Tagged: Jeremy Corbyn
Political Zionism: The Hegemonic Racism of the early 21st Century.
by Ian Donovan
(Reblogged from Socialist Fight)
Socialists (and anti-racists more generally) have to confront the role of political Zionists as the chief promoters of open racism today. This means open racism, not racism in general. There are many other types of racists active in the advanced capitalist countries, but with the exception of the political Zionists they largely operate in an obscured, cryptic manner in terms of political discourse.
We have to do this because we do not reduce all questions involving oppression in a vulgar manner to economic relations alone. Working class politics is more complex than that, and class and social antagonisms are refracted through, and often obstructed by, a substantial overlay of questions resulting from other complex types of oppression that cannot be simply reduced to ‘class’. As Lenin put it over a century ago, when dealing with often very different concrete questions, but of the same type:
“the Social-Democrat’s ideal should not be the trade union secretary, but the tribune of the people, who is able to react to every manifestation of tyranny and oppression, no matter where it appears, no matter what stratum or class of the people it affects” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iii.htm)
The Corbyn Campaign, Critical Support and the perils of Left Reformism
This is the editorial from the current issue of Socialist Fight. The entire publication can be read here:
Logo of Jeremy Corbyn’s very effective social media campaign
Jeremy Corbyn’s challenge for the leadership of the Labour Party has spooked the neo-liberal political elite that have dominated Labour since the days of Neil Kinnock. For the last two months Corbyn and his supporters have been patronised and ridiculed by all manner of Blarite and Brownite luminaries. Now the latest opinion poll has shown that he has the potential to win the leadership election outright with over 50% of the first preference votes, massively defeating Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper. The crypto-Tory, overtly Blairite candidate Liz Kendall is forecast to come last with a humiliating tally.
Labour’s neo-liberals are desperately trying to stave off humiliation by witchhunting those relatively few organised leftists formally outside Labour who have signed up to vote. But there is nothing they can do about the many tens of thousands of newly energised left-wingers joining Labour either as members or supporters who do not have any such affiliations. This is not entrism; this is a mass movement that Miliband and Collins did not expect when they abolished the special voting privileges of MPs and invited the public to sign up as supporters.
Vote Corbyn! Drive out NuLab Class Traitors! Smash Austerity!
This is the leading article in Communist Explorations, no 2 (Spring-Summer 2015). It is partly adapted from an earlier article on the immediate post-election situation, but contains much newer analysis.
The anti-austerity demonstration on 20th June takes place after a historic defeat for the working class in the UK, which last May’s general election outcome represented. There has already been a beginning to social protest by youthful sections of the working class against the new Tory government. The 4000 strong London demonstration on May 9th, which was unsurprisingly pushed around by the cops, demonstrated that. The advent of a unalloyed Tory government, minus the discarded and destroyed Nick Clegg and his Lib Dems, whose project is to declare war against all of the remnants of social security and post-WWII gains of the working class that Thatcher failed to smash in her offensive in the 1980s, as well as against migrants and refugees, will force the working class to fight back.
Political resistance crystallising
It is imperative to resist the new Tory government both in terms of economic struggle and on the political level. Political resistance is even more crucial than merely ‘economic’ resistance, as without a political movement behind them that is capable of addressing all the problems of society and all ruling class political stratagems, and putting the political arguments for solidarity to the entire working class, economic struggles will likely be left isolated as they have been in the past.
Communist Explorations 