Bruce Anderson
In reality, it is the neoliberal or the right-wing libertarian position that is almost never held by anyone who is not only in the first flush of youth, but also from an extremely privileged background, adding up to practically no life experience whatever.
It is possible that that has not always been the case. But it certainly is so today.
Moreover, this delusion about Corbyn's base of support is routinely held alongside the fantasy that it is made up of veterans of the Far Left from the 1970s and 1980s.
Not only is it impossible for those things both to be true, but it was in fact Tony Blair who was surrounded by what were then very recent veterans of the Gramscian wing of the Communist Party of Great Britain, plus a smattering of similarly minded old Trots, while it is Boris Johnson who has hugged close the graduates of the Revolutionary Communist Party and of Socialist Action, which was previously the International Marxist Group.
Anderson, however, is most revealing in this article. He lays bare how utterly unconservative and un-Tory the Thatcherite position is, always has been, and always will be. He analysis is entirely economic and materialistic, and he quotes Marxists favourably.
In so doing, he bemoans the fact that Britain never had a full-blown bourgeois revolution on the French, German or American model, meaning that historic institutions remained essentially intact, or at least recognisably continuous.
"As the English bourgeoisie never reshaped institutions and society in their own image, they may not have the self-confidence of their equivalents in France, Germany and America," Anderson regrets, so that this is, "the only country in the world where a self-made millionaire would feel socially uneasy in the presence of a retired major and a country clergyman."
Is it? Even if it is, then so much the better. A certain deference to at least the embodied aspiration to gallantry and godliness, flag and faith (and family), makes possible the civilised and civilising acquisition and application of the self-made man's millions, rather than the alternative that Anderson would only too obviously prefer.
Also, note that spitting of "country", as well as of "retired", even though Anderson himself is now no spring chicken.
Like almost everyone who is even in the broadest sense an intellectual on the British Right, Anderson was a Marxist in his youth, something that almost no one in the population at large has ever been; the inability of this country's historically dominant and presently governing political subculture to grow its own intelligentsia is very striking indeed.
And like most people, although not quite all, who were Marxists in their youth, Anderson is incapable of understanding the world in any other terms. In that great scheme of things, it is the most minor of details merely to change the ending so that the bourgeoisie wins, and it is nothing at all to hold, if Anderson does, that in Britain only the parliamentary system is to be used.
That latter was held by the Communist Party of Great Britain throughout all 71 years of its existence, in accordance with the view of Lenin himself, and it remains the position of the Communist Party of Britain, which is by far this country's largest and which is the one associated, although the two bodies are strictly independent of each other, with the Morning Star.
Yet to Anderson, this ideology makes him a Tory. Not only that, but these days, and for several decades now, almost all of the Tories agree with him.
In so doing, he bemoans the fact that Britain never had a full-blown bourgeois revolution on the French, German or American model, meaning that historic institutions remained essentially intact, or at least recognisably continuous.
"As the English bourgeoisie never reshaped institutions and society in their own image, they may not have the self-confidence of their equivalents in France, Germany and America," Anderson regrets, so that this is, "the only country in the world where a self-made millionaire would feel socially uneasy in the presence of a retired major and a country clergyman."
Is it? Even if it is, then so much the better. A certain deference to at least the embodied aspiration to gallantry and godliness, flag and faith (and family), makes possible the civilised and civilising acquisition and application of the self-made man's millions, rather than the alternative that Anderson would only too obviously prefer.
Also, note that spitting of "country", as well as of "retired", even though Anderson himself is now no spring chicken.
Like almost everyone who is even in the broadest sense an intellectual on the British Right, Anderson was a Marxist in his youth, something that almost no one in the population at large has ever been; the inability of this country's historically dominant and presently governing political subculture to grow its own intelligentsia is very striking indeed.
And like most people, although not quite all, who were Marxists in their youth, Anderson is incapable of understanding the world in any other terms. In that great scheme of things, it is the most minor of details merely to change the ending so that the bourgeoisie wins, and it is nothing at all to hold, if Anderson does, that in Britain only the parliamentary system is to be used.
That latter was held by the Communist Party of Great Britain throughout all 71 years of its existence, in accordance with the view of Lenin himself, and it remains the position of the Communist Party of Britain, which is by far this country's largest and which is the one associated, although the two bodies are strictly independent of each other, with the Morning Star.
Yet to Anderson, this ideology makes him a Tory. Not only that, but these days, and for several decades now, almost all of the Tories agree with him.
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