discokermit
Well-Known Member
bollocks. now i've got a peter gabriel song stuck in my head.
I joined the Labour Party...
- Thread starter TopCat
- Start date
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
games without frontiers, war without tears
On the bright side unlike myself I bet you don't get asked for his autograph!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Running up that hill. With James bond.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
whistling tunes i'm kissing baboons in the jungle.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
willy's happy again
DrRingDing
'anti-human wanker'
You have experience of the majority of CLP members!? I'd get yourself down the clinic.
Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that the Corbyn project is doomed.
Even if Corbyn does stick to his opposition to Trident, he seems to have no idea how to defend such a policy from the resistance of the military establishment.
When a senior general said that the British military will ‘use whatever mean possible, fair or foul’ to prevent Corbyn from ‘emasculating’ their power, Corbyn’s response was merely to suggest that it didn’t matter because the general had now been ‘told off’ by his superiors!
In terms of economics, a likely trajectory of any Corbyn-led government will be to end up imposing austerity - just as Syriza are now doing in Greece.
Labour already say they support the Tory idea of a ‘welfare cap of £120 billion’. Indeed, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, sounds more like Thatcher than Marx when he says: ‘We are going to have to live within our means and we always will’.
Like Ken Livingstone, who he worked with in the 1980s, McDonnell is very good at sometimes sounding radical. But, once in power, McDonnell may well repeat Livingstone’s trajectory as London’s Mayor, i.e. he’ll just end up running capitalism. It is significant that Corbyn’s top advisers used to advise Livingstone when he was Mayor.
This is not to say that Labour’s new leaders do not have other, more ‘radical', tendencies. Both Corbyn and McDonnell, for instance, believe that ‘we can learn a lot’ from Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba and its ‘amazing success story’ [sic] . Furthermore, back in 1991, when even official Communists were giving up on the Soviet Union, Corbyn still saw the Soviet Union as an important part of the leadership of the international left, at one point saying that he was ‘concerned at the break-up of the Soviet Union and the leadership it gave.’ (Morning Star, 24/9/91)
Right-wingers may use such facts to claim that Labour’s leaders are secret revolutionaries. But anyone who knows the history of Stalinism knows that people with Stalinist illusions are often opposed to revolutionary change.
One obvious example is Socialist Action, an ex-Trotskyist group who have been accused of having influence over Corbyn’s leadership. Socialist Action, for instance, say that in a war between the US and China they would defend China on the grounds that the ‘Chinese capitalist class … do not hold power’. Such pro-Chinese views may worry a pro-US military establishment. But all these views really show is how Socialist Action are more Stalinist fantasists than any sort of genuine revolutionaries.
For more arguments against the Labour Party see:
Arguments AGAINST Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
Even if Corbyn does stick to his opposition to Trident, he seems to have no idea how to defend such a policy from the resistance of the military establishment.
When a senior general said that the British military will ‘use whatever mean possible, fair or foul’ to prevent Corbyn from ‘emasculating’ their power, Corbyn’s response was merely to suggest that it didn’t matter because the general had now been ‘told off’ by his superiors!
In terms of economics, a likely trajectory of any Corbyn-led government will be to end up imposing austerity - just as Syriza are now doing in Greece.
Labour already say they support the Tory idea of a ‘welfare cap of £120 billion’. Indeed, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, sounds more like Thatcher than Marx when he says: ‘We are going to have to live within our means and we always will’.
Like Ken Livingstone, who he worked with in the 1980s, McDonnell is very good at sometimes sounding radical. But, once in power, McDonnell may well repeat Livingstone’s trajectory as London’s Mayor, i.e. he’ll just end up running capitalism. It is significant that Corbyn’s top advisers used to advise Livingstone when he was Mayor.
This is not to say that Labour’s new leaders do not have other, more ‘radical', tendencies. Both Corbyn and McDonnell, for instance, believe that ‘we can learn a lot’ from Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba and its ‘amazing success story’ [sic] . Furthermore, back in 1991, when even official Communists were giving up on the Soviet Union, Corbyn still saw the Soviet Union as an important part of the leadership of the international left, at one point saying that he was ‘concerned at the break-up of the Soviet Union and the leadership it gave.’ (Morning Star, 24/9/91)
Right-wingers may use such facts to claim that Labour’s leaders are secret revolutionaries. But anyone who knows the history of Stalinism knows that people with Stalinist illusions are often opposed to revolutionary change.
One obvious example is Socialist Action, an ex-Trotskyist group who have been accused of having influence over Corbyn’s leadership. Socialist Action, for instance, say that in a war between the US and China they would defend China on the grounds that the ‘Chinese capitalist class … do not hold power’. Such pro-Chinese views may worry a pro-US military establishment. But all these views really show is how Socialist Action are more Stalinist fantasists than any sort of genuine revolutionaries.
For more arguments against the Labour Party see:
Arguments AGAINST Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party
I love it when posters come over all haughty and politically pure on threads like this, then quickly reveal themselves to have made at least as shabby a compromise as anyone whose joined the LP. Good work fiannanahalba
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Perhaps time to set up an external faction?
andysays
Love and solidarity
The victory of the PCS strikers at the National Gallery may be good news (I don't know enough about it to say for sure), but I'm not sure that simply pointing to one victory is enough.
What you really need to do to convince me (and, I suspect, many others) is to demonstrate how and where this "openly supporting direct action" is going on, how far extra-parliamentary action will be permitted and even encouraged, and specifically how and where the "scope for mobilising mass popular opposition to the neoliberal agenda" is actually going to be put into practice by the Corbyn-led Labour Party, without being diverted down the same old bureaucratic cul-de-sacs and hijacked by the same old party hacks.
Once the celebrations and the claims of vindication are over and the hangover has cleared, what has actually changed which makes this supposed new dawn the real thing rather than just another false dawn? You haven't answered that question, you haven't attempted to answer it, in fact you appear not to even realise that it is a question worth asking.
Any sign of that? I reckon the newly energised democratic left will push its energies into anti-war, anti-imperialism, Syria, etc, pro open borders, refugee support(my MP was inundated by offers of support) anti-racism, especially in the light of Mays Powellite speech) and lots of anti-austerity stuff without actually doing anything. All worthwhile, but I just doesn't seem a desire to engage with WC issues and especially those forgotten about on the estates.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
those are working class issues, ffs
Smokeandsteam
Working Class First
I think he means issues raised on the doorstep/in pubs in working class communities - anti social behaviour, crime, immigration, housing etc. Not sure I've heard much from Corbyn on any of this.
Syria, 'war', the call for open borders are issues the left tends to believe the WC should be interested in.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
is he fuck.
And if you haven't heard anything from Corbyn about housing, you're deaf.
yeah, the working class dont care about 'war' because they're never the ones who die in them, are they?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
don't bring facts into this! we need more stereotypes and ill-informed rubbish.
Didn't know there was one, will have to go on YT.
is he fuck.
And if you haven't heard anything from Corbyn about housing, you're deaf.
yeah, the working class dont care about 'war' because they're never the ones who die in them, are they?
Yes, but did you go up to say the Manor during the Iraq War?, covered in union jacks and support our boys. like many I was involved in STW etc and there were few manual workers, etc, even fewer from the estates.
One thing, he is nothing like Michael Foot, as his detractors claim, he is very self assured in that video.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
what bollocks.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
I saw plenty from Pitsmoor, Firth Park, Darnall, and Southey (the places I was politically active in). And, yes, that's wc off all races and religions.
the flytipping round my way is symptomatic of council neglect, it wouldn't be allowed in posher areas so I don't see why we should put up with it, Funny enough I've done the planter thing but I'm no gentrifier but just trying to make my nearby hotspot more than just a shooting gallery.
malatesta32
Not Serb. No, Really!
DexterTCN
Troy and Abed in the morning
What...you mean the SNP that didn't enforce those new contract 'proposals' for the NHS with all those demos down there in England? The SNP that's frozen the council tax year on year, free travel for the old, no prescription charges? Tory bastards.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
er - half of those things you cite are Tory policies (Osborne has been urging council tax freezes since they got in in 2010, and Boris-ruled London has free travel for young and old), and as for the other two Wales has had free prescriptions for longer than the Scots have and won't be implementing the new junior doctors proposals either.
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