Translated “Avante!” article by Jorge Cadima, Member of the International Department
More and more, capitalism systemic crisis generates shock waves, making contradictions and open confrontations break out among the great capital sectors, even if those cleavages’ real motives remain in the shade. The fratricide war spreads amid the USA, both sides of the Atlantic, the EU and its main powers, among powers in ascension or in decline, and currently among the Gulf petro-monarchies, the imperialism servile countries.
The British elections, as the Brexit referendum outcome, are the expression of this growing political crisis. The system’s scribes ( right-wing and “left-wing”), in desperation before the 2016 outcome, ignored the social discontent explosion.
Referendum and elections expressed the British people’s discontent – one of the first “neo-liberal” victims, in the four last decades – along with its impoverishment policies of the great majority and the obscene enrichment of a small minority, inseparable of war and terrorism policies, at world scale. It is not worthwhile, to currently picture this vote as a support to the continuance in the EU. More over, the EU great capital was and ought to always be one of the central motors for class policies, and that the British people refuted in the polls. Corbyn had the merit of perceiving the class motivations behind the Brexit vote ( which he does not put in stake), and concentrate his campaign in social and labour issues. By doing it, he was able to recuperate a good part of the discontent electors which had stopped voting in the Labour Party, indistinguishable from the Tories. He achieved to call upon abstentions and wipe out the right-wing. A lesson of common significance.
It is useless to hold illusions on what Corbyn ought to achieve. His personal integrity ought to collide against a eroded Labour by Blairism – and for many decades the British imperialism support. The last months have proved the repeated drawbacks he was forced to make. But the attack against Corbyn is fierce. A year ago, the Mail on Sunday newspaper ( 2017.06.16) published Corbyn’s photo in a coffin, in the front page, dressed as Dracula, with the following: “ Labour ought to kill the vampire”. This call to violence reveals deep fear: that, in the current crisis context, Corbyn’s dynamics, he set in progress, ought to generate a fast political awareness amid workers and the British people, against the great capital policy.
Despite scribe comments, the war and terrorism policy was jeopardized in the elections outcome. The electoral campaign was stained by blood, in Manchester and London attempts. Which hold a common element concerning other terrorist acts: the alleged authors are all connected to imperialist intelligence and wars promoted by imperialism in Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and others regions. Manchester is a small sample of what imperialism performs, finances and arms every single day, in order to submit peoples all over the world and submit those that come across its path. Theresa May threatened “ to change human rights legislation” in order “to fight terrorism” (in BBC, 2017.06.07). More than cynicism, it is an alert on a real danger, for workers and the peoples amid imperialism centre, that terrorism, at the service of imperialism ought to be used to establish authoritarianism. Just what Macron has announced, to carry out in France, changing the state of emergency into current law (France 24, 2017.06.09).