Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The funny thing is that Labour under Corbyn isn't exactly "anti-capitalist" per se. The 2017 manifesto includes increases in tax for businesses and high earning individuals and some renationalization of infrastructure, but stops well short of abolishing the financial services sector (which is just as well, because the result of that would be mass starvation). Whether Corbyn, in his heart of hearts, is really an unreconstructed Marxist who wants to ban private capital altogether is not really relevant - although clearly that image of him is a big part of both his appeal to some people and the reason others are averse to him.

What's also notable is that the heads of both Citibank and Deutsche Bank have indicated that they would prefer a soft Brexit under Corbyn to a no-deal Brexit, and I've heard that recent events that have made a Labour victory more likely have caused sterling to rally, not fall.

This is why "follow the money, duh" doesn't, in itself, explain the Brexit phenomenon. The business interests that stand to lose out from a hard or no-deal Brexit vastly outweigh those that stand to gain. It's just that those that stand to gain include people like Farage and Rees-Mogg.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
This was on before newsnight on the day labour announced the broadband nationalisation. Very fitting.

A complete rejection of modernity, innovation, evolution. Just inanely sticking to something completely redundant in the modern world.

 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
Dissensus is divided between those who think socialism looks like stencilled fists in the air, ak47’s, Molotov cocktails, riots, revolutions, John Eden in his khaki suit and ting and those who think it looks like a weasel-chinned bloke in an anorak calling people comrade.
 

luka

Well-known member
When I showed Vimothy this thread he chuckled and said "neoliberalism is an ideology as quaintly outdated as socialism. A new beast shuffles towards Bethlehem."
 

luka

Well-known member
This thread is a winner. I'm determined to get it off the ground. Assessing the legacy of neoliberalism and asking what, as vimothy puts it, is currently slouching towards Bethlehem to replace it.
 

luka

Well-known member
1979-2008? I'm not very knowledgeable about this stuff. Get craner out of retirement.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's another in our recent series of looking back threads. The 2010s one, the 20th century one. It's going to get spicy. Robust exchanges of opinion. Contentious statements. Controversy. Can't wait.
 

luka

Well-known member
Craner said he's got a LOT to say on this topic and that he's broadly sympathetic to bartys position albeit with a few provisos. However, first he has an article on Oliver Letwin to finish writing. "It's mostly done it's just a matter of polishing the brasswork so to speak."
 

version

Well-known member
Did he actually though? I can't tell anymore. Every other user could leave and there would still be huge threads of them arguing via you.

:crylarf:
 

luka

Well-known member
The funny thing is that Labour under Corbyn isn't exactly "anti-capitalist" per se. The 2017 manifesto includes increases in tax for businesses and high earning individuals and some renationalization of infrastructure, but stops well short of abolishing the financial services sector (which is just as well, because the result of that would be mass starvation). Whether Corbyn, in his heart of hearts, is really an unreconstructed Marxist who wants to ban private capital altogether is not really relevant - although clearly that image of him is a big part of both his appeal to some people and the reason others are averse to him.

What's also notable is that the heads of both Citibank and Deutsche Bank have indicated that they would prefer a soft Brexit under Corbyn to a no-deal Brexit, and I've heard that recent events that have made a Labour victory more likely have caused sterling to rally, not fall.

This is why "follow the money, duh" doesn't, in itself, explain the Brexit phenomenon. The business interests that stand to lose out from a hard or no-deal Brexit vastly outweigh those that stand to gain. It's just that those that stand to gain include people like Farage and Rees-Mogg.

This is a good point tea and many thanks for your contribution. Barty says the difference is evident in the rhetoric coming out of the two parties. "One wants to create wealth, the other wants to destroy it. Without wishing to sound hyperbolic when I hear promises of “an irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people” my blood runs cold as I flash on the cultural revolution and intellectuals forced to work as pig farmers. They are playing a tremendously dangerous game. Society is more fragile than they know."
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Luke asked me to kickstart this thread, which I’ll do if you read this first:

https://kirkpatrickmission.wordpress.com/2013/05/08/guerrapittura-2/

I wrote if after watching Ken Loach’s useless documentary Spirit of 45 and having recently read Edmund Dell’s important book A Strange Eventful History: Democratic Socialism in Britain.

This is written from a residual Blairite perspective of course, but I regret being so glib about the prospects of the Far Left. It hasn’t aged very well, in that regard. I was still too confident and gloating. But it is a relic from a time when an obvious truth was still obvious: Labour was a broad left coalition, and the New Labour right were iconoclasts.
 

luka

Well-known member
Wait, you're actually going to do something I asked you to do? This is unprecedented I don't know what to say
 

luka

Well-known member
Ok I've read it (for the second time I read it at the time dutiful as ever) let's go!
 
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