camouflage, and it really is the biggest obstacle to socialism in this country.
The wealth is in the hands of the ruling class, we see very little of it. That’s also mainly the result of Labour’s subservience to capital.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 6:41 pm
Your analysis is like the detailed description of the pen and paper on the small desk in a corner of a room and an attempt to find the source of the peculiar bad odor there by rifling through the drawers in the desk.
Missing from your picture is the very large and smelly thing in the middle of the room although Gilad just about told you it’s something that starts with “Ele..” and ends with “phant.”
With your 19th century economic analysis and your elephantophobia you sound like a jewish marxist, even though you may not be one, that you know of.
Jay Knott
June 23, 2012 at 6:52 pm
‘Redscribe’ is a Marxist, but not like the tribal ones. He does argue that the Israel/Palestine issue confirms the Marxist analysis, rather than falsifying it. However, he defends Atzmon against the most egregious misrepresentations of the crypto-Zionist community.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Redscribe’ is a Marxist, but not like the tribal ones.
I am not familiar with his writings so I am not saying anything about who redscribe is. All I have is this post, from which I see a glaring omission which is usually tribal, definitely pro-tribal
“He does argue that the Israel/Palestine issue confirms the Marxist analysis, rather than falsifying it.”
I happen to think it falsifies it. From the US standpoint that is so. American corporations stand to gain a lot more from being against Israel than with it.
“However, he defends Atzmon against the most egregious misrepresentations of the crypto-Zionist community.”
That’s nice. Does it come with points?
redscribe
June 23, 2012 at 8:00 pm
What you say is interesting, but it would not be the first tine that US corporate political interests have shot themselves in the foot because of a defective understanding of politics.
They could easily have done a deal with Fidel Castro in 1959 which would have kept Cuba more or less in the American camp, or at least as a friendly neutral. When his movement came to power, it did not consider
itself communist but basically liberal/nationalist, and only mindless American hostility drove it into the Russian camp. That was not smart from the rational viewpoint of US capitalist interests.
That’s only one example. I don’t think such idiocies as the Clinton impeachment, or the flirtation of considerable sections of US Republicanism (e.g Gingrich) with anti-government terrorism in the early 1990s, was exactly rational either. Is ‘Tea Party’ Republicanism today rational from the point of view of capital? Birtherism? I don’t think so.
There is a lot about American capitalist politics today, and has been for a long time, that is a bit flaky, to put it crudely. Sometimes the ruling class has a flawed understanding of its own class interests. Its consciousness is not a mirror image of Marxism, it is not scientific, and can be at variance with reality.
A big part of it, I think, is a shared racism, hatred and fear of the masses of the Muslim world who have the misfortune to live in countries with the biggest oil reserves that the American ruling class considers belongs to them.
Its still the case that if the US ruling class, for whatever reason, did not think their Israeli policy was wise from their point of view they would change it. And there is nothing AIPAC could do about that.
If that were not true, then the Mearsheimer/Walt strategy of seeking to change their mind about that would have no chance. And instead of incurring hatred and enmity from the Zionists, they would simply be regarded as irrelevant. As would Gilad.
redscribe
June 23, 2012 at 8:05 pm
“Sometimes the ruling class has a flawed understanding of its own class interests. Its consciousness is not a mirror image of Marxism, it is not scientific, and can be at variance with reality.”
Heh, come to think of it, there is no guarantee that the views of Marxists are in tune with reality either. Anyone can be wrong, no matter how good their method, if they don’t use it properly or understand the subject matter. But using a materialist method does help.
Jay Knott
June 23, 2012 at 8:26 pm
“But using a materialist method does help”. Except with Israel/Palestine.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:55 pm
So help me, we agree on this, Jay!
I think we could agree more often and joyously if you stopped mentioning the thing named after a date…
Jay Knott
June 24, 2012 at 10:43 am
Ariadna: I can’t resist posting this, about a dispute between Dawkins and Wilson. In a nutshell, Dawkins has fallen into your ’6 million engineers and architects for X’ fallacy. He lists the people who agree with him:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/24/battle-of-the-professors
“If science depended on rhetoric and polls, we would still be burning objects with phlogiston…” – Wilson
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 24, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Jay: “I can’t resist posting this, about a dispute between Dawkins and Wilson. In a nutshell, Dawkins has fallen into your ’6 million engineers ..”
Jay, we need to take this outside, as the bartender says. Let’s resume it on the Conspiracy thread and get back to redscribe’s “marxism a la carte.”
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:31 pm
“Sometimes the ruling class has a flawed understanding of its own class interests.”
Yep, I noticed that too. I also noticed the incredible coincidence that the “flawed understanding” seems to uncannily coincide with Israel’s interests.
redscribe
June 23, 2012 at 11:13 pm
Over Cuba?
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 24, 2012 at 3:54 am
Cuba used to be the major Carribean bordello and casino business of jewish and italian mafia interests. Castro killed that. It was very much in the US/Jewish business interests to undermine (and try to assassinate) Castro at every turn. Where do you come up with the idea that it was against US business interests to be against Castro is obscure indeed.
And the comparison with Israel takes the cake.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:53 pm
“But using a materialist method does help.”
So why don’t you? Consistently.
Feelings of fear of muslims? Thats’ using a marxist materialist method!?!
redscribe
June 24, 2012 at 10:53 am
Just on Cuba, this may be true, but it hardly explains why it was in US business interests to persue a policy that drove Castro into the arms of the USSR.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 24, 2012 at 2:26 pm
Redscribe, I fear you may need to take a refresher course in marxism.
All this talk of feelings (hatred, racism, fear of muslims) of the ruling elite determining its policies may be kosher marxism but it is a slap in the face to Uncle Karl.
If I were a Comrade I would not touch your marxism with a 10-ft pole not knowing where it has been, contaminated as it appears to be by dangerous bourgeois subjectivism and idealism, to use the proper lingo.
In the beginning, Red, there was MATTER, remember what you were taught? (or in the vulgarized speech of American politics “It’s the economy, stupid!”)
Furthermore, Uncle Karl and Uncle Frederich worked so hard to correct Hegel (who had it all upside down), they turned his dialectics right side up and transferred it to materialism. And you… you.. like a Judah, red, kissed them on their cheeks and betrayed them, joining the gang of idealistic pharisees.
Read Lasse’s excellent article (referenced in his post below).
Ponder it and then decide: (1) take his path (“when I realised that both Zionism and Bolshevism mainly were Jewish movements, and that Jewish Marxists from Eastern Europe colonised Palestine and committed genocide, I stopped identifying myself as a Jew and cleansed my identity of the remains of Marxism. I became an ordinary person and a humanist”)
or (2) recommit yourself to marxism, but with a pure heart, without bourgeois heresies.
Many laugh at marxism nowadays but I see the attraction of it, aesthetically speaking. It has a certain elegance to it, like period clothing: impractical, outdated, but worth preserving and donning on special occasions, like costumed festivals (May 1?).
The beauty of it is that if you don’t apply it to reality, if you don’t test it (Jay’s insistence), it is a perfectly sculpted system in which you can play countless games to test your deep understanding of the meshing of materialism with dialectics.
My favorite:
Q: If societies always progress on the obligatory upward spiral from sclavagism to feudalism to capitalism and then to socialism, how come Mongolia jumped from feudalism to socialism?
[It's a trick question that would probably trip you, tempted as you are to come up with ideology/politics (the SU) as explanations instead of real marxist dialectics.]
A: Because at the higher levels of historical development, the spires grow tighter and tighter and unfurl faster and faster, so that smaller spires may be jumped. Wow!
Hit the books, Red.
Jay Knott
June 23, 2012 at 9:23 pm
The main problem I have with Marxism is its untestability. When the ruling class acts in its class interests, Marxists say they are vindicated. When it doesn’t, they say it “has a flawed understanding of its own class interests”. Mearsheimer and Walt, on the other hand, tried to falsify their hypothesis.
I agree with you about American mistakes. But support for Israel is more than a mistake – its the expression of the power of one ethnic group over the others. Marxism rejects this analysis as ‘racist’. It is worse than useless.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:28 pm
I said:
“American corporations stand to gain a lot more from being against Israel than with it.”
to which your retort was a sort of
“Move on, folks, nothing to see here. Really, it has nothing to do with Jewish Power, the US capitalist interests often behave irrationally, just like that. Come, I’ll show you Cuba, you’ll see “mindless hostility,” they cut their noses, worse, they make holes in their pockets, not smart, not “a rational viewpoint of US capitalist interests”at all…”
The comparison is so egregiously false that I really don’t think I need to rub it in any further.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:51 pm
“A big part of it, I think, is a shared racism, hatred and fear of the masses of the Muslim world who have the misfortune to live in countries with the biggest oil reserves that the American ruling class considers belongs to them.”
1. I don’t believe for a moment that racism of fear of muslims is the motivation behind the elite’s policies. Those are the merely the red rags to shake in front of the bull crowds. I don;t see the Bushes having a problem at all with their Saudi and Kuweiti friends.
As a true marxist you should not even go anywhere near such a “subjectivist” and “idealistic” explanation.
2. Oil as the reason for all the wars on behalf of Israel is a sterling zionist dust in the eyes.
redscribe
June 24, 2012 at 11:03 am
Capitalist racism is a complex of elements, it never is purely about ‘race’. Hitler’s loathing of ‘Jew-Bolshevism’ was a distorted class hatred, he feared that Jews were the bacillus of revolution against capitalism.
Likewise bourgeois Islamophobia/anti-Arab hatred is really at bottom about fear of revolution from the Arab masses against Western interests (which includes Israel). Its not an abstract philosophising about ‘race’ but a counter-revolutionary demonology.
The ruling class never has a problem with its lackeys, whether it be the Maharajah and Nabobs who helped the British run India, or the Emir of Kuwait. Though it does have contempt for them, it does not fear them. It does fear the masses though. That is what racism is and always was – fear and hatred of the masses of oppressed peoples and nations. It is class based, and always was.
who_me
June 23, 2012 at 11:51 pm
redscribe
“Its still the case that if the US ruling class, for whatever reason, did not think their Israeli policy was wise from their point of view they would change it. And there is nothing AIPAC could do about that.”
you just lost your credibility as leftist and as someone independent of jewish zionist hasbara. but it was kind of obvious what you were about from what you call yourself. it’s very common for psuedo-left zionists to use such a cheesy gimmick.
redscribe
June 24, 2012 at 11:04 am
Well, if that is not possible, what is the point of the political activity of Mearsheimer and Walt?
Jay Knott
June 24, 2012 at 11:18 pm
“Western interests (which includes Israel)”. Nope.
“What is the point of the political activity of Mearsheimer and Walt?”
Western interests.
Jay Knott
June 23, 2012 at 8:34 pm
Redscribe’s blog is http://redscribblings.wordpress.com
He deleted my comments, but it’s still pretty good!
redscribe
June 23, 2012 at 7:36 pm
In the 19th century Britain was the world’s most important manufacturing nation. Things are a bit different now for reasons to do with the prolonged evolution of capitalism which both fears the working class and yet depends on it for its existence.
Sure this method was first fleshed out in the 19th Century, as were most other economic methods. All these things have been updated and modified since to reflect changes in the world. But I have yet to meet anyone who mocks Marxism as being ’19th Century’ who does not themselves adhere to a method that was not first elaborated in the 19th Century, if not earlier.
To be honest I’m not bothered about being called a Jewish Marxist, though its factually incorrect. It does not bother me either that many of those who post here (including Gilad himself) are of Jewish origin though hostile to a Jewish political identity and perhaps a bit over-sensitive about it at times. Marx himself was of Jewish origin, though as Gilad among others has pointed out, he was one of the great Jewish heretics. I can buy that.
Actually Jewish capitalism is not really any different from capitalism in general. It only bothers me when it affects the issue of the Palestinians and all that comes from that. Miliband is awful on that question of course, but he is pretty awful on quite a few other things as well.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:39 pm
“Actually Jewish capitalism is not really any different from capitalism in general. It only bothers me when it affects the issue of the Palestinians and all that comes from that.”
I don’t know what you mean by “affects the issue of the Palestinians” but whatever that is–something not so nice done to Palestinians (perhaps the “excesses” of Israel?) — if the root cause is capitalism, “jewish capitalism which is not different from capitalism in general,” then you are indeed a “Jewish marxist”–a category that, to use an expression Gilad may have used once in another context, is a sort of kosher shrimp.
Gilad Atzmon
June 24, 2012 at 8:31 am
AT: With your 19th century economic analysis and your elephantophobia you sound like a jewish marxist, even though you may not be one, that you know of.
G: Hello Ariadna, RS may sound like a J Marxist because all Western Marxists are slightly kosher (Progressiveness = Choseness) but RS is actually a proper Marxist ideologist, he is actually far more advance than our tribal Marxist crowd. But you are obviously correct, our Marxist are now 2 centuries behind..
Gilad Atzmon
June 24, 2012 at 8:26 am
I agree about Friedman,,,sadly enough i am touring now for 3 weeks and cannot engage in a proper discussion… However, it is clear the Red Ed is not as red as he promised to be…
who_me
June 23, 2012 at 12:42 am
millicent the sayan works for israeli/zionist jewish oligarch interests. he’s got a long history of war crimes, treason, corruption and who knows what other serious crimes. he belongs in prison, sharing a cell with that canadian porn actor who liked to chop up and eat his lovers.
Gilad Atzmon
June 23, 2012 at 7:25 am
this is not very kind
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 1:43 am
Ed Milliband… ‘empathises’ with the weak: “We lost sight of who was benefiting from that growth – and the people who were being squeezed. And, to those who lost out.”
How can yo lose sight of those who benefited from the growth if you see them at cocktail parties all the time, unless you’re sloshed?
It’s easy to lose sight of those who lost out, however–they’re not at eye level, they’re on the ground and every time they attempt to rise you step on their hands.
happeh
June 23, 2012 at 5:36 pm
You know what Gilad? I have seen your name for what seems like a decade now associated with “resistance” to Israel. I never believed it but I didn’t care enough to investigate.
You really are an Israeli agent like the other ones on this website.
The only reason you are picking on Ed Miliband is because if immigration really was restricted, the mass immigration of your cousins from Poland into England would be slowed or halted.
“Figures published in August 2007 indicate that 656,395 people were accepted on to the scheme between 1 May 2004 and 30 June 2007, of whom 430,395 were Polish nationals.
Unofficial estimates have put the number of Poles living in the UK higher, at up to one million.”
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 5:47 pm
I feel hurt. I was the first, I believe, to be outted by you on this site.
Why? Was I so transparent? So clumsy in my disguise? What gave me away so much earlier, whereas with Gilad it took you a decade to figure him out?
OK, I am not saying I am as good as Gilad but a few days compared to a decade?! My self-confidence is in tatters.
Laura Stuart
June 23, 2012 at 6:06 pm
Ooooh now I just realised who the owner of all these Polski Sklep businesses are around here, all Gilad and his family …
It really looks like Gilad and I have been outed as Israeli agents. Can you please tell the Israelis that you have confirmed this – perhaps they remove my ban from Israel.
What to do now .. . . . .?
fool me once...
June 23, 2012 at 8:48 pm
Hi Laura, do think this link could be a clue to the identity of the mysterious “happeh”?
“A person does not need permission from a nobel laureate on what they should think and believe. An independent person does not need the comfort of a written report backed by a corporation to give him the strength to believe what his own eyes show him.”
http://www.sciforums.com/encyclopedia/Happeh
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 23, 2012 at 9:17 pm
I don’t want to ever be on your bad side…
Jay Knott
June 23, 2012 at 8:44 pm
Gilad’s article reads a bit like it was written by Ed Milliband’s dad rather than our beloved leader.
Milliband “longs to appeal to some imaginary British national collective”. On the contrary. Nations are not ‘imaginary’, as Ben Anderson argued, and politicians don’t represent them. They represent international capitalism and/or international Jewish power.
One of the reasons Labour lost the last election is because its leader was recorded calling a lifelong Labour voter a ‘bigot’ because she mentioned she was concerned about too much immigration.
During the dot-com boom, yuppies moved into San Francisco, raising the rents out of the reach of local people, who had every right to resist. Left-liberals would agree. But when thousands of immigrants from poorer countries move into a richer country, accepting lower wages and worse conditions, thus lowering the position of the indigenous poor, and these locals complain, the left screams ‘racist!’.
Leftists help the elite by slandering working class people opposed to mass immigration. But Milliband’s job is to win an election. That’s democracy (or ‘populism’, as Gilad calls it). So he has to pay lip service to the valid concerns of working class people, such as immigration. But if he gets elected, he will promote it just like his predecessors.
Lasse Wilhelmson
June 24, 2012 at 11:09 am
I was a Jewish Marxist
http://lassewilhelmson.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/arabnyheter-interviews-lasse-wilhelmson/
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 24, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Where can I get “Is the World Upside Down”?
Lasse Wilhelmson
June 24, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Ariadna, it is in Swedish. Before the end of this year I plan to fix an English version of my book. Many of the articles, including “Quo Vadis?” which is the postscript of the book, you will find on my blog in English. I have to pay for translation, publish and sell myself, so I have to take it bit by bit. Also I plan a no 2 of the Swedish version, as I wrote a lot of articles since then. I also have a biografi of my “journy”, from 68 movement till today, in the offing, and some more… So I will have to finnish somethings before I am finnished
peace
lasse
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 24, 2012 at 3:46 pm
Godspeed, Lasse!
who_me
June 25, 2012 at 1:55 am
what is missing from the chomsky influenced “marxism” of people like redscribe is logic. they get most of the detail right, but fail on the basics behind the details.
part of it is due to the felt need to protect “the jews”, so any influence “the jews” may have automatically gets downgraded to something that can be portrayed as harmless. for the honest dupe of this line of propaganda (the dishonest, we already know where they are coming from), the indoctrination they get concerning “the jews” being this long suffering minority of powerless victims as they grow up serves to ready their minds to reject any association of the present zionazism rampant in the capitalist world with “the jews”. it’s got to be somebody else wielding the power to do these crimes. so they blame everything under the sun and moon, but ‘the jews”.
when these chomskyite arguments (for lack of a better descriptive term) are looked at in a logical manner, they fail. for example, the canard that the jewish lobby in the usa is no more powerful than any other corporate lobby, and only wields influence because american rich folk see israel as a useful tool to control “arabs” with.
this propaganda fails logically when one asks why would the american polygarchs need something like aipac. they already own the politicians through their various other business lobbies (chomsky goes into great detail how mam, for example, runs congress). if american poligarchs want american politicians supporting their “aircraft carrier in the mideast”, they already had the lobbies in place to do this. what the jewish lobby in fact does is duplicate these lobbies. the jewish lobby (aipac, etc.) does not just concern itself with israel, it covers every aspect of american policies, both domestic and foreign. this is an additional layer of lobbying over and above that duplicates what all the other lobby groups do.
now why would business go to such great expense to duplicate something they already have, and which is fully effective at controlling the usa?
the answer is obvious. they don’t need it, it is imposed upon them.
why?
to keep them in line.
byh whom?
themselves – according to chomsky “logic”. see what i mean. the logic fails.
when one goes further and asks why each western country has this jewish lobby playing an identical role in controlling that nation for zionazi interests that fully duplicate already existing corporate/fascist influence lobbies, one has to wonder. why are these penny pinching corporates so generously ineffiecient with their lobbying efforts worldwide?
then there is the problem that these jewish lobbies often force business and countries to act against their own interests. in fact, going by chomsky “logic”, it becomes a major “head scratching” moment. why are these clever crooks, who have think tanks and specialised staff researching all their options to the infinite decimal place, shooting themselves in the foot in ways a layman can see would be obviously detrimental to their goals?
logic says they’re not shooting themselves in the foot. either somebody else is shooting their feet and they are taking a planned fall. or they just want one to think that is what they have done, and that the real benefits, and beneficiaries, of the actions are kept hidden.
we have all heard the line: “follow the money”. a useful tool, if one can do this. often, “the money” is not very easily followed. a better way is to follow the logic of the actions. when one sees things that don’t make logical sense from people one knows have vast research facilities at their beck and call, it’s not because the decision maker is an opinionated fool, but because the real reasons for the decision are obscured, and so are who and what benefited from them. when intelligent people present illogic in such situations, it’s not illogic, but manipulation of the gullible.
redscribe
June 27, 2012 at 10:21 am
‘Chomsky-influenced Marxism’. I was not aware that Chomsky considered himself a Marxist, though he is obviously to some extent influenced by it, which sort of makes things the other way round.
The article I was commenting on, however, is about Ed Miliband and why he is capitulating to anti-immigration sentiment and more broadly regressive nationalism. I don’t see that this has much to do the activities of AIPAC and I don’t see what interest the Labour Friends of Israel collectively has in pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment is in Britain.
Its not entirely unknown for some here (though obviously NOT Gilad) to intimate that Zionists promote immigration in order to undermine nativist nationalism in countries like Britain – a really dodgy criticism which points in the opposite direction to Gilad’s article. Obviously these two critiques are in incompatible with each other.
Perhaps that’s why some think that Gilad sounds like Ralph Miliband – I’m not sure that I would entirely concur with this but in his writings there is generally a leftist thrust that, shall we say, is not shared by all his admirers. This is lost on those on the left influenced by ‘left’ Jewish communalism, but it is why there is a basis for dialogue between Marxists and people with views like Gilad’s.
There is a glaring lack of economic analysis in those who mock ’19th Century’ Marxist analysis. But actually, there is plenty of 20th Century Marxist economics (of mixed quality, as with everything), and more to the point, nothing really in the way of a coherent critique of the status quo that is not influenced by supposedly ’19th Century’ Marxism.
Unless you are talking about Keynesian economics, which is really just a sticking plaster on the existing system, and about as ‘radical’ as Ed Miliband.
What the current economic crisis reveals is that the nation-state is an obsolete social formation by virtue of the fact that the modern productive forces, created by capitalism, long ago spilled over its boundaries and need genuinely trans-national institutions to work in a fully productive manner. Hence the ruling classes tried to accommodate this by creating trans-national economic institutions such as the Euro.
But it does not work properly, because the ruling classes, despite this recognition, cannot go all the way and break with the national state, which is where their power comes from. All they can do is build an unstable halfway house, a rickety thing that is neither fish nor fowl, that staggers from one disaster to another. Who else has any analysis of this or any idea of what to do about it? Only the programme of trans-national economic planning and expropriating those national ruling classes actually provides a credible solution to these very 21st Century problems. This is a Marxist position.
Gilad’s article does pose these questions because Miliband’s feeble nationalist rubbish is an appeasement of that ruling class which needs trans-national institutions but cannot escape from the nation-state. Its not in the interest of the working class to support its own ruling class on this, any more than it was in the interest of the working class to slaughter each other in two world wars on behalf of their bosses. And who else but Marxists have anything coherent to say about that?
Not everything revolves around the Israel/Jewish lobby.
Jay Knott
June 27, 2012 at 10:58 am
I think working class people have a little bit more interest in restricting immigration than they do in getting killed! The living standards of poor whites in Arizona are undermined by illegal Mexican immigrants. When they complain, the left yells ‘racist’. All I’m saying is, you have to accept that there are conflicts of interest within the working class. This is not ‘feeble nationalist rubbish’.
Saying ‘dodgy’ is not good enough as a reponse to claims about Jewish groups supporting immigration. The ADL and the SPLC really do slander moderate opposition to mass immigration more ferociously than any other part of the ruling class do. The simplest explanation is because it’s in their ethnic interests.
True, it’s not all about the Lobby. It’s not all about class, either.
redscribe
June 28, 2012 at 10:48 pm
People risk getting killed in all kinds of situations. Some are more worthwhile than others. If people risk their lives fighting for their own (working) class that is honourable. If they win something positive comes about. Nothing wrong with that.
Fighting the workers of other nations over illusions of national purity is doing so for the interest of a different class. A waste and a travesty. And that includes fighting against immigrants. The issues are fundamentally the same.
Actually it is about class. In the end everything is. Fighting against other workers as perceived ‘racial’ enemies or other such nonsense only leads those under that kind of delusion into more poverty, if not worse.
It doesn’t actually work, poor whites in the South have generally been pretty downtrodden, and become more so the more racial divisions are entrenched. That kind of stuff makes unions virtually impossible to organise and basically leaves workers with hardly any power of their own.
A decent organising campaign among immigrant and native workers alike for better conditions, wages etc would benefit workers on all sides of the fence. Anti-immigrant mobilisations make that much more difficult and again, it is not the working class, even the sections influenced by racism, that benefit.
Small compensation that your boss shares your prejudices if he craps on you while flattering your illusions of common national interests. That sort of thing is like unrequited love. A one-way thing. Its just divide and rule.
As for the ‘anti-racism’ of the ADL and co, they may be hypocrites, but so are those who denounce them for racism while supporting anti-immigrant agitation. You don’t fight racism with other racism, or hypocrisy with other hypocrisy.
Ariadna Theokopoulos
June 29, 2012 at 12:23 am
So, globalization is the result of the ebullient “modern productive forces,” frenetically spilling over boundaries, and which clamored for “genuinely trans-national institutions” in order to “work in a fully productive manner.”
Luckily the “ruling classes” swept up by such dionysian ergomania had no choice and did their best to “accommodate” it by creating the much needed “trans-national economic institutions such as the Euro.”
You are a funny guy. Not much of a marxist but a funny guy. I had a good laugh over it.
Is this your idea of marxist analysis or more like a a kosherized Soros marxism?
“Actually it is about class. In the end everything is. ”
Yep. We can see it in Israel. Jews, let’s be frank, have always been at the forefront of the class struggle in diaspora, nay, they have always been the very leaven that made the social dough rise and bubble, so imagine if it’s jews all to wall, like in Israel, and it’s all about class, as you say.
Why, then you get the Histadrut– the israeli workers’ unions.
The proletariat is “the most disciplined and most socially conscious class” (if I remember my readings correctly–oh, I do, I am just being falsely modest).
Take that CLASS and add to it “Jewish” so what do you get? Why, the most advanced and the most socially conscious of all proletariats that ever were….
Small wonder that they won’t accept Palestinian membership–those backward workers would not even be able to understand that it’s
all about class.”
As for any criticism of ADL, you’re right–you’d have to be a hypocrite to denounce them for racism. Look, we’re all a bit racist, ain’t we? Who can cast he first stone? Oops, no, that’s a bit too Christina. Let’s make that: why focus on the ADL?
In the US/UK it’s all about class too. The so-called Jewish power is just a class thing, right?
redscribe, once again, you either have to bone up on your marxist or come out and admit that yours is kosher marxism.