Empire Socialism Part 14

Escape from McMurder Incorporated

There is no need to despair. The recent revelations in the Labour party about sabotage by principle-free centrists is a good thing, it’s helping release energy that would have been wasted worrying about which meaningless Labour committee the left should try to take over to do more constructive things like actually fight the working class corner for once. Before the Corbyn project many socialists said there was no point in attempting to work with Labour, after the centrist Milliband was trounced it was obvious that the hopeless world of triangles and poppycock was coming to an end at last. I remember saying it wasn’t just that socialists should stop flogging the dead horse of labourism, but that the poor horse was now little more than a stain on the road after over a hundred years of being thrashed, disappointed and manipulated by unprincipled leaders.

It was hard to persuade the old guard to do anything new, though. Admitting you have invested perhaps decades in a project that has objectively made things worse is really difficult. I remember how hard it can be to let go of all the work you did building up something that ended up supporting things that are objectively useless, but it had to be done.

The Corbyn project changed that for a short time, despite its shortcomings. But when Labour finally, if accidentally, had a leader who wasn’t in the pocket of the ruling class we all saw what happened. It demonstrated even more clearly that there’s nothing in the…