Blog

I understand the problems - can LRC come up with some answers now please ?

Lesley Whiting
27th February 2012 at 13:30
43 comments
I’ve been a member of the Labour Party (LP), for 33 years, and like a lot of LP members have become very disillusioned over the last 20 + years. My problem is not with New Labour as such, but the fact that what was a broad church with a self balancing mechanism, has now disappeared, and been dominated by one view alone.
However, I’m one of those who believes that change to the LP has to occur from within, and as a result of this, I was drawn to the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). I suppose I naively believed that the LRC, would be full of Labour Party members working together to mount a credible alternative to New Labour discourse, and get balance back into the LP. 
Sadly though, it has become very apparent that the LRC are not a credible alternative at all. Without wanting to cause offence, what I have encountered in the LRC, I can only describe as an undisciplined shambles. Firstly, it appears that many members of the LRC are not even members of the Labour Party, yet these people still call upon members to leave the LP and set up in opposition to it. How can the LRC hope to reform the LP, if it has members who are actively opposed to the LP?
Secondly, LRC members seem to have some very questionable ideas indeed. For example I read today an article by an LRC member in Hackney claiming that prostitution and pornography do not degrade, devalue, or contribute to rape and violence against women, but are legitimate occupations. Others urge us to support appalling regimes who claim to have god on their side, yet threaten to annihilate Israel, brutalise their own people, and pervert notions of human rights and justice. How can the LRC ever hope to be offer a credible alternative to New Labour discourse while associated with such extreme views?
Thirdly, many members speak very eloquently about such things as the effect of unemployment, but offer no solutions to this whatsoever.  How can the LRC offer a credible alternative to the New Labour method of dealing with things like unemployment, if it doesn’t have an alternative?
If the LRC are going to get balance back in the LP, they need to be credible, and disciplined, rather than a platform for anyone with a bonkers idea, and no answers.  [continue/comment...]

Imperialism is blackening Syria

Marie Lynam
21st February 2012 at 21:10
1 comment
Hello comrades of the LRC
22.2.12 I write to warn against the imperialist-inspired campaign against Syria. The press and the sectors accommodated with the war preparations of imperialism are once again on the rampage to denounce Syria. Of course, what they mean is Iran .. and Russia. But in their typical cowardliness, they attack peripheries, and move, wolf-like, towards the centre of what they wish to devour. [continue/comment...]

Return to the Falklands

Mike Phipps
13th February 2012 at 22:58
0 comments
Riots, union bashing, privatisation, attacks on our public services - just like Tory Governments of old. Now the Coalition seems determined to emulate Thatcher in foreign policy as well. Mike Phipps reports. [continue/comment...]

What next for the Labour Left ?

Michael Chewter
7th February 2012 at 15:25
16 comments
Now that it is increasingly clear that the Labour Party is the site of a feud between Blairites and Brownites, what should the response of Labour Party socialists be ? Should we choose the lesser of two evils, if we can identify one, or should we oppose the centre-right trajectory generally ? How do socialists give expression to their own politics in such a situation ?  [continue/comment...]

From Regimes, to Production of Human Relations

Marie Lynam
28th December 2011 at 12:46
0 comments
I note that the left in general has retaken the notion of ‘regime’ as used by capitalism. But a regime is characterised by the particular relationship of a given ruling class with production - depending on the development of the productive forces. Libya and Irak were not Gaddafi’s or Saddam’s regimes. They were capitalist states in a process where capitalism - as a regime - had become historically incapable of building a new capitalist class. For a viable capitalist class to be born today, it needs to compete with the likes of the USA, or the EU. But the world has been carved out, already, precisely by the likes of the US and the EU. For development purposes, there was nowhere for the State of Iraq or Libya to go, but towards a transitional State no longer strictly capitalist and not yet a Workers State. J. Posadas characterised this as the Revolutionary State. The Revolutionary State highlights the total agony of capitalism, and its impotence. It must abandon corners of the world, because it can no longer reproduce itself overall, as a regime. It has only its military power to keep it on the scene. The corners and niches that it can no longer control are taken over by revolutionary humanity, in response to the need of the populations to continue to progress. These niches are utterly temporarily, as proven precisely by the fate of Iraq and Libya. But their fate under capitalist occupation itself is temporary. It depends on the military ability of world imperialism to maintain itself. One thing often forgotten is that military ability is dependent upon economic, social and cultural ability. Pure military ability is doomed, if it does not have a superior regime to offer. [continue/comment...]
Tags: for schools of politics and culture in the lrc (1)

Page 3 of 26 pages
previous / 1 / 2 / [ 3 ] / 4 / 5 / next / last page