Setting the Record Straight
Richard Seymour, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
Verso, 256pp, £12.99, ISBN 9781784785314
reviewed by Elliot Murphy
Richard Seymour’s latest book, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, is a damning account of some of the most virulent media attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party. His main intention here is to chart the rise of Corbyn; or rather, the rise of the institutional and popular forces which allowed him to win the Labour leadership campaign so decisively. This is ‘the first time in Labour’s history that it has a radical socialist for a leader.' Corbyn was crucially ‘elected as a man of the movements, not of the markets’, with social media activists welcoming the charges levelled at Corbyn from the right as a ‘militant’ socialist and life-long agitator. His leadership campaign intelligently exploited the levels of popular and institutional volatility which have been simmering since long before the 2008 financial crisis. The comedian Steve Coogan could wax lyrical about Andy Burnham’s ‘radical leftwing plan,’ but the majority of voters in the leadership election saw through Burnham’s tempered careerism and stuck with the only principled candidate on offer.
Seymour summarises that ‘a long dormant Left, the survivors of old and almost forgotten battles, had reanimated and fused with a younger generation radicalised through participation in social movements and single-issue campaigns.' Hotshot intellectuals like Will Self and Matthew Parris could predict shortly after Corbyn’s election that he wouldn’t last more than a few months, but he’s proven to be extremely resilient, bolstered by an expanding Momentum organisation – all in the face of an obstinate procession of what Seymour calls ‘commentariat arrogance.' Corbyn also rightly sets the record straight on a number of issues, pointing out that while the Conservatives were clearly opportunistic in blaming the credit crunch on Labour, their unscrupulous tactics should not blind us from ‘the extent to which New Labour created a British haven for banks and speculators.'
Seymour distinguishes between Corbyn’s two major party-internal obstacles: ‘the bile’ of David Blunkett, Sadiq Khan, Tristram Hunt and Michael Dugher on the one hand, and ‘the more subtly undermining behaviour’ of Hillary Benn, Angela Eagle and – perhaps most dangerous of all – Tom Watson. Ultimately, Seymour argues, Corbyn won the leadership not because of Trotskyist infiltrators, but because the Labour party was weak, its dominant ideologies fragile and undermined, and the traditional political centre in disarray. Corbyn’s success, then, is not a sign of the Left’s strength, but paradoxically a reflection of its weakness.
In this book, as in a number of recent interviews, Seymour repeatedly stresses that ‘Labour is an electoralist organisation first and foremost.’ (Another formulation: ‘Labour is in the marrow of its soul a constitutionalist and electoralist party.') In some sense it’s a truism to call a political party ‘electoralist’ – what else is it going to be, aside from revolutionary? – but Seymour’s narrative, of Corbyn’s leadership putting the party’s Right on the defensive for the first time in decades, acts as a convincing and important reminder of the renewed political potential for an opposition to meaningfully oppose the government, aiming to achieve more than simply winning the next election at any cost.
In addition, Seymour makes the related point that if Corbyn is to appeal to younger voters and broader branches of the electorate then he should draw attention to any issue whatsoever where the Tories are clearly weak, not limiting himself to ‘real life’, ‘bread and butter’ issues as numerous trade unions have argued. The subtly reactionary logic goes something like this: ‘Why bother talk about Saudi arms deals and global warming when wages are stagnating?’ To this, Seymour replies that ‘a retreat to the traditional, narrow, sectional concerns of trade unions is likely to be a mistake on their part, one that could cut off potential sources of new recruitment and support.'
Right now, Seymour believes the new Labour Left is ‘more potential than reality’ since, among other things, the ‘cultural schism between those who still sing the Red Flag at parties, and those who emerged from the more modern-day milieux of Climate Camp, the student movement and Occupy, is a palpable obstacle.' Corbyn needs to appeal not only to the kinds of seasoned hard-Leftists who care deeply about revolutionary politics (and express interest in little else) and can still remember reading about the Battle of Orgreave, but he also needs to appeal to the contemporary cosmopolitan, multicultural working class, most of whom (quite understandably) aren’t interested in revisiting the battlegrounds of Thatcherism. As Seymour succinctly puts it, the young are ‘more culturally fluent’ and ‘aren’t obsessed with setting up street stalls on a Saturday morning.' Formulating policies and media messages which speak to the lived experiences of younger voters will be essential in securing Corbyn’s survival as Labour leader. Indeed, attempting to motivate millennials to join anti-austerity and anti-war organisations by focusing solely on the defeats of the 1980s and the successes of the post-war Attlee government is a bit like trying to encourage dock workers in the 1970s to rally against the state’s brutal anti-union laws by teaching them about the uprisings of the English Civil War. Lessons will be learned, and a minority will express support, but left-wing nostalgia will always fail to be as effective as a sense of basic relatability.
At the same time, Seymour makes the important point of qualifying the common claim that Corbyn is somehow closer to his party’s socialist roots than the Blairites. Labour party heads were horrified at the wave of strikes from 1910 to 1914, being instinctively deferential to the state, and organisational leadership was in fact spurred on by syndicalists (and anarchists). Seymour summarises that those Labour MPs who find scrapping Trident, breaking up the United Kingdom, and ending the ‘special relationship’ with the United States simply unthinkable are in fact ‘authentic legatees of their party’s traditions.’
Regrettably, the book doesn’t discuss what readers can actually do to buttress the emerging socialist politics of Labour. When asked about this during an interview with Novara Media’s James Butler, Seymour simply replied ‘think more,’ because ‘thinking is a good thing.’ The journalist Laurie Penny has praised the book for being not so much a call to arms as ‘a call to brains,’ and while Seymour’s intellectual motivations are admirable, a politically attuned brain without any limbs for action is fairly impotent, and risks lapsing into an aloof – and ultimately apolitical – solipsism.
Nevertheless, Seymour’s warranted pessimism about the ‘apparatus’ of Labour’s institutional structure is crucially and refreshingly complemented with his candour about hard-Left parties like Respect, Left Unity (which he was a supporter of, and an optimistic one) and Socialist Alliance. These organisations ‘proved to be far too narrow, based on ramshackle coalitions of the fragments of the far Left and the odd Labour refugee, to make a sustained bid for a national political presence.' Seymour also detects two major changes in Corbyn’s leadership which make him stand out. Despite Corbyn’s project still ticking that familiar box of being ‘a traditional electoral’ and ‘constitutionalist’ enterprise, Seymour contends that Corbyn has made impressive though as yet fairly nascent moves to, first, shift the party’s decision-making to its members, and second, to use his leadership as the foundation of a social movement. Corbyn’s strength lies precisely in his power to communicate an emotionally resonant anti-neoliberal message to working people, since Labour remains the only major party able to speak directly to so many – an asset no other left-leaning party can boast. Corbyn should clearly compromise where necessary to stave off coup threats – the Syria vote and European Union membership, for instance – but simultaneously push as far to the Left as possible when it comes to every other domain, such as anti-austerity economics and education, topic which currently don’t seem to pose any threat of a split in the party.
Many on the British left have an unusual level of contempt for Seymour – some of it reasonable (his ‘joke’ about the Falklands veteran Simon Weston, a deeply uncompassionate swipe at the burn victim’s face), some of it not (Alex Callinicos’s numerous, personalised snipes). Nevertheless, as this book demonstrates, he is one of the most insightful and constructively ruthless writers on the British Left, going after all the right names for all the right reasons. His analysis is urgent, and his bold style – if occasionally a little verbose – is unavoidably encouraging.
Seymour summarises that ‘a long dormant Left, the survivors of old and almost forgotten battles, had reanimated and fused with a younger generation radicalised through participation in social movements and single-issue campaigns.' Hotshot intellectuals like Will Self and Matthew Parris could predict shortly after Corbyn’s election that he wouldn’t last more than a few months, but he’s proven to be extremely resilient, bolstered by an expanding Momentum organisation – all in the face of an obstinate procession of what Seymour calls ‘commentariat arrogance.' Corbyn also rightly sets the record straight on a number of issues, pointing out that while the Conservatives were clearly opportunistic in blaming the credit crunch on Labour, their unscrupulous tactics should not blind us from ‘the extent to which New Labour created a British haven for banks and speculators.'
Seymour distinguishes between Corbyn’s two major party-internal obstacles: ‘the bile’ of David Blunkett, Sadiq Khan, Tristram Hunt and Michael Dugher on the one hand, and ‘the more subtly undermining behaviour’ of Hillary Benn, Angela Eagle and – perhaps most dangerous of all – Tom Watson. Ultimately, Seymour argues, Corbyn won the leadership not because of Trotskyist infiltrators, but because the Labour party was weak, its dominant ideologies fragile and undermined, and the traditional political centre in disarray. Corbyn’s success, then, is not a sign of the Left’s strength, but paradoxically a reflection of its weakness.
In this book, as in a number of recent interviews, Seymour repeatedly stresses that ‘Labour is an electoralist organisation first and foremost.’ (Another formulation: ‘Labour is in the marrow of its soul a constitutionalist and electoralist party.') In some sense it’s a truism to call a political party ‘electoralist’ – what else is it going to be, aside from revolutionary? – but Seymour’s narrative, of Corbyn’s leadership putting the party’s Right on the defensive for the first time in decades, acts as a convincing and important reminder of the renewed political potential for an opposition to meaningfully oppose the government, aiming to achieve more than simply winning the next election at any cost.
In addition, Seymour makes the related point that if Corbyn is to appeal to younger voters and broader branches of the electorate then he should draw attention to any issue whatsoever where the Tories are clearly weak, not limiting himself to ‘real life’, ‘bread and butter’ issues as numerous trade unions have argued. The subtly reactionary logic goes something like this: ‘Why bother talk about Saudi arms deals and global warming when wages are stagnating?’ To this, Seymour replies that ‘a retreat to the traditional, narrow, sectional concerns of trade unions is likely to be a mistake on their part, one that could cut off potential sources of new recruitment and support.'
Right now, Seymour believes the new Labour Left is ‘more potential than reality’ since, among other things, the ‘cultural schism between those who still sing the Red Flag at parties, and those who emerged from the more modern-day milieux of Climate Camp, the student movement and Occupy, is a palpable obstacle.' Corbyn needs to appeal not only to the kinds of seasoned hard-Leftists who care deeply about revolutionary politics (and express interest in little else) and can still remember reading about the Battle of Orgreave, but he also needs to appeal to the contemporary cosmopolitan, multicultural working class, most of whom (quite understandably) aren’t interested in revisiting the battlegrounds of Thatcherism. As Seymour succinctly puts it, the young are ‘more culturally fluent’ and ‘aren’t obsessed with setting up street stalls on a Saturday morning.' Formulating policies and media messages which speak to the lived experiences of younger voters will be essential in securing Corbyn’s survival as Labour leader. Indeed, attempting to motivate millennials to join anti-austerity and anti-war organisations by focusing solely on the defeats of the 1980s and the successes of the post-war Attlee government is a bit like trying to encourage dock workers in the 1970s to rally against the state’s brutal anti-union laws by teaching them about the uprisings of the English Civil War. Lessons will be learned, and a minority will express support, but left-wing nostalgia will always fail to be as effective as a sense of basic relatability.
At the same time, Seymour makes the important point of qualifying the common claim that Corbyn is somehow closer to his party’s socialist roots than the Blairites. Labour party heads were horrified at the wave of strikes from 1910 to 1914, being instinctively deferential to the state, and organisational leadership was in fact spurred on by syndicalists (and anarchists). Seymour summarises that those Labour MPs who find scrapping Trident, breaking up the United Kingdom, and ending the ‘special relationship’ with the United States simply unthinkable are in fact ‘authentic legatees of their party’s traditions.’
Regrettably, the book doesn’t discuss what readers can actually do to buttress the emerging socialist politics of Labour. When asked about this during an interview with Novara Media’s James Butler, Seymour simply replied ‘think more,’ because ‘thinking is a good thing.’ The journalist Laurie Penny has praised the book for being not so much a call to arms as ‘a call to brains,’ and while Seymour’s intellectual motivations are admirable, a politically attuned brain without any limbs for action is fairly impotent, and risks lapsing into an aloof – and ultimately apolitical – solipsism.
Nevertheless, Seymour’s warranted pessimism about the ‘apparatus’ of Labour’s institutional structure is crucially and refreshingly complemented with his candour about hard-Left parties like Respect, Left Unity (which he was a supporter of, and an optimistic one) and Socialist Alliance. These organisations ‘proved to be far too narrow, based on ramshackle coalitions of the fragments of the far Left and the odd Labour refugee, to make a sustained bid for a national political presence.' Seymour also detects two major changes in Corbyn’s leadership which make him stand out. Despite Corbyn’s project still ticking that familiar box of being ‘a traditional electoral’ and ‘constitutionalist’ enterprise, Seymour contends that Corbyn has made impressive though as yet fairly nascent moves to, first, shift the party’s decision-making to its members, and second, to use his leadership as the foundation of a social movement. Corbyn’s strength lies precisely in his power to communicate an emotionally resonant anti-neoliberal message to working people, since Labour remains the only major party able to speak directly to so many – an asset no other left-leaning party can boast. Corbyn should clearly compromise where necessary to stave off coup threats – the Syria vote and European Union membership, for instance – but simultaneously push as far to the Left as possible when it comes to every other domain, such as anti-austerity economics and education, topic which currently don’t seem to pose any threat of a split in the party.
Many on the British left have an unusual level of contempt for Seymour – some of it reasonable (his ‘joke’ about the Falklands veteran Simon Weston, a deeply uncompassionate swipe at the burn victim’s face), some of it not (Alex Callinicos’s numerous, personalised snipes). Nevertheless, as this book demonstrates, he is one of the most insightful and constructively ruthless writers on the British Left, going after all the right names for all the right reasons. His analysis is urgent, and his bold style – if occasionally a little verbose – is unavoidably encouraging.