General Election
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Pretty soon the left is going to say that this is a counter-revolution, What counter-revolution can take place when there is not a revolutionary movement? They must go ahead and read Rosa Luxembourg: Reform and revolution again, or read it if they have not read it yet
Yes, Marcos.
The Left think in terms of Dick Dastardlys conspiring against them. This is the same bourgeois politicking that drove the terrorism of Robespierre, Lenin and Mao.
There was no conspiracy. The mass of workers who voted voted for Johnson. They voted for what they want. There is nothing wrong with the voting system. It gives them what they want.That article by Jonathan Cook is, as usual, well written and he makes some valid points. However, his conclusions that the political system is rigged and that therefore the answer is to take to the streets is wrong and even dangerous.
Yes, the private and state owned media are biased and they do manipulate popular opinion, but there is no evidence that the electoral system does not accurately reflect the views of those who vote. After all, it didn’t prevent the election of over 200 Labour MPs. And there is no evidence that it could have prevented the election of the 326+ needed to for Labour to have become the governing party. It was that on this occasion not what a sufficient number of voters wanted.
The system that is “rigged” is not the electoral system but the economic system as all reformist governments have found and as a Corbyn one would have too. The working of the capitalist system require that priority be given to profit-making and that any government that doesn’t respect this will provoke an economic downturn.
The answer is certainly not to take to the streets and try to reform capitalism by “direct action”. That won’t be able to overcome the economic laws of capitalism either and, being the action only of a minority, would provide the state with the pretext to crack down with popular support. If such direct action had majority support it could use this to win an election, not that that would allow their reformist programme to be implemented given the nature of capitalism.
No, the lesson is that the battle that needs to be won is the battle of ideas, which is fought not on the streets but in leaflets, meetings, social media and even by contesting elections. Until a majority want to reject capitalism and replace it with socialism then it’s not going (to be able) to happen.
“…We lost our last illusions. The system is rigged – as it always has been – to benefit those in power. It will never willingly allow a real socialist, or any politician deeply committed to the health of our societies and to the planet, to take that power away from the corporate class. That, after all, is the very definition of power. That is what the corporate media is there to achieve…”
Sadly, Jonathan Cook has not lost his last illusions. The system may be rigged to benefit those in power but who put them in power? And why did they put the in power? The idea that workers just mindlessly and mechanically obey the dictates of a system that benefits those in power in effect portrays the former as just putty in the hands of the latter. Ironically, this is one of the ways in which the system perpetuates itself – by disempowering the workers and encouraging the belief among them that there is nothing they can do abut a system that is rigged against them.
Thus Jonathan Cook is inadvertently aiding the very system he rails against. Apart from anything else this flawed idea of some kind of absolutist totalitarian system of power overlooks that the powerful are never as monolithic in their outlook and interests as Cook seems to assume. Division at the top of the hierarchy is something that those at the bottom can and do exploit. Its just that the latter have not yet gone far enough – to end a system that generates this hierarchy of power in the first place
“who put them in power? And why did they put the in power? The idea that workers just mindlessly and mechanically obey the dictates of a system that benefits those in power in effect portrays the former as just putty in the hands of the latter.”
Once again we must remind ourselves of the power of the capitalist ideology.
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”
I think no-one can deny that the media conducted a campaign of lies and smears against Corbyn from the very day he became the leader of the Labour Party. It was not to put Johnson into power as it began long before he became Tory leader and prime minister but to ensure Corbyn was kept out of power. Any Tory would have done and if they could have, any Labour member who could have dislodged Corbyn. Corbyn was the Devil-Incarnate and it is no wonder voters viewed him with suspicion and distanced themselves from him. The Corbynistas were a genuine movement at the time of his election to the Labour Party could not grow. Who can forget the rousing reception Corbyn received at Glastonbury. That was what had to be undermined and, in my mind, it became the priority of the media, both right-wing and liberal.
I thought that was Cook’s real point that we are indeed putty under the hands of the ruling class control of the media? They set the issues and they select the personalities and they choose what should be the “correct” answers to political questions. How we respond and act is drummed into us until we are regimented into accepting the views and opinions of our ruling class.
Gramsci despite his many flaws and faults does try to address the issue about how the working class can try to break through the hegemony of the control of ideas. We require more than a simple political movement and indeed we did have class movements they did encompass, cultural, social, sporting, literary expressions of working class daily life.
When the ruling class feel threatened in those times where there is a dramatic sea change in ideas and when they fail to oppose it, they feverishly scramble to co-opt it…and they usually prevail. They place the blinkers upon the revolutionary vision we need to inspire. St. Corbyn of Glastonbury had to be defeated by demonising him and they succeeded. We should never underestimate the power of the media because if we ever begin to grow, it will be turned upon us and we urgently must build the media tools to protect ourselves.
Yes, the media did destroy and character assassinate Corbyn and they are still kicking him now that he’s down. I am not sure that this was entirely or even mainly due to Labour’s radical reformist programme, but will have had more to do with his pro-Palestine position. After all, Labour’s programme wasn’t the most radical they’ve had, even in living memory. And although they made fun of Michael Foot it wasn’t vicious as it has been in Corbyn’s case.
In any event the media are not all powerful. Otherwise how did the state-capitalist regimes in Eastern Europe collapse? In fact, how come we exist? If we can escape it, so can the rest of the working class. In fact, our whole case is based on this assumption.
Corbynites seemed to be looking back to life before Thatcher, when a lot of things were better as far as life under capitalism can be.
I certainly had a wonderful, comfortable childhood on what my parents earned, and so I understand where those with similar memories are coming from.
But one cannot go back, and as by decade capitalism becomes ever more defunct and dangerous, and the quality of life ever more deteriorates, reformist dreaming remains just that.Certainly, some of us can escape the tentacles of capitalist indoctrination. But what produces a mass anti-capitalist movement?
Certain Eastern Europe rejected their rulers propaganda but they didn’t reject the countervailing propaganda from the West that “free enterprise” was the way forward.
We have also always said the inevitable class struggle will result in resistance to the ruling class and holds the potential of an opposition to the capitalist system, itself. That consciousness still awaits. Indeed for many of our fellow-workers even trade-union consciousness is something to be fully realised.
I think if a time-line is made, we see the anti-Semitism smears were just the latest in a series. It began with him being a terrorist sympathiser, went on to Corbyn being a KGB agent, and when that mud didn’t stick then they settled on anti-Semitism.
Nor should we forget the “enemy within”. The Blairites determined to sabotage Corbyn even at the cost of the Labour Party vote.
I think the delighted response of the stock-market and the rise in shares was not solely about Brexit going to get done but also Labour’s redistribution policies and spending plans were no longer going to be a threat. Investors are sure the Tories promises are not going to be implemented but just didn’t know if Corbyn’s might have kept his pledges (unlike ourselves who did believe he would break them).
Do you really think the likes of the Daily Mail and right-wing Tories had any concern to protect the Jewish community from anti-Semitism that motivated the campaign of lies? So we are left with the reason for the witch-hunt is Labour’s reforms, imho.
Anyways we need to tap into that early optimism of change that Corbyn brought to politics that the young embraced and flocked to join the Labour Party and it is an enthusiasm that the Friday for Climate school strikers and XR now exhibit. Shouldn’t we interacting and making a connection with them before they too become subject to similar media distortion. I already detect the beginnings of that.
This is our task…to see what lessons we have to learn.
XR on Twitter made it clear to me they don’t want to be associated with “anarchists” and revolutionaries!
“Investors are sure the Tories promises are not going to be implemented but just didn’t know if Corbyn’s might have kept his pledges (unlike ourselves who did believe he would break them).“
Of course we didn’t believe that he would try to implement them but, rather, that if/when he did they wouldn’t work due the nature and operation of capitalism. So it would be more accurate to say “unlike ourselves who didn’t believe he could deliver them”. Mind you, investors were right to worry about the economic disruption that would result when a Labour government did try to implement them.
But you didn’t have to be a socialist to believe this. Workers have sufficient experience of the way capitalism has worked in the past to know that the Labour Party was promising something that they couldn’t deliver. Of course this will also be a reflection of the cultivated view that it is not capitalism but the way the world has to be that prevents things getting that much better.
Except workers have short memories.
Most haven’t the foggiest whom you are talking about when you speak of things and politicians in the 70s.
And they think immigration is new. There were more “foreigners” in London in 1919 than there are now. Read Thomas Burke.
People in London don’t mind “foreigners” and get on with them. It’s people in the middle of nowhere that have never seen one that seem to see them as some sort of threat and even then change their mind when they do meet one.
And you’ve got to be over 50 to remember the 1970s. Given younger people a break ! Anyway most of the politicians of the period were eminently forgettable/ George Brown? Reginald Maudling? Who were they? Or were they the 1960s?
As part of the work in the Folkestone area at the time there was a Party Newsletter for public distribution.
The PDF is here.
Here is another view on electoral interference and media bias.
“As part of the work in the Folkestone area at the time there was a Party Newsletter for public distribution.”
I was going to share this ‘Newsletter’ when I first saw it over a fortnight ago but was far too embarrassed. It’s positively dire; who on earth was responsible for writing it?
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