UK - Election: Vote Corbyn

Not sure if you are trolling or flamebaiting or whatever but assuming you are serious.
We are not 'the left'.
Voting Corbyn is not 'the only chance', 'the sane choice'.
This is the reheated lesser-evil argument which even would have been made against forming a Labour party when the workers chose between Tories and Liberals.
Supporting the lesser of two evils always returns evil and hampers long-term organising. It is not a stepping stone, a halfway house and delays and postpones real revolution. It runs contrary to working class interest.
There is an alternative and it doesn't involve voting for Hillary or Corbyn so not every election is crucial to keep the more reactionary candidate out..

Firstly, where I live, Labour will win regardless of whether I vote or not. It's a safe Labour seat. We don't have proportional representation so it's not 'every vote matters'.

Secondly, other safe Labour seats are those in Southwark and Lambeth, where Labour have been decimating social housing. Are you calling on Southwark and Lambeth social housing tenants to vote for the people who're trying (and largely succeeding) to kick them out of their homes?

Lastly, not voting Corbyn isn't about fighting the revolution that isn't here instead. It's about spending our campaigning time building organisations that can fight to improve our conditions in the here and now: whether that means unions or extra-union workers' networks, tenants' groups, or local groups to stop closure/cuts to services. And fighting means fighting whoever it is that's attacking us, including Labour councils.

What you're proposing is all of that is subordinated to getting Labour elected in four years' time: what do we do until then? Let Southwark and Lambeth councils sell off all the social housing stock? And what if Corbyn then doesn't come good on his promises? Four years of energy and activism sunk while conditions deteriorate.

Oh well, there's always 2025..

Nobody is proposing inactivity. Nobody has to support or vote for Corbyn to defend the working class. The 'alternatives' have been organising for a very very long time. For at least a hundred and fifty years. Are you proposing what has gone before should be jettisoned?

Where we are now is not unprecedented in the modern era!!!

At the start of the twentieth century, supporters of the Liberals might have called for support on the basis they were the lesser evil compared to the Tory party rather than supporting the new Labour party. In case this isn't clear, lesser-evilism was an argument against the Labour party back then and had it been followed would have kept Labour out of power for longer.

There was no welfare state, there were economic recessions, wars and people dying throughout the modern era (including PMs worse than Thatcher) and people still rejected the lesser-evilism argument so they could build the alternatives they wanted and needed today. There was racism, bigotry and low levels of class consciousness.

The Labour party is anti-working class. They only keep getting elected because people vote for them. If you stop voting for them at the next election they will be less effective at the following one. You have the next generation in 2025 and the generation after that in 2030 to answer to if you keep returning Labour oppositions or Labour governments whether with slim majorities or by landslide. Part of the revolution is and will be keeping Labour out of power. You don't do that in the future by electing them now.

If alternatives aren't on the agenda, you should be putting them on, not somebody else, you!

If you are willing to trade ameliorated conditions under austerity to install the Labour party as the ruling class, then the working class will be accustomed to being ruled, and the Labour party will always be prepared to make (or promise) trade-offs or buyouts with some sections in order to rule over you and your class. Alternatives will never be built by those arguing for the lesser-evil.

If you vote for evil and get evil then you are responsible.

No, people were unnecessarily dying from poverty at worse rates throughout the twentieth century which was a post-industrial advanced society in the modern era. Inactivity is not what we have, revolutionaries have been organising for over a hundred and fifty years.

What will stop Tory cuts will be getting rid of the Tories and their cuts, but ruling classes have always cut living conditions of the working-class as they see fit. You won't change this by installing a new ruling class.

Please don't claim to be speaking in practical terms as if it is an argument for Corbyn, I am speaking in practical terms, so was Marx, Engels and William Morris.

We have had over eleven Labour governments who have done nothing for revolution. Revolution is what will liberate the working class not amelioration. Don't delay it by helping another Labour government govern no matter how decent the leader happens to be (and yes Corbyn seems more decent than most). You will lose fellow workers trust and credibility as a revolutionary worker.

If you want a revolution and including Labour out of power, when are you going to start and stay true to keeping Labour out?

Which party do you recommend workers vote for in Northern Ireland and Scotland?

Is it still Corbyn and the Labour Party?

Northern Ireland if i recollect, doesn't have a UK Labour Party so that is out.
Scotland - Labour has not got a snowball in hells chance of beating the SNP who have adopted most of the Labour Party's positions so a Labour vote is a wasted vote.

So your proposal for the Labour vote is much the same as for the EU referendum...only England and Wales count politically.

Those who wait for others die waiting. A Corbyn led government is unlikely, but if it were to come about, then bar a few scraps thrown to the fools who voted for it, nothing of substance will have changed. The problem is capitalism, whichever government tries to run it - because it runs them!

As I have said, there will not be a revolution. This isn't going to happen.

So, this has already been covered, but we can accomplish a lot short of revolution and the ways we accomplish that (direct action, self-organization, industrial action, campaigning) don't change regardless of who's in power.

I sort of see why the extremely low level of class power and class confidence leads to a sense of defeatism that makes voting look attractive. But a belief in electoralism (either proactive or lesser of two evils) reinforces that passivity.

Anyway, go ahead and vote, I don't really care and I don't even usually bother to have the argument, but please spare us the lecturing.

Just join The Pirate Party and all your dreams will come true and capitalism will magically become something really nice;

The party that could be on the cusp of winning Iceland’s national elections on Saturday didn’t exist four years ago.

Its members are a collection of anarchists, hackers, libertarians and web geeks. It sets policy through online polls – and thinks the government should do the same. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/iceland-braces-for-a-digital-revolution-as-pirate-party-prepares-power-election-2016-a7377456.html

wishface:

You're really not going to get a lot of support for voting Labour here, although to be quite honest I don't really care if you do or don't vote. I think people who fetishize not voting to be as dreary and preachy and irrelevant to my life as those bang on about how important voting is.

However, I think you might be investing a wee bit too much hope in this one man. Even if Labour wins the next election (unlikely) Corbyn doesn't have the support of the PLP, it's highly unlikely that all the MPs involved in the coup will be de-selected, so they'll all be sitting behind him, not co-operating. That's not much of a recipe for Corbyn ushering any serious changes.

If I was really, really cynical* I would suspect that the Labour right might be playing the long game and actually hoping not to win the next election, so they can get rid of Corbyn et al return to the status quo.

I understand the desperation of UK folks, from what I see things have deteriorated to something abysmal and the Tory party are a very special kind of pond scum, but investing so much hope in one man is destined to lead only to disappointment, not to mention a huge waste of time. How much energy was spent on Momentum this summer, energy which could have been spent more productively elsewhere?

*Actually, I'm really, really, really, really cynical.

Also, I'm pretty sure you're wasting your time trying to talk us into voting for Labour. The potential anarchist voting power is probably not even large enough to swing a parish council vote, let alone a general election :P

replace syriza with corbyn

wishface

So, for the fourth time of asking, what is the alternative, other than putting the Tories back into power for five more years of misery. People are suffering and I don't see much compassion here at all.

http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2006-07/1240

Never mind, the cost of running the NHS under Corbyn is guaranteed to come down if elected

The homeopathy-believing/trusting Labour Party leader just needs to change all the Big Pharma pills and potions to water, as long as they don't buy them from Boots the Chemist

http://www.boots.com/en/Pharmacy-Health/Health-shop/Alternative-therapy/Homeopathy/

The alternative is simple...keep telling your family, your friends, your fellow workers, they are f##ing delusional to think there will be a permanent amelioration of their circumstances from a Labour Govt. eventually the message might sink in when they witness the actions of Labour.

Introduces the national health service, as you say - and then the first to introduce charges to this free health service ...

Our situation is different so there isn't the likelihood of Corbyn being humbled

Lol "wishface" really is a wonderfully accurate moniker.

wishface

The comparison to life around 100 years ago wasn't the comparison I was making, and I have explained this.

Yes, to stop the cuts we need to get rid of the people making them. So again what is your solution for this?

You have not spoken in practical terms, you have made numerous appeals to ideology.

You misrepresent my argument once more: i did not say that Labour had or will ever do anything for the revolution. That is not my argument. However reolutionary or not, it was Bevan and a Labour government that brought in the NHS. While it might not be the most egalitarian system ever, it remains a consistently better healthcare service than the american model advocated and being brought into place by the current government. If you wish to argue that was a capitalist sop you will have to provide evidence for this also, as I do not believe Bevan thought that was what he was doing.

When am I going to start? When the bleeding has stopped. Currently our society is an open wound. You don't heal it before stopping the flow of blood.

You can start by explaining why political and especially class consciousness, and membership of organised labour unions has probably gone down over the last hundred years. Maybe something to do with, among other reactionary arguments, what is commonly known as the lesser of two evils argument. Sure you are happy to subjugate history and the future to the now, where you are urging us vote for Corbyn. Forget about elections gone by and elections to come after the next one. Living standards can be better under lesser evils but we want the best and the way to get that is refusing to accept anyone to rule over us.

Well, that's us told. Maybe I'll go and find a Momentum forum and tell them they're all wrong. Or maybe I'll just see what's on telly instead.

You seem to be under a misapprehension that anyone on these boards thinks a "revolution" in the teenage rebel sense is likely and/or desirable?

I realise it must be quite hard, coming at it from fantasy Corbyn-island where most of your critics are to your right, to imagine that people on your left might not see your sub-Bevanite schtick as particularly impressive while also not being a Daily Mail pastiche of the screeching ideologue, but you do yourself no favours by coming on boards with (clearly) fuck all understanding of the creed you're trying to debate against with the big patronising I Am.

Ok, so before I carry on I'm going to ask that you stop replying with 'what's your alternative? revolution?' and 'can single mothers eat Bakunin?'. I haven't once mentioned revolution or Bakunin (and I don't think anyone else has either) and it's just plain disrespectful to expect me to write lengthy replies only for you to discount them out of hand based on your own prejudices about things I haven't said. I write this now assuming you'll knock that on the head and engage with what is actually said rather than what's easier to answer..

wishface

You can spend your time building organisations and doing all those things. Voting takes ten minutes of your time so really there is no logistical problem.

Ok but as we already covered, I live in a Labour safe seat and, I'd hazard to guess, so do most far-left revolutionary types.. just look at the local groups of most anarchist/socialist organisations: they're mostly based around big urban centres i.e. where the Labour vote is strong.

If you want to make a difference to Corbyn's electoral chances, it's not enough that the relatively few revolutionaries living in Labour strongholds vote Labour; it means campaigning where Labour are weak. That's more than just ten minutes: that's hundreds, maybe thousands, of activist hours being bussed out to fucking Wealden or wherever, knocking on doors, talking to people. Hours which could be spent campaigning to defend social housing, against pay cuts etc rather than trying to get politicians elected in four years time (hoping not just that they'll stick to their promises but reverse all the shit we've put up with in the meantime)..

wishface

However fighting those councils isn't really working. There have been a few victories - the Focus E15 mums for instance, and I commend and support those entirely.

wishface

I fully support the efforts of those undertaking such actions. DPAC for example are nothing short of heroes. But they are alone and not enough. That's the tragedy and the reality of it all.

So, yeah, I know we're mostly losing. But that's precisely because people aren't active. You can't look at general inactivity and conclude that taking action doesn't work. And while Corbyn may have rejuvenated some CLPs you'll have to admit that many thought they could change the direction of UK politics by paying £3 and voting him as Labour leader.

Compare that to the situation in the 1970s where one in six workers was a union rep; criticisms of unions aside, that's an entirely different form of politics (and one we've largely lost, some industries don't even have one in six in a union!). It involves active participation, a willingness to disrupt institutions (their workplace, letting agents or whatever) and an ability to take the shit that comes with it from bosses, landlords, the law etc.

So the decision really is between trying to build a movement that fights now or one that tries to get someone elected in four years in the hope they really do improve our lives. It very much isn't about some distant revolution.

wishface

Our situation is different so there isn't the likelihood of Corbyn being humbled by the troika as Sypras (sp?) was. We are a sovereign currency.

So, people like to say this but I honestly don't get why this is true for the following reasons:

1) Pressures within the Labour Party: fact is, Corbyn could literally stop cuts in loads of Labour councils and really take the fight to the Tories tomorrow just by telling his MPs, councilors etc to break cuts budgets. But he's done the opposite. Now he's obv trying to hold his party together (same way we're bombing Syrians coz he wanted to keep his party together). That will still be the case even if he's elected PM; there'll still be a Labour right, unless there are mass deselections they'll still be a majority of the PLP and they'll still be politicking and undermining him/the Labour left. For Jeremy to win, at a minimum, voters in Southwark will have to vote for the arseholes destroying the borough's social housing, which means they'll still be in the PLP of a Corbyn govt, threatening to ignore the whip, leaving Cabinet, publicly criticising etc. That pressure to hold the party together will always be there.

2) Pressures on the UK economy: Brexit has sent the pound ('our sovereign currency') crashing, we're expecting price rises on imports and banks are threatening to leave, all because the government has moved against the wishes of international (specifically European) capital. The government wanted businesses to provide lists of foreign workers; the CBI kicked up a fuss and got it scrapped. Now imagine instead of a right-wing racist capitalist govt, it was Corbyn's lefty govt. The non-cooperation and active sabotage from capital would be even stronger (with added pressure of having the entire media against him). Seriously, there's nothing about the UK that means our government can boss capital around..

The idea that Corbyn wouldn't end up like Tsipras (or Hollande, or the German and Irish Greens, or the Italian Communist Party of the 1970s etc etc) is a false hope. In all likelihood, that's exactly what would happen.

So you might say that building a militant social movement is a long way off and tbh you're completely right. But just coz we're nowhere near such a movement and staring disaster in the face, doesn't make your proposal any more likely..

New Scientist quotes him on Twitter saying
" I believe that homeo-meds works for some ppl and that it compliments 'convential' meds. they both come from organic matter..."

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28169-jeremy-corbyn-where-he-stands-on-science-and-medicine/

So does bear bile and tiger gonads "work" for some people.

I am a member of a small party with the only saving grace is that it has survived and stuck to its principles. However, it has survived for over a century, listening to all manner of well-intentioned folk defend the Labour Party and all the pressure and ginger groups which sprung up over all these decades, many now deceased and buried .. the ILP, the Socialist League ...

I have no wish to complain but if less people like your good self stopped offering apologies for the failure of decades of Labour Party and began the laborious task of education and persuasion rather than engaging in dead-end cul de sac lesser evil arguments we might actually be a bit closer to socialism that we were when my party actually was founded.

For anyone genuine and sincere in wishing to bring about a new and better world, supporting the Labour Party requires a pact with the devil. Where the forming of a government means being sucked into running the system. Over decades, millions of workers have invested their hopes in so-called ‘practical’, ‘possibilist’ organisations like the Labour Party, hoping against hope that they would be able to neuter the market economy when, in reality, the market economy has successfully neutered them. they turned out to be the real ‘impossibilists’ – demanding an unattainable humanised capitalism – is one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, made all the greater because it was so predictable.They held the idea that capitalism could be reformed into something kindly and user-friendly. It couldn't and it can't. Socialists make a choice. We choose to use our time and limited funds to work to eliminate the cause of the problems. One can pick any number of single problems and find that improvements have taken place, usually only after a very long period of agitation. But rarely, if ever, has the problem actually disappeared, and usually, other related problems have arisen to fill the vacuum left by the "solution".

If you insist upon the view that the struggle for reforms remains worthwhile then imagine just how many more palliatives and ameliorations will be offered and conceded by a besieged capitalist class in a desperate attempt to retain ownership rights if the working class were demanding the maximum programme of full dispossession and complete appropriation and nothing less. To stem the socialist tide the capitalist parties will sink their differences and draw closer together, much as religions do today in the face of the world avalanche of secularism. Reforms now derided as utopian will be two a penny - in an attempt to fob off the workers. Perhaps, for example, capitalism will provide a batch of free services, on the understanding that this is "the beginning" of a free society, but socialists will not be taken in. Perhaps the "libertarian right" and the "liberal left" will coalesce around a citizen's income

wishface--

So here's what you don't get about electoral politics--reforms that matter to our day to day lives don't just happen. Any and all meaningful reforms that actually do impact our lives positively were won in reaction to a strong working class movement. Without such a movement in play, believing that anything meaningful will happen through electoral politics is a particular kind magical thinking.

But here's the thing Very, very few things from the macro-political world have any impact on our daily lives. Most of the things that matter happen at our workplaces, where we live, in our neighborhoods, etc. Those things simply cannot/will not be solved through electoral politics.

It's like this--What Capital wants, capital will get without a militant working class fighting back. It doesn't matter who is in office. If a particularly principled politician were in office and had both the will and the political muscle to follow-through, and this politician refused to do what the ruling class wanted, they would find a way to remove them from office. The only way you'd be able to stop it would be through having people in the streets. So, even if what you think we really should be doing is supporting a particular politician, the best way to do that would be through working to build a radical movement.

But then the question is, if you have such a movement, why the hell would we settle for reforms? Why not just make the new world we want?

Tell me your alternative. I've yet to hear it. I asked afed in Bristol how big they were. The number was about 20 (iirc). It was a dismally small number. All of these people (arsonists aside) I'm sure are decent honourable people, that's not my contention, but 20 people aren't going to change anything, so what do you propose?

So, if 20 communists are too small to 'change anything' exactly how do you think their votes are going to matter? You've completely undermined your own point.

Furthermore your aggressive posting style, making demands of other posters is unhelpful. Yesterday in the other thread, you made similar demands asking about Trotsky. When I took the time to explain it to you, you disappeared and started a new thread where you're making demands about something else. People have patiently answered your question, but you dismiss and ignore their answers.

For future reference, the search function is your friend. I guarantee any question you want to ask has already been asked and answered, probably a dozen times at least--The 'pragmatic electoral politics' vs the 'utopian communist' routine even more so, and every time this dichotomy is shown to be reversed.

wishface, I'm guessing that you're relatively young.
I'm going to sound patronising but try and stick with me. I can remember feeling like that, that horrible feeling that everything is going to shit and we have to do something. Still get it sometimes. The problem is that you end up pushed into dojng something pointless. You've already said as much, with regard to councils. If councils will do largely the same thing then why would governments be any different, remember that the ruling class doesn't change when the government does.

Everyone on here has heard these arguments before and has disagreed with them at length. Holding your nose and voting Labour has almost become a running joke.

You've come on here to argue in favour of it but you're not responding to people's arguments, you're just repeating your own. You are unlikely to persuade anyone of anything but if you want to do so then you need to debate rather than earnestly repeating the same things. We'e aware of what is hapening. I come from an area that is gentrifying out long-term residents, where aggressive and racist police act with impunity, where we have a Labour MP that tells us he can change things while angling for the next big chance for personal power and wealth. I don't think anyone is under any illusions about how severe the problems are, nor about the horrible effects that they are having on people. IT's emotive rhetoric, and the politicians use the same to try to get us care about whichever one of them wants our vote this time. The difference is that as communists, anarchists etc. we actually care, it's not just a selling tactic. People in general are sick of lying, interchangeable politicians so they try to whip up these existential battles to make us care. Abortion, Trump etc.
I care. A politician doesn't and won't. On the off chance that he she does then they won't be able to do anything about it.

A part of me wondered if I shouldn't have voted "against the Tories" because I was disgusted with the mixture of glee and arrogance they showed while destroying people and their lives. But Labour introduced internal markets to the NHS (preparing for privatisaton and swallowing up huge chunks of the 'extra' funding) Labour made academies, forced schools to become businesses, saddled them with expensive PFI contracts (much like the NHS) to profit private companies, shut down benefits offices, hired private contractors to take away invalidity benefits and so on and so on.
Now you might say that the Tories would have done that anyway, which is probably correct (some people think that Labour helped keep working class resistance down, I'm not so sure) but you can't argue that one side would be better while explaining away every example of them being equally bad on the grounds that whoever is in charge would have done it. Either governments make a difference or they don't.

Good posts Ed and jesuithitsquad.

Basically speaking, wishface is just trotting out that moth-eaten SWP slogan:

“Vote Labour – with no illusions”

I agree with Ed and jeff costello.

Where I live has been Labour since the borough boundaries were first drawn. Nothing I do in electoral terms will mean anything in the general election. Ed put it very well, the election gets decided in the marginal constituencies, which are not anarchist strongholds usually. If every single poster on Libcom voted Labour I seriously don't think it would swing a single seat. You're assuming that anarchists are all going to refuse to vote, but I did actually vote in the referendum, I got properly shouted at for it by some people but would go and do it again.

Your average anarchist has probably had the 'if you don't vote you're letting the tories win' argument before every election since the age of about seventeen from their neighbours, workmates, parents, aunts, and all the other Labour voters around you over and over and over again, it's one of the most common arguments you have. People will have made their minds up one way or another and don't need to have the argument again, there's more interesting things to argue about. If you want to influence the results of the general election, which I think is perfectly understandable given the terrible circumstances we are in, go out and argue with people who are thinking of voting conservative, seriously we are not the crucial constituency you should be spending time convincing.

I'd also like to say, don't accuse posters of not caring about what people are going through, a lot of posters do loads in the campaigns you mentioned like E15 and are fully aware of how bad things are, don't assume people are coming from an aloof position of not caring, whether they vote or not.

You don't know serge forward and you don't know what 'real issues' he might be involved with.

Look, you don't know me or (I guess) any of the people you are arguing with and so please don't accuse people of being indifferent to that suffering.

wishface

fingers malone

You don't know serge forward and you don't know what 'real issues' he might be involved with.

Why don't you support the only thing, right now, that can ameliorate their suffering?

I already said, but I live in the middle of one of Labour's strongholds, my vote either way would be meaningless. For what it's worth, if I lived in a swing seat, I would vote Labour.

wishface

fingers malone

I'd also like to say, don't accuse posters of not caring about what people are going through, a lot of posters do loads in the campaigns you mentioned like E15 and are fully aware of how bad things are, don't assume people are coming from an aloof position of not caring, whether they vote or not.

You don't get to play that card. You don't get to tell me I'm making unfair accusations after I have repeatedly and consistently invited you to offer a better alternative.

Mate I'm not trying to play any cards. If you would like me to explain an alternative I will try to do so. I am also not having a go at you for trying to get Corbyn elected either.

wishface

fingers malone

You don't know serge forward and you don't know what 'real issues' he might be involved with.

Why do you persist with the false narrative that supporting a Corbyn vitory in 2020 (all things being equal) prevents long term revolutionary activity.

I don't actually think that, a lot of people do think that, anarchists don't always agree on everything. I think if you want to campaign for Corbyn go for it. I'm not going to attack you for it. My mum has joined the labour party because of Corbyn and so has my aunt, I'm not having goes at them and I'm not going to have a go at you either.

I don't judge people for voting or not voting either way. I voted in the referendum.

I believe the only way we can change things is slow painful work at the grassroots. I am not going to get angry with people who do electoral activity. However if you want to know my alternative idea it is slow painful work in the workplace, in housing, in all areas of our lives. But you won't be able to overthrow the right in the labour party without a mass movement outside electoral politics, so I'm actually helping you.

Ok I don't think Corbyn is a carbon copy of the current government, I mean I have actually met the guy, and my mum wouldn't be supporting him if that were true given how much she hates the current government.

I'm sorry that I didn't actually see you had covered the safe seat issue.

My argument is not saying you *shouldn't* support Corbyn- though lots of other people do think that. My argument is that [either way we need to build a grassroots movement. The Labour Party is in control of many labour councils and is evicting tenants, bullying homeless people and many other anti working class actions, we need to fight to stand up for our class whoever is in charge of the council. If your strategy wins, which it might, I'm no armchair Napoleon, then you will be in a position where you have the right wing of the Labour Party against you and you will be fighting that political machine which they have been in control of for a long time. To defend all the changes that you hope a left wing government will make, you will need a mass working class movement. So I believe that either way we need to build that movement and that's what I'm trying to do.

My alternative is roughly this.

Build connections between different workplaces, support other workers in struggle, experiment with what works for people in precarious situations such as Deliveroo.

Defend council housing through linking up different estates and strengthen groups like LCAP, HASL and Sisters Uncut which do mutual aid direct action for people in terrible housing situations, to get them housed by the council.

Networks for private renters like Digs.

Strengthen groups like anti raids and Against Borders for Children who fight against immigration raids and immigration harassment of migrants

This is only covering some issues, of course there are many others but as a start.

"We've had six years of Tory misery with the very real possibility of another 5."

And i have had sixty-two years of Tory and Labour misery :(

wishface

Serge Forward

Well, that's us told. Maybe I'll go and find a Momentum forum and tell them they're all wrong. Or maybe I'll just see what's on telly instead.

Really? That's the best you can manage?

I did consider a spot of petulant foot-stamping but decided against it in the end.

I have repeatedly and consistently invited you to offer a better alternative.

It's there. You just have to read some of the key texts on the website (some of which have already been pointed out to you). We really have better things to do with our time to repeat what's already on here every time some angry young labourite wants to gob off at us.

Oh, and to repeat what Fingers Malone says, you really don't know us or what we have/haven't been involved in. Maybe if you'd started with a less arsey tone, people would have been less likely to give you the short shrift you deserve.

All I see here is people hiding behind cheap remarks

That, I suspect, is because you aren't reading what's actually being said and are instead arguing against the anarchist in your head. As for what I mean by you having a misapprehension of what people want, if you start talking about:

There isn't enough interest in our society to bring about a revolution

That is a teenage view. The idea that what revolution entails is enough people coming to the conclusion "I want a revolution" and then going out and storming Westminster is not one that anybody here would entertain.

If you feel patronised by what I've said then perhaps you should look in the mirror instead of blame me.

No, I think I'll blame you. In part because of numerous lines from you which, for example, posit yourself as hard-nosed cynic and us as starry-eyed revolutionists. Neither is true.

You are very clearly not hard-nosed as, even in your own terms, you seem to think your time is best spent persuading tiny numbers of fluffy revolutionists to be reformists rather than doing the actual hard work of persuading "centrists" and even right-wingers in marginal seats that Corbyn's Labour is a viable government. Which is understandable, because it must seem like an easier job and one you can do simply by bouncing over to the requisite forum and spouting "clear-eyed" hyperbole for a while.

But as several (actually clear-eyed) other posters have pointed out, this is actually a foolish strategy which offers few returns and a lot of opprobrium from people who don't generally take very kindly to some know-nothing prat spouting off the same old guff they've heard a thousand times before from better minds than yours. That's the Reality of your situation, tough guy. You're asking people to believe your Napoleon of Politics line when the very strategy you're enacting, right now, is pathetically limp and poorly directed.

No it won't, but the problem is, millions of people voted conservative, maybe for various complicated reasons, but a large number of them want and support anti-working class politics. A lot of them are also working class. That is a serious problem both for an electoral politics and for a direct action politics. I hope that doing this grassroots stuff about people's material needs will mean that some people come to think that mutual aid and collective action are good things and reject nationalism or zenophobia or looking down on the unemployed or all the other kinds of anti working class beliefs that are, unfortunately, really popular.

Of course the problem is still there that all these groups and projects I referred to are clustered in certain areas of the country, mainly big cities and probably majority Labour areas, but I have made my life in my barrio and don't want to ever leave. So that's where I am and I am fighting where I am. What to do about small towns and areas with a more conservative culture is something I don't have any answer to, unfortunately.

These groups are all struggling because not many people are involved in them, this is also a problem for friends I have who are involved in trying to reform the Labour Party, lack of working class resistance is something that is part of the fundamental problem we are all facing in whatever form of struggle we believe is the right way.

Rob Ray, I know the other poster is being really rude, but I think it would be better if you did not respond in kind.

Given their total lack of respect for multiple polite and thoughtful responses thus far I doubt you'll get much joy without giving them a bit of a kick in the arse, but fine.

You know I have to get on my high horse occasionally about being polite, I am a teacher after all.

If you want to have a debate about the politics, let's have one. Better than an argument about who was rude first, that won't go anywhere good, please trust me on that one

It's up to you how you spend your time, yes, but we're having an argument about what the most effective political strategy is, which does kind of imply that we are all telling each other what we ought to be doing. We can of course all reply 'I can do what I want!' as no one has the power to make anyone else do something based on the collected opinions of a libcom thread.

Or at least I fucking hope they don't as that would be awful.

The argument about how you spend your time is something that comes up because loads of us have experience of being involved in a difficult but worthwhile grassroots campaign and suddenly some of the participants stop and go off to do the electoral campaigning for six weeks and leave the rest of you in the lurch. This happened to me in an anti eviction campaign and I was one of the people living in the threatened block of flats so I was pretty upset about it.

On a wider level a big part of how political ideas 'compete' is about competing for people to get involved and put time and energy into them. And grassroots campaigners feel they lose out time and time again to electoralism and are angry about it.

wishface

fingers malone

No it won't,

Exactly.

All the reasons may be accurate and I don't disagree, which is why i snipped them, but they aren't really relevant to the issue.

There is a workable, if unpalatable, alternative: put Corbyn in power in 2020 and keep fighting in the meantime.

mate, I thought we already agreed that I live in a labour safe seat and therefore can't really change the result of the general election? So this grassroots stuff is really the only thing I can do then.

So looks like I'm not a player in this debate then really. Ok. I should really have taken the dog out for a walk ages ago so will do that then.

Lol see what I mean fingers, wishface can't rethink their approach even when told bluntly that it's counterproductive.

This is a straw man.

It's a direct quote. If you presented your own opinion wrongly then say so, but you stated that revolution was a matter of "enough interest in our society."

You haven't given any alternative and you are putting words in my mouth

Am I.

As I have said, there will not be a revolution. This isn't going to happen. I wish it weren't so, desperately. It's what this country needs. But what it needs it's not going to get ... I'm not naive ... It is a necessary evil and a simple brutal truth in the real world:

All the class theory in the world isn't going to bring about change without activity ... I'm not interested in theory ... there is no hunger for class revolution. Even using this kind of language shuts down the discussion ... there won't be a revolutionary society anytime soon. If you don't like that reality, too bad because we are where we are ... What alternative do you offer to the pregnant single mother sanctioned off benefits? Ideology? A few books by Marx or Bakunin? ... Idealism isn't feeding people ... I am not disagreeing with the broader points being made. I am speaking in practical terms ...

You don't think that possibly lines like these might come across just a tiny bit like someone who is positing themselves as the hardnosed realist and the people they're arguing against as starry-eyed revolutionists?

these 'time is best spent' lines are best ignored.

Genuine tip here, I don't think it helps you as much as you think to ignore the people you're trying to persuade when what they say is inconvenient to you and generally, if your approach is sparking "abuse" rather than engagement it'll be a bad approach. When going on forums full of people who disagree with you (where you are now is the libcom forums) one of the worst initial approaches is to spout off without:

1. Knowing the lay of the land - also known as "lurk moar" thanks to the efforts of 4chan. It's important, because it gives you an idea of the actual content of the board conversation, meaning you're less likely to go in guns blazing on topics which have already been done to death a hundred times over.
2. Knowing who you're talking to - ie. asking about and actually reading some of the key texts that drive the audience you're trying to convert
3. Being polite and respectful - Don't treat people like idiots, we're all aware that your tone is one of someone who thinks we're just a bit deluded and need to have the harsh realities of life explained to us, most of us have put up with similar for a very long time and aren't impressed by it - this also relates to point 2.
4. Knowing your shit - The people who populate boards like these are specialists, or at least many will be - and this is a board about politics. We don't just read about Bakunin and Marx, we read the lot. We know all about McDonnell's problems with presentation, Corbyn's shortcomings in international policy, Milne's "Stalinist Malcolm Tucker" incompetence as chief PR guy.

You haven't established I know nothing

No, you did that when you came on with the line that what a board full of libertarian communists really needs is someone to explain to them that they just haven't thought through their positions and should really be voting for Corbyn.

I did mention that the Labour Party was the first party to impose charges on the NHS back in 1949, didn't i?

Aneurin Bevan resigned from the government. In a speech he made in the House of Commons he explained why he had made this decision:

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer in this year's Budget proposes to reduce the Health expenditure by £13 million - only £13 million out of £4,000 million... If he finds it necessary to mutilate, or begin to mutilate, the Health Services for £13 million out of £4,000 million, what will he do next year? Or are you next year going to take your stand on the upper denture? The lower half apparently does not matter, but the top half is sacrosanct. Is that right?... The Chancellor of the Exchequer is putting a financial ceiling on the Health Service. With rising prices the Health Service is squeezed between that artificial figure and rising prices. What is to be squeezed out next year? Is it the upper half? When that has been squeezed out and the same principle holds good, what do you squeeze out the year after? Prescriptions? Hospital charges? Where do you stop?...After all, the National Health Service was something of which we were all very proud, and even the Opposition were beginning to be proud of it. It only had to last a few more years to become a part of our traditions, and then the traditionalists would have claimed the credit for all of it. Why should we throw it away? In the Chancellor's Speech there was not one word of commendation for the Health Service - not one word. What is responsible for that?"

And since then it's been down-hill all the way, hasn't it? Or don't you think the Labour Party has a role in dismantling a free health service?

All three parties had some sort of NHS proposals in their 1945 manifestoes. The Conservatives, pledged:

"The health services of the country will be made available to all citizens. Everyone will contribute to the cost, and no one will be denied the attention, the treatment or the appliances he requires because he cannot afford them. We propose to create a comprehensive health service covering the whole range of medical treatment from the general practitioner to the specialist, and from the hospital to convalescence and rehabilitation..."

In 1944 the Ministry of Health (under the war-time coalition government) published a White Paper on a National Health Service, which put forward detailed proposals for a system of free universal healthcare funded by central taxation. The Conservatives favoured a future service in which local authorities would have the lead rather than separately on a regional basis as Bevan pushed for. He chose to nationalise the voluntary hospitals to be managed by unelected Regional Hospital Boards (RHBs) alongside ex-local government institutions, while GPs were administered separately and local authorities were left with residual public health and social care functions. Enoch Powell was instrumental in promoting The Hospital Plan of 1962, which unleashed a huge hospital building programme after more than 20 years of capital shortage in the NHS.

A NHS of some sort was an inescapable inevitability at the end of the war. When it comes to running capitalism, the division between Labour and Tory is exaggerated

wishface; if you think revolutionary ideas are a waste of time, why are you here?

If someone's minded to abandon an anti eviction campaign they are either selfish beyond reason or they didn't really care in the first place.

That's an extremely black and white statement from someone asking us to accept shades of grey.

At worst all they would need to do, according to my position, is take ten minutes at the ballot box.

Okay so this is the crux of your position in one line.

First, anarchism as a historic trend has never been as fussed about voting as you seem to think - even the CNT was fine with people voting in Spain's 1936 elections, and that's as close to a revolutionary moment as you're likely to get. Lots of anarchists I know vote, usually in the marginals.

Second, the logic of "just vote" is dodgy as hell, especially when predicated on the idea of keeping the Tories out as The Number One priority. If keeping the Tories out really is a priority, then it has to be campaigned for, as you can't beat Labour through far-left voters alone, meaning you inevitably have to draw people away from other activities in at least an election year and (more likely) in other years as well. There's really no way around that unless you're relying wholly on the liberal "centre" of the party to do the legwork, which itself leads us straight back to a Blairite Labour Party.

To take the realist view, you can't have your cake and eat it - especially in the marginals where generally speaking available activists are thin on the ground. Something has to give up its acvitist support base to provide to Labour's electoral one.

I see no evidence he will behave as New Labour or previous labour administrations did and, again, do not advocate keeping him in power.

And you have no evidence whatsoever that once in power he will carry out - or much more importantly - be able to carry out - his pledges.

You expect people to trust in promises despite a hundred years of Labour leaders breaking their word.

You keep suggesting because Labour say they will protect and improve the standard and quality of life of workers, they will do so. And that, therefore, is the practical alternative and the pragmatic choice to make.

You brush aside the experience and lessons of history as irrelevant and of no consequence.

You keep insisting we should offer an alternative. I beg to differ that the action as you subscribe to - a vote for Labour - will be beneficial.

Let me remind you of the physician's basic tenet

Primum non nocere is a Latin phrase that means "first, do no harm."

Painful as it is, if conditions aren't ripe, if people aren't aware and educated enough, we follow Malcolm X's advice

“A ballot is like a bullet. You don't throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket”

And indeed your whole attitude of the dire existential class consequences for workers of another Tory government reminds me of another Malcolm X quote

the only way people would run toward the fox would be if you showed them a wolf.

Again: there will not be a revolution by 2020.

Again, no-one has said there will be. And how "we" frame the concept of revolution probably should be a bit more important to you, otherwise you're simply saying "vote Corbyn, rather than relying on shmumbubbledub." Which is simply "Vote Corbyn" - something I can read in any Morning Star paper published over the last year.

In my own case, for example (and I hold only one of the myriad possible), I would regard "revolution" (I put it in speech marks because the word itself is so loaded) as being the end result of decades of patiently building practical grassroots working-class power in communities, workplaces and nationwide organisations, something that would only happen if we had already achieved the sort of collective leverage over capital (used here as a broad term for the social forces that tend to pressure working class needs) that would cause it to react by attempting broad repression. I wouldn't call for a general strike or a popular insurrection for the same reason I wouldn't call for the Big Rock Candy Mountain, they are both fantasies.

The building of a revolutionary project is in my view indivisible from, indeed can only come about through, everyday struggle. That means the core part of any "revolutionary" project is not, on the face of it, very revolutionary at all - it's simply the process of ongoing working class dissent and solidarity against the dominant socio-economic form.

Those forms of dissent are the important bit right now, far more so than whether anyone on here puts a cross next to Corbynism in three years' time and then has to watch while capital flight, CBI threats and media pressure either pushes him into a neoliberal-lite position or brings down his government (most likely both).

When it comes to 2020 itself, I have no problem with people voting for him, and certainly can't bothered to campaign against voting, though I have very little faith that his administration will actually achieve very much. What I won't do is vote for him myself, for several reasons:

[*] While I hope for the best, I think a social-democratic victory in the current economic circumstances may well actually be counterproductive. Whatever small changes are brought in will be rolled back immediately when (and it is when) the right gets back into power five years later and critically, the vicious reaction of the Markets to a soc-dem government, allied to the enormous power of the right-wing media, in a situation where both grassroots labour and community leverage is basically zero, will almost certainly lead to an identical backlash against Failed Leftism as we've seen happen right across Europe.
[*] As an activist I don't see the point of "just" voting. Either you think Corbynism is a priority or you don't. If it is, then you should campaign for Labour and its values, because the fight will at best be a very difficult one. You should be in the party because otherwise it'll simply be taken over by the right. And you should recruit more people, because otherwise it'll simply be taken over by the right and lose other elections.
[*] I don't believe in quite a lot of his actual policies. I don't think nationalisation is a salve for all our ills, I don't think a vague commitment to reviving the welfare state stacks up against the real economic situation (ie. I think he's lying, even if he doesn't realise it yet), I think his position on Russia is pathetic one-dimensional "anti-imperialism," I find Labour's general attitude of limp British Nationalism vomit-inducing. They promise much, but say little about how any of it would be achieved because in the end they've got no ideas about how to get around the real roadblock - Britain can be bullied into practically anything by international capital and the bigger kids (EU/US/China), and all he's really able to do is reorganise a declining real State income, meaning that for every penny he moves to one group, another goes begging.

By all means provide the alternative

You can shout "what's your alternative" until you're blue in the face. The initiative lies with you however. You've come on to a libertarian communist board to state your case, so it's your job to persuade us, not ours to persuade you. Clearly we have our own ideas on the matter (and various people have pointed you to an extensive library of related works on this very site, which you have rudely dismissed as irrelevant), otherwise we wouldn't be here - if you can't engage with us on those terms you're not going to get very far.

that is just lazy ad hominem of my opinion

Yes yes we can all quote lines off that "art of debate" poster (though doing so accurately helps, "ad hominem" would suggest I'm attacking you as a person to deflect from your totes incisive argument, whereas I'm actually just asking you to wind your neck in and be a bit more respectful).

Still not addressing the issue.

I was offering you some help on getting a conversation that doesn't just boil down to "you're all wrong" "who the fuck are you to tell us we're wrong?" I don't give a monkey's what you think "the issue" is.

You don't need to be telling me what my position is, you need to be telling me what your alternative is.

I don't "need" to be doing anything sunshine, certainly not for someone who comes onto a forum asking people to agree with them and then can't respond to criticism of their position.

Hats off to all the posters who have patiently engaged with the OP, despite his refusal to actually engage back.

As for wishface, nobody owes you their time, especially if your only contribution to the discussion is yelling "What's your alternative?" You've come to libertarian communist site, which by it's very nature you're not going to find many supporters of lesser evilism, and have refused to engage with anyone who have put forward actual alternative points of view. If your imperative is to persuade people to vote Labour in 2020, then you'd be better off trying to persuade people who might actually want to vote Labour, like disaffected Libdems, rather than yelling at a handful of commies on the internet. On the other hand, that might involve four years of thankless hard slog and far less of a feeling of personal moral superiority than you're getting from shouting at a handful of commies. It's not as if you actually read anything they said or indeed the multitude of articles and discussions on this site, you might actually understand what the difference in political opinion is. However, that might take a little more time, interest and engagement (not to mention courtesy and respect for other peoples' time) than just yelling "What is your alternative?" at people who have taken time out of their lives to respond to you.

And as for suggesting that people who don't agree with your facile and proven by history to have failed argument are callous and don't care about the problems and suffering caused by capitalism (under governments of all parties,) GTFO. You don't know what people are doing, what they are involved with, above and beyond the pretty meaningless activity of taking 10 minutes of their time every 5 years to vote. Why do you think we are commies to start off with? We don't do it for the snacks or the impressive pension plan.

ajjohnstone:

You beat me to it on the Malcolm X quote :)

So what do folks reckon, how long til wishface fucks off back to Labourlist and triumphantly declares "I've talked to libertarian communists, they have no alternatives"?

I've got a better idea: I'll post what I feel I want to discuss and you can decide if you'd like to reply without behaving like a child.

Try not to stamp your foot too hard, you'll damage your cuboid bone.

At this point I'm assuming that you're just a belligerent and arsey teenager (apologies and no disrespect intended to the actual teenagers who post here with well positioned arguments and decent manners.) As someone who has lived through many elections, on both sides of the Atlantic, every single goddamned last one of them was apparently the most important, most pivotal, without a doubt if people didn't vote this time the world was going to end. Anyone for hope and change?

So, to turn your question around, what's so alternative about what you are proposing? Sounds like the same fucking thing which happens every 5 years.

Actually, don't bother replying to that. You clearly don't have any answers.

Rob Roy:

So what do folks reckon, how long til wishface fucks off back to Labourlist and triumphantly declares "I've talked to libertarian communists, they have no alternatives"?

You don't think he's this guy?

https://www.facebook.com/AnarchistsforJeremy/

wishface

I am advocating that as many vote for Corbyn as required to put him in number 10 where he can actually do some good, however little.

only people in Islington North can vote for Corbyn

wishface

At the bvery least that takes the Tories out of power which is the absolute priority.

if that your priority then your actually advocating people spend years campaigning for labour, not just 10 minutes voting

wishface

I'll wait on your alternative though. I'm sure it's forthcoming.

have you read this yet? - https://libcom.org/library/libcom-introductory-guide

or this https://libcom.org/library/fighting-ourselves-anarcho-syndicalism-class-struggle-solidarity-federation

and this? https://libcom.org/library/role-revolutionary-organisation

maybe this too https://libcom.org/organise

wishfulthinkingface wrote:

Anything else is just shitposting

Which is little rich for someone who has posted on 2 threads (the other of which he effectively shut down with his belligerent attitude) and the sum total of his contributions is to yell at people who don't agree with him and throw tantrums. Have a cup of tea dear and calm the fuck down. Or try CiF, which would be far more receptive to your opinions.

wishface

if you believe i'm seccretly a labour supporter or member in some capacity then by all means participate no longer. Anything else is just shitposting.

you think getting labour into power is more important than anything else, but you r not a labour supporter?

dissent isn't happening enough to make a difference, which is the basis of my argument.

You don't have an argument, you have wishful thinking, an electoral fetish and apparently a lack of historic and current affairs knowledge.

They may well be rolled back, but that's a poor argument. If the Tories get in they won't be in a position to be rolled back. So which is worse? Helping people if only for five years while building grassroots power, or letting people suffer and die while building grassroots power.

Well done for ignoring the entire second part of my point (and then setting a binary either/or I never posited). Read it again.

But the problem here is that the alternative to this isn't a neutral position, it's more Tory misery.

The problem is that Corbynism IS Tory misery.

Of course

There is no "of course" here, the sum total of your last dozen posts has been "what's your alternative." You've offered no facts, nor proofs, nor guarantees, no strategy, and no answers to the many criticisms made other than the signally hackneyed whinge of "dissent isn't enough." At no point have you addressed concerns, you've just pilloried people as "childish" for raising them.

That's a poor answer.

You misunderstood what I was saying which was that the initiative is with you to persuade us, not the other way around. Thus far all you've managed to do is annoy people by making petulant demands that they write you a TL : DR for the contents of the libcom library while airily dismissing all criticisms of your own position as irrelevant coz whut about teh poor people nooow (ie. after 2020).

I'm not interested in reading through an extensive library in the middle of a conversation.

Perhaps you should be, because it would have saved you the embarrassment of the rest of it.

I've been prefectly respectful

And yet no-one else seems to think so. Odd.

I shouldn't have to wade through pages and pages to back up YOUR claim

Aw diddums, as though everyone here hasn't been wading through piles of literary dung with nary a hope of improvements or substantial clarifications to the line "Vote Corbyn cuz realism."

Ah fuck it I'm out, even chastising fools has its limits for entertainment value and I'm forgetting to be polite.

wishface

radicalgraffiti

wishface

I am advocating that as many vote for Corbyn as required to put him in number 10 where he can actually do some good, however little.

only people in Islington North can vote for Corbyn

wishface

At the bvery least that takes the Tories out of power which is the absolute priority.

if that your priority then your actually advocating people spend years campaigning for labour, not just 10 minutes voting

wishface

I'll wait on your alternative though. I'm sure it's forthcoming.

have you read this yet? - https://libcom.org/library/libcom-introductory-guide

or this https://libcom.org/library/fighting-ourselves-anarcho-syndicalism-class-struggle-solidarity-federation

and this? https://libcom.org/library/role-revolutionary-organisation

maybe this too https://libcom.org/organise

Again, those are links to huge amounts of written information. Tell me the answer, I shouldn't have to wade through pages and pages to back up YOUR claim

you have all of normal social assumptions on your side which you have adsorbed though years of articles tv shows, and general conversation with people who hold those assumptions. its natural that something from radically different point of view would take time to learn about, so dont be lazy take the time and read.
if you would prefer i may be able to find youtube videos instead.

Seriously man, how are you ever expecting to persuade people of your point of view if you can't even be arsed to read up on what you are trying to argue against?

You're not the first poster who expects to be spoon-fed information that they can easily find themselves and demand that other posters give it to them and you surely won't be the last but ffs learn to use search functions.

Isn't it harsh to judge any future Corbynism on it's potential repression given that team anarchy has proved equally unsuccessful?

I suspect you are all using arguments leading to an understanding of a world wishface would rather not be in. Wishface seeks deliverance from political reality. As a ‘believer’, only an anarchist Messiah appearing could show wishface that Corbyn has feet of clay. And nothing less will do.

Yes wojtek 'team anarchy' has been very unsuccessful in it's efforts at ''repression'' whilst Labour governments have a proven record of such! wishface provides no convincing arguments or evidence to suggest that a Corbyn led Labour government would be any different in practice. Opposition to capitalism necessarily implies opposition to capitalist parties such as the so-called Labour Party and capitalist politicians such as Corbyn.

You were as rude af on the other thread, which was jogging along quite happily until you showed up.

Because the burden of proving the claim lies with the person making it. the claim was that there is an alternative to voting corbyn to get rid of the tories. Nothing i see even hints at that so I'm not going to read those links

Nobody needs to prove anything to you. You're the one who started the discussion. For that matter,you are entirely unable to "prove" that voting Corbyn into No 10 will do any of those things you are suggesting. Unless you have a time machine. Unless the benefit of experience in electoral politics for the last century is nothing to go on. You are clearly ignorant of the arguments and refuse to educate yourself. You refuse to engage with any of the salient points made by posters who have tried to put forward their point of view. You've pretty much ignored any actual discussion and yelled "What's the alternative?" You just have faith. Not a good starting point to prove anything.

Now if you are arguing that enough people voting for Corbyn will get rid of Tories, then I suppose that's a sound argument. However, that's pretty unlikely anyway. What will a Corbyn govt do? Not much, given the restraints on it from all different directions. Right now though, you're arguing from a position of faith, and riding on a wave of hope and change. As if we haven't heard that before.

edit: crossposted with Auld-bod about the faith thing.

6 years of tory austerity, the like of which we have never seen

This is a bit hyperbole. It's not the 1930s or the 19th century, etc.

wojek:

Yeah, it's fair to say that Team Anarchy has been unsuccessful but there again so has everything else. There's no reason to even suspect that Corbyn led government will be even capable of bringing about any change, other than the purely cosmetic. You have to remember that the architects of the austerity that the UK has been experiencing was the Labour Party and the Tories have just cranked up the volume. It'll be the same Labour MPs in a Corbyn government, don't expect them to do a volte face. If you think that Corbyn will be able to push through policies without the consent of the PLP, then you don't understand British electoral structures. It doesn't work like that. To be honest, I find the Corbynmania which happened over the summer weird, creepy and cult like - not unlike the Trudeaumania which swept here before the Anointed One was crowned. Turned out that Justin Trudeau and his party haven't stepped up to promises, reneged on some, endorsed the things the tories did which they opposed in opposition. However - and this is a big one - he does look good without a shirt on, which is something you'll never be able to say about JC.

Honestly, my problem is not that people are planning on voting Labour. People have been doing that for a century, it's not a shocker that they're going to do it again. It's the principle that supporting the Labour Party and campaigning for them to get into power is not in any way anarchist praxis. It certainly isn't and if someone wants to be a vaguely left liberal, that's up to them but don't make it anything to do with us.

Double post. I blame the annoying anon tech dudebros who have been fucking up the internet on this side of the Atlantic. And the weather. My connections are crap when it rains.

then whats the point in the council being there at all? if they have to do the same stuff as the toryies or get replaced then how are we any better with them in power? i don't see how you think this is a defence of them

wishface

radicalgraffiti

then whats the point in the council being there at all? if they have to do the same stuff as the toryies or get replaced then how are we any better with them in power? i don't see how you think this is a defence of them

I'm not defending the likes of Marvin Rees. I'm pointing out what will happen if he rejects the cuts.

What's the point of councils? Does it matter?

The Tories booted out the guy running Tower Hamlets because they didn't like him. They will do the same thing elsewhere.

So this is the reality that must be addressed. Wishing it were different won't help. Now Marvin has been given options, borrow some and use reserves. So he can make a choice, but the threat from Whitehall remains.

the fact that elected officials are constrained by powers beyond there control is a big part of the criticism anarchists have of electoral politics, the ones insisting "this time, this party, this leader will be different" are the ones relying on wishes

wishface

radicalgraffiti

wishface

radicalgraffiti

then whats the point in the council being there at all? if they have to do the same stuff as the toryies or get replaced then how are we any better with them in power? i don't see how you think this is a defence of them

I'm not defending the likes of Marvin Rees. I'm pointing out what will happen if he rejects the cuts.

What's the point of councils? Does it matter?

The Tories booted out the guy running Tower Hamlets because they didn't like him. They will do the same thing elsewhere.

So this is the reality that must be addressed. Wishing it were different won't help. Now Marvin has been given options, borrow some and use reserves. So he can make a choice, but the threat from Whitehall remains.

the fact that elected officials are constrained by powers beyond there control is a big part of the criticism anarchists have of electoral politics, the ones insisting "this time, this party, this leader will be different" are the ones relying on wishes

And i share those criticisms, but that's beside the point. unless you have a way to change that in the next few years those cuts will go through whether we like them or not.

your advocating prioritising electoral politics above all else, i don't see how criticism of electoral politics are beside the point

wishface:

Sorry, was I addressing you? Answer - No. I was addressing something Wojek said. Little clue in the way I addressed my post. You had already said "Bye" to a previous post of mine and I have no interest in furthering any discussion with you because you are rude, willfully ignorant and quite frankly not very interesting.

Maybe I'm drifting off topic with this, but I do like to see the right of the Labour Party getting hot under the collar about the disaster that Corbyn represents to their party .

Here's Nick Cohen in The Spectator:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/this-could-be-the-end-of-the-labour-party/

Hi guys,

Perhaps we could talk a bit more about how the intrinsic nature of power structures within states limits the scope of public policy? I have my own idea about how this works, but i would like to hear some other, probably better informed, perspectives on this, rather then try to weigh in myself.

I should think that it would contribute to the discussion here,

Thanks.

I've gone through making some responses to your points but I think it's a waste of time, you're trying to suck us into an argument because no one is listening to you.

I will ask you one question: why have you come here?

Do you know what your reason for coming here is? what is your goal? how do you hope to achieve it? how much effort are you willing to expend?

You're angry and you're arguing. You are not convincing anyone because you are making claims with no evidence, then demanding that everyone else backs up what they say and either ignoring what they say or refusing to read it. Fingers gave lots of examples, as did others. You've replied several times that we should do both and that voting only takes ten minutes, when the flaws in this have ben pointed out you then go back to your original point.

Again, why are you here? Are you planning on learning anything from this conversation? Are you trying to convince people to vote? Are you trying to get other people to support your argument and spread the word?

You're angry, you feel isolated and that serious things are happening and no-one is doing anything. And you've come here to argue, to prove that you're right, to affirm that something must be done, to try to make someone listen. This will achieve nothing, it won't even make you feel better.

I'm not interested in reading through an extensive library in the middle of a conversation. It should be a simple matter to support a claim as straightforward as 'there is an alternative'. It isn't my responsibility to back up claims made by others, the burden of proof lies with the persons making that claim.

You weren't interested in reading it before the discussion either. Equally, you have ignored the arguments and examples (even while acknowledging them in some cases), if you're not here to learn and you're not planning on trying to convince people with anything other than throwing the same arguments at us ad infinitum then why are you here? And give up on this burden of proof rubbish. Demanding other people prove their claims has a place, but it is also a classic way of wasting time, it is also deeply hypocritical when you don't provide any evidence yourelf (aside from evidence that supports our arguments at least as well as it does yours, and I'm being charitable)

wishface

No i expect people to be aware that some promises, not all, maybe even many, have been broken, and to accept this reality for a greater good. You aren't giving any reason why doing this is a bad thing given that there will be an election whether you participate or not and that, given where we are and who has the power, your principles mean nothing in practical reality. Instead you could oust a tory government that otherwise will further coarsen the political discourse, further the divisions in society, and further callous attitudes. This period hasn't led to a significant increase in revolutionary activity, of whatever kind you prefer, it has simply turned people against each other. That if nothing else is why it is absolutely the priority to get the tories out. If that means living with Corbyn for a few years, that is a price I am willing to pay. I have explicitly said he doesn't have all the answers, and that likely he won't achieve everything he wants to (and even that isn't enough in the long term), but it is enough to give respite to the eviscerated precariat that now exists.

People must accept that promises have been broken and believe new promises anyway. There's a little flaw in the logic. Incidentally modern parties rarely make specific promises, otherwise people can ask them about keeping them.

You keep insisting we should offer an alternative. I beg to differ that the action as you subscribe to - a vote for Labour - will be beneficial.

Prove that.

Two quotes to do so that direct precede your challenge.

I can't predict the future, any more than you, except when it comes to what will happen if the tories retain the power they have.

No, again, I say they will ameliorate conditions enough that those blasted by things like the bedroom tax will not have to resort to suicide.

6 years of tory austerity, the like of which we have never seen, has not led to increased class conscioiusness and it has not put anarchism on the agenda. If it had i would support that as the alternative. But it isn't. What has happened is people have become entrenched, marginalised, polarised and hard edged. The public consciousness is more callous, it isn't receptive to any alternative to the current system. Even with support, Corbyn, despite the popualrity of his policies, is still a distant second to the Tories. It will be a difficult struggle.

To argue that he and the tories are ideologically identical is evidently false and not worth considering. If that were true the labour party wouldn't have fought so hard to get rid of him.

This hardening of society is a huge problem and if the Tories in in 2020 it will only get worse and worse. Our society is dying, the fabric is falling apart. I have never seen it so bad, fwiw. So this isn't a game and it's not the time to hide behind ideology

What ideology? No one has said "we are anarchists, we don't vote." eople have repeatedly stated why they see no point in doing so and do not.

Do you genuinely think that the Labour Party that has reluctantly backed down from open revolt will suport Corbyn? (without even considering whether or not he would do anything good or not)

You point out that it will be hard (and you haven't even acknowledged how little power the government has to change things) and ask for more effort, even though you've tried to say it's only ten minutes and you've said that you shouldn't divert time from solidarity work to campaign for Corbyn.

To argue that Labour are the equals with the Tories in austerity is just untrue. They are complicit, yes, and I acknowledge that Laboru councils have been at the forefront of implementing austerity policies. But that also ignores the reality that the Tories have their hands tied: what else do councils do. Bristol as I mentioned faces a huge degree of cuts that will decimate services. It's disgusting, but the fact remains that if the cuts aren't implemented the Tories will boot the council out, take over, and force the cuts through anyway.

My councillors made the same argument, that if they refused to set a budget then they'd be replaced and the Tories would do it anyway, if they stayed in charge then they could "keep control" of the process. That's what they cared about. I think someone actually suggested that they should resign on principle, which deeply confused the councillors. I remember my MP telling me how he'd defend schools. He'd been a government minister in the Education department and he expected me to believe he would improve things in opposition, as if he'd somehow stop the Tories, without any power, from doing precisely what he'd been doing when he was in power.

I've been prefectly respectful and I don't need to wind my neck in. If you ad hominem my point i will point that out. I have no time for fallacies that derail and smother the discourse.

As Rob pointed out an Ad hominem attack is a personal attack that does not treat the issue, so an ad hominem attack cannot be made on your point. Also you've been behaving in a rude aggressive manner for the whole time you've been here. As you're not willing to listen at all I'm afraid rather than being one of the people who cringes a few years later when remembering the strident rubbish that they used to spout, you'll be one of those ones who uses failed discussions like this as a justification for their shift to the right. It's a bit of a shame.

I have responded to every single point. I don't need to hear lies about my intellectual honesty. If you can't stick to the issues you are free to discourse elsewhere

You do realise that you came here to preach to us, you can take your ball and go home but you're not kicking us out of the park :)

Sorry in advance to quote drop

It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
Eugene V. Debs

If you are endorsing or calling for a vote for the historically warmongering, strikebreaking Labour party, then everyone has the right to criticise that.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

Good post jef costello!
I'm glad you asked wishface "why have you come here?"
When I asked: "wishface; if you think revolutionary ideas are a waste of time, why are you here?"
They dismissed it as: "obvious trolling."

wishface states in post 43 (http://libcom.org/forums/general/uk-election-vote-corbyn-25102016?page=1#comment-586714)

"People don't care, they have become callous. This is exceptionally dangerous, but you don't' seem to grasp this point. It doesn't breed revolutionary activity or a desire to change things in any way you deem acceptable (whatever that is, since you don't articulate it). Instead it breeds indifference and malaise: people just sit in front of the TV where they are spoonfed hateful propaganda that reinforces that callousness and encourages the division we see."

For me this statement is indicative of the same Leninist / liberal patronising and dismissive attitude that expects us to defer to a leadership; class struggle as mediated through an elite of experts. Corbyn as the Saviour of the mindless masses. We're all dumb, passive consumers who sit in front of the telly and can't act for ourselves. Forget the autonomous, everyday resistance of workers; wildcat strikes, absenteeism, occupations.
There is always working class resistance, but you have to look for it.
The Labour party is a reactionary, anti-working class, capitalist institution. It is our political enemy.

Ok, so I can't help but be a little hurt that wishface has replied to literally everyone else's posts except mine.. :( especially as one of the questions being discussed was how would Corbyn deal with the inevitable backlash from capital/within his own party.

So how would he? Considering Jeremy 'Stop the War' Corbyn didn't even try to stop the UK bombing Syria because he didn't want to jeopardise party unity just as Jeremy 'Old Labour Socialist' Corbyn won't call on his party's councils to break cuts budgets for the same reason, why do you think he would fair better in government? Because as well as having most of the PLP actively against him he'll also have the entire British capitalist class as well?

I know you're asking us to provide an alternative (and I'll get to that) but if you can't answer that question then quite frankly you're failing to provide a viable model for social change as much as anyone else.

wojtek

Isn't it harsh to judge any future Corbynism on it's potential repression given that team anarchy has proved equally unsuccessful?

I think this is a fair question but it needs to be looked at differently. That is, basically every strand of working-class politics from social democracy to Marxist-Leninism and anarcho-communism has been unsuccessful. That's why we're in the mess we're in. But if you look at points in history where workers have historically been strong, it becomes clearer where we need to get to.

One thing that always sticks in my mind is how during the 1970s, even as the oil shock was hitting the world hard, Italian workers were able to maintain their conditions through their militancy to the point that the Governor of the Bank of Italy described the working class as a "monetary authority" in its own right. So as the Italian Communist Party was getting ready to get into bed with the right-wing Mafia and fascist-collaborating Christian Democrats, the Italian workers were maintaining their conditions against the attempts of big business to pass on the cost of the crisis onto them. (Similar, though on a much less dramatic scale, could be said about the UK in the same period, with the Labour Party imposing wage restraint and workers resisting it, ending up in the 'Winter of Discontent')

So seeing as even left-wing parties are willing to go back on their most strongly held principles once in power, it seems clear to me that the goal is to build a working-class movement that could become its own 'monetary authority'. Because we're so far off that, it means starting small but even here there can be really significant victories.

[*] Brighton Solfed have won back literally thousands (tens of thousands?) of pounds in stolen wages from bosses using direct action. Recently, a worker who wasn't being paid for a trial shift told her boss she'd tell Brighton SF and the boss paid up!
[*] IWGB were able to win sick and holiday pay for cleaners at the University of London while cycle couriers at various London firms have also won pay rises (some as high as 28%)
[*] Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth have done some great work literally stopping people getting kicked out of their homes.

I could go on about other groups like Sisters Uncut or Focus E15 or even just the organising of individual workers active in their unions but I'm slightly worried that you'll just ignore it anyway so I don't wanna waste my time tbh..

So there, it might not get rid of the Tories in four years' time and it might not stop things getting worse before they get better (indeed, I fear that things will get much worse on all fronts before they get better).. but if I have hope in anything, it's in action like that being able to improve people's lives (because it already has!) and one day growing into a movement that can defend (and even improve) conditions on a mass scale.

Or at least, that's my opinion until you can present me with a viable alternative (not just pie-in-the-sky fantasising about Corbyn uniting the Labour Party behind him and fighting the combined forces of international capitalism, please)..

You and me both ed; and for me it's across two threads. :(

also wishface, i provided a link to the introductory guides the day before you started the thread. so, clearly not in the middle of a conversation.

Wishface, you have presented an argument that has gone on since the 19th C as if it is something new because of Corbyn.

You keep dismissing the failures of the Labour Party in the past to act in the interests of the working class as if it is simply a side-issue and nothing to do with the fundamental flaw in the whole concept of a half-loaf is better than a whole loaf.

I don't think any counter-argument to your position will succeed. I have met it so often. Once one assumption is disproved the discussion is switched to another...then another...I demonstrated with data that the Labour Party should not be credited with the creation of the NHS nor the Welfare State. Beveridge was a Liberal. Butler was a Tory. The Tories have evolved into being less enamoured by the NHS structure - as have the Labour Party, or did i imagine their re-structuring of the basic principles of a free NHS that was not a Blairite initiative but the continuation of a position from the very government that introduced it...as again i have shown.

Over and over again you keep asking us what is our alternative to a Labour Party vote to keep the Tories out and refuse to accept our answers as sufficient to satisfy you.

I ask you this...What is your alternative if Labour Party fails again?
Will you re-define "success" to ensure you don't have to face the consequence of your vote?
What will you do politically next if you do accept you were mistaken?

Our political position is to determine attitudes from experience and history...sometimes it is in our nuanced parlance described as understanding society through the application of the material conception of history. It is not based on some wishful thinking.

wishface

radicalgraffiti

your advocating prioritising electoral politics above all else, i don't see how criticism of electoral politics are beside the point

No. I'm not.

And above all else? What else would that be?

Why do you think there are no other alternatives? And if you do think there were alternatives why do you think they no longer exist and Labour does? For example, why does the Anarchist Youth Network no longer exist? Why isn't it instead, thousands or millions strong?

Do you say there is no alternative because there are alternatives but they are too small in number? In which case, what do you think is holding back the Lib Dems or the Greens? Lack of support? I'm not advocating supporting them, but trying to unpick your reasoning about what constitutes an alternative.

wishface

Even if Corbyn does nothing, he will have achieved one thing by being in power: he will oust the Tories and take their power to further destroy the few things we have in this society.

You've given no evidence that Corbyn would be able to stop the onslaught on the few things we have in this society. Of course, his plan is to stop doing what the Tories have been doing. But that WILL cause a backlash from capital (same would be true for any working class movement, by the way). That backlash will see non-cooperation and sabotage not just from capital/big and small business but also dissent from within his own party.

I've given two examples of how Corbyn has already backed down from conflict with the PLP and the disastrous consequences of that. You've given no idea on how Corbyn could deal with it in government (when the pressures would be higher and not limited to within his own party). In fact, the opposite is true: you're encouraging us to vote for the very people who'll stab him in the back!

wishface

Yes it's a shit society in a shit system, but that doesn't mean that we can afford to throw away the few things that benefit us (NHS, welfare state - such as it is, etc) just to suit an ideology that has nothing else practical to offer.

Numerous people have given you examples of practical alternatives. My last post mentioned groups who've stopped people being kicked out of their homes, won 28% pay rises, won holiday and sick pay, whose organising has now meant workers only need to mention the group's name in order to get bosses to pay what they owe. This is all very practical. The problem is it needs to be done more, not that it needs to be subordinated to the electoral needs of the Labour Party.

At this point, it's you that isn't offering anything practical. Where is your viable model for social change?

Lol, wishface is actually just trolling now. An alternative has been given, it's you that hasn't explained how your model can get past the practical problems people have pointed out.

Now do that or jog on..

Wishface #3
‘But, as I say: give me an alternative. I'm not interested in theory. There is no long term organisation. Where we are right now is a situation unprecedented in modern era; Even Thatcher was nowhere near as vicious as this lot. We are losing everything. The NHS is gone, the welfare state is killing people, racism and bigotry are spiralling out of control, we are about the leave the EU, the economy is fucked.

Yet in spite of this, there is no hunger for class revolution. Even using this kind of language shuts down the discussion: people don't want to hear about communism, Marxism, class this or that. They have been conditioned to reject this stuff. So where does that leave us?’

Wishface #114
‘Auld-bod wrote:
I suspect you are all using arguments leading to an understanding of a world wishface would rather not be in. Wishface seeks deliverance from political reality. As a ‘believer’, only an anarchist Messiah appearing could show wishface that Corbyn has feet of clay. And nothing less will do.

Except right from the off I highlighted the fact he hasn't got all the answers and very likely will struggle to achieve all he wants to achieve. So what? Your argument only holds if you believe I am arguing for unquestioning support of Labour. I am not.’

I never suggested you believed Corbyn was actually ‘the divine architect of the universe’. Your faith appears to rest on the belief that Corbyn will alleviate, in the short term, the working classes present suffering. This suggests to me a parallel with Marx’s observation of religion’s opiate effect, by numbing the pain of the poor. It cures nothing, but for a while makes everyday life more bearable.

Now I think the working class is canny enough to use every means it can to protect itself, including the ballot box. I feel it unproductive to argue against this tactic (and it is only a tactic and not a principle). It may marginally help to ameliorate the effects of capitalism (like help protect the welfare state). I do fall short of advocating ‘Vote Corbyn’, as it is too close asking people to fall in their knees to pray for deliverance. It offers no real solution to the tyranny of capitalism, and Corbyn will inevitably fall victim to its methods.

The state/ruling class will give reforms (or leave the stage of history) when it has to, when confronted with a working class willing to fight on its own behalf. And no politician or priest can do it for them.

wishface should take another look at the posting guidelines as his arrogance and rudeness quite apart from his persistent repetition is bordering on his being banned.

If by failure you mean fails to deliver the society we want, then I am under no illusion they will do this. How many times would you like me to say that before you realise i've not said otherwise? If you mean fails to deliver the policies it promises, same answer.

So you are voting for a party that you fully expect to disappoint you but solely on the grounds

Corbyn gets into power and puts the Tories out, ending their ability to wreak the havoc they are wreaking. Anything else is irrelevant because...

Now there has been a long history where left-wing governments have also wreaked economic and social havoc simply often because of unintended consequences of their reforms or more basically, they are unable to control or manage the capitalist global economy.

So again, what is your alternative if under a Corbyn government the working class are made worse off than they are right now under the Tories?

Or do you refuse to countenance such a situation as the possibility that a Tory government might be a better option than the Labour Party.

wishface

Even if true, and that's speculative at best, it still doesn't change the fact the Tories won't be in power. While Corbyn is far from perfect, they are demonstrably and evidently not as bad as the current crop of Tory monsters. If you believe otherwise please provide proof.

So look, there's an interesting slip in this quote where you say "Corbyn is far from perfect" but "they" are not as bad as the Tories. Coz yeah, Corbyn is a nice guy. My mum's mates met him in the 80s to talk anti-war stuff. But it's not 'Corbyn' who will be in government, it's the Labour Party and Corbyn's faction is a minority within the PLP i.e. the people who vote on laws.

So I don't think Corbyn is 'as bad as the Tories' but I do think the Labour Right are. Remember it was Labour that first introduced the market into providing medical services within the NHS (something even Thatcher didn't do coz she knew British workers wouldn't have it), it was Labour who introduced tuition fees for uni, Labour who first started the Bedroom Tax to reduce housing benefit in the private sector, Labour who had 13 years of power to roll back anti-strike laws and never even considered it.

These are the people you are telling us to vote for (to get the Tories out). The only alternative to voting for these people is to get involved in the Labour Party and start campaigning for mass deselections of key Labour figures in Labour safe seats. Apart from taking more than the 'ten minutes' you first floated, the instability that would occur is huge, which is why Corbyn won't entertain it, but that means they will always be there to act as a huge break/destabilising presence on any left-wing Labour government.

And this is all before the problem of capital flight/non-cooperation/sabotage (which I already discussed and you haven't responded to).

wishface

Ed

I've given two examples of how Corbyn has already backed down from conflict with the PLP and the disastrous consequences of that.

I don't recall, please link me to those examples.

His refusal to call a whip on the vote to bomb Syria (thus, contrary to his lifetime of peace activism, not even trying to stop the war).

His refusal to call on Labour councils to break cuts budgets.

Both of these were done with Labour Party unity in mind rather than the effects they'll have on people. And bear in mind that these capitulations are when the pressure is (relatively) weak.

wishface

I haven't called for it to be subordinated to the labour party. I've no idea why you persist in believing I've said this. I won't keep correcting people, either pay attention or we move on.

Well, as I and others have repeatedly pointed out, what you're calling for (the entire left to unify behind Corbyn to get him elected) will:
a) take more than just 'ten minutes' to go and vote but actually take hundreds/thousands of hours of campaigning time in marginal constituencies; that means deciding between one form or activism over another. So which should take priority if the aim is to 'get the Tories out in 2020'?
b) involve not undermining the scumbag Labour politicians in safe seats who've been decimating our conditions for decades. After all, how are you going to get rid of the Tories if your campaigns unsettle Labour MPs in Labour strongholds?

If that's not subordinating grassroots activism to the Labour Party then I'm not sure what is.

wishface

Telling me I haven't offered anything is simply being uncharitable.

All you've offered is 'get Corbyn elected'. You've not explained how he would deal with what everyone here sees as the insurmountable problems which would arise if he did get elected.

wishface

Telling me to read masses of online data is not an alternative.

I've not told you to read anything except for my posts.

wishface

We've already covered grassroots activism anyway, which I acknowledged was a positive thing, but not related to the issue at hand.

It is actually entirely related to the issue at hand. Why do you think it was Blair and not Thatcher who introduced to the market to providing medical care within the NHS? Because Thatcher was nicer than Blair? No, because in the 1980s there was a mass of grassroots activism that made it impossible. Thatcher had to crush that activism in order to act out the reforms she wanted to do. By the time Blair comes around, that activism is basically non-existent and he can make pretty much whatever reforms he wants.

So grassroots activism is actually extremely related to the issue at hand. It's literally, imo, the only viable alternative we have..

Also, wishface, don't tell me or any other posters to fuck off. It's against posting guidelines as it makes the forum an unpleasant place to be. Please desist or future posts will be edited/deleted and you could be banned, temporarily or permanently.

WHAT. IS. THE. ALTERNATIVE?

A cracking post by Ed.

The Labour Party sponsored the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which resulted in the massive slaughter and maiming of workers in those countries. But Corbyn remained a member of the party.

wishface

Spikymike

wishface should take another look at the posting guidelines as his arrogance and rudeness quite apart from his persistent repetition is bordering on his being banned.

anarchist claims that a different point of view offends him. priceless.

Herein lies the primary problem for wishface--you literally have no idea who or what you're arguing against. First, spikymike spoke about your rudeness and repetition, not your ideas. Secondly, you have a caricature of what you think anarchism means. This is why people are directing you to read texts, not because we're saying--hey, all the answers are right in there!! But because, as Rob Ray et al have mentioned, you've got a sophomoric !anarchies! notion of what libertarian communism means.

Thirdly, I'm beginning to feel like libcom secretly imposed a block feature as I have written 3 posts prior to now, all addressed to wishface and all blatenly ignored. I'd also love to see you address jef's questions as well. Or for that matter, actually addressing what anyone has actually said.

Also, i know you have an aversion to reading but here is the last time we discussed this very same tppic.
https://libcom.org/blog/thoughts-movement-or-why-we-still-dont-even-corbyn-joseph-kay-ed-goddard-22072016

Or do you refuse to countenance such a situation as the possibility that a Tory government might be a better option than the Labour Party.
If you can make a case for that then by all means.

I could cite that the Labour Party have used troops to break strikes post-war more often than the Tories. 9 times under the Atlee government alone who also prosecuted in court gas workers in 1950

1924 when the first Labour Government threatened to use the Emergency Powers Act against striking workers. Bombing of tribesmen in Iraq, and firing on strikers in India

In 1931 when the second Labour Government cut unemployment benefit.

Devaluing the pound in 1949 and 1967 on both occasions saying they would not devalue because that would be bad for the workers, then later pretend that it was quite a good thing after all for workers

A wage freeze from 1948-50, then from 1966-67
At the TUC in 1968 Hugh Scanlon said Labour’s wage restraint was merely a policy on traditional Tory lines.

Then there was In Place of Strive aborted simply because they lost the general election but it opened the door to the Tories to impose their Industrial Relations Act

During the Labour government 1974 - 1979 unemployment went up from 628,000 to 1,299,000, while the general price level rose by 112%. Callaghan urged scabs to break picket lines

What about the Immigration?

During the 1964 election campaign nearly twice as many Labour candidates as Tory mentioned immigration in their election addresses – and almost all of those who did made it plain that Labour was keen to continue Tory immigration policies.

In 1968, Labour rushed the Commonwealth Immigrants Bill through parliament in 24 hours. The act stopped Commonwealth British citizens if they lacked a 'close connection' with the country, close connection being defined as birth in Britain or descent from a parent or grandparent born in Britain. When the Tories passed the 1971 Immigration Act, Labour toughened it up. Under the Labour government immigration officials subjected Asian women to the humiliation of 'virginity tests'

Labour’s final contribution to the tightening of immigration controls in Britain was its Green Paper on nationality law, which included several proposals later incorporated by Thatcher’s Tory government in its 1981 Nationality Act.

I'm sure of your response..."so what...Tories would have been worse"...But since they were in opposition, you simply don't know that, do you?

Too often Labour have loaded and aimed the gun but let the Tories pull the trigger.

A useful read on this site
http://libcom.org/library/labouring-vain

In around 1980, just before I became a libertarian communist and still considered myself left-labour, I asked Labour MP John Golding about the then Tebbitt anti-trade union bill and what he was doing to oppose it. He told me there was nothing to oppose really and the bill had been put together by the Tories in conjunction with the Labour Party and representatives of the trade union movement. Labour was led by Michael Foot then, who was probably to the left of today's Corbyn. That comment contributed greatly to my understanding that left party politics and electoralism was utter horseshit and doomed to failure.

Of course, we anarchists and libcoms haven't been successful either. The working class is more divided and less politicised than ever and the potential for revolution in places like the UK seem more remote than ever. Still, we never mass murdered in Iraq and Afghanistan like the Labour government did and we haven't royally fucked over workers in this country either. However, I can safely guarantee that even under the nice St Jeremy, the next Labour government, if elected, would continue to fuck over the working class and, in the right circumstances and if called upon by their special friends in government across the pond, would be no less prepared to participate in whatever butchery global capitalism deems necessary.

ajjohnstone #158

‘Then there was In Place of Strive aborted simply because they lost the general election but it opened the door to the Tories to impose their Industrial Relations Act’

I agree it did leave the door open for Thatcher’s Industrial Relations Act. However I remember the circumstances of Harold Wilson’s scrapping Barbara Castle’s Bill ‘In Place of Strife’ a little differently.

There was a big wave of industrial protest over the proposed bill, I lost several days wages over it.
Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones attempted to sell out the militant shop steward’s movement. Eventually Wilson caved in and Castle has stated that Wilson stabbed her in the back. The watered down version of the bill was lost when Labour lost power.

The important factor was the industrial strength of the working class. This was not lost on Heath or the Thatcher governments, they understood they had to destroy the organised working class.

http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/industrial-unrest.htm

It was just a tad before my time, Auld-bod. I bow to your years, your experience and your memory :)

Wishface - since you are so adamant everyone "prove" their claims, how about doing the same? How will a small number of people (those you are addressing) voting Labour "provide people respite from their current misery"? Say everyone on this site, everyone involved in anarchist politics across country all voted Corbyn, how does this help with regard to that?

Everything else aside, the "just 10 minutes" of voting is literally just wasted (and before you demand I prove this- MPs by majority in 2015 http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/mps-maj.htm Not a single seat in the UK where a single seat would have been swung by "just voting"). tbh personally idgaf either way if someone does - and I voted "just voted" Remain for largely personal reasons despite knowing it was a waste of time - but you can't have it both ways. Either you are just voting (and therefore not changing anything, so you shouldn't really care of others do as well) ; or you're arguing for wholesale involvement in winning the election - in which case your "just 10 minutes" claim is out on its arse.

Honestly, I'm sympathetic as to why someone like Corbyn and wants the Tories to lose in 2020, but your arguments are all over the place, internally inconsistent, and in fairly bad faith - for a start you can't demand every claim be "proven" when you operate largely in assertion.

Tbf if all the libcom posters moved to Gower we could probably swing it back to Labour. What's your strategy? #PayBack2020 #PlanGower

(Ofc Labour are going to get decimated by boundary changes regardless of who's leading the party, and if Scotland goes for independence again and gets it it's Tory rule forever unless the liberal europhile and revanchist europhobe wings finally split).

wishface

jondwhite

Do you say there is no alternative because there are alternatives but they are too small in number? In which case, what do you think is holding back the Lib Dems or the Greens? Lack of support? I'm not advocating supporting them, but trying to unpick your reasoning about what constitutes an alternative.

Present one and lets find out

Well if you like reforms the Green party have lots to offer.

wishface

jondwhite

wishface

jondwhite

Do you say there is no alternative because there are alternatives but they are too small in number? In which case, what do you think is holding back the Lib Dems or the Greens? Lack of support? I'm not advocating supporting them, but trying to unpick your reasoning about what constitutes an alternative.

Present one and lets find out

Well if you like reforms the Green party have lots to offer.

The greens don't stand a chance of winning power

What is your threshold for 'standing a chance of winning power' in 2020? 10 MPs, 100 MPs?

How do you think groups and parties grow their influence? This is why I say you subjugate both the history and the future to the now. I'm guessing this may be one of the first elections you plan to cast your ballot in. As such you may think it more important than any other past election.

However, if you look at the political party propaganda from the earlier elections, you will see it was posed as much more important and much more at stake. Blair was depicted with devil eyes in the 1990s. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the Conservatives were warning about communist infiltration and the collapse of Britain. There was fascism and nuclear armageddon on the agenda in the 1960s and 1980s. The 1970s were high levels of industrial action.

The point is the election in 2020 will not be uniquely important so that we all must cast our vote in with Corbyn bolstering his mandate to govern, which will inevitably be at the expense of anarchists and real socialists ability to present themselves as a credible alternative with widespread support.

wishface

My point is to everyone in the country. It isn't intended solely to a limited number of people, and i cannot force people to vote the way I want that would be an authoritarian position (a bit like expecting Corbyn to whip MP's against Syria). I can only hope people agree with me. there is no claim to prove here. I am making my argument and it is up to everyone else to make up their own mind.

It's difficult to know where to begin with this, and to be honest at this point I suspect you're just a troll on a hilarious wind up.

You are posting on an anarchist forum. You are not addressing everyone in the country, by definition the arguments you'll encounter and be expected to advance on an anarchist forum are entirely different. Given, you know, a basic assumption of opposition to capitalism, the state, electoralism to overcome that you won't encounter elsewhere.

And whipping members of a political party isn't authoritarian by any meaningful use of the word. It's a basic part of running a parliamentary party, and something that any Corbyn led government would have to make heavy use of. You'd hope someone advocating support for Corbyn might know this.

It takes more than ten minutes to put a cross on a piece of paper? What are you talking about?

This isn't what I said, is it? Again, this sort of (at best) deliberate misreading is why I'm assuming you're probably here trolling.

If you spend 10 minutes voting, and nothing else, you are literally achieving nothing. This isn't a moral or political claim, it's a simple practical numerical one. One vote, in one constituency, has never, once, in the entire history of electoralism across the world shifted who the government is. Even on your own terms, it is an entirely meaningless act - hence why myself and several other posters here have been fairly clear they don't really give a shit if you want to do it.

If you want to actually effect how the election goes, you need to actively campaign, across the country, and win votes for Labour in significant numbers of marginals. And at this point your "it just takes 10 minutes" argument is lost.

If you want to vote Labour and feel better about yourself that you've done the correct moral thing then fine, cool, go for it. But don't have a tantrum when other people patiently explain why, on the basis of significant amounts of real world practical experience why they think it's not a great idea.

Or in your terms - if you think spending 10 minutes "just voting" can overturn a Tory majority in the context of them 15 points ahead in the polls, majority anti-Labour boundary changes coming and a media almost universally hostile media, the prove it[.

wishface

I haven't given a definition of anarchism.

you didn't have to--your response to spikymike tells me you have no idea what anarchism in practice means.

I don't have a problem with texts, except when in the middle of a conversation. This is a discussion and i'm not going to interrupt it to go and spend days reading texts to answer someone else's burden of proof.

and for the third time now, i will point out that i linked you to the introductory guides that others have asked you to read the day before you started this thread. so not in this 'discussion' at all.

People repeated the claim that there was an alternative. That has not been provided. All that has been given is the notion of grassroots activism which I acknowledged was a good and necessary undertaking from the off. That position has not changed hwoever it does not address the issue at hand: ousting the tories.

is that the issue at hand? I thought the issue at hand was your concern for the suffering people are going through. as others have done an excellent job pointing out, labor made possible cuts the tories could only have dreamed of. in the us it's the same--reagan and bush 41 would never have dared cutting the social safety net in the way clinton successfully did. you have this childish notion of tories-bad, labor-good that doesn't stand up to even a second of scrutiny, and you refuse to acknowledge even basic facts.

several of us have pointed out that in order for a labor government to implement any fightback to the cuts you would have to gave a large, militant extra parliamentary movement. as others have successfully demonstrated, giving labor a majority would mean hard organizing work and would require much more than the 10 minute claim. there are a limited number of people willing/able to do this kind of work and a limited number of hours in any given day. so which do you support? people doing grassroots work or working to elect a labor majority? both is not a valid answer.

There is not enough action that will happen between now and 2020 to change my position. Of that I am absolutely certain.

then why the hell are you here? what do you mean to accomplish? you've been asked this numerous times and have yet to answer. if you're certain of your pov why do you keep asking for an alternative?

in the same breath you demean how many anarchists an organization has, and turn around and act like these anarchist votes could swing the election. either we're too small to matter or we're not. which is it?

this is just uncharitable arrogant nonsense.

you pulled the same routine, demanding answers in the other thread and i spent not an insignificant amount of time answering your question about trotskyism, and you fucked off out of the thread without aknowledging you'd even read it. in this thread i responded to you multiple times with no response. you appear to have a tendency to ignore inconvenient points and dismiss outright points that can't be ignored (without even a moment of reflection).

but i do appreciate your honesty in this response. at least you've now told us directly, what's been obvious for awhile now that you have absolutely no interest in an actual discussion.

ETA cross posted with Fallback--on further consideration, surely wishface is on a wind-up. No one could intentionally make this ineffective an argument and actually mean it.

So, I've actually given up on this thread and wishface but there are a couple of assertions they make that I thought I'd correct before I go to bed.

Labour haven't done anything comparable to the Health and Social Care act which has dismantled the NHS.

Yes they did. In fact, if it hadn't been for Labour's reforms then what the Tories are doing now would never even have been possible. Before Labour got in, private healthcare couldn't compete with the NHS, it was entirely dependent on NHS staff and infrastructure. That all changed with PFIs and later the Health and Social Care Act 2003 with its introduction of 'mixed economies' within healthcare to improve 'patient choice'. Labour literally laid down the necessary infrastructure to make what's happening now possible. Moreover, the majority of the PLP look back to that period as a positive one. Give them your vote, let's see if they roll back the process they started.

It wasn't Labour who started the Bedroom tax either, that's a myth.

No it's not. Labour introduced the Local Housing Allowance as a different way of recalculating housing benefit for private tenants. Part of how the allowance was worked out was on a basis of how many bedrooms were needed i.e. a mum with two daughters aged 15 and 13 in a 3-bed house would be judged to only 'need' two (one for the mum and one for the daughters) and so receive less housing benefit (as if they only 'need' two bedrooms, the third one is 'spare'). Doesn't sound a million miles away from the Bedroom Tax, does it? Especially as the goal was to 'incentivise' renters to move into cheaper/smaller accommodation.

Ed

And this is all before the problem of capital flight/non-cooperation/sabotage (which I already discussed and you haven't responded to).
wishface

Won't happen. The big businesses make too much profit that they would sacrifice it all. Companies like google and amazon make millions here, they won't throw that aside. At best this means the tax laws stay the same, but while not ideal, is not the priority. Stopping people starving to death or being made destitute is more important.

This is so wrong it's almost painful to look at. I mean, look at what's happening to the markets now when we're just talking about going from one form of conservative capitalism to another. But if Corbyn really tried to do what he says he wants to do, we're not talking about a light divergence in how to do neo-liberalism. Corbyn is talking about higher wages, better rights at work, stronger unions, better social security, higher corporation taxes, stripping private companies of lucrative deals and renationalising whole sectors i.e. everything that makes a place unattractive to investors.

The result of reluctant investors would be shaky markets and a devalued pound leading to higher costs on imports which would mean higher prices. Companies (particularly ones negatively affected by Corbyn's policies) would probably begin redundancies, blaming government policy for squeezing profits of course, leading to increased unemployment alongside those high prices. Meanwhile, international capital would probably make it difficult for the govt to borrow money, citing Britain's economic instability, meaning the country would hit a liquidity crisis. Maybe the IMF would lend though, providing some policy changes were made, as happened in the 1970s.

Now, all of this is fine in a sense. If a working-class movement ever got anywhere it would come up against the same problems. But the difference is that a working-class movement is always positioned against capitalism (not necessarily ideologically but just by virtue of being outside the main institutions of power they always have to fight for what they can get, as they did in Italy and the UK in the 1970s) while governments are meant to manage capitalism.

So how would Corbyn manage that situation? You pretending he wouldn't even need to coz 'Google and Amazon make loads of money here' spectacularly misunderstands the point, not least because Corbyn has never talked about nationalising Google and Amazon.

Anyway, what a spectacular waste of time this has all been.. probably would've been more constructive shouting this post out the window..

Anyway, what a spectacular waste of time this has all been.. probably would've been more constructive shouting this post out the window..

new organizing campaign

For wishface it is unfortunate that we don’t have a presidential system of government because except for his constituents no-one else actually votes for Corbyn. We vote for the Labour candidate in our own constituencies and they are selected by the Labour Party apparatchiks who rarely reflect Corbyn’s position.

Supporting Corbyn is encouraging the idea of leaders and leadership. It's assuming that "opposing austerity" is an action that has some chance of success in capitalism in a recession

Let us put things in some historical perspective – Jeremy is Harold Wilson warmed up and his economics is Keynes re-heated.

For the time being he is being presented as a symbol – for the right – the demon, for the left, the saviour. Neither is accurate depiction of Corbyn.

We do not attack individuals per se - we attack the system

Wishface- I'm gonna try and clear up the argument going round and round about how it only ten minutes to vote.

It does only take ten minutes to vote. The thing is, anarchists are more likely to live in big cities and in Labour strongholds. Even if all of us voted, most of us don't live in marginals. To have an impact on the election that's where you would need to be.

The argument about time is an argument about campaigning in electoral politics. Maybe that's not what you are arguing for. In which case fair enough and maybe why it's going round and round. But that is something that a lot of us have direct experience of. The example I gave of the people who were helping us in an anti eviction struggle dropping out for several weeks before the elections, that was because they were spending all their free time campaigning for their party, not just voting for it.

Campaigning doesn't require all day every day, no, but most people spend nearly all day every day working, doing the laundry and cooking the kids' dinner, free time for political activity is actually in really short supply especially now with the intensification of workload and increase in zero hour contracts which has lead to a decrease in free time. Exhaustion and burnout are really big problems in direct action and grassroots groups and so the issue of people going and putting energy into electoral campaigns is a big deal.

wishface

If you care about ameliorating conditions you'd do that, but I don't think you or anyone else here actually does. I think this is just dogma and intellectual comfort.

Seriously, please stop saying this.

wishface

fingers malone

wishface

If you care about ameliorating conditions you'd do that, but I don't think you or anyone else here actually does. I think this is just dogma and intellectual comfort.

Seriously, please stop saying this.

Why?

Because it is an outright lie.
You seem to be under the impression that anyone who doesn't do what you want doesn't care. Even though it has been repeatedly explained that what you are arguing won't help and will divert resources from actual useful work. Even though you disagree with those arguments you should recognise that.

The problem is that you are too arrogant to understand that you are wrong (or even read any of the arguments against your position) and too immature to realise that someone disagreeing with you is doing so due to their own thought process rather than being too evil/dishonest to admit that you are right.

You are wasting everybody's time.

You know its funny really, nearly every person I know in the local Labour parties who I'm still on good terms with are refusing to do any campaigning because the party is dominated by the very same bigwigs who got most of them suspended for liking Corbyn. They know its pointless as helping Labour means helping them stay in control and get thousands of pounds letting the area stagnate.

Hell I actually went to local Momentum open meetings, and they were all tripping over themselves to talk about how they need to move onto educational work and solidarity networks, and workplace organising instead.

The argument was made that by posting this here I'm only interested in the people here and that because there are few people here compared to the size of the electorate I'm wasting my time. That's just a shit way of trying to shut down conversation.

Your OP was explicitly addressed at anarchists/revolutionaries. This is literally the argument you have made. You didn't say 'I want people to vote Labour because the Tories are worse'. You argued that anarchists needed to support Corbyn it they were responsible for whatever the Tories do.

It'd be like arguing that I, as a brit, can't have an opinion on the US election because I don't live in the US.

I mean, it's not? It's not even remotely the same. They're entirely different arguments with basically nothing in common.

So you infer on the basis of one vote that he won't use the whip ever?

I said the exact opposite of this. Of course he would use a whip. You don't seem to understand this, and even apparently think this would be bad and authoritarian. Honestly, if this counted as authoritarian, then the word would be meaningless.

Of course it's an authoritarian position. If we lived in an anarhist community, however you want to call it, and there was a discussion about committing arms/troops/people to a neighbour to help them fight armed religious fanatics would you allow the community to vote freely or would you somehow force everyone to agree with you?

Not that I've got any interest in playing fantasy anarchy land manager, but if such a vote was taking place in anarchy land, then delegates would be strictly mandated. They wouldn't just be voting freely however they felt. Decisions on this scale are hardly going to be made by a direct show of hands.

Good to know your knowledge of the anarchism you attack is as vacant as the Parliamentariasm you endorse.

Because you weren't addressing what I had actually said. You are again straw manning me. It takes no time at all to vote.

I agree. It takes no time. It also, on its own, achieves nothing. No election is won by a single vote. Sorry to break your GCSE Citizenship level belief, but your vote (statistically) doesn't matter.

I wasn't making a point about campaigning and even that doesn't require all day every day - even if we assume individuals are also engaged in other more producrive activity, an issue that was raised and addressed way back in the conversation. If you wish to ignore that then you're just shitposting.

Your problem here is you didn't answer it. You didn't prove anything, you just asserted. If you want to make a meaningful contribution to Labour winning, you are talking thousands of people spending thousands of hours. You're not going to make a scratch against the entire media, Tony election machine, and 18 points in the polls otherwise.

This is desperate stuff. Of course it wouldn't be one vote in one constituency. You're completely intellectually dishonest here.

Why, do you get extra votes somehow? I mean, if you persuade anyone here to spend 10 minutes just voting, what exactly do you think that's got to give Labour, beyond their one vote?

All of which is perfectly possible and needn't collide with or prevent revolutionary activity. Again, asked and answered.

prove it

I think we're done; you're not even reading what I say. I have repeatedly told you that this isn't the ideal situation.

I have no interest in an "ideal" situation. Nothing any of us does is in an "ideal" situation. I've also said idgaf if someone votes or not. I'm taking issue with your claim that it is both meaningful activity and easy to do.

It's not. Even if we are to accept the electoral field as a worthwhile one to engage in, it's not both of these - you're either doing something incredibly time consuming, or you're not making a dent.

You've even acknowledged that by calling my argument the 'lesser of two evils'.

Where did I do this? prove it

You're just being obstructionist and dogmatic and there's little point continuing. That I have to repeat saying I wont' repeat myself is just plain disrespectful. Either address the issue or talk to someone else.

I've said I don't care if someone votes, and based my arguments entirely on the basis of whether it's going to make a change, rather than on principles, basically the opposite of dogmatic. I really, honestly don't care that you think Corbyn is going to be better than Tories. I might even agree. That doesn't mean your arguments that anyone not voting Labour is responsible for 5 more year of what the Tories do isn't nonsense.

But you're right on one thing, I don't have any respect for you; you're either a tedious troll, or brutally thick. Not just wrong, mind, but entirely incapable of comprehending the arguments made to you. Or to put another way - you're not even wrong. You haven't even reached that point yet.

The Tory majority is 12.

Please, I'd love to hear your strategy to overcome the majority of 12 (plus DUP and Carswell) in the face of boundary changes, hostile media, and Tories polling better than 2015. Honestly, I'd love to hear it.

2 years into the Tory government of 2010 (it wasn't a coalition)

omg, dying, this is incredible.

wishface

Fall Back

2 years into the Tory government of 2010 (it wasn't a coalition)

omg, dying, this is incredible.

Who held all the major positions? Who was PM with ultimate say? Who was health secretary?

You're not this fucking stupid are you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Cameron_ministry

wishface

Fall Back

2 years into the Tory government of 2010 (it wasn't a coalition)

omg, dying, this is incredible.

Who held all the major positions? Who was PM with ultimate say? Who was health secretary?

You're not this fucking stupid are you?

Do you know what the word coalition means?

wishface

Who is coercing you?

What useful work is being done? DPAC manage to do great work, and have met and engaged with Corbyn and people like John McDonnell. Some of them very likely support him. What's your excuse?

Well you are not coercing me into interacting with me, no, but I'm not accusing you of coercing me, I'm asking you not to say something that isn't true.

Yes I once bumped into Corbyn on a DPAC protest actually. I do stuff with the cleaners' campaign and they have big pictures on the wall with Corbyn and McDonnell on their picket line with them. This is part of the reason why I actually think Corbyn is a pretty good guy (the other reason is he helped my family when I was a kid, in his role as an MP).

What useful work is being done, well I already gave you a bit of a list, but even a little campaign on my estate that we are doing, I'm not full on involved, all I really do is put up the posters for the meetings and that still takes time. The cleaners union has loads of really committed volunteers and they need more. All the groups like HASL and Hackney Housing Group are helping people who are getting thrown out of their homes on a day to day basis. I got a message today about a solfed campaign about workers not being paid that are doing an action today. I'm off work this week but I still received loads of emails from my union about stuff that people are doing. I don't really know how to convince you any more than I can.

Yes I think a lot of people in DPAC probably do support Corbyn, I know a lot of the cleaners do (though they usually can't vote). You know anarchists in these campaigns are not usually going round lecturing people about electoralism, they are just getting on with the campaign.

What's my excuse for what exactly?

wishface

Who is coercing you?

No-one, and never said I was being coerced. Interesting that you've picked that and ignored all the rest, just like you have done for every post by everyone else.

What useful work is being done?

All the things that fingers etc mentioned that you ignored. Although whether or not someone is personally active doesn't make their argument correct or incorrect, one of the reasons why fingers asked you to stop saying that is that it's deeply offensive, for the reasons that I mentioned in my post. Reasons that you chose not to engage with, because you can't, because you're defending your point to the end and you don't actually care whether it's right or not.

DPAC manage to do great work, and have met and engaged with Corbyn and people like John McDonnell. Some of them very likely support him. What's your excuse?

Excuse for what? Not meeting Corbyn? I don't make time for things that I don't want or need to do. I am giving up at this point. Every post wishface makes tells us that he won't listen and that it is pointless, in a way we're ignoring this very clear argument as much as he is ignoring every single one that is made to him :)

Wishface doesn’t want the Tories back in and tells us to vote Labour and for Corbyn. But polls tell us that supporting Corbyn means that the Tories will win.

According to the Mori opinion poll published on October 19, if an election were held today then the Tories would be on 47%, Labour would get 29%, the Liberal Democrats 7%, the UK Independence Party a fairly miserable 6%.
These results echo an ICM poll out earlier this month, which put the Conservatives 17% ahead.

Using the Electoral Calculus method, generally regarded as the best vote/seat predictor available, on a uniform swing under the new boundaries proposed by the government (reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600) such a vote share would give the Conservatives 371 seats and Labour 159 - a majority of over 200

So why are you supporting the Labour Party’s liability if you seek the end of Tory rule?

Couldn’t some argue the alternative which Wishface keeps on asking us to provide is now to get rid of Corbyn and bring in a Blairite?

I mean, if i was into "practical" and "pragmatic" real politik strategies to protect the NHS by kicking out the Tories even if it means kicking out Corbyn/McDonnell.

Shockingly, the composition of the coalition cabinet reflected the balance of power between the coalition partners.

wishface

Reddebrek

wishface

Fall Back

2 years into the Tory government of 2010 (it wasn't a coalition)

omg, dying, this is incredible.

Who held all the major positions? Who was PM with ultimate say? Who was health secretary?

You're not this fucking stupid are you?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Cameron_ministry

Perhaps you should read your own link.

Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt are tories. The PM, final arbiter of policy, was a tory. Chancellor, a tory.

A few minor positions given as sops to their coalition 'partners'. They had the real power.

Yeah you probably should crack open a dictionary and look up the C word it doesn't mean what you think it means.

Also Business, Treasury and Energy aren't important areas for the government? Yeah sure.

wishface

Joseph Kay

Shockingly, the composition of the coalition cabinet reflected the balance of power between the coalition partners.

In other words, it was a Tory government.

Do you know what the word coalition means?

wishface

jef costello

All the things that fingers etc mentioned that you ignored.

Which I addressed way backin the conversation.

You seem to be under the impression that I'm against direction action. I've said exactly the opposite. The problem isn't that direct action doesn't work, it's that there isn't enough of it and won't be by 2020.

So what is your alternative?

Knowing that ousting the tories would take away their power to continue doing the things they have done, what would you tell someone losing their home due to the Bedroom Tax?

25 years ago riots brought the poll tax and ultimately Thatcher down. If there had been the same militancy and interest today things would be different. They aren't. So what now?

But to win the election you're goint to need a left wing movement that is winning people over in all the more right wing areas of the country, this is also really difficult and is going to require a social upheaval too. We're not winning on any criteria I can think of.

Corbyn may well be a nice fellow and a good constituency MP. Well, so are a lot of tory MPs. At the very least it helps give them a little job security. I heard that some conservatives vote for the ‘Beast of Bolsover’ because he is an excellent constituency MP. Being a caring person makes no difference, as once in a position of influence – capitalism’s thirst for profit guarantees the roles are reversed and their ‘influence’ becomes largely illusionary. As the old tory Harold MacMillan once said, “Power? It's like a Dead Sea fruit. When you achieve it, there is nothing there.”

During the war my parents knew Gordon McLennan, once a big noise in the Communist Party. He was young and idealistic then and worked in Albion Motor Works on Clydebank. Years later during the 1966 general election he stood for election in Govan, and held a meeting in the street below our tenement flat. My mum asked me to take a mug of tea down to him. I wasn’t wearing it, as I felt about him the way I feel today about Corbyn (though to be honest I’d not deny him a cuppa tea).

Auld-bod, I could listen to you all day ^^ fascinating!

Isn't there a "practical" argument that when the margin isn't close, you should act according to your conscience and cast a protest anyway.
Or the tactical argument of voting lib dem where they are more likely to unseat a tory?
All sorts of arguments can be made for different actions according to tactical "practicality" even including where getting the tories out is your priority.

Plenty of vested Labour interest in privatising the NHS; http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/one-in-six-labour-peers-have-financial.html

And wishface fails to mention that it was Labour began the vicious ATOS attacks on disabled benefit claimants which has led to many deaths. But maybe a few less deaths than the Tories so VOTE LABOUR! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_Capability_Assessment

wishface

The Tories woudl also have started the war so who actually called the shot is irrelevant.

Hi wishface, would it be possible for you to explain to me in a little more depth what your reasoning is behind this statement.
Thanks in advace,
rat.

http://libcom.org/forums/general/uk-election-vote-corbyn-25102016?page=5#comment-586871

Man, this thread is great. It's been a bit quiet on the boards lately but wishface is bringing some much needed lulz. You know, like when the an-caps come on here to show us how things really are. Though, I think this Corbynite have more stars in his eyes that I've ever seen on libcom and is certainly not as bright as an-caps. But pls go on digging g wishface, I'm enjoying this thread. Just don't go all Kenneth.

I think Jeremy Corbyn will be the next Francois Mitterrand imo. That is, if he wins.

He can not, as prime minister control the flows of capital, he does not control who invests when and where, he does not decide if you have a job and he does not decide how much it will pay. He will not determine the value of the currency and he does not control the balance of payments. He will not control the ruling class; the ruling class will will control him.

I'm not as well versed on economics and things as you guys are, but common sense seems sufficient enough to suggest a hell of a lot of things could be explained as forces of capitalism driving policy rather then the other way around.

common sense seems sufficient enough to suggest a hell of a lot of things could be explained as forces of capitalism driving policy rather then the other way around.

exactly-well said.

Why you should
Never vote labour
http://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/socstudy101.shtml#nolab

jesuithitsquad

common sense seems sufficient enough to suggest a hell of a lot of things could be explained as forces of capitalism driving policy rather then the other way around.

exactly-well said.

Second that!

So Wishface, for all your earlier sanctimonious talk about protecting the NHS, it now appears you would rather sacrifice it than sacrifice Corbyn for the sake of its defence...There is a word for that sort of politics...cultism

Given how their responses are so repetitive and often completely irrelevant to the points being made, what's the over/under on wishface being a bot?

Wishface was the standard issue Labour Party hack bot.

A taster of the internal pressures any Corbyn govt would have to deal with if it ever got power (which it looks like the PLP are trying to avoid at all costs, even at the expense of losing an election):

Labour rebellion on Saudi bill defied 3-line Party whip to intentionally undermine Corbyn’s leadership

Again, this is before capital flight. And, again, wishface has completely avoided explaining what Corbyn would do to overcome such a problem (beyond saying 'it won't be a problem')..

Jesuithitman, at least it passed the Turing test.

Has it already been listed on this thread that the Labour Party also tried to bring in compulsory identity cards?

Khawaga

Jesuithitman, at least it passed the Turing test.

indeed!

Wishface, I geddit. Vote conservative since they not the Tories.

wishface

Khawaga

Wishface, I geddit. Vote conservative since they not the Tories.

You don't, but if you think the Tories are better than Labour then vote for them. That would be the logical position.

What if you think there are better alternatives to both? Should we still vote for the 'lesser of two evils'?

wishface

There won't be a capital flight. THis is just paranoid nonsense. Big business ins't going to just give up considerable profits.

What? The UK is already seeing outflows of money from some sectors because of the Brexit, if a Corbyn led government got in then I would be shocked if there wasn't capital fight from some sectors. That said, all Corbyn is interested in doing is running capitalism in a slightly sustainable way so I guess there would be some considerable profits to be made so maybe that flight would be misguided.

wishface

You don't, but if you think the Tories are better than Labour then vote for them. That would be the logical position.

Well, I can't vote in any British election, but in any case you've repeatedly stated throughout this discussion that people should vote conservative since a vote for Labour/Corbyn would mean nothing changing and the UK just staying on the same course it's been on for decades already. Arguing to vote for neo-liberal parties is advocating a conservative vote.

wishface

Ed

A taster of the internal pressures any Corbyn govt would have to deal with if it ever got power (which it looks like the PLP are trying to avoid at all costs, even at the expense of losing an election):

Labour rebellion on Saudi bill defied 3-line Party whip to intentionally undermine Corbyn’s leadership

Again, this is before capital flight. And, again, wishface has completely avoided explaining what Corbyn would do to overcome such a problem (beyond saying 'it won't be a problem')..

There won't be a capital flight. THis is just paranoid nonsense. Big business ins't going to just give up considerable profits.

That's the extent of your argument? 'No it won't'.. we've given examples of when it has happened in the past and how it is happening now.. you're only response is 'it won't happen to Corbyn'. Sorry, but what's so special about Corbyn that he'll manage to keep international capital happy while also installing the most left-wing programme of any British government in the last 40 years? Why would he succeed where Harold Wilson failed?

wishface

That article provides no evidence, merely thin supposition, for the reasons they didn't vote. Certainly that could be the reason, but you need to do better to prove that.

Ok, so now you're saying the right-wing of the Labour Party aren't out to sabotage Corbyn. They're all singing from the same hymn sheet, are they?

Wishface

There won't be a capital flight. THis is just paranoid nonsense. Big business ins't going to just give up considerable profits.

Other have rightfully already picked up on this, but you seem to have a misunderstanding of how capital flight works. The companies would leave because Corbyn-esque reforms would eat into their considerable profits. They'd leave the UK because they could maintain those same levels of considerable profits in another locale.

As has been pointed out, this would also be the case if the labor movement itself found its footing. But the difference there is that there would be a mass movement to fight it, not placing hope in a leader who's going to have to fight the pressures of capital without even the support of his own parliamentary party.

wishface

You don't, but if you think the Tories are better than Labour then vote for them. That would be the logical position.

Talk about binary thinking. The lib dems don't even exist? Or for that matter, all the other tiny parties? But the ideology is strong in wishface; he clearly accepts the notion that there is actual choice in official politics, when, to borrow a term from Horkheimer and Adorno, it is really an issue of everything being pseudo-individualized.

235 posts. Anybody convinced yet?

Fleur

235 posts. Anybody convinced yet?

I am pretty sure that wishface is human, although bots are becoming better and better so you never know.

Capital flight can take place without even eating into profits, so long as they can make greater profits elsewhere they will go. The pressure must be immense on any government.

I would love to work all this out in great detail myself but I'm not 100% sure where to start.

There does not even need to be capital flight for them to put pressure on the government IMO. The can just divest or move into more "primitive acculmulation" I think it's called. I need to know a lot more about economics really, but I do suspect that domestic pressures are more then enough to constrain the actions of a government to what we are familiar with. But the international factor is extremely important nonetheless.

I guess businesses would just postpone investments untill they get what they want. Maybe they sit there and think of it like a strike. Maybe they plot and plot waiting for the opportunemail moment, maybe start with small actions first, like industry petitions and so on untill they get to a point where they pick up and leave or whatever untill they get what they want. A reverse strike with maybe specialists weighing up the costs and returns on whatever it is they are doing, ready to maximise the profits in a never ending war on the workers; a class war in reverse.

I think that's bassically how lobbying works, anyway.

I can imagine themy speaking nicely and framing it all to Mr corbyn and his cabinet, framing it all on positive terms. "How good it would be if you did this", "how noble it would be to help us, and your country". And Corbyn gradually comming around, the back benches cheering him on in the name of " realism". They're not wrong! They just fanatically support this reality.

We have seem it all before. I don't mean to personalise it too much; this is not a conspiracy as such. It is just the way the institutional framework works! The economic and political institutions are one and the same.

The way in which our un-wanted system of social organisation works we can work out, by analysing it's institutions, theit properties and their relationships. But the way it manifests on a personal level, the very micro level of the people involved, we can only speculate on. But speculating on such things is usefully to us, as it helps us personify our enemy, and thus communicates our view of the world to the many.

Or maybe not who knows. I need to read more. I just think that we could use a bit of the storytelling kind of approach that the conspiracy "theroists" use in order to make the whole thing more vivid and compelling. Could be wrong though.

Khawaga

Fleur

235 posts. Anybody convinced yet?

I am pretty sure that wishface is human, although bots are becoming better and better so you never know.

This is almost word for word what i was going to write!

EDITED for phone-posting weirdness.

Maybe he is a bot.

One, if it's only a "slight dip" (we certainly got one of them on this thread) then the sort of anti-austerity reforms you think Corbyn can implement won't actually be feasible. Capitalism needs austerity to maintain expected levels of profit, if austerity is turned back, profit's going to take more than a small dip.

Two, profit is generated at the point of production. So in manufacturing, for example, capital can and will move to areas where it gets the highest rate of return. With service and transport/distribution, companies do risk losing markets, but they'll up prices/cut down on labor costs to compensate instead. The idea that Corbyn can, at that point, fight capital and do so without the support of his own parliamentary party is, indeed, nonsense.

wishface

Corbyn has the best chance of winning.

Ah, I see, The Trump/Charlie Sheen criteria for politics. Gotcha.

Patient Insurgency #238

I sympathize with you regarding trying to understand the workings of capitalism. The past and to an extent the present can be made understandable, unfortunately however, because of its inherently unstable nature the future market is not predictable except in the most general terms.

Capital will move to wherever it can grow. Everywhere speculators are looking for investment opportunities. They are like locusts devouring the planet. Companies move location as their only function is to create dividends for their investors. If they fail to do that, the financial life blood will drain away and like most of the UK manufacturing, the enterprise will wither and die. Capitalism can only survive by devouring the weak and Corbyn and the Labour Party are powerless to challenge its remorseless internal logic.

wishface

The idea they will abandon the considerable profits they make here, even if after a slight dip, is just nonsense.

You're just repeating yourself now but what you've said is demonstrably bollocks. Do you think that the devaluation of the pound since Brexit is nonsense? Do you think Nissan would sign a trade deal with Corbyn if instead of telling them he was seeking a tariff-free trade deal with the EU he said he was going to strengthen workers' rights and increase corporation tax?

The point (as many have pointed out and you've ignored) isn't that they'll be 'abandoning considerable profits' but that they'll be evading a squeeze on their profits to go somewhere there isn't such a squeeze.

You're only answer is 'it won't happen'; but a) you haven't addressed how similar has happened in the past/is happening now and b) you haven't explained why it won't happen to Corbyn beyond vague, vacuous and easily disproved statements about 'considerable profits'... particularly considering your insistence everyone prove everything to you..

wishface

Ed

That's the extent of your argument? 'No it won't'.. we've given examples of when it has happened in the past and how it is happening now..

You've not given any evidence, you've asserted it.

I gave two example: first, capital flight in the 1970s during the Harold Wilson govt; second, the shaky markets and collapse of the pound since Brexit. These examples of what happens when markets don't get what they want is also known as 'evidence'..

wishface

And so what?You think this wouldn't be the reaction from capital to any effort to challenge it - whether or not that's supporting Corbyn (because capital views Corbyn as a challenge, wheether or not you do).

I addressed exactly this point in a previous post, citing examples from the Italian (and to lesser extent, British) workers' movement of the 1970s. Go back and read my posts before you respond.

wishface

It's irrelevant: the purpose is to get the Tories out.

No it's not. The purpose is to improve working-class people's lives no matter who's in government.

wishface

This would not have happened had Labour got the victory last year.

This is utter bullshit. In that election, Labour committed themselves to remaining within George Osbourne's cuts budget and even to cut more in other places. Even if ESA hadn't been cut something else would've. The net gain for working class people would have been nil.

wishface

Ed

you're only response is 'it won't happen to Corbyn'. Sorry, but what's so special about Corbyn that he'll manage to keep international capital happy while also installing the most left-wing programme of any British government in the last 40 years? Why would he succeed where Harold Wilson failed?

Why is this relevant?

Because it's an example of what pressures Corbyn would be faced with were he to get into power, pressures that you say won't happen coz of the 'considerable profits' capital could make.. except they have happened before. Why wouldn't it happen again, when globalisation is even stronger than it was in the 1970s?

wishface

Ed

Ok, so now you're saying the right-wing of the Labour Party aren't out to sabotage Corbyn. They're all singing from the same hymn sheet, are they?

They may be, or they may not be, again so what?

Because on top of the pressures of capital flight mentioned above, a PLP full of people trying to get rid of Corbyn would add YET ANOTHER pressure. Do you not understand that? And sorry, but is your line now that there isn't division between Corbyn and the PLP?

Decided to delete my sily post

How are Labour so far behind in the polls? Is the UK as conservative as Alan Partidge says?

Part of the question is where a firm sites its production, if a firm moves its factory to another country they are still maintaining production and can usually still sell the products in the UK so will not necessarily be losing profit.

Capital flight really is a real thing, look at Mitterand in the 80s.

wishface

Jim

wishface

There won't be a capital flight. THis is just paranoid nonsense. Big business ins't going to just give up considerable profits.

What? The UK is already seeing outflows of money from some sectors because of the Brexit,

Citation needed.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/aug/23/uk-investment-funds-suffered-5-billion-pound-outflows-after-brexit-vote

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-property-idUKKCN0ZL13H

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-12/u-k-construction-shrinks-as-brexit-delays-investment-projects

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/projects-on-hold-enquiries-down-aj-survey-reveals-how-brexit-is-hitting-workloads/10010253.article

wishface

jondwhite

wishface

Khawaga

Wishface, I geddit. Vote conservative since they not the Tories.

You don't, but if you think the Tories are better than Labour then vote for them. That would be the logical position.

What if you think there are better alternatives to both? Should we still vote for the 'lesser of two evils'?

in 8 pages noone has provided a better alternative.

feel free to be the first though

Take your pick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_the_United_Kingdom
not including various anarchist groups.
The responsibility is on you.

The only 'alternative' strategy and tactics that wishface is interested in his giving any consideration to at all are those with the single and only purpose being to defeat the Tories in the next general election. He has no interest in any broader strategy aimed at advancing independent class politics and organisation and displays a blissful ignorance of the reality of the practice of the Labour Party (left, right and centre) either historically or in the present day, so that inevitably there is no actual discussion to be had with him, even if the strenuous efforts of others here might have been of benefit to other viewers still harbouring illusions in the benefits of voting Labour under Corbyn's leadership. Time to close this down surely?

Is wishface actively pursuing a ban?

wishface

I'm repeating myself because people still aren't addressing what I've said and are arguing against a straw man.

People have directly addressed what you've said ('Corbyn would be better than the Tories') and responded, at length with examples of similar situations. You've responded mostly by showing that you haven't a clue about economics though occasionally you've made assertions that you've refused (been unable?) to back up.. obviously while demanding everyone provided you with fully sourced arguments (but you don't want to be given anything too long to read)..

wishface

However to address this silly tangent, capital is already in those places and even if Corbyn manages to successfully legislate for higher taxes, so what? Capital isn't going to throw the baby out with the bathwater anyway. Most likely scenario would be they would find a way to avoid tax as they do now since Corbyn cannot legislate for tax havens and tax laws beyond the borders of the UK.

Look, can you just admit you haven't got a clue how economics works (again, I'm no expert, but even I know what you're saying makes no sense).. if you knew what you were talking about you wouldn't think it was a silly tangent..

wishface

Provide some evidence of what happened in the 70's and why it was Wilson's fault and why it was a problem etc.

I'm not saying it was Wilson's fault (just like it wouldn't be Corbyn's) and, tbh, I don't feel like doing your homework for you. I've told you what happened in the 1970s: a left-wing Labour govt was hamstrung by capital flight.. if you want a little more detail, eventually they needed to borrow from the IMF who obviously demanded structural changes (which Labour went beyond to show they were business-friendly).. are you saying this didn't happen? That it wasn't a problem? That wage restraint with massive inflation was a pro-working class policy? Or just that the anti-working class policies they pursued were less anti-working class than the ones the Tories would have done IN YOUR MIND?

wishface

The effects of Brexit (we haven't actually left the EU btw) haven't really led to anything concrete.

So, as Jim already pointed out, there have been huge outflows of money in some sectors since Brexit. But do you not see how you've responded to your own point here? We haven't left yet, nothing's changed.. and yet already the markets are shitting themselves. Now imagine how the markets, which wobble like this in the face of a POSSIBILITY of change from one form of conservative capitalism to another, would react to an ACTUAL change to a socialist government?

wishface

Which post #?

Go back and look for it for fuck's sake. If you're not gonna read my posts properly I'm not going to waste my time looking back through things I've written to spoon-feed you.

Though maybe this is symptomatic of your lazy politics where you hope change can come by just getting out of bed one day and ticking a box. That's what gives you the gall to talk to a bunch of people like fingers who have been/are active in their unions, communities, various political groups etc and call them do-nothings coz they think your box-ticking is pointless..

wishface

in lieu of a credible alternative (still not forthcoming here as beyond)

You know what, this is the actual bit that I sympathise with you.. because we are so far off building a movement which can improve people's conditions en masse (let alone build socialism).

But you know what else, just coz there's a problem doesn't mean there's an easy solution. I think you/we have to understand that things are probably gonna get worse (a lot worse) before they get better and Corbyn won't stop that. Just coz you miss the last bus doesn't mean you should get in some random's car; you'll jusy have to walk, even if it is a long way..

wishface

You also seem to be arguing that we shouldn't upset capital.

You wouldn't be saying this if you'd actually read people's posts..

wishface is now banned for repeatedly breaking the posting guidelines by using insulting and abusive language towards posters.

None of you are anarchists, left liberatarians or communists. You are cowards, gutless self entitled scum. If you want to ban me, you'll only be proving my point. Hiding behind dogma and bullshit.

once again showing you have no idea what any one of those labels mean.

About time. Why did so many of you respond to this abusive troll?

Just wanted to say before this thread ended that a Corbyn lead LP may not be flavour of the month in capitalist and political establishment circles just now given the leftist 'sound bites' emanating from the leadership battles, but the current lot are very far from even earlier left turns in that organisation and some aspects of what McDonnell for instance proposes are well within mainstream economists advise on dealing with UK capitalism's problems post Brexit. A more left-wing inclined government might not be such a bizarre prospect if the economic crisis gets still worse in UK-land. See these short articles for comparison:
www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2016-10-11/yes-we-need-socialism-no-corbynism-isn-t-it and
www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1347-november-2016/cooking-books-john-mcdonnell-imagines

He definitely had to be banned. He didn't really leave any other choice. That said, as far as trolls go, wishface was kinda useful. Arguments against corbynism are generally really well presented and the discussion is commonsensical in a way that non-ultra left people can understand it.

Being an absolute nut, wishface made other posters look really good. Might actually bring some new traffic to the site. It's an accessible thread to new comers in a way that threads on value theory or the real subsumption aren't.

wishface

Ed

Though maybe this is symptomatic of your lazy politics where you hope change can come by just getting out of bed one day and ticking a box. That's what gives you the gall to talk to a bunch of people like fingers who have been/are active in their unions, communities, various political groups etc and call them do-nothings coz they think your box-ticking is pointless..

You can't be this stupid, surely. This has to be some kind of act.

Active? Like fuck you are. This is the politics of laziness and ignorance.

Lol I actually honestly just came home from a picket line!

Wishface Nov 3 2016 15:52 #225
ajjohnstone wrote:
So Wishface, for all your earlier sanctimonious talk about protecting the NHS, it now appears you would rather sacrifice it than sacrifice Corbyn for the sake of its defence...There is a word for that sort of politics...cultism
How have you reached that conclusion? Please provide evidence to back up your claim, or have the guts to retract it.

I said – “I mean, if i was into "practical" and "pragmatic" real politik strategies to protect the NHS by kicking out the Tories even if it means kicking out Corbyn/McDonnell.”

You said – “Because Corbyn is their leader. And because I think he is differnet than the Blairites. Did you not read the part where i said if someone like Owen Smith was leader I wouldn't advocate this? Because then it really would be the same as the tories.”

I conclude you have put the personality above protecting the NHS (and other social institutions that may be threatened. I never suggested Owen Smith as the alternative. There are many political rivals to Corbyn who would be more acceptable to the media and other MPs and who would still be committed to Corbyn’s policy on the NHS. Placing Corbyn above a principle that you have repeatedly depended upon to justify voting for Labour is a sign of following a personality cult.

Have you got the guts to admit that?

"1. As I have said, there will not be a revolution. This isn't going to happen. I wish it weren't so, desperately. It's what this country needs. But what it needs it's not going to get. So we have to make do with what we have right now. That said, I fully endorse and support revolutionary activity and grassroots activism such as we have seen from groups like DPAC for example, or those resisting bailiffs and evictions - including those instigated by Labour councils. I'm not naive."

Isn't this just defeatism? Obviously revolutionary change anywhere is not going to happen anytime soon, but I think the basic assumption of revolutionary politics is that revolutionary change will happen if we effectively organize for it. This is an important base assumption because we no doubt live in an oppressive world that can only be abolished through the self-activity of the oppressed. Telling revolutionaries to abandon that assumption and vote for a centrist candidate with some vague hope that he might make things better seems like the worst advise possible.

"2. Since an election is inevitable, the left has a responsibility. If it doesn't vote that then translates into a vote for the Tories."

No it doesn't. If you don't vote for any candidate then you haven't voted for any candidate. Simple as that. It's pretty convenient that this type of guilt tripping assumes that not voting is a vote for whoever the person arguing the point doesn't like. How come refusing to vote is not automatically a vote for labour or the libdems?

"The bottom line is this: you can still fight for revolutionary change, you can still campaign grassroots direct action, but if you enable the Tories to remain in power, knowing what they have done over the last 6 years already (never mind the next 4), you are complicit in that (aforementioned caveat aside, and any others I have not considered)."

Let me ask you something. So, let's say Corbyn wins in 2020, what is preventing the Tories from winning next election cycle? The revolutionary analysis is that capitalist democracy doesn't exist so believing in some grand, all important choice between two capitalist options is a liberal point of view, not a revolutionary one.

What if you do want Corbyn to win in 2020- just so he fails or betrays his support base? This is what is likely to happen. Libertarian Communism then being the logical alternative to a capitalist society.