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"Jeremy" has launched his reformist economic programme:https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/70/attachments/original/1437556345/TheEconomyIn2020_JeremyCorbyn-220715.pdf?1437556345As can be seen, it assumes the continued existence of capitalism, even of production for private profit and the continued existence of the rich but with more government intervention.He seems to be advocating the Bank of England printing (well, creating electronic) money for the government to invest:

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The ‘rebalancing’ I have talked about here today means rebalancing away from finance towards the high-growth, sustainable sectors of the future.How do we do this? One option would be for the Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects: Quantitative easing for people instead of banks.

It's Keynes warmed up and won't work of course. Zimbabwe (or Venezuela), here we come.

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It's true that socialism can't be imposed from above by some vanguard after it has somehow won control of political power, as Mason himself once believed when he was in Workers Power. But then we never believed that. OK, you can say that it won't come either by a democratic majority revolution but you must concede that it couldn't come surreptiously on its own like a thief in the night as someone once put it (the Fabians I think). It would have to require some political action, even reformist, to for instance reform patent law and abolish the concept of "intellectual property". I imagine Mason wouldn't deny this. After all, he seems to be drawing a parallel with the transition from feudalism to capitalism (which did involve a struggle for the control of political power as well as the growth of capitalist economic forms).

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Here's how the i paper (15 July) reported the story:

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Socialist realists eye capital gainsA socialist party of just 300 members is worth more than £lm, it has emerged. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has cash reserves of £452,250 and property worth £900,000, its accounts state. A spokesman told the BBC: "We live in a capitalist society; you need money to survive. We don't just want to 'abolish money'"

Which goes to show that not all scumbag journalists, skilled in the arts of distortion and truncated quotes, work for the Sun, the Daily Mail and the rest of the gutter press. Some work for the self-styled "quality" press.

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They were handing out "Jeremy Corbyn for Labour Leader" leaflets at the Lambeth Country Fair yesterday. Here's what it says on the front:

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Together We CanBuild A Fairer BritainHelp create a more equal society by voting for a principled Labour leader, committed to opposing austerity, protecting our environment, promoting,peace and investing in our future.

There are plenty of thing's wrong with this.1. It's assuming that a Leader of the Labour Party could commit the party to trying to do all this.2. It's encouraging the idea of Leaders and Leadership.3. It's assuming that "opposing austerity" is an action that has some chance of success in capitalism in a slump (have they not heard of Greece?).On the back it talks about addressing

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Britain's wealth divide, building an economy which works for the many not the few.

as if capitalism could be reformed so as to "work for the many". You'd have thought that by now Labour activists would have learned that this can't be done. But this reformist illusion/delusion lives on. 

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You're probably right. The stuff he's talking about is pretty marginal to production and the theoretical point Marx posited of the labour content of a unit of physical commodities becoming so negligeable that they might as well be given away free is a long, long way away.

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DOMINIC LAWSON: Comrade Corbyn's biggest problem? He never smiles! (Even though his Marxist views are such a joke) 

So now he's a Marxist and a Trotskyist. Leaving aside the contradiction between being both, is there any evidence for either? I imagine the Daily Wail is just making up the "Marxist" one as that's what they call anyone who is "anti-business" even describing Ed Miliband as one for saying he wanted to freeze energt prices for a year or so. I can see too that a Labour MP might see Trotskyists under every bed, but was Corbyn ever in a Trotskyist group? I know they say his brother was in the IMG in the 1970s, but so what? My brother was once in the Labour Party but that doesn't make me a Labourite..

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

I'm no doubt the Private Frazer of the party, full of doom and gloom,

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

We are rejecting their consensus on the safety of GMO, on fracking and nuclear energy through parliamentary legislation.

Who is "we" here? It can't be the Party since we've always taken the view that there is no reason in principle why techniques such as these and others couldn't be employed safely in a profit-free context. And it's certainly not me. We, the Party, have never been anti-technology. Just the opposite. Every scientific advance makes socialism all the more plausible.Genetic modification of crops in particular opens up immense possibilities.I know we shouldn't be discussing this here but this thread is not going anywhere anyway for obvious reasons.

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I'm not sure that the Liberals are a sunken ship yet. There's been 4 local council by-elections here in South West London (where they lost both MPs, both Cabinet Ministers). They won all 4, gaining one from the Tories. Looks as if some people are beginning to regret that their votes resulted in a one-party Tory government, especially as the Tories are interpreting their victory as a mandate to continue with their old nasty party agenda (bashing the unions, bashing the BBC, reintroducing hunting). The Tories seem to be overlooking that they only won because Labour lost. If they carry on as they've started there'll be a backlash from which the Liberals could be in a better position to profit from that the pathetic Labour party (pink Tories who are now openly pro-business and anti-welfare to try to steal Tory votes).  What the one-party Tory government is doing also gives credibility to the Liberals claim that, when in coalition with the Tories, they were a restraining influnce on them.OK, it's all just boring capitalist politics …

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That's a bit disturbing and reflects badly on him. But more disturbing is that the current Cabinet Minister responsible for the NHS also believes in this nonsense:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-signed-parliamentary-motion-in-support-of-homeopathy-in-2010-10393413.htmlI suspect this is part of a campaign to descredit Corbyn. I wonder what else they'll come up with.It is true that homeopathy works for some people as he tweeted, but not for the reasons given by the quacks and distilled water salesmen behind it. All sorts of things can work because of the placebo effect. But at least the distilled water homeopathy recommends can't do you any harm (unless it prevents you going to a proper doctor if it turns out that there's something seriously wrong with your health).

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One good (or not bad) thing about the BBC is that there is no advertising (commercial lying) on it. Bringing that in would be a step backward and represent yet another area colonised by naked commercialism..

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Here's the Trotskyist "Socialist Alternative" (sister party to SPEW in the US) take on Bernie Sanders. It's a bit long. The gist seems to be that they should infilitrate the Elect Sanders campaign hoping that its other supporters will turn to them (or the Green Party candidate, they don't seem to mind) when he lets them down when he endorses whoever is chosen as the Democratic Party candidate. The usual "transitional demand" tactic of leading workers up the garden path in the hope that they will learn by  the experience of failure and turn to the Trotskyist vanguard for correct leadership:http://www.socialistalternative.org/2015/07/07/response-howie-hawkins/

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Oh I see now. That's what the secret is: Head Office is to be decorated with expensive William Morris wallpaper in keeping with its enhanced value:

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Not quite all. He says he votes for the Green Party ! I notice too that he endorses Kshama Sawant, the Trotskyist councillor in Seattle. More here:http://townhallseattle.org/event/chris-hedges-kshama-sawant-and-jill-stein/Ironically, she too has been criticised for nob-nobbing with the Democratic Party:https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/sawa-m25.htmlI know this is from a rival Trotskyist group (which also likes one of our names) but we know how Machiavellian Trotskyists are here in relation to the Labour Party.There's a defence of her courting support from Democrats here:http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/03/25/is-kshama-sawant-really-caving-in-to-the-democrats/

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I wasn't criticising the decision to buy a trellis (after all, didn't he write a book we like) but that we have been reduced to discussing this here. And still are.

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