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“Economic Policies for the Many Not the Few: Assessing the Economic Strategy of the Labour Party”
... ,Ashman et al. (2018) andFine and Saad-Filho (2019). ...
... As a leader, Corbyn reorganized the structure of Labour and shifted its policies. He endorsed an explicit anti-austerity agenda, calling for policies of increasing public investment in green industries and free public services through radical reforms of the tax system (Saad-Filho & Ben, 2019). This agenda was complemented with a close and more direct relationship with trade unions and a broad spectrum of social movement organizations articulated around the anti-austerity struggles of 2010 and 2011 (Bolton & Pitts, 2018). ...
“This rich and insightful collection arrives at the perfect historic moment. Even as the modern neoliberal university reels under the impact of the COVID pandemic, these chapters remind us that university students continue to be significant political actors.”
– Professor Judith Bessant, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
“This wide-ranging volume provides the reader with a holistic understanding of the specificities of contemporary student movements within the context of neoliberal higher education.”
– Dr. Sarah Pickard, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, France
“Drawing on recent cases from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, this volume successfully draws the study of student movements into the social movement literature.”
– Professor Christopher Rootes, University of Kent, United Kingdom
This book inquires into the global wave of student mobilizations that have arisen in the aftermath of the economic crisis of 2008, accounting for their historical and sociological significance. More specifically, its eleven chapters explore the role of students as political actors: their ability to build effective organizations, to make political alliances with other actors, and to win public consensus, as well as their impact on cultural, political, and policy outcomes. To do so, the volume examines case studies in England, Chile, South Africa, Quebec, and Hong Kong, covering Europe, Africa, Asia, and North and Latin America. Grouped into two major sections, the collection covers the organizational structures of student movements and their alliances and outcomes. Ultimately, this volume examines the understudied political aspects of student unrest, exploring how student mobilizations—driven by indebtedness, precariousness, the corporatization of the university, and other issues—correspond to larger processes of change with wider implications in society.
Lorenzo Cini is a political sociologist on the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences of the Scuola Normale Superiore of Florence, Italy.
Donatella della Porta is Professor of Political Science, Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy.
César Guzmán-Concha is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
... As a leader, Corbyn reorganized the structure of Labour and shifted its policies. He endorsed an explicit anti-austerity agenda, calling for policies of increasing public investment in green industries and free public services through radical reforms of the tax system (Saad-Filho & Ben, 2019). This agenda was complemented with a close and more direct relationship with trade unions and a broad spectrum of social movement organizations articulated around the anti-austerity struggles of 2010 and 2011 (Bolton & Pitts, 2018). ...
This chapter analyzes how the dynamics of cooperation and competition between student movement organizations and third parties shaped the impact of student protests in higher education policy in England between 2010 and 2019. The chapter analyzes the wave of higher education reforms and university student protests of 2009–2014 and 2015–2019. For each period, the chapter examines the strategy and alliances of leading student organizations and the impact that protests have on higher education policy. The chapter suggests that English student protests have a low impact on policy due to the existence of competitive relationships between leading organizations, and the lack of strong connections to third parties. The chapter concludes by reflecting on strategic tensions that student activists experienced during the transition from opposition and revolt against neoliberal policies, to reform and influence higher education policy through alliances with the Labour party and the rise of Corbynism.
... As a leader, Corbyn reorganized the structure of Labour and shifted its policies. He endorsed an explicit anti-austerity agenda, calling for policies of increasing public investment in green industries and free public services through radical reforms of the tax system (Saad-Filho & Ben, 2019). This agenda was complemented with a close and more direct relationship with trade unions and a broad spectrum of social movement organizations articulated around the anti-austerity struggles of 2010 and 2011 (Bolton & Pitts, 2018). ...
Several episodes of student unrest have taken place, both in advanced and developing economies, since the turn of the twenty-first century. These protests suggest that universities have regained centrality as locus of contention in contemporary societies, but also that students—and more generally the young—have become more politically involved. The introduction of the edited volume “Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism. Dynamics of Contention and their Consequences” provides a discussion and overview of three main themes that have called the attention of recent scholarship on student activism: (i) the current transformation in the conceptions and practices of higher education; (ii) the organizational forms of student movements, including the tactics they employ; (iii) and the alliances they engage in, as well as the outcomes of their struggles. In doing so, we introduce our theoretical discussion on the topic, developed from social movement studies. More specifically, building upon research on episodes of student unrest after the 2008 financial crisis, we look at their mode of organizing and action tactics, on the one hand, and their configuration of allies and achieved outcomes, on the other. We also explore how and to what extent such aspects are to be understood as the result of strategic choices made by the student activists themselves during the process of mobilization. The broad geographical scope of the volume, with chapters dealing with events that occurred in Latin and North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, partially rectifies a bias of mainstream academia, namely the focus on cases of the global North.
In the context of divisive disagreements about how the British left should orient itself towards the current Labour Party, this intervention uses the Gorzian category of non-reformist reforms to critically evaluate the 2017–19 policy programme developed by the Corbyn-led Labour Party and draw out the implications for current strategic debates. It argues that the radical core of the Corbynite economic programme lay in its proposals for widening ownership and extending economic democracy, but that there was a tension between commodified and decommodifying visions of these proposals. Exploring the different conceptions of political transformation implicit within each vision, the paper argues that only the latter had the potential to be non-reformist in the Gorzian sense. However, Gorz was concerned not merely with a reform’s content but also with how it was formulated and pursued. The paper ends by arguing that the transformative potential of the economic programme was not reflected in its political strategy and that this has important lessons for strategy today.
For much of the left, with the rise of Corbyn, it is as if such analyses and pessimisms around the limits of such labourism have simply evaporated -as evidenced symbolically and intellectually, for example, by Robin Blackburn's analysis in 'The Corbyn Project: Public Capital and Labour's New Deal
The classic case structurally denying the potential for achieving socialist aspirations through
the Labour Party was made by Ralph Miliband in Parliamentary Socialism: A Study in the
Politics of Labour, 2nd edn (Merlin Press, 2009), and The State in Capitalist Society, 2nd edn
(Merlin Press, 2009). For much of the left, with the rise of Corbyn, it is as if such analyses
and pessimisms around the limits of such labourism have simply evaporated -as evidenced
symbolically and intellectually, for example, by Robin Blackburn's analysis in 'The Corbyn
Project: Public Capital and Labour's New Deal', New Left Review 111 (May/June, 2018), pp.
5-32.
- Mcdonnell
McDonnell cited in interview by Jim Pickard, Financial Times, 2 March 2018,
ft.com/mcdonnell (accessed 20 March 2019).
Labour manifesto, p. 19, and 'Alternative Models
- See
See, for example, Labour manifesto, p. 19, and 'Alternative Models', pp. 6-7.
Labour's Fiscal Credibility Rule'. 15 'Labour's Fiscal Credibility Rule'. 16 'Richer Britain
- See
See, for example, Labour manifesto, pp. 15, 17, 102.
14 'Labour's Fiscal Credibility Rule'.
15 'Labour's Fiscal Credibility Rule'.
16 'Richer Britain, Richer Lives'.
For an overview of neoliberalism and financialisation and their consequences, see Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho, 'Thirteen Things You Need to Know About Neoliberalism
- Alfredo Saad-Filho
For an overview of neoliberalism and financialisation and their consequences, see Ben Fine and
Alfredo Saad-Filho, 'Thirteen Things You Need to Know About Neoliberalism', Critical
Sociology 43.4-5 (2017), pp. 685-706, and Alfredo Saad-Filho, 'Neoliberalism', in The
Routledge Handbook of Marxian Economics, ed. David M. Brennan, David Kristjanson-Gural,
Catherine P. Mulder and Erik K. Olsen (Routledge, 2017).