A Problem?

On their page about the pensions crisis, the BBC highlighted this comment sent in by a reader - presumably because they think it's a nugget of truth:


Part of the problem is that there is an expectation by many people in the UK that the state will never let them go hungry or without a home

Sandy Mann, London, UK.

Yeah, what are we like, eh?

All those unreasonable expectations like "food" and "shelter". Don't we realize the Chinese are prepared to east just a bowl of rice a day, and the Indians love to live in huge slums!

And here we are, demanding things like "decent housing" and "a living pension" from the hard-up employers.

The state should exist only to keep us in line (the police), and keep other people in line (the army).

Islam and the Englightenment

A really excellent article in the Review this month, written by Neil Davidson - author of the also excellent book 'Discovering the Scottish Revolution'.

A timely piece (which I imagine is why they published it!), given the recent hysteria over the racist cartoons.

All interesting, but there's a particuarly useful debunking, or at least a critique, of the notion that Christianity was 'open' to the rationality and scienctific progress promised by the enlightenment. Islam is usually counterposed here, as an example of an 'inflexible' or, worse, 'intolerant' religion - unwilling to change or adapt its tenets to new realities.
















- The 'rational' inquisition


Similarly, many important Enlightenment thinkers, most famously Voltaire, absolutely despised religion and Christianity. So it's a bit unfair for that religion to take the credit for his ideas! Who would want to anyway? Voltaire was a strident anti-democrat, who favoured an enlightened despotism which would circumvent the stupidity of the masses. But, anyway.

Read Neil's article, it's a belter.

Jimmy Johnstone (30th September 1944 - 13th March 2006)

Just a little word on the death of this man.

Celtic fans, more than any other fans I think, tend to be in love with the history of their club. I'm no different.

So even though I never seen him play in the flesh, I felt like I had witnessed every single Jimmy Johnstone game. From clips and anecdotes, you can tell he was a special player - and a special man.

He died yesterday, after fighting a long battle with motor neurone disease.

Jimmy played in the days before footballers became mercenaries, moving from club to club in search of money and fame. Jimmy was a 'Celtic man', in the best sense of that phrase. Committed, on and off the park, he exemplified everything that is great about Glasgow Celtic as a Scottish cultural institution.

And he was a hell of a winger.

Cheers Jinky!

Subcomandante Marcos says: "Par En Bas"

In a brilliant new interview in radical American newsletter, Counterpunch, 'leader' (although I'm sure he doesn't like the term) of the EZLN, Subcomandante Marcos, has laid out his ideas about the future of the Latin America:

"We think, fundamentally, that the future story of Latin America, not only of Mexico but for all of Latin America, will be constructed from the bottom--that the rest of what's happening, in any case, are steps. Maybe false steps, maybe firm ones, that's yet to be seen. But fundamentally, it will be the people from the bottom that will be able to take charge of it, organizing themselves in another way. The old recipes or the old parameters should serve as a reference, yes, of what was done, but not as something that should be re-adopted to do something new."

Quite apart from being a clear espousal the of the Marxist concept of self-emancipation, it should also serve as a lesson to those on the left for whom the swing to the left in Latin America begins and ends with Chavez, Morales etc.

The fact is, if it wasn't for the popular movement which backs him, Hugo Chavez would probably either be dead or sitting in some dungeon right now, while a fascist general lords it over Venezuela. Similarly, Morales came to power as the personification of a massive workers' and indigenous movement in Bolivia. If these people, like Lula in Brazil, decide for any reason to abandon these movements, then they will be sitting ducks.

More from the Man in the Mask:

"What we're going to do is shake this country up from below, pick it up and turn it on its head".

New Look

I've decided to go for a little change of look.

I fancy this as a bit more elegant.

Do you think he'll get his job back?

I always knew teachers were fucking nuts

Jokes aside, it's interesting that he wanted to "talk to the media" about his inability to find work after he had been fired by the school.

I mean, how deep is the malaise in French society that respectable middle class types feel their only option is to take hostages?


N.B. Are teachers still considered as middle class anymore?

I had often thought...

Venerable Marxist-turned-Neo-Con (how cliche) Norman Geras has highlighted a contribution by one of the signatories to the 'Unite Against Terror' statement. For anyone not aware, UAT is the lovechild of Harry's Place and something called OpenDemocracy.

Its founding statement, issued in response to the July 7th bombings, basically asserts that the bombings were not motivated by any anger towards US/UK foreign policy, but by a radical, indeed 'fascistic', hatred of 'democracy'. You get the picture. Basically, anyone who reads Cohen or Aaronovitch or any of the Pro-War blogs could have knocked it out in ten minutes. So, platitudes abound!

"We believe that democracy and human rights are worth defending with all our strength. The human values of respect and tolerance and dignity are not 'western' but universal."

Great, who doesn't? The important question is not whether respect and "tolerance" are values worth upholding, it's whom we get to do the upholding. For many of the people who've signed, Cohen, Hitchens etc, the U.S. Marine Corps is up to the job.

The problem there is that the U.S. Army, and the U.S. State, has a long, proud, staunch and continuing opposition to democracy and human rights.

Anyway, UAT is a fairly insignificant organisation, restricted to the insular, if slightly creepy, world of Neo-Con Left. The reason I mentioned them, as I intimated, is because 'Norm' chose to highlight one contribution - presumably because he thinks it 'resonates'. It's written by a man called Evan Matthew Daniel - who tells us he was in 'Manhattan on September 11'. Here's the rump of Mr. Daniel's contribution. It's interesting, I think you'll agree.

"I had long thought that countries like the United States and Britain - liberal democracies - were imperialist powers responsible for most of the world's ills and that wide-spread poverty and economic desperation in the Muslim world drove some Muslims to commit desperate acts, like blowing themselves up in pizza parlors in Tel Aviv, slamming planes into buildings in New York City or terrorizing commuters on the subways of London and Madrid. As I learned more about the perpetrators of these acts of violence it became clear that they were not members of some lumpenproletarian under-class. These were educated middle-class men following an ideology that stands against everything liberals are supposed to defend: open societies, equality for the sexes, political pluralism, free expression, the list goes on and on. It's high time that those of us who consider ourselves progressives and liberals stood up against what is the greatest global threat to freedom and democracy in the world today, the threat of Islamist totalitarianism."

This raises a number of interesting points.

Daniel correctly identifies that Imperialism is responsible for most of the world's ills. Although he may have meant it to, nothing he says after this contradicts or diminishes this point. The hijackers were middle class, so the US and UK aren't imperialist? Eh? How does that work then?

Firstly, there's arisen in much of the West's mainsteam political and intellectual discourse a kind of 'before and after' version of history. Some would like us to believe that the whole pantheon of human history (or, certainly post-war history) can be divided into pre and post 9/11.

This is an neat rhetorical device. It makes it seem that the 9/11 attacks were the 'first act', and that every action thereafter is a response. It encourages us to dismiss as 'unimportant' the preceding 50 years of theft, corruption, murder and dictatorship supported and perpetrated by the West in the Middle East. Followers of the Israel/Palestine conflict will recognize this trick, particularly in the media coverage. Israel is always 'responding' to some Palestinian transgression. You're not meant to ask, sorry, WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY DOING THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?. It helps them create a debate in which the only reasonable question is, 'how violent should our retaliation be?'

Now, as to the class of the hijackers. It's hardly a great historical revelation that resistance to imperialism is led by the urbane middle classes. Gandhi went to UCL - does that mean Indian anti-imperialism was somehow unconnected to the Indian masses? No, of course not. The leaders of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions were also bourgeois figures. Also, to be somewhat tactless here, it's obvious that if the hijackers have to engage in activities like going to flight school in America, they need to be of a certain intellectual 'quality'. But, that's irrelevant.

The ideology of Islamism and 'Western Values'? Sure, I'll take Daniel's word for it that "we" stand for some of those things and some Islamists don't. So what? Listen, let's get this straight.

The idea that Fundamentalist Islam poses any kind of serious threat to Western Capitalism is, quite simply, absurd. They may be capable of various hits now and again that damage our pride, make us scared etc, but the notion that the West is in serious danger of being enslaved under Sharia Law is stupid.

Osama Bin Laden is a Arab nationalist with particularly strong religious beliefs. He believes in self-determination in the Arabian peninsula, ending American involvement and 'Islamic states.' So have lots of people before him. He just happens to think the way to bring this about is to provoke a War with the West by engaging in 'terrorist' activity.

And another thing, this stuff about an 'alliance of liberals and socialists'. Fuck off! Liberalism and socialism are diametrically opposed. Classical liberalism is infused with disgusting class prejudice, casual racism of the worst sort and unthinking Imperialist hubris. Liberals intend to support and stengthten class society, whereas socialist seek to abolish it - where's the common ground? Let the liberals oppose it in their own way, and we'll do it in our way.

And don't give me this nonsense about 'defending the Enlightenment'. Only out of touch Marxian academics like Professor Geras could think that the major point of conflict in the modern age is between the proponents and detractors of the Enlightenment. I think we can safely assume that there are more important divisions in the world than whether one should defend Voltaire.

Still, at the end of the day, the real divisions in the world, that is, class divisions, will always rise to the surface - despite the best efforts of obscurantists like Bush, Blair and Bin Laden.

Labour Fiends of Iraq

The masses will doubtless be stirred by
this rousing call to action by the *snigger* Labour FRIENDS of Iraq.

The LFOI, for those of you still blissfully unaware, are a group of MP's and Labour party activists committed to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. You know the type, the kind of people who see a 'straight line' between the International Brigades and the U.S. Army on the outskirts of Fallujah. The kind of people who think Blair is a latter-day Sartre - which would make Bush our General de Gaulle?

Who knows what goes through their minds, apart from very little.

Thankfully, however, despite their quite incongruent vanity, these people remain a small force on the Left.

White Phosphorus, Fallujah and Jesus Christ

So, the Dear Leader has finally admitted, to Michael Parkinson of all people, what many of us had already suspected. The Christian Deity spearheaded the liberation of Iraq! His wrath brought down the Savage Leader, and now the Kingdom of God will be extended to the land where the Arabs live.

The Thinker-President is, as we know, only too keen, mainly for electoral reasons but also because he's a total cretin, to proclaim his righteousness at every turn. God guides him, God protects him from evil-doers, he converses with the Almighty, etc, etc. Crucially, Bush is associated with a certain strand of Christianity - namely, hard-right born-again Evangelical Christianity. Some on the far left in America, groups like the Maoist RCP, even claim he is a 'Christian Fascist'. I'm not sure about this. Certainly there are fascistic elements to the Bush doctrine (Imperial expansion, the merging of the State and the corporations), but above all, Fascism relies an autonomous mass base. Say what you like about Billy Graham, but he's hardly likely to lead a paramilitary organization in terrorizing the American working class.

Blair has been, up to know, more reticent about proclaiming his Godliness. Alistair Campbell, in folklore at least, summed it up by saying 'we don't "do" God'.

Christian Socialism did, of course, play a large part in the development of the British Labour Party. One of Keir Hardie's big problems with Marx was his perceived hostility towards religion. Hardie himself was quite a religious man. Tony Benn is also famed for his passionate Christian beliefs, as well as his staunch democratic socialism. Even the Dear Leader has called himself a 'Christian Socialist'. Now, I don't really want to get into the whole 'religion and Marxism' debate. Simply to point out that just because religion doesn't get as big an airing in British politics, it's always there, underneath the surface.

Until, it seems, now. Let's get to the crux of the matter. Here's the Dear Leader on the American offensive against Fallujah in 2004:

"They (the insurgents) are fighting democracy, they are fighting to stop democratic elections supervised by the U.N. and due to take place in January,"

And here's a photo, posted without comment, of the effects of that assault.










Here's a photo of another person killed in that particular War Crime.










Now, I'm not a Theologian. I don't wish to ruminate on the implications of killing babies and melting the skin of innocents in the interests of Greed and Power. Presumably Bush and Blair know the Gospels, and there must be some quote in there which justifies such actions. And if, when the Dear Leader transcends his mortal shell, God does indeed pardon him, we, as the inheritors of the Earth, will merely have to repeat Bakunin's old saying:

"If God did Exist, it would be necessary to Abolish him."

A revolutionary career

A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.

- Max Horkheimer

Whenever I'm discussing the world with friends/peers, a few arguments always pop up. Firstly, they'll generally accept my complaints about the world. War, poverty and racism etc are bad things, we can all agree.

Then, in most cases, they agree that we have to do 'something' about it. Their proposals usually range from boycotts to 'voting Labour out'.

However, my protestations about the intrinsic revolutionary power of the working class never go down well, for a couple of reasons:

1) What do you mean by the working class? Most people are 'middle class', aren't they? You're only working class if you do 'manual labour' etc.

2) The working class, insofar as it exists, is, in the West at least, 'bought off'. People are too busy living their happy lives to worry about radical change.

To the first point, Harman's excellent article from a years ago in the ISJ, called 'The Workers of the World', destroys the popular sociological notion of a disappearing 'working class'. Readers interested should seek it, it's available on the web.

As to the second point - it's an oldie but not a goldie. As far back as the 50's and Crossland's 'The Future of Socialism', people on the left even have argued that capitalism is now stable, it's future was secure. The only thing socialists could do now was fight 'culture wars', and wage Gramscian struggles to change the terms of popular discourse.

In May 1968, the theories of a 'bought off' working class were exceedingly popular in academia. Then, something happened. Motivated by a radicalized student base, the French proletariat awoke, bringing down the nationalist leader De Gaulle in a massive general strike, and almost overturning the French state. The movement, through a complicated process of betrayal and conciliation, was eventually defeated and French capital, once again, managed to stabilize itself.

This movement was part of a massive worldwide strike against capital and oppression. The Prague Spring, the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam war movement were a part of this internationalist struggle. Whole sections of society across the world were radicalized. Intellectual ferment brought forth a 'New Left' committed to opposing both Stalinist tyranny and the degradations of the American empire. Figures like Tariq Ali, Christopher Hitchens, Perry Anderson all coalesced around this broad approach.

As the decades proceeded, and the Fire Last Time became an even hazier memory, some people lurched back into the shadows of cynicism. Whole sections renounced their previous radicalism, and were welcomed back into the fold by the Guards of Capital. Some, such as David Horowitz and the editor of the risible 'Black Book Of Communism' , Stephane Courtois, became 'outspoken critics' of the Left. Others, like Tariq Ali, remain an inspirational example of the courage and revolutionary spirit which exemplified the days of '68 - from the Veitcong in the trenches, to the Czechs resisting Stalinist oppression.

The politics of '68 were certainly not perfect, which is reflected in some of their numbers later apostasy. They did valorize Chairman Mao to an unhealthy extent, which led many of them to take the weird position that though the Soviet Union was bad, Enver Hoxha's Albania was the workers' paradise. Trotsky was certainly a revered figure for many of them. However, it was not the Trotksy of the Bolshevik revolution, it was the Trotsky of Duetscher. Trotsky as glorious failure, idealist, the 'unreasonable' opposition to the inevitability of Stalin.

They could, as much as they tried, never make a total break with the Soviet Union. Seduced by the rhetoric and the red flags, it was always maintained that, however distasteful, the Soviet Union must be, kind of, better than Western Capitalism.

And then comes '91 - and tears rain down their blushing cheeks.

Anyway, hopefully you'll forgive my discursiveness.


The point is that I am a proletarian revolutionist!

I was motivated to say that because of comments on unnamed websites. You know the type, 'you'll grow out of it'.

Maybe one day I will, but I take immense heart from the people I know and the people I've read about who haven't. Those who refused to succumb to the overbearing hopelessness of the world.

I leave you with a quote from the old man:

Life is not an easy matter... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.

- Leon Trotsky

Lenin next to the Red Flag