So here we go:

Paul C: My point though is that the project of the Power 2010 type has no real ‘material’ within that relationship, or least none which is in the interests of the working class.

First, the Labour party and the left-coalition is not just about economic issues to help the working classes. That coalition is too small now anything useful electorally. Sometimes social issues matter more and sometimes the concerns of the middle classes also have to be taken into account (or at least people who see themselves as middle class).

If you’re serious about using the Labour Party as a vehicle of change then you’d also look into the different demographics that vote for Labour and what reasons they vote Labour.

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My response to your claim that increase political participation can result from electoral reform is the one you would expect. So? What good is the increased opportunity to get someone else voted in if that doesn’t end up having a material effect on power relations between capital and labour

It does – because elections are about sending clear signals to politicians and policy makers. If the electoral system forces them to shift left-wards then that has a huge impact. If lefties don’t have any alternative to Labour then the party takes their support for granted and moves right-wards.

It also, in certain constituencies, forces the party to stay on its toes and not take the local voting block for granted (as they have done in many areas and allowed the BNP to grow.

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Bit I can’t see why the fact that capital has become more powerful over the last 30 years because labour has not got its act together should be an argument for labour just abandoning the cause and leaving the poor to their lot. Surely the argument should be that we screwed up for a generation and that it’s now time to get it right.

I’m not saying you abandon the cause at all. I’m saying that firstly Labour has lost the battles over the last 30 years. Why? You can’t blame the media because it’s been around before. And in many ways organised labour can be more effective than the media. And the country has shifted left-wards on social issues and right-wards on economic issues.

You blaming the media is an easy way to not accept blame for labour’s failings: that they’ve not managed to build a coherent and populist agenda nor a bigger coalition on changing demographics and ways of life.

Yes you need to get it right. But the way you’re going about it now is not different to the past, and isn’t building you any coalitions is it?

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I’m going to have a debate about the future of the left on Libcon from tomorrow. We can then carry on.

You’re quite right. I don’t have all the answers. We all of us are facing some very bleak times. We’ve just seen the greatest progressive mass movement in modern political history followed by exactly the sort of crisis in capitalism that should have seen workers flocking to the red flag. Instead the hard left is in a shambles, Labour’s core vote is staying at home, Nick Griffin’s on Question Time and New Labour’s hegemony looks unbreakable, at least in the near future. As for me, I have to admit, I’ve been in the wilderness for a while. I was very active in Respect in its early years, but its split has left me cold to both sides.

I’m now a member of the Greens and if you’ve read my interviews on The Third Estate you’ll notice a lot of them focus on forging a Red-Green alliance and advancing the Greens as a party not just for fluffy middle class eco warriors, but the old class warriors as well. I’m very encouraged by the Green Left movement, by Peter Tatchell’s involvement and the fact that Derek Wall was the last male principal speaker. If you look at the Green party manifesto, there can be no doubt, it is an explicitly socialist party in every sense. It doesn’t matter whether it has historical ties to the trade union movement. It matters where it is going and where it can take us and I’m going to fight as hard as I can to see the first Green MPs sitting in Parliament next year.

Bringing this back to the beginning, that’s one of the main reasons I see the fight for democratic reform as a crucial political struggle. As to whether I believe far right gains are part of the price – I’m half Asian and a socialist. If the far right come to power, I’m first against the wall. They need to be fought with every last breath in every way possible. In communities, in hearts and minds, on councils, in the debating chamber, on the streets if necessary. But not by restricting democracy. As Caroline Lucas told me:

“If the BNP started winning seats under first-past-the post, would we suspend democracy to stop them getting elected? Of course not. I deplore their racism, ignorance and lies. However, I believe the best way to challenge them is to address the factors which drive individuals to vote for far right parties. If we treat the disease, the symptoms will go away.”

I tend to side with Salman and Dave (against Carl and it would appear Reuben) if the latter are claiming some kind (whatecver kind) of ongoing right of the Labour party and its activists to identify themselves as having THE link in perpuity to to the working class.

Where I differ from Dave and Salman is that, for the moment, i think there is more opportunity to (re)establish that link productively than there is via other organisational routes. Not necessarily everywhere, but in many places.

Dave is right (from another post) that my evidence base for claiming this is relatively week (though some stuff fomr Syed and Whiteley from 2002 I’m waiting for at the moment may go some way to filling that gap (or disproving what I have to say) but even so I think it’s valid enough to set out a proposition on the basis of my (admittedly) regional experience.

Alongside this, I’d argue with Salman, for example, that it is insufficient to argue that the LP is no longer in a position to unite with the working class without also seeking to set out what the alternative organisational structure are, either locally to him or at a national level, or both (I accept of course that his whole life does not happebn ‘on blog’ just as mine doesn’t, and that he may be doing this); certainly I know, though, that this is what Dave is exploring actively in his local area.

The outcome of NOT exploring class-focused organisational structures but at the same time dismissing the validity of LP without, I would argue, an evidence base for doing so, is a drift to the comfy, easy politics of the type that my and Dave’s complementary OPs criticised; they look efficient and they are well organised, but they have no real value (at the very least in an opp. cost frame)in terms of material benefit for the working class.

The workers of Venezuela once owed their loyalty to the social democratic AD party. Indeed their largest trade union remains linked it it. But AD was not the right vehicle for a country that desperately needed change. That’s why Chavez has won their support, without any reliance on historical links or organisation, because he is the right vehicle and the right voice. Parties cannot just be viewed in terms of their history. A week’s a long time in politics and a decade’s even longer. We have to look at their policies here and now and make informed decisions about the change they are likely to bring. Otherwise we’re betraying our own principles, all in the name of some ideological committment to a homogenous, united, organised, class-conscious working class of the last century that thanks to Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown, no longer exists.

There is a qualitative difference between a Labour Party, however bourgeois, that at least professes to support the working class and will enact social democratic measures accordingly, and what Labour is today. Thus I would argue, if Labour can still claim to be the dominant site of working class activism (which is doubtful), that it is vestigial and in the process of being removed entirely rather than following a cycle of waxing and waning.

Seeing such a cycle through the history of Labour is to simplify things to a useless determinism.