Corbyn opens door to Labour backing for British bombing of Syria
1 December 2015

The decision by Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to allow a free vote on UK participation in bombing missions in Syria is a total capitulation to the right-wing, pro-war forces in his party.
Corbyn has done everything possible to ensure a “yes” vote on Wednesday, given that Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron did not have a majority without the support of Labour MPs and had said he would proceed to a vote only if there was a “consensus.” At least 15 Tory MPs are said to be opposed to the extension of bombing to Syria on the pretext of defeating Islamic State (ISIS).

Now, a supposed “consensus” has been handed on a plate to Cameron by Corbyn. If the Labour leader had imposed a party whip, those voting for bombing would have had to do so in defiance of their party. Instead, Corbyn has given the green light for more Labour MPs—free from censure—to back Cameron’s policy. The Tories are now boasting that up to 100 Labour MPs will vote with them.

In September, Corbyn was elected by a landslide to lead the party based on his declared anti-austerity, anti-war stance. A reported 300,000 people signed up to the party to support him. Yet at every major turn, Corbyn has betrayed his mandate in the name of maintaining unity with the militarist, pro-business, anti-working class cabal that dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party and its local government apparatus.

Of all the ignominious retreats he has made under fire, this is the most fundamental.

Millions of workers and young people oppose military action in Syria, and Labour’s annual conference ruled that the party would not back action in Syria without “clear and unambiguous” United Nations support.

Prior to Monday, Corbyn said that Cameron had not made the case that the UN supported air strikes, so he was opposed to a free vote that would allow MPs to contradict party policy. He went on television Sunday to declare that “the leader decides,” implying that he was considering a three-line whip instructing MPs to vote against bombing Syria.

He then organised a poll of over 100,000 party members and supporters that showed 75 percent opposed and just 13 percent in favour of air strikes. Corbyn was reported by the Guardian as telling his allies that he believed he had sufficient backing from MPs and his grassroots supporters to try and “stop the war.”

Len McCluskey, head of the Unite union, Labour’s biggest financial backer, came out to warn members of the Shadow Cabinet, “Any attempt to force Labour’s leader out through a Westminster Palace coup will be resisted all the way by Unite and, I believe, most party members and affiliated unions.”

This was all for show. Behind the scenes, Corbyn was already in secret discussions with Deputy Leader Tom Watson and Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn, two of the overwhelming majority of his Shadow Cabinet in favour of air strikes. He agreed to a free vote in return for a non-binding, and therefore meaningless, statement that “party policy” was to oppose bombing.
Corbyn has rolled over before a bloodthirsty and politically discredited rump that enjoys little popular support outside the UK’s big business media. And he did so as he and his right-hand man, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, spoke of “democracy” and allowing MPs to vote “according to their conscience.” McDonnell said a free vote would mean that “people will hold together.”
“Democracy” now means the right to defy your party’s members, defy the wishes of the electorate, openly collude with the Tories, and threaten legal action to depose an elected leader. “Voting with your conscience” means not having one.

Yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting saw this venal layer in the ascendant, shouting at Corbyn that his position that party policy was to oppose bombing was “absurd.” The meeting of the entire Parliamentary Labour Party in the evening was little different.

Corbyn was left with nothing other than to write a letter to Cameron urging a two-day debate before a vote is taken. Cameron dismissed this demand within hours, saying instead that Wednesday’s debate would be extended by a few hours. Benn has been given the right to close the debate for Labour.

Once again, events have supplied a devastating rebuttal to the claims made by Corbyn that he and his supporters could refashion the Labour Party as an instrument for opposing austerity and war by giving voice to its members and insisting on a “new politics” of democratic debate. This, he claimed, could bring change without threatening Labour’s “broad church.”

Instead, Labour continues to be a party of austerity and war. Its support for Cameron means that the bombs that will rain down on Syria, like the hundreds dropped by the Royal Air Force in Iraq since September 2014, will be Labour’s bombs. Syria will be Labour’s war just as was Iraq in 2003.

Labour’s political and class character can never be changed by installing a new leader. It is determined by the party’s pro-capitalist programme and a history stretching over a century of defending the fundamental interests of British imperialism—not only against foreign capitalist rivals, but against the threat from below posed by the working class.

Corbyn’s mealy-mouthed reformist rhetoric never offered a political alternative to the party’s control by the right wing. Rather, his role has been to prevent the hostility to austerity, militarism and war that brought him to office from assuming the form of a political rebellion against Labour’s despised leadership. Indeed, without his defence of their position in the party, even including them in his Shadow Cabinet, many would have already been deselected by their local parties.

The exposure of Corbyn is at the same time a devastating indictment of Britain’s pseudo-left groups, all of which proclaimed his leadership to be a fundamental turning point in Labour’s fortunes. A week ago, Left Unity, the party formed just two years ago as a supposed alternative to Labour, declared at its conference it would no longer stand candidates against the party led by Jeremy Corbyn. On Saturday, the Stop the War Coalition held a protest against bombing Syria at which the central message from the organisation’s chair, Andrew Murray, was to urge Labour MPs to “stand behind Jeremy Corbyn.”

All these tendencies are guilty of disarming the working class and paving the way for war.

The struggle against war cannot proceed through the Labour Party and under the leadership of Corbyn. He will not move against the right wing of his party because he shares their pro-capitalist programme. He calls for a change in policy on austerity and war from the ruling class when both are the inevitable products of the capitalist system at this time of acute crisis.

The bourgeoisie needs austerity because maintaining its obscene wealth is dependent on ramping up the exploitation of the working class and destroying the social provisions on which millions depend. War is the product of the drive by the imperialist powers to seize control of oil and other valuable and essential resources on behalf of the super-rich.

What is required is the building of a new mass anti-war movement that seeks to mobilise the working class in Britain and internationally against the capitalist system and for socialism. That requires the building of the Socialist Equality Party to lead this struggle.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/01/pers-d01.html

UK prepares military action against Syria after Corbyn clears the path
By Julie Hyland
2 December 2015

Prime Minister David Cameron lost no time in announcing that a vote on air strikes against Syria will take place late Wednesday evening, after Jeremy Corbyn’s capitulation to Labour’s right wing cleared the path for Britain to join US-led military operations.

Corbyn agreed that Labour MPs will be given a “free vote”, enabling an anticipated 50 to 100 of them to side with the Tories, without fear of censure. While the Scottish National Party, and possibly 15 Conservative MPs are expected to vote against, the vote of these Labour MPs—together with those of the Unionist parties and the Liberal Democrats, almost guarantees Cameron a majority.

It comes even as parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee voted 4-3 in support of a motion that the prime minister had “not adequately addressed concerns ” it had set out earlier.

Yet so abject is Corbyn’s surrender to the warmongers that Hilary Benn, Labour’s foreign spokesperson and a leading proponent of military intervention, will close the parliamentary debate for the party.

In anticipation of a yes vote, the Ministry of Defence is already planning to double the RAF’s fleet of aircraft in Cyprus, with reports that bombing could start within hours of the vote.

Cameron dismissed Corbyn’s plea for a delay in the vote so that a two-day debate could be held. The Tory cabinet unanimously backed military action Tuesday morning. The 11-point motion, to be put to the house, presents a litany of justifications—including that Islamic State (IS) poses “a direct threat to the United Kingdom”; that military action has been authorised by the United Nations; and that it is being taken in solidarity with “requests from France, the US and regional allies for UK military assistance.”

Military operations are presented as part of a “broader strategy to bring peace and stability to Syria,” while the motion rules out deploying “UK troops in ground combat operations”.

All this is a pack of lies. What is underway in Syria and the Middle East is not a campaign for “peace” but an escalating conflict that poses the threat of a third world war.

Cameron’s case for military operations in Syria—which faithfully repeats the justifications of Washington—does not withstand scrutiny. Britain is to join US efforts to secure its geostrategic domination in the region, as part of its war drive against Russia.

The media openly acknowledges the holes in Cameron’s claims, with the Guardian advising against support for bombing on this basis, while the Times, Telegraph and others call for greater “clarity”. Labour MP Kier Starmer and Tory backbencher David Davis are among those who have said they cannot vote for war under these circumstances.

Targeted for particular disbelief has been Cameron’s estimate that 70,000 “moderate” Syrian opposition fighters can be relied upon as a “ground force” to take territory captured from IS. Several commentators have correctly drawn a parallel between this groundless assertion and Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s “dodgy dossier” claiming Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

As with Iraq, the lies over Syria are essential to the criminal nature of the enterprise underway. And whatever the qualms of the bourgeois critics of Cameron’s war strategy, there is a reluctance to see the UK sidelined in the division of the spoils now underway.

Even as Cameron spoke about “peace”, Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British Army, told the BBC: “Although it’s quite specifically excluded from tomorrow’s motion in the House of Commons, and as much as I don't want to see British, American, French boots on the ground, if we are serious about defeating Islamic State, it may have to come to that.”

Political responsibility for the fact that the British public is to be dragged, once again, into an unpopular war with catastrophic implications lies entirely with Corbyn and his apologists.

Far from his leadership providing the means to “reclaim” Labour for working people, it is the mechanism through which the right wing intends to overturn the party’s failure to support war against Syria in August 2013.

This is despite the fact that a survey of Labour Party members indicated overwhelming opposition to war, with some 75 percent against. The poll was commissioned by Corbyn, supposedly to shore up his case for opposition to war in his shadow cabinet. Instead, just as when the Syriza government in Greece called a referendum in July on austerity only so as to repudiate the result, the membership poll was just the prelude to Corbyn throwing in the towel.

Corbyn, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and others have claimed that the agreement to allow a “free vote” is an object exercise in democracy. It is nothing of the sort. While the Labour leader was claiming publicly that he was minded to impose a three-line whip, he was in secret talks with the pro-war cabal in his cabinet, agreeing to a free vote in return for a public statement that “party policy” was to oppose bombing.

Even this meaningless exercise was abandoned after the right wing threatened to resign from the Labour front bench.

It is instructive to compare the stance taken by the right to that of Corbyn and his supporters.

Benn claimed that the decision on a free vote was correct because “People of conscience have reached different views about what the right thing to do is. Those views are sincerely held and we should respect them.” But Benn, deputy leader Tom Watson and others—far from “respecting” the views of the Labour Party membership—insisted that their own support for war was one for which they were prepared to resign from the party and split it if necessary.

Their behaviour was in stark contrast to Corbyn, who refused to throw them out despite their narrow base of support within the Labour membership. Indeed, their departure would likely have increased Labour’s standing in the population. However, Benn and Company could proceed without fear of being challenged, because Corbyn and his allies are determined that issues of principle—including decisions on life and death—can be jettisoned in the interests of “party unity”.

There is to be no “free vote” on the Tory side when it comes to war.

The Times wrote scathingly on the implications of Corbyn’s decision. “Senior Labour officials call this ‘the new politics’,” it mocked. “It may be new, but it is inimical to parliamentary democracy.”

Corbyn “claims to be speaking for voters on an urgent question of national security while in reality he is skirmishing with factions of his own party… There will be an official Labour party position, but no obligation on senior party members to defend it and no risk of being sacked if they choose not to. On a policy level, he is supposed to provide an alternative to the government’s agenda, or at least constructive criticism of it. This is his duty as leader of the opposition, but he is offering neither leadership nor opposition.”

The Labour right is crowing. In the Daily Telegraph, Dan Hodges wrote that “her majesty’s official Opposition” had failed in its constitutional duty to “pass collective judgment on whether or not the nation should go to war.”

Instead, Corbyn had been pushed into a “humiliating” and “grovelling” climb-down and “has cleared the path” for war. This was good news, Hodges went on, because it shows that “the Corbynite insurgency can and will be directly challenged.”

Corbyn’s spinelessness is not simply a matter of personal inadequacy or misplaced party loyalty. The Labour leader and his supporters in the pseudo-left groups are acutely aware of how sharp class tensions are. Under conditions of deepening austerity and a sharp turn to militarism, they are determined to do all they can to contain and silence the voice of working people. It is this that accounts for the ability of the Tories to go on the offensive, despite the narrowness of the government’s majority.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/02/corb-d02.html

People have been comparing Corbyn to Bernie Sanders. I think they've got a point.

UK stages bombing raid on Syria hours after parliamentary vote
By Robert Stevens
4 December 2015

Conservative Defence Secretary Michael Fallon authorised the first air strikes by RAF squadrons immediately following the vote by the British parliament in favour of bombing Syria.

MPs voted for air strikes at 10.30 pm Wednesday. By 11.30 pm two Tornado bombers took off from the RAF’s base in Akrotiri, Cyprus, each loaded with three Paveway missiles, worth more than £100,000 each. An hour later, two more Tornados took off, also armed with Paveways.

On Thursday morning, more Tornado jets departed from Marham, Norfolk, to join the RAF’s squadron in Akrotiri. These are to be backed by an RAF Airbus A400M tactical transport plane that flew to Cyprus from RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland. This will take engineers and ground staff.

“We have enough Tornados and we are now sending Typhoons [fighter jets] as well,” Fallon told the BBC Thursday.

Fallon said the British bombers had attacked “oilfields in eastern Syria—the Omar oilfields—from which the Daesh [Islamic State] terrorists receive a huge part of their revenue.” The locations bombed were around 35 miles inside Syria’s border adjacent with Iraq, where RAF planes have already been bombing for more than a year.

The Guardian noted that the “defence secretary indicated that military action against Isis could be expected to continue for years, rather than months. ” Fallon told the broadcaster, “The prime minister has confirmed this is going to be a long campaign... This is not going to be quick.”

In fact, according to Al Arabiya, the oil fields bombed by the RAF had already been “destroyed” by a US-led air strike two months ago.

Within the most pro-war sections of the ruling elite and media, the response to the vote for military action has been a hysterical campaign against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for opposing the bombing of Syria. This is the case despite Corbyn allowing Labour MPs a “free vote” on the issue, meaning they would not be censured or disciplined in any way for voting for war.

Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron began the attacks the night before the vote, referring to Corbyn and anyone planning to vote against military action, as “terrorist sympathisers.”

On the morning of the vote, the Financial Times all but called for Corbyn’s removal, editorialising, “[C]orbyn seems determined to push his party towards the far left whatever the consequences for its electability. The longer he stays in his post, the more likely it is that he will destroy Labour as a mainstream political party.”

Hilary Benn, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, who supports bombing Syria and had voted for both the Iraq war and the war on Libya, closed the parliamentary debate for Labour with Corbyn’s blessing. He is being lionised as a figure comparable to Winston Churchill for his “historic” speech, in order to beat the drums of war and hasten Corbyn’s removal. The attacks on Corbyn in the right-wing media have centred on his being a danger to “national security” and a threat to the “values” upheld by the warmonger Benn, the Labour right wing and the Tories.

In its editorial Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph stated that Benn, “did not just deliver a towering moral argument for intervention... he exposed his own leader’s position as worthless...and demonstrates once again why Mr Corbyn cannot be trusted with national security.” The house organ of the Tory party led its front page Thursday with an excerpt from Benn’s speech, in which he compared the forces of the Islamic State to Hitler’s fascist army that conquered large parts of Europe.

Benn’s speech has led to numerous calls for him to be installed as leader of the Labour Party, with the Telegraph ’s Dan Hodges, a leading Blairite, commenting, “Hilary Benn didn’t just look like the leader of the opposition. He looked like the prime minister.”

In its editorial Thursday the liberal Guardian claimed, at the last moment, to have opposed Cameron’s motion endorsing war while insisting, “We support the cause of defeating Isis, and we do not reject military action.” It was euphoric over Benn’s speech, describing it as a “shock and awe campaign.” Martin Kettle said the speech positioned Benn “as a serious leadership challenger.”

The response to this offensive by Corbyn and his closest ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, has once again been an attempt to appease and protect the party’s right wing from Labour members’ anger. Both have issued statements that they will personally oppose any attempt by local Labour Party constituencies to “deselect” MPs who voted for war.

After allowing nearly a third of Labour MPs to vote for war, thus granting Cameron the supposed “consensus” he demanded to justify British imperialism’s latest bloody venture, McDonnell stated, “The whole debate made me proud that in the Labour Party we allow people to vote with their consciences and I think we took British politics on a step, a qualitative step forward, allowing people to express their views.

“I don’t think MPs who are elected by their constituents should come to Parliament to have their consciences overridden by the party whip. That’s unacceptable.”

Corbyn, a supine Labour backbencher for more than 30 years, is a known quantity to the bourgeoisie and their attacks are not aimed primarily at him. They are directed instead at suppressing and silencing growing anti-war sentiment among workers and young people as illegitimate and intolerable.

On the morning of the vote, the Daily Mail was forced to acknowledge that despite the wall-to-wall media propaganda for the launch of bombing raids in Syria, only a minority of the population were in favour of war. Another poll showed that 72 percent of Scottish voters opposed bombing. These backed up the poll commissioned by Corbyn, prior to the vote, showing that 75 percent of Labour Party members opposed war.

The suppression of all dissent is paramount for the ruling elite, as it embarks on yet another war of conquest under such socially and politically polarised conditions. Cameron’s statement that opposition to war is tantamount to support for terrorism must be taken as a stark warning. It was of a piece with Labour peer Jeffrey Rooker’s statement, during a simultaneous debate on war in Syria in the House of Lords.

Labour had to “get rid” of Corbyn, he said, identifying Islamic State’s “innate intolerance” for the “British way of life” with the “anti-British Trots in the Labour Party” who were “using our tolerance to try and get control” of the party.

Those opposing war represent the majority of the population. They are now being branded as supporters of terrorism, anti-British and a threat to the British way of life under conditions in which, since 9/11, under the guise of the “war on terror”, a mass of reactionary legislation has attacked democratic rights and civil liberties, introducing methods normally associated with a police state.

Last year, the “Prime Minister’s Task Force on Tackling Radicalisation and Extremism defined “extremism” as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values, including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs... There is a range of extremist individuals and organisations, including Islamists, the far right and others.”

Cameron said in relation to new legislation to be enacted: “Dealing with the terrorist threat is about not just new powers but how we combat extremism in all its forms. That is why we have a new approach to tackling radicalisation, focusing on all types of extremism, not just violent extremism.” [emphasis added].

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/04/uksy-d04.html

People have been comparing Corbyn to Bernie Sanders. I think they've got a point.

Money seems always to win - go figure...

WHY CORBYN IS NOT A SOCIALIST

There is a serious political problem surrounding the Labour Party’s new leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Jeremy Corbyn says he is a socialist. The media says he is a socialist. His supporters and detractors all say that he is a socialist. But socialists don't.

Why are socialists out of step with everyone else? Why do we say that Corbyn is not a socialist?

It is all about what you mean by socialism. For socialists, socialism is a world-wide social system where production will take place just to meet human need. Socialism will be established by a socialist majority through a principled political party, socialist delegates, the revolutionary use of the vote and Parliament. This has been the principled and democratic position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain since 1904.

Corbyn’s politics, on the other hand, is all about the enactment of piece-meal social reforms, nationalisation policies, Keynesianism in economics, government intervention in the markets, and aggressive taxation of the rich. However, his politics offers no fundamental change to society leaving capitalism intact.

For Corbyn the abolition of capitalism does not enter into the equation. Commodity production and exchange for profit, nation states, the wages system, and class exploitation are unquestioned. Instead, Corbyn wants a fairer and regulated capitalism not its abolition. For a republican he sees nothing inconsistent in either becoming a Privy Councillor or to perform other duties required of the Leader of her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

Corbyn even tells us that he is as patriotic as the next person. With reference to the Teesside steel industry he wants to save jobs for “British workers” through “partial nationalisation” as though this will protect workers from world competition. Workers were still unemployed when the steel industry was fully nationalised and it was a Labour government in 1965 who made over 400,000 miners redundant by closing down “inefficient” and unprofitable coal mines (Huw Beynon, Andrew Cox and Ray Hudson, THE DECLINE OF KING COAL). Under the Callaghan government of the late 1970’s, 40 mining pits were closed when Corbyn’s friend Tony Benn was Energy secretary and if Thatcher had not come to power in 1979, the Labour government would have gone on to close even more coal mines.

And there is no such thing as “British jobs” for “British workers” just as there are no ring-fenced and protected jobs for workers in France or elsewhere in world capitalism. Employers think nothing of moving production to other countries to tap into cheaper labour costs or importing in workers from abroad to undercut wages and salaries. In an economic depression unemployable workers are laid off in their tens of thousands. Workers are only employed when it is profitable to do so and when it is not they are made redundant.

Corbyn rejects the class struggle just as he rejects socialism as a distinct social system from capitalism. Socialism will be a world-wide social system without national boundaries and the nationalism and patriotism which goes with it. It will also be a social system without the exploitive wages system; the leaders and the led. Only the working class can establish socialism without the need of leaders like Corbyn, no matter how well-meaning and sincere. The establishment of socialism has to be the work of the working class itself.

In Corbyn’s politics there is no end-game, there is no common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution by all of society. Corbyn sees capitalism and the profit system going on and on forever. The Labour Party under the leadership of Corbyn exists not to establish socialism but to administer capitalism. Evidence of this was made recently by his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, with his vision of “socialism with an iPad” (20th November 2015). This is neither a “new politics” nor a “new economics” but a re-hash of Harold Wilson’s “WHITE HEAT OF TECHNOLOGY” speech of 52 years ago. Wilson’s policy was an utter failure; there was no national scientific and technological renewal (GUARDIAN September 19th 2013)

So the difference between a socialist and non-socialist is the difference between wanting to abolish capitalism and to keep it. And Corbyn falls into the latter category. A socialist he is not.

So if Corbyn is not a socialist what is he? Corbyn, put simply, is a reformist in as much as he has no intention of bringing about revolutionary socialist change. Corbyn thinks within the capitalist box and is quite happy to stay there.

Corbyn’s social reform menu was stated at the last election, during the hustlings when he was standing for the Labour Party leadership contest and when he assumed leadership of the Labour Party in September 2015.

Here is a taste of his reform menu: a state controlled NHS with no private sector input; the end to privatisation, a “people’s Bank”; nationalisation of the railways and postal services; rent control and security of tenancy; and the expansion of social housing. The list goes on and on as it would with any social reformer. But it is a menu that is offered to whet the appetite of a non-socialist electorate. These reforms might be carrying a criticism of capitalism and the vast wealth owned by the capitalist class but they will not resolve the urgent problems facing the working class.

The use of social reforms plays an insidious and reactionary political role in the defence of capitalism. Whenever a sound socialist critique is made against a particular problem caused by capitalism, a social reformer will come along and insert a social reform between the capitalist problem and the socialist solution.

Socialists, for example, have long argued that only the establishment of socialism will provide the best housing for everyone. Corbyn does not want capitalism abolished so, instead, he proposes “240,000 social houses” to be built if a Labour government is elected; not the best housing but ones stamped with the words “second best”. “Social housing” is only a mealy-mouthed way of referring to working class housing. He does not want workers to live in the type of housing found in the pages of Country Life.

Corbyn calls for a “fair and equitable society” but it is a hollow cry, undeliverable in a class divided society where the means of production are used for the purpose of making profits not for meeting human needs. Only Socialism, a social system without capitalism and the capitalist class can deliver a world of abundance.

The belief that capitalism can be reformed into a fair and equitable society has a long history. However policies to make capitalism more egalitarian will always flounder when imposed upon a social system based on the private ownership of the means of production and distribution.

Social reforms initiated by well-meaning politicians to meet real social needs fail because they conflict with the overriding principle of capital accumulation and the profit motive. The interests and needs of the capitalist class dominate capitalism and capitalist politics not the needs and interests of the working class. Social reforms are also subject to the vagaries of the economic cycle where social reforms enacted during an economic boom are watered down or repealed in an economic depression.

Socialists have neither advocated a policy of social reformism nor do we advocate reforms as a bridge to socialism. Socialism cannot be reached by a series of reforms; it only be achieved by the formation of a socialist majority understanding and wanting a world of free access to what people need to live creative and decent lives. All reform programmes have the effect of side-tracking workers away from working for socialism.

And here lies the real difference between socialists and the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. A socialist party cannot entertain advocating social reforms because it would attract non-socialists to the socialist party who are more interested in the social reforms than in wanting to establish socialism. Corbyn rejects this key socialist principle. His Party uses social reforms to attract non-socialist voters in competition with other capitalist parties. To call this socialism is the politics of deceit.

However, it is a policy that has a long history of failure. Just pick up any history book and consider those numerous social reforms which were enacted to solve the problems facing the working class. Two hundred years of social reforms and the problems facing workers still persist from one generation to the next: poverty, poor housing, second-rate health care and schooling, unemployment and social alienation. In offering workers social reforms rather than socialism, the continued misery of capitalism is all Jeremy Corbyn can offer the working class.

http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/article%20corbynsocialist.shtml

The False Promise That is Jeremy Corbyn
Howard Pilott | History of the Labour Party | Jeremy Corbyn | Labour Left | Labour Party | Labour Leadership Election 2015

Whilst John McDonnell might put 'generally fermenting the overthrow of capitalism' as his interest in his Who’s Who entry, sadly that isn’t enough to make a socialist of the man. It takes more than verbal flourishes to emancipate the working class. Rather than socialism, his talk is of working in partnership with enterprise and business to ensure economic growth, as in his Labour conference speech. Whilst we hear promises of nationalisation of the railways and possibly even some utilities, it seems this state ownership stops short of the real productive capacity of the country. But what is this state ownership anyway? Will rail travel be free once the crony capitalists are ousted and denied their bonuses? Hardly. The likelihood is that the railways will simply be a business run by agents of the government and probably on some form of commercial basis.

But what has Corbyn, the great herald of the new New (or Old?) Labour himself said? Well, at the conference he said he’d be the champion of the self-employed. But in fact he didn’t say much about the economy, rather gave a kind of framing speech to provide an overall sense of his position and counter some of the accusations in the media: he loved his country; believed in open discussion; wanted more for the many not the few, etc. Not much actual flesh on the bones of this advert. The idea was that John McDonnell would open that black box, as above.

What can we charitably infer? He’ll try to tax the rich a bit more, try to make corporations pay some more tax, build some more houses and control business (certainly the utilities) a bit more. Oh, and maybe reduce tuition fees. And, oh yes, there might be some quantitative easing – printing money, to you and me – to give the economy a bit of a push, as he thinks growth is a good thing.

Does any of this ring any bells with anyone? Haven’t we been here before? Or, is this the time when they really mean it: when they will really make a difference? This brings up two questions: what makes this brand of Labour significantly different to any of the others? And, will what is on offer have any chance of really making a lasting difference?

Previous Labour governments

There have been eleven previous Labour governments. We can choose from those led by Ramsay MacDonald, Clem Atlee, Harold Wilson, and Tony Blair.

The first period, before World War Two, can be called cohabitation. The first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald was a minority administration propped up by the Liberal Party lasting 11 months and so it's not really surprising they didn't achieve very much. In fact it was little more than what were called the Wheatley houses, which was a programme of cheap council housing. Nice but not exactly earth-shattering.

Ramsay McDonald was back in office in 1929 and this administration lasted until 1931 but again another minority government. This one vacillated about Keynesian-style measures of public works to address large-scale unemployment. However it fell apart and led to the National government which addressed the recession by means of the type of austerity that we currently see: cutting benefits and government spending to get out of recession. This man of promise called himself socialist and he ended up implementing these kinds of measures as part of that government, and was actually expelled from the Labour Party.

The Attlee period might be called 'the land fit for heroes'. This is probably regarded as the most radical and successful Labour government that was elected after World War Two. Their offer to the voters was to destroy the five ‘Giants’ of Want, Squalor, Disease, Ignorance, and Unemployment. This government was certainly committed to improving the lot of the working class. The creation of the welfare state, and rebalancing the economy to address poverty were priorities. They nationalised about 20 percent of the economy but abandoned plans to nationalise farming. However the senior staff in the nationalised industries remained in place. It was simply a case of new owners, or perhaps old wine in new bottles. There was no worker control on offer. Additionally industries nationalised were mostly those that were completely run into the ground from lack of investment and the War effort.

Trying to square the circle for this bankrupt economy with social aspirations was never going to work. Joining the Korean War did not help, and by 1950 health prescription charges appeared; so much for free cradle to grave healthcare. Then there was the formation of NATO and the nuclear weapons programme. It is worth noting that Attlee signed up to the terms of the Marshall Plan which required a large measure of the regulation for business to be removed, which is quite similar to the way in which the IMF operates today. American capitalism seldom comes without large strings attached. But give them their due, the Attlee government set up a variety of welfare structures that many of the baby boomers benefited from, and endured mostly intact until the so-called 'sweeping away of socialism' under Thatcher.

Harold Wilson's first administration was 'the acceptable face of capitalism'. Wilson was elected in 1964 with a minority government and a platform called New Britain. A second election in 1966 brought a majority administration which lasted through to 1970. Nobody really claims this regime was socialism although it did do major work on social reform: education, housing, social security and workers’ rights. But ultimately the economy faltered; which led to cuts including school milk in secondary schools (that wasn’t Thatcher), dental charges, increased National Insurance deductions, benefits not linked to average wages, prescription charges being scrapped but then reintroduced, tax allowances being cut, and a doomed programme of building cheap high-rise flats. Their attempt at playing the money markets went wrong with the devaluation crises from which the government never really recovered.

The first Wilson administration can certainly lay claim to a number of major pieces of social reform, for instance the repeal of the death penalty, decriminalisation of homosexuality, changes in the law regarding divorce, abortion and race. However this is social tinkering. It is not changing the relationship of power in any meaningful way.

Harold Wilson's next regime, which led into James Callaghan's, can be termed 'the period of walking a tight rope'. The first was in a minority administration and re-election in 1974 saw a wafer thin majority of four. This meant the government was never in a particularly powerful position and effectively its five years in office were spent riding the storm of an economic recession brought about largely by the oil price hike and the bursting of the Barber boom. Again, the major impact was a series of social tinkerings: tenancy rights, improved benefits, Sex Discrimination Act, prices commission, and workers’ rights. However the government finally ground itself out in the so-called Winter of Discontent, after borrowing from the IMF (again) led to large cuts in government expenditure.

Which brings us to Tony Blair. New Labour had set out its stall as the party of capitalism when at conference Tony Blair called for the abolition of Clause Four, probably the last vestige of anything resembling socialist intent within the Labour Party structure. In 1997 there was a pledge card provided to voters which didn't offer much in terms of radical social change – which was pretty much the overall picture of the Blair administration. They promised to cut class sizes, fast track offenders, cut NHS waiting times, reduce under 25s unemployment and have tough rules for Government spending. What was on offer was a managerial approach to capitalism: we can run it better than the Tories.

So we got the minimum wage (at a very low level) and Sure Start but we also got PFIs, Iraq, the rich got richer, and corporations got much more powerful and they also paid less tax. We were told this was a new kind of economy where boom and bust was beaten for good – but this hubris crashed in the banking crisis of 2008.

Could Corbyn be any different?

Not much of a record for eleven election victories: not much socialism anywhere in the picture. Not much of a basis to think Corbyn will make a massive impact. Has he distanced himself from all that? Apart from apologies promised for Iraq (even Blair is working on that now), it sounds very much like he’s offering a Wilson Mark 2: bits of nationalisation, taxing the rich, government spending and more welfare. Even Denis Healy, a right winger, as Chancellor offered to tax the rich until their pips squeaked. Not much of that kind of talk here.

So, will it work anyway? What Labour is trying to effect is a benign and responsible capitalism: a system where they accept there is an unequal distribution of wealth and power but where the state is enabled to act as an arbitrator and redistributor thereby minimising the impact of this inequality within certain limits. This is all the while still remaining a member of all sorts of capitalist power blocks (e.g. WTO, EU) because they want to maintain global trade. So the theory must be that while the rest of the world carries on trying to lower costs and hence wages, Britain will manage to continue trading with them and somehow maintain decent wages and conditions. Presumably, this is predicated on the notion that they will somehow be able to redistribute the excessive profits of business and have lots of internationally desirable commodities and services for sale, cheaply enough to maintain Britain's position as the sixth or seventh largest economy in the world. One wonders at what point does this wonderful government start to dismantle the financial services industry which makes a huge contribution to the economy but contributes not one iota to production?

The point is if you want a bigger economy, the last thing you are going to do is start making life too difficult for big players. You have to find some way to coexist with these capitalist enterprises, which means you have to recognise their interests in one way or another. Sure, you’ll try to curtail the egregious excesses but in reality you’ll let them get on with it in some regulatory framework or another.

We have regulatory frameworks at the moment for all sorts of things: Ofwat, Ofgen, Ofcom, Ofsted, Ofrail. Accepting that these ones are charades and that Corbyn will introduce big tough ones, the problem is that governments only last five years at most. Someone else can come in later and water them down. What has been the trajectory of the NHS since inception? What was the trajectory of the nationalised industries? All have started with great aspirations and fallen under the millstone of government funding decisions. Just a little bit of prescription charging to start with and then where do we go?

Here’s the rub, then. Even if Corbyn did manage to tame the forces of capital enough to raise the economic condition of the bottom 50 percent and similarly reduce differentials in Britain, he would not really be addressing the distribution of power. Sooner or later that power would reassert itself, particularly if there was an economic downturn. What would stop the rich choosing to take their money elsewhere or to simply sit on it? To stop the investment and the trickle down supply and whatever else? Desperate not to have them do that, there would be all sorts of concessions. What would stop the large corporations, foreign and UK, simply moving their activity overseas? Unless this remains a country friendly enough to business, business will prefer to be somewhere else.

Remember the event during the Major government called Black Friday? International currency speculators bet against the pound staying in the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (a precursor of the euro) and forced Britain out. Having a financial system which runs on credit and borrowing as Britain does, the government has to borrow money to make ends meet. We have seen the effects this circus can have on countries’ abilities to run themselves – Greece is a recent example. Unless your government is self-sufficient (as none is), sooner or later you’ll need to go to the money men and offer them a proposition that they like. Otherwise you will go without and their money will go to someone else.

Sad but true. The truth is that unless this whole approach is entirely rethought and scrapped for a better system, we’re onto a loser. How fortunate then that help is at hand: socialism. Abolishing money and the whole financial exchange mechanism means those who have large amounts of wealth and influence are suddenly deprived of all that power: they could make hats out of their bank notes for all the difference it would make. A system of production for use as determined democratically is the only way by which the working class can achieve emancipation. Jeremy Corbyn may look like a breath of fresh air but he’s as stale as the party he now leads.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2015/no-1336-december-2015/false-promise-jeremy-corbyn

In fear of a mass movement

So why is it that, on the one hand, the IMF is calling for Keynesian measures and, on the other, Jeremy Corbyn is being lambasted for proposing them? His policies - including a £10 an hour minimum wage, mass council house building and free education - have enthused hundreds of thousands of people. In reality, however, they consist of quite a limited Keynesian programme, which we support but argue should go further. The policies of Labour under Michael Foot went considerably beyond Jeremy Corbyn's today. The 1983 general election manifesto, for example, called for the "return to public ownership [of] the public assets and rights hived off by the Tories, with compensation of no more than that received when the assets were denationalised". Yet the 1983 manifesto was more limited than the Alternative Economic Strategy which the left of the Labour Party, including Jeremy Corbyn, supported at the time. Its programme included the public ownership of financial institutions.

Jeremy Corbyn's demands today include the renationalisation of the NHS and of the railways (gradually, as the existing franchises expire), but not any of the many other industries and services that have been privatised since the early 1980s. He does not call for the nationalisation of the banks. Meanwhile, his policy for a publicly-owned national investment bank which invests £500 billion in high-speed broadband, energy, transport and homes is exactly the kind of 'forceful action' that the IMF claims to want.

The point is that, when the IMF calls for action to prevent the growth of 'popular discontent', it means in order to prevent a movement which could threaten the capitalist system. The IMF understands, at least dimly, that the enormous growth of inequality, combined with the impoverishment of the majority, is preparing a revolt against the system it defends. The capitalist class fear that the movement in support of Corbyn could become just that. They are correct. It is an expression of the enormous accumulated anger felt by millions at their experience of capitalism over the last eight years. Wages in Britain have fallen by more than 10% - of the advanced capitalist countries, only Greece has seen a bigger fall - while public services and benefits have been butchered. A million people are now dependent on food banks.

The capitalist class are correct to fear that the upsurge that has thrust Jeremy Corbyn into the leadership of the Labour Party could be just the beginning. The surge in support for a Corbyn-led Labour government, particularly if it came to power against the background of renewed economic crisis, could push it to go far further than Jeremy's current modest programme, compelling it to take socialist measures that could threaten capitalist rule. It is not illogical, therefore, that the capitalist class are virulently opposed to even the most modest policies put forward by Jeremy Corbyn.

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Labour_Party_figures/Jeremy+Corbyn/23626/24-09-2016/the-corbynomics-challenge

There is no doubt that the so-called Islamic State group has imposed a reign of terror on millions in Iraq, Syria and Libya. All that ISIS stands for and does is contrary to everything those of us on these benches have struggled for over generations.


And there is no doubt that it poses a threat to our own people.

Finally, in the light of the record of western military interventions in recent years, including in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya does the Prime Minister accept that UK bombing of Syria could risk more of what President Obama called ‘unintended consequences’ – and that a lasting defeat of ISIS can only be secured by Syrians and forces from within the region?



- Jeremy Corbyn

The spectre of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya looms over this debate.

To oppose another reckless and half-baked intervention isn’t pacifism. It’s hard-headed common sense.

To resist Isil’s determination to draw the western powers back into the heart of the Middle East isn’t to turn our backs on allies.

It’s to refuse to play into the hands of Isil.

It’s wrong for us here in Westminster to see a problem, pass a motion and drop the bombs pretending we’re doing something to solve it.

That’s what we did in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Has terrorism increased or decreased as a result?

He has failed to make the case for another bombing campaign. All our efforts should instead go into bringing the Syrian civil war to an end.

After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, members thinking of voting for bombing should keep in mind how terrible the consequences can be.

Only a negotiated peace settlement can overcome the Isil threat in Syria. And that should be our overriding goal.



- Jeremy Corbyn

Like Tsipras and Syriza, Corbyn and Labor have drawn on Socialist rhetoric to appeal to an electorate unable to identify the underlying class issues but one familiar with short term socialist objectives. Corbyn has had no intention of following through a Socialist program. He and the Labor Party in collusion with the pseudo-left are reactionary, in the face of growing working class disillusionment. Both Syriza and Labor's deceptive language and their outright lies are planned to disorientate workers from class struggle and delay socialist consciousness.

Corbyn’s six months as UK Labour leader: A record of capitulation and betrayal

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/03/24/pers-m24.html

Britain: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outlines policies for “wealth creation”

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/08/24/corb-a24.html

A balance sheet of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/12/corb-d12.html

But there are important reasons, based on historical as well as very recent evidence, that we in the SWP don’t believe it would be right to join Labour. Firstly, the Labour Party as a project is geared towards winning elections in order to gain office and make changes through legislation. The pressure of electoralism isn’t simply about right wingers in the PLP sniping; it’s about success being measured only in votes and therefore anything that doesn’t appear to push the polling up is quickly dumped.

Another problem of focusing on parliament is the pressure to submit to the authority of the British state, with all its weird traditions (be it kneeling to the queen or the even more bizarre rituals that those such as Cameron engaged in at the British state’s training ground, Oxford University). Corbyn has already fallen foul of the press in this regard, for not singing the national anthem, not wearing a tie, and so on.

And this isn’t just pomp. A senior British army general effectively threatened a coup if Corbyn were to become prime minister and should seek to “downgrade Britain’s capabilities”, meaning if he should follow through on his promise to scrap Trident. And these aren’t mere ramblings — an actual plot was in place during Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s term in office in 1968.

There is a big difference between the PLP and the membership of the party, but the PLP is the leadership of the party and has disproportionate influence. This means that Corbyn is in the tricky position of being leader without the backing of most of the PLP and with backing from a majority of members and supporters. He is having to appeal to the members over the heads of the PLP, while also trying to keep a shadow cabinet together. Only a movement from outside parliament can give him the strength to withstand the pressure and stick to his principles.

It is unclear so far how much support he has from the other leading force within the Labour Party, the trade union bureaucracy. Paul Kenny of the GMB, for example, has taken a “wait and see” position (a sterling example of leadership!).

The dominance of the PLP, conditioned to compromise with the state, and the union bureaucracy, bound by its mission to compromise between bosses and workers, means that the Labour Party, no matter how many brilliant socialists are members of it, is not a vehicle for profound social change.

As radical as Corbyn sounds compared to the rest of the establishment, his policies are actually fairly mainstream social democratic ones. Abandon austerity, renationalise the railways, build genuinely affordable homes — these are all things which a majority of people would agree with, including many mainstream economists. Corbyn would like to achieve these things through parliament and without fundamentally disrupting the functioning of capitalism.

But is this possible? Unfortunately, we have the recent example of Greece to suggest that it isn’t. When Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza government were elected on 25 January of this year it was a victory for the movement against austerity. The government immediately came under immense pressure from the institutions of European and international capital — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund (known collectively as the “Troika”) — to accept violent austerity measures in order to pay back Greece’s debt to the Eurozone.

This eventually drove Tsipras to take it to the people in a referendum on whether to accept the forced austerity measures. Once again the movement on the streets of Greece gave people the confidence to vote Oxi (No) on 5 July. Yet just a week later Tsipras signed up to an even worse deal.

Movement

When this led to a crisis inside Syriza, with dozens of members breaking to the left, Tsipras once again called an election in late September. Syriza has won the election, but now on the basis of “responsibly” pushing through the demands of the Troika. Now the movement in the streets will need to oppose the government that initially represented them.

Fundamentally the problem was not that Tsipras was weak or right wing, or that challenging austerity wasn’t possible; it was that Syriza sought to take on austerity without challenging the institutions of European capitalism which were imposing it.

Our comrades in the Greek Socialist Workers Party (SEK) withstood the call over the last couple of years to join Syriza, arguing that the pressure of parliamentarism would distort even the leftest of reformists. Instead they have been part of the electoral coalition of the radical left, Antarsya, and rooted in the anti-austerity and anti-racist movements — both of which are much more developed and facing greater challenges than here in Britain.

They have maintained their political and organisational independence, while constantly working with others to fight austerity and the growth of the far right. This has meant that rather than being elated at Syriza’s victory and expecting them to deliver change for them, and then being demoralised and deflated at their capitulation, SEK comrades have fought consistently to strengthen the workers’ movement and show that another way is possible.

This is important, because revolutionaries should never be commentators. We don’t write these articles or hold meetings in order to draw clever sketches of parliamentary manoeuvrings. Neither do we simply cheerlead nice leaders, or wait, arms folded, for the “inevitable sell-out” and then say I told you so. We act.

Jeremy Corbyn was elected because tens of thousands of people saw in him an expression of something different — the idea that there is an alternative to neoliberalism and inequality. We can’t — and they can’t — wait for the next general election to make that happen.

The situation in Britain is nowhere near the level of crisis experienced in Greece, but the same forces are at play: the attempt to make workers and the poor pay for the economic crisis; the attempt to scapegoat migrants or refugees or Muslims for our problems. The job for socialists is to build the broadest and deepest possible united fronts over these symptoms of the system’s sickness — involving socialists, whether in or out of Labour, trade unionists, young activists, and so on.

http://socialistreview.org.uk/406/so-why-not-join-labour-party

Corbyn’s capitulation to the right wing and the lessons of the UK Labour leadership contest
29 September 2016

On Saturday, September 24, Jeremy Corbyn secured a massive popular victory in his re-election as UK Labour Party leader. His triumph was secured in the face of a vicious witch-hunt by Labour’s right wing, which included denying a vote to more than 180,000 registered members and supporters. He won thanks to the political mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of workers and young people seeking to take on the political heirs of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and support Corbyn’s declared aim of committing Labour to oppose austerity, militarism and war.

Yet just four days later, Corbyn’s victory might well have never happened. He gave the closing speech Wednesday to a Labour Party conference at which his opponents carried the day on every single issue of substance.

Most telling of all, Corbyn’s shadow defence secretary, Clive Lewis, not only publicly endorsed the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system, but pledged that a Labour government would “fulfil our international commitments, including those under Article 5” of NATO’s constitution. This commits the UK to come to the aid of any NATO member facing attack. Given the escalating US-led provocations against Russia, involving Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic states, this is a commitment to wage nuclear war against a nuclear power.

This left Deputy Leader Tom Watson to crow that Labour was “reaffirming our commitment to NATO—a socialist construct, as our defence spokesman, Clive Lewis, reminded us yesterday—and trying to persuade our EU colleagues to do the same.”

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell outlined an economic policy based on protectionist measures to ensure that British industry is globally competitive. Watson praised him for “deftly” explaining that “Labour is a market socialist party.”

He added, “I don’t know why we’ve been focusing on what was wrong with the Blair and Brown governments for the last six years... Capitalism, comrades, is not the enemy.”
The hours leading up to Corbyn’s final appearance were monopolised by a former leadership challenger, Andy Burnham, demanding that the party oppose the free movement of labour in Europe and recognise that working people “have a problem” with “unlimited, unfunded, unskilled migration which damages their own living standards.”

After such a display, any further protest by Corbyn, any refusal to endorse this or that measure, only proves him to be a left-talking figurehead for a right-wing party of militarism and war.

Corbyn made clear how consciously he seeks to utilise left rhetoric to conceal the real character of the Labour Party and prevent the working class breaking from it. His speech was once again peppered with calls for unity with the right wing in a rebuilt “Labour family.”

But more revealing still was how he detailed the political concerns that animate him. The support he has won, he explained, was not “unique to Britain.” He stressed that “across Europe, North America and elsewhere, people are fed up with a so-called free market system that has produced grotesque inequality, stagnating living standards for the many, calamitous foreign wars without end, and a political stitch-up which leaves the vast majority of people shut out of power.”

He continued: “Since the crash of 2008, the demand for an alternative and an end to counter-productive austerity has led to the rise of new movements and parties in one country after another.”

What he had accomplished was to make sure that “In Britain, it’s happened in the heart of traditional politics, in the Labour party, which is something we should be extremely proud of.”

By preventing a break from Labour at a time of such acute crisis for British and world capitalism, Corbyn could boast that “We meet this year as the largest political party in Western Europe, with over half a million members.”

Making a direct appeal to his opponents, he said, “Some may see that as a threat. But I see it as a vast democratic resource.”

There is nothing democratic in any of this. Corbyn is steering the aspirations to genuine democracy and an end to austerity and war felt by millions of workers behind a party that he admits views its new members as a “threat,” and does so because it is a party of the state and the financial oligarchy.

Moreover, Corbyn wants to channel this desire for change behind policies that are wholly geared to the interests of British capitalism. His appeal was framed around calls for state investment to end the situation where “Britain lags behind France, Germany, the US and China” in research and development and productivity. “A Labour government will never accept second-best for Britain,” he declared. “We will also be pressing our own Brexit agenda,” he added “including the freedom to intervene in our own industries...”

Corbyn’s defence of the Labour Party’s grip on the working class and his continued opposition to any struggle against the right wing is a vindication of the political stand taken by the Socialist Equality Party.

From the very beginning of his first leadership bid last year and throughout the attempts to remove him, the SEP opposed all efforts by groups such as the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party to portray support for Corbyn as a means of transforming the Labour Party. To cite just three examples, we wrote:

“However, those looking to a Corbyn victory to provide an alternative to austerity will be cruelly disappointed. The real measure of his campaign must be judged not on stated intentions, but on the essential criterion of the class interests served by the party and the programme he defends. Labour is a right-wing bourgeois party. It is complicit in all the crimes of British imperialism and has functioned as the principal political opponent of socialism for more than a century...” What does the “Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon” represent? (August 15, 2015)

“No one can seriously propose that this party—which, in its politics and organisation and the social composition of its apparatus, is Tory in all but name—can be transformed into an instrument of working class struggle. The British Labour Party did not begin with Blair. It is a bourgeois party of more than a century’s standing and a tried and tested instrument of British imperialism and its state machine. Whether led by Clement Attlee, James Callaghan or Jeremy Corbyn, its essence remains unaltered.” The political issues posed by Corbyn’s election as UK Labour Party leader (September 14, 2015)

“Those workers and young people who have rallied behind Corbyn in the hope that they could ‘recapture’ Labour from the Blairites have been misled. It is the upper-middle class clique that constitutes the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party]—and which is accountable only to the military-intelligence state apparatus—that determines Labour’s class character, not its members.” Lessons of Labour’s leadership contest (September 24, 2016)

Our appraisal was not rooted in an estimation of Corbyn’s subjective intentions. We based ourselves on an historically-derived understanding of the nature of the Labour Party and of a contemporary world situation in which the demands of the ruling elite for ever greater exploitation of the working class and the pursuit of a military offensive to secure control of the world’s resources mean there can be no return to a reformist past.

The crucial task placed before workers and young people is to secure their political independence from all those who seek to subordinate them to the profit system, which is the root cause of austerity and war. We urge all readers of the World Socialist Web Site to study the record of the SEP and take the decision to join us in building the new and genuinely socialist and internationalist leadership that is urgently required.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/09/29/pers-s29.html

What does the “Jeremy Corbyn phenomenon” represent?
By Chris Marsden and Julie Hyland
15 August 2015

British political life is dominated by speculation over whether Jeremy Corbyn will win leadership of the Labour Party.

A new “one member, one vote” system for the leadership contest was meant to help consolidate the party’s right-wing course, based on the assumption that the electorate—or, more properly, the narrow social layer to which all the parties pitch their rotten wares—shared the party’s concerns and prejudices. This appears to have backfired.

The decision to open up the contest to anyone defining himself as a Labour supporter on payment of just £3, and to allow individual affiliation through the trade unions, has drawn sufficient numbers supporting Corbyn’s anti-austerity appeal to potentially tip the balance in his favour.

For the media and most Labour Party parliamentarians, this prospect is regarded as a threat to the neo-liberal agenda pursued by Labour and the entire ruling elite for more than three decades. On what passes for the “left,” it has been hailed as opening the way for Labour’s renewal as a party for working people. It is, in fact, neither.

What is alternatively described as “Corbyn-mania” and the “Corbyn phenomenon” certainly reflects broader leftward sentiment. The hysterical attacks on the veteran Labour “left” MP as a relic of a failed socialist utopia has little traction, especially among young people who know only too well the failures of capitalism and are looking for an alternative.

The more Corbyn comes under attack, the more attractive he becomes to working people. Two interventions by the former Labour prime minister Tony Blair warning against Corbyn’s victory only prompted a surge in applications to back Corbyn. Registered and affiliated supporters now outweigh Labour Party members, though Corbyn records majority support in all three categories.

Corbyn is also helped by comparison with the self-serving scoundrels he is contesting—Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. He has a record of voting against the worst excesses of New Labour, has called for Blair to face war crime charges for aiding the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, and was the only leadership candidate to vote against the Conservative government’s latest package of welfare cuts.

However, those looking to a Corbyn victory to provide an alternative to austerity will be cruelly disappointed. The real measure of his campaign must be judged not on stated intentions, but on the essential criterion of the class interests served by the party and the programme he defends.

Labour is a right-wing bourgeois party. It is complicit in all the crimes of British imperialism and has functioned as the principal political opponent of socialism for more than a century. Yet Corbyn has consistently defended Labour’s political authority as an MP for 33 years—the period in which the party resolutely cut any remaining connection to the working class. Nothing—not the repudiation of social ownership, illegal wars, or the party’s obsequious kowtowing before the financial oligarchy—has disturbed his position on Labour’s backbenches.

This is not a matter of misplaced loyalty. A longstanding political opponent of independent working class struggle, Corbyn insists that the only legitimate form of opposition is one that is subordinate to Labour and the trade unions and directed through Parliament.

Even now, in the face of Blairite threats to stop the election and split the party, Corbyn decries any struggle against the right wing as “personality politics” and has offered his opponents positions in any shadow cabinet he forms.

An attempt to save Labour

Corbyn’s decision to enter the leadership race at the last moment was taken in the aftermath of the party’s debacle in the May general election. The party’s inability to make any headway against a hated and reviled Conservative government, after five years of savage austerity, revealed that the alienation of workers and youth from Labour had reached a tipping point. Faced with the danger of Labour collapsing like the social democratic PASOK in Greece, Corbyn and his Socialist Campaign Group of just nine MPs were finally roused to act.

“Disillusionment” with Labour’s acceptance of the Tory austerity plans had meant many people “didn’t vote in the election,” he has said, arguing that this can be changed by Labour “returning to our principles.”

Corbyn has received backing from many Constituency Labour Parties. But his most significant support is from the trade union bureaucracy. Unite—Britain’s largest union—was the first of several to ditch its expected support for Andy Burnham in favour of Corbyn.

To some, the unions’ support for a “left” candidate may appear contradictory. The trade unions have presided over the greatest decline in workers’ wages since the 1870s. Social inequality has skyrocketed, especially after the 2008 economic crash, and as successive Labour and Conservative-led coalition governments imposed wage cuts and freezes, privatisations and massive spending cuts. The unions have responded by systematically demobilising opposition, betraying one struggle after another.

But the union bureaucracy has seen the writing on the wall. Aware that broad layers now see Labour as a Tory Party Mark Two, they fear the political consequences. To this end, the union bureaucracy is calling for a slight reflation of the economy through a form of quantitative easing, such as that carried out in the United States by the Obama administration, as an alternative to any measures to redistribute wealth or encroach on the profit drive of the major corporations.

Corbyn has secured the services of Richard Murphy, an economic adviser to the Trades Union Congress and a long-time personal associate. Murphy has called for a “people’s quantitative easing,” presided over by the Bank of England, which would fund a national investment bank to make money available for capital projects such as housing, road building and green technologies. Money for this project is supposed to come solely through a more efficient collection of corporate taxes. When asked about the prospect of raising taxes on business, Corbyn meekly suggested that the present rate of 20 percent should not be abandoned.

Murphy stressed to the Financial Times, “People’s QE is necessary only if [Conservative Chancellor] George Osborne’s plan comes off the rails pretty fast.” He cited 2020 as a possible date for its implementation, arguing that “China’s currency devaluation” or “something else” is “likely to export deflation, to prick the housing bubble and to prick the investment bubble.”

Notwithstanding the use of the prefix “People’s,” this is not a policy to address the desperate plight of millions of workers and youth. It is a back-up plan to try and safeguard British capitalism in the event of a new global economic catastrophe.

In this same spirit, Corbyn has reassured the media that he has no intention of reinstating the reformist Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution committing the party to social ownership of the commanding heights of the economy. A spokesperson said he did not want “a big ‘moment’ such as that… He says we need some forms of public ownership in some cases, such as rail… His leadership would be the opposite of top-down changes.”

Corbyn describes his economic plan as the sort of “not particularly radical” policies that Germany “has been doing for a very long time.”

His embrace of the “German model” is another key reason the unions are lining up behind Corbyn. It is one based on a corporatist alliance between government, business and the trade unions to lower the wages and conditions of the working class, as exemplified in Berlin’s leading role in imposing savage austerity on Greece. With the Conservatives proposing yet another raft of anti-union measures, leaders such as Len McCluskey of Unite fear their lucrative positions as industrial policemen are under threat and are looking to Corbyn to guarantee their continuation.

Corbyn, Syriza and the pseudo-left

The most telling refutation of illusions in Corbyn is to be found in an examination of the political tendencies he has said he wishes to emulate—Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.

Corbyn has cited them favourably as models for an anti-austerity movement in the UK, but one to be implemented through the Labour Party. “I have been in Greece, I have been in Spain,” he told the Daily Mirror. “It’s very interesting that social democratic parties that accept the austerity agenda and end up implementing it end up losing a lot of members and a lot of support. I think we have a chance to do something different here.”

Corbyn’s remarks were made little more than two weeks after Syriza repudiated the landslide “no” vote against austerity in the July 5 referendum and agreed to cuts far more onerous than those implemented by the previous right-wing coalition.

Events in Greece must serve as a warning to working people throughout Europe. Syriza is a bourgeois party, led by ex-Stalinists and various pseudo-left tendencies, which has used populist rhetoric to impose the diktats of the Greek and European bourgeoisie. Podemos is, if anything, to the right of Syriza.

The main instrument in covering for Syzia in Greece and encouraging illusions in the supposedly socialist character of the Corbyn campaign is Britain’s pseudo-left.

One of the main achievements of Corbyn’s long political career is the extensive network of relations he has built up with the Green Party, the Communist Party of Britain (for whom he writes regularly in the Morning Star ) and the pseudo-left groups, through such umbrella organisations as the Coalition of Resistance. The purpose of all these organisations has been to channel opposition back behind the Labour Party and the trade unions.

Unabashed by having acted as cheerleaders and apologists for Syriza, they now offer the same service to Corbyn and a Labour Party that they had, at least rhetorically, insisted should be replaced by a new “workers party.”

Their rhetoric has been amended to leave open the possibility of Corbyn either reinvigorating the Labour Party or, should he be expelled, acting as the focus for a “British Syriza.”
One such organization, Left Unity, was founded in 2013, supposedly to provide a left alternative to Labour. It is the brainchild of Alan Thornett, the leader of Socialist Resistance, which is affiliated to the Pabloite United Secretariat. It is backed by film director Ken Loach.

It has taken less than a month for the organisation to abandon its pose of opposition to Labour. Corbyn’s candidacy provided the occasion for Left Unity to urge its members to join the party, with Loach among those who signed up only to be excluded by Labour’s vetting committee.

On August 8, Left Unity’s executive committee passed a motion acknowledging that “some of its members will view joining the Labour Party as the avenue for supporting this new [anti-austerity] movement.” It duly recognised “a pressing need” for work “inside and outside the Labour Party” and created a new “friends of Left Unity” category to this end.
They will join a smaller entryist faction grouped around the web site Socialist Action. One of Corbyn’s chief advisors is Simon Fletcher, who previously worked as one of four Socialist Action members playing a key role in then-London Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone’s administration. After Livingstone lost the 2008 mayoral election, Fletcher received a handsome payoff before moving on to act as trade union adviser to ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband. He is now Corbyn’s campaign director.

Then there is the Socialist Party (SP), formerly known as the Militant tendency, which operated for 35 years as a faction in the Labour Party, claiming that Labour could be transformed into a vehicle for socialism. Given Labour’s right-wing evolution, it was forced to abandon entry work in the early 1990s. After Blair’s junking of Clause IV, it called for a new party based on the trade unions.

The July 27 edition of the Socialist now declares that if Corbyn “is victorious, it would be a real step forward and, in effect, the formation of a new party.” Should the right wing respond with expulsions or a split, the Socialist Party promises to acknowledge him as the de facto “anti-austerity leader” of a new party made up of “all those who have voted for him,” along with “the many trade unions—including non-affiliated unions… which support his programme.”

The only union not affiliated to the Labour Party that has backed Corbyn is the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT). Under the leadership of the now deceased Stalinist Bob Crow, the RMT joined with the SP to form the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition electoral front. The SP is, in effect, declaring that it will continue to work under the discipline of the RMT in its efforts to restore Labour’s political credibility.

Above all else, what has been proved by the bitter experience made by Greek workers with Syriza is that it is impossible to defend anything—jobs, wages, essential social services—without breaking the stranglehold of the financial oligarchy over economic and political life. It demands the independent political mobilisation of the working class against the major corporations and banks and their government—which Greece has also proved will stop at nothing to safeguard their interests, even if this means destroying a country and plunging millions into abject poverty.

Corbyn offers no such struggle. Should he win the leadership of the Labour Party, or become the focus of a political regroupment of the pseudo-left, he will betray all of those who voted for him just as surely as did Alexis Tsipras of Syriza.

The issue placed before the working class is not a return to the Labour Party or the fashioning of a new pro-capitalist formation that employs socialism purely as a rhetorical trick, but the building of a genuine socialist and internationalist party of the working class.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/15/corb-a15.html

The most telling refutation of illusions in Corbyn is to be found in an examination of the political tendencies he has said he wishes to emulate—Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.

Absolute kiss-of-death. How any "labor" "leader" could be so tone-deaf as to openly advocate emulation of SYRIZA is ridiculous. And PODEMOS is even worse (if that is possible). On the twit you got all sorts of lefties (of various stripe) touting Corbyn, in one way or another, but it all sounds a bit hollow - this is why.

Absolute kiss-of-death. How any "labor" "leader" could be so tone-deaf as to openly advocate emulation of SYRIZA is ridiculous. And PODEMOS is even worse (if that is possible). On the twit you got all sorts of lefties (of various stripe) touting Corbyn, in one way or another, but it all sounds a bit hollow - this is why.

It serves as a flag for reformism. Speaking of which, check out this dribble from Houston: http://houstoncommunistparty.com/movement-for-peoples-democracy/, could have been penned by 'Conditional Leftists for Bernie'.

Perhaps their editor's chair revolves on a factional basis...

It serves as a flag for reformism. Speaking of which, check out this dribble from Houston: http://houstoncommunistparty.com/movement-for-peoples-democracy/, could have been penned by 'Conditional Leftists for Bernie'.

Perhaps their editor's chair revolves on a factional basis...

Godamighty! That crap is barely "leftist" at all. When they use bourgeois "trigger" phrases like "of the people, by the people, for the people". Then they attack "Wall Street bankers" (they almost wrote "banksters", I would bet money). Aren't the bankers "people", too? If you remove class from all of your litany, then you have nothing, at all, except bourgeois talking points. They can't choose sides, because for them there ain't any.