Thecharnelhouse.org

Auf­heben № 24
November 2016
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The EU mi­grants’ or­deal and the lim­its of dir­ect ac­tion

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We be­gin this art­icle with a case dealt with by Brighton Solfed (SF) and CASE Cent­ral so­cial center — the story of an EU mi­grant in Brighton.

At the end of 2015, L., a Span­ish hos­pit­al­ity work­er, sought help from SF. She had worked in a res­taur­ant for more than a year but, as soon as she fell ill, her em­ploy­er sacked her with a flimsy ex­cuse, in or­der to avoid pay­ing Stat­utory Sick Pay (SSP). Re­ceiv­ing SSP would have been this work­er’s right un­der both do­mest­ic and European Uni­on (EU) le­gis­la­tion. However, the em­ploy­er in­sisted that she left her job vol­un­tar­ily, and re­fused to re-em­ploy here.

One then claimed a sick­ness be­ne­fit, Em­ploy­ment and Sup­port Al­low­ance (ESA). As an EU work­er, she should have been en­titled to equal rights un­der EU le­gis­la­tion, and to ESA. However, the state re­fused the be­ne­fit: they said that, due [to] a “gap” between the end of her job and her claim, she was no longer a “work­er” when she claimed ESA. A be­ne­fits ad­vice group helped with an ap­peal, but the state re­fused to re­con­sider. L. was in a des­per­ate situ­ation, with no money and far from her fam­ily, and was temp­ted to move back to Spain. This would amount to eco­nom­ic de­port­a­tion — not im­posed through phys­ic­al force, but through ex­treme hard­ship.

Back in [the] 1970s the UK’s mem­ber­ship of the European Com­mon Mar­ket was op­posed by left-wing mil­it­ants, as the Com­mon Mar­ket was seen as a neo­lib­er­al club de­signed to pre­vent the ad­vance of so­cial­ism, or just the im­ple­ment­a­tion of Keyne­sian policies.

Yet the UK joined the EU. As a con­sequence of the Treaty of Maastricht since the early 1990s one of the rules that the UK gov­ern­ment had to abide by was the “free move­ment of labor.” This prin­ciple ob­liged each gov­ern­ment to treat EU cit­izens equally as Brit­ish cit­izens; both work­ers, and, fol­low­ing EU Court rules, also those who entered the UK to seek work, as long as they were “genu­ine job­seekers.” This in­cluded giv­ing them the rights to claim be­ne­fits and re­ceive help with hous­ing.

The best as­pect of mi­gra­tion from the point of view of the in­di­vidu­al em­ploy­er is the mi­grants’ nor­mally dis­ad­vant­aged and vul­ner­able po­s­i­tion, which the im­pos­i­tion of equal­ity ten­ded to mit­ig­ate. Once en­titled to equal rights at work and to all be­ne­fits, EU mi­grants had the op­tion of re­fus­ing crap jobs. They had also the same in­cent­ive as their Brit­ish work­mates to fight for bet­ter pay and work­ing con­di­tions in their work­places, side by side.

Thus since day one, the righ­t-wing press re­lent­lessly at­tacked the prin­ciple of equal­ity un­der­ly­ing free­dom of move­ment in the EU, de­pict­ing them as “be­ne­fit tour­ists.” Sens­it­ive to this pres­sure, the Con­ser­vat­ive gov­ern­ment made a series of ef­forts to deny equal rights to EU mi­grants, above all the un­em­ployed. A “ha­bitu­al res­id­ence test” in the UK in or­der to claim many out of work be­ne­fits.1 What this “ha­bitu­al res­id­ence” meant was so vague that it was equally as easy for the state to im­me­di­ately re­ject a claim, as it was for claimants to even­tu­ally win their ap­peals. A lengthy ap­peal pro­ced­ure would however pro­long the wait for a hear­ing for months, and would ob­lige mi­grants, through des­ti­tu­tion, to re­turn to their coun­try. Only those who re­ceived help from friends or or­gan­iza­tions (e.g. churches, polit­ic­al groups, squats), or had some sav­ings, could per­severe to the hear­ing.

The “ha­bitu­al res­id­ence test” was the first chal­lenge from the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment against the Free­dom of Move­ment, and was in­tro­duced with cau­tion and great rev­er­ence to­wards the newly born prin­ciple of equal­ity. Not to con­tra­dict this prin­ciple, the state felt ob­liged to im­pose the test to any­one com­ing from abroad, in­clud­ing Brit­ish cit­izens.

In 2006, after part of East­ern Europe was al­lowed to “ac­cess” the EU, the gov­ern­ment re­stric­ted the “ha­bitu­al res­id­ence” rules. This was para­dox­ic­ally done by ex­ploit­ing a new EU law, Dir­ect­ive 2004/38/EC, which had been cre­ated to cla­ri­fy and strengthen the rights of EU cit­izens. As the dir­ect­ive pro­duced a list of “qual­i­fied per­sons” who had auto­mat­ic right to res­id­ence, the gov­ern­ment used this list to ex­clude from equal treat­ment many thou­sand EU cit­izens who had so far been treated equally un­der the “ha­bitu­al res­id­ence test,” if they did not match the list. For ex­ample, “Work­ers” and “Self Em­ployed” had a right to reside, but ill people who had not worked much or at all, carers or single moth­ers who were not in work were ex­cluded. A Right of Res­id­ence test based on the dir­ect­ive be­came a pre­requis­ite for many out of work be­ne­fits.2

This new test was the UK gov­ern­ment’s first chal­lenge to the prin­ciple of equal­ity, as Brit­ish cit­izens who had lived abroad were auto­mat­ic­ally ex­emp­ted from it. In May 2013 the EU Com­mis­sion took this chal­lenge to court, but failed: the in­equal­ity of treat­ment of EU cit­izens was ap­proved by an EU court as “jus­ti­fied” by the in­terests of the mem­ber state.

Since the in­tro­duc­tion of the right of res­id­ence test in 2006, work­ers who be­came ill, such as L. could have their claim for sick­ness be­ne­fit simply denied, with any flimsy ex­cuse, or even with no reas­ons at all. Isol­ated and ill, they were put in the po­s­i­tion of hav­ing to “prove” their Right of Res­id­ence and, to do so, wait up to nine months for a tribunal hear­ing on no in­come.

Not happy with this, the na­tion­al­ist anti-mi­grant lob­bies con­tin­ued to pres­sur­ize the gov­ern­ment. In 2015 un­em­ployed mi­grants were stripped of un­em­ploy­ment be­ne­fit (Job Seeker’s Al­low­ance [JSA]). Fol­low­ing a rein­ter­pret­a­tion of the dir­ect­ive and case law that pro­tec­ted the right to reside of un­em­ployed EU cit­izens as long as they had “genu­ine chances of find­ing work,” the state sub­jec­ted EU cit­izens to a “Genu­ine Pro­spect of Work Test.” This test was as ab­hor­rent as the tri­al of witches by duck­ing stool: all un­em­ployed EU cit­izens would lose their JSA after a fixed six month peri­od after their last job un­less they got a new job with­in this peri­od. Fail­ing this they would lose all rights of res­id­ence, in­clud­ing the right to Hous­ing Be­ne­fit and could be made home­less. The stat­ist­ic­al concept of “pro­spect,” was then re­defined as a lim­it­a­tion to all be­ne­fits to a strict peri­od of 3-6 months. At the same time, all those who lost their status as work­ers were denied Hous­ing Be­ne­fit al­to­geth­er.3

Still un­happy about this, and threat­en­ing to leave the EU, last year the Tory gov­ern­ment went for the whole hog and ob­tained an opt out from pay­ing all in-work or out-of-work be­ne­fits to all EU mi­grants for their first four years in the UK.

Re­cently, the EU mi­grants have also star­ted be­ing de­por­ted, un­der the al­leg­a­tion of not hav­ing, or “ab­us­ing,” a Right of Res­id­ence. A pi­lot scheme that be­gan in 2011 with the de­port­a­tion of home­less and job­less East European cit­izens has now been ex­ten­ded to all EU na­tion­als.4

Act­iv­ist groups such as Solfed and Brighton Be­ne­fits Cam­paign ob­vi­ously op­pose all this. Yet when the means to tackle in­justice is based on col­lect­ive solid­ar­ity there is a lim­it to what one can do. L. could not get fin­an­cial sup­port from a group com­posed of people like her­self, who struggled to pay bills and rent. Also, dir­ect ac­tion was pre­cluded by the re­mote­ness of the de­cision mak­ing. Where to protest, and what of­fice to pick­et, if the de­cisions re­gard­ing L. were taken in Bel­fast and re­vised in In­verness? Per­haps in bet­ter times, a net­work of protest­ors could act na­tion­ally and reach re­mote of­fices, but at present there was no hope to re­solve L.’s prob­lem through dir­ect ac­tion.

In the ab­sence of a self-sus­tain­ing al­tern­at­ive com­munity, or a mass be­ne­fits cam­paign, de­mand­ing that the state abide by EU law was the only op­tion; and after a few nasty let­ters from CASE, the state ac­know­ledged L’s rights and paid her ESA.5

Of course, the laws and in­sti­tu­tions do not act for us; we still need to act, and even simply in­vok­ing the laws can be a mini war against the state. CASE vo­lun­teers are now used to re­ceiv­ing phone calls from gov­ern­ment of­ficers who try to con­vince them that this or that piece of EU le­gis­la­tion do not mean what they say, or that there are oth­er new mys­ter­i­ous “laws” that con­tra­dict it. Any weak re­sponse at this stage would en­cour­age these bur­eau­crats to is­sue an un­fa­vor­able de­cision. It is clear that the gov­ern­ment has giv­en guid­ance to its of­ficers to deny EU rights at all costs. This at­tempt to make EU laws in­ef­fect­ive for be­ne­fits claimants is the frus­trat­ing ex­per­i­ence of many be­ne­fits ad­visers across the coun­try.

Thus when, on 23 June 2016, Brexit won the plebis­cite, both mi­grants and those who had been in­volved in de­fend­ing mi­grants” rights felt alarmed. Brexit will set aside all EU rights, with no guar­an­tee of any auto­mat­ic rights. If the same visa sys­tem that ap­plies for non-EU mi­grants is ap­plied to cur­rent EU work­ers liv­ing in the UK, nine out of ten would no qual­i­fy.6 Cru­cially, the ab­ol­i­tion of the rights em­an­at­ing from EU laws is not the res­ult of our suc­cess in es­tab­lish­ing more rad­ic­al op­tions, but the suc­cess of na­tion­al­ist lob­bies.

In the fol­low­ing we will dis­cuss the po­s­i­tion of people in the rad­ic­al left, such as the polit­ic­al groups (SWP, etc.) or in­di­vidu­al Ben­nites, on Brexit. But be­fore, let us ask ourselves the ques­tion: what has the rad­ic­al left done dur­ing the pre­vi­ous dec­ades of at­tacks on EU mi­grants? What did these people do while EU mi­grants were made pen­ni­less by the grueling Gen­er­al Pro­spect Tests? What have they done when work­ers like L. were denied all their rights as soon as they fell ill? The an­swer is: noth­ing. In fact, most of the groups and in­di­vidu­als in “the left” have nev­er even bothered to know about these is­sues.

Of course, the non-EU refugees es­cap­ing from war, es­pe­cially the ones from Syr­ia, have de­served a lot of in­terest and ac­tion. However, as we will show later, many people in the left have been very busy with oth­er, more ideo­lo­gic­al, is­sues, such as the burkini ban in France. Sim­il­ar is­sues seem to de­serve more en­thu­si­asm, time and ef­forts than the sorts of EU cit­izens re­duced to home­less­ness and des­per­a­tion. And even than the xeno­phobic murder of a Pol­ish cit­izen in the sum­mer of 2016.

The big blun­der

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It was clear since the be­gin­ning that the ref­er­en­dum about the EU was not about the EU as an in­sti­tu­tion at all. Pre­vi­ous opin­ion polls had re­peatedly shown that EU mat­ters were at the bot­tom of a scale of con­cerns for most Bri­tons. The ref­er­en­dum was, in real­ity, the product of in­tern­al in­fighting with­in the Con­ser­vat­ive Party.

As Dav­id Camer­on once put it, the only people that in­sisted on “banging on about Europe” were the “nut­ters” in the United King­dom In­de­pend­ence Party (UKIP), old diehard Thatcher­ite Tory Party act­iv­ists and a few dozen back­bench Tory MPs, cheered on by the right wing press. But Camer­on’s project of rebrand­ing the Con­ser­vat­ive Party as an elect­able, mod­ern, so­cially lib­er­al party de­pended on keep­ing these diehard so­cial con­ser­vat­ive[s] in the Tory Party quiet. To pla­cate them Camer­on had re­peatedly thrown them the odd euro-skep­tic bone to chew on. But the more bones he threw the hun­gri­er they be­came.

Fi­nally, en­cour­aged by the bad pub­li­city caused by the EU’s hand­ling of the Euro crisis, the Tory right be­came so vo­ci­fer­ous that Camer­on was ob­liged to prom­ise a ref­er­en­dum on Bri­tain’s mem­ber­ship of the EU at some time in the fu­ture. It was not pos­sible right then, of course, be­cause his co­ali­tion Lib­Dem part­ners would not go along with his ref­er­en­dum plans. But this com­mit­ment was in­cluded in the Con­ser­vat­ive Party mani­festo for the 2015 elec­tions.

At the time this seemed quite a clev­er move, since it was widely ex­pec­ted that there would be an­oth­er hung Par­lia­ment, and any Con­ser­vat­ive-led Gov­ern­ment would have to share power again with the Lib­Dems. Camer­on would there­fore be able to blame Nick Clegg for any fail­ure to de­liv­er on his pledge to hold a ref­er­en­dum. But un­for­tu­nately for him, the Con­ser­vat­ives won the elec­tion, but with a small ma­jor­ity. Camer­on then risked the fate of John Ma­jor in 1990s, who spent much of his second term as Prime Min­is­ter be­ing dogged by repeated Euro-skep­tic re­bel­lions threat­en­ing to bring down his gov­ern­ment.

Thus the best op­tion was to press on with plans for a ref­er­en­dum. With all three main­stream parties ex­pec­ted to sup­port Re­main, Brexit would be fron­ted by a mot­ley col­lec­tion of minor Tory back­bench­ers, and by Nigel Far­age and vari­ous oth­er UKIP “nut­ters.” Al­though a tire­some Ref­er­en­dum would waste the gov­ern­ment’s time and ef­fort, a re­sound­ing Re­main vote would at least stop “them banging on about Europe” once and for all.

But Camer­on made a mis­take that would bring about his ig­no­mini­ous polit­ic­al de­mise: he let it be known that he was con­sid­er­ing stand­ing down as Prime Min­is­ter after his second term. The heir ap­par­ent, George Os­borne, was en­trus­ted to lead the Re­main cam­paign.

Os­borne’s rivals then faced a di­lemma: either sup­port Re­main or jump ship and sup­port Brexit, in the hope that this would win fa­vor amongst Tory act­iv­ists, which could prove cru­cial in stop­ping Os­borne’s coron­a­tion as party lead­er.

Shortly be­fore the of­fi­cial Ref­er­en­dum cam­paign was due to start, Bor­is John­son and Mi­chael Gove took the plunge. Opin­ion polls had grow­ing sup­port for Brexit and they could that a good show­ing for the Leave cam­paign, with them at the helm, would ob­lige Camer­on to be mag­nan­im­ous in vic­tory. After all Camer­on had sus­pen­ded party dis­cip­line and col­lect­ive re­spons­ib­il­ity for the ref­er­en­dum. So these pro-im­mig­ra­tion, neo­lib­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al­ists made an un­holy al­li­ance with the xeno­phobic little Englanders of UKIP.

On the morn­ing of the 24 June, no one was more shocked than John­son and Gove.7 It was ap­par­ent that they had ex­pec­ted that Re­main would win, and had no con­crete plan for a Brexit — yet John­son was ap­poin­ted by new PM Theresa May as one of the Brexit min­is­ters, with the task of lead­ing the ac­tu­al thing.

Brexit and ideo­logy

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UKIP and its lead­er, Nigel Far­age, were the ideo­lo­gic­al win­ners of Brexit. They were able to use a pop­u­list, na­tion­al­ist, anti-es­tab­lish­ment mes­sage which united a large num­ber of people from dif­fer­ent classes: from middle class Tory voters in the south of Eng­land, who con­trib­uted to the ma­jor­ity of Brexit votes, to work­ing class people in in­dus­tri­al cit­ies of the north, dis­il­lu­sioned with so­cial demo­cracy. In the eyes of every­body, from im­mig­ra­tion ex­perts to MPs, it was clear that the cam­paign for Brexit boiled down to a cam­paign against the Free­dom of Move­ment. This emerged as the only con­sis­tent mes­sage, amidst a mishmash of half-baked is­sues, such as a £350m per week of EU fees that should rather go to the NHS or the im­pos­i­tion of straight ba­na­nas by Brus­sels.

Part of the left and the Green Party, Trot­sky­ist So­cial­ist Ap­peal and the Left Unity party cam­paigned against Brexit. Prob­ably the age com­pos­i­tion of So­cial­ist Ap­peal, pop­u­lar among uni­versity stu­dents, played a ma­jor role in its pro-Re­main po­s­i­tion.

But for oth­ers it was a di­lemma. On the one hand Camer­on and a large part of the bour­geois­ie sup­por­ted Re­main: the cap­it­al­ist mar­ket de­pended on sta­bil­ity and would be vul­ner­able in the massive eco­nom­ic change cre­ated by leav­ing the single mar­ket. On the oth­er hand, the Brexit cam­paign had an ap­peal­ing, pop­u­list, anti-es­tab­lish­ment, pro-work­ing-class mes­sage. And, of course, the EU was part of the cap­it­al­ist sys­tem…

For all these reas­ons, sup­port­ing Re­main could have come across as sup­port­ing glob­al cap­it­al against the Brit­ish work­ing class, and sup­port­ing Camer­on. All this could taint a left-wing soul. As­sum­ing that Re­main would win, one can then hold a prin­cipled stand against the EU think­ing that this would have no real con­sequences.

For many left­ists, used to dec­ades of simplist­ic polit­ic­al com­mon sense, ar­gu­ments that raised com­plex is­sues, such as the polit­ic­al mean­ing of a vic­tory for the Brexit cam­paign, were per­haps too dif­fi­cult to take in. In­stead of strug­gling with the polit­ic­al and mor­al com­plic­a­tions of the present, it was thus easi­er to dust off the Euro­scep­tic reas­ons of the 1970s, when the left op­posed the Com­mon Mar­ket, and to fol­low the ghostly au­thor­ity of Tony Benn.8

Yet also claim­ing to sup­port “Brexit” would taint a left-wing soul. To get out of the di­lemma, they just re­named the same thing… “Lexit” (i.e. “exit from the Left”). Prob­lem solved. The Lex­it­eers’ ar­gu­ments were pack­aged as readymade slo­gans loaded with good left-wing val­ues. Ques­tions re­gard­ing the EU pro­tec­tion of work­ers’ rights or the en­vir­on­ment, or mi­grants’ rights, were con­fron­ted with banal an­swers, such as “it’s all scare­mon­ger­ing,” “what about the TTIP,” or “the EU is bur­eau­crat­ic” (sic). More pathet­ic, some Trots voted leave to sup­port John­son’s at­tempt to destabil­ize Camer­on. While these people were blinkered by ideo­logy, the fact that Brexit would, in con­crete, be a vic­tory for the far right was mean­while clear to the far right across Europe and the USA, and to Don­ald Trump, who all cel­eb­rated the vic­tory of Brexit.

Mo­mentum, the move­ment which arose in sup­port of La­bour party lead­er Jeremy Corbyn, and the La­bour party it­self, of­fi­cially cam­paigned for Re­main. By age and af­fil­i­ation, Corbyn could well have been a fol­low­er of Euro­scep­tic Benn, but led the cam­paign — but, only two weeks be­fore the vote, nearly a third of La­bour party mem­bers were still in the dark about the po­s­i­tion of their own party! But many [of] Corbyn’s sup­port­ers did not worry about Brexit. With Jeremy lead­ing the op­pos­i­tion, and the fant­ast­ic pro­spect of him lead­ing the coun­try, the UK could soon have new good laws, pro­tect­ing work­ers, mi­grants and the en­vir­on­ment. Who needs the EU?9

Yet a pre­requis­ite to lead a coun­try is that to have clear po­s­i­tions; and Corbyn’s po­s­i­tions equi­voc­ated. In­ter­est­ingly, as soon as Brexit won, “Re­main­er” Corbyn stated that[:]

It was com­munit­ies, of­ten in former in­dus­tri­al heartlands, that had ten­ded to vote for Brexit…10

Re­spect­ing these “com­munit­ies,” Corbyn was happy to say that Par­lia­ment should ac­cept that Brexit would hap­pen and “work with it.”11

On the sorts of EU mi­grants, Corbyn and his al­lies equi­voc­ated too. Wor­ry­ingly, not a com­ment was said on the status of the EU cit­izens cur­rently liv­ing in the UK, threatened by Theresa May. For Corbyn what mattered was the pro­tec­tion of the Brit­ish work­ers’ rights in Bri­tain:

The red lines have to be: ac­cess to the European mar­ket, European In­vest­ment Bank, pro­tec­tion of ma­ter­nity leave, pa­tern­ity leave, min­im­um wage le­gis­la­tion. There has to be pro­tec­tion for people against work­place dis­crim­in­a­tion. Those is­sues to me are ab­so­lutely cru­cial.12

The rights of EU mi­grants to equal treat­ment could well slip through Corbyn’s “red lines.” This is part of an ideo­logy that con­flates the Free­dom of Move­ment, a spe­cif­ic prin­ciple, with the gen­er­al is­sues of bor­der con­trols and “anti-ra­cism”; and in turn con­flates EU mi­grants with refugees.13 This con­fla­tion can well unite left-wing Re­main­ers and Brex­it­eers, by sac­ri­fi­cing, and for­get­ting about, EU mi­grants and their rights.14

On his part, the Shad­ow Chan­cel­lor of the Ex­chequer, John Mc­Don­nell, re­peated that the free move­ment of labor would end with Brexit and that La­bour would “con­sult the Brit­ish people” (sic) on the is­sue of fu­ture mi­gra­tion.15 More en­light­en­ing, Corbyn replied to a ques­tion about the need for an up­per mi­gra­tion lim­it with the fol­low­ing, un­ques­tion­able, state­ment:

I don’t think you can have one while you have the free move­ment of labor [sic]…16

a tru­ism which even the tele­graph agreed with.17

At the end of Septem­ber, Corbyn’s re­fus­al to make prom­ises on mi­gra­tion con­trol un­der a fu­ture La­bour gov­ern­ment was gen­er­ously in­ter­preted as a com­bat­ive de­fense of free­dom of move­ment by leftwing me­dia.18 In the face of this de­voted trust, prob­ably Corbyn and his al­lies have not cla­ri­fied even to them­selves what mi­gra­tion policy can be reas­on­ably en­vis­aged in the con­text of leav­ing the EU, an ac­tion that they have sup­por­ted.

In the an­arch­ist scene too, the ref­er­en­dum chal­lenged rad­ic­al pur­ity. An­arch­ist is­sues are nor­mally foun­ded on a clear-cut mor­al stand, where what is bad is un­ques­tion­ably bad and only needs ac­tion. As long as is­sues are chosen to fit mor­al cat­egor­ies, it is all in­dis­put­able: free­dom and self de­term­in­a­tion is good, state con­trol is bad, sex­ism and pat­ri­archy are bad, an­im­al cruelty is bad, ra­cism and fas­cism are bad. But Brexit was a prob­lem. On the one hand, the Brexit cam­paign was a na­tion­al­ist and xeno­phobic cam­paign, which could com­fort­ably fit the cat­egory of “fas­cism.” On the oth­er hand, the Re­main cam­paign was sup­por­ted by Tor­ies, politi­cians and ex­perts who were part of the es­tab­lish­ment, and the EU is an in­sti­tu­tion em­bed­ded in glob­al cap­it­al­ism, and con­trolled by bankers and in­ter­na­tion­al lob­bies. This many simply sat on the fence, see­ing the vote as an op­tion between two bad au­thor­it­ies (the UK and the EU). A few even sup­por­ted Lexit.

As a res­ult of these mor­al di­lem­mas the cam­paign for Re­main was left to lib­er­als and im­port­ant reas­ons for op­pos­ing Brexit were not high­lighted from a rad­ic­al stand­point.

What’s in the law?

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In his es­says on class con­scious­ness in cap­it­al­ism, Georg Lukács said that while past so­cial re­la­tions were mys­ti­fied by re­li­gious or oth­er ideo­lo­gic­al con­struc­tions, in cap­it­al­ism we can clearly see eco­nom­ic re­la­tions as driv­ing so­ci­ety, and due to this clar­ity it is now pos­sible to trans­form so­ci­ety through a con­scious move­ment against ex­ploit­a­tion. Yet, he also saw that our re­la­tions cre­ate their own mys­ti­fic­a­tion, which can af­fect the pro­let­ari­at it­self; for this reas­on, he con­cluded, a clear con­scious­ness is only em­bod­ied by “the party.”

It is in­deed true that con­scious­ness is shaped by cap­it­al­ist so­ci­ety… but is it true that a Len­in­ist party or an elite of rad­ic­al in­tel­lec­tu­als see bet­ter than the riff-raff?

It is a mat­ter of fact that every so­cial class sys­tem de­vel­ops its spe­cial mys­ti­fic­a­tion. It is easy for us to see and cri­ti­cize, for ex­ample, the re­li­gious be­liefs that ex­pressed and veiled at the same time feud­al class re­la­tions, but it is in­cred­ibly dif­fi­cult to dis­en­tangle the ex­ploit­a­tion and un­fair­ness of cap­it­al­ism from its veils of lib­er­al glit­ter. The prob­lem is that this is dif­fi­cult for Len­in­ist or a rad­ic­al cam­paign­er, too. In this sec­tion we will show that the de­mor­al­izing in­ef­fect­ive­ness of the left in front of the Brexit cam­paign was rooted in the mys­ti­fic­a­tion of cap­it­al­ism: com­mod­ity fet­ish­ism.

Com­mod­ity fet­ish­ism is an in­ver­sion of real­ity, where a re­la­tion among hu­mans ap­pears as a re­la­tion between com­mod­it­ies and money. In this in­ver­sion, cap­it­al or “the eco­nomy” be­comes the real prot­ag­on­ist of his­tory, and dic­tates its needs and its rules to people — needs and rule[s] that are more com­pel­ling than our in­di­vidu­al needs or de­sires. Our bul­ly­ing, misery and ex­ploit­a­tion then ap­pear as caused by ob­ject­ive, al­most “nat­ur­al” forces, not by people. The fact that our re­la­tions are trans­formed in­to an ob­ject­ive “thing,” sep­ar­ate from any in­di­vidu­als, was called by Lukács re­ific­a­tion. At the same time, in­di­vidu­als re­late to each oth­er as free and equal buy­ers and sellers — only the money we have in our pock­et dic­tates what we can eat, study, hope and be, and if we need to get a job… and there are people who can hope and be whatever they want, oth­ers who can’t hope any­thing at all. Re­ific­a­tion mys­ti­fies the fact that we live in an un­equal so­ci­ety, where a class of people con­trol all the means of pro­duc­tion and an­oth­er class of people have to work for them day in, day out.

Re­ific­a­tion shapes every­ as­pect of so­cial life. Polit­ic­al, eco­nom­ic, and cul­tur­al spheres ap­pear too, to have a life on their own, dic­tat­ing their “ob­ject­ive” rules to people. The state and its laws are ob­jec­ti­fic­a­tions too. These struc­tures are not an il­lu­sion, but a real­ity: for ex­ample, in or­der to make a polit­ic­al ca­reer one needs to play along with the rules of elect­or­al demo­cracy, and nav­ig­ate the struc­tures of uni­ons, parties and states. Simply telling ourse­lves that these struc­tures are “a so­cial con­struc­tion” or an “il­lu­sion” won’t help — the need re­mains, for mak­ing a polit­ic­al ca­reer, to ac­cept them as real and play along with them.

In this in­ver­ted re­la­tion, oth­er­wise free and equal in­di­vidu­als, “re­late” to the state, by vot­ing or be­ing elec­ted in it, and by abid­ing by or op­pos­ing its laws. But even be­ing crit­ic­al of the state, however clev­er our cri­ti­cism is, will not ab­ol­ish the state and its laws, be­cause they are based on ac­tu­al re­la­tions among people.

Yet, we can defy this “solid­ity,” and we do it through class struggle.19 When work­ers, ten­ants, claimants, etc., are in­volved in a struggle con­nec­ted to their needs, the fo­cus can shift from things like money, laws, eco­nomy, to our con­crete situ­ation and ex­per­i­ence. The stronger we are, the more cheeky ques­tions we ask, shak­ing the solid­ity of cap­it­al­ist con­struc­tions: “fuck the leg­al con­tract, why should we be treated this way and paid so little?”, “fuck the Hu­man Right to private prop­erty, why can’t I use this empty flat?”, “there is no money my arse, why can my bosses go on hol­i­day to Bali?” … The mys­ti­fic­a­tion is then un­veiled and dur­ing the struggle our re­la­tions re­veal them­selves as what they are: a bal­ance of forces between people (or bet­ter, people “like us” and people “like them”: classes).

When past struggles ended, cap­it­al re-so­lid­i­fied. A law for­bid­ding farm­ers to use some pesti­cides, or a law pro­tect­ing preg­nant wo­men at work, ex­presses our vic­tory, and the re­defin­i­tion of a bal­ance of forces, but they ap­pear again as things: new leg­al rights, which ap­par­ently em­an­ate from something ali­en: a state. Those laws still re­flect our vic­tory, and, however weak we have be­come, we can still use them for our pro­tec­tion in our on­go­ing daily struggles with bosses or the gov­ern­ment.

However, this “solid­ity” is also chal­lenged by the rul­ing class. As soon as our ca­pa­city to fight back has shrunk, the rul­ing class will try to re­define new “ob­ject­ive” con­di­tions, chan­ging the laws. The fact that this hap­pens through the ob­ject­ive realm of the state and its laws can para­lyze our rad­ic­al mind. After all, a law that pro­tects preg­nant work­ers or wild­life comes from the state. So why should we de­fend this law when the gov­ern­ment wants to change it? Thus when vari­ous gov­ern­ments en­acted at­tack after at­tack: be­ne­fit cuts, the ab­ol­i­tion of se­cur­ity of ten­ure, the ab­ol­i­tion of leg­al aid, the privat­iza­tion of pub­lic spaces… all this happened in the im­pot­ent si­lence of many rad­ic­al people. To be fair, we can see the ma­ter­i­al weak­ness of the class be­hind this si­lence, but these un­chal­lenged at­tacks have led to our in­creas­ing weak­ness and im­pot­ence.

The latest at­tack was the cam­paign for Brexit. It was UKIP’s clear in­ten­tion to get rid of EU laws that im­pose equal­ity at work, ma­ter­nity and pa­tern­ity pay, dis­ab­il­ity rights and hol­i­day pay; as well as laws re­strict­ing the free­dom for cap­it­al­ists to pol­lute air, land, and sea.

The fact that Brexit is the ob­jec­ti­fic­a­tion of our de­feat is also ap­par­ent from the dy­nam­ics of the cam­paign it­self. While our chal­lenge to cap­it­al­ism in­volves the cheeky sus­pen­sion of the “sol­id” ap­pear­ance of bour­geois struc­tures of power, Brexit has emerged through state in­sti­tu­tions. It used a ref­er­en­dum or­gan­ized through the state, con­firm­ing the ob­jectiv­ity of the polit­ic­al sphere and of bour­geois demo­cracy. Also, the res­ult of the ref­er­en­dum im­me­di­ately ap­peared as a leg­al man­date for the state: a “thing,” more sol­id than any real people. The mi­grants whose lives may be wrecked by Brexit do not count, the demo­crat­ic man­date does. The voters who “re­pen­ted” do not count, the demo­crat­ic man­date is more real than them. Any con­crete ob­jec­tions do not count. Re­mark­ably, the re­la­tion between this “demo­crat­ic man­date” and real in­di­vidu­als is the same as that between the state and “people.”

As the Brexit cam­paign played with, and re­in­forced, the re­ific­a­tion of the polit­ic­al sphere, the “left” and many rad­ic­al people were caught by the same mys­ti­fic­a­tion.

The re­treat of the anti-cuts move­ment, which petered out in 2012, fol­low­ing the de­feat of the pub­lic pen­sion dis­pute, en­cour­aged an ideo­lo­gic­al counterat­tack from the far right, which cul­min­ated with Brexit. Mean­while, class struggle was sub­sti­tuted by its weird­est re­ified sur­rog­ate in the his­tory of the Brit­ish left.20

Just a few months be­fore the EU ref­er­en­dum, La­bour party back-bench­er Jeremy Corbyn was pro­pelled in­to lead­er­ship through an on­line vote of left-wing sup­port­ers. All eyes and hopes then fo­cused on this newly elec­ted lead­er and his hero­ic nav­ig­a­tion through the struc­tures of the party and the state, and a new group, Mo­mentum, was cre­ated to sup­port him. An in­sti­tu­tion­al power game ap­peared to do the ma­gic of ad­van­cing the left in­to prom­in­ence: a suc­cess that real people had been un­able to achieve through in­dus­tri­al dis­putes and a mass move­ment dur­ing the anti-cuts cam­paign.

In the past, the power of so­cial­ist gov­ern­ments or politi­cians had nor­mally emerged from the set­tle­ment of some class struggle or mass move­ment in­to in­sti­tu­tion­al shapes — the Corbyn ef­fect ap­peared to have in­ver­ted this dy­nam­ic, with an elect­or­al vic­tory with­in bour­geois in­sti­tu­tions lead­ing to a move­ment pivot­ing around the elect­or­al vic­tory after the ac­tu­al de­feat of a class struggle.

If all the left-wing eyes and hopes fo­cused on the re­ified struc­tures of cap­it­al­ist power, it is not sur­pris­ing that the Trots who voted for Brexit had no time for its con­sequences on mi­grants and work­ers. What’s the point of con­sid­er­ing real people, when people are ec­lipsed be­hind the glit­ter of re­ific­a­tion?

Also many rad­ic­als were caught by the same re­ific­a­tion. If it’s all about “us” and sol­id, ab­stract, au­thor­it­ies over there, a rad­ic­al po­s­i­tion would be to op­pose both the state and the EU or even vote against the EU, be­cause it is a form of state. Again, any ap­peal for solid­ar­ity from the real in­di­vidu­als threatened by Brexit was dis­missed.

In the next sec­tions, we will see how the vic­tory for Brexit would re­in­force cap­it­al­ism by di­vid­ing the work­ing class, and that those who are in­volved in however small struggles around, can see this.

The “Free­dom of Move­ment” and free­dom for the move­ments: The con­tra­dic­tions of cap­it­al­ism

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Since its be­gin­nings, cap­it­al­ism has been faced by mor­al cri­ti­cism based on ideal po­s­i­tions — money is bad, the bour­geois state is bad, the po­lice are bad, poverty is bad, in­dus­tri­al­iz­a­tion is bad…²¹ Yet a mor­al­ist­ic chal­lenge will not des­troy cap­it­al; for ex­ample, good-hearted Chris­ti­an cri­ti­cism has nev­er chal­lenged it, but also ab­stract rad­ic­al mor­al­ism can be as in­ef­fect­ive.

The ap­plies also to the is­sues of the EU. There are plenty of mor­al/rad­ic­al judg­ments that are ab­stractly true — the EU is a cap­it­al­ist in­sti­tu­tion; it does re­flect the in­terests of cap­it­al­ists; it is em­bed­ded in a glob­al eco­nomy, etc. Yet know­ing and pro­claim­ing all this will not lib­er­ate us from cap­it­al­ism or from the glob­al eco­nomy — let alone ask­ing a Tory gov­ern­ment to lead us out of the EU! In­stead, the prac­tic­al ac­tions of people who take ad­vant­age of the present, in­clud­ing the EU, can be a good start.

One of these con­tra­dic­tions is the Free­dom of Move­ment. It is true that European cap­it­al uses mi­gra­tion to di­vert com­pet­i­tion in the labor mar­ket to­wards areas where labor is in de­mand. The un­em­ployed in­di­vidu­al who is forced by his coun­try’s eco­nomy to move abroad for jobs is in this sense a pawn in a ma­chine in­ten­ded to make pro­duc­tion ef­fi­cient. Yet, at closer in­spec­tion, all the un­em­ployed and work­ers who are forced to com­pete against each oth­er for jobs or ca­reers are pawns of the same ma­chine, and the Brit­ish work­ers who feel forced by these same laws to ant­ag­on­ize with mi­grants are the best pawns of all, as this di­vi­sion ef­fect­ively de­fuses our po­ten­tial for re­bel­lion.

In fact our re­bel­lion against cap­it­al must first of all chal­lenge our di­vi­sion along na­tion­al lines, as well as along oth­er lines such as gender or race. In light of this, in this sec­tion we dis­cuss the suc­cess of a col­lab­or­a­tion among act­iv­ists from all parts of Europe and how these pro­test­ers took ad­vant­age of the Free­dom of Move­ment, turn­ing it in­to a mo­tor­way for solid­ar­ity and dir­ect ac­tion.

In May 2016 so­cial center CASE Cent­ral gave its minibus to a group of people from Brighton and Lon­don, com­posed of Brit­ish and EU cit­izens, to at­tend an in­ter­na­tion­al protest against a huge open­cast coal mine in Lusa­tia, Ger­many.²² Air pol­lu­tion and car­bon emis­sion is an in­ter­na­tion­al is­sue and it is im­port­ant that protests are in­ter­na­tion­al — a na­tion­al protest would have at­trac­ted far less people and would have been seen as a loc­al is­sue.

The par­ti­cip­a­tion from Brighton and Lon­don was made pos­sible be­cause of the Free­dom of Move­ment. The minibus could be driv­en by both a Brit­ish and a Ger­man, it crossed the Eng­lish Chan­nel, trav­eled through Bel­gi­um and France, ar­rived in Ger­many, and came back. No prob­lems with bor­ders, no prob­lems with traffic war­dens, no prob­lems with the in­sur­ance: all this be­cause we are in the EU. The EU le­gis­la­tion on free­dom of move­ment was turned on its head to be­come our free­dom to chal­lenge cap­it­al around Europe.23

This free­dom has been already ex­ploited by many European move­ments, al­low­ing, for ex­ample, the cre­ation of a large European LGBT, and al­low­ing people to travel to France and Greece in solid­ar­ity with work­ers on strike. Oth­er ex­amples of such in­ter­na­tion­al net­work­ing are the in­ter­na­tion­al anti-fas­cist self-de­fense gath­er­ings that have taken place around Europe, last time in Po­land, and which will con­tin­ue in spring 2017 with a gath­er­ing in Brighton.

It is true that people could travel around to protests be­fore the EU opened its bor­ders, and that wealthy rad­ic­al stu­dents can travel to Seattle or Brazil for anti-cap­it­al­ist gath­er­ings. But the Free­dom of Move­ment has made con­nec­tions much cheap­er and ac­cess­ible: just grab a minibus and go! To­geth­er with mak­ing our con­nec­tions easi­er, the Free­dom of Move­ment has cre­ated the con­di­tions to ab­ol­ish our men­tal di­vi­sions: by de­vel­op­ing con­crete solid­ar­ity across bor­ders and na­tion­al­it­ies against the com­mon en­emy. This is more than clear to the far right, who would be happy to see en­vir­on­ment­al, anti-fas­cist and LGBT act­iv­ism set back in Europe.

Free­dom of Move­ment and the Free­dom of Move­ment: Il­leg­al­ity as a weapon of cap­it­al­ism

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The Free­dom of Move­ment is a con­tra­dic­tion of cap­it­al­ism also in an­oth­er re­spect: our po­ten­tial to es­tab­lish solid­ar­ity in our work­places.

We need to cla­ri­fy that the Free­dom of Move­ment of labor is not just… free­dom of move­ment, i.e. “al­low­ing free ac­cess” to mi­grants: it is also, and fun­da­ment­ally, a set of rules that ob­liges each mem­ber state to treat all EU work­ers and self em­ployed equally. Un­der­stand­ing this is fun­da­ment­al: without the Free­dom of Move­ment, all EU mi­grants would be des­per­ate for any crap job, and their struggle to sur­vive would work more ef­fi­ciently in un­der­min­ing all wages and work­ing con­di­tions. The prin­ciple of the Free­dom of Move­ment were agreed to avoid the most ex­treme ef­fects of mi­gra­tion.

Brexit will not stop mi­gra­tion, wheth­er leg­al or il­leg­al. In fact the lead­er of the House of Com­mons at the time), Chris Grayling, sug­ges­ted that EU mi­grants en­ter­ing the UK from the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land would not need a visa, but could simply be denied a Na­tion­al In­sur­ance num­ber. It is clear that the rul­ing class is not in­ter­ested in stop­ping the move­ment of EU work­ers to the UK, but to un­der­mine their rights and di­vide them from na­tion­al work­ers.

The sep­ar­a­tion of work­ers in­to “leg­al” and “il­leg­al” is already an in­stru­ment of di­vi­sion which has a sig­ni­fic­ant im­pact on solid­ar­ity in work­places. In or­der to see how subtly this works, we will now men­tion a work­place is­sue, which in­volved for­eign work­ers.

The scen­ario in this case was a small food out­let run as a fam­ily busi­ness. The own­er ran the out­let with pat­ri­arch­al au­thor­ity, cre­at­ing a sys­tem of per­son­al fa­vors, hir­ing il­leg­al mi­grants and pay­ing them un­der the counter and be­low the min­im­um wage. This cre­ated a bond between em­ploy­er and em­ploy­ees, based on grat­it­ude for the fa­vors, and per­haps also a shared feel­ing of solid­ar­ity against the state, as both the petty bour­geois em­ploy­er and their em­ploy­ees dodged the law. Yet all this also con­sol­id­ated a very ex­ploit­at­ive re­la­tion­ship, where lack of rights made the il­leg­al work­ers sub­ject to the whims of their em­ploy­er.

At the same time this situ­ation also di­vided il­leg­al and leg­al work­ers. The em­ploy­ees from the EU had rights, guar­an­teed by the Free­dom of Move­ment. This meant that their en­ti­tle­ments did not de­pend on the em­ploy­er’s pat­ri­arch­al good heart at all and that they could then see them­selves in ant­ag­on­ism with the cap­it­al that hired them. Yet, with such a di­vided work­force, solid­ar­ity was im­possible. In fact, the case star­ted when a work­er from the EU fell out with an il­leg­al work­mate: the il­leg­al work­mate stuck to the em­ploy­er, and grassed the oth­er up for minor is­sues, ob­tain­ing an un­fair dis­missal. After a brief dis­pute, the leav­ing work­er ob­tained hol­i­day pay, yet she did not, and could not, re­ceive sup­port from with­in her work­place.

We need to add that not just “il­leg­al” work­ers, also non-EU mi­grants who are gran­ted a visa through their em­ploy­ers will be at their mercy, as they can have their work per­mit with­drawn at the em­ploy­er’s whim.

Cur­rently, all work­ers from the EU are treated equally as Brit­ish work­ers and their status does not de­pend on the will of their em­ploy­ers. For this reas­on, their loy­alty can then de­vel­op along clear class lines. For ex­ample, we know about East­ern European health and so­cial care work­ers who tried to ini­ti­ate a work­place struggle in a care home, in­volving their Brit­ish col­leagues. By de­priving EU mi­grants of their rights, Brexit will un­der­mine this po­ten­tial.

Be­sides our solid­ar­ity against the em­ploy­ers, Brexit will un­der­mine our solid­ar­ity against the state. Cur­rently, Pol­ish, Itali­an, and Ger­man cit­izens are not un­com­mon in protests such as anti-fas­cist demos or dir­ect ac­tions in the UK. Less com­mon are people from out­side the EU. This is not be­cause of a lack of polit­ic­al aware­ness (in fact, for ex­ample, many Ir­a­ni­an refugees were leftwing act­iv­ists in their coun­try) but be­cause of a con­di­tion of vul­ner­ab­il­ity, as non-EU mi­grants de­pend on leaves is­sued by the na­tion­al state. Un­like them, EU cit­izens feel that they can hap­pily ant­ag­on­ize the state and risk ar­rest, without fear­ing re­per­cus­sions, pre­cisely be­cause their right to stay is an “aura” that de­rives from EU laws and not the state.

It is true that the Brit­ish gov­ern­ment has worked hard to un­der­mine this aura. Fol­low­ing an ap­peal from the UK gov­ern­ment, in Janu­ary 2014, an EU court de­cided that pris­on terms can ser­i­ously dis­rupt EU rights of res­id­ence.24 Yet, most EU cit­izens are still pro­tec­ted, and feel safe in re­bel­li­ous events, side by side with their Brit­ish mates. These rights, however, can be wiped out by Brexit. The in­ten­tion is there: Home Sec­ret­ary Am­ber Rudd has just an­nounced at the Con­ser­vat­ive Party Con­fer­ence in Birm­ing­ham that even be­fore Brexit the new gov­ern­ment will push to de­port EU cit­izens found guilty of re­peated minor of­fenses.25

Brexit will be the vic­tory of a sys­tem which uses bor­ders and il­leg­al­ity as a weapon to di­vide and weak­en us. But the Lex­it­eers are still proud of this. After all, their anti-ra­cist be­liefs will shine un­spoiled un­der the new con­di­tions, which they’ve voted to have — and why not, with mi­grants un­der threat and the far right em­powered, be­ing an anti-ra­cist will be even more ex­cit­ing! This is, again, in­ef­fect­ive ideo­logy. Our be­lief that “solid­ar­ity has no bor­ders” does not stand on ab­stract truths writ­ten once and for all by the Marxes and Bak­un­ins and pre­served in form­al­in, but on what we are go­ing to lose: the con­crete prac­tice of struggle side by side.

In fact, per­haps we should not ex­pect any ex­cit­ing left-wing ac­tions in de­fense of EU cit­izens at all. It is in­deed in­struct­ive to com­pare the re­ac­tion to the ban­ning of the Is­lam­ic “burkini” gar­ment in France and the xeno­phobic murder of a Pol­ish mi­grant in Har­low, which both happened in the late sum­mer of 2016. The search en­gine re­veals the fol­low­ing posts/entries between Au­gust and 1 Oc­to­ber 2016 (pic­tured be­low).



Sig­ni­fic­antly, the Face­book group “EU leave and re­main voters united against ra­cism and pre­ju­dice” had in the same peri­od no posts at all on the as­sault in Har­low or on the vi­gil that fol­lowed it, which would be ex­pec­ted from a group with such a name! In terms of ac­tion, while we would ex­pect at least a mini demo in Brighton after a murder, there was none, while the burkini ban had a beach demo on 27 Au­gust, as well as an emer­gency demo in Lon­don on 26 Au­gust.

If this happened after a murder, we won­der what level of ac­tion we are go­ing to see when thou­sands of EU cit­izens lose their rights. It is more real­ist­ic to think that the left will be too busy with oth­er, more ideo­lo­gic­ally un­con­tro­ver­sial, is­sues.26

Brexit means what? Work­ing rights and ex­ploit­a­tion

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Also the loss of EU dir­ect­ives that pro­tect work­ers’ rights (min­im­um wage, preg­nancy and sick­ness rights etc.) is not a step out of glob­al cap­it­al­ism at all, es­pe­cially in a situ­ation, like the UK, of very low class mil­it­ancy.

Like all laws and rights, EU rights are the res­ult of a class set­tle­ment, but in this case the set­tle­ment has con­gealed the out­comes of struggles which have taken place in Europe.

While the work­ing class in the UK has quietly ac­cep­ted to work harder on zero hour con­tracts after the fin­an­cial crisis, oth­er coun­tries still face res­ist­ance from their work­ing class. Al­though one may simplist­ic­ally ex­pect that an in­sti­tu­tion of the rul­ing class should auto­mat­ic­ally be against work­ers’ rights, it is in the in­terest of cap­it­al­ism that stand­ards achieved in oth­er coun­tries, for ex­ample France or Ger­many, are im­posed throughout the EU in or­der too pro­tect na­tion­al cap­it­als against un­fair com­peti­tion. Thus EU dir­ect­ives im­pose, at least form­ally, min­im­um stand­ards on Brit­ish em­ploy­ers.

For a few years already UKIP had cam­paigned against rights at work, es­pe­cially those im­posed by EU dir­ect­ives, and their Brexit cam­paign was con­sist­ent with this. At­tack­ing the EU and its “red tape” meant to at­tack the laws that reg­u­lated work as well as the use of pesti­cides, gas emis­sions, an­im­al wel­fare, etc.

When the Brit­ish people voted for Brexit, they were not told what Brexit meant — but this ques­tion be­came rel­ev­ant only after the vote was made. Cru­cially, the ques­tion “what does Brexit mean for the work­ing class?” was not spelled out dur­ing the cam­paign. But something is now tak­ing shape, with May blatantly push­ing for very right-wing changes, for ex­ample the re-in­tro­duc­tion of gram­mar schools.

The al­li­ance of UKIP and John­son was a win­ning com­bin­a­tion. John­son had been pro-EU for years, even de­mand­ing that Tur­key be ad­mit­ted to the EU “to re­con­struct the Ro­man Em­pire.” For the neo­lib­er­al John­son, Brexit means to fully ex­pose the UK to glob­al cap­it­al­ism. More than an op­por­tun­ity, this will be a need: if the UK leaves the EU, it will be des­per­ate for any trade deals, and will have to ne­go­ti­ate these deals with large powers and ag­gress­ive mul­tina­tion­al cor­por­a­tions as a coun­try on its own. China is well aware of this weak­ness: in the af­ter­math of the ref­er­en­dum, May was told that a re­fus­al to go ahead with the con­tro­ver­sial nuc­le­ar power sta­tion at Hinkley Point would jeop­ard­ize any fu­ture trade deals with China. A sim­il­ar black­mail of the EU would have been im­possible, but the UK needs to trade with China, while China does not need to trade with a small is­land.

Al­though UKIP’s na­tion­al­ism would su­per­fi­cially ap­pear to be at the nadir of John­son’s glob­al­ism, the con­junc­tion of “stars” Far­age and John­son makes sense if we see Brexit, simply, as a vic­tory of the rul­ing class. If UK in­dustry is open to glob­al com­pet­i­tion, as John­son is happy to pro­spect, na­tion­al in­dustry will have to ad­opt a new eth­os of pro­duc­tion of the sake of in­ter­na­tion­al com­petition. Already in Septem­ber 2016, Brex­it­eer Trade min­is­ter Liam Fox said at a Con­ser­vat­ive “Way For­ward” event for busi­ness lead­ers:

We’ve got to change the cul­ture in our coun­try. People have to stop think­ing about ex­port­ing as an op­por­tun­ity and start think­ing about it as a duty…27

And a new eth­os of work and money dis­cip­line will have to be re-im­posed after dec­ades of “lazi­ness”:

This coun­try is not the free-trad­ing na­tion that it once was. We have be­come too lazy, and too fat on our suc­cesses in pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions.28

What ap­peared to be a re­proach to “lazy” chief ex­ec­ut­ives, was in fact an ap­peal to make Brit­ish pro­duc­tion more ef­fi­cient — after all, ef­fi­ciency of pro­duc­tion does not de­pend on wheth­er its dir­ect­ors play golf, but on their ca­pa­city to squeeze their work­ers. In or­der to sur­vive, Brit­ish in­dustry will have to stream­line pro­duc­tion to the stand­ards of Jakarta, or Bangladesh — this means first of all to re­duce the costs of labor as well as en­vir­on­ment­al costs, de­grad­ing the treat­ment of work­ers, an­im­als, land, wa­ter and air. Thus the pro­tec­tion of work­ers im­posed by the EU, however flimsy and dif­fi­cult to en­force, will have to go, as Far­age was happy to pro­spect.

The smal­ler do­mest­ic in­dustry and petty bour­geois busi­nesses will be un­der threat from glob­al cap­it­al, but there will be lots of il­leg­al mi­grants from the EU to squeeze.

So, all the pieces of this the Brexit puzzle fit to­geth­er, sug­gest­ing one mean­ing: Brexit means UKIP. The Brit­ish cap­it­al­ists who have been re­luct­ant to face dra­mat­ic changes may ac­cept the new chal­lenge and its po­ten­tial for ex­treme ex­ploit­a­tion of the work­ing class. All this, in the si­lence and ac­qui­es­cence of many Brit­ish work­ers who think that Brexit is a fant­ast­ic pro-work­ing-class achieve­ment, and in the si­lence and ac­qui­es­cence of a polit­ic­ally ob­tuse rad­ic­al left.

Con­clu­sion

.

In this art­icle we have ar­gued that the Brexit vic­tory re­flec­ted a vic­tory of the far right. We have also seen that many people in the rad­ic­al left have been blinded by the ideo­lo­gic­al forms of our so­cial re­la­tions to the point of ac­cept­ing this vic­tory with ac­qui­es­cence, or even sup­port­ing it.

A ques­tion re­mains: since the mys­ti­fic­a­tion of cap­it­al­ism acts upon any­one, why are we able to cri­ti­cize them? Have we read the right books? Or are we more clev­er? Not at all. We can criticize them be­cause we have been in­volved in cam­paigns and dir­ect ac­tion, sup­port­ing mi­grants and cas­u­al work­ers in their be­ne­fits and work­place dis­putes. Un­like some left wing or “polit­ic­al” people who can only see the world from a se­cure job and a se­cure home, those who have a dir­ect ex­per­i­ence of class struggle for their sur­viv­al are more likely to per­ceive the dir­ect re­la­tions of bul­ly­ing and ex­ploit­a­tion be­hind the forms of bour­geois power — even if they have nev­er read Marx! From this per­spect­ive, Brexit is not an ab­stract is­sue of “glob­al­iza­tion,” or “bur­eau­cracy” or any oth­er clev­er, polit­ic­ally edu­cated is­sues: it is simply, and ob­vi­ously, the rul­ing class’s con­crete at­tempt to un­der­mine our solid­ar­ity in the work­place and in the streets.29

From this point of view, sup­port­ing a move­ment to de­fet­ish­ize the “demo­crat­ic” res­ults of the ref­er­en­dum and sab­ot­age the Brex­it­eers’ plans would make sense.

Notes

1 The test ap­plied to “means-tested” be­ne­fits. Be­ne­fits ac­quired through pay­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance con­tri­bu­tions were not sub­ject to res­id­ence con­di­tions.
2 The gov­ern­ment would also try to re­fuse be­ne­fits to those who had worked, ar­guing that their job was not “genu­ine and ef­fect­ive” or that they had not worked long enough, caus­ing end­less leg­al con­tro­ver­sies.
3 The only EU job­less still pro­tec­ted by the dir­ect­ive are those who had lived in the UK for five years “leg­ally,” and, have then ac­quired a per­man­ent right of res­id­ence. “Leg­ally” means: with a right of res­id­ence.
4 Non-EU mi­grants have been sub­ject to a harsh visa scheme al­low­ing only those with jobs earn­ing more than £28,000 per year, which was in­creased by Theresa May to £35,000 from April 2016, to re­main. Be­ing mar­ried to a Brit­ish cit­izen would not help: hus­bands or wives of Brit­ish cit­izens are de­por­ted, and fam­il­ies des­troyed. “Immigrants ‘have to earn £35,000’ to settle — from 2016.”
5 In “The re­newed im­pos­i­tion of work in the era of aus­ter­ity,” Auf­heben № 19 (2011), we de­scribed the re­sur­gence of new be­ne­fits struggles after the fin­an­cial crisis, and ex­pec­ted that these struggles could grow. We were a bit too op­tim­ist­ic. The whole of the anti-cuts move­ment, in­clud­ing claimant struggles, failed to take off.
6“Brexit: nine in 10 EU workers might not qualify for a visa.”
7 A journ­al­ist de­scribed Gove on the morn­ing of the 24 June as “someone who comes down from an acid trip and dis­cov­ers they’ve killed their best friend”!
8 The is­sue of the Com­mon Mar­ket had the same con­tra­dic­tions as today — in­deed, leftwing Tony Benn cam­paigned against it along­side ex­treme rightwing Tory Enoch Pow­ell.
9 It is not clear how many Corbyn sup­port­ers were “neut­ral” on Brexit; some polls show that most Mo­mentum sup­port­ers (>60%) were pro-Re­main; the new people join­ing La­bour through “the Corbyn ef­fect” ap­pear to be a mix­ture of old left types com­ing back to La­bour (and so anti-EU) and oth­er people who were new to polit­ics; these lat­ter have no pri­or com­mit­ment to anti-EU Ben­nism and many see the EU as pro­gress­ive.
10“Jeremy Corbyn pledges to change La­bour’s policy on im­mig­ra­tion after Brexit vote” The In­de­pend­ent, Sat­urday 25 June 2016. As we ex­plained sev­er­al times in Auf­heben, this ro­mantic idea of “com­munit­ies” is just ideo­lo­gic­al. In fact most of those who voted to leave were just in­di­vidu­al tabloid or Tele­graph read­ers.
11“Jeremy Corbyn: Brexit is hap­pen­ing and Par­lia­ment must ac­cept it,” The In­de­pend­ent, 19 Septem­ber 2016.
12Ibid.
13 Which is a mir­ror im­age of the ideo­logy of the far right, as this con­fla­tion was used dur­ing the Brexit