I’m curious as to how many people here have aspirations of moving to a socialist country, and think that they can succeed. If so, which one would you move to?
Finally, do you think it would be more beneficial to the communist movement if communists in the west moved to already socialist countries?
Where I’m at or where my friends are in Nam? They’re doing just fine at this point. I think they’re back to life as usual there, with a few extra restrictions on travel as a precaution.
Over here in the UK’s a totally different situation. The government has lurched reactively between haphazard, poorly planned and badly implemented lockdowns on the one hand and extremely bad schemes to try and keep the already tenuous economy afloat on the other, directly undermining the preceding lockdown measures. We’ve vacillated between these two positions since the beginning of the response to the crisis back in March; “We’re under lockdown, but you can still go outside to exercise. Schools are still open and a haphazard definition of “essential worker” is in place”. After a decade of stripping down the state under the austerity agenda they lack the capacity to even implement emergency lockdown measures if they tried, and people are aware of this. Lockdown measures have in effect amounted to a guideline, not an imperative.
This was made even more farcical when the first lockdown was lifted under the extreme economic pressure that arose from the government’s unwillingness to adequately cover business owners and workers during the lockdown period. Even as case numbers were only just beginning to lose pace under the half cocked lockdown situation the government were already undermining it with nonsensical schemes like Rishi Sunak’s “eat out to help out” measure, packing people back into restaurants and in doing so not only effectively eliminating the hard won gains of the previous sacrifice, but also broadcasting a dangerous ambiguity to the public; people began to see contradiction in the government approach, and many began to conclude that the pandemic wasn’t that big of a deal. The government itself weren’t bothered by this, it’s in fact given them ideological cover to cram people back into dangerous workplaces and in doing so stave off their own worst case scenario of economic losses and a crisis easily on par with the winter of discontent. It was only when an even greater horror, the prospect of the total breakdown of the national health service, reared it’s ugly and they finally relented. The image of our sick being turned away from hospitals to die in their homes or on the streets was too much even for this cruel and callous Tory government to spin, and would have been the crowning achievement on more than decade of mismanagement at the helm of the state.
And so on we go, back into another inadequately planned, ambiguous, bureaucratic lockdown. This time it comes in a geographically categorised system with 4 tiers; in areas tiered 1-3 there’s still a degree of freedom allowed, and people will continue to work as always. It’s only in those areas where the hospital service is already on the brink of breakdown that the harshest restrictions, tier 4, have been implemented. This has created even more ambiguity, an uneven situation where those in the toughest restricted areas see themselves as put out compared to lower tier areas where restrictions are comparatively light. With no effective coordination between the national and local governments and the media apparatus people have found themselves confused as to what tier their local area is, what the specific restrictions of each tier is etc… It’s sheer pandemonium.
That’s nice to know comrade but I was referring to the topic we had last time, which was on the aftermath of the left’s ousting from the Labour party. What’s the left been up to recently, especially considering the circumstances you laid out so brilliantly above?
Ahh sorry, I thought you were referring to the overall situation. No effective change in Labour except the purge has intensified. Labour has haemorrhaged it’s left wing membership in a controlled cull by the party rightists. CLPs (local labour groups basically) all over the country have found themselves gagged by party insiders, with anyone voicing disapproval over the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn or the current trajectory of the party being binned off. They’ve also marginalised their union support, and Keir Starmer has openly courted corporate donors in an effort to squeeze out the last of union influence over the party. No one’s biting however, as their political interests are already very well represented by the conservative party, who are in power with a strong majority. In essence, the rightist putsch has just enfeebled Labour, it has lost swathes of members with the enthusiasm to canvass come election time and now even alienated the unions, a major pillar of financial support. For all the right wing efforts to purge the leftists from the party, polling seems to indicate their share of the vote remains effectively unchanged, and they still trail the Tories.
OK I get that Labour is purging but what exactly is the left doing in response? New parties, new orgs, what?
My party, the worker’s party, has grown at a clip since it was founded last year. We have over 4000 members now and over 70 party branches. We’re scooping up quite a lot of former labourites, especially in the so called “red wall” in north England. I’m in the south, which is Tory country, but I’ve picked up some interest. George Galloway’s media profile has worked wonders to promote us, with things like MoaTs pulling in interest.
Is the party a DSA style big tent where the membership requirements are loose and people aren’t required to be communists? Is it closer to a socdem worker’s party like in many countries or is it going to be like the WPK?
https://workerspartybritain.org/about/
What do you think of this, given the UK’s reputation as TERF island?
OK, now that I know what it’s about, what are the short term goals? Get elected? Get more members? Education? Like I know why the party started, I know the vision of the party, I just don’t know what it actually does.
It’s a situation I’m not wholly comfortable with, but I do know that identity first politics is incompatible with Marxism on a fundamental level, especially on the matter of cultural hegemony and the fundamental economic basis of society. We stand for mutual respect and reject any notion that people can be refused a voice in our organisation or otherwise attacked because of a particular characteristic that idpol proponents take issue with, such as their being white. We likewise expect the same level of respect for people of other backgrounds. We’re egalitarians, we stand for universal rights and mutual respect. We won’t tell someone they don’t deserve a right to a respectful discussion of any issue on the basis of their skin colour, sexual identity, etc no matter who they are. We’re of the mindset that we cannot build a movement by talking down to people or treating them as anything more or less than our equals. We are Marxists and dialectical materialists and that is our party ideology.
I’m a branch sec myself. All kinds of activities are underway, the most important of which is laying down links with all kinds of other orgs such as ACORN, SaveourSchools, RentStrike etc in order to be directly connected with actual political struggles on the ground, as opposed to only engaging in narrow political contests for local and national government posts. While we also offer political education for our active membership and do have targets in our areas for local politics, we’re not yet at the stage in my area where these are the most important party activities. We cannot develop the political consciousness of the working class until they’re aware of us and we’ve won their trust as a mass. A large part of that is cross-promotion and aid to a variety of causes, to build up an actual, significant base. I’ve personally been involved in eviction resistance, pickets, pamphleteering, postal work etc fighting for a variety of struggles… I wanted to also try and secure a commission for political art for agitprop purposes, but that’s still a ways off for the time being. I’m also on board with a long term electoral plan for local politics in my area, which involves us wooing a bunch of established Labour councillors that were kicked out as a part of the wider party purges to run on a WP ticket. All parts of our work connect with each other, hopefully culminating in a political machine capable of contesting wards in the areas we’re established.