Reform versus Transformation: Reflections on the Legacy of Corbynism’s Economic Programme

Abstract 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.