Jim is more right than Karl, but both are on the right side of right. I would like to add a bit to the analysis that Jim offers of the British Labour Party. The realities first showed themselves when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, went to the IMF for a massive loan in 1976 and thereby inaugurated a period of massive austerity in which the Labour Government prepared to break the resistance which eventually came in the Winter of Discontent of 1978-79. These were the opening years of the Labour Party openly accepting its servant role in the developing world economy run by transnational corporations whose turnovers, for the first time in history, exceeded the GDPs of all but the richest few nations. Hereafter the power of the State had greatly reduced, the British Labour myth of national reformism had collapsed, and British general elections became a scramble between the Tories and Labour to see who could be more attractive to the transnational corporations. The Labour Government since 1997 has been nothing more nor less than a transition belt for the policies of the transnational corporations. If you are interested in a fuller analysis of this ontological change in the structure of world capitalism then you could contact A World to Win and order their book on it.
Phil Walden -----Original Message----- From: marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu [mailto:marxism-thaxis-boun...@lists.econ.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Farmelant Sent: 25 January 2010 02:16 To: marxism-thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu Subject: Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Marxism-Thaxis Digest, Vol 75,Issue 21: Setting the record straight On Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:57:51 +0000 Karl Dallas <karldal...@f2s.com> writes: > As a former member of the Communist Party of Britain, and a > continued > activist in struggle on such issues as Palestine, I cannot subscribe > to the > basic analysis of Sam Webb in "Setting the Record Straight". > I wrote to the UK Morning Star the following after the Scott Brown > victory: > "So the Barack bubble has burst, just one short year after the > world > rapturously hailed the new dawn of a new presidency, supposedly to > move on > from the dreadful disillusion of the Bush years. > "But now a new disillusion has set in, as Obama fulfills the > classic > function of 'left' opportunism, to see the system through an > otherwise > insoluble crisis, to pave the way for the next swing to the right. Right, except I don't think that one can even call what Obama is doing. 'left' opportunism. That is a label that could be applied to what FDR was doing with his New Deal or Lyndon Johnson with his Great Society. What Obama has been doing hardly measures up to what Roosevelt or Johnson tried to do. And in fact this has been the case with the last three Democratic Presidents, starting with Carter. And I suspect that things are not so different in the UK. The British Labour Party, it seems to me, began shifting to the right under James Callahan. Then once knocked out of power by Thatcher, it briefly shifted to the left, and then resumed moving rightwards when it became apparent that it might soon return to power. That process continued, first under Kinnock and then under Blair who eventually became PM. > "'Things can only get better', 'Yes we can' . . . Blair and Obama > have many > things in common, as under the first, things only got worse, and the > true > lesson to be drawn from the failure of Obama's sloganising appears > to be 'No > we can't'. > "This is what the pundits are trying to teach us. Just as the > disenfranchisement of Labour's core voters has paved the way for the > advance > of the BNP here, Obama's refusal to honour his pledges appears to > leave his > supporters nowhere to go but down. > "It doesn't have to be like that. If what we might call the > scientific left > were to have provided all along a clear analysis of the strengths > and > weaknesses of this reliance on political charisma (a study of > Plekhanov > might be a good place to start), to have used the Blair/Obama > phenomenon to > build an accurate critique that didn't take us by surprise when > leaders > break their promises, we could turn disillusion into > disenchantment. > "It doesn't have to be like that. If, at last, we begin to look > reality > square in its ugly face, things could, indeed, start to get > better." > But I must say that most of the responses in this list have been > infantile > in the extreme. There are interesting parallels between FDR and > Obama, but > important differences also. At this point, I think the differences between Obama and FDR are of more importance than the similarities. First of all while both presidents came into office during periods of economic crisis, FDR did so when the US was on the brink of civil unrest (And it should be noted that Socialists and Communists had been spending years organizing councils of the unemployed). Therefore, he perceived the need for taking dramatic actions. Even though during the 1932 campaign, he had condemned Hoover for engaging in deficit spending and promised to balance the budget, FDR, as soon as he entered the White House, all that talk about balancing the budget went out the window because he realized that the fiscal orthodoxies of the day would only result in disaster if he stuck to them. Obama, in contrast, took office in a country that was still politically quiescent. And unlike the 1930s, the radical left in the US is almost non-existent. Up to now there has been nothing like the movement to organize the unemployed that existed in the early 1930s. FDR as president face strong pressures from the left and those pressures helped his administration's policies to the left. Obama has been largely spared such pressures. Instead, much of the radical left, such as it is, has actively embraced Obama, and so have enable him in shifting rightwards, since Obama, not surprisingly, has concluded that these people have no place else to go. The CPUSA's embrace of Obama is simply one of the more outrageous examples of this phenomenon, but not the only example. Secondly, FDR was, unlike Obama, to the manor born. As a member of the "old money" bourgeoisie, he had a special self-confidence, which allowed him to break with the conventional wisdom so that he could better defend the long term best interests of this class. He was therefore able to accept being denounced as a "traitor to his class," with a certain amount of equanimity. Obama, in contrast, is sort of the epitome of meritocracy, and as such, seems to be temperamentally inclined to embrace uncritically the conventional wisdom, as that's understood in Washington. > It would be helpful if people on the > left, > instead of internecine name-calling, were to examine those parallels > and > differences and develop appropriate strategies for the current > capitalist > crisis. It is tempting to regard this crisis as terminal. But it > will not be > so, unless we on the "left" face up to our revolutionary > responsibilities. > NOTE FOR THOSE OUTSIDE UK: > "Things can only get better" was Tony Blair's New Labour theme tune > in the > 1997 general election. BNP, British National Party, is a fascist > organisation making worrying advances in the polls, because of the > alienation of the white working class. This may strike a chord on > the US > side of the Atlantic. > ----------- > Go well. > Karl Dallas > Follow me on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/karldallas > Want to help the people of Palestine? Then follow > http://www.twitter.com/bradfordvp and > http://www.twitter.com/dpalestine > > > ____________________________________________________________ Home Improvement Projects Make your dream home a reality. 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