Jeremy Corbyn to be elected Labour Leader?

[alanjjohnstone]

"I met someone last night who had been barred from voting (and lost his £3) on the grounds that he didn't share the aims and values of the Labour Party. " I'm curious. With all this talk of legal challenges about the vote, couldn't there be also counter-claims that those excluded from the vote should have their three quid back, since their membership is being refused. What's in the small print that justifies keeping the fee? 

[ALB]

I don't think it's that straightforward. The person I met doesn't share the Labour Party's aims and values (he shares ours) and would concede that he was being dishonest when he signed that he did. So I don't think either he or anyone else in this position, including the Tory member of the House of Lords, have a leg to stand on if they asked for their money back.Someone who genuinely did share Labour's aims and values and had supported some other party at the last election because they felt that Labour Party itself had departed from them would be a stronger position, but any court case would have to be a civil action. For just £3. Hardly worth it.But what is happening has blown out of the water JohnD's proposal for open primaries, even by us. What has happened was predictable and will happen again. It's built-in to the scheme. And we are even stricter that people should share our aims and values. Like the Labour Party we would expel (and have expelled) people who publicly vote for another party.  Would we let them vote in a primary to decide our candidate?

[Anonymous]

Wonder how many workers we alienated with these?  Wonder why we are so small.This looks like right wing propaganda. Corbyn is not Hitler. 

[Anonymous]

Vin wrote:

Wonder how many workers we alienated with these?  Wonder why we are so small.This looks like right wing propaganda. Corbyn is not Hitler. 

If you really think that then it's rather puzzling that you 'liked' the first image when it appeared over on the party's Facebook group.https://www.facebook.com/groups/worldsocialism/But why would telling workers the truth about the activities of a previous Labour government possibly alienate them?  If anything they should be pleased that someone has drawn their attention to indisputable facts of which, presumably, they had hitherto been unaware.

[Anonymous]

gnome wrote:

But why would telling workers the truth about the activities of a previous Labour government possibly alienate them?  If anything they should be pleased that someone has drawn their attention to indisputable facts of which, presumably, they had hitherto been unaware.

 It doesn't and that is not my point. I am all in favour of a new party pamphlet on the Labour Party's history but we need to be careful about   demonising.Some deserve it and some don't., Unlike some members, I do not think all non members are pro capitalist and anti working class.  Where is our attack on Tories? and Austerity? Oh but wait, they aren't responsible, 'capitalism' is.Some are closer to us than others and we are failing the movement not recognising this

[imposs1904]

Vin's makes a fair point. I'm not suggesting for a second that we soft-pedal our criticisms of Labour in all its forms, but these memes just seem to be the one tone and I think they're going to backfire on us. Why would Corbyn supporters investigate our politics further if that's the first thing they see coming from us?I think these are only appealing to a small pool of individuals; individuals, in the main, who are already aware of Labour's sorry history in government.

[ALB]

This editorial from the September 1965 Socialist Standard might have been more appropriate:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1965/no-733-september-1965/editorial-what-runs-labour-governmentespecially, now that 40 economists are reported to have endorsed Corbyn's economic programme, this:

Quote:

It is almost a year now since the Labour party formed a government. They felt that thirteen wasted years of Tory rule would give way to an administration that could solve social problems. It has been a year of renewed failure, in which their optimism has been humiliated by their inability to control Capitalism.We do not doubt that the Labour Government really believed they could "get the economy moving". There was to be steady expansion. Out of a four per cent increase in productivity there were going to be more schools, hospitals, roads, pensions. There were going to be more wages. A "planned" incomes policy. A "planned" growth rate. None of these schemes have begun to get off the ground, nor do they show any prospect of doing so.

i.e Harold Wilson rather than Clement Attlee warmed up.

[alanjjohnstone]

I think this is the problem i was wondering myself…How do we approach well-meaning fellow workers with good intentions?Message #155 

Quote:

More to the point, what are our tactics if i am wrong and in 4 or 5 yrs Corbyn's left-wing Labour Party contests the election… Do we concentrate on deflating their optimistic balloon, exposing their fallacies, becoming more visibly anti-Labour thus in a way offering support for the status quo of the Right…Or do we endeavour to push Labour further "leftwards" with appeals to it for real genuine socialsm and ignore the Tories in our campaign. Using their so-called "values" against them.

Perhaps we should use the new left-wing momentum as a spring-board for our socialist vision versus Labour "values" (for the frequency that word has been quoted on the media by Labour Party members and reporters and journalists, i have still to see or hear it defined other than very general platitudes that could asily come from Attila the Hun's PR dept.)It is a tight-rope to walk, a narrow line to follow, how not to alienate and distance ourselves from those who potentally share many of our own ideas and much of our past criticisms of the Labour Party. But on the other hand, we cannot simply for sake of popularism offer Labour and their political leaders, left or right, a free pass from justifiable rebuke. I suggest our history of being the Cassandras of socialism may not have proved the most fruitful of strategies.Perhaps there is a tactical alternative to be tried. And i think we should debate this and all options thrown on the r]table to be debated and some to be quickly tossed aside and some given further discussion. I see nothing wrong with the graphics produced by Gnome. Like everything we do, there is a time and place for them being used for full effect and we won't be infallible in their usage.I think we should accept that there is sincerity within the the Left and now showing itself in the Labour Party but that their focus is misplaced and their values misinterpreted. We can describe what socialism is and has always been when Corbyn or Sanders supporters advocate their vague belief in their version of "socialism." We should try and concentrate the exchanges on this.I recall that Keir Hardie once offered an accurate description of what socialism was…forget where and when. Could, i wonder, our Labour historians juxtapose all other Labour Party quotes that concur with the SPGB's interpretations to show that we have kept to real Labour values and sunsequent generations of Labour members have been the people who have strayed. Use the words of the Labour Party against them. Accompanying this i think we can also collate quotes where the Labour Party is easily exposed. The same Keir Hardie can be directed cited as a racist and anti-immigration proponent, for instance. Oh, i just came across this 1954 article (the year i was born,btw)

Quote:

Nevertheless many pioneers of the Labour movement did not view Socialism as a merely recurring decimal of State activity. Many might have mistakenly believed that Nationalisation and various forms of State activity might serve as a means to an end but they did not believe that these things were an end in itself. Thus, Keir Hardie in accepting as he said "State Socialism," despite all its drawbacks, as an evolutionary stage in social development nevertheless held that it was "a preparation for free Communism in which the rule of life would be, from each according to his capacity to each according to his needs." (From Serfdom to Socialism, p. 89).

http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1950s/1954/no-601-september-1954/sterility-labourismPerhaps as i speculated our best means of conveying the socialist messahe is to push Labour and Corbynites towards this genuine socialism of ours which requires communicating in a critical but comradely fashion, something very hard for some of us to do if we follow the Party tradition of vitriol, as entertaining as it is to some of us. Our attitude should be the same as bedroom etiquette, different strokes for different folks. 

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

especially, now that 40 economists are reported to have endorsed Corbyn's economic programme

I've been trying to find out who these are and have only been able to come up with this:https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ourkingdom/35-economists-back-corbyn's-policies-as-'sensible'The only names most people will be able to recognise are Steve Keen and Ann Pettifor. We reviewed a book by leftwing Keynesian John Weeks in the April 2004 Socialist Standard and two edited by Alfredo Saad in May and December 2004.  Saad describes himself as a Marxist and, as the reviews recognise, explains Marxian economics well. All the stranger then that he doesn't realise that Corbyn's "proposal to fund public investment by the sale of bonds to the Bank of England" (so-called People's QE) is just Keynes in a new package and cannot work to make capitalism operate in the interest of the working class or even to get it to "grow" again. Or perhaps he does and is just agreeing that Corbyn has opened an interesting discussion on economic policy.The media are reporting that Danny Blanchflower has also signed up. The former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, that is. A bit more of a catch.

[alanjjohnstone]

Another letter here with a different names with Blanchflower at the tophttps://labourlist.org/2015/08/economists-back-jeremy-corbyns-anti-austerity-policies/

[ALB]

Thanks. I notice that Saad-Filho and Pettifor are no longer on it. I wonder why. Also note the addition of Josh Ryan-Collins, one of the authors of the currency crankish Where Does Money Come from? (reviewed in the Socialist Standard in February 2012). I imagine there are others among the signatories who also think commercial banks can create money from thin air. Not sure, though, that Corbyn himself has actually said that (yet). But with friends like this….Perhaps we could send a letter saying Corbyn's economic policy is no more credible than that of everyone else who thinks that governments can control the way capitalism works.

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

I see nothing wrong with the graphics produced by Gnome. Like everything we do, there is a time and place for them being used for full effect and we won't be infallible in their usage.

While I'm unable to take credit for the graphics, or more precisely, internet memes, I'm happy to endorse them and my branch will be using enlarged versions of the second one at our two stalls at the Kent Miners' Festival next Monday. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/kent-miners-festival-betteshanger-kent-10amMost workers we've encountered since the Labour leadership contest was launched, while being sometimes surprised by our stance on Corbyn, appear to show a great deal of respect and understanding for our position. No alienation found whatever; in fact far from it.  At our stall in Canterbury last Saturday (the best one to date) we sold 4 Standards, 6 pamphlets and 3 books and received three donations. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/world-socialist-movement/kent-sussex-branch-stall-%E2%80%93-canterbury?page=3#comment-25214

Quote:

Perhaps as I speculated our best means of conveying the socialist message is to push Labour and Corbynites towards this genuine socialism of ours which requires communicating in a critical but comradely fashion…..   Our attitude should be the same as bedroom etiquette, different strokes for different folks.

I can heartily re-assure comrades that Kent & Sussex will not be engaging in 'soft-peddling' tactics particularly when it comes to exposing so-called 'saviours' of the working class such as Jeremy Corbyn and Russell Brand.

[ALB]

Looks as if the Labour leadership are going for the rigging the election option:http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/25-000-rogue-voters-in-labour-poll-chaos-1-386604525,000 to be purged! Even after they've voted. That's bound to affect the result.

[Young Master Smeet]

And good job too, according to the Daily Mailhttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3207363/Prime-Minister-Corbyn-1-000-days-destroyed-Britain-brilliant-imagining-Corbyn-premiership-reveals-Tories-gloat-Labour-s-woe-careful-wish-for.htmlAnd of course, Robert Skidelsky, Keynes' biographer, likes Corbynomics:http://www.skidelskyr.com/site/article/taking-corbynomics-seriously/

[jondwhite]

imposs1904 wrote:

Vin's makes a fair point. I'm not suggesting for a second that we soft-pedal our criticisms of Labour in all its forms, but these memes just seem to be the one tone and I think they're going to backfire on us. Why would Corbyn supporters investigate our politics further if that's the first thing they see coming from us?I think these are only appealing to a small pool of individuals; individuals, in the main, who are already aware of Labour's sorry history in government.

what if there was a meme image creates about exposing the anti working class nature of prime minister Cameron or Nigel farage?

[Author]

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