Leftybritpol - New NK Ambassador edition

Bennite, supposedly.

It refers to Tony Benn.

Yeah, I know that, but what kind of ideology is it?

It's like ML, but with more Spurdos

Goddamn I wish we had a radical journalist even half as popular as Jones is.

social democracy in one country with a co-op fetish

I don't see how McDonnell and Cockshott are mutually exclusive. Labour still want several things state owned, for example the NHS wastes a fucking fortune on bureaucracy and provisioning (dae £3000 tub of skin cream?). Why is nobody pushing for NHS cybernetics?

Eh this is dishonest, Benns project was moreso "modernizing" old school social democracy to attempt to lay the groundwork for the possibility of a future Socialist Britain. Can't say it wasn't flawed but Social Democracy wasn't the ultimate goal. I'm sure some more educated posters than me could expand on this.

I was unironically thinking about writing a manifesto on introducing cybernetics to NHS logistics. Imagine it, a cybersyn ensuring peak efficiency with lorry delivers to get medicine ect. to places. The money it could save, heck the lives it could save.

As for defining Benninism, it has a few key points but essentially it is taking Marxian analysis, reaching the conclusion the best way to create the dictatorship of the proletariat is to create a true political and economic democracy, and using social democratic means to implement this. It is actually kinda interesting how you can see this ideology form throughout his life: he grew up in a trad english radical household, he became anti-imperialist training as a pilot in Rhodesia, he developed contempt for the British elite at the BBC, he developed democratic reformist tendencies by being denied the right to be an MP after his dad died & passed his lordship down, his anti-bureaucratism having to deal with the civil service, and finally is introduced to Marxist thought in the 1970s & 80s.
So to boil it down, Benn sees Britain as an imperialist country but takes his analysis further by adopted the Orwellian analysis that the British elite itself rules Britain as another part of the Empire (mask growing to fit a face ect.). As such to fix that inherent issues of this elite radical democratisation of our political system needs to be introduced " Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.". To accompany this Britain needs to introduce economic democracy to further weaken or even destroy the power of this elite by giving the working masses the economic power and control over their own lives "The demand for more popular power is building up most insistently in industry, and the pressure for industrial democracy has now reached such a point that a major change is now inevitable, at some stage. What is happening is not just a respectful request for consultation before management promulgates its decisions. Workers are not going to be fobbed off with a few shares…or by a carbon copy of the German system of co-determination. The campaign is very gradually crystallizing into a demand for real workers' control.". It's kinda best summed up in his quote on democracy itself: "I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community." He uses social democratic (I mean this in the OG sense of the word) electoralist means mostly because he thought such change could not occur rapidly in the UK. This elite couldn't be overthrown in a day because of how they were entrenched. As such, a war of attrition would be needed to remove it by increasing democracy in the economic and political spheres.
You may disagree with it from a theoretical standpoint (I don't), but it is a sound theory of Socialism with British Characteristics. Honestly having written that all out, kinda makes me want to write a tract on the "fundamentals of Benninism now".

(me)

Cheers for doing our job for us lad, also I think making an effortpost or thread about Benninism is a great idea, because it will not only elucidate a /tendency/ based on real pragmatic endeavours towards a future Communist Society that has been not only sorely forgotten, but twisted into a demented creature by opportunist liberals, socdems & "demsocs", who desperately need to be reminded that their bullshit is not the end of the means but merely means to the end. It might also have the nice side effect of shutting up burgers who see the bullshit that orgs like Democrat Cops of America pull and assume that must extend to the Corbyn incarnation of the Benn project (unfortunately there also seem to be those involved in it who also think this so perhaps it's not entirely unwarranted). Most importantly though, it's actually arguable that now we have moved beyond post-war social democracy & the reaction against it didn't solve anything it appeared to, this period we are now in is even more ripe for the taking with a Benninite strategy. The Contradictions of Capital are increasingly being laid bare and the Bourgeoisie has very little recourse to implement piecemeal reforms that will satisfy a Working Class with growing consciousness who have been regaled with tales of an idyllic period and wish to return to it. It's simply not possible to go back to Social Democracy in the wake of a recession that has never been recovered from and a "Neoliberal" period that has merely stemmed the bleeding of the falling rate of profit. There is more turmoil ahead and our task should be to guide this political will of the Working Class organically full well knowing that it will only lead to betrayal when none of their demands can be met through Bourgeois Democracy, ready to swoop in and provide them with the knowledge to tie such a glaring example of systemic failure to that which we have said. There is no going back, it was never real and couldn't be so again, there is only forward, ``"Beyond Parliamentary Democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new Popular Democracy to replace it."``