Your Opinion of Tony Benn

[Connolly]

What is your opinion of Tony Benn?



Him speaking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETqOvBKnKdk


A quote from him:

""As a minister, I experienced the power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government. Compared to this, the pressure brought to bear in industrial disputes is minuscule. This power was revealed even more clearly in 1976 when the IMF secured cuts in our public expenditure. These lessons led me to the conclusion that the UK is only superficially governed by MPs and the voters who elect them. Parliamentary democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_system) is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is, and some new Chartist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartism) agitation might be born and might quickly gather momentum.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Benn

[Hit The North]

Left reformist. Better in opposition than he ever was in Government. A better man than his son, Hillary.

[Holden Caulfield]

he pretends to be a son of the people, no working man in their right mind would call their son Hillary..

also has his son & grandaughter in politics, which seems rather curious...

pretty much what bob said

and he has far too much faith in the flawed system of 'democracy' that we have in this country

[Sam_b]

he pretends to be a son of the people, no working man in their right mind would call their son Hillary..


http://images.animanga.nu/fanart/3219/facepalm.jpg

[Colonello Buendia]

not to bad as reformists go but I'll personally change his sons name

[Vanguard1917]

However well meaning they individually may have been, people like Tony Benn served a crucial function for bourgeois politics by allowing Labour to cover its left flank and create the illusion that it was a party for change.

[redarmyfaction38]

not to bad as reformists go but I'll personally change his sons name
personally, i'd shoot the bastard son of a well meaning aristo.
don't get me wrong i like tony, i've met him, he's a good soul, but, he hasn't a clue really, his whole political experience is "parliamentary", he's a "labour party" man, the party and how it can deliver your freedom for you if it just drops blairism etc. etc.
what we need is a new workers party, not just in britain, but worldwide, a new international, a workers international. imo.

[Reuben]

Tony Benn is contradictory both in terms of his own politics and in terms the function he plays. He has spoken a great deal about the impotence of parliamentary democracy under capitalism and yet he also carries himself as a committed parliamentarian. While he does not promote revolution, he does promote ideas which - whether he accepts it or not - necessitate a decisive break from the status quo if they are to be realised.

The way some people are talking on this thread, one would think that if only workers hadn't been listening to benn all these years they would have been sitting at the feet of Tony Cliff, or Taff or Healy. The reality is that - for all his faults - Benn has been one of the most effective advocates of socialistic ideas in post-war britain. The point is that the significance, and the potential effect, of the ideas which he has promoted is not limited to the place they hold within his own reformist worldview. Ideas do not simply live inside the mind of the person who espouses them. They are recieved and critically interpretted by living social forces. To reduce Benn's social and political function to his reformist worldview is anti-materialist.

[Reuben]

he pretends to be a son of the people, no working man in their right mind would call their son Hillary..

Yes because 'working men' are like these brauny types who work in factories during the day and go to the pub or the working men's club in the evening, all the time with a healthy dose of testosterone. No real working man would fuck with gender boundaries by giving their son such a girly name like hilary. :lol::lol::lol:

[Devrim]

bourgeois politician who sent armed police in to break pickets.

Devrim

[Zurdito]

Tony Benn is contradictory both in terms of his own politics and in terms the function he plays. He has spoken a great deal about the impotence of parliamentary democracy under capitalism and yet he also carries himself as a committed parliamentarian. While he does not promote revolution, he does promote ideas which - whether he accepts it or not - necessitate a decisive break from the status quo if they are to be realised.

The way some people are talking on this thread, one would think that if only workers hadn't been listening to benn all these years they would have been sitting at the feet of Tony Cliff, or Taff or Healy.

no, but he was there to re-incorporate people into the system who were beggining to break with it. In the 70's when he was in government this was a real issue, and parts of the British establishment were even planning a military coup as the only way to solve their crisis. It even was the case in the 1980's when Tony Benn posed as a radical left alternative. It's no coincedence that Labour was forced to the left by the contradictions of British capiyalism forcing mass working class revolt. You make it sound as if enlightened "socialist" fabianites led the working class to the left. The oppsoite is true. The idea of them breaking with Labour back then might now seem remote, but it underestimates the crisis British captialism was in at the time and the role people like Tony Benn played in making sure it never went further than it did. You are re-writing history to now laugh at the idea. Workers themselves were basically the ones who brought down the last Labour government of the 1970's, don't forget.

I don't tink all workers would have become revolutionaries, but a significantly greater number might have, and many more might have turned to a radical trade unionism not constrained by the Labour Party, which would have been very dangerous for British captialism. The role of radical reformists like Tony Benn is exactly what most posters have said: to provide the illusion of the chance for radical change within the system and retain the legitimacy of the system with people who would otherwise have lost faith in that.

Also, has Tony Benn ever seriously debated the marxist left?

[Connolly]

and parts of the British establishment were even planning a military coup as the only way to solve their crisis


Interesting. Do you have any links or info about this?

[Zurdito]

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/apr2006/wil2-a20.shtml

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm

[thejambo1]

he is an irrelevant man now,and his son is a useles character. i think a good deal of what has been said sums him and his politics up.

[Goose]

he is an irrelevant man now,and his son is a useles character. i think a good deal of what has been said sums him and his politics up.


A thinker and a gentleman. Irrelevant, though, and his spawn should be killed.

[Post-Something]

Meh, I still have some respect for politicians like him. I know I'll get anihilated for this, but if it wasn't for people like Tony Benn, George Galloway and Tommy Sheridan, I probably would never have even heard of Marxism.

[robot lenin]

I'm with Post-Something, I was interested in these left-reformists before I really knew what the real left was. And just cuz he'd the son of an aristocrat, leave off him for being upper class, it wasn't his fault what he was born into, at least he got round to a reasonable - if not correct - way off thinking.

[spartan]

I agree with both Post-Something and robot lenin.

People like Benn are often the stepping stones for many people into even more radical left-wing politics.

But just as often people like Benn can serve to make people have even more faith in the current system as many people will think that if the current system allows people like Benn in it then there is hope yet.:rolleyes: