Bourgeois swine

Immigration Controls Kill

Banksy on immigration: no human should be illegal

EXTRACT; As Cooper and Reeves remind us, immigration is a toxic issue for the working class movement - meaning that support for any form of immigration controls (firm, fair or otherwise) is to succumb to British nationalism and divide the global working class into competing national units. Communists therefore call for the abolition of immigration controls and utterly reject the ‘socialist’ justification that restrictions are needed because mass migration is used to drive wages down, and hence we must retreat into our national shells to defend the rights and conditions of the ‘indigenous’ workforce. If you are an internationalist, as opposed to a left nationalist, the answer is to incorporate migrants into the trade union and labour movement and in turn learn from them about their struggles and experiences.
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Coup That Never Was

Seems legit

EXTRACT: Here we come to the heart of the matter. The rightwing press is terrified that ‘Red’ Ed will somehow win the next general election - which is a bit strange if you think, like some on the left do, that the Labour Party is a bourgeois party just like the Tories and the Lib Dems. But, of course, it is not - though currently the left within it is in a truly wretched state. The Mail and all the rest of them demonstrate that the rightwing media will go to almost any lengths to discredit and demonise any Labour leader who is perceived to be deviating even in the slightest degree from the neoliberal and ‘common sense’ consensus.

Meaning, needless to say, that the recent attacks on Miliband are part of a long tradition - a standard feature of British political history. Michael Foot was ceaselessly derided for his supposedly loony left views and for ‘inappropriately’ wearing a donkey jacket to the Cenotaph. Neil Kinnock was mercilessly mocked and abused as the “Welsh windbag”, culminating in the legendary Sun front page in which his head was superimposed on a light bulb: “If Kinnock wins today, will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights”. Lest we forget, Gordon Brown was lampooned as a ditherer who could not even sign his own name. The only Labour leader not to be vilified in this manner was Tony Blair - telling you all you need to know about Blair: the press recognised him as someone they could do a lot of business with.

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End the War On Drugs

Adriaen Brouwer's The Smokers , circa 1636

EXTRACT: But one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that if there has been a fall in use or addiction levels amongst some sections of the population it has nothing to do with the government’s policy of prohibition - it happened despite the drugs laws. Yet there is a much broader point to be made, at least for communists. Human beings have always taken drugs for stimulation or relaxation, whether for positive or negative reasons - whether to feel happy or dull the pain. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Therefore from the larger historical perspective, drug-taking of various sorts is not some abnormal or deviant activity - quite the opposite. To one degree or another, psychoactive substances have always held an appeal. There is absolutely no reason to believe that human nature will fundamentally change in the foreseeable future, including the communist future.

In which case, the only logical conclusion is to call for the legalisation of all drugs - not just marijuana. Not because we naively believe that legalisation is some sort of universal panacea that will immediately create a perfect society of happy, well-adjusted, non-alienated individuals. Communists fully recognise the potential danger of drugs, including those that are presently legal. After all, why do some people drink so much booze that it threatens their health? It has something to do with the grossly unequal and profoundly alienated society we live in, a set-up that generates misery and escapism. Hence our call for legalisation is principally motivated by the desire not to make a bad situation worse, not starry-eyed hippy idealism. For us it is unacceptable, rationally and morally, that swathes of the population are criminalised by the current prohibitive laws. All serious evidence and research, strongly hinted at in the home office report, shows us that the legalisation of drugs would be far less harmful than the present regime.

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