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Labour, antisemitism and the critique of political economy
Author(s): Bolton, Matthew; Pitts, Frederick Harry
Editor(s): Stoetzler, Marcel
Date: 2023
Topics: Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Politics, Political Parties
Abstract: This chapter uses the critical theory of antisemitism (e.g. Postone 2006) to analyse the antisemitism crisis which erupted in the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (2015–20). Explanations for the seemingly sudden explosion of antisemitism within leftist milieus commonly focused on the idea of antisemitism as a ‘virus’ imported into the party from outside by extremists (see Gidley et al. 2020 for an account). This chapter challenges this narrative, developing our previous work (2018, 2020a) to argue that the roots of the crisis under Corbyn can be found in the ‘truncated’ or ‘foreshortened’ critique of capitalism (see Kurz 2007; Heinrich 2012) that has been a feature of the British socialist and liberal left since its formation, of which ‘Corbynism’ represented a concentrated form. This worldview regards capitalism as the corruption of an otherwise benign form of productive society by capitalists motivated by greed and personal immorality. The ‘real economy’ of productive national industry is valorised and opposed to unproductive, parasitical global finance, which is taken to fraudulently conjure money out of money (Bonefeld 2014).
The Rigged System and the Real Economy: Corbynism, Antisemitism and Productivist Critiques of Capitalism
Author(s): Bolton, Matt; Pitts, Frederick Harry
Editor(s): Alietti, Alfredo; Padovan, Dario
Date: 2020
Topics: Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Politics