Labour Party and the Unions

[Rakesh Bhandari]

>Whether it could have been differentiated depended on the ability of the
>left to break from its identification with the Labour Party and with
>state socialism. Some of us tried, but we were a minority of a minority.
>--
>Jim heartfield

And Jim, so the left should be too tough to call for nationalisation,
welfare or anti racism (no wearing swastikas is really the heroic act)? And
what has LM provided instead?  Basically  Tony Robbins-like inspirational
lectures, dressed up with a few marxist and libertarian concepts, that
serve as pep talks for the  big market middle class that isn't getting off
its ass to take advantage of the opportunities life has bestowed upon the
priviliged, wallowing instead in lassitude (middle class decadence is a
real problem indeed but hardly the one Marxism was out to solve, though
Tony R has indeed proven that there is quite a bit of money in adult pep
talks).  You know the LM positions: learn how to fly a plane--just do it!
or just be that subject who can heroically change your own life all by your
lonesome (who needs class organisation and solidarity?) Or fuck around
without a condom since it's only poor people, homosexuals and IV drug users
who have anything to fear! Go ahead and enjoy your Club Med vacation
despite the surrounding human squalor! Or don't be a pussy-ass capitalist
without nerve to accumulate--just capitalise it! What LM (that minority of
the minority) figured is that to survive in the high times of bourgeois
individualism, the left had to break with socialism, solidarity and the
oppressed, right?

Yours, Rakesh