And just for the record: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-i-won-t-wear-white-poppy-at-cenotaph-a2947701.html

Hey, it’s not my constitution, I was just saying how I’d phrase it if I was to want to re-introduce Clause 4 in it’s original sense, which I suspect JC would want to do.

However – you make a valid point, CD. If the security guard and the chairman are seen as putting in equal effort, as you contend they do, what exactly is the reason for not paying them the same? Just asking as Devil’s (or JC’s) advocate… 😉

..and as a panellist my answer would be.. I’ll give him six months before he proposes putting it back the way it was (with a re-write so that you won’t have to have read Marx to get the meaning of it).

I would, if I were him (and I am not) go for something like “To guarantee equitable distribution of the profits of industry, such that all who have contributed to those profits shall benefit according to their mental or physical efforts, and to place into common public ownership such industries whereby private ownership does not guarantee equitable returns for all according to such effort, and to ensure that dividends above and beyond equitable returns for effort are shared as the common wealth of the nation.”

This covers off the nationalising agenda AND points out that wildcat striking for a bigger slice of the cake (greed) isn’t the point of socialism, but rather it’s opposite.

That’s a great question!

For the record, Clause 4 of the Labour Party Constitution used to read “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service”

It was changed by New Labour in 1995 to read “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect”

It was widely seen as an abandonment of the principle of national ownership.

There has been a massive change in people’s approach to politics in the UK over the past thirty years, so that now it seems people won’t vote for Corbyn because his ideas do not seem to accord with ‘who we are’ as a nation (whatever their personal take on them). Thus an ‘opposition’ party could emerge that simply echoed the Government’s take on practically everything – believing that the status quo was ‘who we are’ and thus they had to represent it as much as the Government were, and completely throwing out the founding principles of their own party – and the principle that was inherent in being Her Majesty’s Opposition – in doing so.

The reality is ‘who we are’ is entirely definable by us, through democracy at large. But first we need a choice, and that is why so many rejoiced when Corbyn came along, even if not agreeing with all of his policies.

It is increasingly amusing to see young conservatives (the old ones tend to know better) talking of ‘state control’ by socialists, when their own party has complete and utter control by the simple technique of on-side media telling folks ‘how it is’ and scare mongering about any democratically elected alternative.

One has to admit, Corbyn has stimulated debate – like this one.

JG.. that was funny too 🙂

If you’d rather make up stuff and write it in capitals then fair enough – but there are definitions out there, and they all run more or less along the same lines as those quoted.

You going to write that theory in a treatise? You could call it Das CAPITALS (I’ll get my duffel coat).

Maybe the Tories are right to be smug.. as if in answer to my thread starting question, Radio 4 vox pop this morning revealed ‘reasons to vote against Corbyn’. To paraphrase, one was ‘People are selfish now, and so JC is unrepresentative of the British people with his belief in fairness’. Another was “We’ve gone too far down the current road to change things now, so I’ll vote for someone else’.

Sad day.. for me, though I accept I am in the minority feeling that.