General Election
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If some here are correct in their educated guesses that we face an unprecedent reign of Parliamentary power from Johnson with his Commons majority, where can the opposition go but on to the streets.
One thing is for sure. The Tories are going to fail woefully in living up to their expectations. Its the same with any Party trying to administer capitalism. Give it a year of two and the Johnson government is going to be deeply unpopular – particularly once Brexit is done and dusted and the chickens come home to roost
What of the opposition? I take it as axiomatic that people on the Left tend to be more sympathetic to socialist ideas than those on the right. It thus makes sense to target more of our efforts on the former rather then the latter.
Declining support for a Tory government is going to translate into thousands of workers trickling back to Labour. The so called “red wall” in the North of England is going to rebuild itself brick by brick. The political cycle in which Labour alternates with the Tories in running capitalism is going to reassert itself.
And so we are going to find ourselves back to square one. All the more reason to focus our efforts particularly on those left inclined workers who voted labour and whose illusions have been shattered by this election. The idea that a Jeremy Corbyn government, for all its good intentions , would have made a fundamental difference to the lives of ordinary workers needs to be vigorously challenged. Its one thing for politicians to make wild promises, its quite another trying to keep them. In capitalism there is no such thing as a free lunch and what you gain on the one hand you lose on the other
Labour will come back from this bruising defeat but I strongly suspect it will only do so by moving to the right in a bid to capture the centre ground. That will be the moment of truth for those on the left who have entertained illusions that labour’s agenda is some sort of socialist agenda. Will they continue in their wishful thinking that capitalism can be administered “in the interests of the many not the few” or will they finally give up on this pointless pursuit of the holy grail. And how can we best encourage them to take the latter course of action?
I agree with Robbo here. The people likely to be more receptive to our arguments will be disillusioned Labour activists and voters who already agree that the interests of the few are not the same as the interests of the many and that the interests of the many can be pursued via the ballot box.
There will be stiff competition for their attention coming from Trotskyists saying that what is needed is a disciplined vanguard party to lead the workers and anarchists calling for so-called direct action in the streets to get reforms.
They abandoned Labour BECAUSE it was too left.
They’ll vote for a Blairite Labour next time, and then Tory again after that, because short memory syndrome will have kicked in by then.
The ultra-left are not going to join us, because we can’t satisfy their Soviet romanticism.There will be stiff competition for their attention coming from Trotskyists saying that what is needed is a disciplined vanguard party to lead the workers and anarchists calling for so-called direct action in the streets to get reforms.
True . But the influence of Trot organisations has diminished considerably in recent years and I cant see the anarchists making much headway in their protest much as I prefer them to the Trots. At least some of them are more on our wavelength. I think the time has arrived when the Socialist Party will finally begin to make some real progress providing we do things properly and dont botch things up
People associate us with Trots, and don’t hang around for explanations and history lessons.
People associate us with Trots, and don’t hang around for explanations and history lessons.
True but there is always a spectrum when it comes to people. We need to target those more likely to hang around for explanations and history lesson
The only hope I see are people leaving Trot parties because of personal hatreds and who go party-hopping.
And the number of those will decline because of the universal dumbing down that marks the digital, no-reading age we are in.
And this brings us back to the abysmal state of education. Did Oliver Cromwell play for Arsenal, etc., which state is very real indeed!
As I posted previously, I believe we are being overly optimistic in thinking that disillusioned Labour supporters will be fertile ground for our case for socialism.
I still hold that it is those who are growing increasingly sceptical of the ability of capitalism and governments to fix the climate crisis with each new disappointment with failed international conference. When it comes to real disillusionment with actual capitalist practice, it is more likely be expressed by climate campaigners. They are aspiring to a sustainable cooperative economy that has to include and involve changes in the way we organise our daily lives. That, in my mind, means they are going to be more receptive to the main thrust of our socialist message for a steady-state zero-growth economy.
There is no need to re-fight the old battles
Do ex-Corbynista supporters really go that far in their analysis of what is wrong with the world? We saw how the radical reformers such as Left Unity (that swayed one or two of our own active ex-members) and RESPECT swiftly dissolved and got absorbed into Corbyn Labour Party where they sank into anonymity subordinated into silence by the very aptly named “radical” wing Momentum.
“For the many and not for the few”, I thought was a very good slogan, (one which we can now appropriate), but was it being interpreted simply as an anti-austerity, re-distribution of government spending budgets without any of the revolutionary implications that I feel potentially exists within the ecology movement, where its political “leaders” being 16 yr old school-kids voice their key message as to listen to the science. If only we could translate that into heed scientific socialism. Even Occupy, IMHO, did not offer such a possible receptive audience to our ideas as school strikers.
OK, the downside is I accept the presence and influence of New Age mysticism manifesting in some XR spoke-persons and I am forever online refuting the too many people over-population and carrying capacity arguments advanced by many in the environmental movement.
John Oswald wrote:
They abandoned Labour BECAUSE it was too left.
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What is too left, or centre-left? Left or right are both the same thing, both are a reformist trend, both are wings of capitalism, and both are irrelevant. The problem of our world is not left, right or neo-liberalism, the essential problem is capitalism.
There are two good articles on the website of the WSM, written by the Socialist Party and the Socialist Party of Great Britain which explain that situation, especially the last one published on the Socialist Standard
I don’t think the Socialist Party and the WSM should be looking for political juncture like the leftwingers, both sides of the working class are in the same situation, and the ones supporting the new government are also going to be against the new government that they have elected. The SPGB should be doing what it has been doing since its birth which is to propagate the conception of a new society to all the workers in England, Europe, Latin, America, Australia, Africa and Asia. Peoples are not discontent with capitalism, they are discontent with the leadership
I don’t think the Socialist Party and the WSM should be looking for political juncture like the leftwingers,
That is not what was being suggested. Of course nobody is saying we should seek common cause with left wing reformists if that is what you are implying. I am merely suggesting we should maybe focus more on targeting the Left, persuading them to embrace socialism as a political objective , because all things being equal, left wingers tend to be more receptive to socialist ideas than right wingers. Probably more so now after the crushing defeat of the Labour Party which so many on the left had joined in the expectation that things would change
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