>At 10:28 07/03/00 -0500, you wrote:
>>If this guy passes Hugh's test, he ain't no sellout.
>>
>>CB
>
>
>He's not a sell out. He is courageous and shrewd. But that does not stop
>him being an opportunist.
>
>If he wins, and it is more than likely, since he will get the largest first
>preference votes, and will get the largest second preference votes from
>everyone else, including the Conservative! then he will incorporate protest
>votes once again into the New Labour machinery. They will make some
>accommodation with him, and when his term expires, the party machinery will
>reabsorb him.
>
>And I should warn Charles that Livingstone supported military intervention
>in Kosovo, though he did not support the intervention that occurred.
>
>Chris B
It's not a static question. It's a question of a movement being built
around Livingstone's candidacy that might well be able to use a few
fundamental democratic, anti-bourgeois slogans to gather behind it all the
popular disaffection and hatred for New Labour's neo-liberal Tory policies
that exists in London. The outcome in terms of votes cast and local
government measures will be less interesting than the shift produced in the
balance of forces between a radicalizing mass movement and all the various
shades of manipulative self-seekers in the Labour party machine and
Livingstone's immediate entourage. Anyone seriously interested in building
a solid revolutionary working-class party and solid revolutionary
working-class movements will want to get stuck in here. Anyone not seeing
this as a heaven-sent opportunity will earn themselves the title of
armchair pedants at worst or sponsors of individual anarchistic heroics at
best.
It's also obvious from the red-baiting that's getting started now, and the
horror felt by Livingstone himself at being taken seriously when he pays
lip-service to socialism, that the intervention of revolutionary Marxists
in this campaign will not be easy. In other words, a real and exciting
challenge lies ahead.
Cheers,
Hugh
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