David Graeber on 'Momentum': democratising the Labour Party?

That's a double post I already posted this elsewhere on libcom

Here on page 2
https://libcom.org/forums/theory/why-i-likedislike-david-graebers-ideas-01042014?page=1

Yeah, totally agree by the way.

TBH I think this idiocy deserves a thread on its own

A terrible article that's incorrect in nearly every paragraph, that's impressive in weird way.

Well, if this thread is to be for this "idiocy", here's one of Graeber's 'unique observations' I posted on the other thread - Rojava comes to Thanet!;
Graeber

I should emphasise that I am myself very much an outside observer here – but one uniquely positioned, perhaps, to understand what the Corbynistas are trying to do. I’ve spent much of the past two decades working in movements aimed at creating new forms of bottom-up democracy, from the Global Justice Movement to Occupy Wall Street. It was our strong conviction that real, direct democracy, could never be created inside the structures of government. One had to open up a space outside. The Corbynistas are trying to prove us wrong. Will they be successful? ...

The Corbynistas ... say that while so far they have been forced to concentrate on internal party politics, the object is to move from a politics of accountability to one of participation: to create forms of popular education and decision-making that allow community groups and local assemblies made up of citizens of all political stripes to make key decisions affecting their lives. ...
There have already been local experiments: in Thanet, the council recently carried out an exercise in “participatory economic planning” – devolving budgetary and strategic decisions to the community at large – which shadow chancellor John McDonnell has hailed as a potential model for the nation.

So apparently the UKIP-led Thanet Council is leading the way in Corbynist-Bookchinist municipal socialism.

Corbyn’s Labour Party: Inside and Out
https://theoccupiedtimes.org/?p=14625

Marriott,

If it was even possible would national participatory planning be a step forward or back?

prole,

a step for who and planning of what? Our own economic exploitaion within 'our' national borders?

Yes workers are exploited, yes workers do not have interest in the nation or nationalism.

A step forward from the current status quo. I am not supporting the idea, I don't support Corbyn, I don't vote Labour. I am merely asking the question.

A step for workers in Britain, I don't know what could be planned if anything. If you want a new society you have to start somewhere. To give workers and communities a say, experience and control however limited in a given area. We are not going to wake up one day living in Full Communism. Workers in general in Britain have no confidence and are defeated.

I'm not suggesting it is a move towards communism, I'm not even suggesting it is a form of struggle.

The Occupied Times article by Michael Richmond makes some valid observations and is right to try and encourage some of those getting involved in 'Momentum' to engage in more direct class struggle based activity (where they aren't already) as something of value in it's own right rather than as an indirect recruiting ground to a reformed Labour Party. Critical engagement however needs to consistently and robustly seek to undermine the illusions being fostered by Corbyn and his supporters that there is anyway forward for the working class in seeking to recreate a version of the long past Social Democratic movement (bearing in mind that the Labour Party was only ever a pale reflection anyway of it's European equivalents). MR makes too many concessions to those illusions in his text based on the attractions of the Corbynistas 'mood music' rather than the reality of their politics.

prole

Yes workers are exploited, yes workers do not have interest in the nation or nationalism.

I think you answered your own question already.

If there is some illusion that the UK could be turned into a giant workers co-op I'll have to disagree and question the sanity or integrity of those making the claim. Why capital, including its left faction, would allow this now is unclear; it’s not as if present struggles make this a necessary concession – nothing could be further from the current situation. How the relationship of capital & labour would change is also unclear; workers setting their rate & conditions of exploitation, via what – soviets, unions or worker/employer councils? And what if workers demanded to impose, eg, greater caps on immigration or ‘homes & jobs for locals only’ policies? (One can wonder what the Thanet Ukippers would demand?) Democratic forms don’t guarantee a particular content. And why wouldn’t these new institutions be dominated by the same old reformist bureaucrats, unionists, party hacks & leftists that always pack such representation? Or widespread creation of such reformist institutions often generates a base for a new layer of careerist bureaucrats. But in any case the proposals at local council level are for citizens generally, not just 'workers' or 'proles'.

The idea that such state-sanctioned and controlled processes – ie, greater democratic participation by proles - could create or advance class struggle and unity is a typical leftist illusion; mistaking class self-activity for its domination by various representative institutions who lead the foot soldier-proles.

Arguably greater democratic participation has been only a vehicle for a lurch to the right further away from any tendency of independent class struggle; UKIP, Scots nationalism, Brexit etc. Corbynism is partly a safety net-in-waiting in case there’s a left and/or class struggle surge that would need recuperating and integrating; into a democratic participation that always delegates control of one’s own struggle away into the hands of ‘official representatives’ – with their own particular and separate interests as professional representatives.

Several of my local friends including some old-time anarchists seem to have joined up as 'Corbynistas' recently caught up in the backwash from the Referendum campaign.
Thought I'd post this here rather than the 'Labour Party Shambles' thread. You don't have to buy into the whole spgb 'educational' approach and 'impossibilist' tradition to recognise some useful history and home truths in the article relevant to recent Momentum supporters.
www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2016/no-1345-september-2016/lack-momentum