(Great) (White) Hope(s) Spring(s) Eternal

S.Artesian

They’re at it again, those who don’t know any better, but pretend they know more.  The ones who supported Syriza, and then Podemos; those on a never-ending search for the next lesser-evil-best- thing; those mini-maxi Ahabs, peg-legging amidst the doldrums determined to pursue and capture the “democratic” alternative, the “expansion” of rights, liberties, the “enlightened, progressive,” still-capital-but-almost-social-ISM that is the Moby Dick/Holy Grail of their dreams.

Have you seen the white whale?

They have and this time on this expedition it’s called Jezza Corbyn.  Those taking, and in vain, the name of the club of Jacobins, they’re jezz-ites, or ists.  Richard Seymour jack of all faux-erudition, master of none, he’s a jezzite.  The British Trotskyists are jezzites, or should I say the British Trotskyites are jezzists?  Six of one, half dozen of the other, both add up to zero.

Leo Panitch loves Jezza, probably just as much as he loved Syriza.

Yanis Varoufakis claims to have advised Jezza, but that’s hard to believe given that Labor actually gained seats in the latest election, or maybe Jezza just ignored the advice.  Had to be the latter, Varoufakis being the kiss of death in everything from elections to horse racing to magazine features.

Six or so months ago, Louis Proyect, wrote, with a straight face, the following which I still cannot read with a straight face: “I honestly haven’t devoted enough time to considering Corbyn. I don’t like to go off half-cocked.” 

Hilarious, right?  Still with nothing to say re the Jezza steamroller,  Lulu hasn’t used the six months to bone up on Corbyn and the left-wing of the British Labour Party.  So many movies reviews,  so little time.

Anarchists endorsed Corbyn. David Graeber, London-based anthropologist, author, publicist for Occupy and other “r-r-r-revolutionary actions” climbed aboard Jezza wagon before it was even a wagon.

What was it that used to, might still,  be on the masthead of Mad magazine,  “the usual gang of idiots”?  Yeah, that about sums it up.

There’s nothing knew to the Jezza parade.  It’s the same old players with the same old songs. We get the same notions of an alliance with the “middle class;”  the same old commonality of interests against war, against austerity, for the environment.

It’s the same old, same old “community” of shared interests. That every iteration of bourgeois rule, from radical to corporatist, from Jacobin to NSDAP, holds that there are shared interests and those shared interests supersede differences of class, of labor and property, of exploitation and wealth, doesn’t seem to register with this crew.

“Reconciliation” of opposites is the pseudo-dialectic of our toddler-Hegelians.  Elimination of private property; abolition of capital; expropriation of the bourgeoisie; destruction of the relations and institutions of bourgeois rule–the overtaking, the overthrowing of the social relations of production, the social organization of labor is either impossible, or unnecessary, or not feasible ever.  

The “alternative” that the Jezzites offer is the idiots’ proof to Thatcher’s “There Is No Alternative.”

Now Corbyn isn’t in power yet, so it’s a bit premature to point out all the reasons that capitalism will reconcile the Corbyn movement right to where it wants it,  be it up against a wall, or as the majority party in parliament, so we can all enjoy the spectacle of Jezza forming a government on behalf of her majesty and all the little majesties.

We’ve been here before and examined all those reasons before: in Portugal, Spain, Chile, Greece, Brazil,

We’ve been here before– we’ve been here with the “alliances,”  the “shared interests,” the “common dreams,” the programs of “compassion” that only go so far and so long before, the so-called middle classes come to their senses, that is to say their property interests, and take the actions they always take behind the banner they always wave, “Where’s Mine?”

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