Who the fuck is Wells, hahaha. And you silly fuckers suggest I am daft. Lol
Looming Le Pen - French Election 2022
- Thread starter RileyOBlimey
- Start date
All of which you stated without offering evidence.
Though you also stated that there was "probably" some shifting.
Nevertheless, a collapse in the turnout for the centrists gifts seats to the left or right almost by default so what are you trying to prove?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
NUPES have wasted no time going for the jugular , they've tabled a vote of censure/no confidence in the government
That is simply not true as here we had several left wing candidates standing in competition with each other. And in the locals there was open discord in public between TUSC and an independent socialist, not to mention the Greens standing against them in most places. If that is unity I hate to think what division would look like.
What would you suggest?
It's a good starting point but not necessarily a final destination.
And what ambition are you demonstrating? You seem to be arguing that Labour is the best we'll ever get. That's a whole lot less ambitious right now.
No, that's not what Colin Hunt is arguing. It's not what anyone's arguing apart (possibly) from you.
I have been adamant in my opposition to Labour, unlike some here. So your attempt at a straw man attack is risible.No, that's not what Colin Hunt is arguing. It's not what anyone's arguing apart (possibly) from you.
And what is he and others arguining exactly? That it is pointless for the left to try and achieve anything? And Labour is a waste of space too? Where is his and others' genuine hope for change then?
Extra-parliamentary action might win crumbs here and there but cannot ever bring systemic change, unless you imagine violent revolution in the streets. For systemic change you need to gain power within the system somehow.
If you think the left are wasting their time fighting for that, what are your alternatives? What other options for gaining power are there?
This thread has certainly brought out the no hoper, left are laughable and wasting their time brigade, who offer no better alternatives for change themselves.
Political defeatists of a kind the right love. How about not giving up and standing for what you believe in? Or do you all secretly not really want meaningful change?
Political defeatists of a kind the right love. How about not giving up and standing for what you believe in? Or do you all secretly not really want meaningful change?
Colin Hunt
Active Member
My vision involves the left going back to basics and building something from the ground up that is rooted in communities and trade unions. While a parliamentary strategy eventually becomes important, you need to put in the effort to change culture and lay foundations first, especially when the ground is as barren as it is in the UK.
Your proposed alliance of Leninists, Trotskyists and cyclists has no real chance of bringing systemic change for all of the reasons that I and other posters have mentioned already. In any case, you've not really responded to any of the points that I've raised well enough to make it worth me continuing to reply to you. Good luck with the popular front.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Perhaps you could look at what there is in France, and what there isn't, and there isn't some shitty lowest common denominator unity imposed but diversity. Maybe you need to be more imaginative and try some experimentation instead of looking for tried and tested answers.
Actually we are far less apart than it has appeared throughout. I agree we need to build something new from the bottom up, but don't think we should defer actual electioneering until some point in the distant future. I think the two should occur in tandem. And trying to get as much cooperation and unity on the left as possible is a reasonable enough goal to aim for in the meantime, however problematic. It is always worth striving for and even any partial success in this is better than nothing.
I do think your dismissing the left as leninists and trotskyists, whilst disparaging the Greens as cyclists is a little bit Daily Mail. The Green manifesto is very similar to Labour's of 2017. And most of us on the left might well be socialists but that does not make us trots or leninists. There is room for cooperation.
I don't think we should refrain from trying to fight in elections until some far off future date, but should be doing so now whilst simultaneously building something from the bottom up. As the latter progresses we will begin to achieve more success wiuth the former, but it will not happen overnight.
We need to recognise, though, that Labour as a vehicle for meaningful change is a lost cause, likewise the Lib Dems.
Again, what would you suggest in concrete policy terms?
I keep referencing Labour's 2017 manifesto because I had believed in those policies for decades before Labour adopted them and still do now that Starmer has abandoned them.
And I am all in favour of diversity on the left, though still think we'll all achieve more with some measure of cooperation too. Too often different elements of the left fight each other and that is not helpful
What is class if not a relationship to property? The Tories are themselves quite Marxist in their understanding of this. They understood that Right to Buy creates Tory voters, and so those that got on the property ladder did become more Conservative leaning. They refuse to construct social housing because they fear it will create socialist voters, and any "solution" to the housing crisis they raise involves devising new ways to get people onto the property ladder ("right to buy" for housing associations, 5% mortgages).
So it makes perfect sense that the re-emergence of socialist politics is led by the most properly proletarian demographic, private renters who were born too late to get in in the housing bubble, as well as people in social housing. Corbyn won the biggest majority among people in social housing; second biggest amongst private renters. The Tories win a slim majority amongst people with mortgages and a large majority among owner occupiers. So I don't think the portrayal of an excessive focus on "cosmopolitan urban liberals" is accurate at all, insofar as it implies that this group are relatively privileged.
It is not the excessive focus on "young cosmopolitan city dwellers" causes other groups to vote for far right; I also don't accept that there is an excessive focus on that group. "Young cosmopolitan city dwellers" who are fully proletarianised (i.e. own nothing and survive paycheque to paycheque) get "excessive focus" because they are the ones who are more active in articulating their interests and who come to socialist conclusions based on their lived experience and material conditions. Nobody is giving them undue focus, they are just the ones who naturally gravitate towards the left. Complaining about it seems like complaining that the early trade union movement focused too much on urban industrial workers and not enough on rural farmers.
I'm not sure who the true proletariat is meant to be other than these people. I've worked in call centres across Newcastle before and the people who work there were mostly pretty left wing and voted Corbyn. I'm from a mining town and as far as I can see all the young people moved to Newcastle or further afield because that's where the jobs where. The reason some of these towns have a radical left heritage is because of the close sense of solidarity created by everyone working together in the same mine, shipyard or factory; but this has not been the case for decades now, so the material conditions that created a radical left vote have faded. It stands to reason that the more hard left places are now urban centres where social housing and private renting is concentrated.
The reason for somewhere like Hartlepool going Tory is fuck all to do with "excessive focus on young cosmopolitans" and everything to do with all the people of working age leaving to where jobs are. A town full of homeowning retirees is not going to be radical left.
Last edited:
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
We are in day one of the most critical strikes in the UK for a decade and at the centre of it is a trade union whose membership isn't based on property ownership but on the relationship to the control and ownership of the means of production.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
diversity does not need to mean no cooperation. if you look at eg j18 in 1999 you'll see a lot of people with very different ideas cooperated to make the carnival against capitalism the success it was. but there are for me basic underlying issues which make your position in my view untenable. the first is that the 2017 manifesto was not really all that left wing. just to take one example no rises in income tax for those earning less than £80,000 a year? what about restoring the 10% tax rate for low earners gordon brown first introduced then withdrew? why should people on £50, 60, 70, 80k pay no more in income tax? it's ludicrous and would i think have appeared ludicrous to those well-known lefties denis healey and 'red' jim callaghan who imposed rather more in taxes on higher earners quite happily in the 1970s. the manifesto states that only the top 5% of earners would see their taxes increase. why not the top third?
but put the manifesto to one side and look at the labour party under jeremy corbyn, where throughout his leadership he was hobbled by the right wing shits in the party. they responded to his tepid social democratic notions - not by any means the red-blooded socialism which many suggested he represented - in such a way that it is unthinkable that ever again the labour party might make such a mild swerve to the left. the simple truth is that labour abandoned any pretence of socialism after 1987 to seek power. any resemblance between labour and a socialist party has for many years been but a coincidence. it has been a party with socialists in it: but a party which when put to the test can be as virulently anti-working class as the conservatives, as anyone who recalls the enforcement of the poll tax in labour boroughs like camden, islington and haringey will attest. as anyone who has seen the tearing down of housing estates - the heygate in southwark for example, or the haggerston in hackney - and their replacement by yuppie flats will know.
i think that belief in a progressive labour party will always be just that, a belief unsubstantiated by any actual facts on the ground. if they ever were a progressive force they certainly aren't now and at a time when we really need to leave capitalism behind us as soon as possible if we as a 'civilization' are going to see out the century we don't have time for them to catch up to what needs to be done.
I do not actually disagree with any of that. I should clarify that when I spoke of the left uniting, I meant it in a cooperative sense, not an ideologically conformist one. Diversity is a good thing as long as we are not wasting our energies fighting each other instead of the real enemies.
And the 2017 manifesto was just a starting point. Promise too much all at once and no one would believe in it. Once we had something like that implemented we could win support for going further.
I would also just like to suggest that taxing land and wealth might be more effective than taxing incomes. The rich would find it much harder to move their fields and mansions offshore than their money. That is not to say that we shouldn't tax high incomes too of course.
Dystopiary
putting up a hook to hang my hopes upon
srb7677 Galloway is not in any way left. He might possibly have been once (but more likely simly a chancer), and he might pretend to be now, but he's a Putin mouthpiece ffs, a creepy genocide denier.
The Greens don't care about the working class.
And yeah, better to build on grassroots stuff, mutual aid, local and networking activism. Yes I totally hear you about what you see as defeatism, but why put a whole load of time and energy into trying to prop up a corrupt and broken system? It's a pointless distraction from things that really could work, imo.
The Greens don't care about the working class.
And yeah, better to build on grassroots stuff, mutual aid, local and networking activism. Yes I totally hear you about what you see as defeatism, but why put a whole load of time and energy into trying to prop up a corrupt and broken system? It's a pointless distraction from things that really could work, imo.
Of course we can build things up from the grassroots, but we'll not get systemic change to the system that way. To get that we only have two options. Overthrow the system violently which will never work, we'll condemn ourselves in the eyes of most people if we ever tried that. Or we have to use the system to change it. However difficult that is is no reason to give up in despair. Because that simply guarantees that nothing fundamental will ever change.
So we need to be building upwards from the grassroots whilst simultaneously trying to win ground under the current system. Extra parliamentary actions of various kinds are worthwhile too obviously, but we'll not get fundamental change that way and need to take over the system itself for that. Or at least pose a credible threat to make others bring change to head us off.
As for Galloway, I have severe qualms about him too. He is an egotistical narcissist who cannot handle being disagreed with, and has morally questionable aspects to his conduct. He has actually blocked me on twitter for daring to disagree with him. He cannot handle that.
Nevertheless I personally know left wingers locally who still rate him. He has a following amongst some elements of the left. That is simply an unfortunate reality. Do we cut all these people loose and fight them openly? Or do we try and work with them?
Last edited:
editor
hiraethified
It's also brought out gobby bellend buffoons like you. Wind it in or fuck off.
Ownership of the railway lines and trains is property ownership. The membership of the RMT is therefore defined by their relation to property; they do not own the railway lines yet they create value which goes to those who do.
It is a form of class relationship like landlord-tenant is. The tenant generates surplus value for the owner of the property, just as the railway workers generate surplus value for the owners of the infrastructure.
People do not have static class identities, but the purpose of Tories encouraging home ownership was explicitly to create a larger demographic who could take part in capitalism. Once you own a home, you have a vested interest in seeing its value increase, for instance, so you are more likely to oppose measures which threaten that; which is in direct opposition to the interests of those who don't own property.
I am entitled to my opinions however much you disagree with them.
I see no one else being insulted by you and asked to retreat.
If you're the guy in charge and don't want me around you can abuse your power to fuck me off anytime you like.
Bellend!!
editor
hiraethified
Have you posted here before under a different name YES/NO?
No.
If you have chosen to insult me and attempt to tell me to stop arguing for what I believe simply because you think I am someone else, you are way off base, and buying into paranoid conspiracy thinking of a kind I have seen propogated by others.
Apparently I am supposed to be some dude called Wells. Never heard of him. If he has caused problems here in the past that is nothing to do with me.
editor
hiraethified
Here's a tip for you. When you're new to an online community, opening your big trap and calling established posters the "no hoper, left are laughable and wasting their time brigade" marks you out as a Grade A cunt.
Like I said, wind it in 'newbie.'
Note; if you wish to discuss this further, take it to the feedback forum.
Also, I want to revisit this - how has La France Insoumise written off other sections of the working class, and how are these defined? What should they do differently to engage them?
I would agree that the old Socialist Party did by transforming into neoliberals; but they also wrote off the young urban dwellers who also abandoned them.
The collapse of organised Labour and the old industries it was built around are the main cause of a loss of this kind of 20th Century Labour movement. But I don't think it is fair to blame younger leftists who are trying to rebuild things from scratch for having trouble communicating across a generation gap, especially when one of the most pressing issues for young leftists (housing security and cost) puts them in direct material opposition to the interests of older workers who may now be on the property ladder and not care very much about rent controls or social housing. Recent successes in unionisation efforts in retail, hospitality and the games industry have been led by such people who may be labelled as young urban cosmopolitans.
Last edited:
You wouldn't let it lie!
I am forthright in my opinions and say what I think.
You take offense at that whilst flinging much baser insults.
I will continue to say what I think unless removed which is your call but I will not self censor my opinions. And sorry, but that is how they were coming across, critical of any move for the left to try and progress politically whilst offering no other alternatives beyond the street. Why do you take offense at that yet expect me to be fine with being labelled a bellend, a buffoon, a grade a cunt, etc? Not to mention accusations of being somebody else?
And are you telling me that there is a heirarchy of acceptance here? That the ones who have been here decades can say and do whatever the fuck they want but newbies cannot respond likewise?
Sorry but i do not do one way censorship. If you don't like that, I am here only for so long as you refrain from deleting me.
And re the identity thing. Were it not for this hostility from you I'd be quite prepared to reveal my real life identity privately to you to prove who I am.
But the hostility you are showing towards me makes it hard for me to trust you with that information.
Had you raised any suspicions in a polite and non-hostile manner it would have been sorted privately by now.
You wouldn't let it lie!
I will say no more about it here.
wemakeyousoundb
hopefully not gimboid
sorry to derail the thread, but I wonder how MLP will fare in the next fremnch presidential election, now that she has a significant number of elected members in parliament over ther there.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
They've passed a threshold beyond which they get lots of seats, but the second round of this election showed that voters for other parties are still refusing to switch to NR. Best she can hope for is that they abstain, but that's much less likely in a presidential election. That's her problem.
Similar threads
