Hi,
looks interesting and looks if it examines some of the problems that any radical political project would face.
EP Thompson is pretty key to ecosocialists like me!
cheers,
Derek
"I can remember when Peter Hain and the Labour Co-ordinating Committee used to come out with much the same. Long time ago, though."
Exactly - it's back to the AES. A set of radical-ish policies but no-one with any clear idea of how capitalist reaction will be dealt with - just some hand-waving gestures about mobilised mass support.
How will mobilised mass support stop rentiers from attacking the currency and how will it stop investors rushing to the exit?
He still gets my support - but it's clear that the Labour Left hasn't really developed any new ideas since 1983.
I was impressed with this interview with McDonnell - he seems very thoughtful. I was faintly amused by his citing of "David Harvey's piece on the new era of imperialism, for example, an academic from New York." I think David Harvey, probably the leading Marxist geographer in the world (and originally from Kent) is not just an academic.
Neverthless, impressive. Pity he won't even get enough nominations.
Yeah, I was taken by that reference to Harvey, too. You'll have read 'A Brief History of Neoliberalism', I take it? Best book I've read all year.
Soon this comments box will get on to discussing what the helicopters at the end (sorry, I only watched the television adaptation) meant, mark my words.
The name checks he gave to ostensible revolutionaries in an interview with the AWL aren’t surprising. I can’t see him mentioning Luxembourg in an interview with an interview in Tribune, though.
There’s no arguing that FPTP is intensely undemocratic, maybe in as an extreme way as the former denying of the vote to women was. Revolutionary socialists may have 10 MPs under fairer representation, fascists maybe double that - both currently have none. But it’s disingenuous to say FPTP the post means you must work in Labour - Galloway is proof of that.
correction - I meant to say 'to the ostensible revolutionaries of the AWL'.
Incidentally with globalisation the EU is as politically important than the UK state and there is pr...
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ftssoldier.blogspot.com
www.edwardsaid.org
Dave take a look at these blogs
This claims to speak for the white
working class:
http://www.kirkbytimes.co.uk/
these are energy blogs:
http://www.heavyoilinfo.com/
http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
Did you contact this soldiers blog
yet?
http://the-chosen-man.blogspot.com/
I agree with Ed, after showing his familiarity with Marxist thought he then goes on to cite the most unimaginative reformist strategy possible, and vaguely states that mass mobilisation will solve the problem. The very thing that needs dropping on the left is the idea that a Prime Minister can legislate socialism through the existing state. You'd think people would have learnt that by now, after more than 100 years of mass socialism in democratic countries.
Igor - you are a wise man.
The choice is either: a new social democratic project across Europe (redistribution, reflation, capital contols, Tobin Tax for example) or revolution. The first course of action doesn't get you to socialism, but is, arguably, less painful. There isn't a reformist road to socialism (which isn't to say that revolution must necessarily conform to the usual Leninist model of 1917).
I think the Labour Left and fellow travellers need to spell out to themselves exactly where they stand on this (and that includes me, incidentally). There's a lot of hand waving about something vague called 'socialism' which they would like to legislate into being - but they aren't quite sure whether they are socialists or radical social democrats.
That's because some of them fall into each category.
The critical detail missing from all this is McDonnell's own political experience on the far left. What was his choice among the 57 varieties (all unfit for human consumption) in the 1980s? And what did he think about Gerry Healy taking cash from Libya and Iraq? I remember Labour Herald if no one else does. As Orwell said of Kingsley Martin ... no, look it up.
Come on Paul,not all eighties Trot sects were 'unfit for human consumption'. You might not have liked the Migs or the Millies, but neither did anything that naughty. As you say, the WRP are the exception. Remind me again ... what was JMcD's links with Labour Herald?
Somebody told me McDonnell is an ex Millie. Anybody know if that's right or not?@
When I was in Militant in the late 1970s, McDonnell was, if I remember rightly, a 'contact' (meaning he was discussed at every branch meeting...).
I can't remember if he was ever recruited. But I think he was certainly close to the Militant for a while.
"You might not have liked the Migs or the Millies, but neither did anything that naughty." says Dave (ex 'Mig' i.e. IMG member)
How true, but that's bad not good.
Which reminds me, with the poll 'Who do we execute first?' on my site coming to an end, I might replace it with ‘which blog by a one-time Trot(s) is the most right-wing?’
Oooh you bitch. But Norm Geras wins in advance, I'd have thought?
Oh... I could think of one or two other candidates, Alan Johnson (Euston one, not Minister one) for instance.
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