Good thing steel isn't an input into weapons and munitions production, Clown Island.
Why produce weapons and munitions yourself when you can just buy them from the US and enrich their military industrial complex? In fact from an American perspective, why does Europe need its own weapons industry at all? Better that they become fully dependent on the US, that way they are easier to control.
Reject steel, return to iron, embrace Anglo-Saxon tradition. Watch out Russia, the brits have 7th century military technology and they're not afraid to use it.
If this decade ends with Brits making pig iron in makeshift furnaces in their back yards, I will take back every negative thing I've said about Sunak
embrace Anglo-Saxon tradition
They should set "The Ruin" to music and make it the official UK anthem.
What level of deindustrialization is it when you can't make fucking steel anymore?
Earliest known steel artifacts are from 1800 BCE, earliest discoverings of reliable steel production are from XIII century BCE Anatolia, X century BCE Egyptians discovered tempering which allowed for high-carbon steel, and V-III century BCE south India produced high quality wootz steel.
So steel was actually produced as early as iron, but iron remained easier to produce for most of that time.
As wise as the Brits pre-WWII, who sent all their scrap metal to the Nazis. (Thanks to @AnarchoBolshevik@lemmygrad.ml for the continuous history lessons!)
Will financial services mostly remain unaffected? OK no problem then.
Neoliberals will soon find out that it may be easy to print money but not actual produced goods.
Indeed, western politicians appear to be utterly shocked by the fact that they can't just wish factories and trained workers into existence from thin air.
Aims gun at own foot: "Okay, we've got target lock... preparing to fire..."
Tata Steel
THANK YOU, DO NOT COME AGAIN
nothin' personnel tho (literally you ain't got no personnel)
It may be the result of capitalism, but there's something incredibly right about Tata owning (and discontinuing) modern Britain's steel production. Here's hoping that in due time (and due collapse) Indian corporations come to own that whole wretched island, it would be only fitting and even then would pale in comparison to reparations owed.
Tata has also bought Jaguar which I think is/was a British car company. Very weird trend IMO.
From Wikipedia:
Jaguar Land Rover has been a subsidiary of Tata Motors since they founded it as a holding company for the acquisition of Jaguar Cars Limited and Land Rover Limited from Ford in 2008.
Do you expect Indian capitalists to be different from British ones?
Not at all, save for the fact the power dynamics don't allow them to drive the whole island into slavery, starvation, and disenfranchisement the way Britain did the subcontinent. If things reached anywhere near that level, or well before it, I would certainly care.
This however? It may not be praxis, but I will certainly allow myself to not only enjoy seeing this, but cheer it on. The Brits deserve this and more, particularly as their island remains one of the champions of modern imperialism and exploitation worldwide. Notions of "sainthood," "purity culture," and all that nonsense be damned, I won't stop myself from appreciating karmic justice (so long as it stays within the realms of what can be interpreted as justice) where it happens.
I respect the sentiment and also long for the final destruction of the Empire but important to remember the only people ever affected negatively by the actions of capitalists are the working classes. Real justice would be unwinding the web of exploitative financial services, stripping the house of lords of all their honours, seizing their property to pay reparations, and sending them to labour camps.
As someone of the working classes living in the west- if it takes the destruction of the west's working classes as well, to end the empire- in truth, so be it. I won't play a part in it (as I'm not an accelerationist), but the majority of the world cannot, will not, and should not have to wait for the working classes in the imperial cores to rise up- and thankfully, things are moving rapidly in the direction of multipolarism and development of capable, determined resistance to the empire.
The honest truth is that- more likely than not (though I'm not a defeatist, either) no change shall come in the imperial cores, till it is far too late. And when said change comes- I suspect more likely than not, it will first be marked by a long, brutal period of increasing fascism- I'd love to be proven wrong, and I don't let it color my principles- but, while not being a "third-worldist," I expect things will have to get far, far worse before they get better here, and that change will have to come from the global south and anti-imperialists like (even if by circumstance only) Russia.
And FWIW- I would definitely rather see the imperial cores' working classes decline further, than see our lot rebolstered by some revitalization of the empire and new flows of plunder and exploitation from the global south- that's not accelerationism though, but simply that I don't want my benefit to be at the expense of others- basically a "no" to the war economy, etc.
Totally agree with all of that, just sad that things are getting worse and the only people benefiting from the decline in standard of living in the UK are billionaires, whether they are white or brown.
I feel like it is a sign of declining empire, turning inwards due to reduced avenues for exploitation overseas, but I don't know if that means anything right now. Maybe it's nothing to do with declining empire at all, and due totally to self-destructive neolib brain worms.
Like you say, we are probably going to descend into fascism first, and even after that it is a complete gamble what takes its place.
They did fucked up Polish steel industry that remained after shock therapy, and by then the steel demand was rising globally so the industry was significantly modernised, but the neoliberal dogmatics sabotaged it for years.
Do you expect Indian capitalists to be different from British ones?
not my problem
's can't help themselves.
