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During the past week, numerous prominent leaders of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have posted tweets celebrating the 1940 assassination of Leon Trotsky and portraying the murderer, the Stalinist GPU agent Ramon Mercader, as a hero.

Many of the tweets by DSA leaders are illustrated with photos and memes of an alpenstock, the weapon used by Mercader to murder Trotsky. Nickan Fayyazi, a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), presents one such photo with the caption this might come in handy today.

Asheville, North Carolina DSA member Dan Pozzie proposes erecting a memorial to Trotskys assassin, reading, In memory of Ramon Mercader: He showed us the way. A tweet by a recent DSA East Bay, California Steering Committee member reads, Ice pick jokes will never not be funny, and we will all continue making ice pick jokes publicly + unapologetically.

The tweets are part of a coordinated response by a substantial section of DSA officials to the growing readership of the World Socialist Web Site, the online publication of the Trotskyist International Committee of the Fourth International, among rank-and-file members of the DSA.

In March and April, a World Socialist Web Site article exposing DSA member and Democratic Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs statement denouncing criticism of the Biden administration as bad faith recorded over 100,000 distinct readers, including thousands of DSA members. Anxiety over the impact of the WSWSs criticism of the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy was exacerbated by the failure of the AFL-CIOs unionization drive at the Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama in April.

The DSA members celebrating Trotskys assassination include elected national office holders and leaders of its youth wing (YDSA), branch chairs, leaders of campus clubs and prominent DSA podcasters, as well as contributors to the Guardian and DSA-affiliated media outlets such as Jacobin magazine.

Those who are tweeting sick jokes about Trotskys murder are circulating the political equivalent of pornography. They are not only laughing about the murder of one of the towering figures in the history of twentieth century socialism, they are solidarizing themselves with the campaign of mass murder carried out by Stalins totalitarian regime.

The fact that such individuals hold leadership positions within the DSA should be taken as a serious warning by rank-and-file members and supporters of this organization. In politics, people are judged by what they do. Individuals who solidarize themselves with the crimes of Stalin have absolutely nothing to with genuine left-wing politics. The trajectory of their politics is not toward socialism, but toward supporting state repression against the socialist movement.

From the standpoint of the international class struggle and the fate of socialism, Trotsky's assassination on August 20, 1940 was the most consequential political crime of the twentieth century. His murder deprived the international working class of the last surviving leader of the 1917 October Revolution and the greatest strategist of world socialist revolution. Trotsky played a monumental role in the struggle for world socialism, as a theoretician, orator, writer, organizer of the seizure of power by the working class, leader of the Red Army, implacable opponent of Stalinism, founder of the Fourth International, and socialist visionary of a world liberated from all forms of oppression. The study and assimilation of Trotsky's vast legacy are essential for the preparation of the victory of socialism in the twenty-first century.

But Trotsky was not the only victim of Stalinism. His assassination was the culmination of a wave of Stalinist terror launched in 1936 with the first of three Moscow Trials. During the Great Terror of 1936-40, the Stalinist regime murdered an estimated one million revolutionary workers, intellectuals and artists. An entire generation of Marxists and socialists who had played a decisive role in the preparation, leadership and defense of the 1917 October Revolutionincluding virtually all of Lenins closest comradeswas murdered. The Great Terror, which precisely targeted those prominently identified as socialists for extermination, has been correctly described as politically directed genocide.

What follows is a small sample of the scores of tweets by DSA members celebrating Trotskys murder. Those retweeting or liking these posts comprise a Rolodex of the DSA leadership.

The aforementioned post by Nickan Fayyazi, a member of the YDSAs National Coordinating Committee leadership body and co-chair of the YDSAs UC Berkeley chapter, presents a photo of an ice pick with the caption this might come in handy today, alongside other vulgar language. This was retweeted by Dary Rezvani, a prominent member of the Los Angeles DSA.

The tweet about the ice pick was liked by over 100 people, including many DSA members, as well as the following DSA leaders and prominent members:

A separate post by Washington D.C. DSA member Ben Davis features a drawing of Mercader preparing to carry out his attack on Trotsky. It shows the assassin holding an ice pick above Trotskys head as the latter works at his desk. It bears the caption: Clear out the wreckers. Davis worked for Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020 as a data analyst and has written for the British Guardian newspaper, which describes Davis as someone who works in political data in Washington D.C.

This post was also liked by a number of DSA members.

The term wreckers, drawn from the vocabulary of Stalinism, has distinct political implications. Trotskyite wreckers was a term employed by Stalin to justify the mass murder of Trotskyists and opponents of the Stalinist regime, based on the lying claim that they engaged in terrorism and sabotage. It featured prominently in the three Moscow frame-up trials and was used to justify the slander that Trotsky and his supporters were agents of fascism. On March 29, 1937, in the lead-up to the second Moscow Trial, Stalin gave a speech titled Deficiencies in Party Work and Measures for Liquidating Trotskyites. In the course of the speech, Stalin employed the term Trotskyite wreckers 16 times.

Another tweet, by former DSA National Electoral Committee member Nate Knauf, includes the same drawing depicting Trotskys assassination, accompanied by the words, Thats right!!! This post was liked by Ben Davis, Knox College YDSAs Matt Milewski, New York DSAs Ganeev Chichagov, and YDSA Purdue Co-Chair Mason Wyss, among others.

An additional thread posted by a recent DSA East Bay Steering Committee member was liked by Guy Brown, a member of the DSA National Political Education Committee and co-chair of the Charlotte Metro DSA; Maura Quint, a DSA supporter and contributor at the New Yorker and the Hill; and an unidentified member of the Portland DSAs steering committee.

In a separate post, Southwest Florida DSA and Florida Gulf Coast University YDSA member Morgan Kirk tweeted a meme about Trotskys death.

The following DSA leaders liked this post:

Most of those posting, retweeting or liking these tweets are active members of the Democratic Party or officers of the AFL-CIO trade union bureaucracy. These include:

One DSA member who also liked such tweets is New York City DSA Organizing Committee member Honda Wang, a leading anti-Trotskyist within the DSA. Wang regularly posts attacks on the WSWS. The comments section of his TikTok videos attacking the WSWS are filled with commenters posting images of alpenstocks.

Wangs politics and his past as a political consultant for Schoen Consulting give a sense of the type of right-wing Democratic Party operatives directing the DSAs attacks on the WSWS.

On his LinkedIn profile, Wang explains that when working for Schoen, he consulted on strategy and communications for political clients in both domestic and international markets, and advised corporate clients in a wide range of sectors.

Wang does not list the governments, politicians, state agencies and corporations with which he has worked, but Schoen Consultings clients now include billionaire Michael Bloomberg and his Independence PAC, a private fund for buying political support, as well as Walmart.

A public report on Schoen Consulting explains that the clientele of its founder, Bill Clinton advisor Paul Schoen, includes:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (NY), New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and Indiana Governor Evan Bayh, and his corporate clients have included Walmart, AOL Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and AT&T. Internationally, he has worked for the heads of state of over 15 countries, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and three Israeli Prime Ministers. Schoen helped introduce Victor Pinchuk, Ukraine oligarch, financier, and former member of Parliament, to philanthropic and political groups that have made him an international figure who now serves on the boards of the Peterson Center for International Economics, the International Crisis Group and the Clinton Foundation.

Wangs career as a Democratic Party operative shows that the Democratic Party and AFL-CIO apparatchiks who comprise the DSA leadership identify in Trotsky a threat to their own material position and to the capitalist system. Undoubtedly, there are other provocateurs not named here who are also motivating these attacks behind the scenes from within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is an imperialist-capitalist party and is rabidly anti-socialist. Why, then, are its operatives within the DSAwhich claims to be a variety of anti-Stalinist socialismglorifying the crimes of Stalinism and recycling its slanders against Trotsky?

To understand the political logic that underlies this apparent contradiction, it is necessary to review the historical context of the Stalinist terror of the 1930s and its relationship to American politics during the era of Roosevelts New Deal. That period was the heyday of the political alliance between a substantial section of Democratic Party liberals and the Stalinist American Communist Party. This alliance was known as the Popular Front, which was devised by the Kremlinin the aftermath of Hitlers rise to power in Germanyto draw the democratic imperialist governments of Europe and the United States into an alliance with the Soviet Union. In return for more favorable diplomatic relations with these imperialist states, the Soviet regime and the national Communist parties under its control would support bourgeois governments and suppress working-class struggles against capitalism.

One of Stalins central aims in the Moscow Trials and the Terror was to convince the Western Democracies that the Soviet Union had broken decisively with Bolshevism and the Lenin-Trotsky perspective of world socialist revolution.

The class-collaborationist policies of the Popular Front led to the victory of the fascistic Franco dictatorship in 1939 in Spain, and, in 1940, the establishment of the Vichy regime in France.

In the United States, the American Communist Party enthusiastically promoted the Roosevelt administration. Democratic Party liberals increasingly viewed Stalin as a valuable ally and endorsed his extermination of the Old Bolsheviks.

As is well known, leading left-liberal publications such as the New Republic and the Nation endorsed the Moscow Trials, confirming Trotskys classification of the Popular Front as democracy in alliance with the GPU. Prominent artists, writers and intellectualssuch as Lillian Hellman, Louis Fischer, Freda Kirchwey and Malcolm Cowleydeclared their confidence in the integrity of the Moscow witch trials, although the only evidence presented against the defendants was their own dubious confessions. They bitterly attacked the American philosopher John Dewey for agreeing to serve as chairman of the Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials. Subsequently, they denounced the Commissions findings that Trotsky was innocent of all charges against him and that the Moscow Trials were a frame-up.

The Democratic Party is once again threatened by a growing movement of the working class. It recognizes and fears that the radicalization of youth and the working class can lead, unless diverted, toward a break with capitalist politics and, therefore, a serious movement for socialism.

The Democratic Party employs the DSA to prevent this development.

In this context it is significant that the two issues which triggered the Democratic Party and DSA leaderships attacks on Trotsky were the WSWSs exposure of Ocasio-Cortez, which led significant numbers of DSA members to write to the WSWS expressing support for our criticisms, and the increasingly prominent role played by the WSWS and the Socialist Equality Party in strikes and social struggles taking place across the country. The DSA and the Democratic Party view the defeat of the AFL-CIOs unionization effort at Bessemer, Alabama and recent votes by workers rejecting sellout contracts as warning signs that efforts to create a state-controlled labor movement are coming into conflict with profound hostility within the working class to the pro-corporate AFL-CIO.

The Democratic Party defensively turns to the lies of the Moscow Trials, filtering them through the DSA to poison the political atmosphere against genuine socialism. They recognize that Trotskyism, represented today by the SEP and WSWS, is the political force giving conscious expression to growing socialist sentiment in the working class and among the youth.

No organization that calls itself progressive, let alone socialist, can tolerate the legitimatization of the crimes of Stalinism and the GPU. That these crimes are being hailed by a significant section of the DSAs leadership exposes the presence of a deeply reactionary and vile political culture within the organization.

At a time when right-wing violence is a growing threat against the left, it is the obligation of socialists to defend those threatened with political violence by far-right and fascistic forces. Despite our clear opposition to the politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the WSWS has consistently defended her and her staff from ongoing threats of violence by fascists, who attempted to kill her during the coup attempt of January 6, 2021.

The DSA now has a political obligation to make clear that the propagation of lies that legitimize and encourage violence against left-wing and socialist opponents of the Democratic Party will not be permitted within its organization. Local branches of the DSA should pass resolutions denouncing the anti-Trotskyist slanders. They should demand that the upcoming national convention issue an unequivocal denunciation of the neo-Stalinist campaign.

We urge all members of the DSA who are seriously interested in history, theory and the politics of socialism and Marxism to read the works of Leon Trotsky, who ranks alongside Lenin as the greatest fighter for socialist revolution in the twentieth century.

***

The World Socialist Web Site recommends that DSA members read In Defense of Leon Trotsky, by David North, the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US). This book provides a comprehensive refutation of Stalinist lies directed against Leon Trotsky.

mehring books

In Defense of Leon Trotsky

David North defends Trotskys legacy against the campaign of historical falsification begun by Stalin and continuing to this day. Stalin assassinated Trotsky in 1940, but was unable to silence the Fourth International, founded to embody the revolutionary heritage of 1917.

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Praising the crimes of Stalinism: The DSA and the assassination of Leon Trotsky - WSWS

What does it mean to you, to say Im a Vet! I dont know about you, but Im damn proud of being an American Veteran!

Yes, I served 29 years in the U.S. Military, and I would do it again, if asked, and physically able! For me, it was a special, on-going, experience!

Today, I must, reminded you, that We U.S. VETERANS, swore a PLEDGE, to Protect and Defend, our Constitution! Does that PLEDGE ever concern you? It does me, because it may apply today!!

Who is defending the PLEDGE NOW, outside of our Military? Apparently, FEW if ANY, with our background, are concerned?

Remember, serving U.S. Military members cannot get involved -in National Politics! But Veterans CAN and should! Particularly, if they see the Nation shifting away from the tenants of OUR Constitution!

Do any of you, feel our Constitution is in DANGER today? I do! Why? Because, Socialism, is intended to be OUR new way of LIFE! I am TOLD! And, as a way of life, it is NOT noted, in any part of the Constitution!

Would you REALLY accept SOCIALISM, as a way of life, for YOU and your KIN? I wont No Way!! FREEDOM and FREE ENTERPRISE have been our MANTRA, from Day One of our Constitution!

President Biden has unilaterally, throw OPEN our Southern Border, without any National DEBATE, or CONSENT, by the US Congress, or National Mandate!

Is that action, not a THUMB in the EYE of OUR Constitution and YOU and ME?

Will Socialism provide Americans their personal independence? The INDEPENDENCE we ALL have today?

Ask the Venezuelans, who are currently racing across our Southern Border, to this their Sanctuary of Freedom? What a potential BUMMER running from Socialism into the arms of nuveau SOCIALISM!

Come ON Vets! Lets get involved in saving our Constitution and our FREEDOMS! While it still provides all Americans today!

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Where are the veterans? | Editor's Inbox | stardem.com - The Star Democrat

In the past when the Soviet Union and the system of socialist countries still existed, there was nothing to discuss about socialism in Vietnam. However, since the model of socialism in the Soviet Union and many Eastern European countries collapsed, and the worlds revolution fell into decline, the issue regarding Vietnams path towards socialism was raised again.

We acknowledge that capitalism has never been as global as it is today and has also reaped great achievements. However, capitalism still has failed to overcome its inherent contradictions.

The social protest movements that broke out in many developed capitalist countries over the past time have revealed the nature of capitalist political institutions. In the developed capitalist countries, the so-called "free" and "democratic" elections cannot change dominant forces, although they can change the government.

We need a society in which development is truly for people. We need economic development in tandem with social progress and justice. We need a society of compassion, solidarity and mutual assistance, towards progressive and humanitarian values. We need sustainable development in harmony with the nature to ensure a healthy living environment for current and future generations. And we need a political system where power is really of the people, by the people and for the people.

National independence associated with socialism is the basic and cross-cutting guideline of the Vietnamese revolution and is also the key point in President Ho Chi Minh's ideological legacy.

During the years of Doi Moi (Reform), the CPV has been more and more aware of socialism and the transition period towards socialism.

So far, although there are still some issues that need further study, a general perception has been formed: The socialist society that the Vietnamese people are striving to build is a society of wealthy people, strong country, democracy, justice and civilisation; owned by the people; of a highly developed economy based on modern production forces and appropriate, progressive production relations; and advanced culture imbued with national identity. It is a society where people have a prosperous, free and happy life, and conditions for comprehensive development; ethnic groups are equal and united, and respect and help each other; there is a socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people and for the people, led by the Communist Party; and there are friendly and cooperative relations with countries around the world.

To that end, we must: accelerate industrialisation and modernisation in association with the development of the knowledge-based economy; develop a socialist-oriented market economy; build advanced culture imbued with national identity, improve people's living standards, ensure social progress and justice; firmly guarantee national defense and security, and social order and safety; implement the foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralisation, diversification, peace, friendship, cooperation and development, and proactive and active international integration; build a socialist democracy, carry forward the will and strength of the great national unity bloc, combined with the strength of the era; build a socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people and for the people; and build a comprehensively pure, strong Party and political system.

A basic, important feature of the socialist orientation in the market economy in Vietnam is to combine economy with society, economic policies with social policies, and economic growth with social progress and justice.

In the socialist political regime, the relationship between the Party, the State and the people is the relationship between the subjects who share the same goals and interests; all guidelines of the Party, policies, laws and activities of the State are to serve interests of the people. The political model and general operating mechanism are the Party's leadership, the State's governance and the people's ownership. Democracy is the nature of the socialist regime, and is the goal and the driving force of the socialism building. Building a socialist democracy and ensuring that power truly belongs to the people is an important and long-term task of the Vietnamese revolution.

Being deeply aware of the Communist Partys leadership is a decisive factor in the cause of the Doi Moi and would ensure the country's development in accordance with the socialist orientation. We have paid due attention to Party building and rectification, considering this a key task that is vital to the Party and the socialist regime. The CPV has persistently taken Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minhs thought as the ideological foundation and the lodestar for revolutionary actions, and have taken democratic centralism as the basic organising principle. The Partys leadership has been based on platform, strategies, and orientations on policies and major guidelines. Aware of the risks of corruption, bureaucracy and degradation, especially in the context of the market economy, the CPV has ordered regular self-renewal and self-rectification, and the fight against opportunism, individualism, corruption, bureaucracy, wastefulness and degradation within the Party and in the entire political system.

The Doi Moi process, including the development of the socialist-oriented market economy, has really brought about great and positive changes to the country over the past 35 years.

Apart from these achievements, there still remain shortcomings and limitations, along with challenges in national development. The CPV has been aware of these challenges. It is a very tough and arduous struggle, which requires new vision, new mettle and new creativity.

Both theory and practice show that socialism building is creating a qualitatively new type of society, which is totally not easy. Therefore, apart from determining the right guidelines and ensuring the Partys leadership, it is a must to promote creativity, support and active participation of the people.

On the other hand, while determining political directions and making decisions, it is necessary for the Party to study experience of the world. We must proactively and actively integrate into the world and materialise the foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation, development, and multilateralisation and diversification of international relations on the basis of respect for each others independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit.

It is very important to remain steadfast and firm on the ideological and theoretical foundation of Marxism - Leninism. Such scientific and revolutionary features of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minh's thought are sustainable values that have been pursued and realised by revolutionaries. They will further develop in the spheres of revolution and science. We need to selectively absorb and supplement them in the spirit of criticism and creativity.

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Some theoretical and practical issues on socialism and path towards socialism in Vietnam - Nhan Dan Online

I now understand through the budget, rather than any formal road map from the government (heaven forbid!) that this is likely to be extended for another year.

This is not something I am willing to endure, and am currently in the process of moving my young family out of Australia indefinitely.

My point put simply is that no one in their right mind with any remaining interests overseas would move to Australia in the knowledge that the government can deny them the ability to see loved ones. This goes for both skilled migrants and students.

She added that she was by no means alone in her plans to leave. One other colleague had already left and others were contemplating doing the same.

This country faces an enormous brain drain as a result of the current draconian travel restrictions and seemingly zero appetite from the federal government to provide an exit strategy from the COVID-free corner it has painted itself into.

Stinging stuff and not an isolated view, coming after the budget assumptions pushed back until mid-2022 any meaningful reopening of the international borders.

The airlines and international tourism sectors are once more despairing. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, whose stewardship throughout the crisis left her state well poised to cash in on the recovery, is frustrated.

Closed international borders are costing NSW $1.5 billion a month and opportunities to capitalise are slipping away, she says.

Despite all the promising ideas to speed up travel, many of which emanated from the recently decommissioned COVID-19 Commission led by Nev Power, nothing so far has come to pass.

There was no mention in the budget about business- or university-sponsored travel and quarantine, the potential for rapid testing and truncated quarantine periods, or expanded quarantine facilities.

As it stands, the joint will stay pretty much locked up until mid-next year, unless the vaccine rollout gets a rattle on.

While there are clear health reasons behind the assumptions the virus is far from being contained in many nations the political imperative cannot be ignored.

As we noted last week, after watching the political rewards heaped on populist state leaders, the federal government, too, has decided to err on the side of an abundance of caution until the election, due by early next year.

For every Sally out there, there are dozens of punters content with living like a hermit kingdom for another 12 months.

Tuesdays budget was very much in that vein. As has been written a hundred times, the government shifted the fiscal rules two weeks out and set a new unemployment target of below 5 per cent. This gave it licence to keep spending on job-creation measures rather than shift to budget repair.

Consequently, Josh Frydenberg unveiled a pandemic budget which put off the heavy lifting in terms of debt and deficit repair until after the election. It did spend big, but it was not all about the pandemic.

The $17.7 billion for aged care would have been necessary regardless of whether there was a pandemic. Morrison called the royal commission and would have been crucified had he ignored it.

Overall, it was a Labor-style budget, which has made the Oppositions task trickier.

This was evident two days before the budget when Labor reached peak Opposition. In the age-old tradition that every silver lining must have a cloud, treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers played down what was evidently a much faster economic recovery than had been forecast in December when the budget was last updated.

The point were making is that even if the recession wasnt as bad as many economists feared, it doesnt mean that the recovery cant be better, he said.

Anthony Albaneses big housing response on Thursday night showed Labor was not going to be pushed to the right.

Morrison took some heat from the fiscal conservatives in his ranks who were uttering such foul oaths as Whitlamesque on Tuesday night.

The PM reiterated how when the pandemic struck and the economy was forcibly closed down, economic ideology had to be suspended so billions could be shovelled out. Even John Howard said so, he pointed out defensively.

All the government did this week extend the ideological suspension for another 12 months or so, he contended.

This is a pandemic budget to address the times that we have, and it is true, as the Reserve Bank Governor and others have said, borrowing costs are low at the moment and so Australians need their government to lean in at this time. Monetary policy is basically spent, he said.

He also reminded the true believers that Labor was still the gold standard in terms of spending, by pointing out how he had ceased JobKeeper at the end of March despite complaints from the Opposition.

Just remember what we did with JobKeeper we knew when to bring it in, and we knew when to take it off. That was a responsible economic decision. Others wanted just to see it run on forever.

He noted the Coalition eschewed a recommendation of the royal commission to fund aged care with a new tax. Labor has yet to discount the idea.

These nuggets, Morrison trusts, will keep any insurrection at bay until the next election, by which time the government will be banking on the belief that the voters will trust the debt to the party that created it.

Still, this week, both sides promised to spend plenty. Amid the cacophony of reaction from interest groups, rent seekers and all else who festoon the Parliament in budget week, just one party raised concerns about how it was all going to be paid for.

It was the Greens, with a proposition to tax the nations 122 pandemic profiteers the 122 billionaires whose wealth expanded between March last year and this year.

Slightly batty, but that was it.

See original here:
Federal budget 2021: The government's cash splash was not socialism, it was ideology on pause - The Australian Financial Review

Keir Starmers failures as Labour leader have been much of his own making. Expending precious political capital removing the whip from Corbyn, suspending hundreds of members who issued motions in support of the ex-Labour leader and glibly repeating the slogan under new management until blue in the face has left a policy and vision vacuum that has pushed the party backwards.

Why then, when a Labour Party that is led from the right does poorly in a set of elections, is it the fault of hard left factions attached to trade unions? Ask Peter Mandelson. In a set of interviews in the wake of Labours dire council election results, the Blairite spin doctor has sought to put his own curious twist on proceedings. For Mandelson, last Thursdays failure is only evidence that the Labour leaderships crackdown on the socialist left hasnt gone far enough. You know that strategy youre trying out that is demonstrably failing? Do that but with even more vigour, he demands.

By now, its almost become a reflex for Labour right politicians. Just this morning in an ITV interview, Tony Blair sternly warned Starmer to distance himself from the far-left agenda. Lose more than 300 Labour councillors while offering no transformative vision of what the party could do in local government? Blame the left. Get thrashed in a Hartlepool seat that Corbyn had won in 2017 and 2019? Blame the left. Cant find your car keys? Blame the left. Its pathological.

The ironic thing about it all is that the charge that Mandelson and the Labour right often direct towards socialists in the Labour Party is that we need to face out to the country, and stop playing to a narrow sect within the party. But its pure projection.

When faced with an election defeat that they have authored, their reflex is to immediately attack left-wing Labour members and strengthen their own position within the party, as if thats what voters were clamouring for, rather than, you know, facing out to the country and actually providing a compelling vision for the future.

What would it look like for the party to truly face the electorate? Well lets look at the polling on policy in Hartlepool a seat Labour must win back at the next election. According to a Survation poll conducted in early April, 69 per cent of voters in the area support universal broadband by 2030, 59 per cent want Royal Mail returned into public hands and 67 per cent want to prioritise investment in public services. The country that Mandelson loves to ventriloquise wants nothing to do with a failed Thatcherite economic model that he championed back in the 1990s, and now offers no alternative to.

Meanwhile, there are Labour administrations around the country showing what a modern, socialist Labour Party can achieve. In Preston, council leader Matthew Browns revolutionary approach to local government insourcing, support for cooperatives, living wage for council workers has led to the Labour council bucking the national trend and holding all of their 30 seats. In Salford, mayor Paul Dennett is kickstarting the biggest council house-building programme seen in the city since the 1960s, investing in local infrastructure and bringing thousands of jobs to the city. The local authority has been named the greenest council in the North West. In Thursdays election, the Salford Labour council increased its vote share, even picking up seats from the Tories. And just down the road in Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham won on an increased vote share promising to bring back the buses into municipal ownership.

What these results show is that offering a vision of a better society built on strong socialist principles can win elections. With a by-election in Batley and Spen looming, the leadership needs to change course as a matter of urgency. To see the kind of swing that will show us the party stands a chance of winning in 2024, Starmer must ignore the has-been Labour grandees and learn the lessons from last Thursday. Attacking the party left is a path to electoral oblivion; bold and exciting policy offers are popular and win you votes.

Callum Bell is a vice-chair of Momentums National Coordinating Group

Link:
Peter Mandelson is wrong about Labours hard left socialism can win elections - The Independent