critical-mass.net

In part 1 of this article pointing out the neglect of larger social issues it was argued that blaming the victims of the hierarchical mass society system has become a default position of all political tendencies within the neo-liberal phase of the capitalist mode of production. The mainstream media’s parroting of the ‘Thugs’ and ‘law and order’ narrative emanating from all sides of the political spectrum over the summer of 2024 ‘Riots’, is now being replicated from a different angle – this time from the reformist left. Yet again with regard to civil disturbances and citizen unrest, the social and economic context of the current neo-liberal phase of the global economic system is being either largely or totally ignored.

This socio-economic amnesia is emanating from many of the left who occasionally posture as radicals is similar to the centre and right. It seems that some powerful motive prevents many people from blaming the way we humans are enforced by current circumstances to live collectively. The left, right and centre of the established elite political system will not countenance any serious internal criticism and opposition to the system which privileges them. Their narratives are selected to eliminate any of the problems arising within these societies. Here is another example produced this month by a left liberal campaigning group based in the UK;

“The street violence that has gripped much of England and Northern Ireland since 30 July instead tells a story of who the modern far right are, how they organise, what they believe, and the coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators and influencers who have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.”

As they openly confess, “instead“, of socio-economc facts it’s a story of the “modern far right”.  For these left liberals the street violence in the UK is a “story” about the “hateful” far right movement of individuals. So in fact it is a ‘story’ which deliberately misses out the facts of a socio-economic system which for many decades in the UK and Europe has increased the wealth and privileges of the rich and decreased the wealth and well being of the working and non-working poor. In this left liberal ‘establishment‘ mindset, the economic, social and political reasons for the rise of right wing beliefs and whatever experiences have made them “who they are”, are apparently not even worth mentioning, let alone seriously considering. I suggest this neglect is because this reformist section of the British establishment and its political representatives in the British Labour Party and assorted NGO’s have for a generation utterly failed to adequately or seriously represent the interests of the lower middle classes, the union organised working classes and the precarious and unemployed working people of the UK and elsewhere.

As a consequence of this failure of the soft ‘left’ to ‘represent’, the interests of a significant sector of UK society, a small section of the latter’s victims of the system have broken away from the ‘established’ reformist wings of the British class system and are seeking alternatives. Disgusted with the two or three generations of three (or two) party establishment pattern, they are choosing to follow what they mistakenly consider are alternative radical means to hit back and disrupt the current established elite ideas, practices and policies. But the above noted mediocre middle class, think-tank intellectuals, rarely start from reality.

So the lefts, typically for intellectually trained individuals, conveniently reason that it is not the actual experiences of the working classes in the UK and Europe which inform what ideas they are expressing, they prefer to assert the opposite. To most intellectuals, their mental  ‘camera obscura’ turns reality  upside down. They follow the mistaken philosophical proposition; ‘I think; therefore I am’, when in fact the real world operates according to the observation that; ‘I am; therefore I think’. Just seriously and self critically reflect on your own intellectual process or watch any new born baby for confirmation that ‘being’ (experiencing) always precedes thinking. Hence these trained liberal reformist inverters of reality  think that it is simply the ideas and messages that the rioters have been given and are expressing which determines how they behave. Thus they write;

“These messages have gathered pace over the past four years as the former Conservative government ramped up messaging to “stop the boats” and accused migrant people of abusing the system while being “child rapists” and “threats to national security”. In the same time period, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and a failing policy to house asylum-seeking people in hotels has repeatedly triggered real-life violence and intimidation, mainly outside the hotels housing families.”

So the decades of living through austerity and measures undermining the living standards and security of millions of working class citizens administered by Conservative, Liberal and Labour governments is being ignored. Also being ignored is the undoubted ability of the masses to deduce for themselves the overwhelming unfairness of the current system which rewards the few and punishes the many – even during a Pandemic. All these decades of complicity by all wings of the British political establishment is being ignored and instead they want the rest of us to believe that it’s the ideas of the right wing fringe political tendencies which are stirring things up and causing the unrest. It is perhaps inevitable that the manufacturers of so-called politically correct ideas about who is allowed to define themselves as feminine and who is not, would also manufacture ideas which conveniently omits their own class-based complicity in the reality of decades of British and European life.

In this inverted way, the left liberals conveniently avoid dealing with the part of the British ‘establishment’ socio-economic reality they are actually part of promoting, whilst living at the expense of it and protecting it. They are simply adding their influences to the law and order campaign orchestrated by the latest Labour Government’s left liberal ‘benighted’ ‘establishment. The spectacle of an antiquated ‘knight of the realm’ (arise Sir Keir) repeatedly urging the criminalisation of confused and serially angry young teenagers for loudly protesting and wildly throwing office and street furniture about the streets, actually indicates the existence of an alternative story.

The alternative is a story about the experiences of more than one generation living throughout their lives with a lack of adequate school buildings, disappearing youth clubs, few decent skilled jobs, adequate social housing and decaying community environments. The targets these indigenous victims chose (immigrants) as the catalysts for the current riots and disturbances, as confused and as mistaken as these expressions are, are nonetheless the limited and distorted expressions of something deeper. In the UK, Europe and elsewhere there are increasing numbers of exasperated human beings who are now refusing to be treated like sheep and who are refusing to be silenced. Mentally herding (or physically kettling) them toward or within whatever ‘story’ or space seems convenient to the established elite, is no longer working. So long term imprisonment in a prison estate which is already failing and close to collapse is to be tried

Another crucial missing chunk of reality from the current establishment narrative in the UK, Europe and the West, is the ‘story’ behind  how come so many foreign countries have become so inhospitable to their own people? Why is it that those born into them are so desperate to get away that they will risk life and limb in a overcrowded piece of boat shaped plastic and pay out all the money they possess to escape the clutches of their systems and its governing elites? How come many regions of Asia, Africa, and Oceania, which have historically supported large numbers of resident peoples and whose societies literally lasted for thousands of years whilst doing so, with only a relatively few Marco Polo type intrepid travellers venturing beyond their own shores? Why have Asian and African people in the 21st century, suddenly wanted to urgently leave their homes in such huge numbers?

Could this neglected alternative prequel ‘story’ have anything to do with the period of colonial history in which the European elites conquered and subdued these foreign regions? Did the deliberate European ruining of their local indigenous social systems and economies perpetrated in order to obtain possession (or control) of their ample natural resources, not have anything to do with current problems? Could the increasing exodus of people from these now rapidly failing puppet state regimes, be anything to do with the 20th century installation and ongoing 21st century manipulation of them by European and North American country elites? Indeed, the installation of those regimes were deliberately set up by the UK, European and US elites so that they would become long term enablers and agents of the west who would comply with European and North American elite economic and financial requirements.

We need to ask why are the UK and European establishment voices of all political tendencies of left, right and centre, remaining silent on this undeniable Do they think that the modern descendents of these ravaged communities don’t know this colonial and imperial back story to their present urgent need to become immigrants? The Hey Day of the Colonial and Imperial period is in the past but there is still continuing foreign military, financial and political interference, subjection and displacement behind the current wave of immigration. In reality, rather than racist myth, the majority of immigrants, are not raiders of our reduced social funds, they  the current victims of economic, political or military oppression by regimes still supported, fully armed añd equipped by the UK, Europe and the West.  Could it be, that the silence by all these ‘established’ well educated sectors concerning, the impoverishment and oppression of the European working classes and the poverty and oppression of the foreign immigrants trying to get into the UK and Europe, is actually a lack of knowledge of the colonial period of capital accumulation, its horrors and assumptions? I doubt it!

Or is it perhaps a decision to deliberately ignore some highly embarrassing past histories upon which knighthoods, privileged forms of parliamentary living, reporting and ongoing foriegn investment returns (private and institutional) are still fully based upon? So much silence in 2024 on any possible alternative motivational ”stories’ concerning riots and disturbances from the professionally trained chattering middle classes of modern societies, must have a powerful reason to explain it. You normally cannot turn their verbal X, tik tok, Facebook, Radio or TV dihorea off, it normally keeps on gushing out. Commodifying sentences and selling them whether they are repeatedly banal or not is keeping thousands of them in the salaried means to purchase, consume and pollute the planet locally and internationally. Words are cheap to produce, particularly now there are AI sub routines to expedite the recycling of banality; however, corrective humane actions are what is needed.

With regard to the many victims of the current hierarchical mass society systems it is to be hoped that the stoked up frustrations and anger of the current suffering populations in Europe and elsewhere, will soon be re-focussed on the real problem for life on earth and the suffering sections of humanity. I suggest the focus of anger and frustration should be calmly redirected onto the current nature of the elite governed socio-economic system itself. And not just on its latest capitalist based mode of production. Non-capitalist elites are just as problematic as capitalist ones in regard to authoritarianism, oppression and the exploitation of humanity and nature.

Anyone who doubts this only need to read about the reality of Leninist Russia, Maoist China and North Korea under the Kim dynasty. As an alternative to repeating past mistakes, individuals and groups of concerned individuals need to begin thinking and seeking to actually implement alternative, more ecological and humane ways of living now. Being a supportive, cooperative part of the humann species rather than a competative warring section, would not only be preferable in particular but also more in line with the evolution of life on earth in general. Of the millions of species existing on the planet, throughout their millions of years of evolution, no other species has systematically treated other members of their own species with so much hostility and aggression, nor destroyed the environmental resources they needed to lived upon.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2024)

The recent riots in various UK cities sparked by the tragic stabbings of little children in Southport have highlighted two social narratives, which are primarily based upon narrow ideological understandings rather than on factual ones. This symptom of narrative selection is further demonstrated by the evidence that the actual stabbings have been quickly neglected and the focus directed exclusively upon the issue of immigration. It is here that the two partially correct narratives have been counter-posed to each other as alternative truths. It is being asserted within one narrative, emerging from within the indigenous working class communities, that the already much depleted social resources once available to them are being further reduced and redirected to immigrant communities. Once the facts are examined, this viewpoint cannot be denied so its relative truth has been deliberately ignored or neglected by those in government and media.

The amount of financial and fixed resources directed to support immigrants has been expanded astronomically during the same period as a decline in previous indigenous community resources have been reduced and replaced by austerity reductions, food banks and charity shop purchases. The descendents of the indigenous working classes have had their mid 20th century relative security gained from secure employment and social distress relief reduced by unemployment and cuts to education, health and other social services. Consequently, many UK citizens have been angry, frustrated and relatively powerless for decades and are now joined by a new generation also experiencing deteriorating circumstances.

Yet these facts are missing from within the narratives championed by the right and left leaning political classes. Frustration and anger have therefore, increased exponentially. What is currently happening is that the cause of this relative decline in life experiences and future life chances of current indigenous working people in the UK and Europe, is being attached to the existence of those human beings displaced from other countries who have now become immigrants to Europe.

One set of victims of the current global crisis of the neo-liberal capitalist system – the indigenous victims – are being told by the right wing extremists that this is the fault of another set of external victims – the immigrants!. The additional reality missing from the narrative of the right wing and liberal wings of the political and media ‘establishment’ in the UK is the following. During the same decades that were used by the governing elites to reduce wages and benefits for working people, the resources going toward the rich, super rich and moderately well off were increased either moderately in some cases or astronomically in others. Tax cuts, cheap labour costs and reduced industry and financial restrictions in the UK and Europe have enabled the class of millionnare and billionaire capitalist exploiters to expand their wealth, their numbers and their influence within all countries – including the UK.

Consequently, the reality is that in the 21st century, there are not less socially produced resources to go around, for indigenous and foreign victims of the global system, but far more than there was in the 20th. It is the social distribution of these resources which has been manipulated and altered by successive governments of all political complexions. This unequal social distribution of resources has become part of the problem which lies behind many of the current riots and civil disobedience and is conveniently being ignored.

The right wing organisers of these demonstrations and riots know these basic facts, but for various reasons, are choosing to ignore or neglecting to mention them. This undoubtedly is in order to continue to promote the one-sided blame game of picking on the immigrants rather than on the rich elites who control how disproportionately the global economic system functions. So the various figures in the political establishment are asserting an opposite, also partially correct and valid point, in their narrative of justification for the existing inequality by asserting that immigration benefits some people and the country in general. Whilst it undoubtedly does to some extent, they also choose to ignore or downplay the above noted dispossessed reality for the indigenous working classes. The fact is in 21st century UK and Europe there are enough social resources to adequately feed, house and educate all indigenous working people together with those immigrants terrorised or victimised by their own governments who are now seeking sanctuary.

What ultimately stands in the way of re-distributing these resources to all those who need them is the current hierarchical mass society system governed and controlled as it is by a relatively small class of greedy, overprivileged, inhumane elite individuals, who for decades have shaped the social, economic and financial systems to benefit themselves. These elite minority sectors of hierarchical mass societies are so dehumanised by their privileged life-styles, that in summer 2024, in the background of the riots, they have preferred to financially support the exclusive elite focussed Olympic Games, and a continuing Genocide in Gaza, rather than financially, supporting the schools, hospitals, care homes and local councils of their own struggling communities.

It has also been clear for some time that they would also prefer to financially support the war in Ukraine and continue to despoil and pollute nature rather than relinquish the smallest fraction of their wealth in taxes. Incidentally taxing the rich and super rich would at least ease some of the current burdens upon ordinary people, the environment or the other essential species necessary for the existence of life on earth. With this obnoxious 21st century reality in mind, is it any wonder, that there is widespread discontent, even if some of it is currently confused, misguided and counterproductive?

What also stands in the way of solving the many problems that the current hierarchical mass society systems have created are those who have only managed to grasp partial truths and regurgitate them along with promoting other mythical fabrications. Among those are those fabricators and defenders of the ideologies of Islam, Judaism and Christianity, who also ignore the fact that these ideologies openly justify and condone patriarchal exploitation, state orchestrated oppression and revenge killings in the name of their imaginary god. Marx’s characterisation of religion as the ‘opium of the people’ only scratches the surface of the alienating circumstances attached to living within the past and present hierarchical mass societies. Incidentally, being a childhood victim of religious indoctrination adds to the difficulty many adults have now in deciding how to act collectively together to change the oppressive and exploitative reality of their societies.

Let’s summarise what is currently happening to the low, paid, hard working, precariously employed working classes of the UK, Europe and elsewhere. Many are reduced to living in shop doorways, others on park benches. Others, are just surviving by having multiple part-time low paid jobs, to feed themselves and their children. The exhaustion, stress and mental turmoil this kind of existence brings leads to drug taking, alcohol abuse, self-harming and mental illnesses of various kinds. Others are drawn into the internet world of interconnected and intensified anger, frustration and distorted fantasies of revenge (games and chat rooms) against the half understood processes and actions occuring around them. How can these thousands of mistreated, rejects of the modern hierarchical mass society system be expected to make calm rational sense of a system in which its educated elite are themselves in a constant state of denial concerning the corruption, the injustice, the low and high-level violence and neglect caused by  the socio-economic system they govern?

Far too many citizens have been rendered by the current socio-economic system of neo-liberal capitalism, completely unfit for rational thinking and calm reflection. Within any humane paradigm of understanding of social realities, the blame for the existence of a section of modern societies who are, mad for revenge, full of erratic rage and distorted perceptions cannot be laid entirely on the heads of those citizen victims displaying these symptoms. The system which at a governmental level bombs people into oblivion, starves others to death, builds prisons rather than community centres and homes, and falsely imprisons its critics, is producing on a small scale – in some of its citizen victims – essentially the same irrational and self-centered characteristics which define it at an elite level and on global scale.

Yet typically, it is the neglected, mistreated and misled working class victims who are to feel the full weight of the law at the urging of Labour and Conservative politicians, who stay silent or complicit when in the presence of those responsible for mass killings and genocide.  To use an agricultural metaphor, the system is reaping what it has sown as it did in the 20th century in which two world wars, resolved its many contradictions by removing at least six million of those earlier victims who potentially personified them.

The modern versions of these alienated citizens’ of the system, are among those victims of the present system who are currently being recruited by the right, in the UK and elsewhere, to target the weak and defenceless immigrant victims and to riot and destroy objects in various towns and cities during August 2024. Of course, it is much easier to classify those who the present system currently renders ‘unfit for rational thinking and reflection‘ as ‘fascists’ and condemn them outright rather than trying to provide them with a more accurate view of what is wrong with our global societies.

Explaining to them that what they are being misled into fighting for, will ultimately turn on them and destroy them as it did to others like them in the 1930’s and 1940’s, is currently a necessary – but a completely neglected task. It was in the 20th century,  that a previous generation of angry and frustrated citizens in Europe, initially joined the then small groups of sectarian conspirators who went on to create the openly fascist mass parties headed by Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Stalin. The evidence of numerous  historical archives indicate that these organisations and their leaders turned upon everyone (high or low) who would not implement the orders they had been issued with. Then when they gained power, they unleashed total war and dragged  global humanity into a previous era of shameful episodes.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2024)

In the context of the 21st century multi-dimensional crisis visited upon the planet and its many species of life-forms, it has become popular in some circles to suggest reaching back to the writings of long dead individuals for contemporary guidance. The ones chosen have invariably made outstanding contributions to the understanding of life on earth, and that is the prime reason normally given to urge some of us to consult their opinions. A recent suggestion from some on the left in 2024 has been to study the works of Fredrick Engels.

However, three cautionary factors need to be recognised before undue reliance is placed upon any past researcher’s and their conclusions – and that includes Engels. The first is that they were limited by the quality and quantity of the evidence they had available and chose to base their conclusions upon: Second; they were subject to at least some of the general, class based socio-economic assumptions that were popular and taken for granted during the period they existed on earth; and third, they, like all human beings, were subject to their own emotional responses to events as well as to the intellectual processing of their experiences.

In this article I will provide some additional evidence for recommending a degree of caution before anyone relies too heavily on recent uncritical suggestions that the 19th century opinions of Fredrick Engels are still worth accepting in the 21st. Although Engels was a consistent radical, he nevertheless shared many assumptions typical of the educated men of that period. It was generally assumed by most of the educated elite in the 19th and 20th centuries that the history of humanity – and thus the world – had evolved through a sequence of definite stages.

Crucially, it was imagined that  one stage preceded another and created the conditions and an accumulation of knowledge which was necessary for the development of the subsequent stages. Evolutionary developments were assumed to have a ‘progressive’ purpose! This assumption was a retrospective application to history of the bourgeois  notion of human ‘progress’ which itself had been adopted from the Abrahamic religious traditions of assuming a purposeful ‘creation’ of life on earth, by some invisible mystical being.

Fragments of  what was then known about history and  pre-history were selectively attached to this idea of human progress. Certain historical facts were selected from the historical record which ‘appeared’ to fit this theoretical construction of progress and the resulting assumptions presented as a series of necessary sequences. That type of purposeful narrative became part of a commonly held set of theoretical abstractions  across a range of religious and non-religious educated Europeans.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps, it was an accepted historical perspective shared by a broad spectrum of conservative, liberal and radical educated gentlemen. They generally only differed on the relative (and not the absolute) merits of this supposed historical ‘progress’ unfolding by the mystery of God’s will or by the unfolding of another abstraction known as ‘natural selection’.

Fedrick Engels, the revolutionary minded friend and collaborator of Karl Marx  provides us with an excellent example of this general  retrospective idea of progress as applied to some pre-supposed  stages of history and pre-history. It was most clearly contained within in his lengthy polemic against a religious intellectual called Duhring and carrying the title; ‘Anti-Duhring’. In the section on Force Theory Engels justifies the existence of slavery on the basis that it served a necessary purpose. He asserted that;

“Without slavery,  no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery no Roman Empire, no modern Europe either. We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development presupposes a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was universally recognised. In this sense we are entitled to say: Without the slavery of antiquity, no modern socialism…..When we examine these questions , we are compelled to say  – however contradictory and heretical it may sound – that the introduction of slavery under the then prevailing conditions was a great step forward…..Given the historical antecedents of the ancient world, and particularly of Greece, the advance to a society based upon class antagonisms could only be accomplished in the form of slavery. This was an advance even for the slaves; the prisoners of war, from which the mass of the slaves was recruited, now at least saved their lives, instead of being killed as they had been before, or even roasted as at a still earlier period.” (Engels. Anti-Duhring. Section 4;  Force Theory concluded.)

Engels concludes from this 19th century general anthropocentric perspective that slavery was a “necessary stage”, “a great step forward” in the  “advance” of human hierarchical mass society that was leading toward socialism. He goes even further in his assumptions and considers that the slaves at the time should have viewed their slavery as an advance for themselves as it spared them from being killed or killed and eaten. With only limited 19th century knowledge of pre-history and history,  Engels accepts the general reactionary and bourgeois Hegelian perspective on assuming there is not only  a ‘purpose’ to the unfolding of history, but a necessary one, leading to a stage he and others actually desired – called socialism. How intellectually convenient and counterfactual was that?

Note also that Engels  accepts the 19th century prejudice against an imaginary pre-historical stage of humanity they called ‘barbarism’ in which they arrogantly assumed past Homo sapiens were so ‘ignorant’ that they didn’t know any better than to eat each other. Therefore, they concluded on the basis woefully insufficient evidence that the human species – as a whole – were then prone to routine killing and cannibalism. The well known fact at the time of Darwin and Engels, let alone the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, that no other species of life on earth, including predatory species, routinely turned on their own species for their sources of nutrition, did not cause them (or Engels) to question or refute that prejudiced assumption. He goes on to add imaginatively that;

“So long as the effective working population were so much occupied with their necessary labour that they had no time left for looking after the common affairs of society – the direction of labour, affairs of state, legal matters, art, science, etc. – the concomitant existence of a special class freed from actual labour to manage these affairs was always necessary;……” (ibid)

He retrospectively applies a modern bourgeois economic term of distinction (necessary labour) to a period long before the existence of hierarchical mass societies, let alone ones dominated by the capitalist mode of production. During the period that Engels lived and studied, sufficient accumulated evidence already existed within Europe to contradict that kind of biggoted received ‘opinion’. Evidence accumulated by the many voyages of discovery to the east, west, north and south of the planet had established the fact that native peoples around the globe, practised many different modes of production, which indicated the opposite. For multiple thousands of years, most human groups had plenty of time available after securing enough daily nutrition to engage in any other activities they deemed interesting or worthwhile. Art, music, story telling, craft work and even domesticating pets and modifying their behaviour had existed along with regular decisions of when and where to move their location, when resources became scarce.

Engels provides no evidence for the above asserted state of human society which implies that humans existed like ruminant animals and are assumed to spend most of their non sleeping time in grubbing around for low grade vegetable nourishment from low lying grasses. However, this perspective does not fit into any known historical or pre-historical modes of production such as hunter-gatherer bands, coastal and lake-side fishing villages, goat, sheep or reindeer herders or seasonal pastoralists, etc. His insertion of such an imaginary  fabricated scenario therefore can only be assumed to be part of a polemical construction used to provide a logical ‘progression’ to his following sentence – which encapsulates his own particular view of a hoped for socialist revolution. Thus;

“Only the immense increase of the productive forces attained by large-scale industry has made it possible to distribute labour among all members of society without exception, and this to limit the labour-time of each member to such an extent that all have enough free time left to take part in the general affairs of society, whether theoretical or practical. It is only now, therefore that every ruling and exploiting classes become superfluous and indeed a hinderance to social development… ” (ibid)

Elsewhere I have provided evidence that Engels often mis-understood, the revolutionary-humanist perspectives of his friend and colleague Karl Marx, particularly with regard to Marx’s forensic analysis of the capitalist mode of production, (in the three volumes of Das Capital, the extensive notes known as the Grundrisse or in the three volumes of notes on Surplus Value.) Indeed, the existence of large-scale industry is now demonstrably not the ‘progressive’ good or necessary stage for human emancipation as it was imagined to be, in the 19th and 20th centuries by all Bourgeois intellectuals, of conservative, liberal or even revolutionary persuasions.

Unsurprisingly, such context specific anthropocentric assumptions to varying degrees, were also made by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Mao. How could they not be? These individuals were also – only human and their understanding limited by their experiences and the knowledge available to them at the time! Therefore, whilst recognising the many contributions to anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal perspectives made by a number of the above noted individuals we should not abandon our own critical and self-critical research and we should avoid leaning too heavily upon the level of understanding achieved by all individuals living during earlier centuries.

The reminder to ‘Whenever you are sure of something; maintain it with doubt’, provided by Bertrand Russel to his students could be usefully followed by every one of us. We should research as diligently and critically as we can, but always remain open to new information and new perspectives, because these new facts and perspectives once proven  reliable may prompt us to refine, modify or even refute our previous conclusions. Reminding ourselves that we too are only human and as such are products of the limited social and economic circumstances that we are immersed in during our own lifetimes, is not a fatal weakness for us individually nor for humanity as a whole.

Indeed, I suggest this modesty represents a form of evolutionary development for our species. Knowing how little we still know or understand should create humility and caution rather than arrogance and impatience. Consequently, we should develop and retain a healthy suspicion of those who fail to recognise their own limitations and arrogantly assume they have gone beyond making mistakes or beyond arriving at ill informed conclusions.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2024.)

(You do the Hokey Cokey and shake it all about)

So members of his Majesty’ Loyal Opposition (the Labour Party) are claiming an astounding victory in the latest UK General Election – yes! However, this only reveals that their grip on reality is blinded by their euphoria at now getting their feet to dangle in the trough of high salaries and privileges, paid for by courtesy of the tax payer legally shackled to the hierarchical mass society system in the UK. The reality is that the citizens of the UK have distanced themselves from both the right wing leg of the British State (the Conservatives) and the left wing leg of the British State system (the Labour Party). In fact in the latest General Election, the citizens of the UK have distanced themselves the greatest from the Tories and even some of the Labour voters voted tactically in order to keep the number of Tory MP’s down to the minimum. Despite the unprecedented crisis for working people in the UK neither political wing of the British Establishment actually gained votes.

The knock on results of this result is almost the reverse of the last election in which large numbers of the traditional Labour voters switched to the Tories to show their disgust at the New Labour Parties track record since Tony Blair and his right -wing support group shunted the Labour Party away from its electoral roots among the British working class. The Blairite Coup ended the post war facade of the Labour Party being against the established British Ruling elite and being for the working men and women of the UK and the working class desertion to the Tories was the result of that betrayal. That pre-Blairite facade had been created by the Labour Party being in a coalition parliament during the 1939 to 1945 War with Germany led by Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party. The war against Germany was in order to save substantial parts of the British Empire from a second attempt by the German ruling elites to take them over.

The first attempt by the German hierarchical mass society to obtain land and resources controlled by the British Empire had resulted in the First World War. The second attempt by Germany resulted in the Second World War. A further boost to the facade by the Labour Party came with the post war reconstruction of the UK and Europe in which reforms to the hierarchical system in the UK introduced free health services, free further education, social housing provision, social security and pension provisions paid for by National Insurance Contributions. Since these reforms mostly benefited the working classes, and since a post-war Labour Government was the government to fully implement them, the myth or facade of the Labour Party being the party of the working class was established. That facade was eroded under other post-war Labour governments by incomes policies and attacks upon the British trade union movements, until the last tattered remnants of the facade were stripped away by Tony Blair and his cronies.

Since that time the Labour Party and its leadership have reinforced the Blarite tendency of emphasising a one-nation Labourite ideology to counter balance the Conservative one-nation Tory ideology. The one-nation ideology is an ideology that is fully committed to maintaining and preserving the three class system of hierarchical mass society living based upon the neo-liberal phase of capitalist development. That is to say it is based upon; a ruling class; a middle class; and a working class, all working and administrating the socio-economic system to maximise the profits (and interest) of those who own and/or control large amounts of money in the form of investment capital. In effect, the Labour Party and the Tory Party are the two political legs which hold the socio-economic body of the UK upright and able to manoeuvre within the global system to the benefit of its ruling, political, economic, financial and bureaucratic elites. This is why Tony Blair and other Senior Labour Party members have been able to enrich themselves out of office and why Boris Johnson and other senior Conservative Party members have been able to do the same or in most cases much better.

The Labour Party under the leadership of Keir Starmer and his shadow cabinet members went so far in order to reassure their British Establishment masters of their loyalty to the hierarchical mass society system in the UK, that they could not condemn the horrific genocide taking place in Gaza. Nor did they risk their future stipends by a call for a halt to the UK supply of material, information, advice and encouragement to the genocide perpetrators in the government of Israel. Thousands upon thousands of innocent men, women and children were allowed to be slaughtered during the months these individuals sat tight lipped on the opposition benches in the highest seat of governance in the UK. Silent, except when they were caucusing to plan and prepare for their ascent into higher places of UK office and privilege than the ones they held at the time. That silence and inaction during the most vicious concentrated attack upon defenceless civilian men, women and children, since the Second World War tells you practically everything you need to know, about them. It tells you just who they are prepared to sacrifice in order to not spoil their chances of obtaining high Office. This silence also explains why so many people in the UK could not in all conscience turn out to vote for them even to get rid of the much hated Tories.

Nevertheless, the election of the Sir Keir Starmer led Labour Party, despite having less than hoped for electoral support, means they do have enough Members of Parliament to push through many reforms to the hierarchical mass society of Britain. However, given that Starmer and his associates have marginalised the few remaining left of centre Labour Party members and MP’s it is unlikely that anything of substantial benefit to the working classes of the UK will be enacted by them. The likelihood of anything of substantial to benefit infrastructure or to prevent further pollution of air, sea, water or offset climate change, ecological destruction and essential species loss, is unlikely. This is because they will first and foremost be dedicated to maintaining the entitlement rights and privileges of those making up the three classes of UK society. Since the hierarchical mass society system is controlled by the elites and the elites are dedicated to protecting their own entitlement rights and privileges before all else, then the future of the UK in their hands is fairly predictable. Any few remaining hope’s and illusions in Sir Keir and his knights around the Number Ten labourite top table, are almost sure to be dashed.

Roy Ratcliffe (July 2024)