OUT NOW:
Corbyn
The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
by Richard Seymour
“Seymour is an essential voice on the left, and this book is a necessary intervention, explaining this daunting political moment and bringing the focus back to strategy. Not so much a call to arms as a call to brains.”
– Laurie Penny
For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership
https://www.versobooks.com/books/2511-corbyn
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In the 2017 general election, Jeremy Corbyn pulled off an historic upset, attracting the biggest increase in the Labour vote since 1945. It was another reversal of expectations for the mainstream media and his ‘soft-left’ detractors. Demolishing the Blairite opposition in 2015, Corbyn had already seen off an attempted coup. Now, he had shattered the government’s authority, and even Corbyn’s most vitriolic critics have been forced into stunned mea culpas.
For the first time in decades, socialism is back on the agenda—and for the first time in Labour’s history, it defines the leadership.
Richard Seymour tells the story of how Corbyn’s rise was made possible by the long decline of Labour and by a deep crisis in British democracy. He shows how Corbyn began the task of rebuilding Labour as a grassroots party, with a coalition of trade unionists, young and precarious workers, students and ‘Old Labour’ pugilists, who then became the biggest campaigning army in British politics. Utilizing social media, activists turned the media’s Project Fear on its head and broke the ideological monopoly of the tabloids. After the election, with all the artillery still ranged against Corbyn, and with all the weaknesses of the Left’s revival, Seymour asks what Corbyn can do with his newfound success.
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“Richard Seymour has a brilliant mind and a compelling style. Everything he writes is worth reading.”
– Gary Younge
“One of our most astute political analysts turns his attention to Corbyn, and the result is predictably essential: not just to make sense of how we got to this unlikely situation, but for his thoughts on what the left might do next”
– China Miéville
“Long after the Labour left was thought to be dead, Jeremy Corbyn’s emergence has inspired millions. There is no one better positioned than Richard Seymour to take a look at his emergence and whether Corbyn can actually turn Labour into a force for radical change.”
– Bhaskar Sunkara
“Richard Seymour’s Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics not only shows how, amid Labour Party decline, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters challenged the neoliberal consensus, but also considers the possibility of success and what form that might take.”
– Times Higher Education [Books of 2016]
“Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics is the first serious analysis of Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected ascent.”
– Yohann Koshy, Vice
“Corbyn is not about Corbyn in much the same way that Richard Seymour’s earlier and much shorter book, The Meaning of David Cameron, wasn’t really about its eponymous anti-hero. Rather it is an analysis—and an astute one—of the socio-political conditions which have given rise to Corbynism, its future prospects and the substantial obstacles it will inevitably face.”
– Tom Mills, Ceasefire
“It is a point of contention whether the politics represented by Jeremy Corbyn offers a pathway out of the crisis or we are instead witnessing the last hurrah of Britain’s harried and diminished workers’ movement. That is one of the questions Richard Seymour tries to answer in his excellent new book … Seymour’s analysis remains indispensable”
– Alex Doherty, Red Pepper
“The finest study of Corbyn yet written.”
– Stephen Bush, New Statesman
“A witty and acute political and historical analysis from a position to the left of Corbyn…Seymour is utterly unsentimental in his analysis.”
– Robert Potts, Times Literary Supplement
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PAPERBACK: October 2017 / 384 pages / ISBN 9781786632999 / $16.95 / £9.99 / $22.99 (Canada)
CORBYN is available at a 30% discount (paperback) on our website. Purchasing details here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2511-corbyn
For more information on university inspection/desk copies visit: http://www.versobooks.com/pg/desk-copies
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