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I watched the latest debate between Corbyn and Smith on youtube. My initial impression is that Smith is the better of the two speakers. His oratorical skills probably lie in his Celtic ancestry. By contrast, Corbyn is almost Australian like in his lack of the rhetorical flourish. Having said that, I have a strong dislike for what Smith stands for. It is true that he stood up there arguing for Keynesianism and radical socialism. Yet, he does so solely because circumstances have called into being a party which is desperately seeking an alternative to neoliberalism. Everyone knows that Smith is the candidate of the Old Right, the Soft Left and (reluctantly) the Blairites. There is no way that these groupings believe in radical socialism. For example, just over a year ago, the then leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Harriet Harman, ordered her party to abstain on a Tory bill which attacked welfare rights. She did so because, she assured everyone, she had gone around the country after the election defeat and discovered that Labour was thought to be the party of welfare, and that was a political problem. Harman was obeyed by the section of the Labour party which later was to pass a vote of no confidence in Corbyn and which now asks us to believe that it supports a program of radical socialism. So again, if we leave to one side the aesthetics of rhetorical style, there is a deep untruth at the heart of the Smith campaign. They are not socialists and the party knows that. They also know that the Smith Campaign has been cobbled together to get rid of the possibility of the Labour Party becoming a radical socialist party, and should he somehow win, Smith will move decisively to the Right. For the moment he is in his responsive mode. That is. he publicly claims to be willing to respond to the wishes of the members. Once elected he would hit the switch and become "responsible". Responsibility in this context would be largely defined by the economic elites and the Murdoch Press. For the latter, responsibility still means adherence to the norms of neoliberalism. As Peter Mair pointed out, in *Ruling The Void:* The *Hollowing* *of Western* *Democracy, *it is the abandonment of responsiveness and the embracing of responsibility that has hollowed out parliamentary democracy. This manifests itself in a deep despair among the people at the realization of the truth that there was no difference between the political parties. In the UK it meant that millions ceased to vote in elections. Corbyn broke that mold decisively on the side of responsiveness. In so doing, he challenged the common sense that one can only win elections by being responsible. That is what the Right means when it says he is unelectable. Corbyn has wagered everything on responsiveness, and that is why the Labour Party has grown exponentially. & if he wins the leadership struggle, he can possibly build the party into a force that will threaten the rule of the Tory Party. comradely Gary _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
