Attila the Stockbroker
Erdogan’s victory in Turkey confirms my increasing view that identity politics is now being weaponised by the Right in many countries as a divide and rule mechanism to get the poor and desperate to fight each other. People brutalised by capitalist economics are being persuaded to vote against their own interests and their own class by ‘culture wars’.
The demands of basic human rights of food, shelter, warmth and economic security for ALL should always come first. When the Left puts identity above economics, the Right uses it against us – and we start arguing with each other. It’s self defeating.
Mark Drakeford – who should be Labour leader – got it right when he said that there needs to be a ‘solidarity union’ in the U.K. to guarantee the building blocks of life to every citizen. That is a basic human right!
When capitalist governments talk of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ they are always referring to the political sphere, not the economic one. You can starve in the street as long as you have the theoretical political right to demonstrate about your condition. (A right which is now being eroded anyway.) But without economic rights, political rights are mere window dressing.
Economic human rights and economic democracy have been the central planks of my political perspective ever since the 1970s and I still believe them to be the cornerstones of progressive politics. They are the base: the other stuff is the superstructure. Sort them out and everything else becomes easier.
Not my idea, but that of an old German bloke with a beard I still have a lot of time for.