Corbynism and the Labour Party

[alanjjohnstone]

Taking the hint that we should have a new thread on Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn: A Generational Opportunity?

Another of many articles that declare the election of Corbyn is the beginning of a new movement…but where is the evidence…words are not deeds…

[alanjjohnstone]

Bowing and scraping to the Queen?Who can forget this clip and have a secret desire that Corbyn duplicates its climaxhttp://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1443223751.html

[jondwhite]

The Guardian take issue with the shadow cabinethttp://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/26/brocialist-modern-tribe-jeremy-corbyn-shadow-cabinet

[alanjjohnstone]

Digging up the grave by McDonnell 

Quote:

“If you look at our capitalist system, one of the definitive analysts of how it works – not whether it is condemned, or whether it is right or wrong, just the mechanics of how it works, when it was formed and how it would be developed – actually was Marx.  "If you look at most of the institutions that are teaching economics today. Marx has come back in to fashion because people have gone back to his analysis of just the basics of how the system works.  “People might disagree with his conclusions about what to do with the system, but actually to understand how the system works he comes up with some interesting analyses that have been built in to traditional and fairly classical economics.”

[ALB]

Alan, as the original has disappeared in cyberspace, can you repost that anti Scots Nat quote from him about a worker is Glasgow and a worker in Birmingham, etc. having the same problems. It's worth recording. In fact it's what we say.

[alanjjohnstone]

From the Andrew Marr interview

Quote:

"If you are poor in Glasgow or you are poor in Birmingham – you are poor. If you need a house in Glasgow or you need a house in London – you need a house, and so there is the class politics issue of it,” he said. "That is the message I am taking when I am campaigning in Scotland just as much as I am campaigning anywhere else. Flags don't build houses."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11894676/Jeremy-Corbyn-SNPs-nationalism-does-not-help-the-poor-get-a-house.html 

[Young Master Smeet]

Here's McDonnell's full speech:http://labourlist.org/2015/09/full-text-shadow-chancellor-john-mcdonnells-speech-to-conference/

Quote:

First we are throwing off that ridiculous charge that we are deficit deniers.Second we are saying tackling the deficit is important but we are rejecting austerity as the means to do it.Third we are setting out an alternative based upon dynamically growing our economy, ending the tax cuts for the rich and addressing the scourge of tax evasion and avoidance.Fourth having cleared that debris from our path we are opening up a national discussion on the reality of the roles of deficits, surpluses, long-term investment, debt and monetary policy.Fifth we will develop a coherent, concrete alternative that grows a green, sustainable, prosperous economy for all.

Quote:

We’ll also turn the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills into a powerful economic development department, in charge of public investment, infrastructure planning and setting new standards at work for all employees.

Not much in there that sounds like it's been anywhere near Marx…

[ALB]

Just got round to reading my local paper and an article headlined "Councillor turns Red":

Quote:

A Liberal Democrat councillor has defected to Labour in support of Jeremy Corbyn, becoming Richmond's first Labour councillor in more than 13 years. Teddington Councillor Jennifer Churchill … criticised her former party for "parroting Tory economic propaganda". Councillor Churchill told the Richmond and Twickenham Times in her first interview since defecting: "I wouldn't say [it has been coming] for a long time — when Jeremy Corbyn was elected it became a real possibility. The Labour Party's policies are more in line with my own views."

On the opposite page the headline is "Lib Dem Lord may follow":

Quote:

Baroness Tonge says she agrees with Labour leader on foreign policy and foreign policy and human rights.

As Jenny Tonge she was LibDem MP for Richmond between 1997 and 2005.I thought the trend was supposed to be in the other direction. I doubt, though, that either will consider themselves to be anti-capitalist.

[Young Master Smeet]

Oh, and this appears to be on his reading list, given he names Mariana Mazzucatohttp://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/

Quote:

The book comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—from IT, biotech, nanotech to today’s emerging green tech—Professor Mazzucato shows that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri.Mazzucato also controversially argues that in the history of modern capitalism the State has not only fixed market failures, but has also actively shaped and created markets. In doing so, it sometimes wins and sometimes fails. Yet by not admitting the State’s role in such active risk taking, and pretending that the state only cheers on the side-lines while the private sector roars, we have ended up creating an ‘innovation system’ whereby the public sector socializes risks, while rewards are privatized. The book considers how to change this dysfunctional dynamic so that economic growth can be not only ‘smart’ but also ‘inclusive’.

And in an article in New Statesman a few years ago:

Quote:

So how can we change the narrative of the left from one of "redistribution" to one that champions value creation, in which both risks and rewards are shared more equally? Let's first agree that the market is not a bogeyman forcing short-termism but a result of interactions and choices made by different types of public and private actors. We need to stop talking about the public sector "de-risking" and facilitating "partnerships" and talk more about the kind of public risk-taking that led to all the generalpurpose technologies and great transformations of the past, a change of language from general "partnerships" to more detailed commitment about the kinds of partnerships that will lead to greater, not lower, private investment in long-run areas such as research and development and human capital formation.

(She did quote Polyani in the same article, though).Oh, and she underlines the patient in this part of McDonnel's speech.

Quote:

That requires patient long term finance for investment in research from a effectively resourced and empowered national investment bank.

[ALB]

Review in the Socialist Standard of one of her books here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2013/no-1303-march-2013/cooking-books-value-creation-and-extraction

Quote:

She is not as radical as might at first seem. Her case is not against capitalism as such, but only against present-day capitalism which she sees as biased in favour of finance and against industry. Her ‘production theory of value’ is a plea for, as she put it, ‘reinvesting profits into areas that create goods and services’ instead of financial juggling.

It looks as if Labour under Corbyn and McDonnell is going to return to the days (I daren't say the 1960s under Harold Wilson) when they championed the interests of the manufacturing section of the capitalist class against the financial section as championed by the Tories (and in more times by the Labour Party too).

[alanjjohnstone]

For some Corbyn is really about nostalgic past and Marxism Today is the route map…all our yesterdays…http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/sep/29/marxism-today-forgotten-visionaries-whose-ideas-could-save-labour

[ALB]

I thought most of that lot ended up as Blairites.

[jondwhite]

Yes but they still seem not to have figured out consistent politics.

[alanjjohnstone]

I'm in a pickle at the blog…what adjective do we use for the current Labour Party…Corbyn's Labour Party sounds a bit paternalist and nespotic…Old Labour isn't quite accurate…Newer Labour is nebulous, newer than what?….New Old Labour an oxymoron…Blushing Pink Labour as in a lipstick colour?….The Left Labour suggests that indeed a transformation has taken place, and that is still to be decided…Any suggestions will be welcome.

[moderator1]

Old Labour MkII?

[Author]

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