I've always voted Labour. In the now-distant past this was to support their progressive social policies. More recently it has been in the hope that, against all current indications, they might somehow rediscover their one-time progressive role.
There must be thousands of people like that: tired of the corrupt financial system, the relentless militarism, the continuing privatisation and welfare cuts, and with it, the shovelling of money into the pockets of wealthy tax-avoiders and speculators. And the numbers are surely growing.
But can we only look forward to more years in which the Labour Party fails to provide a genuine alternative to the Tories? How much longer are we to listen to the mantra of right-wing Labour politicians, and of the even more right-wing media, that Labour has to embrace the market in order to become 'electable' - at a time when more and more people are realising that the market is the main cause of our troubles?
Jeremy Corbyn becoming Labour leader raised the question of what the Labour Party is actually for. Was it just possible that, instead of its recent role as a pale copy of the Conservatives, Labour might become a genuine and powerful opposition to Cameron’s and May’s and Johnson's grotesque policies of greed and inequality?
Right wing fights back
But the vicious fightback, by the Conservatives and the right-wing media, and even more shamefully by the right-wing Labour apparatchiks, helped put an end to any such hopes. Let’s not delude ourselves that Corbyn’s Labour party would necessarily have been the answer to the ills of capitalist society. His vision was framed within the logic of the market and would have done little to combat the gross contradictions. But it was a step forward, and an indication that thousands, even millions, of people were looking for something better.
So now we seem to have a soft-centred Opposition, acquiescent in its relationship with the party of the ruling class. It is revealing that the right-wing press appears to be mildly tolerant of the new Labour regime: it poses so little threat to them.
Should an Opposition make 'electability' its first priority? My answer would be 'no, it shouldn't', and especially not by leaving unchallenged the policies of an inadequate and divisive Government. Its job, first and foremost, is to oppose. At every opportunity it has to challenge the promotion of corporate greed, the fomenting of foreign wars, the privatisation of the welfare state, and the ever-increasing gap between rich and poor. It is only by successfully taking on this task that it becomes a valid alternative.
As Rosa Luxemburg said, socialism is permitted to rise only on the ruins of the capitalist state.
Add comment
Comments