Jeremy Corbyn has proved to be one of Labour's most popular and yet one of its most divisive leaders among the membership. In this carefully researched collection of essays, Corbyn's influence on and legacy for the party are assessed.
Corbynism as a political movement is now in the ascendency, and, conceivably, is also on the verge of power. This book provides a critical overview of what Corbynism is, above and beyond Jeremy Corbyn himself, placing it within the context of populist left and right movements that have taken hold across the globe.
Corbynism as a political movement is now in the ascendency, and, conceivably, is also on the verge of power. This book provides a critical overview of what Corbynism is, above and beyond Jeremy Corbyn himself, placing it within the context of populist left and right movements that have taken hold across the globe.
How Jeremy Corbyn, the radical left candidate for the Labour leadership, won twice—and won big In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ‘soft-left’ detractors. Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government’s authority, and even Corbyn’s most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas. For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership. Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ‘Old Labour’ pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media’s Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left’s revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.
A short zine collecting an introduction to the concept by Matt Colquhoun that appeared in 'krisis journal for contemporary philosophy Issue 2, 2018: Marx from the Margins' and the unfinished introduction to the unfinished book on Acid Communism that Mark Fisher was working on before his death in 2017. "In this way ‘Acid’ is desire, as corrosive and denaturalising multiplicity, flowing through the multiplicities of communism itself to create alinguistic feedback loops; an ideological accelerator through which the new and previously unknown might be found in the politics we mistakenly think we already know, reinstantiating a politics to come." —Matt Colquhoun
A crisp and trenchant dissection of populism today The word 'populism' has come to cover all manner of sins. Yet despite the prevalence of its use, it is often difficult to understand what connects its various supposed expressions. From Syriza to Trump and from Podemos to Brexit, the electoral earthquakes of recent years have often been grouped under this term. But what actually defines 'populism'? Is it an ideology, a form of organisation, or a mentality? Marco Revelli seeks to answer this question by getting to grips with the historical dynamics of so-called 'populist' movements. While in the early days of democracy, populism sought to represent classes and social layers who asserted their political role for the first time, in today's post-democratic climate, it instead expresses the grievances of those who had until recently felt that they were included. Having lost their power, the disinherited embrace not a political alternative to -isms like liberalism or socialism, but a populist mood of discontent. The new populism is the 'formless form' that protest and grievance assume in the era of financialisation, in the era where the atomised masses lack voice or organisation. For Revelli, this new populism the child of an age in which the Left has been hollowed out and lost its capacity to offer an alternative.
This book provides an accessible yet critical analysis of the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn (2015-2020) in the context of the contemporary British political economy. It analyses structural constraints on left-wing politics and evaluates the transformative potential of Labour’s economic and social policies under Corbyn. Drawing from a neo-Marxist and neo-Gramscian framework, the book argues that the material, institutional and ideological conditions before 2015 opened political space for a left-wing Labour Party, although the dominant historical structures severely limited its chance of coming to power. In addition, the book argues that Labour under Corbyn should not be dismissed as ‘populist’, and that its policies aimed to redress structural economic problems, promote economic democracy and tackle contemporary challenges. The book also highlights the importance of adopting a long-term approach to counter-hegemonic political struggle so as not to shrink the space for progressive politics.
On 12th December 2019, the Left died. That at least was the view of much of Britain's media and political establishment, who saw the electoral defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party as the damning repudiation of everything it stood for. Yet, just over four years previously, the election of Corbyn as Labour leader seemed like a sea-change in politics- reanimating not just a party in apparently terminal decline but a country adrift, with a transformative vision based on a more just, more equal society and economy. In this revelatory new book, Owen Jones explores how these ideas took hold, how they promised to change the nature of British politics - and how everything then went profoundly, catastrophically wrong. Why did the Left fail so badly? Where, in this most critical of times, does that failure leave its values and ideas? Where does it leave Britain itself?
'THE POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR' Tim Shipman A blistering narrative exposé of infighting, skulduggery and chaos in Corbyn's Labour party, now revised and updated. * A Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Times and i Newspaper Book of the Year * Left Out tells, for the first time, the astonishing full story of Labour's recent transformation and historic defeat. Drawing on unrivalled access, this blistering exposé moves from the peak of Jeremy Corbyn's popularity and the shock hung parliament of 2017 to Labour's humbling in 2019 and the election of Keir Starmer. It reveals a party at war with itself, and puts the reader in the room as tensions boil over, sworn enemies forge unlikely alliances and lifelong friendships are tested to breaking point. This is the ultimate account of the greatest experiment seen in British politics for a generation. 'Gripping... Every bit as good as people say' Guardian 'Reads like a thriller...told with panache and pace' Financial Times 'The definitive post-mortem of the Corbyn project' Sunday Times
Labour has been on a wild ride over the past thirty years. New Labour argued that we had no choice but to accept a globalized free market economy in which the race was to the swift, the open and the flexible. Corbynism reacted against this with a jumble of old school statism and identity politics. Both ultimately failed. In this book, Maurice Glasman takes the axe to the soulless utilitarianism and ‘progressive’ intolerance of both Blair and Corbyn. Human beings, he contends, are not calculating machines, but faithful, relational beings who yearn for meaning and belonging. Rooted in their homes, families and traditions, they seek to resist the revolutionary upheaval of markets and states, which try to commodify and dominate their lives and homes, by the practice of democracy, mutuality and pluralism. This is the true Labour tradition, which is paradoxically both radical and conservative – and more relevant than ever in a post-COVID world. This crisp statement of the real politics of Blue Labour – rather than the absurd caricature of its detractors – is Glasman’s love letter to the left-conservatism that provides Labour’s best chance of moral – and indeed electoral – redemption.