As Corbyn’s leadership comes to an end, thought I’d repost a couple of articles about perspectives/focuses for class-struggle socialists in the Labour Party, one from 2017 and one from 2015, which I think still stand up.
I don’t want to give the impression of upholding an “invariant doctrine”, impervious to change depending on a changing context, because obviously a *lot* is different now. But I’d stand by these takes, and at the very least it’s worth reviewing the assessments.
The first, from 2017, is a short piece about the need to make a revival in industrial struggle and a reinvigoration of dissident rank-and-file agitation in unions a key focus for any left surge in Labour: theclarionmag.org/2017/06/24/par…
How make residual energy there is in “post-Corbyn Corbynism” to turn in that direction is a matter for debate, but without a revival in workers’ action and a reinvigoration of the industrial labour movement, any socialist political project is doomed, basically.
The second, from 2015, written during the leadership election, is a response to articles by @michael_chessum and @MrBenSellers, debating whether socialists should leave the Labour Party. It covers some similar ground to the 2017 piece. workersliberty.org/node/25315
I’m not reposting it to imply the terrain of 2020 is the same as the terrain of 2015, but as there is now some renewed debate about the extent to which the Labour Party can be a “vehicle for socialism” (spoiler: it can’t, and never could be, in any straightforward sense)...
...it seems worth chewing over some of the issues.
