The politics of Michael Foot

Today former Labour Party leader Michael Foot seems really quite cool in a retro kind of way - fortunately for those of us too young to remember him when he actually was Labour Party leader there is a good article by Simon Basketter in this weeks Socialist Worker which should help dispel any illusions, as well as going through his political and intellectual evolution, and concluding that the tradition of Labourism is utterly utterly bankrupt when it comes to the struggle for socialism. As Marx once noted, 'The democratic petty bourgeois, far from desiring to overturn the whole of society for the revolutionary proletarian, strives for a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as endurable and comfortable as possible for him'. That might sound quite a harsh judgement on Michael Foot's political life, but there is undoubtedly an element of truth in there somewhere.