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John Edmundson wrote

Yes, but perhaps part of the problem was the Left's faith in the Labour Party. Have we still not figured that out. It's disappointing to see that Richard Seymour, who used to get this, has dived deep into such a failed project. When your only mass movement is to the ballot box, a la Bernie Sanders' campaign, why should anyone expect a deep commitment from the voters?

Cheers,
John

[https://novaramedia.com/2019/12/13/no-false-consolations/]
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This is the sort of sensible comment I haven't seen much of. Yes, apparently from these results and others elsewhere, much of the working class, with insecurity of life chances and resentment at its status in the system and at the other, either votes on nationalist grounds for the rightwing misleader or stays at home. For now - but it's inevitable that the failure of the right is going to become palpable to workers everywhere as the system grinds to a halt for most, and that's already happening, especially if the protests breaking out are any indication. And with the failing ecosystem and the debt-infested stagnant economy, there is no fallback to growth for the system anymore; nor will no-growth panaceas of any sort work under capitalism, including especially those that only benefit the richer nations.

How long will it take before the working class and left leadership of the world accept, despite the interim right-populist upsurge and its reasons, that declared social democratic parties, with no credible, viable socialist program, will never be able to manage or change the capitalist state? Will never be able to mobilize a base of power in the working class?

Too many contradictions, especially that to simply manage capitalism, to ensure the profitability of a capitalist regime on which its survival depends, any social democrat apparition must accede to the imperatives of accumulation and profitability, and to accomplish that, to pretend, equivocate and evade; ultimately, to retain power, workers be damned. Or war.

Tony Blair is one poster child among many. An array of populist Bonapartists in the poorer countries. Bernie's prospects apply here as well. This is certainly not 1933 and no New New Deal or faux Green New Deal will do it. If workers now seem unreceptive to the message from the left, to the imperative that we take charge of our destiny - I nevertheless look to us sooner or later to come to the conclusion that there really is no other way. If that does not happen, or does not happen in time, before chaos sets in, there's not much anyone can do, except stick to the message, counsel people to start by reading Capital and take it from there, as my older socialist friends once counseled me, and think and act to help fellow workers to devise, from the objective conditions and mounting contradictions, the alternative objective and the route to it.

It is to the contradiction between capital and labor that we should adhere, and never forget or forego.

I immediately think of that knight in the Monty Python skit who keeps taunting and tilting against the giant until, where arms or legs were, only bloody stubs are left, and who declares he will prevail with his lance in his teeth. But that's just my bad monster in there. After all, it's Friday the thirteenth.
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