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“LabourList revealed in February the party had lost more than one in ten members since the general election with the party losing the equivalent of one member every ten minutes between December and February.”
Now Labour Party leaders are covering up the fall in the number of members:
https://labourlist.org/2025/05/labour-membership-numbers-members-how-many-political-party/?amp
This was picked up by the Socialist Standard at the time, as in this extract from an article that appeared in July 1920:
“Another interesting point is the ratio between the urban and country representatives. Thus for the All Russia Congress of Councils the Urban Councils send one representative for every 25,000, while the County Council Congresses send one delegate for every 125,000, or to put it another way, the Urban Councils have five times the representation of the County Councils. The same ratio applies to Regional and County Congresses. These figures have a peculiar significance.
The Bolsheviks, naturally, find their chief support in the urban centres. By this basis of representation they are able to ensure the practical certainty of a majority in “the supreme authority of the Russian Republic”. “And that’s how it’s done”, as the stage conjurer says.
This method may be suitable to Russian conditions, but to claim for such a system that it is “a million times more democratic than the most democratic regime in a bourgeois republic” – where the workers have a direct, and overwhelming, vote for the very centre of power – is the wildest nonsense.”
The full article, entitled “The Russian Dictatorship” can be found here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/fitzgerald/1920/leninkautsky.htm
The first two sections — accepting the need for widespread socialist consciousness and for democratic decision-making — represent advances for groups in the left-communist ‘milieu’. It is third section that presents a problem.
It’s what they say about the state during the ‘transition period’ as ‘representing all non-exploiting strata and people’, defined not just as ‘petty producers and the peasantry’ but also ‘the huge numbers of people thrown out of the productive process, unable to integrate the productive forces, the homeless, unemployed, and others, victims of famine, disease, and war’? Presumably it will also include other non-economically active people like the retired, students, housewives and the chronically ill. Even in an advanced capitalist part of the world like Britain the percentage of so-called ‘inactive’ people is about 20 percent of the adult population.
These ‘strata’ are to be submitted to the dictatorship of the ‘proletariat’ defined only as those working in factories, offices, etc. The state is supposed to represent them (but how and by who?) but is to be subordinated to “workers’ councils”.
What IP is imaging should happen shows the limitations of the concept of “workers councils” running society. Why can’t those who make up the “non-exploiting strata” have an equal say with “workers” in the way post-capitalist society is run?
It also shows how their thinking is still conditioned by what obtained in Russia in 1918 and the 1920s. They would still seem to be, at heart, Left Bolsheviks trying to cope with the problems of yesteryear.
Just noticed that the Daily Excess above quotes Lowe as saying:
“Mere reform is inadequate – we need radical, principled change.”
I think he’s saying What We Need is Revolution Not Reform, though of course his idea of revolution is quite different from ours. Still, it’s a good criticism of any party calling itself Reform.
Thanks. But what a mish-mash of “vulgar Marxism” — the tendency of the rate of profit to fall becomes an iron law which results in less and less profits so the capitalists have to squeeze the workers more, so much that in the end the workers rise up and overthrow capitalism !
It is true that Marx did regard capitalism as historically necessary and, for a while until the material basis for a socialist society had been built up, historically progressive. His attitude to capitalists (as opposed to capitalism) is spelt out in the preface to the first German edition of Das Kapital:
“To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense `couleur de rose. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests.“
Personifications of capital is what they are, whatever they themselves — and hack journalists — might think they are. The process of capitalist accumulation increases wealth. They are merely its expropriators.
As to the Labour Party and its present leaders. They simply accept capitalism as it is and get on with complying with its economic laws.
I see that RefUK’s equivalent did very well in the Portuguese elections the other day. It is called “Chega” which is simply the Portuguese word for “Enough”. Which might be a better name for RefUK as that is what seems to be the basis of its support. Another possible name might be The Protest Party. The trouble with such parties is that once they get elected and have to participate in running capitalism they become part of the “establishment” and another party of protest arises.
The two articles by Lenin about this can be found here on the Marxists Internet Archives site:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/mar/03b.htm
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/mar/29b.htm
These disgustingly rich people certainly have a high opinion of themselves. They call themselves “wealth creators”. But wealth can only be created by applying human labour to materials that originally came from nature. They may have worked long and hard but only at wheeling and dealing to amass wealth for themselves created by others, workers by hand and brain.
Any chance of anyone finding the full text of the Daily Torygraph article. The start sounds as if it might be interesting.
I don’t think Lowe will get anywhere, if only because nobody’s heard of him outside the Westminster bubble and even if, like the other leaders of RefUK, he’s got the money, being a capitalist himself. But you are right, the nativist right is already split, like the Trotskyists, into a number of competing sects. UKIP still exists and then there are breakaways from them such as Heritage and the Homeland Party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:UK_Independence_Party_breakaway_groups
Biting question to Starmer at Prime Minister’s Question Time yesterday from the Welsh Nationalist MP Liz Saville Roberts:
“The prime minister once spoke of compassion and dignity for migrants and for defending free movement. Now he talks of islands of strangers and taking back control. Somebody here has to call him out, Mr. Speaker.
It seems the only principle he consistently defends is whatever he last heard in a focus group. I ask him, is there any belief he holds which survives a week in Downing Street?”Starmer’s lame reply was:
“Yes, the belief that she talks rubbish.”
What a plonker.
At least one Labour councillor resigns:
If the people you talk to really do say “innit” you could point out to them that they are speaking London multicultural English.
“Island of strangers”. With these three words, a Prime Minister — a Labour one at that — echoes Nigel Farage, Tommy Robinson and Alf Garnett and gives credibility to, not to say endorses, their views.
“Strangers” is only a polite, though not that polite. way of saying “(bloody) foreigners” or “aliens”. And to rail against them supposedly taking over the country. It is likely to become a catch phrase and the only thing that Starmer will be remembered for in years to come. His personal and political epitaph. And deservedly so.
It’s nonsense of course. But today people who dress differently or speak English with a foreign accent will be feeling less secure. They could even become the victims of physical well as verbal attacks, as happened after the Brexit vote was announced.
After Party of NATO, Party of Business, this represents a new low for Starmer which further exposes him as cynical hypocrite and a thoroughly despicable person. It also exposes the Labour Party as just a band of career politicians whose priority is to get to enjoy the fruits of political office. No principles, just an electoral machine.
Maybe some Labour MPs will protest and hundreds resign from the Labour Party. If they’ve got any self-respect they will. But We’ll see.
The new pope has apparently called himself Leo after pope Leo XIII, best known for his 1891 en cyclical Rerum Novarum on “The Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour” in which he justified private property but also encouraged Catholic trade unions to work for a “just wage”. In effect, accepted capitalism and embraced reformism as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism.
Here is what the American socialist Daniel De Leon wrote about it at the time:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/pdf/1891/1891_jun14.pdf
Our position is still being discussed in these “unity talks”. This from Jack Conrad in this weeks Weekly Worker.
“Comrade Wrack also clarified TAS’s commitment to a programme. Not an SWP-type ‘What we stand for’ column, or an SPGB maximum-only, or an essay along the lines of Militant: what we stand for (author Peter Taaffe). Frankly, that was good to hear. I readily admit to being worried on that score.”
He records Nick Wrack as saying;
“When the working class comes to power”, the comrade continued, the task is to “socialise everything”. As a flourish he declared that this would include “every fish and chip shop, every corner pub”.”
We don’t know what Nick Wrack had in mind but in principle this is correct. But these won’t become state property (as Conrad assumes) but wouldn’t be owned by anyone. If those currently running these outlets wanted to continue doing this they would be doing it as a free public service, not to sell a commodity. They wouldn’t be part of a class of petty owners surviving into socialist society, even if they might be a feature of “capitalism ruled over by the working class” that Conrad envisages as the immediate aim.
https://www.weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1537/programme-n-chips/
