why has marxism had only limited influence in Britain?

Account for the limited influence of Marxism in Britain

Before examining the extent of the influence of Marxism in the British Labour movement it is worth defining what is meant by Marxism. There are many possible definitions, but for the purposes of this essay only two will be employed; firstly, at its simplest level Marxism is an attempt to provide a materialist explanation of history, showing how human society has developed alongside the development of productive forces, and how the struggle between the classes act as the motor of history, and as a deconstruction and critique of the industrial capitalism which Marx considered as the latest, and last, form of class society. British Marxist organisations were from the first, educators and disseminators of this form of Marxism.

The second definition of Marxism is as a panoptic political movement, which aimed to embrace its members in a movement that would provide for them every aspect of their lives while the party itself would subsume and eventually replace the state itself. The template for this form of Marxism was the mighty German SPD.

The pre war Marxist sects and parties of Britain always remained numerically small but their membership was in constant flux; the rapid turnover of members meant that there were always a far greater proportion of Marxist educated workers at large in the British Labour movement than can be gleaned through exclusive attention to the subs lists of individual branches.

It is thus an understandable mistake to see the difference in size between organised Marxism in Britain, whether in its pre Bolshevik, or later communist incarnations, and the mass Social Democratic and Communist Parties of the continent as an indication that Marxism has had only limited influence inside the British Labour Movement. Size, as they say, doesn’t (always) matter. The British Marxists were an integral part of the British labour movement which even if it didn’t always agree with them or even found them uncomfortable bedfellows recognised them as a part of the larger whole.

The nature of the Marxism that was taught within British Marxist groups should also be examined; the pejorative “crude” is almost universally applied when considering the Marxism of the Social Democratic Federation and its splits and successors, but this is an unfair one justified only by the Leninist conviction that their extension of Marxism as an overarching world view, makes it more sophisticated. In reality the pretention that Marxism can provide the answers to every question of Human existence transforms it into a quasi- religion, with its own priesthood and readymade sets of anathema, witch hunts and heretics.

Hyndman’s role, as founder of the SDF, is a major part of the argument for the crudity of early British Marxism, while it is true that he often allowed his old Tory prejudices to colour his interpretation of socialism Hyndman was not ‘the’ SDF and was often challenged and overturned from within the federation. Debates within the SDF often came to conclusions that pre-empted the debates within the wider socialist International, but were often ignored and others would be become associated with the concepts; notably, the bitter arguments that took place after the outbreak of the Boer war, in which Hyndman’s attempts to oppose the war within a overall pro- imperial standpoint led him to assess it nakedly anti Semitic terms whilst his opponents developed an internationalist approach which directly associated the Boers with the interests of the working class, and pre-empted later development of the theory of imperialism undertaken by the Second International and even Lenin’s evocation of ‘revolutionary defeatism’[1].

The vitality of pre war socialism is often overlooked; Ken Weller describes how in one borough of North London no fewer than a dozen different groups and organisations were operating, with their own public meetings, literature and educational classes[2].

The British Labour movement predates all others in the world, it was born in the ‘blood and filth’ of Industrial capitalism’s own birth and its formative years, well described by Thompson[3], were tumultuous and violent as Capital attempted to impose ‘the tyranny of measured time’ and the factory system on the new proletariat. The new working class built its organisation without benefit of the advice of Marxist Intellectual and ‘professional revolutionary’.

Marx and, especially Engels took a rather dim view of the proletariat of their adopted country. After the waning of the Chartist movement both Marx and Engels became increasingly critical of the ‘conservative’ nature of the British Trades unionists. The unions gained strength in the conditions of the long boom in British industry and were able to win for their highly skilled membership real material advantages, which ran counter to Marx’s insistence that Capitalist development would inevitably result in the immiserization of the proletariat. These unionists found that in the conditions of economic growth there was real advantage in supporting free trade economics and freedom in collective bargaining, but found it necessary to seek international solidarity in order to defend their members’ conditions[4]. Even as the same trades’ unionists were creating the International Working men’s Association which would provide Marx with a political platform from which to propagate his views, Engels was condemning them as labour aristocrats[5]. After Marx had destroyed the International to prevent it falling into the hands of his Bakuninite opponents, their interest in the British working class dried up altogether, to the extent of not even bothering to have their writings published in English.

The publication of England for all annoyed Marx for not acknowledging him by name, and instilled a lifelong animosity for Hyndman in Engels, who extended this enmity to the SDF, encouraging the Socialist League’s split[6], and exulting at the mistaken prospect that the split would destroy the federation[7] and in the last years of his life providing support to the foundation of the ILP. Kendall argues that Engels’ hostility to the SDF, in isolating Engels from the British socialist movement, prevented Marxism from taking proper root in the labour movement[8]. This is rather overplaying the influence of one individual, even if that individual is Engels, but Kendall is undoubtedly correct in arguing that by precipitately splitting from the federation the Socialist League left Hyndman and his supporters in complete control, and that the democratic and federal composition of the SDF, meant that a split was unnecessary and set an example which became common for oppositions, and ensured that Hyndman’s control continued till the Great War[9].

Notwithstanding Hyndman, British Marxism developed in a peculiarly working class fashion, a part of, and extension of, the self improvement and autodidactic impulse which has been such a feature of British working class life. Within Socialist education classes Marxism was taught not as a totality but as a part of gaining a wider understanding of the society in which they lived and was studied alongside sciences, literature and history. In 1909 Marxist education became more organised and expanded with the formation of the Central Labour College and the Plebs’ League. Formed following a dispute between the working class students and the traditionalist tutors of Ruskin College the League brought together tutors and students from across the Labour movement, teaching an explicitly Marxist and socialist curriculum.[10] The Plebs’ League produced educational material of an extremely high quality, some of which are still of value today.[11]

It is interesting to note the similarity between these circles of autodidactic workers in Britain and the early Russian workers study circles that were so disliked by Lenin for their habit of knowing more about Marxism than the young revolutionary intellectuals who sought to use them as “cannon fodder”[12].

It is clear that there was an enormous gulf between this Marxism; “ultra democratic, opposed to leadership in principle (and) opposed to professionalism of the Labour movement almost as an article of faith.”[13] And the all encompassing European movements: While the British labour movement, in both industrial and political forms had been largely the creation of workers themselves, who were suspicious in the extreme of those few Intellectuals and other members of the middle classes who supported the cause of the workers, across Europe the later industrialisation meant that the intellectuals were, more often than not, the instigators of the socialist parties and the unions were the creation of the parties. The European intelligencia; educated and trained for the role of managing a Industrialised Capitalist society but excluded from any say in the running of that state, they adopted Marxism as an ideology for a highly state centred and bureaucratised Socialism, in which the Educated and managerial Classes would take their rightful place as rulers[14]. The German SPD formed the most fully formed of these parties, creating a parallel society of clubs, unions, papers entertainment and education for its members, and a parallel bureaucracy to run that parallel society, while at the top of the party Marxist intellectuals adorned the party like a crown, with Kautsky, the “Pope of Marxism”, as their chief jewel. Kautsky and the other Intellectuals produced Marxist literature which promised much for the coming socialist Nirvana, whilst simultaneously preaching passivity and the inevitability of socialism. Among Kautsky’s many international disciples Lenin was the most devoted and committed in applying Kautsky’s Marxism[15].

In Britain the democratic reforms of the nineteenth century and the needs of Imperial administration provided for the emerging educated and managerial class opportunities for both representation within the established political system and employment and advancement across the globe. There was no major involvement by the educated managerial class in the British Labour and socialist movement until the 1950s as the needs of the Welfarist state led to the rapid growth of highly educated people who were expected to fit into increasingly limited and frustratingly mundane roles.

The Russian Revolution galvanised and united the bulk of British Marxism into the new communist party around support for Lenin’s very different version of Marxism, however the CPGB unlike it’s continental sister parties was not born of a bitter, and all too often, blood soaked, split, but instead from the unification of most of the old ‘revolutionary’ parties, an aspiration which had long existed within the British left. British communism’s relationship with the wider British left also did not change markedly; Local activists were still the same, whether as members of the BSP or CPGB, and the Party remained essentially within the wider labour fold; Harry Wickes in his autobiography described the early years of the communist party in Battersea where the close cooperation between Communist and Labour was extemporised by the election of Indian communist ‘Sak’ Saklatvala as the Labour MP in 1922[16]. The efforts of the Communist International to ‘Bolshevise’ the party, whether organisationally, educationally and, finally, through the hothouse education of a new cadre of leaders in the Lenin school in Moscow, and the parallel efforts of the Labour leadership to proscribe the Communists and the Minority Movement inside the Labour Party that supported them, largely failed to breach the continuity of relationships between Communists and Labour.

On aspect of the Communist International attempts to break the CPGB’s peculiar relationship with the larger movement was in its approach to Marxist Education. Wicks described the nature and breadth of the Plebs’ classes in the early 1920’s;

“Bill Ryder a foundation member of the communist party introduced us to Marx’s Capital...

Frank Horrabin on Economic geography made use of maps to bring alive how continents were divided in the search for markets and raw materials. ...

Raymond Postgate attracted a wide audience with his series of 12 lectures on revolution from 1789 to 1905. His class was held at the lavender hill labour club and coincided with the attack by Morrison and Macdonald on the presence of communists in the labour party. Its central issue- parliamentary road or revolutionary road? - was then live...

Those classes were widely attended and enjoyed by young and old- apprentices, skilled workers, Cooperative Guildswomen. From there emerged a group of people who became the backbone of the left wing of the Labour party. Historical materialism, Industrial unionism and elements of Daniel Deleon constituted the Marxism in that period of Plebs’ education in the 1920s...”

This eclecticism could not be allowed to stand for the recently Bolshevised CPGB and from 1922 onwards attempts were made to take over the movement and impose a curriculum with the intention of; “correcting defective (non communist) understandings of Marxism and turning the plebs league and labour colleges into adjuncts of party activity”[17]

This failed takeover led to a exodus of some of the CPGBs most able and talented educators, Raymond Postgate, Frank Horrabin, Mark Starr and Morgan Philips- Price all left the party and a great deal of damage was done to its standing.

The final breach between organised Marxism and the Labour movement was the Third Period; This was a new revolutionary offensive decreed from Moscow, in which the only force that was holding back the revolutionary impulses of the workers was the reformist parties and unions, who it was claimed, had become as firm supporters of reaction as the fascists, and should be therefore denounced as social fascists, shattered the relationship between the Marxists and the wider labour movement, that organic continuity was lost and never again regained. When the communists again looked for unity, in the cause of the popular front, it was as an outside organisation, appealing or condemning in turn the leadership of the Labour Party and trades unions, moreover, the assumption that the Communists and the wider movement had the same interests, and the same loyalties could never again be made.

As an integral part of the Labour movement, Britain’s Marxists gained a wide audience, however this was a very different form of Marxism than that pursued by the mass socialist parties of the continent. The introduction of such politics after 1917 caused the steady collapse of the influence of British Marxism.

.

Bibliography

Barrot, Jean The renegade Kautsky and his disciple Lenin Paris 1977 translated by Wildcat 1987 on http://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve accessed 25/02/09

Cliff, Tony Lenin Volume 1: Building The Party, 1893-1905 London 1975

Crick, Martin The History of the Social Democratic Federation Keele 1994

Jones, G.S. Some Notes on Karl Marx and the English Labour Movement History Workshop Journal 1984

Kendall, W the revolutionary movement in Britain: 1900-1921 London 1969

Miles, A workers education: The Communist Party and the Plebs league in the 1920s History workshop Journal 1984 18 (1)

Post, Charlie The Labor (sic) aristocracy myth International Viewpoint 381 September 2006 accessed at

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1110&var_recherche=charles%20post on 25/02/09

Shatz, Marshall S. Jan Waclaw Machajski A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligensia And Socialism Pittsburgh 1989

Stekloff, G.M. history of the First International London 1928 Ch. 3 accessed at http://www.marxists.org/archive/steklov/history-first-international/ch03.htm on 25/02/09

Thompson, E.P. Making of the English working class London 1968

Weller, Ken Don’t be a Soldier, radical Anti war movement in North London 1914-1918 London 1985

Wicks, Harry Keeping my head; memoirs of a British Bolshevik London 1992

---

[1] Crick, Martin The History of the Social Democratic Federation Keele 1994 pp. 158-163

[2] Weller, Ken Don’t be a Soldier, radical Anti war movement in North London 1914-1918 London 1985

[3] Thompson, E.P. Making of the English working class London 1968

[4] Stekloff, G.M. history of the First International London 1928 Ch. 3 accessed at http://www.marxists.org/archive/steklov/history-first-international/ch03.htm on 25/02/09

[5] Post, Charlie The Labor (sic) aristocracy myth International Viewpoint 381 September 2006 accessed at

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1110&var_recherche=charles%20post on 25/02/09

Jones, G.S. Some Notes on Karl Marx and the English Labour Movement History Workshop Journal 1984 18 p. 128

[6] Crick, M 1994 p. 39

[7] Kendall, W the revolutionary movement in Britain: 1900-1921 London 1969 pp.6-7

[8] Kendall, W 1969 p.5

[9] Kendall, W 1969 p.7 and p.21

[10] Kendall, w 1969 p.69

[11] See specially Starr, Mark A worker looks at history London 1917

[12] Cliff, Tony Lenin Volume 1: Building The Party, 1893-1905 Ch.2 on http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1975/lenin1/chap02.htm accessed 25/02/09

[13] Kendall, W 1969 p.300

[14] Bakunin was probably the earliest critic of Marxism to identify its tendency to become an ideology for a state bureaucracy, for the first fully formed critique see the work of the Polish revolutionary Jan Machajski in Marshall S. Shatz

Jan Waclaw Machajski A Radical Critic of the Russian Intelligensia And Socialism Pittsburgh 1989 accessed at

http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/cont.html on the 26/02/09

[15] Barrot, Jean The renegade Kautsky and his disciple Lenin Paris 1977 translated by Wildcat 1987 on http://libcom.org/library/renegade-kautsky-disciple-lenin-dauve accessed 25/02/09

[16] Wicks, Harry Keeping my head; memoirs of a British Bolshevik London 1992 Ch.1- 3

[17] Miles, A workers education: The Communist Party and the Plebs league in the 1920s History workshop Journal 1984 18 (1) p. 107.

Labour got what it deserved – and so did the BNP

The Independant working Class Association gives its view on the recent elections:

The Labour party is dying, and fascism is on the rise. Where does the working class go from here?

‘May you live in interesting times’ is an old Chinese saying. You might be forgiven for assuming it is a blessing but in actual fact it is intended as a curse. Of course, how you might regard the inherent implications of some major political or social upheaval most probably depends on what end of the political or social spectrum you inhabit.

In any event, for good or ill, ‘interesting times’ we are certainly in.

In 1994, at the beginning of the Blair era, Labour MP Roy Hattersley suggested that ‘the working class would continue to vote for Labour whatever the party does’. A number of years after New Labour had taken power in 1997, when the cracks between the governing party and the working class electorate were already beginning to emerge, mostly in the form of a collapsing turnout at elections, it was all airily waved away by current Justice Minister Jack Straw. He described the gathering disengagement as ‘the politics of contentment.’

The quotes are a useful reminder that New Labour’s problems did not begin with the ascension to power of Gordon Brown, or the credit crunch, or MP’s expenses. The real damage was done far earlier, goes far deeper and may indeed be irreversible.

In last weeks Euro elections the SNP won the popular vote in Scotland for the first time ever, while the Tories trumped Labour in Wales. With the South-East in almost complete meltdown – Labour taking a mere 8 per cent of votes cast – there must now be some serious question marks against Labour ever again being a party with a true national reach.

In short, New and indeed Old Labour have got what they deserved and so, predictably, have the BNP. Tony Lecomber’s forecast in 1997 that ‘The people who have been abandoned by Labour and have never been represented by the Tories will, in their desperation, turn to us’ has been handsomely vindicated. The BNP’s steady climb from obscurity also began in 1994 when they abandoned their battle to control the streets.

Approximately a decade ago the modernised BNP, under the control of a new leader Nick Griffin, gave cause for concern when they took 26% of the vote in a council by-election in Bexley in Kent. An alarmed Guardian covered the story on page two but despite the evidence, then and since, their true potential has consistently been underestimated and decried, particularly by ‘professional’ anti-fascists and the orthodox Left.

In the run up to the local elections one poll commissioned by The Observer put their support level at just one per cent. If accurate it meant the BNP would do five times less well than in 2004. So don’t be fooled when they tell you that the recent success was purely down to the expenses row — if that benefitted anyone it was UKIP, who were down and out prior to the election. This has been a long time coming. Wishful thinking fools no one, least of all the BNP....

read the rest here

filling the Vacuum

Filling the vacuum

the election of two BNP MEPs ( and the other successes of the far right, or example the English Demorats winniung the mayorality in Doncaster) has sent shockwaves through the left. Solutions to the threat presented by the far right seem to revolve around rehashing of the failed policies of the past; either the disasterous 'vote anyone but the BNP'-which makes the left the defenders of the status quo and reinforces the BNP as opponents to the professional political westminster Cabal, or the cobbling together of new trotskyite fronts that treat the threat of fascism as nothing but an opportunity for recruitment and the extension of the franchise. The following was written in the mid-1990s when AFA recognised that the change in the tactics of the BNP meant that their previous emphasis on street confrontation was no longer sufficient. The stalwarts of AFA and red action were too few to be able in implement the strategy fully, but the resultant organisation, the IWCA, has had notable success ( especially in Oxford's blackbird leys) and its example has been picked up by community action groups in various parts of the country. It seriously needs to be adopted now if we are to have any chance of dealing with the growing threat from the BNP

In November 1990, at a public meeting in east London, AFA declared that the "working class is the natural constituency of socialism, not fascism. Racism and socialism are incompatible. One only exists at the expense of the other. The success of the Far-Right is due to the fact that the Left are not seen as a credible option. AFA are committed to creating the space in which one (a credible alternative} can develop."

Three years later, addressing a meeting in south-east London, an AFA spokesperson returned to the theme: "While the initial aim must be to root out the organised racists/fascists ­the motive force behind the attacks - and throw down a challenge to those that provide them with facilities, the long-term solution must be to create communities of resistance. By creating some space, perhaps in time a real working class alternative to the lying bullshit that now passes for politics in this country can emerge. The entire Left has failed the working class, black and white alike, though many prefer to believe that the working class has failed the Left. We are here today, not only because they (the Left) are bad socialists but more specifically because they are bad anti­fascists".

In 1994 in a widely distributed expose of the Anti-Nazi League [Don't Believe the Hype], AFA was even more specific. “The BNP can be stopped and on many occasions up and down the country AFA has physically stopped them. However we are not blind to the fact that the fight is political, and accept that the resurgence of support for the Far-Right is a symptom of a deeper malaise. We do not see it as our job to campaign for Labour. It is not AFA's role to argue that change is not needed. The function of anti-fascism is not to see the electoral threat from the Far-Right beaten back so that Labour and the middle-class Left can, as happened between 1982-92, turn their backs on both the social causes and their own collaboration in the political betrayal that gave rise to the NF and the BNP in the first place.”

The ambition of militant anti-fascism is not simply to see the Far-Right defeated and removed from working class areas: the ultimate solution is to see them replaced there. The BNP's attack on Labour is from the Right and is racist, ultra-conservative and anti-working class, Our primary role is to guarantee that a successful challenge to Labour comes only from the Left. Furthermore, and' purely from an anti-fascist point of view, as the best insurance against any nazi renaissance, it would be the duty of militants to offer protection and encouragement to any genuine [anti-­Labour] working class revolt.

When AFA was relaunched in London in September 1989 it was accepted that while AFA was still organised around the single issue of anti-fascism, "AFA propaganda must contain a class message" in order "to negate the efforts by the fascists to present AFA as a bunch of middle-class outsiders,, part and parcel of the Establishment, working in the long-term interests of the status quo".

Much has changed since 1989, not least the fact that AFA is now a national organisation with over forty branches organised in four main regions each with the physical ability to forcefully implement AFA's founding statement on the streets. In addition other organisations such as the ANL, ARA and YRE have jumped on - and off - the bandwagon. The early nineties also saw the return to electoral prominence of the Far-Right not just in Britain but throughout Europe. The success of AFA on the streets also led to the birth of the wannabe paramilitary grouping C18.

In another tribute to AFA's militant strategy the BNP declared in April 1994 that there would be " no more marches, meetings, punch-ups " A year on, this declaration must now be regarded as a serious change of strategy, something other than a temporary electoral ploy or an effort to court respectability. There appear to be at least two crucial reasons for the change of strategy. One, undoubtedly, is that since their resur­gence to national prominence, AFA have fought the BNP to a standstill. In 1991 Scotland was regarded by the BNP leadership as its highest growth area and the area with possibly the greatest potential. Today the BNP no longer visibly exists. Literally beaten into the ground by anti-fascist militants.

In the North West the BNP organisation and morale has all but been destroyed. A similar pattern is emerging in the Midlands. In the South East the fascists have been constantly harassed. Apart from the east and possibly south east they are practically invisible in London.

In many of these areas the politics of the BNP undoubtedly have a resonance, but they are unable to take advantage of the latent support due to the logistical problems caused by the constant possibility of attack and their own profile as 'a party of strength'. One way to resolve the problem would be to recruit, but they cannot have open recruitment for fear of infiltration. In addition the fear of physical violence means that they are unable to bring their more articulate middle class supporters onto the streets for fear of losing them entirely.

The situation in Europe would also have played an influence. Here the fascists, particularly in Austria and Italy, have recognised that with the demise of the support for the communist parties there is no need for a visibly menacing counter threat. If there is no physical danger, fascists do not need to hide behind a sinister private army. The battle for control of the streets need not be fought if control is not being contested. If the end can be achieved without the traditional means there is no need for the rough stuff. In Britain, with the absence of any tangible political threat to their adopted working class constituency the argument for a physical force movement to contest the streets becomes not only void but instead represents a serious impediment to their own political ambitions - only!

Since their meteoric climb in 1990 in not one area of the country, despite significant sympathy on the ground, have they for more than one day at a time been able to control the streets; Bermondsey, Bloody Sunday and the Isle of Dogs being the exceptions. More often than not in regard to the large set pieces they have been humiliated. And even when they have won, the victory has gained them nothing except a confirmation of what already sustains them; that Labour and the Left are increasingly alien to working class people. So in a sense for them simply to continue with the strategy of "marches, meetings, punch ups" only provides an enemy that has already lost the fundamental arguments -Labour/ANL/Trotskyism, etc. (or in the case of AFA which has failed to put an argument) - with a legitimate political excuse/focus, ie: anti-BNP. The BNP policy of open swaggering aggression also affords an organisation like AFA a legitimate opportunity to answer in kind, and in doing so physically destroy the BNP's political prospects by crippling its infra-structure. With AFA having no polltical prospects of its own they are on a hiding to nothing.

It takes two to tango, so what of AFA's reason for being if the BNP decide that they don't want to play anymore? Certainly in London, AFA has only been able to seriously damage the Far-Right once recently. If this is a permanent change of plan there is a serious danger that AFA, without the physical challenge for which it was designed, will itself begin to lose direction and begin to atrophy.

The flip side of the coin is that C18, who have no electoral ambitions either, don't do anything but 'play'. The ideal solution for both the State and the Far-Right would be for AFA to get locked into a clandestine gang war with C18, thereby allowing the State to select candidates of their own choosing for periods of lengthy incarceration. That done, the now entirely legal BNP could go about their lawful business like their European counter­parts, articulating 'genuine racial concerns' unhindered.

Furthermore, if the BNP operation is made entirely legal and if AFA physically opposes them, then our operation is de facto illegal. The BNP then might reasonably expect, in return for their collaboration with the forces of law and order, that the tactic of summary arrest be employed against AFA on a consistent basis. Circumstances are changing and AFA needs to adapt.

Fascism is the vanguard of reaction. It is at once the manifestation, the contributory cause and principle beneficiary of society's decomposition. Unlike the rest of the anti-racist Left, AFA's emphasis has always been on the political danger represented by fascism, while others such as Searchlight and the ANL have laid the emphasis on their violent and criminal tendencies. In addition they refuse or are unwilling to recognise that anti-fascism is by definition a rearguard action and that fascism is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the Left's failure. Inevitably the strategies adopted to combat fascism carry with them the germs of the strategies that caused fascism, invariably leading to compound failure. So while it cannot be denied that the ANL's media campaign focused public attention on the problem, it also proved to be a distraction in regard to the solution.

One of AFA's strengths in its formative years was its limited platform; the 'single issue'. This concentration weeded out or repelled the sectarians, the 'tough talkers' and the dilettantes. However, during the Isle of Dogs campaign, the 'single issue' exposed AFA's limitations. AFA had to nothing to say on the principle business.

AFA has long recognised that once the Far-Right is allowed to mobilise, is allowed to set the agenda, and has passed a certain point, they begin to control their own destinies - and their opponent's. Once that point is reached it would be useless and possibly counter-productive to rely upon a purely anti-fascist stance, primarily because people look to politics for solutions. It might be clear what you stand against, though their understanding of what you stand for will effectively determine their overall response.

As the activities of the ANL on the Isle of Dogs demonstrated (despite blanket canvassing the BNP vote actually rose by 30%), an anti-fascist message on its own would find little favour with working class people, even those repelled by the BNP, if they suspected that it was simply a spoiling tactic, carried out by allies of the local Labour establishment in an effort to maintain the status quo. AFA has never fought to maintain the status quo, but, even at their most effective, anti­fascist militants can never hope to achieve anything more than to maintain that vacuum. There is little doubt that the vacuum has been successfully maintained but now, in the absence of any other suitable candidates, it is incumbent on the anti-fascist militants to help fill the vacuum themselves.

The working class is increasingly alienated from Labour, the BNP's strategy is entirely reliant upon this alienation: 'they really hate Labour' etc. The total ineptitude and the tangible contempt that exists in some areas between Labour and its former constituency has locally and nationally begat the BNP. And fascism begat anti-fascism. In straight­forward language, it is the politics of the Labour Party that has created the BNP. So by acting as campaign managers for Labour, the ANL are are prostituting anti-fascism, and instead of being identified with a radical, pro-working class position, anti-fascism is seen to be defending the status quo, thereby practi­cally forcing people who want change to vote BNP, out of sheer desperation. They are literally driving people into the arms of the fascists. Up to now it is entirely due to the cutting edge of AFA that the passive support has remained just that. But it is unrealistic to expect that vacuum to be maintained indefinitely.

Nor as working class militant anti-fascists can we stand on the sidelines, wringing our hands hopelessly. We have to take a stand. And we have to take that stand against Labour. Not simply in a theoretical sense, but in an organisational sense. It is vital that the working class on the estates, seriously alienated from Labour, are provided with an alternative to the BNP. The election of a Labour government will be a massive shot in the arm for the Far-Right. It is also very possible that in the subsequent local elections the Isle of Dogs scenario could be repeated on a national scale, and all our\good work in the last decade would be undone at a stroke.

What is needed is a new organisation. In all probability the impetus of the Clause Four controversy will cause a realignment on the Left that will give it birth. It is not being suggested that AFA disband and becomes this organisation. It is as vital as ever,. that AFA maintains its own structures 'and agenda. Nor is it being suggested that AFA create this new organisation. This would hardly be possible in any case. What must be recognised is that it will happen with or without AFA. AFA contains the best working class militants in the country. It is absolutely vital that in order to shape the organisation in its own image, AFA is in from the very beginning. To shape it in AFA's own image would mean stipulating from the outset a) a democratic structure, built from the bottom up rather than from the top down; b) rather than appeal to a mythical 'labour movement' the strategy requires an orientation to, and an accommodation of, the working class proper; c) non-sectarian. This does not mean being forced to work with everybody; it means working alongside others towards a common goal, but making no apology for a refusal to collaborate on any project for which you have no enthusiasm, or with those with whom you fundamentally disagree.

In any case it must be obvious that to stand aloof would be an unmitigated disaster. That would allow the middle classes once again to set the agenda. AFA has been dealing with the consequences of their agenda for over a decade. It would be criminally negligent to allow our adversaries to fill the space we have created and maintained in that time. This is an opportunity to add a string to AFA's bow. It will be a complement to, rather than a deviation from, vigorous anti-fascist activity.

Even on a limited tactical basis the benefits of an independent working class organisation operating alongside AFA would be immediate and widespread. AFA could, for the first time, campaign for something instead of merely campaigning against something - and campaign legally.

AFA could be pro-active as well as reactive. There would be no breathing space for the likes of the BNP. And, for as much as an embryonic association might welcome AFA's physical presence, the situation demands that AFA avails itself of a wider political platform than was hitherto considered either necessary or available. For the first time since the thirties militant anti-fascism would be associated with solutions rather than simply violent actions and threats.' For the first time, too, involved with setting the agenda rather than clearing up the political mess left by someone else's.

Ultimately the challenge for AFA is not only to destroy the BNP in working class areas but to replace them there. So the political message, to have resonance, will have to be deeper and more comprehensive. A straight forward anti­fascist parable, a simple refutation of the 'radical' in nationalism will, on its own, prove unsatisfactory.

If AFA's efforts are to culminate in victory we must seek to replace them, but to replace them we must not only out­violence them, we must also out radicalise them.

(This article is a strategy document that was endorsed by London AFA in May 1995. It is currently being discussed by other AFA groups around the country, and has already been agreed by the Midlands Region and the Northern Network. Discussions are taking place with other organisations with regard to setting up an independent working class organisation.)

polish fascists flee from pensioners

Proving again that they do things different in other lands, ANTIFA have this video showing how Social democrats in Poland deal with fascists. The old age pensioners send the Fash scum running and the poor dear ubermensch are forced to use pepper spray to save themselves from the justified anger of the Sanatogen antifa- Pure Class!

It's time to taste what you most fear

Standards are slipping all over and it really isn't good enough!
the Sun reports today that the latest great sponger to be expelled from the loins of the Windsor Cabal has been mugged whilst on her 'Gap Year' tour of Cambodia ( a gap from what? doing fuck all for the rest of her life?). The sun further reports that she was saved from having her bag snatched by the two armed police guards that have accompanied her throughout her back packing holiday around the world, at a cost to the rest of us of over £100,000.
What a sad state Cambodian bandits have fallen into- once the paunchy princess would have found herself working hard in a paddy field for a bowl of rice a day- although whether she ended up with her head on a stake would depend how low The khmer Rouge would drop the bar to count her as an intellectual!

So you been to school
For a year or two
And you know you've seen it all
In daddy's car
Thinkin' you'll go far
Back east your type don't crawl

Play ethnicky jazz
To parade your snazz
On your five grand stereo
Braggin' that you know
How the niggers feel cold
And the slums got so much soul

It's time to taste what you most fear
Right Guard will not help you here
Brace yourself, my dear:

It's a holiday in Cambodia
It's tough, kid, but it's life
It's a holiday in Cambodia
Don't forget to pack a wife

You're a star-belly sneech
You suck like a leach
You want everyone to act like you
Kiss ass while you bitch
So you can get rich
But your boss gets richer off you

Well you'll work harder
With a gun in your back
For a bowl of rice a day
Slave for soldiers
Till you starve
Then your head is skewered on a stake

Now you can go where people are one
Now you can go where they get things done
What you need, my son:.

Is a holiday in Cambodia
Where people dress in black
A holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll kiss ass or crack

Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, Pol Pot, [etc]

And it's a holiday in Cambodia
Where you'll do what you're told
A holiday in Cambodia
Where the slums got so much soul

stamp out crime- target the real criminals

After the publishing online of the video footage which proved what a bunch of lying, brutal pigs the Met are there have been a string of stories in the news over past weeks which show that far from being some sort of protection for society as the filth like to claim; it is society that needs protection from the Police:
murderer
thieves
gun runners
fraudsters
and perverts

Seeing as they are also incompetent when actually doing the job that they are supposed to do isn't it about time to remove this threat at the heart of our society and dump the Bill?

death at G20- witness statement

Various participants in the City of London demonstrations on April 1st have come forward as witnesses to the collapse of a man later identified by authorities as Ian Tomlinson.
Four different university students witnessed the collapse of Mr. Tomlinson. "He stumbled towards us from the direction of police and protestors and collapsed," said Peter Apps. "I saw a demonstrator who was a first aider attend to the person who had collapsed. The man was late 40s, had tattoos on his hands, and was wearing a Millwall shirt."
While the first aider was helping the man, another demonstrator with a megaphone was calling the police over so that they could help. Natalie Langford, a student at Queen Mary, said "there was a police charge. A lot of people ran in our direction. The woman giving first aid stood in the path of the crowd." The running people, seeing a guy on the ground, went around them.
Another demonstrator had already called 999 and was getting medical advice from the ambulance dispatcher. "Four police with two police medics came. They told her [the first aider] to 'move along'.", said Peter Apps. "Then they pushed her forcibly away from him. They refused to listen to her [the first aider] when she tried to explain his condition."The first aider, who did not wish to be named, said "The police surrounded the collapsed man. I was standing with the person who'd called 999. The ambulance dispatcher wanted to talk to the police, the phone was being held out to them, but the police refused."
Another witness, Elias Stoakes, added "we didn't see them [the police] perform CPR."Other people who had tried to stay with the collapsed man were also pushed away. All of the witnesses deny the allegation that many missiles were thrown. According to Peter Apps, "one bottle was thrown, but it didn't come close to the police. Nothing was thrown afterwards as other demonstrators told the person to stop. The person who threw the bottle probably didn't realize that someone was behind the ring of police."
All the witnesses said that the demonstrators were concerned for the well-being of the collapsed man once they realized that there was an injured person.Natalie Langford said "when the ambulance arrived the protestors got straight out of the way."

the numbers game

The SWP have become notorious for their habit, ever since the huge anti war demo of 2003, of seeing the validity and success of anything by how many people turn out. This has led to the repeated declaration of "this is the largest demonstration ever!" from podiums in front of rapidly and visibly diminishing crowds.
The SWP meanwhile have managed to alienate a large element of their previous audience; first through their vain pursuit of an electoral breakthrough and their courting of Muslems as a new oppressed who could be dragooned to provide a voting block. Then by rowwing with their new saviour the stalinist thug and all round lover of dictators, George Galloway they managed to alienate those (very few) who had been attracted by RESPECT.
I suppose that I am the only person in the world who still bothers to look at the SWP's rump respect website, renamed repeatedly but currently called "The Left Alternative". I was very interested to read about something that the rest of us had managed to miss:

Thousands join Unite Against Fascism demo
23/06/2008
Up to 10,000,000 anti-fascist protestors took to the streets on Saturday as part of a demonstration, organised by Unite Against Fascism (UAF) and Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR), against the British National Party. The demo was organised in protest against the BNP presence on the London Assembly and their electoral gains in the May elections this year.

Thats right, 10 million marched through London!
Fucking fantasists!


now you might say that anyone might make a typo, but to have one of that size on the front page of your site for nearly a year without anyone noticing, or caring.

your days of plenty are at an end

Much pompous bullshit is being written about the attack upon Goodwin's house, apparently, a broken window and a dented beemer is only on step away from full on terrorist war. these are a couple of comments that I wrote elsewhere:
If bankers like goodwin aren’t responsible then who is? These bastards are living the good life whilst the decisions they take destroy the lives of millions- a little payback that punctures their secure comfortable lives is to be welcomed.It is a long way away from carrying out executions of the bourgeoisie.
However there is a valid argument that they should pay for the lives that they destroy. That the blood that is shed by the sterile sweep of a pen should be repaid in kind.that the balance sheet adjustment that sweeps away industries and condemns communities to slow death should be answered with rage. that the "regrettable but necessary economies" that closes hospitals and results in unnecessary and pain filled suffering and early deaths does deserve retribution. If those who did these things were afraid that their crimes would be avenged, they might pause and think again.

They make their decisions safe in the knowledge that the effects would never touch them. Not because they intended to destroy lives or gain pleasure through others pain, but because they couldn’t give a shit for the effects it would have. Profit has been their god, and even as that god fails they walk away scot free learning nothing and caring less.

Make them fear.

"Just the Beginning"

From BBC news

The Edinburgh home of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Sir Fred Goodwin has been attacked by vandals overnight.
Windows were smashed and a Mercedes S600 car parked in the driveway was vandalised.
A group complaining about bank executives has contacted a newspaper claiming to be behind the attack.
There has been widespread public and political anger over a pension payout worth about £700,000 a year to the 50-year-old former chief executive.
Sir Fred took early retirement from RBS last year after the bank needed a £20bn bailout from the government.
Last month, RBS reported that it made a loss of £24.1bn in 2008 - the largest annual loss in UK corporate history.
When Sir Fred stepped down from the post in October, he rejected Government pressure to accept a reduction in his package, insisting that changes to the early retirement deal he had negotiated were "not warranted".
The payout was described as "obscene" and "grotesque" by MPs and "unjustifiable and unacceptable" by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
It is not known if anyone was in the house at the time of the attack or who reported the vandalism.
A spokesman for the Royal Bank of Scotland said short term security arrangements had been put in place at Sir Fred's Edinburgh home, and that these were still operational during the time of the attack.
The bank would not confirm what these security measures entailed.
However, earlier this month it emerged that the bank was paying about £290 per month for security, which included CCTV monitoring of the house and security staff for Sir Fred.
A police car is now guarding the entrance to Sir Fred's home, in the Grange area of the city.
Three smashed ground-floor windows of the stone villa were clearly visible.

A Mercedes S600 car parked in the driveway was damaged
In the driveway, the rear window of a dark-coloured Mercedes saloon was smashed, as well as the nearside rear passenger window.
There were no obvious signs of activity inside the house.
A Lothian and Borders Police spokeswoman said they were called out at 0435 GMT.
She said: "Inquiries in relation to the incident are ongoing. We are appealing for witnesses."
A statement was issued to Edinburgh's Evening News on Wednesday morning by a group which claimed it was behind the attack.
It said: "We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money, and living in luxury, while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless.
"This is a crime. Bank bosses should be jailed. This is just the beginning."

good arguments for shooting former nazis #1

Honestly, why has nobody put a bullet in this misogynistal scumbags skull?

a starter for ten

Something fishy is going on at University Challenge. After a deluge of press attention over the sight of an intelligent woman!!! being cleverer than the male contestants. the BBC have now disqualified the winning team after it was found that one of its members had left university and found a job in the time between the first two rounds and the final.

what is odd is that the BBC seem to not noticed that the university year ends in May and therfore if you record the rounds before May and the final in the autumn, then at least a third of possible students will have left and found employment elsewhere.

does that mean that third year students are now disqualified from taking part in University challenge? in case they do not go into post graduate education but instead return to the real world.

Fucking Bastard Bankers!

while thousands are losing their jobs, thousands more are threatened with losing their homes, Popeye Brown pours billions into the pockets of the banker bastards who caused the fucking mess in the first place. The bankers themselves are happily pissing all over the rest of us!
fro the evening standard:

"A city banker stunned staff at a Soho club by running up a bar bill of more
than £40,000 in a single night.
The wealthy financier defied the credit
crunch by ordering the mammoth amount of drinks at a post-Brits party at Maya in
Dean Street.
The banker, who did not wish to be named, shared the drinks with
four friends and other partygoers in the club's VIP area on Wednesday
night.
After spending more than £37,000 on champagne and vodka, the man left
a £5,000 tip for the waitress.
In less than three hours the group got through
two methuselahs of Dom Perignon, which each hold the equivalent of eight
bottles, at a cost of £9,000 each.
They also drank two jeroboams - the
equivalent of four bottles each - of Cristal and three magnums, equivalent to
two bottles, of Cristal Rosé. The bar bill also included five regular bottles of
champagne at £350 each and £3,000 worth of Belvedere vodka. A spokesman for Maya
said: "Maya gets a lot of big spenders, but this is a biggie.
"The recession
is hitting people hard, but it didn't seem to bother this man.
"He is a
regular in Maya and is a member, and he brought along four friends.
"But he
ended up sharing all the drinks with a lot of other people in the VIP area.
"The champagne bottles were coming out with sparklers in them and lots of
people approached them to see what was going on and were offered a
glass.
"They racked up the bill in about two and a half hours."
Maya
opened in September 2007.
Lady Gaga, Sienna
Miller and actor Rhys Ifans have all partied at the club, whose DJs
specialise in funky house and electro music.
Henry Conway, the socialite son
of MP Derek Conway, runs parties and organises the guest list on Fridays."

Fucking bastard bastard banker bastards. make them pay in blood!

moonbat plays Nazi

Bravo to German ANTIFA for this fabulous demolition of Tom Cruise's
whitewashing of the Stauffenburg plot.



the best summation of the Staffenburg plot I have read recently was from Ella commenting on Paul Stott' s Blog. Her History teacher said that;
'The attempted assassination of Hitler was because he was losing the war and wasn't Nazi enough for the plotters "

Capitalism is no conspiracy and Hamas is not the Rebel Alliance

Edit:
Following on fromDave's comments a few notes on the following post;
the leaflet I have reproduced here is one of the few examples in English of the ideas of the 'anti-deutche' antifa, a wing of the German autonomist/anarchist left. I do not agree with some of the points it makes, especially its statist assumption that only an Israeli state can provide defence for the Jewish people. I remain convinced that there is no state solution to the mess in the middle east, that redrawing lines on maps will create more victims, more bloodshed and new hatreds.
However I am also sure that Anti Zionism is a pernicious and corrosive ideology, which combines all the absurdities of anti imperialism, which attempts to tie the working class to the interests of the ruling classes and the would be ruling classes of so called oppressed nations, with an exceptionalist approach toward Israel which easily accomodates anti semites and anti semitism.
The current assault on the Gaza is dressed up by the Israeli Goverment as essential to defend Israeli civilians against the indiscriminate rocket attacks of Hamas, the fact is that the Israeli goverment is facing elections and desperately wants to prove its credentials to save a few votes.
The assault on Gaza has little therefore to with defending Israeli citizens, but neither are the rocket attacks really anything to do with defending the Palestinians of Gaza; the clerical fascists of Hamas could not, and indeed have had no intention of, defending ordinary Palestinians from Israel's army.
I reject both the death seeking fanaticism of Hamas and the cynical vote chasing of the Israeli goverment.

"All the arguments of the left revolve around one state/two state. All happily accept the artificial divisions created in the twentieth century by the very imperialists that they claim to oppose, and all ignore the actual people - Palestinian, Israeli, Lebanese, Druse, Syrian, Egyptian, Jordanian, Bedouin - who live there. Re-jigging the lines on a map will create new oppressions, new grievances and new horrors, and we as revolutionaries should have no part in assisting that.

We should stand shoulder to shoulder with those struggling against the oppressors of the Israeli state and the Palestinian bantustan. We fight against our 'own' rulers who attempt to use this slaughter to their own ends and use measly words 'condemning the violence' whilst writing out the receipts for the latest arms contract.Any state solution is a continuation of the same bullshit.
No Borders No States No Gods No War but the Class War"


from a leaflet distributed by the german group theorie organisation praxis (TOP)
Against Antisemitism within the activist scene
You consider yourself an activist, a radical, maybe an anarchist. In any case you are someone who is an outspoken critic of capitalism and who wants to end oppression and injustice as the left all over the world wants to.
At the same time, all over the world, Antisemitism is on the rise again. It takes many forms, some of which are violent such as verbal and physical attacks, while others are more subtle. Antisemitism has a long and gruesome history: Since the middle ages, Christianity supported pogroms against Jews. Later, the natural sciences came up with the idea of an inferior Jewish „race“, and generally speaking Jews often got blamed for all evil in the world. The climax were the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other concentration camps where six million Jews were murdered.
The activist movement, however, seems to ignore this history and the fact that Jews still are not secure. Rather than acknowledging Antisemitism as another means of oppression that needs to be fought – such as racism or sexism – quite a few of its members actively take part in pushing antisemitic attitudes.
For the most part, these become visible in the form of hatred towards Israel even if of course not every critique of Israel equals Antisemitism. The creation of the State of Israel was a direct outcome of the Holocaust. It is a much-needed refuge for Jewish people to defend themselves effectively against antisemitic attacks. While it should still be on top of the agenda to criticize nation states, calling for Israel´s destruction through claims like “Palestine shall be free, from the river to the sea” means calling for the potential death of its five million Jewish inhabitants.
Ever noticed how Israel is constantly on the agenda while hardly anyone comments on the things going on in areas such as Darfur, Iran, Kashmir, Burma or the Western Sahara? Singling out and demonising Israel while ignoring far worse actions by other countries is what we would call antisemitic.
Likening Israel to Nazi Germany (such as displaying placards with the Star of David twisted into Nazi swastikas), or to traditional anti-Jewish stereotypical behaviour (Israel as a “bloodthirsty and power-hungry” state) is another sign of Antisemitism, as it turns the victims of the Holocaust into alleged persecutors.
Whenever people fight for emancipation, we need to look whom we show our solidarity with: The Hamas, for example, clearly states the wish to destroy the state of the Holocaust survivors. In their charta “the Jews” are blamed for almost everything: “They stood behind World War I…, they also stood behind World War II…, they inspired the United Nations and the Security Council … in order to rule the world. … There was no war that broke out anywhere without their fingerprints on it.”
A blind solidarity with the Palestinian struggle tends to ignore these and other reactionary elements in Palestinian society. Blowing up people by strapping dynamite around your waist is not a revolutionary act of liberation. To explain it with the Israeli occupation ignores ideological elements such as the widespread Antisemitism in Palestinian society: After all, hardly anywhere else oppressed people blow up innocent humans on the basis of their “ethnicity”. Of course, the suffering of people living in Palestine needs to be acknowledged and solutions for the conflict need to be found; but we need to carefully choose who we work with.
Antisemitism, however, is not simply about hating Jews and denying them the right to a secure State. Antisemitic ideology works more subtly: It is usually embedded in a particular world view that “explains” the evils of modern capitalist society. It emerged throughout Europe in the course of the 19th century as a reaction to the rapid spread of capitalist society and the social upheavals this triggered. Capitalism in the antisemitic world view is not seen as a process which unfolds of its own accord in the absence of a particular subject, but rather as an exploitative project consciously put into effect by evil people, like “the ruling class”. The antisemitic world view thus consists of personification and draws upon the picture of the “Jewish capitalist” that is deeply embedded in Western culture, which for centuries associated Jews with money. It can be displayed in talk of “the rulers” or “the capitalists” who “pull the strings”, “dominate the world” and just can’t get enough with their “greed”.
Consequent Anticapitalism might also prevent antisemitic resentments: Capitalism is not a conspiracy of a few – neither Jews, nor the G8 or other “leaders”. It has not become as horrible as it is because of a few capitalists’ intentional plans or because of the interest rates and flow of finance capital. The inherent logic that makes Capitalism work is that of a system that is not oriented towards people’s needs, but towards the realization of capital – it is a game that even capitalists have to play. If we really want to attack the roots of capitalist society we need to understand this mode of production that commodifies every aspect of our lives under the merciless rule of value.
If the activist scene starts to question a black-and-white world view that contrasts good “people” with evil finance “capital” it may come to realize that – as is the case with the Middle East conflict – there is no simple dichotomy of oppressor vs. the oppressed in the struggle for liberation and emancipation. We need to come up with new ways and not fight the players but the whole fucking game.

"Anti Zionism is not Anti Semitism?"

the opponents of the right of Israel to exist often reply to accusations that they are reviving old anti semitic prejudices by replying that anti zionism is not Anti semitic.

take a look at this picture-

the brave anti imperialist warrior with the dreads has the following on his Palestinian flag;

"In my country there is problem"

Where does that come from?

Oh yes, here.

Gotcha!!

Merry Christmas!

As a special treat here is an article from the Economist, in terror that the inspiration of the Greek Insurrection will spread across the World:

EVERY scholar of 20th-century history can tell you about the Communist International—usually called Comintern, and strictly speaking the third in a series of four global fraternities whose aim was to pursue the class struggle all over the world.
Is it possible to imagine an Anarchist International, a trans-national version of the inchoate but impassioned demonstrations that have ravaged Greece this month? (Perhaps because it is easier to say what Greece’s malcontents are against than what they are for, the word “anarchist” is an accepted catch-all term for the anti-establishment rebels who form the hard core of the Athenian protesters.)
By definition, anarchy is harder to propagate than rigid Leninism. Whatever is spreading from Athens, it is not a clear programme for a better world. The malcontents of Greece include ideological class warriors, nostalgists for the protests against the junta of 1967-74 and people (including drug dealers and bank robbers) with a grudge against the police. Relations between police and the counter-culture have worsened recently; the police are accused (rightly) of bullying migrants, the bohemians of dallying with terrorism. A messy scene, with no obvious message.
But the psychological impulse behind the Greek protests—a sense of rage against all authority, which came to a head after a 15-year-old boy was killed by a police bullet—can now be transmitted almost instantaneously, in ways that would make the Bolsheviks very jealous. These days, images (moving as well as still) spread faster than words; and images, of course, transcend language barriers.
E-communications are now a familiar feature in pro-democracy protests against dictators. Equally fast-moving, say specialists, is the role of technology in what might be called “undemocratic protests”: violent acts in prosperous, networked societies.
This became obvious during the French riots of 2005, when teenagers posted blogs that urged people to “burn the cops”—and made massive use of text messages to co-ordinate the protests. The youths that trashed Budapest in 2006 relied on blogs to enlist supporters, and distribute an audio recording of the prime minister admitting government corruption.
Hungarian blogs were also used to aggregate visual evidence of police brutality. There were novel online projects such as an “Interactive Riot Walkthrough”, which superimposed photos of the latest events on a map of Budapest, offering “virtual tours” of the city as it burned.
Already, the Greek riots are prompting talk of a new era of networked protest. The volume of online content they have inspired is remarkable. Photos and videos of the chaos, often shot with cellphones, were posted online almost in real time. Twitter, a service for exchanging short messages, has brimmed with live reports from the streets of Athens, most of them in Greek but a few in English.
A tribute to the slain teenager—a clip of photos with music from a popular rock band—appeared on YouTube, the video-sharing site, shortly after his death; more than 160,000 people have seen it. A similar tribute group on Facebook has attracted more than 130,000 members, generating thousands of messages and offering links to more than 1,900 related items: images of the protests, cartoons and leaflets.
A memorial was erected in Second Life, a popular virtual environment, giving its users a glimpse of real-life material from the riots. Many other online techniques—such as maps detailing police deployments and routes of the demonstrations—came of age in Athens. And as thousands of photos and videos hit non-Greek blogs and forums, small protests were triggered in many European cities, including Istanbul and Madrid. Some 32 people were arrested in Copenhagen.
The spread of sympathy protests over what began as a local Greek issue has big implications for the more formal anti-globalisation movement. That movement has ignored the idea of spontaneous but networked protest, and instead focused on taking large crowds to set-piece events like summits. Such methods look outdated now. Governments are not the only things that networked “anarchy” threatens.

Lets make it happen!

Happy New Year, and Burn It Down!

More tales from two cities

the family of Jean Charles De Menzies have, in the 3 years since his murder by the Police in Stockwell tube station, acted with dignity and quiet determination to gain an element of Justice and a true account of their son's death.

In return the British state and it's apologists have spat on them and their son's memory.

the best that they have been able to achieve has been an open verdict at the inquest (and only then due to the bravery of the jury in rejecting the pressure from the police and the coroner) and not a single policeman or woman having to face responsibility for Jean Charles' murder.

After the murder of Alexandros Grigoropolous the streets of every city and large town in Greece have been ablaze with the righteous anger (and petrol bombs) of a youth enraged with the desire to gain justice for Alexi!

One week after Alexi's murder the pigs who killed him are facing charges of murder!

I hold the de Menzies in the greatest respect and hope with all my heart that they gain justice.

but the next time anyone loftily opines that "Violence never achieves anything," or how non violent protest is the only, or the best way, of winning anything; ask them about Alexi and Jean Charles.

Why Capitalism will not Collapse (1932)

This pamphlet was written by members of the SPGB in 1932, in reply to those who argued that the Wall Street crash was the final crisis of capitalism; instead they insisted that Crisis was a essential feature of capitalism and that the system will not collapse without the active revolutionary action of the working class. I disagree with the SPGB about what constitutes revolutionary action, but the essentials of this pamphlet are still relevant especially in reply to the opportunism of today's state lefties and Trotskyists in response to the latest 'credit crunch' crisis.

 

 

Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse

Our view of the crisis [1932]

FOREWORD

We are in the midst of a crisis that is world-wide. Every country feels its ravages. Millions and millions of workers are unemployed and in acute poverty. Everywhere there is discontent and a feeling of insecurity, and the prestige of even the strongest of governments has been shaken. All sorts of emergency measures have been hastily adopted, but the depression still continues. Working men and women who normally ignore such questions, are now asking why the crisis has occurred, what will be its outcome, and whether it could have been avoided. In some minds there is a fear, and in others a hope, that the industrial crisis may bring the present system of society down in ruins, and make way for another.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain answers those questions in this small pamphlet. The answer is worth the consideration of every working man or woman, as it concerns the great social problem—the problem of poverty. Our views on the crisis are set out here with the hope that workers who read them may be led on to study more seriously the principles of Socialism. One great obstacle has first to be overcome. The worker, seeing the inability of the experts to agree among themselves, may doubt his own capacity to understand the problem that other and seemingly wiser heads have found so baffling. Do not be put off by that idea. Working men and women, who make and tend the wonderful machinery of modern industry, and who carry out the intricate operations of trade and finance, have powers of thought that are well able to grasp the basic problems of politics and economics. We who address you are also workers, and we know that only the lack of desire and of confidence has hitherto prevented the mass of the workers from thinking these things out for themselves.

The reader is asked to remember that this pamphlet is not merely the opinion of an individual—it is the view of the Socialist Party. Moreover, it is not the product simply of the present trade depression. It is based upon the writings of many who have given special study to past crises and to the workings of the social system in which these crises have taken place. We are especially indebted to the fruitful and painstaking work of Marx. The S. P. G. B. has held the views set down here, not for a short while only, but ever since its members took up the problem at the formation of the Party over 27 years ago. All that has happened since has confirmed our view of crises. It has also deepened our conviction that in the theory of Marx the wage-earners will fund valuable instruments with which to work for their emancipation.

I. FEARS THAT CAPITALISM WILL COLLAPSE.

The purpose of the Socialist Party is to show the working class the need for a complete alteration in the organisation of society. The basis of Capitalism is the private ownership of the land, the factories, the railways and the rest of the means of life. This is the root cause of poverty, insecurity and wars, and of a whole host of other evils. The remedy lies in making the means of production the common property of society. In other words, the working class must replace the existing social system, known as Capitalism, by a system of common ownership and democratic control, known as Socialism. But our work has been made more difficult by the idea that Capitalism may collapse of its own accord. It is clear that if Capitalism were going to collapse under the weight of its own problems then it would be a waste of time and energy to carry on socialist propaganda and to build up a real socialist party aiming at political power. If it were true, as is claimed, that Capitalism will have broken down long before it will be possible for us to win over a majority for the capture of political power, then, indeed, it would be necessary to seek Socialism by some other means. Workers who have accepted this wrong and lazy idea of collapse have neglected many activities that are absolutely essential. They have taken up the fatalistic attitude of waiting for the system to end itself. But the system is not so obliging!

At first sight there seems to be a ground for this idea. Capitalism from time to time develops acute industrial and financial crises; and at the depth of these it does appear to many observers that there is no way out, and that society cannot continue at all unless some way out is found. Men of very different social position and political convictions have been driven to this conclusion—reactionaries and revolutionaries, bankers and merchants, employers and wage-earners.

Let us go over some of the statements made by those who have foretold collapse, and notice how much alike they are. Notice, too, how each one falsifies the preceding ones. The fact of another crisis taking place is proof enough that the earlier crises did not turn out to be insoluble—the patient cannot have more than one fatal attack.

During the 19th century there were about ten well-marked crises. One commenced in England in 1825. William Huskisson, a former President of the Board of Trade, wrote about it in a letter dated 30th December, 1829:

"I consider the country to be in a most unsatisfactory state, that some great convulsion must soon take place . . . I hear of the distress of the agricultural, the manufactural, the commercial, the West Indian, and all trading interests. . . I am told land can neither pay rent nor taxes nor rates, that no merchant has any legitimate business . . . I am also told that the whole race of London shopkeepers are nearly ruined" (Huskisson Papers, pub. Constable, 1931, page 310).

Another crisis occurred in the eighteen-eighties, and was dealt with by Lord Randolph Churchill in a speech at Blackpool, in 1884:

"We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874, ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful either among our capitalists or our artisans can discover no signs of a revival. Your iron industry is dead, dead as mutton; your coal industries, which depend greatly on the iron industries, are languishing. Your silk industry is dead, assassinated by the foreigner. Your woollen industry is in articulo mortis, grasping, struggling. Your cotton industry is seriously sick. The ship-building industry, which held out longest of all, is come to a standstill. Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease" (Lord Randolph Churchill by Winston Churchill, M. P., pub. Macmillan & Co Ltd, London, 1906, Vol 1, page 291).

There is one important thing to notice about the two statements above. Huskisson wrote at a time when England was a protectionist country. He was an advocate of free-trade. Lord Randolph Churchill spoke at a time when England had long been a free-trade country. He was an advocate of protection. It is clear that neither free-trade nor protection offers a solution for trade depressions, and that the return to protection in March, 1932, will not prevent further crises.

Of late we have been asked to take a very serious view of the alleged "adverse balance of trade", by which is meant that this country has had more imports than exports, with the consequence that debts have been incurred abroad to the extent of the excess imports. The facts are still the subject of argument, but it is not necessary to go into that question. All that we need to remember is that the fears about the "adverse balance of trade" are not new.

In a paper read to the Royal Statistical Society on December 19th, 1876 (see Trade, Population and Food, by S. Bourne, pub G.Bell and Sons), Mr. Sidney Bourne who for many years was in the Government Service, engaged in the compilation of trade statistics, painted an alarming picture of Great Britain's trade. He argued that serious consequences would follow if the adverse balance (which he pointed out was then in evidence) was allowed to continue. He mentioned, too, the considerable and influential body of political and public men who shared his views.

After making the adjustments he considered necessary on account of income from investments owned abroad by British subjects, and the so-called "invisible exports" (i.e. the services, such as shipping and financial services, that are paid for by foreigners, but which do not take the form of actual articles passing through British ports), he declared that there was an "adverse balance" in the years after 1872.

He said:

"In 1872 the true excess would seem to have been on the side of exports rather than imports, to the extent of nearly £4,000,000; but in the following year the imports again predominated, and have continued to do so with increasing weight up to the present moment" (page 69).

Mr. Bourne, like many modern observers of the course of trade, was apprehensive about the future:

"I firmly believe that Britain now stands tottering on the eminence to which she has attained, and.

In passing, we may notice that one of Mr Bourne's suggested remedies for avoiding the threatened doom of Great Britain has a familiar ring today. It was that the "lower classes" should drink a much smaller quantity of intoxicants. Another was that the rich should "restrain the heavy expenditure accompanying cravings of ambition, the undue pursuit of pleasure and frivolous idleness" (page 74).

It is not necessary to deal with the pessimistic utterances of public men at every crisis; it is sufficient to say that each period of trade depression produces its prophets of catastrophe. We may add, however, that those politicians and business men who foretell collapse now are no more to be relied upon than the others who foretold collapse in past crises. They do not understand the workings of the system that they defend. As recently as 1931 we saw this strikingly illustrated in the abandonment of the gold standard by Great Britain. During August and September we were told that chaos would ensue if that abandonment took place. When it happened everything went on much as before, to the astonishment of the economic "experts" who are supposed to understand these things.

We can leave them and concern ourselves rather with the acceptance of the idea of collapse by those claiming to be socialists. The policies and actions of the workers have been, and will continue to be, powerfully influenced by their theories about the way in which Capitalism works and about its future developments. Wrong theories lead to wrong and dangerous actions.

II. THE IDEA OF A BLIND REVOLT OF THE WORKERS

The defenders of Capitalism who have been panic-stricken in times of crisis, have sought for ways to save the social system, which they believed to be in danger. On the other hand, many who desired Socialism have looked at industrial crises not with fear but with hope. They have thought that in a time of great unemployment and distress the majority of workers, although not socialists, would be forced by their sufferings to revolt against the capitalists and their government, and that they would place in power a government which would try to remould society on a socialist basis.

One of the organisations to hold this view was the Social Democratic Federation. The late H. M. Hyndman, who was prominently associated with the S. D. F., thought that Socialism might be expected as the result of almost every one of the crises that occurred in the period from 1881 onwards. Thus, in 1884, in the paper Justice (January, 1884), he made the following declaration:

"It is quite possible that during this very crisis, which promises to be long and serious, an attempt will be made to substitute collective for capitalist control. Ideas move fast; the workers are coming together".

Later on he suggested 1889 as the probable date for the revolution (see Rise and Decline of Socialism by Joseph Clayton, pub 1926 by Faber & Gwyer, p.14). Edward Carpenter in My Days and Dreams, says:

"It was no wonder that Hyndman . . . becoming conscious as early as 1881 of the new forces all around in the social world, was filled with a kind of fervour of revolutionary anticipation. We used to chaff him because at every crisis in the industrial situation he was confident that the Millennium was at hand" (pub, Allen Unwin Ltd, 1916, page 246).

Hyndman continued to see the revolution "round every corner", until the date of his death, in 1921.

Similar ideas are held by members of the Labour Party and Independent Labour Party, and they were handed down from the Social Democratic Federation to the parties that in 1920 became the Communist Party of Great Britain. It is indeed probable that the Russian Bolshevist leaders, many of whom hold these views, learned them during their exile in England round about the beginning of the century.

The communists provide the clearest example of a party holding this theory and trying to act upon it. In The Communist (22nd October, 1921) it was frankly stated that those who founded the Communist Party of Great Britain were "impelled by the conviction that the capitalist economic system had broken down", while Mr W. Paul, a prominent communist wrote in the communist journal, The Labour Monthly (15th February, 1922):

"The most important fact in modern history is the breakdown of capitalism . . . there is the greatest possibility that the social revolution may take place in the immediate future".

In July, 1926, The Labour Monthly stated that:

"The decline of capitalism in Britain, whether measured in the figures of trade or of production, has developed at a startling and accelerated pace between 1921 and 1926".

In 1928, in a Communist Party book, The Decline of Capitalism, the author, E. Varga, declared (p. 7):

"It is no longer a 'dying' capitalism, but one already in the process of mortification . . ."

In the October, 1931 Labour Monthly (just before the General Election), Mr. Dutt, the editor, wrote in a manner indicating the utmost excitement at the likelihood of a decisive crash: "The fight is here", "the crisis marches on relentlessly", "it is the whole basis of British Imperialism that is now beginning to crack", "the whole system is faced with collapse", "the hour of desperate crisis begins"; and much more to the same effect.

Mr. James Maxton, M. P., putting the I. L. P. point of view, has been as confident as the communists. He made a speech at Cowcaddens on 21st August, 1931, reported as follows in the columns of the Daily Record, 22nd August, 1931 (Reprinted in Forward, 12th September):

"I am perfectly satisfied that the great capitalist system that has endured for 150 years in its modern form, is now at the stage of final collapse, and not all the devices of the statesmen, not all the three-party conferences, not all the collaboration between leaders, can prevent the system from coming down with one unholy crash".

The Daily Record report goes on to describe Mr. Maxton's speech:

"'They may postpone the collapse for a month, two months, three months, six months', he cried, forefinger pointing at his audience, and body crouched, 'but collapse is sure and certain'".

In contradiction to those who hold this theory of an automatic collapse of Capitalism, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has never deviated from opposition to that view. Our knowledge of past history and of the way in which the social system develops, convinces us that no crisis of Capitalism, however desperate it may be, can ever by itself give us Socialism. Socialism cannot come by stealth. It can only come by the deliberate act of workers who understand Socialism, and are organised politically to obtain it through control of the machinery of government. The blind revolt of desperate workers would cause great distress and destruction. It might prove troublesome to the capitalist authorities, who would have to exert themselves to suppress it, but the outcome would not be Socialism.

Why are we so confident of this? In the next section our confidence is explained.

III. THE CAUSE OF CRISES

The cause of trade depression is really a simple one to understand. Highly developed Capitalism, while condemning the vast number of workers to a meagre standard of living, causes extraordinarily large incomes to flow into the pockets of a small section of the population (i. e., those who own the factories, the land, the railways, etc.). Most wealthy people have incomes so large that they do not spend anything like the whole amount. After having purchased all they need, often including luxuries of the most extravagant kind, they still have a large surplus that they seek to invest in profitable concerns. But these concerns are in competition, each trying to sell goods more cheaply than the other. In order to maintain and, if possible, increase his profits, each employer tries to get from his workers a larger output at a smaller cost. By means of labour-saving machinery and methods the same quantity of goods is produced by fewer and fewer workers, and displaced workers are constantly added to the army of unemployed. The unemployed man or woman, having only unemployment pay to spend, cannot buy as much as formerly. Thus buying is curtailed while all the time efforts are being made to increase production—a contradiction that is bound to result in over-stocked markets and trade depression. During a depression, this situation is worsened by wage reductions.

The depression shows itself, every few years, in the accumulation of stocks of goods in the hands of retail stores, wholesalers and manufacturers, farmers and others. While trade is relatively good each concern tries to produce as much as possible in order to make a large profit. It is nobody's business under Capitalism to find out how much of each article is required, so that industries quickly expand to the point at which their total output is far larger than can be sold at a profit. Quite young industries like artificial silk, soon reach the degree of over-development shown by the older industries. Goods such as farm crops, that are ordinarily not produced to order, but with the expectation of finding a buyer eventually, naturally tend to accumulate to a greater extent than those produced only to order—such as railway engines.

As traders find it more difficult to sell, they reduce their orders to the wholesalers, who in turn stop buying from the manufacturers. Plans for extending production by constructing new buildings, plant, ships, etc., are cancelled and the workers are laid off.

The reduced income of the workers and of the unemployed reduces still further the demand for goods. In desperate need of ready money to pay their bills, retailers, wholesalers and manufacturers are driven to sell their stocks at lower and lower prices—often at a price less than the original cost price. Workers, for the same reason, are forced to offer to work for lower wages. It is not that there is any lack of money, but that the rich who have it can find no profitable field for investment. The economies that are made in a time of depression—whether voluntary ones, or economies enforced on the workers by wage reductions, actually aggravate the crisis instead of relieving it. Yet "economise" is the advice given by public men now, as it was by Mr. Bourne in 1876, referred to earlier in this pamphlet.

Here is a situation that always causes grave discontent. It is from this discontent that the believers in the theory of the collapse of Capitalism think that they can draw the force which will overthrow the capitalist system. But it does not work out like that. In spite of riots and agitations, Capitalism still continues. The actual events show us why this is and why it must be so.

IV. WHAT HAPPENS IN PRACTICE

Since the War, to go back no further, the situation has been tested many times and in many places. The result has always been the same—suffering for the workers without compensating gain.

In Great Britain two outstanding events may be considered. First, there was the great depression of 1921 and 1922, when, as now, unemployment was between 2,000,000 and 2,500,000. Then, in 1926, there was the spontaneous demonstration of sympathy with the miners in their resistance to wage reductions, that resulted in what is known as the "General Strike". Since the communists have been the most persistent advocates of the doctrine we are attacking, let us see what came of their efforts to take advantage of these two crises.

Round about 1921 and 1922 the communists claimed that they had the leadership of the hundreds of thousands of members of the unemployed organisations. They organised marches and demonstrations, deputations to Cabinet Ministers and local authorities, and attempted to seize public buildings. They did everything they could to force the authorities to grant their demands for better treatment. By winning the confidence of the workers in this way the communists then hoped to be able to lead them on to an attack on Capitalism.

What was the result? A writer in their official organ tells us:

"The unemployed have done all they can and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians. They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be 'solid'. They have marched to London enduring terrible hardships . . . All this has led nowhere. None of the marchers believe that seeing Bonar Law in the flesh will make any difference. Willing for any sacrifice, there seems no outlet, no next step. In weariness and bitter disillusionment the unemployed movement is turning in upon itself. There is sporadic action, local rioting, but not central direction. The Government has signified its exact appreciation of the confusion by arresting Hannington.

The plain truth is that the unemployed can only be organised for agitation, not for action. Effective action is the job of the working class as a whole. The Government is not afraid of starving men so long as the mass of workers look on and keep the ring" (Workers' Weekly, 10th February, 1923).

Another communist described the way in which discontent will drive men and women into joining associations that promise them immediate benefit, but how easily the membership thus recruited fades away when capitalists give slight concessions. The references are to an unemployed organisation in Liverpool, but are typical of what happened all over the country. The article was published in January, 1923, in The Worker (20th January 1923).

First, the writer tells us that the organisation began in 1921, with a gathering 20,000 strong and a committee "comprised for the most part of Communists". There was a baton charge by the police in September and most of the committee were arrested. The unemployed then attacked a picture gallery and turned it "into a shambles".

"From then onwards the number declined, due to the fact that a scale of relief had been granted, and that the spineless ones had got the wind up and left. We managed to keep a crowd of 10,000".

The article then describes how the unemployed again came into conflict with the police:

"This gave us another setback in point of numbers, and the people left began to show signs of class consciousness . . . They began to flock to the Communist Party. Very few stayed in, but those who left were inoculated with germs of the class struggle. Due to another agitation we were granted the use of another hall. Again, after another couple of months, we got notice to quit. From then onwards until about April or May 1922 the apathy became terrible.

'The Guardians of the rich', seeing this, began to get brave by daring to cut the relief down. A few hundred returned and wanted to know what we were going to do . . . try as we would we could not get them to kick . . . In September (1922) they returned again. The Guardians had brought in a system of test work . . . the agitation became strong . . . the test work suddenly stopped, so did the demonstrations of our organisation."

This communist writer's last words sum up the whole situation. Writing of the typical unemployed worker, he says:

"The immediate wrongs . . .being satisfied . . . he drifted away again. Thus the movement has declined, and hardly exists to-day outside of a small committee".

The years 1931 and 1932 have seen the communists—blind to their own experiences—acting this tragic farce over again.

It must be obvious that unstable organisations of this kind, composed of non-socialists, and recruited merely on some minor question of the day, cannot be of use in the striving for Socialism.

In 1926 the communists had an excellent opportunity to try out their theory on the millions of workers who were involved in the strike or were sympathetic towards it. The result was just what we have said it must be. Strikes can serve a useful purpose in resisting wage reductions or securing increases, but they cannot overthrow Capitalism. To begin with, the workers themselves have not that purpose

in mind, and even when they become socialists they will still need political organisation in order to capture the real centre of power—the machinery of government and the armed forces controlled by it. This no strike can do.

The strikers wished simply to help the miners. In the main, neither they nor the miners had any wish to overthrow the government or to introduce Socialism. To the extent, therefore, that the communists were able to make known their intention of using the strike to overthrow the State, they were not attracting but repelling the workers. As the communists confessed, the "strikers had no horizon beyond bringing aid to the miners, and thereby resisting the employers' offensive against themselves" (The Labour Monthly, June 1926, p. 347). The workers had no desire to use the strike for revolutionary ends, and as the outcome showed, the State, with its financial resources, its armed forces, its support in the press, and its prestige with the mass of the population, has nothing to fear from striking workers even when they number two or three millions.

In a large strike, as in a small one, starvation fights on the side of the propertied class against the wage earners. We know from the General Strike, and from revolts of workers attempted in many countries at different times, that desperate men and women will take desperate action when goaded to it by the hardships of their life under Capitalism. But we have seen in the General Strike of 1926 how such spontaneous outbursts are always crushed by the forces at the disposal of the ruling class through their control of the machinery of Government. How much easier it is, and how much less costly in human suffering, to convert a majority to Socialism than to engage in these blind revolts!

There is, too, another factor of great importance. The ruling class usually and in the long run are not blind to their own interests, and do not drive the working class as a whole into revolt. They are not so foolish as to leave only that alternative. By means of charity, doles, and unemployment insurance, and, if need be, the grant of higher wages and other concessions, the capitalists can always take the edge off periods of the more acute industrial depressions.

The problem of "over-production" that is behind every crisis is always relieved in due course for a time. Employers close down production and thus stop the stocks from being added to. Governments tax the employers and with the money so obtained enable the unemployed to buy a certain amount of the accumulation of articles. Capitalists combine, with or without the assistance of Governments, to destroy stocks. At the beginning of 1932, Brazilian coffee was being burned, thrown into the sea, and used for fuel. Wheat was being burned in Canada and U. S. A., and a resolution was passed by the United States Senate recommending that the U. S. A. Government hand over to the unemployed the 40,000,000 bushels of wheat held by the Farm Board. In addition, in site of every care, great stocks of raw materials deteriorate and spoil. As a last resort there is the colossal destruction of wars to relieve pressure. Sooner or later, these crises of over-production have always given place to a resumption of fairly brisk trade and employment, without, of course, abolishing unemployment. Capitalism cannot do that.

Some of the communists have indeed just begun to recognise the unsoundness of their theory. In The Labour Monthly (January 1932), Mr. Dutt quotes with approval a statement of Lenin's—that no situation for Capitalism is "without a way out", and says:

"We know that the overthrow of capitalism . . . requires the most titanic and long-drawn struggle, action, organisation, and victory of the working class; and that until this is attained, capitalism will still drag on from crisis to crisis, from hell to greater hell".

To this we would add that the workers will never be able to take sound action until they possess the knowledge of Socialism that it is our aim to provide. So long as the workers lack a knowledge of socialist principles, and a determination to bring Socialism about, each crisis will pass off in this fashion. As a matter of fact, it is not always true that the additional hardship makes the workers kick, even blindly, against Capitalism. The capitalists are so well able to excite the workers' fears, because of a lack of socialist knowledge, that we often see the workers in times of crisis rallying round the most openly capitalist and reactionary parties. We saw this in the 1931 crisis, when an overwhelming majority of workers in Great Britain and in Australia voted into power reactionary "Nationalist" parties, in spite of the plans of these parties to reduce unemployment pay and the pay of Government employees, and to impose other economies.

V. THE ONLY ROAD TO SOCIALISM

The lesson to be learned is that there is no simple way out of Capitalism by leaving the system to collapse of its own accord. Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organise politically for the conscious purpose of ending Capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely

Throughout the 19th century, and up to the present time, many attempts have been made to build up working class organisations on the basis of demanding concessions from the capitalists to meet the evil effects of the capitalist system. There have been numbers of unemployed organisations asking for "work or maintenance" and political parties, such as the Labour Party, the I. L .P., and the Communist Party, seeking support on programmes of reforms. Some of these bodies have obtained a large membership and have appeared to gain small concessions. Some have even taken over the Government and tried to apply their reform programmes. But such organisations do not, and cannot, bring Socialism. Their members are attracted by the promises of immediate results. They are not

willing to work for the abolition of Capitalism because they have not learned that it is Capitalism which causes the evils they are seeking to remove. These organisations cannot get beyond the limited aims and understanding of their members. They are built up on a wrong foundation. They are not deserving of working class support. They may reform Capitalism, but they cannot abolish it.

So long as the workers are prepared to resign themselves to the evils of Capitalism, and so long as they are prepared to place in control of Parliament parties that will use their power for the purpose of maintaining Capitalism, there is no escape from the effects of Capitalism. The workers will continue to suffer from the normal hardships of the capitalist system when trade is relatively good, and from the aggravated hardships which are the workers' lot during trade depressions.

That is the prospect before the workers of all the world unless they actively interest themselves in understanding socialist principles and assisting in socialist organisation.

A PERSONAL APPEAL

We have now stated our case and we hope that you have given it the consideration it deserves. The question is, what are you going to do? Are you going to put it aside and carry on as of yore, or are you going to arm yourselves with socialist knowledge? One way lies poverty, misery and bondage; the other way lies the road to emancipation and, at its end, all the happiness and fullness of life that the gigantic and fruitful machinery of modern industry offers to a world of free and equal men and women. The choice is before you; only knowledge, desire and self-confidence are needed to realise the free society of the future. Place not your trust in others, but be assured that the work there is to do must be done by yourselves.

Greece: A statement of moderation

statement issued by the association of employees of the suburb of Agios Dimitrios in Athens. Here’s a rough translation of the statement, as promised. Keep in mind that, as members of the association told some comrades, they tried to keep the style of the text as sober as possible, to ensure the maximum number of people take the streets with them.
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/
STATEMENT
On Saturday night, the Greek police assassinated a 15 year old student.
His assassination was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
It was the continuation of a coordinated action, by state terrorism and the Golden Dawn, which aimed at university and high school students (with the private universities first), at migrants that continue to be persecuted for being born with the wrong colour, at the employees that must work to death without compensation.
The government of cover-ups with its praetors, having burnt the forests last summer, is responsible for all major cities burning now, too. It protected financial criminals, all those involved in the mobile phone interceptions scandal, those looting the employees’ insurance funds, those kidnapping migrants, those who protected the banks and the monasteries that steal from the ordinary people.
We are in Civil War: With the fascists, the bankers, the state, the media wishing to see an obedient society.
There are no excuses, yet they once again try to use conspiracy theories to calm spirits down.
The rage that had accumulated had to be expressed and should not, by any means, end.
Throughout the world we are making headlines, it was about time that people uprise everywhere.
The generation of the poor, the unemployed, the partially employed, the homeless, the migrants, the youth, is the generation that will smash every display window and will wake up the obedient citizens from their sleep of the ephemeral American dream.
Don’t watch the news, consciousness is born in the streets
When the youth is murdered, the old people should not sleep
Goodbye Alexandros, may your blood be the last of an innocent to run

All power to the school kids!

A kid of their age was assassinated. They took the streets to protest only to have tear gas thrown at them, to be violently arrested, to be shot at. Yet hour by hour, day by day, the school students on the streets become more militant and determined. So far they have attacked more than six police stations across Athens. Yesterday in the suburb of Petroupoli, around 100 of them attacked the local police station, smashing it up with sticks and stones. A few banks down the same road were also attacked. Until yesterday night at least 100 schools in the country were occupied by their students. This number is expected to jump up today, when most students are supposed to return to their schools for the first time after Alexandros’ death. Whether they chose to do so or not could largely determine the future of the revolt. Luckily, they seem to have no intention to return to normalcy: For today, 11.12, the students are planning decentralised road blockades across Athens. For tomorrow, Friday, demonstrations are called by university students in Athens and Thessaloniki - universities are also expected to be occupied in large numbers today and tomorrow. The Economics University anarchist occupation has decided to reach out to the students; newspapers, posters and leaflets are being printed right now, to be distributed to schools across the city asap. The future of our struggle seems to be dependent on them and I am confident we are in good hands.
http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/

OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!
For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood
Upon our side, we who were strong in love!
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress--to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moment might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.
What temper at the prospect did not wake
To happiness unthought of? The inert
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!
They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,
The playfellows of fancy, who had made
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength
Their ministers,--who in lordly wise had stirred
Among the grandest objects of the sense,
And dealt with whatsoever they found there
As if they had within some lurking right
To wield it;--they, too, who, of gentle mood,
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more mild,
And in the region of their peaceful selves;--
Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,--the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all!
Wordsworth.

Greek Police employ the UFO defence.

From the defence statement of one of the child killers who took Alexandros Grigoropolous's life:

This tragedy is the result… of an act by the policeman to fire into the air. The bullet ricocheted, we have an entry wound from above. It proves irrefutably that it was a ricochet.

Lying, filthy, murdering bastards.


thanks to bristlekrs for this.

the new poetry

from http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/

In Patras, the furious demonstrators’ block besieged the main police station only hours after the assassination. The first five arrests. The following day, a well-known local poet, now in his fifties, walked up to the police station, alone. He calmly opened his bag and, one after the other, he lit and threw the molotov cocktails he had in his bag. A new form of poetry?

Today is the day that will decide the Greek insurrection

From http://www.occupiedlondon.org/blog/

UPDATE 13:43 A friend on the phone: “I just walked down Mesogeion ave” (far from the centre) “and a small group of students, 12-13 year old, are attacking a riot police van. They are just armed with stones but they are totally going for it!”

UPDATE 13:35 TV footage already shows 12-year old students pelting the riot police with stones this morning; fresh rioting has erupted at the Propylea of the university of Athens; riot police threw tear gas at people sitting in cafeterias &those people attacked them in response. The stalinist trade union (PAME) has already retreated and left the street. Now is our time!

Today is the day. Yesterday’s events showed that the Greek state will try to end the rebellion as soon as possible. The fascists are now out on the streets; mainstream media carry fresh reports this morning that the government has decided to declare a state of emergency tomorrow (Thursday), should the rioting not end by then. Reports on indymedia claim that the ballistic report of Alexandros’ death has been altered to claim show the cop’s bullet bounced off before killing Alexandros (should this happen, his killer cop will avoid conviction).
These are all rumours, but now seem increasingly likely to happen. What will happen today is extremely important and will define what happens from now on. I’m heading for the street, next short reports will come in from there.

GREECE: Fascists, Police and BBC (!) in collusion

the BBC, in their reporting of the funeral of Alexandros Grigoropoulos yesterday, claimed that 'local residents' joined with the police to attack the protesters. This is a lie.
here is the truth:
eyewitness report;
Tuesday’s demonstration was called by local anarchist groups. Participation was phenomenal by the city’s standards - around 3,000 people (some reports put this number up to 5,000) took the streets of Patras behind the anarchist banners and against state violence. The march cruised through the city; banks were smashed. Meanwhile, the city’s police force had gathered around the main police station in order to protect it.
Toward the end of the demo however the riot police launched a major attack, forcing it to retreat toward the city’s historical university building (the so-called parartima). Soon thereafter, the most incredible attack began: Tens of fascists (that seem to had gathered in Patras from across the country, in a pre-planned joint operation with the police) attacked the demonstration with knives and stones. Co-ordinating perfectly with the police, they continued their attack and, according to some reports, even did some joint arrests. The demonstrators were confronted with the following unbelievable spectacle: They were facing a group of people throwing them police-owned tear gas while chanting “blood-honour-golden dawn” (the name of a nazi group in Greece).
The demonstrators’ block (which only numbered around 500 at the time, as this happened near the end of the demo) was completely torn apart; people were chased all the way into their flats; demonstrators had to seek refuge in flats in 10s and 20s, while the cops and the nazis would smash their windows and try to force entry.
Patras Indymedia reports 26 detentions and 9 arrests. Thankfully, the reports that the fascists would head for the city’s Afghan refugee camp have proven false so far.
What makes the above story even more unbelievable is that the mainstream media report it as the “local business owners” being the ones who attacked the demonstrators, “taking the law into their own hands”. Putting aside the …minor detail that absolutely no local businesses were damaged (only multinational banks, the courts and the police station), these supposed “shop owners” and “respectful citizens” were depicted in media in their balaclavas, holding knives! There was an unbelievable joint police-fascist operation in Patras today and they are trying to cover it up and to claim the public has turned against the demonstrators.
It is crucial to confront their lies and to resist their repression - the future of this movement could depend on this. Please spread the word.

Update: eco toffs

Dave E adds more to the sorry tale of limp wrist toff radicalism;

... Lily Kember, one of the spokespeople for this bunch of eco-toff crap, is the product of a the Godolphin and Latymer School, the fees for which amount to some £14,000 pa - more than my total annual income. These fees were generously paid by her mummy and daddy to, ahem, give her the best start in life. So it seemed very strange when one of her climate chumps was quoted as saying:

We're here because our parents' generation has failed us

But perhaps she wasn't referring to her own privileged upbringing, but the fact that the great unwashed no longer know their place and have aspirations to take advantage of cheap modern travel.This pillock also said
We're afraid of what the police might do to us, we're afraid of going to jail Don't worry, Odious Ferry says you can share his cell.To make matters worse, Energy Secretary, and political caste member, Ed Miliband is reported to be calling for "popular mobilisation" to support politicians trying to pressure world leaders into a deal on climate change. He went on to say there needs to be "a mass movement" along the lines of Make Poverty History. Well that will be great news for the wristband producing sweatshops in Bangladesh, and the washed up rock stars with messianic delusions and a mountainous back catalogue to sell.And just to illustrate the pointlessness of this approach - there's still massive poverty all over the world, it didn't work.What a sorry bunch of fucking wankers

Christmas in Greece

burn baby burn!

from Indymedia:
During the night there were attacks on police stations, banks and other targets, the number of which is still unknown. The day started early on Monday. Students at highschools across the country had meetings this morning and decided to protest and show their rage for the murder and the police. The students walked out of the classrooms, some schools were occupied and on others the students demonstrated, stopping the traffic in major roads and setting barricades. This has happened in dozens of cities, even the smaller ones. Slogans were shouted and painted on walls and in some cities the students attacked the cops and their stations, setting fire barricades on the streets, and turning police cars upside down. In Athens, in many neighborhoods, suburbs and downtown, there were big demonstrations by students in the morning, a big number of which classed with the police and there were arrests. The police reactions were very strong against the students (14-17 year old kids) and even the corporate media, who usually follow the police views and cover up their acts, showed riot cops brutally abusing and beating 15 yo boys and girls. What happened later, in the afternoon and night is still unclear. For sure there were thousands of people in the streets rioting, clashing with the police and smashing banks, corporate shops and governmental buildings. The media talk about huge disasters and they show videos of rioting and burning buildings and cars but there are no independent reports since the local Indymedia center is down all day due to heavy traffic and perhaps attacks from the police. The government is holding meetings all day and there is a rumor going on in the news that it will declare a state of emergency. There is need for international solidarity. Please mention the subject on your local infoshop, squat, anarchist talking group and organize gatherings outside the greek embassies and consulates. Print and handout pamphlets about the situation and protest against the police brutality everywhere. So far, the greek embassies in London (UK) and Berlin (Germany) were occupied, demonstrations took place in Hamburg (Germany), Paris (France), Verne (Switzerland),Leukosia (Cyprus) outside the greek embassies, in Croatia where the embassy was attacked and probably more.

Athens is in the hands of the Revolution

lifted verbatim from ian bones blog
8.10pm - Latest eyewitnes..- via Butchers……..
I had to leave earlier from the demo…. I am sure there are still a lot going on but could not stand there any longer I had big breathing problems… I have to trash my mask for sure, it did not help at all….
I am 30 years old, I have been to a number of demos but what happened today is out of any imagination….. I have NEVER seen something like this. NEVER. This is not the usual riot against riot police this is a BIG PUBLIC OUTRAGE. 15000 people on the streets tonight and HUDGE number of them participating on the riots. EVERYTHING IS BURNED. COMPLETELY. From the beggining of the demo, in Omonia, up to near the Greek parliament building (about 3 km) EVERYTHING got destroyed… I left after this point I had to walk for miles in order to get out of the city centre because there was nothing working, no tube, nothng…There is not a single bank, shop, or anything that remained undamaged…. The police responce was big, a LOT of chemicals, I am sure some “new” ones as well as I have a different “feeling” than on other days and also a lot of plastic bullets. A lot of people injured because of them. At a point a group of policemen had a girl down and were hitting her visiously. Others were hitting midle aged people that were on the demo. I did see policemen THROWING THINGS IN SHOPS AND STORES… Especially if those items WERE ON FIRE.
I am speaking to people on the phone now… in the department of Law of the university of Athens there are people trapped inside… The police are outside and are throwing chemicals INSIDE the buidling from the windows… It is a building with a lot of floors and one big stairway that connects them…. I suppose that the most people are trying to go to the top floors in order to avoid the chemicals as much as possible

meanwhile in Hellas...

Andreas Grigoropolous RIP
never forget! never forgive!

while toffs play at radicalism in Britain, the insurrection continues apace in Greece, virtually every city and large town has had rioting, every university has been occupied, schools closed down , a general strike is planned for wednesday! the Communists have called a massive protest in Athens this evening. The Greek embassies in London and Berlin have been occupied.

London and Berlin

Eye witness accounts

Rioting continuing this afternoon after demonstration - 10 banks destroyed, severe rioting in Patras, old people joining in attacking the police, general strike called for Wednesday - anarchidt groups doing us fucking proud.
Thousands of people continue to demonstrate from the centre of athens to the main police station in the exarthia. The anarchists supported by thousands of other people from around greece. At the moment, the police are throwing lots of tear gas at demonstrators. There is a lot of fire around the streets, in between the demonstrators and the police station.Demonstrators have been on the streets since yesterday evening, after the death of a 16-year-old boy from a police shooting.
We have hear that in the demonstration, people are crying, because of the death of this child. Older people are joining in the demonstration, throwing stones at the police.Head of internal affairs in the government, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, has offered his resignation, in order to absolve himself of responsibility for the police murder. Panayotis Xinofotis, another politician, has done the same. The greek president has so far refused to accept the resignations. The head of exarthia police station is currently being interviewed with the 2 policemen who carried out the shooting.
The police have now entered the university, which they are forbidden from doing, and are firing rubber bullets which are injuring demonstrators.
International media are stating that the police are taking a defensive role, and is showing demonstrators vandalising shops and cars. But footage is not showing the police violence, or mentioning that a kid was killed by police yesterday. This violence was started by the police yesterday when they turned up at the square where people gather, and started swearing at the kids there. The police car left, but then came back and shot one of the kids then left straight away. One hospital refused to accept the child, who finally died on arrival in another hospital.

I have just left the demonstrations and came here… I could not be out on the streets any more, I was there all night and today since 13:00. I estimate we were about 10000 in the beggining, a lot left after the riots started though. Whole Athens is burning as we speak, luxury cars, police cars, banks, supermarkets, the police station of Exarchia, also one ministy is one fire… In Alexandras avenue nearly everything is destroyed as well as on other streets around the city centre. A lot of people are arrested it is difficult to estimate number, I was present in more than one arrests, some are saying for 50 people… I will go on with a more detailed post later, I cannot go on for long now, my eyes are burning because of the police chemicals and I think I cannot breathe normally…. I will try to post some photos later.***
I knew it since early morning today. I know what happened. I also know that there were riots, angry demonstrations, attacks against police stations, banks, and/or state buildings everywhere in Athens, Thessaloniki, Serres, Komotini, Xanthi, Alexandroupoli, Giannena, Trikala, Volos, Agrinio, Patra, Sparti, Chania, Irakleio, Mytilini and elsewhere.
Apart Athens the most voilent reactions were in Chania and Irakleio (both in Crete), Thessaloniki and in the cities in northern Greece (Serres, Komotini and Xanthi). In Athens there were under occupation - as a direct reaction to the murder - the National Technical University (the historic Polytechnic School, known also by the famous popular uprising against the dictatorship in November 1973), the Faculty of Law, the Economic University (ASOEE) and the Panteio University.There were attacks in many police stations/buildings and at least two of them (one in Acropolis and another one in the suburb of Neos Kosmos) have been destroyed almost completely. We had attacks in police cars, banks, state building, multinational offices, luxury cars and shops etc etc., we had barricades in the centre of Athens.Things are still going on!
We had the resignations of the Interior Ministry leadership (minister and undersecretary) but the prime minister didn’t accept them (!) The Mass Media are all in the government’s line, except Radio Flash 96,1 (mainstream radio) - which talked clearly for state murder - and some independent Media, such Athens Indymedia and the Radio Station “Kokkino” (Red) and of course lots of blogspots and the left newspapers.
At this time attacks etc still going and now has started a big demonstration next to the Polytechnic, outside of the National Museum, which is to go to the central police headquarters. I think it will be again a very violent and militant demonstration.Anarchists of every tendency etc are of course in the front line of everything but also all the left wing organisations (maoists, trotskyists and others) are participating, as well as university students (who during the last month had not only one time but many confronted the aggressive police in their demonstrations against the initiation of the private colleges etc in Greece), migrants (who also were the last months subject of police brutality etc), workers etc.
Note also that only last week finished a hunger strike in the Greek prisons by the inmates in which about 6.000 prisoners all over the country involved. The right wing government of New Democracy and Kostas Karamanlis (since 2004 on) is not only in trouble with the assassination of the 16 year old and the students, workers and migrants mobilisations but also because it is a very corrupted government with many financial and others scandals in their disposition, involving also part of the Church, local capitalists and others.
Note also that the Greek economy is one of the first of the European Union to collapse if the current crisis is going further.
********
See also, yesteday:
“A group of Athens Medical School students yesterday held Deputy Health Minister Giorgos Constantopoulos hostage in a ministry auditorium for about half an hour after he refused to discuss reforms that would result in them working the first six months of their careers without pay.”

ecotoff twats

Jocasta and tarquin today celebrated closing down Stanstead for a few hours as a part of their campaign to stop the proles going abroad on holiday.

"Chavs- Know your place!

be content with Blackpool that's all you're worth!"

after paying their fines out of their trust funds, they'll soon fly out to Cloisters, to join mater and pater at their ski lodge.

answering the apologists for mumbai

Howard Jacobson writing in the Independent replies to those like Caroline Lucas who have sought to blame Israel for the massacre in Bombay.

There is no hierarchy of the dead. The slaughtered are the slaughtered. This is not always what the slaughterers think. For those who kill in the name of religion their killing answers to deserts – a casual bullet in the face if you're a poor Hindu, a more selective punishment if you're American or British, a slow, luxuriating torture if you happen to be a Jew. In reward for which, their religion tells them, they themselves will be arranged according to degree in heaven: the more assiduous their killing in God's name, the closer to His right hand they will sit. They are cruelly mistaken. No rewards await them in another world. Just as no restitution according to degree of suffering awaits their victims. In death there is no hierarchy. So I mean nothing hierarchical when I talk about the Jewish victims of the Mumbai massacre. I sorrow no more for them than I do for the impoverished Bihari migrant workers waiting to catch trains home, innocent of any involvement in the mythical cause the gunmen had been brainwashed into believing they must kill for. I allude to the Jewish aspect of this tragedy, not because I am Jewish myself and know a little about the outreach programme in which the murdered Jews were involved – the provision of kosher food and a place of prayer for Jewish tourists in Mumbai – but because it bears on the blame game which, with the usual unseemly haste and ignorance, has already begun in this country. As it was after 9/11 so it has been after Mumbai – hearts going out to the victims, necessity of bringing perpetrators to justice, blah blah, and in the same breath the moral exculpation of those perpetrators in one of those acts of "understanding" which in fact understand nothing but give the speaker the opportunity to inveigh piously against our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel's presence anywhere. Even before the bodies had been recovered from the towers, contributors to Question Time were laying the blame for 9/11on us. After Mumbai, before the blood on the streets had dried, they were doing the same on Any Questions?. It's not the programmes' fault. They merely hold the mirror up to nature. Though you might ask how the BBC always manages to have the appropriately sanctimonious speaker on hand to remind us that, whatever the calamity in whatever part of the world, we in the West in general, and Israel in particular, are responsible. It was Caroline Lucas who, unlike the Bihari migrant workers, happened on this occasion to be in the right place at the right time. Caroline Lucas, should the name mean nothing to you, is the elfin leader of the Green Party. But she could, as far as attributing the usual culpability is concerned, have been anyone at that end of British politics. Reader, I could have gone on the programme and said what she said for her. To wit, Iraq and Afghanistan prove we can't bring peace at the end of a gun (though it would seem that "understanding" can be found at the end of a terrorist's gun), many people see the "war on terror" as a war on Muslims (a point that fails to distinguish between what people choose to "see" and what is the truth of the matter), and, in her actual words, "if we are to defeat extremism we have to go to the root causes of it – we have to look in particular at countries like Palestine". We are not unsubtle in this column. We understand that a simmering resentment will not always express itself rationally or fairly. In frustration, the angry often kill the wrong people in the wrong places. But to argue that Palestine fuelled the massacre at Mumbai, that the Hindu waiter shot in the forehead after serving water to a terrorist was paying for the inequities of Gaza, that he wasn't already, in the eyes of that terrorist, expendable enough as an unbeliever, as one who had stolen Kashmir, or simply as a spot of target practice en route to a mad and misguided martyrdom, is not only preposterous, it is irresponsible. I don't doubt that the terrorists' moral education included lessons about the vileness of Jews, along with lessons about the vileness of everyone else in the west, but we cannot be responsible for the lies people tell about us. Vileness of the Jews, note, not vileness of the Israelis. However carefully Caroline Lucas distinguishes between Jews and Israelis in her frequent newsletters and platform speeches on these and other "Green" issues; whatever her hurt at being accused of anti-Semitism when it is only a Jewish country, for God's sake, and not Jews themselves she abominates – it would appear she has not succeeded in communicating this nice distinction to the Mumbai terrorists. Frankly, my dear, they don't give a damn. The Chabad Centre in Mumbai was a Jewish organisation, not an Israeli one. Its occupants were tortured and killed for being Jews, not for being complicit in the "strangulation" of Gaza, unless all Jews are held to be complicit in the strangulation of Gaza, in which case Caroline Lucas must be very careful where and in what language she lays blame. If she is right that the perception of a great wrong in Palestine motivates such murders as those in Mumbai, then it behoves her, as one who influences perception, to be scrupulous in her observations. Scrupulous, I say, not discreet. I would not wish her, in caution's name, to speak other than the truth. But truth is hard to find. I have visited Israel several times recently, making a documentary about Jesus, travelling in the company of Israelis of all parties and persuasions. The "Green" view is that there are good Israelis and bad Israelis, the good being those who oppose the occupation. Nothing could be more simplistic. I encountered extreme left-wingers who could not bear what their government was doing, but understood its sometime necessity; I met right-wingers who had no sympathy with settlers, and could not wait to live in peace with Palestinians; all wanted change, all were frightened, all loathed the naive, ahistoric sentimentalism that paints them as brutal invaders of a foreign land, and not as fellow combatants in a long and tragic struggle for safety and self-determination. Whatever doesn't tell that story is propaganda – the institution of a falsehood into truth. And propaganda, by Caroline Lucas's own account, kills. Come the next massacre, when she is looking around for someone other than the perpetrators to blame, she might ask how much of their hatred she has stoked. When the world is a tinder box, it is a crime to play with matches.
This piece by Howard Jacobson is from The Independent.

Some notes on understanding Socialism’s failure.

What was the cause of the failure of the great movement of the twentieth century?

Why was it that socialism, which promised the end of the history of Human oppression through class exploitation, should fail so completely?

How did a movement which embodied the high ideals of creating a new human millennium free from tyranny, slavery and oppression have become so compromised by its support for tyranny, slavery and oppression?

These are some notes I have been playing with to try to answer these questions any comments would be welcome.

I have written before of my belief that the answer to these questions lies in the real class interest which the socialist parties have pursued.

Marx was undoubtedly correct when he described the principle actors in the class struggle of Modern industrialised capitalism as being between the modern proletariat and the bourgeoisie and he was careful to add that this did not preclude the existence of other classes. I believe that Marx missed the development of a third historic class, which emerged to meet the needs of managing and administrating an increasingly intricate and complex capitalist state system; this class is the educated managerial class, the Salatariat.

Marx once noted that the New Model army did not defy, defeat, and execute a Divinely appointed King under a banner emblazoned with the motto 'protection of the dividend', nor did the French San culottes take their revolution across Europe on the end of their bayonets in the name of 'all power to the Bourse!', instead the class interests that these revolutions were fought were disguised behind the most noble of slogans and programmes, of liberty, equality and brotherhood. The first, and most important, of the tasks of the victorious regimes brought to power by these revolutions has been the suppression of the hopes and aspirations which those slogans and programmes have created. Because these revolutions were for the benefit of minority Classes they were forced to hide their true programme and interests, the working class, Marx declared, as the vast majority, had no need to disguise its programme, and so would inscribe it upon their banners; "Abolition of the wages system!". (It may be instructive that, with the exception of the venerable old SPGB, none of the various 'Marxist' or socialist parties ever actually used that slogan).

Capitalism could maintain its 'classical' form only as long as it remained a mercantile system; the industrial revolution required a concurrent managerial revolution reflecting the increased complexity of controlling industrial capitalist companies. This new management in industry was matched by the expansion of a new state bureaucracy which grew to adapt to the burgeoning interrelation between industry and state. The expansion of Empire upon which so much of Britain's industrial growth depended for its profit also needed its own army of functionaries. To provide personnel for the Imperial, state and private bureaucracies meant a vast expansion of education and a major change in its character. The universities became the entry points to the Salatariat, producing a pool of educated young men (and occasionally women) to provide for the needs of industrialised State and Capital.

Whilst a very few functionaries of empire, government and industry held important and powerful positions vital to the continued running of society the vast majority undertook mundane work for rewards which, in their eyes, failed to account for their expertise and provided little or no control over the society which they helped to run. Amongst these young intellectuals grew new political ideas based upon conceptions of 'meritocracy', which the power of the state was to be invoked and expanded to take over control of the whole of society on 'rational grounds' by which what was meant it should be run by those whose education and ability made them best suited to do so. In early nineteenth century Europe the marginalisation of radical alternatives following the victory of Reaction after Waterloo, pushed these meritocrats into collusion with the emergent working class movement. Very different and divergent concepts of how a future society was to be organised developed alongside each other and became confused with each other.

An essential difference which was lost at this time was the recognition of the true nature of the state; the state was created alongside the emergence of Class exploitative society, for the ruling class of any such society the state is the armed wing, the protector, and the enforcer of its rule. Class society and the state are inseparable; one cannot remove the one and maintain the existence of the other.

When Marx, himself a member of this new class of intellectuals, found himself in conflict within the first International with the supporters of Bakunin, who despite their many faults, at least understood the nature of the state, he found support from the leaders of 'state socialism', Jaures, Liebknecht, Lassalle etc. Who, after Marx's death, collaborated with the aging Engels to determine the character of 'Marxian' socialism as a socialism which was wedded to the state as the instrument of transformation.

In most of Western Europe the state and capital accommodated and assisted in the growth of the EMC, but in Tsarist Russia the backward and entrenched powerful aristocracy which controlled the autocratic regime of the Tsar, whilst recognising the necessity of modernising their economy to be able to compete in the inter imperialist great game, were terrified of the threat to their power that the democratic reforms that accompanied the expansion of industrial capitalism in the west. Thus, although the educational establishments necessary to provide the state with its new bureaucracy and industry with its new managers were being created throughout Russia, the autocracy viewed their alumni with fear and distrust, preferring to rely on the old aristocratic feudal bureaucratic state structure, and import industry from France and Britain.

Excluded almost in their entirety from their place within Russian society, the, would be, EMC constituted a new, volatile, class, unique to Russia; the intelligencia, that became synonymous with revolutionary opposition to Tsarism. Various intellectuals advocated various solutions; Populism, Anarchism and agrarian social utopianism etc. And various strategies; peaceful agitation, communalism, terrorism, but it was Marxism that came to dominate the politics of the radicalised intelligencia. The promise of a combative and young Russian working class spearheading the struggle against Tsarism (with of course a intellectual leadership) appealed to many of the intelligencia who had grown tired of sacrificing itself in struggle against the cops and Cossacks, or trying to galvanise the peasantry into conflict with the state (the peasants who were never slow to take up their cudgels and torches in their own interest whenever the local aristos showed weakness, were far less willing to do so in the interests of what they recognised as a separate class).

How these Marxists wanted to try to relate to the Russian working class was the cause of the great schism in Russian Marxism, both Mensheviks and Bolsheviks were convinced of the necessity of their leadership, but Lenin was determined that no challenge to the intelligencia's control of the party.

The socialist movements which dominated working class politics throughout the twentieth century were thus not the expression of the interests of the working class, but instead were a manifestation of the political aspirations of sections of the educated Managerial class.

The Russian anarchist Machajski identified the class nature of bolshevism (http://www.geocities.com/cordobakaf/cont.html), but did not extend the analysis beyond the borders of the Russian empire. The success of the revolution meant that clones of Lenin's party sprang up all over the world, monopolising and dominating the revolutionary movement for 80 years.

Bolshevist state centralism represented the rule of the Educated Managerial Class in its purest form, but was a part of a world-wide trend as the increasingly complex interaction between sate and capital concentrated more power into the hands of the EMC. Fascism, Nazism, corporatism and even Roosevelt's New Deal all were differing versions of increased EMC power in the face of the global economic crisis (as described in James Burnham's Managerial Revolution.).

The Russian experience confirmed Bakunin's dictum; "We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality." That if one seeks to destroy capitalism whilst retaining the State, one does not gain freedom but replaces one set of tyrants for another.

But what of the social democratic experience?

Social democracy experienced its 'golden age' in the aftermath of World War two; the tasks of both rebuilding Capital and redirecting it on a more harmonious relationship between state and private Bureaucracy was beyond what could be achieved without extensive direct state involvement in Capitalist accumulation. The reforms achieved in this period made a real difference in the lives of the working class, in housing, health, and education, however the true benefits of these reforms were overwhelmingly the EMC.

Within the socialist democratic parties there has always been a constant conflict between the organised working class who provide the bulk of these parties electoral supporters and a fair number of members, and the EMC who made up the parties leadership and ideological driving force, this struggle was never as it has been portrayed by Trotskyite agitators one of a simple left/ right = working class/ middle class dichotomy, many times 'left wing' activity was undertaken by the EMC against, and in opposition to, Working Class interests within the party.

The Leninists resolved this tension between the working class base of their organisation and its EMC leadership by creating the 'professional revolutionary' and the organisational theory of 'democratic Centralism' which excluded the workers from any influence whatsoever in the Leninist party.

Despite all the propaganda against the pro-capitalist policies of social democracy, it was within social democracy that workers had more influence and a voice; the nature of social democracy in seeking to find an accommodation with capitalism encouraged those elements of the working class which sought better conditions within capitalism and further isolate those who would strangle it.

The massive expansion of higher education in the 1950s and 60s was deeply connected to the need of the modern state for more and more educated graduates to fulfil minor managerial roles in the policing and regimenting of an increasingly surveillance society.

The growth of this lower educated managerial Class has been observable in the growth of white collar trades unionism and a radicalised 'new left', which marked both the Bennite left of the labour party in the 1980's, and the neo Trotskyites of todays Leninite left. These groups were identified by both an adherence to abstract principles completely divorced from any real relevance to their own declared audience, the working class; for example an anti imperialist pose which champions any butcher of workers abroad on the proviso that they be in temporary opposition to our own ruling class, and a inability to relate in even the simplest way with the working class in their own communities- witness their total incapacity to respond to the growth of support for BNP fascism amongst some workers. With The shrill shrieks of 'Nazi' and waving of lollipops, combined with calls for state bans and police action alongside the thrill of being able to finally put down the 'Chavs' who steadfastly refuse to follow the leadership of the party cadres, after all the only supporters of the BNP are the 'scum off the estates', The would be patricians of these socialist parties display their ultimate satisfaction with the status quo, with only one small alteration, they should be in charge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

James Purnel is an arsehole

And I hope he gets piles!

A tail of two Cities

Yesterday, as self satisfied Eco toffs and their trot hangers on sauntered smugly through the streets of London, in Athens real class anger erupted in Fire after the murder of a sixteen year by the police.

Fuck the hot air waffling of the new puritan ecotories!

Increase global warming- Burn the Pigs! Recycle the Rich!

Defend bloggers from Gaggers

From Dave's Part

Statement: libel action brought by Johanna Kaschke
AS IS being reported widely across the leftwing blogosphere, I am currently being sued for libel by Johanna Kaschke, a Conservative Party activist based in Tower Hamlets. In light of the considerable publicity, let me state the following for the record.
This case centres on whether or not Ms Kaschke - filmed in May in the company of London mayor Boris Johnson - can fairly be said to have been ‘linked’ to the ultraleftist Baader Meinhof terrorist gang in her youth in seventies Germany.
Ms Kaschke admits arrest on suspicion of terrorism in 1975, and spending two months or so thereafter in custody. As I made clear in the article complained of, she was in 1977 paid compensation for false imprisonment, and has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Despite her contention otherwise, I have at no time accused her of being a ‘hardline terrorist’, or indeed a terrorist of any stripe.
As recently as last year, Ms Kaschke put herself forward for the Labour nomination for the winnable seat of Bethnal Green & Bow. After receiving just one vote, she defected to the Respect party of George Galloway, quickly left to join one of Britain’s multiple Communist Parties, adhered again to Labour and then switched to the Tories; she now overtly advocates political positions that place her on the hard right of the legitimate Conservative spectrum. Rarely can ideological peregrinations have been so comprehensive in such a short space of time.
In addition to her action against me, I know for sure that Ms Kaschke is also suing Labourhome founder Alex Hilton, Labour-supporting blogger John Grey,and leading German news magazine Der Spiegel. She has settled out of court with Private Eye, and I also reliably understand that she earlier this year lost a substantial sum in costs in a failed action against the Labour Party. In addition, she is seeking judicial review against a decision on her right to legal aid made by the Legal Services Commission.
Being a journalist, I have had sufficient professional training to put forward a defence of justification and/or fair comment, and I furthermore contend that the doctrine of ‘bane and antidote’ applies, in that her side of the story was properly set out. I admit to breach of copyright in using a photograph from her website, and will shortly make an offer of settlement, based on National Union of Journalists rates for photographers.
Novel points of law raised by the claimant include the issue of whether her inability to carry out decorative work in her abode can legitimately form part of an action for aggravated damages in defmation, and whether accurately listing her past affiliations is tantamount to denial of her right to freedom of association under the European Human Rights Act. Both interpretations seem to me frankly quixotic, although that is naturally for the court to decide.
Evidence includes a copy of Ms Kaschke’s arrest warrant, stating that she had access to a storage area in which were kept imitation firearms, gas masks and car number plates, and a letter written by a lawyer on her behalf, admitting that she put on a benefit concert for Rote Hilfe, an entirely lawful organisation that raised money to fund legal fees for Baader Meinhof defendants accused in the German courts. Ms Kaschke contests the claims contained in her arrest warrant.
I am happy to make copies of these documents - and ample other supporting material, most of which attracts qualified privilege and is thus immune from action for defamation - available to journalists who may wish to cover this story. Incidentally, application under Germany’s Freedom of Information legislation for further details concerning Ms Kaschke’s arrest will shortly be made.
Comments left on the original post form part of the action, something that in itself raises important issues for freedom of speech on the internet. One of the grounds on which this action is being brought is a remark in this blog’s comments box that describes Ms Kaschke as ‘one cherry short of a Schwarzwalderkirschtorte’. The merit of this designation is now entirely a matter for the court; however, such deliberations can scarcely be considered the optimal use of judicial time.
As most blogging aficionados will realise, such a lighthearted and jocular insult is nothing compared to the anarchic mêlée of a controversial thread in full flight. Everyone - regardless of political affiliation - who values the right to express an opinion online in vernacular English should support all of the bloggers involved in this blizzard of writs.
Congratulations are due to top Tory blogger Iain Dale, who has come down against his fellow Conservative Ms Kaschke in support of Alex Hilton. Heartfelt thanks also go to another prominent Tory, who has offered me concrete support in all this on principled libertarian grounds. All will be revealed if push comes to shove, but it is already clear that this woman does not have the backing of the better elements of her own party.
The next directions hearing is on January 27th next year, at which point I will apply to have the action joined with the action against Alex and John. If this matter comes to court, it is likely to prove one of the more colourful defamation claims of 2009. In the meantime, feel free to publicise this matter, on the basis of the uncontested facts set out in this post

A pirates life for me

Considering the recent revival of Piracy I cannot believe that I hadn't published this before. It was virtually the first piece of published writing that I did, and convinced me that I could write (although I am immensly grateful to Manny and Gerry who edited it and corrected my 'individual' approach to punctuation). It was first published in Red Star #2 in 2004.


On the afternoon of the 26 July 1726, William Fly walked the steps of the Boston gallows. Unlike his fellow condemned, Fly had shown no fear at his fate. The great and the good who had gathered to see the pirate die were uncomfortable: he was not playing his agreed part in the moral drama. But, as Fly neared the rope, their fears it seemed were unfounded. Fly became upset and animated, pointing to the noose and shouting at the executioner.
This was more like it. Fly inspected the rope and the noose that would soon be around his neck, and with distress on his face he turned on the hangman and reproached him for "not understanding his trade". Luckily for the amateur, Fly was a sailor and knew his knots, and he offered to teach the officer of the court how to tie the noose properly. Then Fly, to the astonishment of the crowd, retied it to his own satisfaction and informed the crowd that he was not afraid to die, as he had wronged no man and was a brave fellow.
When the time arrived for the prisoners to address the crowd with their final words, Fly's three colleagues played their part: the condemned were expected to act as morality plays for the education of the unwashed. The unwritten agreement was that if the prisoners condemned alcohol and depravity, confessed their crimes, praised the church, and the courts, and the king, then there was always the slight possibility of a last minute reprieve. Fly's turn came and he didn't play along: no plea for forgiveness for him, no praise for court, or god, or king. Instead, the waterside crowd, packed with sailors and ships officers, was treated to a warning, that "all masters of vessels take warning at the fate of the captain he had murdered and to pay sailors their wages when due and to treat them better, saying that their barbarity turned so many pyrates."

I grew up fascinated by pirates. Wet Saturday and Sunday afternoons were saved by the promise of a Basil Rathbone or Errol Flynn swashbuckler. Westerns left me cold (at least until I discovered Sergio Leone far later on). But pirates just hit the spot. Not simply on film - Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe were books that first spurred me to enjoy reading. As I grew up, though, reading and watching about my childhood heroes became increasingly difficult, as historians insisted on telling me that the pirates themselves were little more than brutes, and their commanders psychopathic bloodsoaked loonies, guilty of all and every violent crime and fully deserving of their fate.
Marcus Rediker is a fan of pirates too, but he is also a historian of the l8th century Atlantic. He shows that this 'history', as it is peddled is nothing more than a repetition of the eighteenth century ruling class in its war of extermination against the last, and greatest, of the pirate brotherhoods, of what he describes as ‘the golden age of piracy’. Marcus reclaims the reputation of my pirate heroes: Calico Jack Rackham, Blackbeard, black Bart Roberts, Mary Read and Anne Bonney- who in a brief ten years from 1716- 1726 shook the new British Empire to blood soaked core- and reveals a real history that puts all the stories of Hollywood in the shade.

As long as maritime trade routes have existed, there have been pirates; the ancient Greeks considered piracy as a valid option for a merchant down on their luck and did not place any moral weight upon the term. The Romans, however, used the piracy at sea in much the same way as they employed the term barbarian on land. A pirate was anyone on the ‘Roman’ sea who wasn’t Roman. In their determination to dominate and control their world, they created a policy describing pirates as Hostes humani generis, the common enemies of mankind, that the rulers of the later emerging British empire would employ to justify its campaign of extermination of the Atlantic pirates.
The British experience of piracy began as a wing of semi official government policy. In perpetual war against the mighty Catholic empires of Spain and Portugal, Protestant England granted letters of mark to pirate adventures to explore, trade and to prey upon the treasure ships of the enemy as they sailed back to Europe packed with silver and gold from the Spanish and Portuguese American territories. Drake, Grenville, Raleigh and Morgan cut themselves a page in history and folklore as they carve England a slice of the New World out of the control of the 'Dons'.
The end of the War of Spanish Succession saw the end of the need for these 'privateers'. Britain gained the assiento, the right to import slaves to the Spanish colonies and so began the trade that would provide the spur and capital for the industrial revolution. As Karl Marx would later note, capitalism was born in blood and filth: the middle passage, from the African coast to the slave markets of Havana and Virginia, saw the bloody birth of a brutal age. The end of the war created two conditions that provided a bonanza for the London and Bristol merchants. The opening up of the slave trade and the demobilization of tens of thousands of sailors meant that even the massive expansion of trade failed to exhaust the surplus of labour. This meant that the employers could force down wages, and worsen onboard conditions to unbearable levels, in the drive for greater profits. Life aboard was never easy and a navy ship was no place for the weak, but the sailors could remember that life had never been as bad as it was now. The brutality of the slave ships was not only visited on the 'cargo' - with the crew facing mortality rates of 30% or higher in a voyage. The master's treatment of the crew reflected that every slave lost was a loss of potential profit, whilst every sailor lost was a saving in wages. As well as the constant threat of drowning, sailors faced disease, made worse by malnutrition and non-existent sanitation, and the constant threat of violence at the whim of the ships' masters, who ruled their ships as god, judge, jury and often executioner. A sailor's life was nasty brutal short and miserable.
Just as capitalism in all its brutality was born in this filthy trade, so also were the sailors the first to develop resistance to its effects. Work stoppages, go-slows, sabotage and strikes were all invented by sailors in their class war with the masters and ships captains. In fact, the strike was invented by sailors in 1768 in London, when sailors went from ship to ship cutting down - 'striking' – the sails to prevent the masters setting sail.
These conditions were what led many to find the alternative of rising in mutiny and becoming pirates an attractive option. For men who faced the threat of death and mutilation on a daily basis, the certainty of an eventual date with the hangman's noose was no deterrent. The pirate laughed in the face of Death and proclaimed a short life and a merry one!
The sailors who became pirates did not do so only because of their suffering – of the tens of thousands of sailors employed on the Atlantic trade, only a minority (no more than 4000) ever became pirates - but also because of the vision of freedom that becoming a pirate provided.
Each mutiny followed a similar pattern: once the ship's officers and any loyalist seamen were overpowered, the rebels organised a meeting involving the entire crew. At this, 'articles', the rules of the ship, were drawn up, and officers elected. The articles followed certain common rules:
· Providing for the care of those injured on board, or in combat
(One of the most audacious acts of notorious pirate captain Edward
Teach, also known as Blackbeard, was the blockade of Charleston
Harbour: not as one might suppose for grog or gold but to obtain
medicine for sick crewmates).

· Limiting the powers of the elected officers: the captain only had
control of the ship whilst in storm or combat, at all other times
power rested in the hands of the ship's council, made up of all the
'full' pirates on board - new recruits were denied representation
until they had proved themselves, usually in combat.

When pirates attacked a merchant ship their first act would be to raise the 'Jolly Roger', the pirates' flag. This would begin the psychological assault, informing the seamen that to oppose them would mean death. So many ships' captains would be prevented from mounting a bloody defence by the rest of the crew simply folding its arms and refusing to fight that parliament decreed that to refuse to fight pirates was a crime punishable by death. For all their violent reputation, the pirates themselves would rather not to fight at all, and the chance of taking a ship cleanly was much preferred.
Once aboard, the crew of the ship were gathered together and their officers paraded before them. The crew were invited to speak out either in favour or against the captain and his staff: their testimony would decide the fate of the captain and his ship. Good or kind captains would find themselves not only still alive but often still in command of their ships at the end of the pirate attack and with the bulk of the cargo intact, minus any alcohol, fresh food, or gold and silver.
A bad or violent captain would, however, be lucky to escape with his life and what the pirates couldn't take or use would be burned with his ship.
The final act before the pirates departed was to appeal for volunteers. Hardly a ship could be found without one or more potential pirates.
For the pirate the aim was for a short life, but a merry one, and the pirates found what comfort they could when they could. The hunt for alcohol was a constant one. Although merchant and navy ships were not known for their sobriety - Nelson's ships have been described as asylums of chronic alcoholics - the pirates' appetites sometimes got them into real trouble. More than one ship was wrecked on reefs or captured by the authorities because the crew were too drunk to sailor to fight.
The privateers of the 17th century had followed a practice of matelotage a relationship of shared property and responsibility between two men, and the pirates carried on this liberated attitude toward homosexuality. Whereas the Royal Navy at the time has been described as being run by 'Rum, Sodomy and The Lash', homosexuality was punishable by death on navy ships. On board a pirate vessel love was accepted wherever it could be found.

Women played a very minor part in this extremely masculine world, but Rediker, who tells the stories of the famous female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, challenges the bourgeois historian's view that women were only victims or whores. He shows that, on one ship at least, 'the molestation of unwilling women' was banned by the articles and punishable by death. Although most pirates had served on the middle passage and thus had been a part of the slave trade, the pirates displayed remarkably little of the racial prejudice that was being developed at that time in order to justify the trade. Whilst pirates were known to take, and sell on, slave cargos, black former slaves made up a considerable portion of pirate crews (over 40% of Blackbeard's crew were black). Pirates would often describe themselves as Maroons, copying the name adopted by the escaped Jamaican slave gangs. On one occasion, Marcus relates, the captain found himself handed back control of his slave ship only after the pirates had released all the chains and provided the slaves with a knife each. That the captain and his 'cargo' would be able to discuss their respective situations on a more equal basis would have appealed to the pirates' sense of
justice.
It was the threat that the pirates made upon the profits of the slave trade that determined their fate. The seaboard coasts of both Africa and the Americas were swamped with navy ships; the pirates were hunted down and hanged by the dozen. The pirates themselves responded to state terror with a terror of their own. More merchantmen were burnt; towns that hanged pirates were blockaded. The pirates themselves declared "No surrender" and vowed to blow themselves and their ships to kingdom come rather than be captured. But the writing was on the wall, and the dwindling bands of pirates either dispersed or died fighting, or upon the scaffold.
Marcus Rediker has done us a great service: he has written an account of those who, facing a world full of horror and brutality, rebelled and challenged the conventions of class, race and gender. Laughing in the face of authority as they laughed in the face of
death, the pirates rebellion created an alternative to the dour hypocrisy of our betters which has given hope and inspiration for over 300 years.



The origin of the Jolly Roger




There have been a number of different explanations of the origin of the most famous of the pirates' flags, the 'skull and cross bones'.
In the book Socialism for Beginners, Anna Paczuska declared that, despite pirates’ flags being almost exclusively black, the term
Jolly Roger was a perversion of the French jolie rougier (red and beautiful). This may have some basis in fact as the navy flag signal for mutiny was a red flag.
The Jolly Roger flown by the Atlantic pirates, however, was black and either showed a skeleton or a skull and bones. Marcus
Rediker provides a more convincing explanation of its origin.
The flying of the Jolly Roger was a part of the psychological war waged b the pirate band and was designed to strike terror into the hearts of those who saw it. The skull and crossed bones device was commonly used by a ship's captain in his log, as a sign that a seaman had lost his life on voyage. As such it would be a universally recognised symbol of death. The colour of the flag indicated 'no quarter' and ordered the victims not to resist. Finally, Rediker argues that the name is taken from 18th century slang for sex (as in 'a good rogering'). Quite simply, if the captain of a fat merchantman were to look out, and see through his telescope the Jolly Roger flying, then he could be sure that he was well and truly fucked.

Murder In Bombay, business as usual in Islamabad

I have attempted several times to write something appropriate to respond to the butchery in India, but given the smart alecky one liners that I tend to prefer on this blog nothing had seemed to match the horror of the images which have crowded our TV screens.
the deliberate targetting of foreigners and Jews, the indiscriminating machine gunning of commuter trains, the attack on women and children at the Cama and Ablass hospitals show the true FASCIST nature of Islamist terror; those who have excused such acts in the past as expressions of some sort of 'anti imperialism' should hold their heads in shame.

My sincere condolences to the families of all those who lost their lives.

The evidence that points toward Pakistani secret service involvement threatens an even greater horror as the two great Nuclear powers of south Asia square up for yet another war.

One of the many questions that do occur is the relationship between the 'return to democracy' in Pakistan, following the election of the PPP, and the Islamist terror groups. In the popular acclumation that the western press greeted the resignation of General Mushareff, and the election of Benazir Bhutto's successor Yousaf Gillani as prime minister, there was much made of the PPP's loudly proclaimed opposition to Terrorism and support for the USA's TWAT.

However the long recognised close relationship between the Taliban and Pakistans secret service ,the ISI, began, and flourished, not during the dictatorship of Mushareff, but whilst 'democratic' Benazir Bhutto was in power. The contrast between the urbane, privately educated, and cultured Pakistani Ruling Class, extemplified by Bhutto herself (and that arch trot toff twat Tariq Ali) and the web of tribal and clan allegiances that make up their political power bases especially in the old North west frontier regions where the Taliban and the islamist groups have their havens, is stark, and has been generally glossed over by their cheerleaders in the West. The 'democratic' politicians of Pakistan are nothing of the sort, the difference between them and the warlords of the NWFP is nothing more than an Oxbridge accent, a sharp suit and better public relations.

Does Sunderland threaten a Nuclear option?

Roy Keane is reported to be 'considering his options' following yesterdays slapping by Bolton.

Perhaps he will return to the day job?

Rumours that Sunderland are preparing to launch a nuclear assault on Newcastle have been denied as 'wishful thinking' by the UN

Comrade Rees is Purged- A nation mourns

there is really nothing much to be said.

But, as this is my blog then I will.
Many years ago when I was working as a train driver in Leeds I was an active member of the Swappies; an announcement in the Party notes asked for speakers at that years Marxism summer school. I was at that time doing talks for West Riding SWP branches on The Luddites and was quite pleased with how it went down. I decided that it would be nice to do the talk in front of them fancy londoners and so called the number attached. I was put through to John Rees. I explained who I was and gave him my pitch; after a moment of silence he said; "It all sounds very interesting. Is this a part of you're thesis?"
"Pardon?" , I was a train driver who left school at 15; but I was not ignorant, I knew what faeces is, and I was not impressed with with the implied criticism.
"Are you studying the subject as a part of your degree?"
I explained that I was a manual worker and not, in fact, a student.
Silence. "Oh."
Rees then 'patiently explained' how the speaker at Marxism had to speak for 45 mins and take questions from a large number of people who may know a great deal about the subject, and it would be very different from a branch meeting, and how daunting that might be.
I was beginning to feel a little patronised* and said that I had been to marxim many times, knew what was involved and that if I did not feel up to it then I would not have applied.
Rees said that he would be in touch if they needed me.
Two months later I arrived at that years Marxism and walked into the meeting entitled "the Luddites" at which I spent an hour correcting the howling mistakes that the teenage student swappie stumbled and stuttered his way through.
Me? Bitter?
damned right!


* If you have ever been a blue collar worker in the SWP you will know that being patronised is the default position, to such an extent that you become immune to it and only notice when it stops.

life a riot with Bjork Vs. Bjork

Iceland was the first country to feel the full effects of the 'Credit Crunch'. now Iceland is the place that is fighting back

All Coppers Are Bastards