I do wonder why you wouldn't just bite the bullet and sit with the tories. That said I wouldn't say Blair "manipulated the left from the inside" - by the early nineties most of the furthest left elements of labour had been purged by Neil Kinnock's leadership (although from what I know of Millitant, good riddance) so by the time Blair was in leader a lot of the groundwork for Labour's shift had already been done. On the other hand I suppose he was leader for so long it was inevitable that the party would change more and more to reflect his personality. You'll be unsurprised to know that I'm not particularly fussed about the ideological shift of Labour - social democrats or "third way" because when it comes down to it for me, they were ultimately defending capital. I believe I'm not far off the mark when I say that Labour only ever set out to administer capitalism better than the other lot (who they ended up resembling in the end) I'm sure you see it differently.
I admire Blair's ability to manipulate the left from the inside and essentially shift Labour from the left/centre left to the centre/centre right.
if you're being serious that might very well make you a unique presence in OI, haha. I can't think of anyone else here with a positive opinion of neu-labour and its architect, restricted or otherwise.
Tony Blair is my favourite politician, I'm a labour man through and through (New Labour) of course.
so I take it you didn't take the time to look up Mr. Cockshott's work :P. I suppose I didn't provide a link so the fault lies with me - http://reality.gn.apc.org/ I would advise giving the articles a read, you might at least find it interesting (I did, and I didn't entirely understand it, like I said) even if you do disagree/find error with the arguments laid out. Out of interest, why do you have pictures of Tony Blair up on your profile? I'm assuming for a laugh :P
The labour theory of value is as dead as an economic theory as Latin is as a language.
re: your last post in that thread about the state propping up unprofitable firms - "but the theory of labour value is fallacious." I believe that there are several people who have come up with convincing arguments that the Labour Theory of Value is far from dead, among them some posters on this forum. As far as I'm aware the poster Paul Cockshott has done some work towards this and many of his posts provide information about it. Personally, I don't know my way around economics too well, so a lot of it is over my head but I imagine it will probably be of interest to you
I'm actually quite enjoying all this This is one of the reasons I think revleft should have something a bit more accommodating as OI, as much as there are plenty of restricted users who belong restricted I can't help but think there are some users who whilst they might not share a common sort of ideology with us are actually capable of contributing to discourse on this forum - arguably moreso than some of its natives. (i'm aware you aren't restricted yet but it's fairly likely given that you've stated explicitly that you aren't a revolutionary - more's the pity that we keep the cosplay communists and keep the better OIers in a pen.) I feel like it's been a more productive than usual night wasted on revleft, in any case
