A Future That Works

A Future That Works
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Sunday 20 November 2011

A European style ‘‘Left Party’’ for Britain?

The Labour Left are marginalized and the Communist, Socialist and Green parties seem to lack the momentum required to build a real challenge to the three major bourgeois political parties electorally or otherwise.

I have always argued against trying to establish yet another Left party but maybe the European Left socialist, communist, red-green left parties need to have a recruitment drive in Britain and see how viable it would be.

They could put advertisements in the Guardian, Independent, Daily Mirror and Morning Star and see what kind of response they got. They may find that this would attract the newly radicalised students and disaffected Labour voters and ex-party members.

15 comments:

  1. Under the current circumstances maybe it’s time to think outside the box and for the European and Scandinavian Left parties to come to Britain?

    http://www.european-left.org/english/home/home/

    http://www.guengl.eu/showPage.php?ID=

    http://www.europeagainstausterity.org/

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  2. EU rules

    ‘‘Without a challenge, a new world order could indeed be operating from March 2012, and it won't be worker friendly. What we are facing is the next step in the entrenchment of free market policies into the European sphere of the global market. This involves a three-pronged attack covering the introduction, regulation and enforcement of neoliberal labour and economic rules within and beyond the EU.’’

    ‘‘The Viking and Laval cases were a harsh wake-up call to the EU shift away from Delors' "social Europe" model to Thatcher's free market model, a model that sees strong labour laws not as a necessary rebalance of power relations but as a distortion of competition.’’

    ‘‘When the economic governance rules were passed in September, the United Left Nordic Green Parliamentarians commented that they ‘added democratic catastrophe to economic catastrophe’.’’

    ‘‘There is clear potential for the trade union and labour movement to advance a progressive alternative, one that could rally a much broader alliance to salvage the productive economy and protect our democracy.’’

    (Carolyn Jones Communist Party of Britain Trade Union Coordinator )

    http://communist-party.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1492:eu-three-pronged-attack-carolyn-jones-runs-rule-over-latest-eu-moves&catid=78:eu-a-popular-sovereignty&Itemid=91

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  3. How do we build this union and labour movement potential that Carolyn Jones refers to, who will provide the political leadership?

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  4. Labour left calls for a "socialist united Europe."

    http://morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/112179

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  5. Moving the overwhelmingly backed motion, Alliance for Workers Liberty member Daniel Randall urged solidarity with Greek workers but insisted the break-up of the EU "would not help the workers' movement."

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  6. Camden delegate Lizzie Woods told the Star: "Never has there been a more crucial time to organise. This is class war.

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  7. Unison activist Jon Rogers, in the closing speech of the event, said that the conference, like many LRC assemblies before it, had been marked by lively debate on international issues "between those who historically have been on opposite ends of the ice-pick". (His reference was to the Stalinist murder of Leon Trotsky in 1940, with an ice-pick)

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  8. The motion on Europe was carried by 72 to 60 votes and this is a landmark vote as the LRC is growing with its membership up by 10% over the last as resistance to the Tory/Liberal coalition increases.

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  9. Workers of Europe & Britain Unite

    ‘‘I think they are stealing from us….It's theft’’ (Maria Juan, Lisbon)

    ‘‘privatisation, cuts, the rolling back of workers' rights and the reduction of pay can now be dressed up as unavoidable decisions. Unless resistance to this project is successful, Europe will be a poorer, harsher and more insecure place’’

    ‘‘We are joined to the people of Europe…We have to fight all together or we will lose’’ (Francisco, retired civil engineer, Lisbon)

    3 million British public-sector workers strike next week against the policies of a British Tory/Liberal coalition government, but without a united European Left which includes the British Left, the European wide austerity programs will not be defeated. The battle for an alternative social Europe will only win when British, French, German, Greek, Italian workers coordinate the fightback.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment.../25/striking-workers-unite-europe

    The capitalist classes are using the institutions of global governance collectively against the working classes of Britain, France, Germany, Greece, Italy etc. and only collectively will the working classes resist the forces of global governance and the capitalist classes. This is a common message from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin through to John Bellamy Foster, David Harvey and Joel Kovel. There is a real need for the labour movement and parties of the left in Britain and Europe to coordinate the economic and political response.

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  10. From a Marxist perspective I am arguing that labour-value has two elements, its physical and its social value. The latter is determined historically from the class struggle between the capitalist and working classes which has determined the real-wage bundle. John Roemer argues that the fiscal crisis is the result of a discrepancy between achievable growth and the growth desired by the capitalist, or Harvey would argue necessary to sustain the capitalist system to achieve the rate of capital accumulation at which the capitalist chooses to invest. As we know the capitalist classes are seeking to solve the general crisis by squeezing the social bundle of labour and therefore reduce the real wage and increase their rate of profit. At the same time the crisis has created a fiscal crisis which they seek to solve by squeezing the subsistence bundle paid to the sick, disabled, unemployed and elderly. If the general crisis of capitalism is such that a growth rate of 3% is no longer achievable the capitalist classes will seek to reduce the social and subsistence bundle down to the levels of the developing world in order that the desired growth and profits can be achieved. The failure to close the realization gap by reducing the social and subsistence bundles may or may not be the final crisis of capitalism as predicted by Lenin and Luxemburg with an alternative between socialism and barbarism, but for Marxists and non-Marxists alike it’s about whether the capitalist classes resolve the crisis in their class interest or the working classes can organize and fightback effectively.

    Divide and rule has always been the method of controlling workers, whether its divide by gender, colour, ethnicity, nationality or skill and social status. Unity has always been the labour movement’s best weapon whether it’s in a particular office, factory, industry or internationally this is why famously at the end of the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx and Frederick Engels say ‘‘Working men of all countries, unite!’’ of course today we would say working men and women of all countries, unite! Until the ruling classes are trembling at the prospect of a socialist revolution the working classes will see the capitalist classes appropriating the surplus-value of their labour as profits for capital accumulation and until the Communist Party of Britain unites with the European and Scandinavian Left they are not following the basics written right at the end of the manifesto published in 1848 by Marx and Engels.

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  11. European debate goes on in the Morning Star

    ‘‘The French Left Front (Communists and Left Socialist) and the German Left (die Linke) have jointly tabled detailed proposals that completely reverse EU policies….. with the European Left party, a campaign for a million signatures to a petition demanding a referendum on this alternative.’’ (Jimmy Jancovich Monday 19/12/2011)

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/113312

    This is the way forward if there is to be any chance of reviving a reformist or building a revolutionary fightback against the mainstream neo-liberal/neo-conservative and ultra-right neo-Nazi parties in Britain, France, Germany and across Europe and Scandinavia and the broad left in Britain should/could rally around European Left campaign for a referendum for a Left Alternative as its focus against the Tory/Liberal coalition and the dictates of the ECB and IMF.

    http://leftalternatives.myfineforum.org/ftopic188-470.php

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  12. European Union and the British Left

    http://leftalternatives.myfineforum.org/sutra13207.php#13207

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  13. European Left - Individual membership

    http://www.european-left.org/english/about_the_el/individual_members/

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  14. European Left
    http://www.european-left.org/english/about_the_el/member_parties/

    observer status parties

    http://www.european-left.org/english/about_the_el/member_parties/observer_parties/

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  15. Goodbye and good riddance? (Alexander Cockburn, Morning Star, Tuesday 03/01/2012)

    ‘‘only in Greece and possibly Portugal both with active Communist parties - is there any organisational vigour on the left and some sense that one could see some emulation of the glorious path taken by Argentina in 2003 and 2004, when factory occupations and immense popular outrage combined with decisive leadership by the late president Nestor Kirchner.’’

    ‘‘Serge Halimi, the director of Le Monde Diplomatique, put it recently, "There is no reason to believe that Francois Hollande in France, Sigmar Gabriel in Germany or Ed Miliband in the UK will succeed where Obama, Jos Luis Zapatero and Papandreou have failed.’’

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.u...php/news/content/view/full/113696

    Whilst it may be true that the people of Greece and Portugal have been the most active including their respective communist parties and whilst Francois Hollande of the French Socialist Party and Sigmar Gabriel of the German Social Democratic Party even with the support of their respective left parties wouldn’t be able to resist the diktat’s of the ECB/IMF dose Alexander Cockburn really believe the Kommunistiko Komma Elladas or Partido Comunista Português are going to succeed in emulate the Frente para la Victoria party. It may be fine rhetoric but is it utopian leftism which leads to glorious defeat?

    What is the point of stale and empty phrases of propaganda that justify following old bureaucratic routines in Britain that have no chance of leading activists to revolutionary action? This will not bring down the Tory/Liberal coalition or install a Left-Labour government in Britain with any better chance of success than Francois Hollande or Sigmar Gabriel in France or Germany. Its just more national bolshevik drivel and why the CPB and Morning Star are increasingly irrelevant to the class struggle in Britain.

    What went wrong with what was once an important force on the left in the British labour movement, it’s not just a case of reclaiming the Labour Party can the Communist Party be reclaimed from the current dogma that has nothing to do with Marx or Lenin and everything to do with Stalinism. It’s easy to see why many union activists call them head bangers, I am positive that Willie Gallacher and Vladimir Lenin would be calling them ultra-leftists and despair of their inability to analyse the material dialectics of the imperialist nature of international finance capital to the nation state.

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