Right now Corbyn fever is spreading wildly -understandably so in light of the total political and economic crisis we are in right now and the Blairite, war mongering, capitalist loving vultures otherwise known as m.p.s launching their long planned and highly opportunistic coup against Corbyn and his supporters, as myself and others have predicted. Protests are being organised in many cities following the large demo outside parlianment in defence of Corbyn last week. Thinking and progressive workers are rightly outraged by this coup and latest betrayal by the Labour right and 60,00 thousand joined the party in the last week in an attempt to stop it.
But the Labour Party, by implenting austerity, cuts, homelessness, benefit cuts, whipping up racism, lining up with the political establishment to support remain, sowing illusions in the E.U., privatisation, job cuts, bombing Afghanistan, Iraq and much of the Middle East, supporting Israel and oppressing Palestinians, the list really does go on, is RESPONSIBLE for the mess we are in and many hundreds of thousands more of the working class are utterly alienated from the Labour Party still and are totally disengaged from parliamentary politics ( and I will not forgive the Labour Party for Iraq, for tuition fees, for all of their austerity, cuts and lies and do not agree with its politics. that’s why I’ve never joined and will not now either).
Many (although not all of course) working class people in South Wales, for example, have already turned to the far-right and are unaware of and / or alienated by the soft reformist liberalism of ‘socialists’ in and sniffing around the Labour Party pretending that the E.U. is a benign institution which can be reformed. It is not. The E.U. is a racist, capitalist institution. The limited workers rights it does offer comes from the achievements of the workers movement, NOT from the ‘kindness’ of right wing, dictatorial E.U. leaders. But the liberal soft left also sow illusions that the U.K. parliament can be reformed to represent workers and that capitalism can be made nicer. It can’t. Capitalism is about production for profit. That is its purpose. Class exploitation is inherent in this economic system because profit is the unpaid labour of the working class etc. Although I’m aware that I’m slipping into marxist-speak, I do honestly think many working class people deep down do have an instinctive and learnt understanding from their own experiences that our interests are seperate to the rulers, so potentially socialist internationalist working class mass consciousness can optimistic, despite the very real dangers our class are in.
The Socialist Party think the People’s Assembly demo against austerity and cuts in London on Sat 16th should make the main demand to be defend Corbyn. Whilst I think it is right to defend Corbyn in the sense of lesser evilism (obviously a naive soft left reformist is slightly more appealing than Gove or May), I don’t think this demo should be turned into support Labour demo and that the focus should stay on anti-racism and anti-austerity and all about working class people rebuilding our own organisations of struggle and not waiting for our so called ‘leaders’ to do it for us. Sure, I want the Labour right led to be defeated and know that advances the working class’ interests in the short term and in the face of no mass w/c socialist alternative to the Labour Party, but i’m far from sure that is going to happen as Corbyn and McDonnell are weak compromising centrists who want to keep ‘the party’ together at all costs and Momentum have made a lot of mistakes, including inviting these right wingers into the shadow cabinet in the first place and then dropping the demand for reselction of all m.p.s – vital if they are to win long term.
So far Corbyn hasn’t capitulated which is great and here’s a potential opportunity to bring the Blairites and capitalist war mongerers in the Labour Party to justice – they are responsible for this entire Brexit mess along with their best mates in the Tories – but I fear that trying to use parliament to achieve this is a dead end and it is better to warn people now and advocate for real working class revolution instead and be truthful about what is likely to happen rather than whip up this Corbyn as savior desperation up any further. There are no saviours, just a complex many activists suffer from (including myself in past times, silly me) The labour movement urgently needs to rebuild itself to defend the working class and poor against more austerity, job losses, worsening economic recession and cuts and the growth of the far right and racism post Brexit.
Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party need to break from the parliamentary Labour Party and help build a new working class socialist organisation – Tony Blair and all his right-wing M.P. allies must be deselected and held to account by the rank and file of the Labour party AND the wider labour movement.
Corbyn is right not to resign and must not capitulate by agreeing to not be on the ballot and supporting a ‘unity’ (read right wing pro war and pro austerity) candidate like Angela Eagle or Pontypridd m.p. Owen Smith (and my m.p.!!!! a right wing, capitalist boss type who doesn’t care about his consitituents, just like Eagle and of the other fake ‘unity’ candidates the right are currently scrambling for). Sure, I want Corbyn to survive as leader and be a prominent left-wing opposition poltician to any of those Tory bastards in a October General Election – I do understand why many workers want this – BUT IT IS NOT ENOUGH FOR US TO WIN AS A CLASS and my concern remains that Corbyn is a compromiser with the capitalist right in his party and the contradiction between the interests of the working class and the capitalist class can’t be reconciled in the name of a ‘united’ Labour Party.If Corbyn clings on and uses the Chilcot Verdict to demand that mass murderer Blair is prosecuted as a war criminal then great but Corbyn is not going to be able to bring Blair to justice through parliament – the system is set up to protect Blair and all politicians from any kind of accountability. Is Corbyn going to ask the Blairite war mongerers in elected positions in the Labour Party to leave, post surviving a leadership contest again (as is expected) – and finally initiate a process of reselecting the mp.s? The general election is very likely THIS October. I strongly suspect that the Labour Party in this election will have the same m.p.s , even if Corbyn survives, as a result of Monmentum’s mistakes so far and if that is the case I can’t vote for them, let alone join such a party
So many working class people, rightly furious at the establishment as a whole and totally unrepresented by parliament ( Corbyn is part of the parliamentary paradigm, however nice man he is) are currently getting misdirected by the right mis-channelling this anger into nationalism and xenophobia thereby dividing our class and allowing the rulers to maintain overall political and economic control. One of the good things to have come out of Brexit is at least the labour movement and thinking working class people who are internationalist in outlook realising that we need to get out on the streets to fight for our class and stop the far right gaining any more advantage than they are already gained by the leave result. But the present leaders of the anti-racist movement do not have a serious strategy and have massive illusions again in the role of the police and the state.These are the same leaders who love the Labour Party, the trade union bureacracy, sexual assault apologists in all the main parties as well as the hard-left ones (SWP and SP) and have no more strategy than organise a big march, send everyone home again and work within the ‘law’, including the anti-trade union law which Labour of course have never removed.The Labour Party don’t want us all to come out on strike.So again, this is why I’m so sceptical and concerned.
We need to stop relying on leaders and saviour figures like Corbyn or leaders of the People’s Assembly or the Socialist Party or whatever to sort it out for us and rebuild our movement from the bottom up. Our trade unions need to rebuilt / won back from the Labour Party and the trade union bureaucracy, we need community organisations which organise to look after each other and build on real working class solidarity and we need to wake up to the fact that all the parliamentary parties, both left and right, have a long history of betraying us and that parliament itself is an elitist, ruling class institution which can not be used to introduce socialism. Look at the lessons of Syriza, a new left wing, social democratic party which has capitulated to Merkel and all the european capitalist institutions including the E.U. I suspect that just as Syriza were unable to negiotate with the E.U., so will any future possible British government, including the be able to negiotate favourable exit terms. Merkel and co want to punish the U.K. now as a warning to the rest of Europe not to do the same.
There’s a lot more I want to say but think for now I’ll finish. So, yes I don’t mean to pour urine over many of my socialist friends’ current and very sincere love of championing Corbyn but I think we need to seriously re-assess this infatuation with social democracy in light of actual historical experience and try our best to better prepare the working class (with our limited numbers and resources) about what is actually happening and what we really need – a mass movement for socialist, working class internationalism that has no illusions in ruling class institutions and parties and doesn’t provide inadvertent left cover for capitalist economics 9keynesian as well as austerity), liberalism and British nationalism. Sara
sakollantai 