Thread by @drgerke1

What is/was Corbynism? A thread:

Firstly, it was only ever called 'Corbynism' because Corbyn's leadership made possible the hegemony of a left-intellectual coalition within Labour. Corbyn's own personal belief system, which is not very systematic, was only one component of that.

7 Components of Corbynism:

1. Post-war soc. dem. (anti-austerity)
2. Pre-war soc. dem. (transitionalism)
3. Marxism (LTV + class war)
4. Methodism + utop. socialism (moralism, Bennism)
5. Movementism (green, FALC etc)
6. Anti-imperialism (non-alignment)
7. Social liberalism

This huge range of influences produced a coalition from SCG veterans and Morning Star people to Angela Rayner i.e. from the radical and Marxist left to the soft left. Eventually, even Labour centrists like Keir Starmer were willing to work with this coalition to achieve power.

The only part of the Lab coalition which was unwelcome within Corbynism was neoliberalism - the old Labour right + Blairism. Economic liberalism and soc. conservatism were not compatible with *any* element within the Corbynite alloy, though they remained a minor force within Lab.

The price of having such a broad intellectual coalition was a lack of intellectual cohesion. Intellectual cohesion is not actually required to win elections, because it can be covered over with rhetorical and political cohesion. This was achieved in 2017, but not in 2019.

In any event, a lack of intellectual cohesion is a problem. It makes facing up to contingent, one-off problems like Brexit difficult or impossible. And it makes it hard to confront even textbook enemies, like Boris Johnson, in a consistent manner. Strategy and tactics suffer.

Of the 7 components of Corbynism listed upthread, three of them were foregrounded: post-war social democracy, Bennite/utopian moralism and social liberalism. The Marxist, pre-war social democratic and anti-imperialist elements were in the background. Movementism was in-between.

Basically, the reformist elements of the coalition were privileged over the revolutionary. This was inevitable - Labour is an electoral machine. But the continued presence of the revolutionary elements, plus right-reformist agitation from the Lab right, caused massive tensions.

Moving forward, the Labour Party risks losing its most radical elements entirely, and perhaps even losing the stronger elements of its left-reformism. A Keir Starmer leadership would render Labour's Marxist, transitionalist, anti-imperialist and movementist strains irrelevant.

The radical left faces an enormous challenge in this situation. The temptation is to simply reverse the polarity of peak Corbynism and ‘foreground the background’ i.e. move in more stridently Marxist, anti-imperialist, transitionalist + movementist direction. This won't work.

Labour is, in fact, a reformist party. All the top Corbynites, including Marxists like McDonnell, understood this and took ‘radical reformism’ to be the immediate goal of a left-Labour government. But they were a) unlucky (Brexit) and b) lacking some vital ‘reformist’ tools.

If you’re going to be a ‘radical reformist’ party that also gives space to revolutionary currents to grow (the goal, arguably, of Corbynism), you need to be offering a complete, hegemonic reformist package. But the British radical left has three major blind spots on this.

The first is internal to Labour: an aversion to substantive party democracy and the constant, demoralising slippage into centralist and bureaucratic power-hoarding. The failure to push for open selection may have been fatal. Solid walls persist between the grassroots and the PLP.

The second concerns electoral reform. The point of being a democratic socialist party is that you're for democracy, too. The single most effective way to win power in Tory-dominated Britain, PR, has remained beyond a left-wing Labour Party's policy scope. Tory majorities await.

The third is constitutional reform, or indeed any position on constitutional issues beyond knee-jerk unionism. Scotland and Wales have been mentioned exactly once during the leadership campaign so far, by Clive Lewis. English regional devolution remains a twinkle in Labour's eye.

To reiterate: all three of these measures are 'reformist'. They don't upend the system, but they make it more equal and more democratic. They are supported within parts of the left but also beyond it. They should all have been components of Corbynism from the start.

All is not lost. Clive Lewis's pitch for the leadership appears to grasp the need for a truly hegemonic reformist platform as the basis for winning power and achieving more radical aims in the future. But these ideas are victims of ideological lag, and the clock is ticking.

In the event of an RLB victory, it will be down to Labour members to vigorously push for a full reformist programme, and to make sure the revolutionary elements of Labour's programme aren't forgotten about. in the event of a Starmer victory, the reformist part may be our horizon.

Personally, I would also recommend toning down the Bennite moralism and foregrounding the moral dimension of Marx's labour theory of value. Inequality and poverty should be treated as the results of *theft*, not greed. Outrage is a more galvanising emotion than guilt.

ENDS

@labourlewis @Neal_Compass @michaeljswalker @openDemocracyUK @siennamarla

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