Love this guy: he's the acceptable end of the socdem spectrum
Though I agree with comrade mazdak his problem was not being abrasive enough
Corbyn's policy on paper is only socdem because it's the only thing that's electable. The man is absolutely a socialist though and would use any legislative power to move the needle away from social democracy and towards socialism given half the chance.
would use any legislative power to move the needle away from social democracy and towards socialism given half the chance.
Man was "too nice" , inactive and compromising to even enact inter-party power to antagonize and go against the reactionaries and neolibs in his party openly trying to bring him down. Imagining a gigazhad Corbyn that not only had a hidden power level "transitioning away from social democracy" agenda but also that he would USE LEGISLATIVE POWER TO ENACT IT GIVEN HALF A CHANCE is pure fancfiction and its imaging a much more based and balsy personality. IF he was elected and IF he whiped the party into a remotely functioning shape that woud even 70% back and vote half of his Agenda and IF a better handling of Covid and Brexit dont still completely throw the country into chaos he would optimisticaly be a good harm reductive socdem materialy with the country under him have being probably a more conductive and energized enviroment of unions and youth communist organization. Also it falls in the "we get this socdem/demsoc party or candidate elected who will successfully then act in the most based way we can possibly imagine for them based on their rhetoric and actualy move the country towards socialism through legislation and reform" which is the dellusion that constantly arose and and constantly ate shit all over Europe after WW2 in dozens and dozens of occasions. Even in the most spectacular failure of someone like Tsipras and Syriza. If he wasnt elected and i after the fact focused on at a bunch of his rhetoric through the years,radcial party members,on paper agenda and radical younger self and comprehensively circlejerk myself into thinking he would be Chavez
Corbyn is more focused on the effect he can have on people, I think he sees a picture in which the goals are to move the people towards class conflict and have them develop into a national desire for socialism rather than pushing it through with only a small minority of people being truly ideologically motivated towards it. I still think the plan to force companies to give shares to their employees was a good one and would have required elected representatives for workers forcing elements of workplace democracy and forcing elements of class conflict internally in companies across the county as workers would then have a material interest in what decisions the bosses are making. It's also a measure that can't be easily undone and attempting to do so would create a national shitstorm.
He wanted to change the conditions to change the people. I do see value in that.
Anyway we're going to do trade unionism and then move to an anti-war anti-imperialist position I guess? I'm worried that beating the drum of ww3 will start to take national priority for people.
good guy for sure but yeah if you get outwitted and betrayed by the likes of fucking kier starmer you're doing something wrong.
oh yeah for sure, he totally should have insta-purged all centrists from the party on day one though in hindsight. the media would have gone wild but it would have faded and then he wouldn't have been constantly undermined from within his own party and might have stood more of a chance.
the british media establishment, the tories and all their mates (see house of lords) and half his own party fought against him
it's astounding he did as well as he did
There's reasonable evidence to suggest that GCHQ and British Military Intelligence were involved in the campaigns against him.
Not to say that he didn't make his own share of mistakes obviously, but yeah, every ghoul in the country was definitely laser focussed on wrecking him in a way that is sometimes difficult to put into words.
he did as well as he did electoraly as far as votes and youth support goes due to a great working class friendly agenda. In his nonexistent compromising handling of inner party neoliberal reaction he didnt do "well"
In Mick Lynch we are seeing what a person who is slightly less naive and slightly more willing to go to battle with the media can do.
We're currently building around union leaders using the same tactics we built Corbyn with and it appears to be paying off. I think if we push a bunch of non-politicians into the limelight and give them the Corbyn treatment we could have a whole suite of popular figures that the media will have a hard time knocking down. They can't smear ALL of them simultaneously, it took 6 years of the entire media attacking just to get their smear to affect Corbyn.
The main task right now seems to be to establish more democracy in the unions. More democracy in the orgs empowers the socialists because the people agree with everything we say. Starmer completely dismantled democracy in the Labour party because there is no way to keep us out of leadership otherwise. We can do the same thing in all of the unions.
