Labour Party and the Unions

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Mon Aug 2 02:14:09 PDT 1999


Max and Seth both ask what I'm for.

Socialisation of the means of production - what G Lukacs called 'societal self-determination'.

The problem with the Labour Party was that its programme was against socialisation, for nationalisation. Since it's been tried in practice we know that that is no academic distinction. Nationalised industries exploited, abused and finally dismissed their employees just as readily as private ones. In fact, the National Coal Board's record of deaths at work is second to none in Britain.

The difficulty with the left is that it is caught between two alternatives that are both defined by capitalist society: the free market and the state. Both are specific to capitalism, both need to be overcome.

In the here and now, the immediate problem facing any kind of social change is a culture of low expectations and the internalisation of victimhood.

In message <000301bedc9a$43f11560$d818c897 at sawicky.bellatlantic.net>, Max B. Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> writes
>
>You're consistent in what you're against,
>but mysterious in what you're for.

In message <000601bedc9d$03b62f00$d818c897 at sawicky.bellatlantic.net>, Max B. Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> writes
>My continuing effort to get the bottom of LM . . .
>
>In one place in your post, Bro. Heartfield


> suggests some kind of support for nationalized industries.
>But later he


> suggests good riddance to nationalized industries.
>
>So which is it? Should Labour have supported them, tried to revive them,
>or proposed something different, and if the latter, WHAT?

In message <518B8516EDC0D011BE3F00C04FD4EE5A158335 at smtp.fair.org>, Seth Ackerman <SAckerman at FAIR.org> writes
> What would this entail?

-- Jim heartfield



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