No wonder you love Kinnockio, mate…

Whatever happened to Labour as a broad church?

You think you can compromise with the people who are in effect the class enemy because compromise has been enshrined as a cornerstone of your politics. This directly relates to my earlier criticisms on you and on Compass: you want a revolution without the revolution.

Society just doesn’t work that way. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of areas of Marxism which require additional clarity – areas that are inadequately addressed by Marx’ political successors such as Trotsky and Lenin – but none of them, including Gramsci, were so deluded, so disillusioned with the structural inscription of the working class at the heart of society as to denounce a revolutionary seizure of power.

Within that seizure, there are many methods and policies to be attended to – but by abolishing the only mechanism by which capitalism can be overcome, we tie our own hands. In fact, worse still, such people become directly counter-revolutionary and Parliamentarism is elevated into a fetish.

So yeah, I think I will stick with my critique of Compass – and yourself by implication – as intellectual masturbators. Certainly not the architects of real change.

Though this is obviously negative, I feel that it is a price worth paying as an otherwise insurmountable obstacle to Social Democracy. Further, I think that you can compromise your way round it without wholesale abandonment of principle.

On Kinnock, he is certainly a hero to me. In my view Labour’s historical mission is to represent working class politics through parliament. This goes far beyond the propagandist candidacies acceded to by those with revolutionary and extra-parliamentary aims and demands.

Trotskyists should be forced by reformists to stick to trotskyist parties.

Since the last contemporary Gaitskellites passed or retired from the party ranks, everyone has tried to claim Bevan’s mantle. The classic was John Reid’s announcement that New Labour was the natural heir to Bevanism.