Corbyn Plots A Marxist Revolution – Could He Win The Election By Accident?

Via Strategic Macro blog,

I don’t think Corbyn can win outright. However, with the constituency system of 650 MPs and votes split often three or four ways in each constituency, he could get in via a coalition with the SNP or LibDems. He is currently only 41 MPs behind the Tories. With a Lab/ LibDem/ SNP coalition he only really needs 270-280 seats vs 247 now:

You Guv 9th September voting intentions:

I think a lot of it will resolve to what the Brexit Party does to the Tory vote in Tory marginals vs how many votes Labour lose to the Brexit Party in the northern heartlands. Its unlikely the Brexit Party will win any seats outright.

Farage does not believe the Tory Party will exit the EU by itself, or at least will only exit via the Withdrawal Agreement which leaves the UK closely tied to EU rules, taxes and regulations. If Farage does campaign against them, he risks splitting the leave vote in Tory marginals. This would boost both the Lib Dems and Labour numbers in Parliament. Its unlikely the Brexit Party could cause many Labour marginals to become Tory seats.

Corbyn’s conference speech

The speech can be taken as a trial balloon for the manifesto in the coming election.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4GVwy_B6aE]

I would summarise it as planning to take capital away from successful people, who would invest it and giving it to unsuccessful people, who will spend it.

In the short term ‘free money for all’ policies boost the economy via upfront spending, but medium term it will be a disaster, as centralised state socialism always is.

My understanding of Marxism is as follows; the proletariat rise up and overthrow the ‘bourgeois’ capital owners and bring about a revolutionary socialist system. Marx predicted this is most likely to happen when the capitalist economy is in crisis. In other words; socialism is born out of capitalist failure and crisis.

I think its fair to say capitalism has been in the Third Turning since 2008 (in fact I think the Third Turning was 1997-2016), The Unravelling, whereby policy has aimed to continue the prior framework (credit super cycle supporting final demand in the face of large imbalances, global platform company labour arbitrage, concentration of assets and profits and falling wage shares to GDP).

Strauss-Howe predict that in the Fourth Turning reformist leaders emerge (which I see as happening since 2016), who break down the prior institutional framework and implement a new one, during which time there is a chaotic environment. Clearly our reformists are Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

Viewed from this perspective, of Marxist theory in a time of struggle and reform, Corbyn’s speech tells you he sees himself as that revolutionary socialist leader and he intends to lead that revolution now.

Below are a summary of his key speech policies:

Economic control:

He described the economy as ‘a tool in the hands of policy makers’

• So command and control and a return to centrally agreed ‘five year industrial plans’

• He is unable to understand that the ‘capital and labour’ economic framework from 150 years ago has been displaced by a complex, high skilled service and innovation driven economy. 75% of our economic output is now non-industrial. 

• His understanding of economics and business is defined by the prism of worker vs capital zero sum conflict  

He will scrap the Trade Union laws and nationalise rail, national electricity grid, water and mail.

• The Trade Unions will just push for extortionate wage increases, which is a tax on consumers, is inflationary and pushes up the IRR hurdle on new private investments

• In terms of nationalising certain complex, large, low RoE utility sectors; Im not so against it, if they are well run (which they wont be by the party bosses). We have had coordination and investment problems with rail and the national grid needs investment for electrical transportation in the coming years  

Pharmaceutical IP theft:

‘Using compulsory licensing to secure generic versions of patented medicines. We’ll tell the drugs companies that if they want public research funding then they’ll have to make their drugs affordable for all. And we will create a new publicly owned generic drugs manufacturer to supply cheaper medicines to our NHS’

• He seems to have missed the part where the drug company gambled billions in developing the new drug and going forwards will make sure they don’t do any valuable R&D within the UK in order to protect their product IP and patents but will probably still use government money for early stage, primary scientific research

• Hs also doesnt understand the difference between biotechnology drugs which involve an organic chemistry process (that is usually secret) and pharmaceutical drugs that are made in a traditional factory and can be more easily generically made

Government sponsored education programmes:

‘Free education for everyone throughout life as a right not a privilege. No more university tuition fees. Free childcare and a new Sure Start programme. Free vocational and technical education. And free training for adults.’

• It has to be paid for by taxes, so why does he think he can spend this money better via centralisation than the tax payers organising their own education and training? 

• Child care has already been regulated to the point of unaffordability. Pre-school nursery costs on average £12k a year, the highest cost in the world, vs around £5k per child school place.

• Scrapping tuition fees would cost about £20bn a year, or 1% of GDP. 

Wealth redistribution:

He will give the workforce a 10% stake in large companies, paying a dividend of up to £500 a year to every employee. He will increase the minimum wage by almost 20%.

• Large companies by definition have been the most successful ones and are essential for productivity/ volume of GDP, but here he wants to increase their cost of capital through basically a form of a shared ownership tax and rising the wages of the least productive workers

He wants to tax the top 5% and big companies.

• While big companies drive GDP volume, its often small, entrepreneurial ones that come up with the breakthroughs that drive productivity growth

• All higher taxes will do is increase the before tax IRR hurdle on a project and reduce investment

• The Tories would cut taxes in an effort to bring in investment and jobs, which in turn see taxes through payrolls and sales taxes

5 year central plans:

UK industrial output is about £500bn a year, or 25% of GDP. He announced he would spend an unbelievable 25% of GDP, or 5% of annual GDP if spread over 5 years, on two large scale sets of new spending programmes. Corbyn is a Unions & QUANGO workers wet dream.

He will spend £250bn (£50bn a year/ 10% of UK annual industrial output if spread over 5 years) on energy, transport and broadband infrastructure.

• In comparison parliament found a need for just £3-5bn of telecoms subsidy in rural areas. The private sector can deliver fast charging stations. The Tories are spending single digit billions on other areas of transportation plus the white elephant of HS2. 

• Its not clear at all what the £250bn would be spent on, why the private sector cant and whether it would pay for itself. 

He will spend £250bn on ‘capital for businesses and co-ops’

• No details, but could be the nationalisation programme or some other government/ union/ company forced union.

With £500bn without doubt you can solve some problems, but if that is low RoE or negative RoE and crowds out private sector investment it will just lead to less economic growth in the long run. Its also likely to be a massive union boondoggle and very beneficial to party and union connected businesses.

It might also be a bigger fiscal boost for German goods producers than anything the German government will agree to.

Who will pay for this?

We already have a near record trade deficit and need to rebalance that via a careful strategy of higher wages, higher savings, higher investment, more domestic production and more exports and less imports. I have argued the case before for a private sector, investment led, economic boom after Brexit.

UK Current Account as a percent of GDP:

UK Capital flows, Qtly in £bns:

Corbyn simply sees the problems and plans to spend enormous amounts of money, but he cant know where the money will come from to pay for it. The external sector has been willing to finance UK deficits for some time as the economy rebounded and grew and while the UK represented a liberal safehaven. For a while it will also probably finance Corbyn given his policies are pro-cyclical and will offer higher returns/ yields for a period. However, longer term, given the high tax, stagflationary policies, it seems very unlikely the external sector will pay; so crowding out the domestic private sector is the only possible alternative. This is the stuff FX crisis are made of, but only a few years down the line.

The first five years could see a significant boost to GDP, maybe longer, but later on the negative effects will show more prominence, probably when there is a recession.

Two details were outlined however, those were that he will build large scale solar plants, battery hubs and wind farms and he will also ramp public house building. All of this is great for well connected, high-wage, unionised companies and QUANGOs.

Internationalism:

He will withdraw from US/ NATO military interventions in favour of diplomacy.

• In effect he will weaken the ability of organisations like the UN and the ICC to enforce basic human rights onto rogue states and allow China’s sphere of influence to grow. That is the opposite of his stated foreign policy intention.

Brexit:

His fence sitting policy on Brexit it to; negotiate a better deal, put it to referendum and carry out the referendum result. Its a Remain party, but as an ardent Brexiteer he is calculating the referendum result will be to leave with whatever deal he has negotiated.

He would then be relatively free to implement his policies; he has no intention of reducing taxes or regulation (and therefore maintain the level playing field requirements) and having left the EU would not be as bound by EU state subsidy rules in his nationalisation and ‘investment’ programme.

Corbyn was never meant to be leader, after a career as a campaigner, he lucked into the role due to failure by mainstream career politicians. In the last several years he has been forced to become an expedient politician. His reformist agenda is also popular with the party grassroots.

Question is can he now luck into No. 10?