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Labour leadership

frogwoman said:
Well yeah 48 MPs. 48. He wouldnt have to purge so much as utterly eviscerate it.
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but how many more will basically blow with the wind and support the new party line if he was elected as leader?

And if the labour leadership wasn't from the neoliberal camp then that could change pretty quickly as the central party would stop imposing neoliberal candidates onto local parties.

Ending up with some form of left / centre left government looks a lot more doable (if the actual vote went with corbyn) than say building up any other left of centre party in England to the state where they had enough MPs to govern in coalition with SNP, Plaid etc. One way there is a potential for a centre left coalition government at the next election, the other it'd take 15-20 years at least to get to that state without any labour input.

I was having these arguments with some of the local labour campaigners at the election from the opposite viewpoint, but at that point I didn't think the left in labour stood a chance of getting a leadership candidate elected. It'd seem that the new labour election rules have actually changed that situation significantly, and the neolib PLP have potentially fucked themselves by allowing a credible left wing candidate into the election where the membership now get to vote on an equal footing so it can't be stitched up as it previously would have been.

I know it's a small sample from one city, but every labour candidate and supporter I came across in Leeds at the last election (who wasn't an established new labour figure) was campaigning on a much more socialist / left wing agenda than the national party, and actually talking about the candidates as being good socialists, and they were mostly relatively young rather than being remnants from the 70s or something.
 
Yea but its not just about the uk tho is it. Where is the the international support which any 'traditional' social democratic far left labour govt would need to carry out such a programme? In france people thought that the socialist party would start to change things and reverse the worst of sarkozy's cuts and instead whats happened is one of the most viciously authoritarian centre right governments in that country ever. I can't see where else in Europe and in european labour party equivalents, where support for these policies would come from? I am so sorry I really dont want to put a downer on things but surely the example of all these countries, Greece, France etc shows that the possibility of change through the electoral route with the best intentions (which i think Tsipras definitely did have at the beginning) is very limited? :(
 
frogwoman said:
Yea but its not just about the uk tho is it. Where is the the international support which any 'traditional' social democratic far left labour govt would need to carry out such a programme? In france people thought that the socialist party would start to change things and reverse the worst of sarkozy's cuts and instead whats happened is one of the most viciously authoritarian centre right governments in that country ever. I can't see where else in Europe and in european labour party equivalents, where support for these policies would come from?
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well, on that basis we may as well not bother at all then eh?

But, Spain, Greece, Iceland, much of Scandinavia, to an extent France.

And our options are much more open due to not being part of the Euro, we're doing austerity voluntarily not because the ECB demands it.
 
stethoscope said:
What fucks me off with @articul8, is that posts such as yours should be the ones he's connecting with, not making ridiculous offensive remarks, shouting 'ultra left splitters!!1!' and then pissing off again for a few weeks before re-appearing on another theory thread using impenetrable language.
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TBF, when he uses "impenetrable language", it just marks him as being not even half as intelligent as he thinks he is. If he were, he'd be able to summarise just about any "technical" point into laymans' terms.
 
Im not telling you not to bother. Im asking where the support for traditional social democracy *within the leadership is gonna come from because you can't push forward any type of policy like that in isolation from other countries.

All european countries have made cuts. While much of this is ideological on the part of the section of British capital it is not 100% so.

(Edited to make clearer sorry)​
 
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frogwoman said:
They would demand it if we stopped doing it.
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but the ECB holds no power over us, we can create our own currency, the likes of Greece, Spain etc can't do that.

I'm not really a fan of QE, but QE was the major difference between us and Greece. We could create £350 billion from nowhere, use it to buy up government debt and pump that liquidity into the financial sector at the same time all by ourselves.

eta The way it was done ended up benefiting the ultra rich and pumping up top end house prices, the stock market and commodity bubbles, but it could have been done differently to have had better impacts. Those in the Euro don't have that option at a national level.
 
Zabo said:
Just out of interest. There have been countless reports about what will happen if 'The Left' gain power. Threats of a coup or a more hard line right - if that is possible? - or even a new style SDP. If 'The Left' are trounced by whatever means where will they go? Will they stay in the same institutionalised party and lick their wounds or breakaway? Given the estimated support they are getting it would surely be foolish to stay and fight another day.
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Depends on who you mean by the left. The minority of non-Labour bods will become even more disillusioned after being burnt probably for at least the second time, if the 'Labour Left' who would leave over it were capable of leaving over Corbyn losing or being thrown out then they would be the sort of people who would have left years ago over something else. They will stay in and back Burnham.
 
frogwoman said:
My honest, gut feeling, which is honestly not coming from anything anyone has said here, is fuck the labour party, and fuck the 'labour left' (or at least the institutions of it)

I have disliked the labour party for a very very long time. The main reason is I'll never forgive them for going in to iraq. Only a handful of Labour MPs and only one member of the cabinet, Robin Cook, resigned over it. Had Blair not agreed to go into Iraq there is a very good chance that Bush would have made the invasion a far more limited one than what happened solely consisting of air strikes or whatever, if not had to pull out altogether. The organisation founded by Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who we have all come to know and 'love', would thus have remained a tiny group carrying out the odd bombing here and there but nothing special. Blairs govt gave Bush's actions legitimacy and added large scale military support.

Labour laid the ground work for the welfare cuts, there is a thread on here started by Blagsta called 'welfare cuts and poverty' which was begun during Blair's rule. I think that thread was started when I was still at school. People are acting like the cuts only started under the Tories but they actually began much earlier than that. I remember talking to a woman once about the Iraq war demo when i was an SP member and talking about how it got me into politics, and she replied that on that day she was also on a demo but it was a local one, protesting against the closure of a daycare centre due to cuts in the council . Remember that brazilian guy who got shot on the tube? Remember 'british jobs for british workers' and PFI??

When i was in the SP i saw countless examples of sectarianism by some (not all) labour members that made me not want to touch their organisation with a barge pole. On just about every local demo labour speakers would stand up and tell people the way to stop this is always to vote labour, every single time. One of the worst examples was in 2011 when it was the public sector strikes and the SP which were always fairly active had done a lot of the work in the unions on getting people out, and during the speeches afterwards this guy in the labour party stood up and started banging on about 'sectarian groups' meaning the SP, and almost no mention of the strikes at all, when the SP had been instrumental of getting people out, whatever I think about these tactics now or whatever my view is of the SP.

I also really dislike this 'THERE IS NO LIFE OUTSIDE THE PARTY' attitude a lot of labour supporters seem to have. Its just vanguardism, assuming that everything which doesnt involve labour being elected or the 'labour left' is shit and not worth bothering about. I don't have much time for the SP's politics these days but at least they were trying to start something different. Good luck to Corbyn and im glad to see anything that pisses off Blairites but really the faith that some people are placing in labour over this imo is just going to lead to disappointment and reminds me a lot of what people thought about Russell Brand and others. There's loads of local stuff beyond Labour there are some groups starting here which look really positive such as People's Political Economy and a few others. Shit even the local AFN round here. These developments are really positive and id hate to see people giving up and going back to Labour.


Sorry that this post is a bit of a rant and might have some factual errors in it but this is my gut feelings. I just dont want to be pressurised into giving money to a party I don't like or feeling I have to support them in any way. As far as corbyn goes im just indifferent and i can definitely see signs of things changing but when it does it's not going to come from labour or probably not electoral politics in general. These days I would call myself a left communist but my dislike of the labour party is fairly visceral and not really to do with any ideology or theories ive read, for many people especially young people in not traditional 'Labour areas' or in unionised industries, im sure many, many people feel the same way tbh.
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Good post. as I stated to you over the conversation we had this afternoon I find the idea of the labour left to be an abstraction totally devoid of any analytical rigour. Noone knows what on earth it means or denotes, and it's generally a stick to plaicate more dissident members on the bourgeois left - oh as long as we can shift the LP to the left we can look at implementing socialism. As Bordiga once quipped with the Stalinists (I think?) 'One does not build communism.' And that is one insight that todays left have lost.

RE your point about vanguardism, during the period of old labour they had this nonsensical idea (following plato) to engender good, socialist citizens, in keeping with the bringing consciousness to the class from outside the party. An interesting parallel to note in this regard is that Plato had an indelible influence on Mussolini's idea of constructing the ideal citizen.
 
frogwoman said:
Im not telling you not to bother. Im asking where the support for traditional social democracy *within the leadership is gonna come from because you can't push forward any type of policy like that in isolation from other countries.

All european countries have made cuts. While much of this is ideological on the part of the section of British capital it is not 100% so.

(Edited to make clearer sorry)​
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This is my problem with the whole social democracy narrative. Instead of analysing the concrete historical conditions in which it came into being it's touted as an abstract.
 
free spirit said:
but the ECB holds no power over us, we can create our own currency, the likes of Greece, Spain etc can't do that.

I'm not really a fan of QE, but QE was the major difference between us and Greece. We could create £350 billion from nowhere, use it to buy up government debt and pump that liquidity into the financial sector at the same time all by ourselves.

eta The way it was done ended up benefiting the ultra rich and pumping up top end house prices, the stock market and commodity bubbles, but it could have been done differently to have had better impacts. Those in the Euro don't have that option at a national level.
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Devaluation?

In fact, this is my problem with the Lapavitsas crowd who are/were yelling for grexit and the drachma. It's a totally counterproductive measure that'll only strengthen the right.
 
dialectician said:
Devaluation?

In fact, this is my problem with the Lapavitsas crowd who are/were yelling for grexit and the drachma. It's a totally counterproductive measure that'll only strengthen the right.
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can you elaborate? what's your problem with this?

ps in this situation we're talking about the UK where we already have our own currency, which means we have those options open whereas Greece doesn't, so the chaos of greece leaving the Euro doesn't apply.
 
free spirit said:
can you elaborate? what's your problem with this?

ps in this situation we're talking about the UK where we already have our own currency, which means we have those options open whereas Greece doesn't, so the chaos of greece leaving the Euro doesn't apply.
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Well obviously. My point was how do you expect to generate value for an artificially printed currency?

If money didn't represent value through being a representation of alienated labour this wouldn't be an issue. But it's not just a free floating abstract that you can print off at will.

In your scenario you're just trying to remedy a crisis by repeatedly hitting yourself in the face by adding even more fictitious capital into circulation. But that is already the problem. We already have tons of it, why more?
 
dialectician said:
Well obviously. My point was how do you expect to generate value for an artificially printed currency?

If money didn't represent value through being a representation of alienated labour this wouldn't be an issue. But it's not just a free floating abstract that you can print off at will.

In your scenario you're just trying to remedy a crisis by repeatedly hitting yourself in the face by adding even more fictitious capital into circulation. But that is already the problem. We already have tons of it, why more?
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ok, but back in the real world the UK was able to create £350 billion of new money because we have our own currency and central bank. Greece wasn't.

That is a massive difference and means that we're not in the same position as Greece etc when it comes to the European Central Bank, which was the point I was making.
 
Umm both the USA Norway and Russia have all introduced cuts in the social wage as have countries in Eastern Europe which have not yet adopted the Euro. I fully agree about the ideological nature of Osborne's programme but you can't say that the introduction of some degree of austerity is at least in part because capital demands it and not solely ideological.
 
as have we, but we weren't forced to do this in the same way that a eurozone country can be, we had other options available as did those countries.

I'll give you the counter example of Iceland.
 
Social democracy and the post war boom arose from very specific circumstances which are no longer possible today. I find it a bit patronising how people can talk about 'in the real world' when trying to dismiss these criticisms of the far left of Labour. in the real world conditions for social democracy do not and have not existed in the west for some time. In the real world austerity and cuts were going on for a long time well before the current crisis, albeit in a more restrained form. In the real world Mitterand was elected in the 80s on a radical left platform, it was a disaster and he had to reverse it, in the real world we just seen how the total ruination and humiliation of a country for trying to reverse even a fraction of the austerity measures of the last ten years can be brought about despite the resistance of its leadership. People say that those that are putting forward views sceptical of far left electoralism arent living in the real world despite the fact that putting ones hope in the leadership of labour to introduce a programme reminiscent of 1945 is as utopian as you can get and is recognised as such by huge numbers of the electorate. Hence like it or not why many of them voted tory. The best we can hope for under a labour govt is a few sticking plaster type measures and the deceleration of austerity and given blairs last record i wouldnt even be so confident of that. Would that be better than what we got now? Probably. At least for a short time until capital would demand further cuts. would it stop the overall trend? No. No offence but this 'in the real world where this and this happens' reminds me of the tories 'there is no alternative'

This isnt about passivity or cynicism. I am not disillusioned. This is gonna sound well cheesy but I really still believe in 'the revolution' and i find all these charges of being a splitter or ultra left and sectarian very tiresome and a way not to deal with the substance of the criticisms and questions about exactly how labour can do this stuff. This isnt a personal criticism of anyone so please dont take it as such.
 
frogwoman said:
Social democracy and the post war boom arose from very specific circumstances which are no longer possible today. I find it a bit patronising how people can talk about 'in the real world' when trying to dismiss these criticisms of the far left of Labour. in the real world conditions for social democracy do not and have not existed in the west for some time. In the real world austerity and cuts were going on for a long time well before the current crisis, albeit in a more restrained form. In the real world Mitterand was elected in the 80s on a radical left platform, it was a disaster and he had to reverse it, in the real world we just seen how the total ruination and humiliation of a country for trying to reverse even a fraction of the austerity measures of the last ten years can be brought about despite the resistance of its leadership. People say that those that are putting forward views sceptical of far left electoralism arent living in the real world despite the fact that putting ones hope in the leadership of labour to introduce a programme reminiscent of 1945 is as utopian as you can get and is recognised as such by huge numbers of the electorate. Hence like it or not why many of them voted tory. The best we can hope for under a labour govt is a few sticking plaster type measures and the deceleration of austerity and given blairs last record i wouldnt even be so confident of that. Would that be better than what we got now? Probably. At least for a short time until capital would demand further cuts. would it stop the overall trend? No. No offence but this 'in the real world where this and this happens' reminds me of the tories 'there is no alternative'

This isnt about passivity or cynicism. I am not disillusioned. This is gonna sound well cheesy but I really still believe in 'the revolution' and i find all these charges of being a splitter or ultra left and sectarian very tiresome and a way not to deal with the substance of the criticisms and questions about exactly how labour can do this stuff. This isnt a personal criticism of anyone so please dont take it as such.
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Not passive, cynical or disillusioned...just seeing with clarity.
 
free spirit said:
well, on that basis we may as well not bother at all then eh?

But, Spain, Greece, Iceland, much of Scandinavia, to an extent France.

And our options are much more open due to not being part of the Euro, we're doing austerity voluntarily not because the ECB demands it.
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Well on this basis you might as well not join the labour party.
 
Thing is, no one is real talking about Social Democracy (hence my thread on it). People are wafting vague "anti-austerity" slogans which ultimately boil down to a bit of tax here, a bit of public spending there and so on. It's not Social Democracy. It's not even standard mainstream Labour fare from the 80s and 90s.

There are no concrete ideas - utopian or realistic - being raised by "the Left" that are caring about Corbyn (or the People's Assembly or any of these schemes).

A genuine examination of (for example) Social Democracy, where it came it from and to realise it today, would at least be interesting and initially credible (certainly more credible than some blind hope in an undefined shift led by Corbyn or Jones or Brand or whatever).

But there's not even that.
 
free spirit said:
well, on that basis we may as well not bother at all then eh?

But, Spain, Greece, Iceland, much of Scandinavia, to an extent France.

And our options are much more open due to not being part of the Euro, we're doing austerity voluntarily not because the ECB demands it.
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'kinnel mate.
:facepalm:
 
http://icelandreview.com/news/2015/06/12/government-creates-bill-force-strikes-stop

The bill would force the specified groups to stop striking, and ban them from striking again until July 1. In the meantime, it requests parties involved to reach a new wage deal that everybody can be happy with; otherwise the contract dispute will go to arbitration. The bill has now been sent to both coalition parties’ parliamentarians to read, and will be put to the Alþingi parliament as soon as possible.

The leader of the nurses told RÚV that the government’s decision is a disappointment. He has great fears for the future of the health service; not least based on discussions nurses are having in closed groups on social media. He says they are taking the news badly and that many could resign.

The government cannot ban the unions from striking, but it does have the power to postpone strike action. Hospitals are at breaking point, with most non-emergencies being turned away. The healthcare system will enjoy the relief of getting key workers back—but at what cost, they ask?
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:(

Im sorry :(
 
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