interesting article! however As the Amy Winehouse song goes "I Can't help you if you won't help yourself", and sadly Corbyn, his media advisor Seamaus Milne and others claiming to be Pro-Corbyn like Novara Media, Momentum and others have been shameful in not calling this smear campaign and gross slander for what it is, a smear campaign and gross slanders. Jewish comrades Glyn Secker, Tony Goldstein, Jackie Walker and people like Marc Wadsworth, David Miller and others are simply Jews and Non-Jews who speak out on Israel and they've been suspended, expelled, and left thrown under a bus, and Corbyn and his inner circle simply don't call BS on the attacks leveled at them or cite the Al Jazeera four part documentary which thoroughly debunks the 'anti-Semitism crisis' which isn't happening in the Labour Party. As long as the Corbyn leadership keeps saying "there is a problem and we're dealing with it" and so called Pro-Corbyn people keep banging on about a non-existent problem with the exception of a few doofuses on social media then Palestine and all social justice/anti-imperial issues are thrown under a bus.

Some members, readers and supporters hold strongly divergent positions on the line taken by the Socialist Equality Party in the UK on the witch-hunt spearheaded by the Labour Party right-wing against Corbyn--one which we have stressed has a much broader target. We disagree with our critics, but we will seek to convince them that their fears of an adaptation to Corbyn and the Labour Party on our part are misplaced.
Their concerns are bound up with confusion as to what we are carrying through, an unfamiliarity with our long record of struggle and a formal approach to tactical issues that does not proceed from the political situation in the UK and the necessity for us to actively intervene to win the advanced workers and youth to a revolutionary perspective. I would suggest, for example, a reading of the June 28 2016 article "Oppose the coup plot against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn," which has been identified as a precursor to our present supposed political errors https://www.wsws.org/en/art....
But I appeal to our critics and defenders alike to avoid attributing malicious or factional intent to those they disagree with. Some language now being employed in the comment section, the product of deeply held views, can serve inadvertently to poison the political debate and detract from a considered examination of the issues involved. This is a comradely discussion of political line and its implications for the working class and must proceed in a comradely fashion.
I would close by urging all our readers to examine our intervention, critically but objectively, confident that the concerns expressed by some will prove to be unfounded.
Chris Marsden

Excellent reply Chris , thank you.

Thank you for writing a response on this issue. I recommend supporters and members study Lenin's "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder" to better understand the way we approach these developments and politics in general.

I've been reading the series on the '68 French general strike, republished earlier this year and part 4 explores these tactical questions in some detail. There are parallels between the demands placed on Labour and those that we argue the JCR [Revolutionary Communist Youth]–a Pabloite youth group–should have placed on the PCF and the CGT. Also explored is the demand to take power placed on the Mensheviks and SRs by the Bolsheviks in 1917. The tactical and political takeaways are relevant.

What should the JCR have done?

Of course the JCR lacked the support necessary for assuming power itself. However, there are numerous historical precedents that demonstrate how revolutionary Marxists—even in a minority—can fight for their programme and win the majority of workers to their side.

In Russia, at the beginning of 1917, support for Lenin’s Bolsheviks was considerably less than that for the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries. However, using skillful and principled politics, the Bolsheviks worked to win the support of the working class and take power in October. In France, where Trotsky lived in exile from 1933 to 1935, he took an active interest in the activity of the French section and submitted detailed proposals on how it could fight for a revolutionary programme as a minority. The central question was always the political independence of the working class from the reformist (and later also the Stalinist) apparatuses and the building of an independent revolutionary party.

When Lenin returned from exile to Russia in 1917, he attacked the half-hearted attitude of the Bolsheviks towards the provisional bourgeois government, in which the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries had assumed ministerial posts. He insisted on unwavering opposition and a programme that aimed for the conquest of power via the soviets.

On the basis of this programme, the Bolsheviks used a tactic that deepened the gulf between the workers and their reformist leaders, aimed at ultimately breaking the former from the latter. The Bolsheviks demanded that the Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks break with the liberal bourgeoisie and take power in their own hands. Although the Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and the Mensheviks proved incapable of forming a government independently of the bourgeoisie, Trotsky later commented on this experience in the Transitional Programme, writing that the “demand of the Bolsheviks, addressed to the Mensheviks and the SRs: ‘Break with the bourgeoisie, take the power into your own hands!’ had for the masses tremendous educational significance. The obstinate unwillingness of the Mensheviks and SRs to take power, so dramatically exposed during the July Days, definitely doomed them before mass opinion and prepared the victory of the Bolsheviks.”

In 1968, the JCR was posed with demanding that the PCF and CGT take power, based on the mobilisation for the general strike. Together with systematic agitation against the conciliatory attitude of the Stalinists toward the bourgeois parties, this demand would have carried enormous political weight. It would have sharpened the conflict between the working class and the Stalinist leadership and helped workers to politically break from them. However, nothing was further from the minds of the Pabloites than to place the Stalinists in a dilemma with such demands. As the revolutionary crisis reached its highpoint, they proved to be reliable props for the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The stance of the ICFI towards the LCR and the NPA–the successor organizations of the JCR–is undisputedly one of unrelenting hostility. You can find articles on the WSWS going back decades exposing them.

But here we have Peter Schwarz claiming that the Pabloites should have placed demands on the Stalinists and on the trade unions in '68. Did the German section of the ICFI adapt to the Pabloites when those words were written in 2008? And for that matter, did the Bolsheviks adapt to the Mensheviks and SRs in the aftermath of Lenin's April Theses?

The question here is on the validity of the tactic of placing demands on our political opponents. If there is one overriding criteria for this question, it is whether or not such tactics promote the political independence of the working class. Whether or not such tactics serve to elevate the consciousness of the working class or muddle it. And it is for precisely this reason that we never fail to warn that the these organizations will do all they can to refuse such demands.

For those not yet won to our perspective–who still have some faith in the moribund and reactionary labor organizations, or are disoriented by their rhetoric, or are unaware of history, etc–these demands are a tool that can elucidate these issues. The same conception is part of the basis for transitional demands more generally.

Links to all parts of that series are in the introduction of the last entry, here: https://www.wsws.org/en/art...

Thanks for that link. Found the later installments on the role of the nominal section of the IC during the May-June Days, OCI, quite illuminating. Trotskyism in France is fortunately back on track with the launching of the ICFI section, after decades of it being adrift and then moribund.

"The orientation of the WSWS is not to Corbyn. It is to the thousands of working people and youth who have joined the Labour Party in the mistaken belief that his victory will lead to the formation of a left and even socialist government."

It really is always about the interests of the working class.

"The ruling class and its political agents see things in these terms. No retreat by Corbyn has reconciled them to his leadership of the Labour Party because they see below him the seething mass of social and political discontent in the working class. Their aim is to criminalise and suppress all opposition to the dictates of the financial oligarchy. And they will stop at nothing to do so."

" Without evincing the slightest political sympathy for Clinton and the Democrats, the SEP warned that the forces behind the Lewinsky affair were seeking the overturn of an elected leader to carry out a sharp shift to the right in US politics. "
I remember the Clinton impeachment drama very well . That was the correct approach by the Socialist Equality Party . The American ruling class was using the undisciplined-or reckless- sexuality of an individual for the purpose of reactionary political intrigue.
And today I would not join any lynch mob impeachment of President Trump . Deliver him to a most undemocratic shadow government of the United States , the CIA , the FBI ? Agree with the oh-so -moral James Comey that only ruling class bureaucrats in the spy agencies are morally fit to run the country ?
Socialists must combat creeping authoritarianism . This becomes more evident in the daily flattering of the brutal police and the unctuous
"THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE " to anybody and everybody in the military ( I heard a librarian say this just yesterday ).
The ruling class education system and their mainstream news media make it difficult for ordinary people even to imagine a world very different from the world of capitalism and imperialism - imagine what was suggested to me by the very title of radical psychiatrist Erich Fromm's book , " The Sane Society " published many years ago.

The working class are more in tune with reality than they know. They thinknow they're against foreigners and so on, as the capitalists would like them to believe, but they have voted for something that will strike quite a blow at the heart of the neoliberal system through Brexit. It's the middle classes who are bafflingly blind. Their self-assurance in their delusions is worrying, especially coupled with their repeated class war insults against all members of the working class. It's a strong indicator thar fascism is breeding among the middle class of a new kind, motivated by powerful self-righteous delusions. You will never win those people over without some catastrophe. It would be easier to exploit the less intense delusion of the working class. Just some thoughts anyway.

Thanks Chris for very informative articles on the rôle of Zionism as an integral part of imperialist ideology.

Mélenchon here in France, like Corbyn in Britain, is a bourgeois politician. He fraudulently presents himself as a left alternative to Macron's far right government. However, he attracted the ire of the Zionist forces in France when he criticised the comment made by Macron at an event on July 16 last year organised by the main Zionist umbrella organisation in France, the Crif, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Rafle du vél d'hiv when thousands of Jews were rounded up by the French police on behalf of the Nazi occupier, prior to being handed over to them to perish in the Holocaust.

In the presence of survivors of the Holocaust and Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahou, Macron went further than any other French president has done in claiming that anti-Zionism is “a reinvented form of anti-Semitism.” He thus cemented an alliance with French Zionism against any opposition to his régime from the French people. 5 to 7 million inhabitants of France have Arab and Islamic origins and feel solidarity with the Palistinians against Israeli imperialism, America's regional policeman in defending Washington’s geostrategic interests in the resource-rich Middle East. He was criminalising such utterly legitimate sentiments.

Mélenchon correctly pointed out, “Associating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism... is not a small thing » as anti-semitism is « a crime that is punishable by law in France. » However sincere he may be in his hostility to antisemitism, it is necessary for him to proclaim it in order to maintain his credibility as a progressive, despite the fact that he is an open nuclear warrior and defender of French militarism in support of the French bourgeoisie's interests throughout the world as he explains in his election manifesto « L'ère du peuple » (The people's era) expanded and republished in January 2017 for his presidential election campaign. He also supports the BDS (Boycott, disinvestment, sanctions) protest movement against Israeli massacres of Palestinians.

The Zionists got their own back, with the support of Macron, when they had Mélenchon mobbed by far right Zionist vigilantes of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) in a march protesting against the horrific murder of an 85-year-old Jewish woman, Mireille Koll, by two petty criminals some days after a jihadist terror attack in and near Carcassonne which killed four people including a gendarme. Lauding « French heroism » in the face of Islamism, Macron linked the attack with Mireille Knoll's murder immediately declaring it to be an anti-semitic act.

Francis Kalifat, leader of the Crif, had sought to prevent access to the march by Mélenchon's Unsubmissive France and Marine Le Pen's National Front. In the event the JDL drove Mélenchon off the march and protected Le Pen who had declared that she was rightfully there because she opposed « Islamic anti-semitism », thus demonstrating the friendly relationships between Zionism, the Israeli state and the National Front.

The original article entitled "Reject the anti-Semitism slurs against Jeremy Corbyn! " was NOT about supporting Corbyn, but it was rather to show how the intelligence agencies use the term "antisemitic" as a way to sabotage and discredit anyone who criticizes Israel's inhumane treatment of the Palestinians. And this is especially the case, if the candidate expresses a more progressive point of view.

Notice, the ruling class neglects to be antagonistic towards a popular politician whose actually antisemitic if they're right-wing nationalists. And also notice, how Netanyahu and the US Government bonds with the most extreme repressive regimes if it serves their imperialistic agenda. And that's because the ruling class always prefers the population to ideologically move towards fascism and NOT socialism.

It's important to build political consciousness among the working-class by clearly illustrating the many insidious operations which are deployed by the intelligence agencies and the warmongering imperialists who want the endless wars in the Middle East and Africa to continue.

Corbyn and Bernie Sanders do not represent a genuine opposition to the ruling class, however, they both pose a threat to it, since their psuedo socialism moves the working-class towards the left and NOT towards fascism.

History is a strange loop.

Corbyn and Bernie Sanders do not represent a genuine opposition to the ruling class, however, they both pose a threat to it, since their psuedo socialism moves the working-class towards the left and NOT towards fascism.

It is alarming that the danger social democracy poses is still reasoned away as if it some threat to, and not a main pillar of support for the ruling class and their state. These figures in each country gather about them, through deceit and propaganda, the masses looking for a way out, only to then deliver them into another 'progressively' forged political straightjacket. The demoralising effect shouldn't be underestimated, especially at a time when the forces of the far right are gathering in preparation for their approaching public debut with the state.

The working class is already moving towards socialism, it is the middle classes which are of greater concern. Because the middle classes aren't as revolutionary as the working class and whichever way they decide to go has drastic repercussions; a relatively peaceful transition to socialism or a bloody civil war. If they follow a Corbyn or a Sanders it will ultimately deliver them to the fascists. Because Social Democrats don't seek revolutionary politics and a worker's state, they seek the elimination of it, by dithering, dragging their feet, promising and betraying, and then capitulating to the right. The lesson the middle classes learn is, the working class isn't able to take power, so they veer to the right and into the arms of the fascists.

Labour isn't a working class party, it is a party of the middle classes. It is a bourgeois political party with a history of war mongering, austerity and imperialist intrigue. Corbyn isn't a far left anti-semite as he is portrayed in the press, but a centre-left social democratic politician. If he is to be exposed as anything it is on the basis of the truth of what he is, what he intends, and more importantly what he historically represents.

"Corbyn and Bernie Sanders do not represent a genuine opposition to the ruling class, however, they both pose a threat to it, since their psuedo socialism moves the working-class towards the left and NOT towards fascism."

You're describing (orienting) the political positions of Corbyn and Bernie Sanders relative to the ruling class.

That's why you draw the false conclusion that "their psuedo socialism moves the working-class towards the left..."

"Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in 2015, we explained, was the distorted expression of a shift to the left in the working class..."

They're opportunists. They're not moving the working class. They're a distorted expression of a shift to the left in the working class.

"The orientation of the WSWS is not to Corbyn. It is to the thousands of working people and youth who have joined the Labour Party in the mistaken belief that his victory will lead to the formation of a left and even socialist government."

I was mainly discussing the phony antisemitic criticisms against Corbyn, as a way of discrediting him among his "liberal" following. And how that term is used by the Israeli Government and the intelligence agencies to squash any negative chatter about their fascist polices.

As an ancillary comment I was trying to point out the irony of calling liberal Corbyn a Jew hater, while Netanyahu has close ties to some of the worst antisemitic right-wing nationalists regimes on the planet. Which is a powerful indication that the ruling class in the US, Britain, and Israel always prefer fascism over socialism.

Although Bernie Sanders and Corbyn are "pseudo socialist" and have no intentions of restructuring the government some of their ideas have allowed their followers to think about the notion of socialism. That in itself is a big step forward. I'm sure that's why the polls now say more people prefer socialism over capitalism.

The discontent young followers of Corbyn and Bernie could be swayed in other directions. Throughout Europe we're witnessing the rise of right-wing nationalist governments.

"Although Bernie Sanders and Corbyn are "pseudo socialist" and have no intentions of restructuring the government some of their ideas have allowed their followers to think about the notion of socialism. That in itself is a big step forward. I'm sure that's why the polls now say more people prefer socialism over capitalism."

It's significant that Sanders and Corbyn must to go to such extents to pretend to have the interests of the working class at heart.

It indicates the growing weakness in the political position of the ruling class as a whole and the liberal capitalist faction in particular due to the intensification of the economic crisis.

"The moods of the masses were themselves a distorted reflection of objective conditions." -On the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International

But that fact doesn't represent "a step forward" for the working class.

"The revolutionary party could overcome these moods only to the extent that it fought within the working class for a correct understanding of the capitalist crisis and its political implications." -On the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International

For which the only step forward comes from the kind of orientation that raises the political consciousness of the working class to its revolutionary tasks.

Thanks for the answer. It was all that I asked for.

I stand with:

1)
Human6 • 5 days ago
To start, it is correct to defend Corbyn against the slanders by Zionists and the Blairites and Tories and the bourgeois gutter press.

However, there seems to be a contradiction in the demand:

"starting with the driving out of the Labour right wing wherever they rear their heads."

This may have been relevant when the Labour party was a reformist workers' party, before the late 1980's. However now, as the article states, Labour is “a right-wing bourgeois party… complicit in all the crimes of British imperialism and has functioned as the principal political opponent of socialism for more than a century...”

To repeat, it's no longer a bourgeois workers' party, but just a simplebourgeois liberal party, just like the Democratic Party in the US has always been. Therefore the call to drive the right wing out of the party ends up sounding like the call by the DSA, ISO, SAlt, etc. in the US to "take back the Democratic Party (for whom? the bourgeoisie?)".

In the end, don't any calls to bourgeois parties to rearrange their composition become calls to the bourgeoisie to better manage their affairs?

2) Warren Duzak Human6 • 5 days ago
I, too, was confused by the formulation of "driving out the Right Wing." I hope we will see more written about it.

3) TJM • 4 days ago
Then why tell them to drive out the right wing? Tell them to join the SEP and Trotskyism.
TJM • 4 days ago
How is this different from saying not to uncompromisingly challenge those bound to the Democratic party? If you are bound to the Democrats, you have a major problem and need to rethink things from the beginning. Besides I’m sure much of the working class is outside labour. I’m sure many are even Tory supporters. Breaking from the two parties is a prerequisite for any basic oppositional sentiment. You don’t need anyone who refuses to do so. They are reactionaries

4) Popart 2015 • 5 days ago
This proves that Corbyn isn't Pseudo-left...

I stand against:

1)
"rosa roja • 4 days ago
To reform the Democratic party is hopeless, but the Labour party is a different case. It's true that the odds favour the Blairites, but it's too early to say that the cause is lost. Remember that hundreds of thousands of new members have joined in support of Corbyn."

imaduwa
"As you have correcly perceived Corbyn is identified with socialist transformation of the society in Britain in the absence of the rvolutionary party of the British working class"

Jason Fitzgerald
"Sadly, crypto-Stalinist Corbyn and the Corbynistas have neither the political nous nor backbone to launch a political counter-offensive against this tsunami of lies and propaganda.

Instead we have seen him bending over backwards like a limbo dancer to try to pacify the liars and mudslingers in the PLP, and the press and media. He even allowed his close friend, Ken Livingstone, to be thrown to the wolves. Others on the Labour "left" have also been sacrificed.

Such weakness has merely emboldened the witchhunters.

Labour is heading for a 1981 style SDP split off the prevent Corbyn becoming Labour PM.

The task for Socialists is to win the best and most advanced workers to the banner of Revolutionary Socialism as this latest Labour implosion erupts on the political landscape"

3)

Don Barrett TJM • 4 days ago
May I suggest the importance of this document, Trotsky's "The Transitional Program". It is an analysis of the method of constructing transitional demands, neither minimum demands (those capable of being granted by reform) or maximal demands (those so divorced from the political experience and maturity of the population at its present state as to seem hopelessly utopian). Here's an explanation in brief: the whole document is one of Trotsky's most important:

Don Barrett TJM • 4 days ago
The parties have very different histories and a different mass base. The Democrats are the world's oldest party of the bourgeoisie, the party of the slavocracy, and the primary, though hardly exclusively, US party of 20th century militarism and war.

The Labour party arose instead out of the trade unions and at one time stressed nationalization of industry, and even (prior to 1994) "common ownership of the means of production," even if any real orientation towards this had vanished decades earlier.

Yes, now both parties are an essential and well integrated part of bourgeois politics, but the different histories and constituencies mean that the nature of illusions in the parties are quite different....

Juan Carlos Popart 2015 • 5 days ago
No, this proves you have an inadequate understanding of what "pseudo-left" means.

Corbyn is claiming to the working class that he can lead Labour to do something it is organically incapable of doing, even as it tries to consume him on the alter for daring to do so.

If Corbyn and his backers in Labour were to make a principled stand and break with the right-wing elements within the party responsible for the latest attacks that'd be one thing, but they have absolutely no intention of doing so.This whole operation is in the playbook of pseudo-left operations.

My final remarks on the debate:

1) Mr Marsden response proves that the Marxist culture of debate is still very present within the Party (I do not care much for having been called "syndicalist", "abstensionist", "formalist" or "sectarian"), the main thing is that the point was debated openly. In 2016 my comment was published, but some defenders of the line I criticised dismissed my comment that the same was developed using the "united front framework", merely stating that I was thinking too much:

solerso altacomposicionorganica • 2 years ago
"Your really overthinking this. Labor party rank and file membership elected Corbyn, according the rules of the Labour party and British law, and they have a right to do so. That is all"

We have progressed beyond the first "Marxist" based party and its theoretical reformist core: Marx`s critique of 1875 of the SPD was hidden until 1891 by the same Bebel, and his critique of 1879 (written with Engels) was never even known by Lenin (only published in 1924)

2) The mistake in the original article, can be seen we you watch how people approved its line in the below comments, citing the need to "reform the Labour Party" (rosaroja) basing ourselves on the Transitional Program (Don Barret). I have nothing personal against this comrades, but the issues involved are of an strategic nature. They express the view that the Labour Party is still a "reformist socialist party", like it was prior to 1981 (approximately). It is the politics that genuine trotskysim applied to it until that date. It gave results to Healy in its moment (up to a certain point), but that was when the Party was based on a big working class membership, and rooted on unions that were national-reformist (not the Unite or TUC of today), a time when you fought against the left-leadership to win a part of its base or some of its more lucid cadres.
What distinguishes today the ICFI from other variants of trotskysm is that it does not apply this "tactic" anymore, without abandoning the Transitional program or the more general "transitional reivindications framework" developed by Trotsky and genuine communism during the 3rd and 4th Congress of the CI. If today the other trotskyist variants have degenerated, and the do not anymore make mild criticisms of the left labour leadership, but instead are just cheerleaders of it (Taaffe`s group as a prime example), that does not mean the ICFI needs to take the politics they have abandoned. Finally, I warned that this "new mass base of the the Labour Party" (to which comrade Marsden refers to), is not spontaneous, but to not a minor degree a conscious political decision of the cliffites, taaffists, grantists and mandelites and their periphery (the ICFI itself wrote extensively in 2016/2017 about the media claims that the Labour Party was being infiltrated by trotskysm). This is not that different as the growth of the DSA within the the Democratic Party within the US. The question, then, requires precise study (to what extent this growth is similar in both countries, to what extent these are cadres that can be won or spontaneous new members, their class extraction and position, to what extent the "trotskyist infiltrators" were really driven out of the Labour Party last year, and so on)

3) The debate is of a highly theoretical nature, as all concrete strategical problems are.
a) It is inextricable bind with the ICFI`s reformulation (the way to get out of the impasse) of the traditional bolshevik and trotskyst politics. We do not speak anymore of reformism and centrism, categories that were strategically vinculated with the kind of transitional politics that saw the existence of genuine mass based reformist parties. Today we speak of pseudo-left. To me the spirit of this new theoretical development is correct, but still requires development. As I criticised it on 2015 (an article of 2012 of comrade North republished that year), we Marxists are not part of the Left. It was that way for Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. A class boundary separates us from the left, rivers of blood (for example, the best "in length analysis" of the Paris Commune of 1871 was Lissagaray`s -to Marx`s own view-, a book of 300 hundred pages that is an entire scientific diatribe against the Left in any of its variants -specially its extreme or revolutionary wing-). So, if we talk about the pseudo-left, it is because "it" has (as a camp) abandoned its reformist or "revolutionary" (sic) politics, not because we represent the "real and true left". To show to what an extent the Marxist tradition is not part of the Left, you could cite that even Turati in 1892 sharply criticised the extreme left. There are only two Left`s that Marxism has known and both are within a communist and working class framework. As trotskysts we identify ourselves with the Left Opposition and not with the Communist Left (Bordiga) or Councilism (Gorter, Pannekoek, etc). But, to stay on the issue. The question today is how to retain and develop the transitional politics of the 3rd and 4th congresses and the Trantional Program of 1938, making in fact this distinction, without amalgamating light liberals with other currents, trying to assert "where" the working class element is leaning to the left and were there are just pettybourgeois developing their own left instincts, how both may be mixed up, in which way, and how to separate and redirect the healthy working class elements. My view is that the message to "drive out the labour`s right wing" appeals more to the bourgeois strata that intends to reform the Labour Party, but this is something that is concrete and to some extent needs be proven in practice (with propaganda, agitation, debate). I do not have the answer or the "magic ball", but I just do not see a healthy core in the message "drive out the right wing of Labour".

b) It is necessary that the Party addresses the way in which the line is being received by the members, readers and all others. So, as my intervention deserved a lengthy article, I hope the line to "reform the labour party using the Transitional Program" of Don Barret`s and Rosaroja is dealt with (specially Mr Barret`s intervention, which is a a prime example of mandelite politics between 1945 and 1975).

c) More concretly, it needs to be thought out why the US ruling class is promoting the pseudo left (DSA, Jacobin), while its British counterpart is histerically fighting it (fighting Corbyn and its periphery). The bourgeois classes have fractions and conflicts within them, and their overall politics is not a carefuly thought out plan that expresses itself clearly within day to day politics (we Marxists are materialists and do not believe in conspiracy theories). Historically, one of its many reasons could be because in England the monarchy is still present and in the US you never had any monarchy to begin with. You could say that this is why the British ruling class is one of the most conservative and retrograde bourgeois classes in the world (within the framework of bourgeois politics). All the same it is still true that may be US bourgeois elements directly influencing the politics within the UK, and it would be interesting to know how they are related with the sections that are promoting the DSA and the like. So, is essential to see how all the different "Syriza like formations" around the world react to the fight against Corbyn, because it will give as the key to the lines of fracture within bourgeois progressism, and how to act to developed aqnd accelerate them and make and independent working class politics appear with some strength.

I know I do not present I unified perspective, but it cannot be denied that the problems that I address are real and need to be thought out, to develop concrete scientific answers.

Marxist greetings.

The class struggle is a living, developing, changing process. The seething mass in the UK opposing all the attacks on them - austerity, war drums, draining democratic rights, etc etc initially appears - in part - in the form of thousands of youth and workers joining Labour. They think that Corbyn will fight for socialist policies. That is something that has not been seen for many, many years. Of course, he won't and isn't. The SEP's work will assist many in understanding what Corbyn (and pseudo-leftism) really is.The SEP is tapping into that with a principled demand that does not lend any support to Corbyn. In fact, the demand is not placed on Corbyn but on these leftward moving forces. I said the class struggle is a living, moving phenomenon. I recall, to take just one important example, the Bolsheviks had a slogan "All Power to the Soviets". In July, Lenin moved to change that slogan. You see, by July Menshevik/SR forces within the Soviets moved, along with the government, to arrest and suppress the Bolsheviks backed by the right-ward frenzy after the pro-Bolshevik July Days worker demonstrations. One must hold a finger to the pulse of history. You don't. That is why some have characterized your remarks as "formalist".

Why are you emphasizing the word "NOW?" Are you suggesting that we ignore history and only consider what different political groupings stand for today?

If there is a 78% tally of "professionals" who are members of the Labour Party, that still leaves plenty "non-professionals". Anyway, what is a "professional"? Is a computer programmer a professional? Is a teacher a professional? A scientist? A nurse? Everyone does not have to wear a donkey jacket to be a worker. And, yes, if say a doctor learns some lessons and moves leftwards, is that not a good thing? The Marsden response is pretty clear. The call to those leftward moving workers and youth to drive out the right wing will assist in breaking many from social democratic illusions.

Whilst disagreeing with the characterisation of Labour under Corbyn as “a right-wing bourgeois party" - it is a leftist bourgeois workers party in Leninist terminology compared to Labour under Blair and Brown, the thrust of the article is entirely correct.

Also the Democrats are a straight bourgeois patry and it is never correct to call for a vote for them or seek entry. The trade unions have no structural connections and that TU bureaucracy can only act as cheereleeaders for US imperialism via their links.

Here the TUs are intergral to the Labour party- it seems it was primarily the TU delegates on the NEC that struck the blows against Corbyn by advovcating the adoption of the IRHA antisemitism definition back in 2016 and now have adopted the full examples and also rejected Corbyn's stornger defence of free speech on Israel in favour a completely anodyne one. Not that either would have been sufficient to undo the damage of the original 2016 adoption but it showd that the TU birauacrats + John Lansman are a deadly combination. Time to democratise that TU vote .

Gerry and Chris,
I also think that characterizing Labor party as "right-wing bourgeois" is incorrect. It is a "left-wing bourgeois" party in a period, when the decline of world and British capitalism requires the ruling elite to take back any and all past concessions to the working class. Hence, formerly pro-reform, "progressive", etc. parties all turn very sharply to the right.
The fact that thousands of workers are joining the Labor party now, that millions of workers still vote for the Democrats in the US, or for Labor in Britain, etc. means that we, Marxists, must do more to explain the objective laws of capitalism and why "nice", "rational", "progressive" politicians, like Corbyn or Bernie Sanders will enact right-wing and reactionary measures.

The very fact that the ruling elites can "take back" anything, confirms that concessions to the working class are entirely in their gift, and that is wrong. We need the ruling elites to be overthrown. Then the gift will be ours, not theirs.

The abandonning of Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution in 1995 which had on paper been in favour of the "common ownership of the means of production", and Labour's support for the Iraq invasion (with no mass resignations from "left" representaives of Labour) , is enough to determine Labour as a right-wing bourgeois party which supports NATO and EU austerity.

I absolutely agree with Gerry. But I also think this takes us back to some fundamental problems with the current ICFI's position. They want to have their cake and eat it too, to have it both ways, etc. etc. but either you adopt the, still eminently sensible, position of Trotsky that both the trade unions, and the labor parties connected to them, are venues for struggle, and short term entry in order to struggle--in other words, they are venues for UNITED FRONTS--AGAINST their bureaucratic leaderships. Or you adopt the ultra-left, "syndicalist" position that David North had the ICFI adopt, just coincidentally, after he privatized the old Workers League, non-union printing operation. Which is that we should not only oppose the trade union and LP misleaders. But we should also scorn and fight against the TUs and LPs themselves.

Supposedly this is based on some sort of fundamental transformation of capitalism via globalization, that makes any reforms impossible, and therefore the unions themselves, not just the bureaucrats, should be rejected.

But during the Great Depression, Trotsky noted that reforms, at least in Europe, had become impossible. And Lenin and Trotsky always knew that the union leaderships were treacherous, selfish misleaders. That never stopped them from supporting work within the trade unions, and, as the article points out, short term rather than deep throat entry work in the Labor Party.

So the current policy is sectarian, cultish, non-dialectical, a-historical nonsense, and I am grateful for any signs that common sense Trotskyism is poking through this nonsense. When y'all make up your minds to abandon this silliness altogether--THAT will be the day when I reapply for membership. Because otherwise you are a fine organization and you are doing outstanding work, especially in the journalistic dept, but also socialist propaganda, analysis, etc.

See the following pamphlet, written admittedly by Morenoites of Left Voice, but still pretty good on the need for united front, defense that turns into offense: http://www.leftvoice.org/Gr...

The unions and Labour parties are NOT "venues for struggle." That suggestion is nonsense and insulting to the workers still stuck in these moribund unions, tied to capitalism, nation-state and corporatist nationalism. As Jerry White said in his previous perspective they are not organisations seeking to organise opposition to the ruling class but mechanisms for the ruling class to control and police the working class. This may be hard for some workers to hear but Marxism was never based on their naive illusions just cause a few union bureaucrats and Labourites shout nice sounding slogans at protests and strikes. It is undeniable that unions have undergone serious transformation, via globalisation of production, they are not the same organisations of the 1930s and 1950s-60s. The capitalists and their spokesmen say "there is no money" and the unions repeat these lies. Of course the union bureaucracies are never short of money for themselves, particularly in major capitalist countries. So-called "common sense Trotskyism" is not a cheerleader for the reactionary, pro-capitalist union bureaucracy and their nationalist organisations which protect the bourgeoisie from angry workers wanting real social change which will only come about through social revolution and a Marxist international party leadership.

Then why are you proposing to support one faction of this Labor Party, tied to the TUs, vs. the other? And who the hell is cheerleading the bureaucracy, by saying we'll fight AGAINST them?! It is you who effectively aid and abet the bureaucrats, by abandoning the field of trade union work, as somehow, in and of itself essentially reactionary. This is just like the aging SWP leadership, ceding the Civil Rights struggle to the reformists and the black nationalists down South, despite the strident calls upon them by Richard Fraser and the RT (out of which came both the Spartacist League and the Workers League, if I understand the history correctly) to intervene with a revolutionary integrationist perspective, and intersect the consciousness of the Southern black workers.

Instead of intervention, you, and the old aging SWP leadership of the early 60s are proposing abstentionism.

Every time the wsws tells workers that we need to "oppose this contract" and "vote it down," you are simply contradicting yourselves. You are proposing to use the structures of that damn reactionary union to fight against the power of the bureaucrats who control and mislead it. Common sense Trotskyism pokes through the cultish, ultra-left nonsense, again, and again, and this time as well. Congratulations! Now be consistent. Again, you can't have it both ways.

You clearly have not read and understood Marsden's response article. He doesn't advocate political orientation to Corbyn but to the thousands of workers and youth who have joined Labour UK recently since his election as leader in the mistaken belief or hope he will execute some sort of positive societal change. People like you are full of noxious commentary but are essentially emptyheaded. How about read his article reply. And you don't know who I am so speak for your bloody self.

Who, as you claim, is "supporting one faction of this Labour Party"? The
SEP is certainly not supporting a faction, but urging the new members
who number tens of thousands to fight the right-wing blairites by
expelling them etc. This is not an appeal to Corbyn's entourage. This
tactic will show who really wants to defeat the right and who defends
socialism, the SEP.

There is no contradiction in characterising the unions and the Labour party as anti-working class, and calling on rank and file members to vote down right politicians and union contracts. This is called intervening in workers struggles by Marxists to raise political consciousness. Whether this be outside or within the unions.

This is totally different from what you call "the field of trade union work", a synonym for providing a "left" cover for the trade union bureaucracy's betrayals.

For workers to defend their rights it is necessary to break from these anti-worker organisations, but that does not mean abandonning those confused elements trapped in them.
How else can workers learn who their real friends are and the Trotskyist party recruit in the working class?

But your line is opposed to the fight against the labor bureaucracy which you label "ultra-left nonsense". Tell that to the teachers and UPS workers in revolt against the unions, who have received maximum aid from the WSWS and SEP.

Correct. That is why Tom has sat on the sidelines for years.

Who, as you claim, is "supporting one faction of this Lbour Party"? The SEP is certainly not supporting a faction, but urging the new members who number tens of thousands to fight the right-wing blairites by expelling them etc. This is not an appeal to Corbyn's entourage. This tactic will show who really wants to defeat the right and who defends socialism, the SEP. Those who take a

Brilliant article,

The change that's required has to be clean and untainted, meaning that it could never originate from within the existing UK Duopoly.

Same goes for all the other vassal sates.

Well I think that clears it up nicely . Thank you Chris .

Hundreds of thousands of mostly young and working class people joining the Labour Party in the belief they wish to fight for socialism is not the same as millions voting to stay in the EU. Those youth and workers who have flocked to the Labour Party are up for a fight. They are actively seeking the socialist political party. They are not finding it in Labour and they will come to see that, and are seeing it already; but their desire and aims are still to build a socialist movement to fight for a socialist society. The SEP is not prepared to wash their hands off those people, it would be criminal to do so. The fightback against the Labour right must bring those youth and workers into conflict with the Labour 'left'.

Do you propose that the SEP stand aside and let thousands and thousands of serious and principled activists simply become demoralised in a vain struggle to change Labour?

In fighting for socialist principles and leadership the SEP is also clarifying for more and more workers that the EU capitalists are no more the answer than the Brexit capitalists. Brexit itself is a major aspect of the drive to the right by the ruling class; but committing to Brussels is an illusion. The same Brussels that condemns thousands to drown in the Mediterranean; that partakes in the slaughters in Syria, Libya; that builds for war against Russia; that supports the fascists in Germany, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria, the Netherlands. If the SEP had backed the vote to remain it would have directly associated the SEP with that.
A bourgeois referendum with a stacked deck is not the same thing as a mass movement of youth and workers into the Labour Party looking for a means to take on and defeat the capitalist ruling class.

From above: "Events will vindicate our assessment. Under such conditions, the demand to kick out the right-wing can not only provide a mechanism for advancing the class struggle, but the means for educating the working class on the difference between opportunist and revolutionary socialist policies. Our implacable opposition to the right-wing and clear call for action against the conspirators will build the credibility of our party and lay the foundation for its growth."
Building the SEP is not an academic exercise. The SEP is not engaged in point-scoring. The battle against the witch-hunt is the battle to build the leadership of the working class. it is not an abstraction.

And what do you make of the analogy that was made between Labour in the UK and the Democratic Party in the US, and the attitude of the respective SEPs to those parties? Is the US SEP "prepared to wash their hands off those people" that voted for Bernie Sanders in their millions in our 2016 primary elections? Are they "stand[ing] aside and let[ting] thousands and thousands of serious activists become demoralised in a vain struggle to change" the Democrats, because they are failing to "lend critical support" to the struggle of the Sanders wing of the party? The comparison is simply written off in this reply because "there are, of course, important differences in the historical origins" of the two parties. This really is backpedalling to a kind of politics that the ICFI seemed to have put behind it decades ago.

In my opinion this position taken by the SEP in the UK is very problematic. This reply is even more worrisome than the original perspective, with it's call for demanding the "implementation of socialist policies" (to whom is this demand directed? Labour MPs?) I fail to see how it is possible to reconcile this position with what is written in, for example, the opening report of Comrade North to the SEP (US) national congress:

"The placing of socialist demands was seen (decades ago - JP) as both necessary and unavoidable in overcoming the still considerable illusions of masses of workers in their leaders and organizations. The demand “Labor to power based on socialist policies” in Britain, “For a CP-CGT government” in France, and, in the United States, “For a Labor Party based on the trade unions” set out to awaken and counterpose the anti-capitalist aspirations of the working class to the class-collaborationism of the bureaucracies.

But the unbroken chain of betrayals by the old bureaucratic organizations in the 1980s and 1990s, and the dissolution of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, changed the relationship of these organizations to the working class, both in an objective and subjective sense. A failure to recognize this change carried with it the danger that a tactic that had been developed to overcome illusions in the old organizations would be transformed into a futile and self-defeating effort to sustain and even encourage such illusions."

How can you even speculate that the WSWS would think the demand for socialist policies could be pushed forward by Labour MPs? Or that the implementation of socialist policies could be carried out within the Labour Party? A full throated movement to deselect the right wing would inevitably cause Corbyn et al to openly oppose that movement in a public political showdown. Many eyes will be quickly opened amongst a section of those leftward moving workers and youth who have recently joined Labour. The article clearly states, "The orientation of the WSWS is not to Corbyn. It is to the thousands of working people and youth who have joined the Labour Party in the mistaken belief that his victory will lead to the formation of a left and even socialist government".

Also, there seems to be a lack of focus on the international implications of this position. I am tempted to make parallels with the decision of the British Trotskyists to form the WRP: "It was approached as a national endeavor unrelated to the international struggle against revisionism." The international implications of such a campaign do not appear to me as being properly addressed. With this position as precedent, might we at some point demand the expulsion of the right-wing of the Australian Labor Party, or the SPD in Germany? Are there circumstances under which we would we call on workers to call branch meetings of the PCF in order to demand the implementation of socialist policies?

Does it imply anything about the attitude adopted by the SEP (US) to the DSA and Sanders wing of the Democrats? Many of the same arguments used here in defense of the this position can, and have, been deployed against the American Trotskyists.

So if leftward moving workers and youth who have joined the Labour party take up the SEPs call to "call branch meetings ... demand the implementation of socialist policies," who are we to presume they are placing these demands on?

The so-called left wing of the Labour Party is a cover, designed to fool youth and workers. This left wing of the Labour apparatus has not and will not challenge the British capitalist system.

The call is by the SEP for Labour party members to demand a fight against the right. A fight by committed and principled Labour members for a militant fightback against the relentless Labour right wing attacks and smears will smoke out the phony left in Labour, and show these Labour party members that Labour, left and right, is truly a party of British capitalism.

The struggle by the workers and youth will show them that the 'left' of the Labour party is a sham. That the Labour party is their enemy.

This campaign and demand of the SEP is a considered and important call. I can only conclude that those who are opposing this SEP campaign are in fact hostile to the SEP and Marxism, under the guise of claiming to defend Marxism. They fear the turn by the SEP.

I am quite confident that the WSWS would have nothing to do with your claim that long-time supporters of the ICFI and WSWS readers internationally who voice critical opinions about a specific national tactical initiative of the party "are in fact hostile to the SEP and Marxism, under the guise of claiming to defend Marxism."

I am struggling to find the correct word to describe someone who would present themselves, on one hand, as ostensibly a supporter of "Building the SEP," while on the other seeking to drive away supporters of the movement by slandering them as hostile to the Party.

"Saboteur" comes to mind, but I will settle for "irresponsible."

The SEP's call for Labour members to take the fight against the rightist attacks is proposed as a serious means to break workers and youth from the malign influence of the Labour party.

The SEP call is quite clearly not put forward as an appeal to the Labour phony lefts; but as a weapon in the hands of those Labour members who are fighting for a socialist program and party. The demand by principled Labour members to eject the right will expose the whole Labour apparatus, including the Labour 'left' for the frauds they are.

You seem completely determined to suppress this fundamental, and very important, analysis by the SEP. For the Marxist you claim to be this is renarkable. To me it is a deliberate, and crude, mis-interpretation of the SEP analysis. As such it is hostile.
Your claims imply Marxist 'purity'.
When in fact it is those youth and workers who are formally members of the Labour party, but are fighting for a socialist way, who are a million times more Marxist than you. Use 'comrades' as many times as you like; but in this case give me those Labour youth and workers who want to take on the struggle. They are the socialists. Not you. It is those youth and workers who will build the SEP, given the powerful fight the SEP itself has taken up.

It is your real outlook, which comes spewing forth in your final paragraph, that is so obviously hostile to that on which this site is based that it really deserves no further comment. I've hardly ever seen such an explicit denigration of the importance of socialist consciousness on this site since it added the comment feature.

Young Corbyn supporter: Corbyn is fighting for socialism.
SEP: No, he isn't. He is a "left" cover for the pro-austerity, pro-war Labour Party. If you want to fight for genuine socialism you need to draw these lessons and join and build the SEP.
Young Corbyn supporter: No, I think we can wage a fight for socialism in the Labour Party. We just need to sideline the right wing Blairites.
SEP: If you truly believe that, then launch a fight to drive out the right wing. Launch a fight for genuine socialist policies in the Labour Party. Corbyn will oppose that. The Labour Party will deploy every means against this. What will you do then?
Young Corbyn supporter: We'll see.
SEP: You are going to be surprised. Follow our coverage on this. Lets keep in touch.

I think what bothers the ruling class about Corbyn isn't so much Corbyn himself as the fact that he has achieved popularity - which in itself shows indications of a nascent mass opposition movement.

Also - and perhaps the WSWS or one of the readers can help me out here - I was wondering if this "sectarian abstentionism" can be likened to that previous movement called "ultra-leftism"?

A bit surprised to see the ICFI use the phrase "sectarian abstentionism".

Sectarianism is a scientific term used by Marxists, including Trotsky and the ICFI. It is also a term that is bastardised and employed as an epithet by the pseudo-left in place of the word "principled" because they are opposed to genuine revolutionary socialist politics. A prime example is Alex Steiner. It is important to note the difference

These are leftward moving currents in the Labour Party going through the kind of experience that builds the revolutionary party.On the other hand, all my life I met socialists and anarchists peering over the horizon for some imagined rank -and-file. You know, the anarchists had not joined the Soviets, Lenin's tiny group had. The rest, as they say, is history

it's not the first time thou, and as the article explains, their calls for abstentions (in EU referendums of 2005 of on Brexit for instance) were never meant to tell people to do nothing and stay home, but to build something else than what's on offer.
I fullly back the intervention in the Labour crisis, there are clearly hundreds of thousands of people in this party at the moment who came because they anticipated a real struggle against the tories and blairites, and this is the right way to show them that in fact Corbyn will not want to fight these half as hard as it would be necessary.

Have to disagree with: "...this is the right way to show them that in fact Corbyn will not want to fight these half as hard as it would be necessary." Corbyn hasn't and won't fight the Tories and Blairites at all, at least in any consistent, principled, and determined (that is, genuine) way. He's just shown that by not taking a stand on UK redeploying to Afghanistan, just a particularly glaring example. From the standpoint of a bourgeois politician, it couldn't be otherwise.

so where do we disagree exactly ?