Tariq Ali vs. Masud Khan

Tariq Ali said to the LRB-

 it wasn’t just official communism that collapsed in 1991: traditional social democracy fell with it.

Where did 'traditional social democracy' exist in '91? Scandinavia? Nope. It abandoned 'solidarity wages' in the Seventies. The Anglosphere? Nope. Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney and so on had buried the thing in the Eighties. France?- Mitterand. Germany?- Helmut Kohl. Italy- who gives a fuck? Now your'e just being silly.

The whole function of social democracy, for most of the 20th century, was to have an alternative within capitalism that fought for some of the reforms as a bulwark against the rising tide of revolution, communism, whatever you want to call it.

There speaks the authentic voice of the Punjabi peasant. The West only exists to be either a bulwark or balti or biscuit or who gives a fuck? coz all that matters is bullocks and buffaloes and getting your idiot son a job in the bureaucracy.

The fact that countries that had the kind of Revolution Tariq Ali fancied in High School- but which seemed so unattainable he exiled himself in Blighty, only to hear of Pakistan being seduced and butt fucked by Bhutto, which sealed him into not just Exile but Impotence- that fact- viz. that Revolutions are fucking horrible dude!- failed to register on nobody save our Jutt hero.

And once the old enemy had gone, capital and its leaders felt no particular reason to carry on following that path.

On the contrary, it was Labor which so no reason to subscribe to a type of stupidity only effective as a cordon sanitaire against drooling nutjobs like Tariq Ali himself.

Instead, they embarked on turbo-charged capitalism, not caring a damn who was trodden underfoot.

Coz it was turds like you, Tariq bhai.

And the social democracies played a huge part in it. The bulk of the privatisations in France were carried out by a socialist government: Mitterrand and Jospin. Blair, Mandelson, Brown were staunch advocates of neoliberalism, quite relaxed with people making loadsamoney.

Which people? Their own sort, Tariq sahib. You too should have cashed in with a Foundation and a string of NGOs and a share in the Davos swindle.

The last social democratic government in Britain which narrowed the gap between rich and poor, if one’s being very cold-blooded about it, was the Wilson government.

Actually, it was Heath- which is why that sailor had to be keelhauled. Wilson's last administration saw the Government advise 'Yes' on the E.U referendum. This meant Keynesianism was off the table, Exchange Controls would have to go, Incomes Policy was bound to fail, and the interest rate would become the lever by which Trade Union militancy would be crushed.

The post-fall-of-communism social democratic parties were not all that different from the centre-right parties; and so what developed, in large parts of Europe and elsewhere in the world too – India is one example – is what I’ve described as an extreme centre.

Not being a nutjob only appears extreme if you are a nutjob.

It didn’t matter which party you belonged to, centre-left or centre-right; basically, you were for the same neoliberal economic policies; by and large you supported America’s wars all over the world; you were staunch supporters of Nato.

Right! Coz Saddam was such a sweetie-pie and his troops deserved a bit of R & R raping Kuwait!

And that created a huge vacuum, which led to two things: one, to a growing number of abstentions – lots of people, traditional supporters of social democracy, stopped voting altogether.

Because when Turkeys stop voting for Thanksgiving, they don't automatically start voting for Christmas.

Apart from the most recent election in Britain, the figures are quite shocking. A bulk of people between the ages of 18 and 30 didn’t vote at all; it was the same in France and in other countries. And the creation of this vacuum, coupled with the Wall Street crash, opened up gaps, which were more often filled, in France and now Germany, by the rise of large right-wing groups.

Who don't like people with names like Tariq or Ali because...urm...even a guy called Barak Hussein Obama couldn't seem to get them to play nice.

In the US, we had two clear alternatives. The opinion polls were showing that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump, but Clinton went with traditional extreme centre-type politics, and handed the presidency to a weird, maverick, white supremacist billionaire, who more or less took over the Republican Party for his own purposes, and came to power on a platform which promised quite a few changes, none of which have happened. So that is the situation we’re still in.

This interview is probably a couple of months old. Still, it should have been apparent that Trump has delivered a Tax cut and completely changed the horizon for Global Trade. This means that Keynesianism is back on the table. Furthermore, Trump has changed the composition of the Supreme Court. This means, as Steve Teles pointed out, that the Left can abandon wonkish 'kludgeocracy'- which experience shows is corrupt and self serving- for old fashioned universalism. Of course, this depends on a lid being kept on immigration. Still, the table has been set for Corbyn but, alas!, not Tariq Sahib. Unlike Masud Khan- that other Punjabi Prince who carved a niche for himself in the British Republic of Letters, albeit as a Freudian not a Marxist, Tariq has not degenerated into drunken anti-semitism. Yet.