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The Labour Party: A Marxist History
Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has given hope to millions of Labour supporters who were deeply disillusioned by Blair's New Labour. Corbyn stands for opposition to war and neo-liberalism but the Labour Party itself is deeply divided, with many in its parliamentary leadership openly opposed to the hopes of its new mass membership. The British Labour Party has always been an enigma. Labour claims to be socialist but when in government does its best to defend capitalism. Can the Labour Party become the vehicle for socialism in Britain? What is the nature of its politics and the division between left and right within it? Why has its record in government repeatedly disappointed its own supporters? And can Corbyn overcome these contradictions? This path breaking Marxist history of the British Labour Party was first published in 1988. This new and updated third edition contains additional chapters on New Labour and Labour Under Corbyn.
427 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1988
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About the author
Tony Cliff
70 books65 followersBorn in Palestine to Zionist parents in 1917, Ygael Gluckstein became a Trotskyist during the 1930s and played a leading role in the attempt to forge a movement uniting Arab and Jewish workers. At the end of of the Second World war, seeing that the victory of the Zionists was more and more inevitable, he moved to Britain and adopted the pseudonym Tony Cliff.
In the late 1940s he developed the theory that Russia wasn’t a workers’ state but a form of bureaucratic state capitalism, a theory which has characterised the tendency with which he was associated for the remaining five decades of his life. Although he broke from “orthodox Trotskyism” after being bureaucratically excluded from the Fourth International in 1950, he always considered himself to be a Trotskyist although he was also open to other influences within the Marxist tradition.
In the late 1940s he developed the theory that Russia wasn’t a workers’ state but a form of bureaucratic state capitalism, a theory which has characterised the tendency with which he was associated for the remaining five decades of his life. Although he broke from “orthodox Trotskyism” after being bureaucratically excluded from the Fourth International in 1950, he always considered himself to be a Trotskyist although he was also open to other influences within the Marxist tradition.
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November 26, 2025
Very thorough and useful history and critique of the British Labour Party. I found the point they kept coming back to about Labour attempting to find a synthesis between labour and nation to be a useful way of understanding their projects and the differences that could arise between the left and right factions. The biggest strength of the book I found, particularly in the early chapters, was the focus on how Labour both reflects the workers movement in a distorted sense through the mediation of the union officials while also shaping and limiting it. Particularly the discussion of the revolutionary wave in the 20s leading up to and including the General strike in 1926.
The one critique I’d make of the book is directed at the updated section on New Labour and the rise of Corbyn. I thought at some points it missed the woods for the trees and focused too much on the parliamentary manoeuvring of the party and the internal faction fights and not enough on the political developments happening outside the party that prompted Corbyn’s rise. They touched on things like the anti-Iraq war movement and the response of the workers movement to the GFC in a useful way but with noticeably less detail than the original book did when discussing similar developments throughout the BLP’s history. Potentially that’s a reflection of the lack of Cliff’s involvement in the updated section due to his unfortunate passing away in 2000 but who knows really.
The one critique I’d make of the book is directed at the updated section on New Labour and the rise of Corbyn. I thought at some points it missed the woods for the trees and focused too much on the parliamentary manoeuvring of the party and the internal faction fights and not enough on the political developments happening outside the party that prompted Corbyn’s rise. They touched on things like the anti-Iraq war movement and the response of the workers movement to the GFC in a useful way but with noticeably less detail than the original book did when discussing similar developments throughout the BLP’s history. Potentially that’s a reflection of the lack of Cliff’s involvement in the updated section due to his unfortunate passing away in 2000 but who knows really.
Displaying 1 of 1 review