Corbynism: A Critical Approach

Emerald (2018), with Matt Bolton

Media Coverage & Reviews

“In Corbynism: A Critical Approach Bolton and Pitts have produced the most thorough and alarming overview of the Corbyn worldview to date….Corbynism: A Critical Approach, is the best book on the phenomenon of Corbynism by some distance because it slots the movement firmly within this camp of moralising and intolerant populism. In doing so it ought to free up space on the broader Left for a more critical approach to the Corbyn project, not least because it is written by two activists who have by their own admission long-yearned for “the Left to take the reins”.” - James Bloodworth, Unherd

“In a fascinating critique from the anti-capitalist left, Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts argue that Corbynism’s big move is away from seeing capitalism as a system with its own unalterable dynamics, compelling all within it to operate according to its own logic, to seeing its cruelties instead as the work of malign individuals.” - Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

“A fascinating new book, “Corbynism: A Critical Approach”, by two Marxist academics, Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts, argues that Mr Corbyn’s brand of socialism is a breeding ground for conspiracy theories. The essence of Corbynism is the belief that a “cosy cartel” of capitalists have constructed a “rigged system” for their own benefit.” - Bagehot, The Economist

”Anyone who wants to understand what a Corbyn government would be like might be better off studying the movement, rather than the man. Corbynism: A Critical Approach, a recent study by Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts, both former Corbynistas steeped in leftwing thought, provides several interesting insights. The authors argue convincingly that the Labour leader’s image as a moral paragon has been crucial to his rise — as has the argument that “Jeremy” has always been on the right side of history.” - Gideon Rachman, The Financial Times

“Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts’ Corbynism: A critical approach is a rare left-wing critique by authors who are virtual Marxists. Inevitably, it has been all but ignored, which is a fault that needs remedying as this rich and urgent work deserves better than that…Bolton and Pitts’ are worth reading because theirs is an explanation not just of the Corbyn Labour party but of the post-crash West.” - Nick Cohen, The Spectator

“Jeremy Corbyn…He really means it. His position is ideological and you have to understand his ideology. A recent book, Corbynism: A Critical Approach by Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts, makes this effort. The authors are two Marxist academics who argue that Mr Corbyn’s view of the single market is an expression of his particular brand of socialism…It is not, however, necessary to have an opinion on this to grasp the authors’ central and powerful point. Corbynism, they suggest, is a version of socialism derived from one understanding of Marx in which the role of class is replaced by “the elite” and “the people”.” - Daniel Finkelstein, The Times

“In a recent book ostensibly focused on Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party, but partly about recent British political history, the academics Matt Bolton and Frederick Harry Pitts explain the last decade in terms of “austerity populism”. Cuts, welfare crackdowns and the case for leave, they explain, were all sold to the public via the exclusion of supposedly unproductive undesirables: “scroungers” in the austerity narrative; “migrants” in the stories that swirled around the 2016 referendum.” - John Harris, The Guardian

Endorsements

Chapter Synopses

Chapter 1 Explaining 2017: The Rise and Fall of Austerity Populism

In Chapter 1 we explain Labour’s surprisingly strong performance in the 2017 General Election, with the party gaining 30 seats and depriving Theresa May of her majority, a result which flew in the face of almost every prediction. We suggest that the key to understanding this remarkable turn of events lies in the process by which ‘the deficit’ became a dead letter in British politics, and the affordances this granted the Labour Party to make progress on the basis of a Corbynist agenda. Tracing the story of the deficit’s rise and fall uncovers a number of important insights about the origins and character of the present political turbulence in the UK, and Corbynism’s position in it. In particular, it reveals the crucial role played by the initial austerity narrative itself, showing how its crude ‘we’re all in it together’ productivism, as well as its anti-austerity opposition, acted as the forerunner of the populist currents that were to follow in its wake and eventually subsume it.

Chapter 2 The Preconditions of Corbynism: On Two-Campism

Chapter 2 focuses on the role that Corbyn’s personal reputation for unshakeable moral integrity and political prescience – a man who has forever been on ‘the right side of history’ – has played in the development of Corbynism as a whole. It shows how the moral mythology that surrounds Corbyn as an individual was rooted in the collapse of the Bennite ‘hard left’ tradition of the Labour Party in the early 1990s, and the subsequent process of romanticisation of that tradition, and of Benn himself, that followed, particularly in the wake of the hard left’s leadership of the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Chapter 3 On the Right Side of History: The Moral Mythology of Corbynism

In Chapter 3, we show how Corbyn was the beneficiary of this process of dehistoricisation and depoliticisation, as it fed into the ‘Year Zero’ narrative that was built around his candidacy for the Labour leadership and which carried over into the General Election itself. The chapter argues that the faith in Corbyn’s personal integrity is such that the actual content of his programme – a national-populist platform of economic protectionism, twinned with a crude ‘two campist’ isolationist foreign policy – has long been left unexamined by his critics and the wider liberal-left. This absence of scrutiny, accompanied by a process in which certain scenes from Corbyn’s lengthy political career have been turned into modern day parables, has been crucial both in piecing together an electoral coalition, and preventing certain tensions and contradictions within the movement itself from rising to the surface.

Chapter 4 Taking Back Control: Corbynism in One Country

In Chapter 4, we seek to counter this romanticised, historically-revisionist version of Corbynism by examining the theoretical premises of the Bennite tradition which have been carried over into its successor. We do this by comparing the ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’ proposed by Benn as a solution to the crisis of British capitalism in the mid-1970s to the ‘Alternative Models of Ownership’ document commissioned by John McDonnell in 2017. This comparison sheds some light on the ambivalence shown by the Labour leadership towards the prospect of a ‘hard Brexit’ – withdrawal from the European Single Market and the customs union. We situate this in relation to contemporary visions of the state, and specifically the nation-state predicated on a turn away from left traditions of transnational solidarity. The chapter then contrasts the theory of capitalism which lies behind the Bennite-Corbyn vision of ‘socialism in one country’ to a critical Marxian understanding of capitalism as a historically-specific global system constituted by ‘socially mediated labour.’ We suggest that it is the failure to recognise the abstract forms of social domination produced by such a system that lies behind Corbynism’s recent turn to the protectionist solutions espoused by nationalist movements on both left and right. The chapter spells out some of the possible malign consequences of such a turn.

Chapter 5 ‘Things Can and they Will Change’: Class, Postcapitalism and Left Populism

In Chapter 5 we critically analyse Corbynism’s mobilisation of the populist notion of the ‘people’, and the respects in which this stands in for a lack of class analysis that elides antagonistic relationships for a contradiction-free conceptualisation of how power will inevitably accrue to the popular subject. We suggest that an orthodox Marxist understanding of class, value and history leads Corbynism – both in its more traditional form, represented here by the work of Ralph Miliband, and its fresher postcapitalist iteration – to strategically miscalculate the possibilities for an incipient liberation present in the current state of things. The failure to recognise the negative, mediated and inherently contradictory character of class society – in which the activity undertaken by workers to ensure their daily survival produces the forms which come to dominate them – leads to the false presumption that social antagonism can be resolved through the production of a non-contradictory ‘people,’ protected from the pressures of the world market by the nation-state and technocratic fixes.

Chapter 6 The Rigged System: Corbynism and Conspiracy Theory

In Chapter 6 we explore how Corbynism is structured around a truncated critique of capitalist society as a ‘rigged system,’ that can easily lapse into a kind of conspiracy theorism. The chapter argues that the ease with which the ‘rigged system’ trope has passed along the political spectrum from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump and then to Corbyn indicates a troubling political ambivalence. In both its right and left formulations, the ‘rigged system’ conceit does not grasp class and capitalism as antagonistic, mediated and contradictory social forms, but presents capitalist society as a relatively uncomplicated and natural process of production which has been hijacked by the illegitimate intervention of the ‘wealth extractors,’ international finance and the banking sector. We expose how this truncated critique of the ‘rigged system’ segues with similar ideas circulating around the rise of Trump and Brexit- for instance, opposition to ‘globalism’ and a retreat into the nation-state as the horizon of political activity. We show how it can spill over into antisemitic conspiracy theories, especially when combined with the reflexive ‘two-campism’ of contemporary forms of ‘anti-imperialism.’