Southpawpunch Comments 2 - The best of my comments from my site

As mentioned last week, this week’s post is another joint post with my new subsidary site Southpawpunch Comments and features what I think are the most interesting of my comments that I have left on my site (in reply to others).

As I said, "pulling them out to the main site will make them easier to find." This post also includes some of comments that I have made this week on other blogs (at bottom).

I’ll resume with the usual format for this column next week whilst Southpawpunch Comments will continue as the place for the best of my comments.

All from Southpawpunch:

The SPGB’s internationalism

"Well, I’m not sure that I have ever mentioned the SPGB before but yes, you deserve credit for your call for a borderless world – but aren’t the only Lefts to do so.

But I think you’re wrong in ‘criticising all the self determination and national liberation movements.’ For example, the great wave of African movements, from the 50s onwards, could have brought socialism but instead at least liberated millions from direct occupation."

08/05/07

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The long 80s

"I remember, say in 1985, promising that when the Tories were finally removed (which I thought would be far into the future, say 1988?) we were going to drive round the posh area in Cheshire, where I partially grew up, playing the Red Flag out loud and generally annoying the locals.

It didn't quite turn out like that."

19/03/07

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Kronstadt

"I knew my Kronstadt stuff once enough to debate - read all the Goldman etc

I can only say principles now.

If, despite being good revolutionaries, the Kronstadters were aiding the Whites, and even if they were completely unaware of this, or were doing it unknowingly - then the repression was legitimate.

If they weren't, it wasn't.

Maybe it's a London thing, in particular, but most 'anarchists' I knew were just interested in (their own) alternative lifestyle and had a very snooty (would be the correct word) attitude to anyone who didn't, say, dye their hair pink. I have met some good ones, though."

19/03/07

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Racism

"It’s interesting that ALL the UK media is now officially ‘anti-racist’ on issues like this, so Jade Goody was Public Enemy No.1 for a day, even with the rightwing press like The Sun and despite her quite mild, but none the less bigoted, comments.

If you rang any talk radio station in the UK and said, ‘I think Jade may have a point about Indians’ they would doubtless just cut you.

Now to be clear, there is acceptable racism in the media on other issues e.g. against asylum seekers, Roma, east European immigrants, Muslims, etc.

Personally I think such censorship is bad. If you want to fight with ideas you need them to be expressed, it makes stuff like EastEnders unrealistic and also, call me a liberal, but I also do think censorship is just wrong."

26/01/07

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The future of communism

"I don't know that I am advocating post Trotskyism. I am certainly not arguing for any dilution in revolutionary socialism. I am arguing that Trotskyism, let's call it revolutionary socialism in C21 won't necessary solely be based upon the 'unbroken thread' upheld by a few thousand (mainly) Westerners."

-

"I suppose two passing people with political views will inevitably agree on a few things - if you gave me 100 statements by Cameron (the Tory leader), I may agree with a couple.

I used to think that the very sharp denunciations of, for example, Pabloism, made by people I knew - 25 years ago in Stockport and Manchester, to keep in the theme of my article - could be a bit sectarian. I still do.

But another way of looking at it is a bit like something else that happened then - being smacked in the mouth ('Are you looking me, pal? - smack! Which was just a northern way of saying 'Nothing personal, mate, I just feel a bit violent').

My tooth developed a small crack that I thought nothing of but which gradually lengthened and deepened over the years.

Maybe I should have realised then that small differences can grow. Not long ago, the whole part of that tooth fell away and left a raging infection underneath.

Likewise whilst discussions at present, on whether to join the LP or not can, at worse, just lead to potshots across blogs. But if things ever do kick off they would be machine gun fire across opposing barricades."

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(From Dave Osler - "But Southpawpunch, what shines through from your post is that you know - in your heart of hearts - that Trotskyism is finished. You just haven't got the balls to say it.")

"First I think Trotskyism = revolutionary socialism = communism. I don’t think you do. But finished how? You give no detail.

Few supporters of revolutionary socialism? Yes, but then maybe more than 10% of the French electorate may again vote for ostensible Trots in the first round of the Presidential election.

Finished organisationally? Yes, there is no credible international but that could possibly change.

Finished policy wise i.e. it’s wrong - No, It’s right. Clearly many areas need new thinking e.g. green issues but I think the fundamentals are as true now as before.

It doesn’t matter that the Aztec chocolate bar became very unpopular and was discontinued long ago. It still remains the finest chocolate bar and could again reconquer the confectionery shelves. You may have changed to Snickers but that doesn’t change the iron law on what delivers and what just gets you through as few pangs of hunger."

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"It's the name of the thing we propose but still we must change it.

Socialism – Gordon Brown supports it, so does Ségolène Royal and so did Stalin. It's clearly not the same as what we support and they have custody of the name.

I agree we don't have the power to change it - if I made up a name now it would just be an eccentric quirk at Southpawpunch (but then again may get me first mention in the Oxford English Dictionary's etymology section - immortality) but the movement must."

11/01/07

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Trotsky’s long dead and publications

"Your mentioning of the long dead Ukrainian is disingenuous. You’ll find no pre-war statement here or similar. I much prefer the term ‘revolutionary socialism’ to 'Trotskyism'.

As you will know, there's a big difference between publication such as yours and agitational ones that are written by communists.

Your magazine (Notes from the Border) makes an interesting stab at explaining how things are. I don't need to tell you that the point of this blog (and similar) is what are we going to do about it?

You can read page after page on what David Shayler’s real agenda is - or in Lobster you may have read endless stuff about who really shot JFK. It is interesting to have a glimpse through whatever lies may be commonly believed - and I enjoy reading the findings - but it changes little.

Personally, I am not overly concerned on the exact level of deviousness of the state – whether it is just honestly brutal or slippery malicious - it still needs to be taken on and it’s that I prefer to write about."

17/01/07

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Saudi Arabia

"I think that any Saudi revolution would be different to Gulf ones, as the native Arab population would be key. So I am not sure Indians, Filipinos and others may play the role that you suggest. As you say, there are 18m Saudis and 5m foreigners in the country.

I enjoyed reading your article but note you say the regime could fall in a moment. I think it could but such comments have been made for decades. I also think that Saudi Arabia is a good example of what’s wrong with left reformism. Unless you smash the rulers in Saudi with no sign of weakness, they would certainly eliminate you permanently and ruthlessly.

I agree with you completely about the lack of any Left impact there. We all look forward to that changing. I wonder whether this has always been the case e.g. have the large CPM or CPI (Indian communist parties) ever tried (they have reasonable influence amongst south Indians, who form a fair part of their expats)?

Was there any Left organisation in the more liberal city of Jeddah before the conservative measures in the 80s that banned women from driving and forced the veil on some (although some women, near Yemen, still don’t wear it)?

There are lots of unanswered questions about Saudi e.g. what happened to the once numerous Jews? I suspect there may be a fair bit of hidden history or destroyed history. An ancient church discovered near Jubail was ‘disappeared’ not long ago."

23/11/06

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Will the cops be oppressive in a socialist state?

"It’s a fair point.

My view is that I wouldn’t care if some equivalent of the cops checked my ID in a socialist state. I don’t object to the role and in any revolutionary situation, I would expect heightened surveillance.

The ‘cops’ would be different e.g. preventing private trading. I’d support them doing this in the same way I would point out the direction a fleeing hit and run driver has gone to any present day cops chasing him.

But I do want the state to whither away and I’m sure there would be abuses until it did.

I’m confident any problems are much more likely to be solved when you have, for example, delegates who implement laws answerable to you (as a delegates, not ‘representatives’) and who are immediately recallable. There would, I think, be a lot less likelihood of crime when people have enough or are less inclined to commit anti-social behaviour (e.g. vandalism) through having worthwhile activities to occupy them."

16/11/06

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How could Lefts be in the same organisation, with such wide differences between them?

"Yes, I would support the Taliban in their fight against the occupiers. That's support for their military struggle and not for any of their reactionary policies. In the same way I would indeed give any spare RPGs I might happen to have to Hezbollah at the present time.

I am guessing you wouldn't agree with such support but that's a good example that relates to the call for unity.

I don't think there would be a problem at all being in the same organisation in the UK with such opposed views - it would make no or very little practical difference and, if the organisation was asked the question you pose, the response would be that 'we have different views on this.'

Now of course if you are in Lebanon, Israel, etc. you need a strategy. There, ideally you would work to the majority line (which would of course be best determined internationally - but not essential). I know that's not always going to happen, but I think that can be lived with, as the alternative is a lot worse.

So yes, in extremis, you could even end up on different sides of the barricades but I personally think I could work with comrades in the afternoon after exchanging shots with them in the morning!

That really would be the very worst-case scenario. I can see the holes in my arguments BUT I don't think this should distract from the very large majority of work that can be done with broad agreement.

This may sound unlikely but I think the pull of a hegemonic and accepted international (or national) organisation would make you not want to put yourself outside of that.

Although I have heard of the Socialist Green Unity Coalition I am not familiar with the detail. My view on any unity is that we should work with any socialist from left LP members leftwards.

With Greens it would depend. If there is agreement on a minimum set of policy, then yes. So no to rightwing Greens and yes to left Greens.

I don't buy the classic answer that only movements based on or from workers or their bodies like TUs can be worked with as bodies like Greens can turn right.

It is correct that Greens can go such (e.g. in Germany) but then workers parties can head even further right e.g. JVP in Sri Lanka, endless 'official communist' parties that were in power, Labour, etc. I judge them on what they argue for in the here and now, not some spurious dated 'analysis' of whom they supposedly represent."


28/07/06

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Southpawpunch on other blogs - this week:

Islamists

"I’m also sure that there are also various fundamentalist sects - Christian, ‘New Age’ and more that threaten death or at least very bad things to those who leave.
But none of that would interest you would it? It’s just Muslim this or Islam that in your monomaniacal obsession with just one of countless superstitious belief systems that maybe the majority of the planet participate in.”

-

You are, as always, selective in your information, Modernity. The Taliban have undertaken many vicious activities, I fully acknowledge it and support them in full knowledge of this.

But you make no mention of the much higher level of imperialist murderous activities e.g. the very rare apology this week by the US forces for a deadly 10-mile random highway-killing spree by their troops. Who do you think can kill more - Taliban AK47s or US aircraft?

And you can indeed be in the same camp as fascists and correct, as Marxists acknowledge. For example, the Indian National Army was worthy of support. They were a Japanese funded army that used captured POWs and pre-war Indian nationalists to fight to kick the British out of India.

Of course the Japanese, whilst promising a free India to the INA, intended no such thing. The INA knew that - they expected to try and come through the middle to remove both invaders - they were right to do so and were a 100 times better than the Congress collaborators in their idea of how to free India.

It can be hard having the courage to be against your own country or even the majority view of Lefts. When the heat turns up and the social chauvinism runs riot, many a former left will capitulate. But it’s ‘moral’ to stay focussed on the big picture, despite all this pressure - such as the 650,000 dead because of the invasion of Iraq."

Shiraz Socialist

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State monitoring of Lefts

"If I had to guess, I'd think that the intelligence services probably used electronic monitoring more than informants - cheaper and more reliable, but I also think that there may be more active than people think.

If there's one set of people who have an exaggerated impression of the importance of left groups, apart from the left itself, it's the cops/MI5 etc.

Information that we have on the state’s activities is slender but what I take to be true, snippets have been uncovered - such as MI5 agents in caravans in Skegness monitoring the adjoining SWP summer event and cops under the stage recording proceedings at a Militant conference.

The former WRP and groups like the Spartacists take one wrong approach to this - they were/are paranoid and have both taken mad actions because of their perception of the threat and have smeared rivals as touts.

The SWP take the other wrong approach - they laugh at the threat and malign any suggesting basic security as being toytown politicos playing at being counter-spies.

I think there is also a danger from the social gnomes who do things like become special constables and are not a million miles from the 'corbeaux' who wrote many letters to the authorities in wartime France denouncing their neighbours as communists and Jews, etc.

A modern day incarnation of these sorts of people, those who like to suck up to authority, are those in organisations like 'Vigil'. They got a lot of glowing media coverage a little while ago, their method was interesting - they infiltrated Islamist web boards and both acted as agent provocateurs and tried to entrap Islamists.

I think it only sensible to conclude that such lowlifes operate on Left boards as well. I think comrades should exercise more self-restraint. It may be hard not to respond to someone who is trying to paint you as being not left at all but you need to think that the 'militant' questioning your commitment may in fact be a sad individual looking to ingratiate themselves with the authorities by seeking to set you up.

There's a correct third route. Use basic security that may thwart some of the more amateur attempts of the state but also will help if things do ever turn left and what today seems just a lifestyle becomes a matter of life and death

I recommend a couple of article about security - http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html
and http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/security.html"

Dave's Part

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Flickr, Yahoo’s photosharing network, is criticised for censoring

"I think it's an interesting wake up call. Flickr are superb at the Bodyshop school of capitalism – ‘we’re just doing it for love and to help people and our ethics are beyond reproach.’

So on Flickr, you see endless naive posts by people very politely taking up customer service issues on their forums.

It's time people realised they are just like your phone company - you pay them for a service, they do as little as they can get away with and make a bundle off you. Your attitude to them should be the same as any other company. They’re not your ‘friends’."

Let's Take Over

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A celebration (by some) of 30 years of punk with a chance to win commemorative t-shirts

"I can do no better than reproduce what I wrote elsewhere on that band (The Clash).

‘I’ve always found the cult of Joe Strummer, on the Left, strange.

I remember people would do things like carrying Beatboxes playing Clash songs in the mid/late 80s on demos. I thought it had gone but I have seen some revival recently...

A little of the music is ace, much so-so - … the political line throughout is soft Left or third-worldist (so admittedly better than the present all non-political stuff).

My memory of the Clash, growing up, was a very few good tunes but also the laughable posing - the 'guerrilla' ' style photos in scenes of urban deprivation which even us 14 years olds could see through … and, when I did see the band, them being worse than the (lamentable) Theatre of Hate who supported them at The Manchester Apollo in 1980.

But the life - Strummer was a Chilterns dwelling Squire with kids in public school. A hypocrite.’

But I can do better in talking about punk as a whole and people who wear t-shirts like that. I can quote Jah Wobble, writing in the Independent on Sunday, yesterday. He was talking about an Alan Parker (a hack biographer of Sid Vicious).

He said that he is “is one of a coterie of blokes that eke out a living by stripping the last remains from the carcass of punk. Most of them are from the provinces and the majority of them seems to be in their late thirties/early forties and therefore would have been no more than 12 or 13 when it happened…They all gather at the funerals of punk luminaries, where they adopt the personae of old soldiers attending the wakes of fallen heroes…Rest assured Sid would have hatred them all… It is the absolute antithesis of the punk scene in 1977.’

The past has gone. Out with old and in with new. Burn it down and start again. The pleadings by others to win the t-shirts are both risible and very fucking sad.

If awarded the shirts I promise to BURN all of them straightaway, photograph the whole process and publish a comprehensive set of photos of the action on my website or a linked one.

I’ll even throw in a shot (if I can get it sent to me in time) of me, aged 15, pogoing to a long forgotten Manchester punk / new wave band to conclude the ‘Who is Southpawpunch? Poll’ on my site."

Dave's Part

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A call for even more Southpawpunch websites?

"Yes, Strappy as it happens I was thinking along the same lines.

Maybe ‘Southpawpunch Energy’ - switch your energy supplier to Southpawpunch and get discounted subscriptions to various left publications and a complete refund of all your energy payments once the utility companies have been expropriated.

Or perhaps ‘Southpawpunch Dating’? Are you Billy No Marx? Do women laugh at you when you invite them back to your bed-sit to have a look through old copies of Socialist Challenge? Join ‘Southpawpunch Dating’ to get the details of 3 hot trot women.

Be aware though that, as the Left ever shrinks, you may well have expelled your prospective date, already slept with her or she could be your sister."

Stroppyblog

Southpawpunch Comments - The best of my comments that I make elsewhere

I’m pleased to be making this week’s article a joint post with my new subsidary site Southpawpunch Comments.

Southpawpunch Comments will publish what I think are the most interesting comments that I make on other sites.

I’ve been thinking that some of what I write isn’t easily available to those who may wish to read it - unless they go to the same sites as I do.

And points I make elsewhere can be hard to find later - comments usually aren’t picked up by search engines and it can be hard keeping track of all the different threads to which I may post.

And let's be frank - many are sharp, acerbic, deal with difficult topics and are a lot bolder than the mush and mess littering both 'Marxist' and moderate sites. Maybe some of my comments are worth more than evaporating when the historical work of the reformist sites is finally done and they are forced off the stage of history.

Mainly from memory, I’ve collected a few of my previous comments (below) under the name of the blog where I first made them. (If you remember anything else you think worth including, please do let me know by sending me a link).

Next week I shall also publish some of my previous comments made on Southpawpunch and that are currently just hidden away in the comments boxes. Pulling them out to the main site will make them easier to find.

But in future I’ll be adding comments on a chronological basis, not by blog - I’ll post maybe a weekly article or a less frequent round-up (when I don’t say much) of my most recent comments at Southpawpunch Comments.

I won’t publish anything there until the original thread appears to have finished. Some comments that I will publish there will have minor edits - for clarity, spelling or grammar.

Of course, this is all rather one-sided. I will give a little background about the issue that was being discussed but I won’t be including the comments and the original posts of others - articles will just get far too long if I include everyone else’s text.

I also won’t be allowing comments on Southpawpunch Comments. I think debates read better when they continue where they started. I’ll publish a link (detailed links will be find on the Southpawlinks site) - if you want to make a point, or find out more, you can go to the original site.

I’d love to combine Southpawpunch, Southpawpunch Comments and Southpawpunch Life into one website with a multi-stranded front page that included all of these and more. If anyone knows how to do this, incorporating these blogs in a cheap (or free) and simple way, please do let me know.

I don’t know of anyone else who has published a site to report the comments that they make elsewhere. Can you copyright an idea like this? I’m sure many a multi-national has protected far more nebulous concepts. I intend ensuring that all the Southpawpunch sites are as innovative as the technology allows - this new site is one of the many new ideas that I try.

(Oh, and I’m looking forward to publishing my next article at Southpawpunch Life, my arts, culture & more site. I’ve written a full-length arts article, drawing on my visit last month to many Amsterdam museums. However an unexpected visit this week to Antwerp should give me a chance to look at their museum and maybe add some more to what I have drafted. I hope to publish this article in the next week).

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Southpawpunch comments:-

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Stroppyblog

Strappybird welcomes Paris Hilton’s re-imprisonment.

"100% wrong.

Socialists don't celebrate some person being sent to jail for 45 days for driving on a suspended licence.

Socialists don't dismiss out of hand any manifestation of mental illness as 'making it up'.

Socialists don't support unfair treatment of even the super rich for reasons like this - I read it's common for people to just serve 10% of their jail time because of prison overcrowding in LA.

I don't know that much about her but someone living the life she does probably would find prison especially harsh - a million miles away from the live she normally leads so it's not that surprising that it lead to tears, like a child. Liberate Paris (and on to Berlin!)

Your political trajectory is clear - Sussex Womens Institute beckons."

13 June 2007

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Louisefeminista looks back on 2006 and namechecks Southpawpunch as an ‘ultraleft’.

"Southpawpunch - Ultra-left adventurist or consistent revolutionary socialist who is not swayed by the vagaries of the ever-changing face of capitalist exploitation?

It’s interesting that you look back on your first year of blogging in which you have frequently looked askance at the ‘ultra left’ ‘Trotskyism’ of your ‘yoof’. From being an ostensible 4th to a ‘Labour Less Blairite’ is a long road but a path well travelled.

But how will you look back in 10 years?

‘Colleagues,

I’m sorry that this will be last annual review at the StroppyBlogLouiseFeminista Multimodal Communications Portal™ following our successful sale to Murdoch & Sons ‘WomenTalk2Women’ platform.

It ’s time to look back. 6 promotions on the ‘Trot’ (sic) in the mid 00s enabled me to empower myself and set up in business as a ‘workers co-operative’ with Stroppy and establish ‘Revanch™ - by women, 4 women.’ No more exploitation of me by men!

The combination of woman manufactured product (sourced at 29c per hour in Uganda), women management through a workers co-operative (net profits of £1.3M each trousered last year by the co-operative - me and Stroppy) and our sassy initial marketing (following the trail of many successful Brighton gay entrepreneurs and that other Sussex woman who made a difference - Anita Roddick) we marketed initially to the BDSM crowd; greenies (all our rubber is sourced from land indigenous to native Indian tribes) and the ‘socially concerned’ through utilising our famous pledge ‘I promise to give to Oxfam every time Revanch™ makes me cum!’.

Now that I am a successful businesswoman whose microchipped sexual fulfilment tools can be found in the high street, from Mothercare to Starbucks, I have more time to return to my first love - radical politics!

So I am very pleased to confirm that, following my stellar performance as a Liberal peer, Lembit (as Prime Minister) has personally recommended me to replace his 7th wife, Lady Cheeky-Opik of Transylvania as Chair of the Blood Transfusion Service following the unfortunate theft of 2.3 million litres of donated blood serum by his 1st wife, the sister of the 7th.

So with your Revanch™ product in your bag and myself heading the Blood Transfusion Service, there really is no need for women ever to exchange bodily secretions ever again with men!!"

29 December 2006

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Dave's Part

Despite McDonnell’s humiliation, Labour Lefts play hard to get with desperate Reds.

“When I first moved to London long ago, my idiot North West friends and relatives asked, ‘isn’t it dangerous, when you go out to clubs and the like?

And I replied, no, it’s a lot worse in small town England. Places like Lefttown.

In London, there’s no history. You’re not going to come across someone who you had a fight with in the bus station a few years ago. There’s no chance that you will meet your Ex’s now b/f who you used to know from the terraces and who is after your blood. There’s also no chance that you will meet those renegades you expelled or have your former Bennite friends pretend that night together ever happened.

And you know you’ve got to stop going to those small town clubs. But still you go.

So now you may reckon your chances with Labour Left man or woman, hanging around near the dance floor. But they are only here, most probably temporarily, because the bouncers denied them entry into Gordon’s Wine Bar.

It’s too early to tell whether they will be let back in there later or are permanently excluded but that’s where they want to be. They hate slumming it here with you and whilst they may make conversation, any number you get from them will be fake.

They even tell you to your face ‘We're not joining in for some no-mark sex’. They wouldn’t if you were God’s Gift, either (a mass Left or even communist party). They’re incurable reformists. Go and chat up someone else."

--

"I’d say Left Labour isn’t (at say 15,000) 10x bigger than the non-Labour left. Maybe 6000 in all other organisations. And the average SWP member, for example, works 3x as hard as a LP type. And how Left is the Labour Left that includes cuts-making councillors and where McDonnell’s platform was no more left than Meacher’s?

And sure, there are very few Lefts anywhere, but electoral support isn’t a perfect measure of this, e.g. richer parties have the resources to do better than they would.

And yes, Dave, the end of revolutionary socialism (like the once large Temperance movement) is more likely than John Rees, Peter Taaffe, Alan Clinton et al getting into bed together. The conditions of capitalism will always create a fightback although that doesn’t mean a thinking and organised fightback will exist.

I’ve written a strategy - Organisational unity for starters. Sure, no-one’s listening but how is LP membership a means to a socialist world?

It may feel like onanism at present, being a Red, but maybe some foreign siren - speaking French, Italian or Spanish maybe, - will be along to rescue us Reds if we just hold out."

--

"What I meant by "It may feel like onanism at present, being a Red, but maybe some foreign siren - speaking French, Italian or Spanish maybe, - will be along to rescue us Reds if we just hold out." was the possibility that revolution or similar, in say Argentina, could come to the rescue of us very isolated British reds.

I thought that would be clear but maybe it wasn't."

26 May 2007

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Dave criticises Workers Power for being ultraleft

“I think Dave is correct in his criticisms of both the language and method that Workers Power are using.

There’s nothing wrong with ‘demanding’ but it’s not the best language to use unless there are lots of you and you are powerful enough to attempt to put your words into action. The desired outcome is reasonable enough - if you had muscle - and I don’t see anything wrong in having a goal but, yes, it’s currently unachievable and it reads silly to raise it like this. I think the WP comrades might (they might not) rethink their language if this was pointed out to them.

But I think it’s telling of comrades, to look at the sort of venom they will use against those who aren’t - in the whole gamut of politics, from fascism to communism - that far away from them.

In the same way that Right Labour or Centre Labour will act in way that shows they think Left Labour is from the Ark or beyond the pale, (e.g. I’ve seen them call Campaign Group types ‘mad Trot wreckers’, scum etc) so those commenting here who have made their peace with capitalism now sound just the same as the other commentators who have never contemplated the revolutionary alternative.

We’ve probably all worked in places where people have thought our politics are ‘mad’ - where we were very politically isolated - and I mean that for all of us, from Trotskyists to Labour types. I‘ve heard terms such as ‘bunch of kids’, ‘pathetic’, ‘saddos’ ‘hilarious’ used in my workplaces by the non-political against Labour party types who have argued for a trade union.

I think of all these terms used here, criticising people for being young or suggesting something must have been written by someone young (with the implication of them being gullible) debars that person from any description of them being a communist.

Workers Power argument is wrong, possibly ultra-left. But they acquit themselves a lot better, with this over enthusiastic dreaming, compared to the jaded and sneering cynicism displayed by so many here. That’s one of the reasons I’ve generally stopped commenting here. I need to go and wash out my mouth, there’s bad taste.”

19 May 2007

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Those wanted to be (and their sock puppets) the Labour candidate in Bethnal Green and Bow at the next election, scramble to anonymously slur their rivals.

“The above just says it all about Labour Party types.

Various acolytes of the 'important', here to dish the dirt on the 'opposition' or big up those that they hope will be or are in political relationships with them.

Meanwhile the hooded wannabe assassins look up to various careerist hopefuls who are scrambling overthemselves to see who can get the selection jackpot and its associated largesse.

Very little has changed since Hogarth drew it.

A pox on them all."

--

"How much effect has the (pitiful) minimum wage had in Tower Hamlets? Many of the employers would have to pay above this level anyway, in London, because of wage competition - even incl. people like McDonalds.

There are, of course, a fair number of people still working below the NMW level. As I - reported - numerous employers openly advertise non-NMW compliant jobs in ads, with little fear of enforcement so what chance for a worker toiling in a garment sweatshop of them getting his/her legal minimums?

But the big lie is about Galloway. He’s one of yours (an old style Labour left) than one of ours (a Trot) - as he’d be the first to point out.

It’s a shame that the SWP still give that opportunist cover he doesn’t deserve, and so tar all of us revolutionary socialists (he’s always mentioned to me as the number one example of what’s wrong with ‘far lefties’, like ‘Red Ken’ once was). If Trots do turn right wing, then criticise those right-wingers (such as Byers) but that’s no rebuttal to their politics 20 years previously.

What’s Labour ever done for Tower Hamlets? It’s a sea of poverty between two of the wealthiest places on the planet, the City and Canary Wharf. I don’t think you understand just how hated Labour are, and just that fact could get a Respect MP elected again.

I look forward to that, if only to put a spoke in the career aspirations of all those slugs scrabbling for selection. Or as they’d put it - feeling bound to put myself forward to see whether one might be of service?"

(Galloway claimed to be a ‘child of the 60s’)

“He is a child of the 60s in a Saturday Night, Sunday Morning way. That woman, from what I recall, was a child of the 60s in a Woodstock way. Whilst all the Easy Rider kids may have bought a Mondeo, there may still be one or two old style Labour MPs left with the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

But all those films are poor. We need a Battleship Potyomkin."

(One of the failed candidates, Rupa Huq, posts further - “I am prepared to say that I am resopnsible for comment at www.rupahuq.co.uk on it all”).

“But you're not though, are you?

Your post uses a very dishonest method of casting aspersions on the selected candidate. It’s as bitter as bitter can be, doubtless the frustration of thwarted career advancement. I’ve copied your post and would consider posting it on my blog if your career sensibilities kick in and you later remove it.

You state a 'Mike Smith' (who he?) answered a survey that includes allegations of privileged access to membership lists and other inane slurs such as 'having appeared on screen in tacky underwear'. Anyone reading this will presume these comments are about the successful candidate.

After reporting all this, you sign off with the incredibly weasel words - 'Dunno if I agree with all of the above but undoubtedly Rushanara will make a brilliant candidate and MP.'

If you are going to make allegations, put your name to them. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they are all true and that there are similar black marks against all the candidates.

And how close are you to BGB Bitch? Are you BGB Bitch?

If I may offer you some advice, if you want to advance your LP career you obviously need to play even dirtier than your opponents, in future.

I mean you're no worse than the rest. But revolutionary socialists will always oppose you and your ilk. Those who offer no more than a few temporary reforms when there is a whole world to be won.”

16 April 2007

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Dave Osler compares the Red Army Faction (often called the ‘Baader-Meinhof’ gang) and the IRA.

“It’s misleading to compare the two - the RAF and the IRA. One was a ‘communist’ fighting group, the other is/was the main component of a national liberation movement.

The former included a few who believed pretty much in the (anarchist) theory of ‘propaganda of the deed’ - their actions would be a catalyst for communism; the latter were (and are) a mass movement who believed in the Armalite and the Ballot Box to remove the remaining part of Ireland from British control.

So it’s not surprising that revolutionary socialists have different views on each organisation - we would point out the limitations of the former (as the RAF claimed wrongly to be communists) but also not be displeased by their execution of a few oppressors. We would defend the actions of the latter.

Revolutionary socialists support national liberation struggles despite the politics of those leading them. If Congress had taken up arms against the British in India, their liberal support in the UK would have fallen away but they would have achieved their aims a lot quicker - Afghanistan spent little time then under imperialist rule because of its violent resistance.

It’s always been the excuse of hand wringing spectators to say - ‘labour can’t wait’ or ‘you’re not proper socialists’ or to vaguely quote Marx out of context, ‘the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves’. Marx (and Trotsky) were clear in their support for violent Irish nationalists.

Being a communist means supporting many things that may not be core to the class relations of society. We support the rights of gays for full equality but it isn’t because that necessarily relates to socialism - a capitalist society could treat gays completely equally.

We support gay rights simply because this equality is just. And if the only way gay equality could be achieved was to shoot e.g. those who hang homosexuals (in some countries) then we would support this violent tactic.

It’s silly to suggest that the politics of the RAF may lead to fascism. Many of the former members of the Weather Underground (the nearest US equivalent) are now greeny types.

But it’s good to know where types like you stand. As the bullets fly and the bombs explode; as Iraqis and Afghanistan’s desperately seek to expel the foreign occupier; you appear to be telling them to go read their, I don’t know what, Labour Left Briefing? And learn about socialism.

Communists don’t take that view, we take sides. We said victory to the IRA and we now say victory to the Iraqi and Afghani (and Iranian?) resistance.

My current article happens to deal with just this issue. Click my link if you want to read more."

--

"There's nothing wrong with a word like 'just' (I didn't use the word 'justice').
You're right that some Trots may think such terms are 'moralism' or similar but I demur. Some would argue that we fight against e.g. racism because to do so is to attack capitalism. Again, I demur, you could have a non-racist capitalism (but never had had).

These struggles are 'just'(and, yes, also attack present day capitalism). Marxists are the best democrats, the most fervent partisans against inequality.

Killing industrialists in 1970s Germany did little, as I stated. But some of it e.g. killing NATO functionaries was, indeed, justice.

Anyway who supported the IRA needs to support it as a whole. So on e.g. Warrington I would have taken the view that I'm sure the IRA took. It would have been regrettable either that they screwed up or the state ignored the warning. It sounds blasé to say there will be civilian casualties in war, but it's true.

And indeed you don't need to take sides in a war. You can just leave people to die in the street. You can just stroll on by. I recommend that course to you."

--

"It's funny how only Republican 'atrocities' get remembered.

You know as well as I do that IRA policy has never been killing people for 'mixing' or other such reactionary reasons. It's a complete red herring.

If an IRA volunteer did it, then I hope s/he was shot for such a sectarian act. And even if it happened (rather than just reported like that in the Daily Mail), it would be one of a few grim examples amongst many killings of perfectly ‘legitimate targets’.

And on 'legitimate targets' - why was the woman killed? I recall someone like that - maybe her - who was killed for 'assisting the enemy' or similar in the Divis Flats, I think - although she may not have done so at all.

If people do collaborate, if they do inform, it would be good to imprison them. But in a guerrilla campaign, you can only kill them (or sometimes exile, in minor cases). And that's just.

Oh how you exTrots slip away in national chauvinism as LP members and as your retirement from revolutionary politics lengthens.

But, kids, it wasn't always so. Some of these 'reds' once were in organisations with principled anti-imperialist lines. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Red_Mole.jpg
I hope any youth reading will seek to maintain the continuity of revolutionary support for those who realise that just writing petitions will get them nowhere."

--

"Indeed I do mean the Taliban and all the others even when they would (and do) fight one another.

Victory to the resistance is the correct slogan. It means victory to the resistors - as a group - against occupation.

'Troops out' would be fine, and I would use any tactic to get them out but I would rather see the imperialists defeated, like in Vietnam.

In the same way that the French resistance contained everyone from Trotskyists to Royalists, so does the 'resistance' in Iraq (although doubtless no Trots).

Communists obviously never offer political support for the Taliban but offer military support in this period. And once the occupiers are gone, the Taliban, Mahdi army, etc becomes the/a main enemy.”

12 February 2007

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Does Britain need nuclear weapons?

"Ditto Alex on GDP - and - it's a long way down the reformist path to argue about who deserves a seat on the UN.

And it's not the case that we don't not want nukes because 'Britain's place in the world is diminished'. We don't want the bosses to have weapons because they may use them against our brothers and sisters in Iran, N Korea, etc. They would use them against us, if they could, as well. Basic, ABC, revolutionary socialism.

The UK's nuclear strategy also seems very odd. They are going to stick them all on three submarines, one of which may be seaborne at any one time.

So if anyone is going to attack then just find (hard, I know, but surely not impossible) the sub and sink it and nuke Portsmouth(?) to destroy the other two.
I hope it's the French who work this out first - 35 hour weeks, decent food, better football team, women who don't buy their underwear in Asda."

11 November 2006

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On supporting anti-imperialist resistance

"Look, what I'm arguing is pretty standard Trotskyism i.e. revolutionary socialism (and that's in London, Leeds or Luanda).

I can appreciate the arguments of genuine pacifists - you punch me in the face, I won't punch back - but find the hypocricy of the rest of you breathtaking.

You support imperalism directly or you take a 'plague on both their houses' position - which means in short, we'll look the other way while the e.g, Brits et al (and certainly not just the USA - I've no time for anti-Americanism) kick in your door.

But we've had this debate before, repeatedly. I'm sorry it's come to dominate this post - my fault - and will say no more or indeed take up the cause of Marxism on this issue, on this blog for some time. I only post in the hope that a few (young, probably) socialists may be amenable to communism and repulsed by the pro-imperialist, Labour supporting talk here.

There is an alternative - a route to human liberation. "Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."


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I’m taken to task for arguing for the road that leads to ‘heaven on earth’.

"Ed -‘heaven on earth’ I mean it in a few ways.

As a reverse to religious doctrine - especially to those that tell you to be content with your lot on earth, as your labour will be rewarded in the afterlife.

And I do think life on earth could be ‘heavenly’ in the way that life now would seem like this to someone from 1000AD. For example, I think the scourge of AIDS would be eliminated a lot quicker with one, international medical research charged with finding the answer, rather than many competing pharmaceutical companies currently duplicating each others work in the race to find a cure that works and makes money (which is why there is not yet a malaria cure).

I don’t mean that things will be all fluffy and we will be sitting around playing lutes all day but I also mean it a riposte to those with a corrosive cynicism. There is a big picture that many have lost sight of over time. It’s a shame, sometimes, that commentators here will praise the music of their youth but are embarrassed by their politics from then.

The situation is now as it was and their politics should have remained the same. Distant as the prospect may be, advances are possible – even revolution. I may not agree with the politics of this group but they are at least trying.

And if you also think that curing AIDS, stopping all preventable diseases, taking music and art to unheard of levels are targets to be aimed for, I would suggest to you that reformism has never got anywhere near this, only revolutionary socialism would take us towards this."


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Red Squirrel's Lair

Korakious argues against the Union of England & Wales and Scotland. I disagree.

“Your argument appears to be (‘by extension’) that if parasites like the CE of Tesco’s are unionists, them Marxists should be opposed to unionism. That’s no argument, I can think of many issues on which Marxists and millionaires are agreed - e.g. the world is round.

You are simply reversing that which you mock - ‘if the bourgeoisie wants something, there is zero chance that the working class might benefit for it.’

It’s just wrong to argue that the RBS would benefit from an independent Scotland. It is the biggest bank in Scotland but it’s also the 2nd biggest bank in the UK. It might benefit from better access to the ‘levers of power’ in an Edinburgh based state but the vast majority of its UK customers are in England. It would lose some weight if lobbying Whitehall as a foreign bank.

You make only a (flawed) case for why an independent Scotland would be better for some Scottish capitalists but none about why it would be better for Scottish (and indeed British) workers.

Nationalism, for those other than oppressed nationalities, is poison. Socialists don’t want people wrapping themselves in the Saltire anymore than the want them to drape the Union Flag.

Scots aren’t oppressed nationally; they’re not denied democratic rights anymore than someone English, and unlike how the Irish were. They don’t yet (although may yet do) have a majority support for independence that is being denied.

In these circumstances, I’m as oppressed identically in London by the rate on my RBS Credit Card, or by my Hull headquartered employer, as is a worker in Lossiemouth or Lockerbie.

It makes absolutely no sense for workers to break up a cross-national united fightback against Capital. Let’s expropriate RBS together. Indeed I also look forward to British workers unity being subsumed into European, if not World Workers Unity.”

30 April 2007

---

And then, more in the next post

“Comrade,

That was an interesting article.

-

I first wanted to say that I know the mood must be pretty downbeat in Scotland after the recent elections.

But I still feel that you have made that quantative step forward, ahead of the rest of Britain, and you should seek to maintain that.

I’ve been arguing with English comrades for a while that there is no place for Lefts in the Labour Party.

When, as expected, McDonnell doesn’t get on the ballot paper (or does, and is crushed) a lot of those people, I think will say - what are we doing in Labour?

But they will also think that there is nothing outside Labour (in England and Wales) to join. They see Respect (somewhat understandably) as beyond the pale.

It’s to our disadvantage that there isn’t an English Socialist Party (or rather better a British Socialist Party, or even better a Word Socialist Party) like there is the SSP (and rather that than Solidarity).

-

On the article

You say (I) understood that (your) rationale was that if large capital is in favour of the union, then we should be against it. I don’t think I do say that but people can read your previous article and make up their own minds.

I would agree with independence as a tactic if it were demonstrably clear that the Left movement in Scotland was being held back a more right wing England but I don’t see any great proof that there is much red water between the level of political and socialist support in the two countries.

Yes, there may be a far greater concentration of Labour MPs in the Central Belt than England as a whole but I imagine the area shares the similar characteristics to say London or the North East. It was only 50 years ago or so that, I believe, Scotland had a majority of Tory MPs.

You state by first attempting to knock down the usual ‘Left Unionist’ arguments. Although you make the case for independence later it’s noticeable you can’t make the case for separation when you deal with these initial matters.

I thought your summing up of the usual case against nationalism was correct (e.g. The most common points Brit lefties...) save Lefts do support the rights of oppressed nations to secede e.g. Chechnya.

But I’d also say British capitalism (and, even more so, Scottish capitalism) is a misnomer - they are just subsets of international capitalism with the differences being deleted daily.

There’s not much, looking around my desk, that hasn’t been produced by a Multi National Company (MNC) rather than a ‘British’ company.

I very much doubt that the Scottish economy is based on ‘small to medium sized businesses’. I think it’s based on the public sector and then MNC oil, transport, banking, food and drink, media and other large companies employing the large majority of workers. I’m going to guess that even in tourism a large number of workers are employed by MNCs.

It doesn’t advance things when you say - don’t worry, if we part, the unions will stay united (well they may not - there are UK and Ireland unions but also purely Irish unions and purely Scottish unions) but that’s not an argument saying why there should be a parting - what advantage is there to trade union organisation in Scottish independence?

You claim “Nationalist groups are a small minority in the independence movement” That’s hard to swallow. What is the independence movement if it is not a nationalist movement? I accept it doesn’t indulge in anti-English rhetoric but again your noting a problem that doesn’t exist makes no movement in arguing the case for.

So what is the reason that many Scottish workers support independence? I suspect few think they may be better off in an independent Scotland. I suspect a lot feel that they are somehow disadvantaged, discriminated against or oppressed by ‘England’ and doubtless it’s mixed with some (non aggressive) national pride of a Tartan Army type.

It’s not a national feeling, but you will get a resonance of that view expressed by people in places like the North East of England or even in my home place of Manchester (‘them down in the Smoke’) where they will see their region as ignored or discriminated against by the capital dwellers.

But that’s all a big con. It’s like when the workers in a regional office complain to the management and are fobbed off. Their local bosses say, ‘don’t blame us, head office just make the decisions and we have to implement them - whether they are right or wrong.’ Scottish bosses, with independence leanings, are leading Scottish workers’ anger down a blind alley.

All national identities are ‘artificially constructed’. As I recall, English national identity was most made in the (9th Century?) by Alfred the Great. I imagine the Scottish nation was formed at about the same time - although the Shetlands and Orkneys didn’t join the country until 1468.

And just because (and only arguably) British national identity was established by a ‘conservative ruling class that was threatened by both the radical elements of the bourgeoisie’ makes it no better or worse a national feeling.

The article is correct in saying ‘the links that English, Scottish and Welsh workers have built in decades of struggle are not subject to the existence of the British repressive apparatus’.

Agreed, although presumably it could become harder (e.g. through increasing different legislation) but how does break-up move forward, in any way, such struggles?

You claim ‘Setting up an independent Scottish state would give us the chance here (provided of course that we are actively involved) to establish an apparatus that is far more representative and with considerably less authoritarian powers, thus providing considerably more fertile ground for socialists to organize and agitate.’

No such event took place when most of Ireland wasn’t just given its independence, but took it. Such a scenario, as you envisage, is possible but the most likely scenario would be just Scotland detaching as it is - with no major representational changes in either country. I’m not aware that the end of Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia led to any more democratic regimes in any of the successor countries.

The loss of, perhaps, a seventh of the UK’s economy if Scotland seceded - and when the USA’s economy is seven times that of Britain - is no great potatoes. It may reduce Britain in the GDP rankings down two places to below France and Italy.

Once Britain would have directed the use of Australian troops. The fact that both countries now do this independently makes no difference to the actual outcome.

So Scotland could go a Scandinavian or Irish route (which isn’t neutral - they’re NATO members) but it would hardly affect the balance of forces.

As you say ‘The movement for Scottish independence must have a specifically defined goal of setting up a republic that is not servile to imperialist interests, a republic that adopts radical solutions to poverty and other social ills; a social republic if you will.”

Agreed. And if it were tactically easier to do this on a Scottish basis than a British basis, then I would support Scottish independence.

But I’m not convinced at all you have outlined that it is - a more likely outcome is to unleash the poison of nationalism.”

13 May 2007

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Shiraz Socialist

In response to Alliance for Workers Liberty arguments on Palestine/Israel - and then onto the Malvinas/Falklands.

"I was also as a member of Socialist Organiser a bit before this time I do remember how this programme that you claim Sean Matgamna was supporting had it fact changed a lot from supporting the Hunger Strikes etc and national self determination to eventually the two state stuff that it is now.

So Matgamna would now see the national rights of the 43% of NI that is Catholic and the population of the South being subverted by the Protestant population of the North (in broad terms). Maybe they would support a White State in parts of South Africa, too.

And so with Israel. Is there any other state in the Middle East that comprehensively discriminates against a section of its population (the Arabs) with many theocratic underpinnings, is built on land stolen from those still alive and displaced, regularly attacks neighbours with overwhelming brutality and still seeks to conquer new territory (e.g. with the wall). Even a Shia'a in Saudi or in Saddam's Iraq would be unlikely to get his house bulldozed or denied the right to internal travel

To allow Israel to continue would have been like sending NI on a course from the late 60s in which the B Specials weren't disbanded but furnished with jet fighters, in which Republicans had their houses burnt down and were kicked across the border or shot, where the SDLP was banned and Iain Paisley's church took over the education system.

With no concessions at all to the anti-semites and those who really would want to push the Jews into the sea, a democratic and secular (and hopefully socialist) state is what we should argue for.

--

Always supporting national groups' or more famously the Kelpers in the Malvinas - hence my exit from SO.

Indeed Lenin did as you say, he supported the national rights of the Irish minority in the (then) UK of GB and Ireland to achieve national independence, not 26/32 independence. Remember the comments of Trotsky (and Lenin) on 1916.

I don't think for a moment that you think that people who argue like me are anti-Semitic or anti 'Unionist people' but you are very flawed when you argue there are 'people' we don't much like - e.g. Israelis, White South Africans as though there is some bigotry.

Naturally we don't like Israeli bosses or indeed Arab rulers but have every degree of worker solidarity and think equally of Jewish workers as of the Arab 'in the street'. I am sure that 'two-state' people do, too.

But in the same way that we would have supported every progressive struggle of Dixie whites against their employers in the USA, we would have also needed to oppose our class brothers and sisters when they acted as a 'national group' (and of course, in concert with their 'own' national group rulers) in asserting their 'independence' from (in their eyes)a different national group, e.g. burning out blacks or lynching them.

--

It’s kind of interesting how a few innocuous comments provoke such debate.

Kelpers aren’t a nation in themselves but British and the conflict was Britain and it’s desire to maintain its colony v Argentina. It wasn’t 1500 Kelpers v Argentina. The Malvinas are like if some Spanish Costa, full of Fish ‘n’ Chip pubs, suddenly declared itself a detached part of Essex.

As you are no doubt proud, the AWL is far removed from most of the left on these issues. Have you ever thought that your distance from the rest of the pack is not clever foresight but an ever increasing flawed deviation from the collective wisdom of most revolutionary socialists?

So Workers Liberty’s current front web page starts well - Stop the Israeli assault on Gaza and Lebanon! But then, in an incredible article, directs most of its fire on Hamas and Hezbollah. What’s the current Palestinian and Lebanese v Israeli death toll since the first prisoner capture?!

The article includes ‘Hamas would rather play with the lives of Palestinian people’ Any organisation that follows a military strategy “plays with the lives of … people”. Only a pacifist can have a problems with this although all note it with regret. Israel is hardly going to take notice of polite requests and whilst it would be welcome, Palestinians can’t wait for mass action by Israeli workers in their support.

The article also states, “Once again senseless small-scale provocative guerrilla action by the militias of Hamas and Hezbollah.” Capturing Israeli soldiers is a good strategy. Past experience suggest the Israelis will pay a high price of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Or should Palestinian prisoners be left to rot?

As you head where Jane Ashworth (There’s a name I never thought I would hear again) and the like have trail blazed the path for you, spare a thought for people like me who never mention their once membership of SO because I then have to spend a further ten minutes explaining they were very different then and distancing myself from your current politics."

Monday, July 17, 2006

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Nation of Duncan

On killing

"I'm not aware of instances of IMG members celebrating deaths of soldiers - it would be an unsocialist thing to do - but they certainly, and correctly, supported the IRA in their fight.

And in the same way, I want the defeat of the occupiers in Iraq which means, sadly, I want US and British troops to be killed.

So whilst I am pleased with any military successes of the resistance, I don't in anyway celebrate the deaths of the troops.

I can't speak for Workers Power, etc but I agree with their slogan and have never met any of them - or other lefts - who actually revel in the deaths of soldiers.

c.f. that to some footage I have seen of former British squaddies, speaking years after the events, mocking or laughing about the dying moments of IRA volunteers or relating how they would taunt they as they lay dying whilst denying them medical aid. Of course such a squaddie may have seen his friends killed the week before.

I can't say a Provo would never do that but I have never seen any say they had - in fact, the reverse, they have said they said prayers for them as they died, etc.

Very grim either way, of course, but I differentiate completely between the violence of the oppressor and that of the oppressed."


March 08, 2007

Reds and Religion

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is”...

Do you know which famous Left quote ends the above paragraph, and which rather takes on a new meaning when read with this rarely mentioned text that prefaces it?

“(Religion)… It is the opium of the people.”(Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right - Karl Marx - 1844)

Many of the hardest working and lowest paid workers in London - the African women cleaners you see on the early morning nightbuses on their long commute into central London, sat with their drawn faces as they fall asleep in their seats - will seem almost joyous when you then come across them dressed up in their finery on Sundays as they travel to their church.

Religious belief has sustained and encouraged those under the heel throughout human existence. Those African women are a good example.

But religious belief has often also been the fog of perception which coloured the way that reformers, or even revolutionaries, have perceived and sought to change the world. Revolutionary socialists need to understand religion, not dismiss it out of hand.

In the English Peasant Revolts of 1381, one of the heroic leaders of the uprising, a priest called John Ball, put the question in Christian terms - “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?"

A few hundred years later, many of the rebels in the English Civil War also saw their strategic aims in Christian terms. Some of best fighters saw a just England as being a Christian theocracy - based upon the communal and brotherly love sections of the Bible.

So it’s no great surprise that many fighters in the current Afghani resistance will often be trying to produce an Islamic state. That’s their worldview, it’s their perception of justice and there are doubtless some progressive (but also many regressive aspects) in that aim.

It is fatally flawed - the Spartacists sometimes print a photo of street life in Kabul in 1980 - it looks a little like London in the fashions, only not a headscarf in sight on the women - but it’d be very wrong to see religious belief as necessarily always reactionary.

Many a secular red will see the religious observances of some other socialists as being unacceptable. A lot of the flack directed at Respect is based upon these concerns. And many an Indian and Indonesian socialist will be scathing about Left religious organisations for their mystical component, despite these bodies occupying more radical ground than they do.

Having religious belief should be no disbar to joining organisations that fight for communism. To contradict what I write below about those who quote ‘holy texts’, I’d still use something from Lenin, if only I could find it. I’ll have to do it from memory -

Bolshevik acolyte: Oi, Vlad, we’ve got this geezer who’s a good communist but we’ve found out he’s also in the Holy Church of the fucking Original Believers! Can you believe this muppet? Do we get rid of him, sharpish like, or what?

Lenin: Do me a favour. If he accepts the programme, argues the politics and is otherwise a good communist, what’s the fucking problem? Leave him alone.

The heart of a heartless world

There’s many wonderful words (such as some of the Psalms of David) and much glorious music (including the Qawwali of Abida Parveen) that has been written in the cause of religion.

If you listen carefully to some preaching their beliefs, you can still sometimes hear a barely audible, but deeply corrupted echo, of the social movements with progressive features that they may once have been.

These would have included the relative advances that the Koran introduced regarding womens’ entitlement to maintenance or the formal equality that Sikhs afforded women or the possibly sensible prohibitions on eating shellfish and certain other foods in a tropical climate - to prevent food poisoning - that may have been the basis for Jewish dietary restrictions.

And if you ever saunter along the serene marble floors of one of the grand Delhi gurdwaras, maybe watching people sitting around contemplating or possibly arranging marriages, you may be taken in by the peaceful and ‘spiritual’ air of the place.

It’s all so very pious now. But this temple may the one that was the execution ground where their guru was beheaded for leading the Sikhs in their original purpose - as an armed resistance against the fierce oppression of the ruling Mughals.

Although they will always have been infused with the mystical gibberish that now consumes the whole of the Sikhism (and every other religion), it’s no accident that their symbols are martial ones - the dagger that all Sikh men are supposed to wear, the iron bracelet that all wear and that was adopted to fend off sword blows or the turban and long hair that identified the devotee and made desertion harder.

Socialism and religion

A socialist society would be tolerant of people’s religious beliefs. People would be able to worship as they wished if they didn’t harm others in doing so. Street preachers would be free to promulgate and not be harassed like they are presently. I’d be in favour of taking a majority vote, of those within earshot, to determine whether a church’s bells can keep ringing.

Adequate facilities would be provided for those who wish to practice religion. I’d imagine some reallocation of resources would occur - the state’s newly owned churches, etc., may well be swopped around so that a few well attended black churches suddenly find themselves given large former CofE churches whilst the scanty congregations of Anglican pensioners may find themselves with the occasional use of a Portakabin behind a scout hut. Whether worshippers should pay for the cost of their use of these state resources may be a moot point, I'd guess they should.

In theory, it’d be good for practices such as circumcision to be restricted to those who are old enough to make an informed choice. But in practice it would continue, as it would be an attack on certain religious groups and would also still be widely practiced (even if banned) which would cause health problems. But reds would hope and expect that religious practices, as well as religion generally and the state itself, would fall away.

The end of superstition

Christianity, Islam, Judaism and the rest mean many different things to their followers. Even a short perusal of the Bible will give you endless contradictory phrases. One of the most famous is 'an eye for an eye' versus 'turn the other cheek'.

And whilst religion is sometimes the voice of the oppressed, it only grew to its tremendous former period of strength through state support - such as the Spanish Conquistadors or the legislative and administrative powers of the CofE in medieval and later England.

I was reading an interview with an observant Muslim who mentioned his acceptance of the constant pain that had been caused by an accident and from which he still suffered. He said that his religion promised rewards in the afterlife to compensate him for his present suffering.

This argument will be familiar to those indoctrinated with Christianity. I bet Judaism and more say the same. And it’s a reason why religion is such a favourite of many bosses - suffer now, accept your miserable lot. It’ll all be better in the afterlife.

It should also be remembered on what shallow ground religious doctrine rests. Take Christianity - there are, I believe, no contemporary accounts of Christ. He wasn’t mentioned by those who reported on the minor disturbances that he was said to have caused. The Gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, were written much later by those with no small interest in the franchise - they were the first leaders of the Christian church - but even their accounts contradict each other.

And let’s not forget the centuries of translation and revision, of what someone may have written millennia before, which have followed. But then if the Roman emperor Constantine hadn’t adopted Christianity as the state religion, maybe that particular set of beliefs would have waned and died like many other forgotten creeds.

So whilst the basis of say Scientology (some of your past traumas may have been deliberately inflicted in the form of implants used by extraterrestrial dictatorships such as Helatrobus to brainwash and control humans) or of the Mormons (the Book of Mormon was written on golden plates in the 4th Century and given to Joseph Smith by an angel 1500 years later) are ludicrous, they’re no madder than those of Christianity (there was this bloke, the son of god, who fed 5000 people with five loaves and a few fish, razed Lazarus from the dead and himself came back to life three days after he was crucified).

Communists are clear in their demands. No to any state supported religion or privileges for the superstitious. No state assistance for its propaganda - in schools and elsewhere. No faith schools. Freedom to practice and believe.

Looking in the mirror?

I sometimes worry that revolutionary socialists take on some of the characteristics of being a modern religion.

I mean, we do love out holy writ. Although there was a lot more quoting of the texts back in the day, I did recently see someone recently trying to crush a detractor by saying 'as Lenin wrote in 1927'.

A few years ago I contemplated trying to draw a family tree of just the different branches of the Trotskyist ‘family’. I realised it’d be a tough job - too many gnarled branches, far too many broken twigs. It’d be even harder now to do this task. But to try and draw such a thing for all the different Christian sects would be a lifetime’s work.

Clear parallels can be seen between the strange and wonderful mutant strains of Christianity that have cross-fertilised, been broken off by storms or were cast asunder over the last two millennia and the twisted and incestuous lineage of today’s wild variety of revolutionary Left groups.

Is there a quantifiable law of all organisations? Maybe there needs to be a critical mass of membership that is a multiple of the percentage acceleration (where war =100% and Britain in 2007 = 4%) of the ‘change in society’ so as to prevent splits.

And if less than a third of the critical mass is present, does a pandemic of general craziness break out?

Which Trot organisation - with a few decades further percolation and decay - will be the first to produce eccentricities like the Anabaptist 'Harmony Society'?

This Christian commune, led by George Rapp, in 19th Century Indiana believed in chastity, communal living, hard work and the forthcoming imminent collapse of capitalism - sorry, the return of the Messiah.

It’s said that Rapp caused his son to bleed to death after castrating him to help with the celibacy obligation. A major split occurred when a Bernhard Muller (who liked to call himself Count Maximilian de Leon) incongruously joined the commune despite his penchant for wild parties and group sex. The Count lost a vote against the 'no sex' rule - 250 to 500 - but in true Bolshevik style, declared himself as having the majority and split.

The Harmony Society lasted about 100 years, which is pretty good going considering a presumed lack of kids. The SWP and its predecessors have been going a bit less than 60 years, the AWL about 40. Let’s see if they make it to a century.

(In the thorough research you know I do before I write each article, I came across what I believe to be the present day site of the Count’s followers.

It’s a very conservative and mainstream American church website featuring photos of their many suburban churches - along with girls with plaits baking cakes, details of some of the Church members who are in elected office and photos of ‘Dads and Lads’ doing voluntary work clearing up a local park. If only they knew.)

Or which Trot guru is most like the British prophet, Joanna Southcott? She was active at the end of the 18th century and saw herself as a figure from the Book of Revelations. She sold places in heaven to an elect 144,000 and promised to give birth to the Messiah shortly before she died at the age of 64.

She left a wooden box of prophecies that was only to be opened in the presence of 24 Anglican bishops. Eventually opened, in front of one bishop in 1927, the box was found to contain items such as a lottery ticket, a pistol and some scrap paper.

The Communist Party of Great Britain, at its height, had 50,00 members and lasted 71 years. It’s estimated that, at its height, there were 100,000 followers of Joanna Southcott.

And the Southcottites are still going. They advertised in the Sunday Express, in the 70s, that "War, disease, crime and banditry will increase until the Bishops open Joanna Southcott's box."

You see, it wasn’t the true box that was opened. Only they, the Panacea Society, are the true inheritors of ‘Joanna Southcott thought’, not those 1920s counter-revolutionaries. They’ve got the real box, listed assets of £20 million in their 2005 Charity Commission accounts (now there’s a worthy target for ‘entryism’) and maintain a mansion that’ll be the residence of the shortly to be returned Messiah. In Bedford.

The unknown

It may be suggestive of an enquiring mind, those who think beyond the mundane and seek answers - be they secular or mystical - but no such credit attaches to those who just follow the faith of their fathers.

So if asked, I’m maybe a bit pedantic. I say I’m an agnostic, not an atheist. But do this pretty much in the way that I am also an agnostic communist in that I can’t say 100% that feudalism isn’t a superior system to socialism (although maybe 99.99%).

And there are unanswerable questions. If the universe started with a Big Bang, from where did all that matter originate? And what was the origin of the origin of that matter - ad infinitum.

I’m not saying these questions suggest any divine element, maybe the reverse e.g. who was god’s mother? But they are all points that are beyond a response and demonstrate our unknowing. It’s good to know your limitations.

Rostock route

My spirits were raised watching protestors taking on the paramilitary arm of the state in Rostock a few days ago, ahead of this week’s G8 summit

But I’ll bet a penny to a pound that the eyes of many British (and other) Lefts eyes glazed over when watching this footage. I know many would have seen little link between this ‘adventurism’ in a Baltic seaport and what they think revolutionary socialists should do.

Adapt

A lot of Lefts will counterpose work in trade unions, participation in tenants associations and activity in similar bodies to mobilising offensively against the state on the streets in situations like Rostock

A few will even see a willingness to work in mass social democratic or Labour parties as being necessary for someone not to be considered as being a dilettante on the margins of the socialist movement.

That'd be an archaic view of what makes for a good communist. It was quite possibly never true but any such arguments would now be unsupportable - with low levels of union density, greater movement of workers, mass casualisation of labour and more. People still organise but not in the ways that they did

Some Left leaders still see anyone with pink hair, a liking for consuming illegal substances or a penchant for participating in unconventional sexual arrangements as being unreliable. Outward revolutionary views can sometimes mask a conservative thinking on how people should live.

The result of such myopia can be to pass by the opportunities that new and emerging social movements can offer. The large scale violent resistance at Seattle kickstarted the anti-globalisation or anti-capitalism movement in a way that no end of Oxfam campaigns, celebrity endorsed initiatives or UN resolutions had previously managed. It also inducted a swathe of new people into protest politics

Orientate

It’s correct to orientate to such movements - the cause is just, the politics are correct. We should celebrate, participate and adopt as part of our strategy those mobilisations that seek to directly confront capitalism. Any communist organisation needs a street fighting ability presence - we want to overthrow capitalism, not play hopscotch with it. And we also want to attract to our communist politics the best elements of those who fight back.

And it’s amongst such people that new and innovative ways of resistance will develop. Revolutionary socialists may have some concerns about a few anarchist inspired developments - such as consensus decisions - but these are also a good example of a welcome rethinking of the basics, such as what form should meetings take, that augur well for the sharp thinking of the originators of these ideas.

So a banner that I saw displayed in Rostock and that was based on the computer message - 'System Error:-->Restart/Quit' - had a lot more punch than a turgid banner displaying just a organisation’s name could ever display.

Seattle inspired many. And the movement of which it was part wasn’t fated to degenerate into just being a support movement for the Naomi Kleins or Susan Georges of this world. That initiative didn’t need to have petered out into the insipid shambles that were events like the London European Social Forum. Communist politics and organisation can develop and sustain these strands of resistance.

Rostock

The violence at Rostock seemed quite extensive. Cops claim that 25,000 marched, organisers said 80,000. There was reported to be battles “between some 2,000 protesters and 5,000 baton-wielding riot police using tear gas and water cannon. At least three cars were set on fire. Police were pelted with Molotov cocktails and cobblestones ripped up from the streets and ferried to a front line in stolen supermarket trolleys.”

Police claim 433 of their officers were injured, 33 of them seriously, although I don’t know if the German cops go sick with a few scratches, like British cops do, to get a few days off. 520 demonstrators are reported to have been injured with 20 severely affected. An estimated 165 protesters were arrested.

There’s a credible argument that the cops provoked the trouble in Rostock. A protestor commented “You have to ask why the Police would want to kick things off when the demo had been so peaceful? No one had deviated from the route of the march. No banks or corporate concerns had been scrawled on or attacked. In fact nothing illegal had happened at all.”

It’s hard to say what really happened but it doesn’t matter. Revolutionary socialists don’t care who started the aggro first (and I mean in any current confrontation - who did actually start all the trouble? The first caveman who started trying to sell ‘his’ surplus to the rest?)

But that’s not to say that we are indifferent to the reporting of events. We are keen to point out when the state attacks first, particularly when the media reports the contrary. We seek to expose the way that the cops and similar will quickly turn to violence. We do this as a lesson both to those who think peaceful change is possible and also to undermine the common caricature that it's always us who seek to provoke trouble.

The press reported that the biggest ‘aggressive’ group was the Black Bloc. Certainly the mass I saw of those taking on the cops were dressed all in that colour. My understanding is that most of them would be of an anarchist disposition but I also believe the Bloc to be a fluid organisation - it contains those with disparate anti-capitalist views.

I was a little surprised to see that the flags I saw, in a few brief TV clips, were mainly red including some from the Trotskyist youth group ‘Revolution’. There were also some with hammer and sickles as well as a few red and black (anarcho-syndicalist) banners.

As per usual, a diversionary concert had been organised. What are protestors doing, after travelling hundreds or thousands of miles, allowing themselves be fobbed off with the chance to listen to some bands instead of marching and more?

Communists and violence

Communists differentiate between the violence of the state and that used to seek to overthrow those who rule. We support comrades’ violence, whether its ‘reactive’ or ‘proactive’.

We may or may not think that going on the offensive is a sensible tactic at a particular juncture. We also realise that such violence is only a small part of a total strategy to overthrow a regime (and I’m sure even the most hard-line anarchist streetfighter also sees their actions as just one of many tactics). But once things kick off, we know which side we are on.

Communists and anarchists and other comrades need to follow tactics and marshal their demos. Provocations will be made by glory hunters and stupid moves undertaken by the naïve. I remember being slightly injured on a demo in London when members of the Revolutionary Communist Party threw sticks and bottles at the cops from the second rank and then scarpered leaving us exposed at the front to bear the brunt of the cops’ reaction.

Anyone sussed sees that street organisation has its limitations. A large percentage of those involved in such activities are in their teens or twenties. No or very few women are there. But such mobilisations are a necessary part of our fightback.

It’s also true that, for every brick lobbed, the more the likelihood that the Towcester Christians at Prayer Together for Peace Group won't book a coach and travel down to the demo. It’d be sectarian to not want concerned social activists to come along but it'd also be suicidal to our politics to let them determine the agenda.

Close the 'arms gap'

Better organisation is also needed to maintain a street presence. The ‘arms gap’ between the agents of the rulers and those who are ruled has been increasing. We need to think about how we deal with new challenges like the following.

I previously predicted that police drones would soon be flying overhead in Britain to watch and record. It was reported last month that these have now started flying in Liverpool. Let’s see where they are first armed in Britain, like they are now in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

German cops have developed a technique of recording peoples’ odours. A few weeks ago they conducted raids to collect the smell signature of various activists. They obliged them to hold bundle of metal tubes in their clenched fists for several minutes to absorb their odour. The cops said that they were doing this to look for suspects for a crime but it has been reported that they would be likely to use these techniques to get police dogs to single out individuals.

(I’m always wary of being spun a line by the state, as they like to install fear and dread by bigging up their technical capabilities. Would they be able to easily manufacture a smell that is a close enough match to that of their target to waft under the nose of a police dog? Or can they preserve original samples well enough to be reused?)

The opposition

The BBC report on the Rostock trouble that I saw appeared to have planned in advance between the news team and the spokesperson from Oxfam who was their interviewee.

The NGO person was just there to ritually condemn the violence - that’s the violence of the protestors, of course.

Fed line after line by the BBC journalist like ‘these protestors aren't helping, are they?’ or ‘what do you have to say about these people who are ruining it for everybody?’ the Oxfam person wouldn’t allow herself to be bettered by anyone in her forceful condemnation of those who want to fight capitalism rather than make it just seem a little fluffier. She also claimed that the only way that change can be achieved is through dialogue with politicians - if people are violent, ministers won't listen.

Well, be as on message and engaged with politicians as you like, Ms. NGO. Let them humour you and give you the time of day. But they are paying next to no attention to your arguments or advancing anything more than a mite from their Treasury.

At the Gleneagles G8 meeting two years ago, the assembled prime ministers and presidents agreed that aid to Africa should be doubled. A report last month said that the G7 countries had increased aid by less than half the amount of what would be needed to reach this target - indeed Italian aid has fallen 30% in this period. NGOs also claim there’s a gap of $10bn between what was promised at Gleneagles and what has been delivered.

And the Independent on Sunday reported last week that “nine out of 10 HIV positive pregnant women in the poorest countries do not get drugs to stop them passing on the disease to their foetus despite the G7 countries pledged universal access by 2010 at the Gleneagles summit.”
Why on the streets?

It’s doubtless hard to put a finger on exactly why the USA gave up on supporting the South Vietnamese regime. Many a book has been written proclaiming why, with the reasons coloured by what the writer wanted to impart in way of their political analysis.

But it seems pretty clear to me that the mass mobilisations - sometimes violent, sometimes not; often student based, sometimes wider - helped deal this body blow to the world’s strongest power.

There never was a point were the US rulers thought that the protestors would overrun Washington or make New York ungovernable but the attrition of these mobilisations had a powerful effect on the ruling class in the States. It influenced a whole culture and percolated through a generation.

When Congressmen went back to their constituencies, their peers argued with them for US withdrawal from Indo China. The American rulers were collectively ground down and pushed into despondency by the resistance to their war undertaken by their own compatriots.

We're in no position to beat the state on the street. Only in very few places could we even force it into a stalemate. But we can inflict major damage, advance our cause and both inspire & induct new fighters for justice by following such a path in the same way that the anti Vietnam War protests rejuvenated the American Left.

And so we should seek to mobilise. Yes, in our trade unions. Yes, in our community organisations. Yes, amongst ‘affinity' groups.

And, yes, on the streets.