America will have her Brexit

I have come to the conclusion that Donald Trump will win the American Presidency. If there is any consolation, it is that I got both the Scottish and the EU Referendum wrong. However, if there is one common denominator staring us in the face between Britain and the USA it is that both these countries are in political crisis. America is having its Brexit moment with a massive revolt by ordinary working class voters against the political establishment and placing their faith in demagogic showmen. I watched Donald Trump closely during the Republican Convention and his facial gestures and his posture were a classic caricature of Mussolini. He even has the same self-satisfied pout. It is the same with his rhetoric, it is empty and vacuous, devoid of any substance and consisting solely of clichés. America is embracing the same kind of nonsense that the British did during the EU Referendum, and embracing the same kind of people. They are also being seduced by the same kind of right-wing xenophobia. However, I am not being critical because they are embracing it for the same reasons that the British did, they are seeing it as the lesser of two evils. They have lost faith in the political system and in the mainstream political class. Both electorates are rejecting the lies, the betrayals, and the marginalisation of ordinary people. I would only say this to the Americans, look what we were left with in Britain, all the main players in the referendum abandoned ship immediately they were faced with the result of their actions. They were not exposed as charlatans and liars; they exposed themselves without any help from anyone else, and that included our Prime Minister.

Karl Marx showed us how the political and social structure of any society was a reflection of its economic base. Adam Smith had taught us that as the technological basis of production altered and developed, so the economic system adapted to embrace the new method of production, and Marx develops this line of analysis to show us that the political, legal and social structures within society supply a stable framework that allows for consolidation and expansion of the dominant mode of production, whether it is a slave economy, a feudal, an industrial or a neoliberal. Our post-industrial society is the creation of the microprocessor which has had an enormous impact on our economic system, but as importantly, on our social system as well, with the explosion in mass communication techniques whether it be the mobile phone, the tablet etc. with the growth of social media and the instant world-wide dissemination of news and information. This growth of digital technology was accompanied by the success of the free market economic model and its policies of deregulation. Combine these three factors and you have the genesis of the financial crash and the political crisis. Digital technology and deregulation allowed for mass licensed gangsterism by the financial and business elites utilising the lie of the free market as justification for their rapacity and greed. That same great lie brought the subversion of our political class, enchanted by what seemed to them, living in their own little bubble on both sides of the Atlantic, to be a fairy story of riches and success. What they failed to see, or simply ignored, (although in Thatcher’s case it was quite deliberate) was the damage they were doing to the structures and functions of society and its crucial institutions. They became bewitched by the holy grail of the market, oblivious to the fact that it was the market, unregulated and unconstrained, that was the source of their trouble, not the unions, not the workers, not the welfare state, but the monster of their own creation.

As they deregulated the economy, it had a deregulating effect on the social system and that has now had a deregulating effect on the political. They thought they need not control the market, it is of course self-regulating, oh dear, I’m afraid not. They welcomed the deregulating of the social whose constituent parts they sought to privatise for profit, and of course created conditions that have not been seen since the Great Depression with consequences they never foresaw, and are now wakening up to the fact that they have also deregulated the political, an unintended consequence and something that they never considered would happen. The political is now out of their control. The political systems on both sides of the Atlantic are dying, they are on their last legs. As I said in an earlier post, Donald Trump is not the solution he is a symptom of the malaise, the cure will come later and like many medicines it may be very bitter. Both nations are deeply divided and in both, unprincipled charlatans are exploiting this situation with consequences we cannot forsee. In Britain, the divisions may become terminal. Why is this happening? I know I have said it before, but the root cause of all our problems? as someone once said, “it’s the economy stupid!” You have been warned    

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat