The roles of Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage in the UK’s almost perfect Marxist society

Even Karl Marx was aware that the capitalist system was an efficient and effective way of wealth creation. His vehement opposition to it related to the exploitation and working conditions of the labour force. The development of a class system comprising the owners of the means of production and the exploited workers was, according to Marx, the seeds of capitalism’s own destruction. However, as for when this would happen, either by a spontaneous uprising of the exploited working class overthrowing the government of the owning class, or by a planned revolution, Marx was rather vague about the timing. This is hardly surprising as no socialist economic wealth-creating model to match the success of capitalism has yet to be developed. In London towards the end of his life, Marx was still working on economic theory, perhaps realising that revolution was a necessary but not sufficient condition for the kind of society he sought. Without a socialist equivalent of capitalism, where was the money coming from to improve society after the revolution?

The world’s subsequent flirtations with communism and its associated command economies haven’t indicated that they could supplant either capitalism as the major wealth-creating system, or the political system that delivers the best environment for capitalism to thrive, democracy. Recalling Winston Churchill’s famous quote about democracy, perhaps capitalism is a bad way for society to enrich itself, but other ways are even worse, or just don’t exist. However, and importantly, within a democracy the people can decide what to do with that wealth. Marx largely dismissed the democracy of the time with the words “The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.” He had a point of course and there’s even some resonance today with the “oppressing class” replaced by the “political class”. “Repress” isn’t appropriate nowadays but “mislead”  could be.

Without the repression and with the improved working conditions – undoubtedly due to a contribution from Marx – the need for a Marxist revolution receded. However, in any society today there are many people who – for various reasons – miss out on the bounty of capitalism. In short there are those who need support in varying degrees. Britain has for many years had two major parties that have provided the parliamentary majority and one of those is socialist, the Labour Party. Glibly and simplistically described in a sentence, the Conservative party is primarily concerned with the creation of wealth, Labour with redistributing it. Both are important: if there’s no wealth, then there’s no wealth to redistribute.

The greatness of democracy is that it can provide a revolution – peaceful and organised and yet one that is still able to remove a government – every time a particular country goes to the polls. When the electorate of a country like the UK tires of what they feel is too many people disproportionately reaping the rewards of capitalism, then they could turn to the socialist alternative, the Labour Party, to redress the balance. Similarly if the majority feel that the business environment could be improved to increase living standards, then they could vote the Conservatives into power. Marx, in today’s context of a workforce without exploitation, would surely have approved as it neatly sidesteps the greatest problem with a ‘single’ bloody revolution, the creation of wealth afterwards. By having a number of revolutions able to remove governments, the wealth creators and wealth redistributors are each allowed their turns in government at the country’s behest. In such a sense we would therefore seem to have almost the perfect Marxist society, albeit and ironically delivered by democracy.

Not quite, though. Unfortunately in the political parties’ eagerness to attain, and remain, in power, they seem to have become overly concerned with the concept of electability. This entails formulating policies for the majority in the headlong rush for the political centre ground. The current Conservative leadership, for example, seemed rather hesitant on the question of Europe during the last election. Yet it would seem natural for the Conservatives to oppose the loss of sovereignty and constitutional paradoxes resulting from effectively the same mandate given to two different sets of MPs – from the UK and the EU – that a federal Europe implies. However, Nigel Farage’s more principled stance on Europe and the corresponding success of UKIP has precipitated a much tougher line on Europe from the current Conservative government. A line they should probably have taken themselves in the first place had they been less concerned with trying to second-guess what the majority felt about Europe. The Labour Governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, under the banner of electability, tried to be all things to all voters in their claiming of the middle ground. Arguably operating outside of Labour’s traditional values and political competence, it was little wonder that the result was huge debts, horribly exacerbated going into the financial meltdown of 2008.

With Nigel Farage reminding the Conservatives of the political spectrum a little further to the right of centre, it’s interesting that the similarly-principled Jeremy Corbyn is doing similar things with Labour on the opposite side of the spectrum. Although some of the policies he advocates are perhaps redolent of a bygone era, he appears to embody the essence and heart of socialism that seem to have been trampled on the way to the political centre ground. But just to remind Labour what socialism is all about may be enough for the party to step back into more familiar territory and give the voters a real choice. It’s important to maintain the divergence and balance necessary for our – almost – perfect Marxist society.

So the burning question of the day is: is there currently enough difference between the main parties?