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On 11/05/2010 01:39, brad wrote: > Everyone should read for themselves either the full article or my > quotes below, which unlike Richards don't seek to completely distort > the whole argument of the article (fucking wow, Richard). > > The trouble with your quotes is that a) I don't disagree with them, and b) they don't contradict what I said. The Labour Party is a party of the working class, a part of the labour movement, and as such is profoundly affected by any class struggle that takes place. This is what I claimed, and this is what Panitch claimed. I am fully in agreement with the Milibandian critique of the Labour Party, but if you think that it says that Labour is not a party of the working class in the sense that I've just outlined, then you just haven't been reading closely. Even your own cited articles underline the point again and again. This is how Panitch discusses the Labour Party in the 1988 article you cite: "...a social democratic working-class party like Labour...". In the Ralph Miliband article from 1976 which you cite, 'Moving On', he repeatedly affirms that Labour is indeed "the party of the working class" (using the definite article where I would not). The basis of his objection to Labourism is above all that it is not *socialist*, not that Labour is not a working class party. Indeed, the Milibandian critique of Labourism nowhere objects to the basic sociological description of the Labour Party as a party of the working class, but consistently reaffirms it, and your own preferred sources prove it. Now can you please engage with the arguments and cease with this boring pedantry? -- *Richard Seymour* Writer and blogger Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.leninology.blogspot.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/leninology Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Seymour_(writer) Book: http://www.versobooks.com/books/nopqrs/s-titles/seymour_r_the_liberal_defense_of_murder.shtml ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
