Funny is not the Opposite of Seriousness

Terry Pratchett: humour used for savage criticism

EXTRACT: According to fellow fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, who co-authored Good omens with Pratchett in 1990, his writing was “powered by fury”: anger at the headmaster who declared that the six-year-old Terry Pratchett would never be smart enough to pass the 11-plus, anger at “pompous critics” and those who think “serious is the opposite of funny”, anger at his early American publishers, who appeared to have little interest in promoting or selling his books. But his anger was always tempered by kindness and compassion, and Granny Weatherwax’s definition of sin - “When you treat people as things” - tells all you need to know about his ethics.
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Nationalist Shock Waves

Voting SNP: logical for anyone wanting separation

EXTRACT: Prior to the referendum, we were told by some on the left, including a minority within the CPGB, that a clear ‘no’ would be a vote to preserve the unity of the British working class movement and stop nationalism in its tracks.

This was always a delusion, no matter how worthy - as we now see. Yes, of course, the class struggle is still happening in Scotland, but it is taking place in a deflected form - certainly not on the basis, as some doubtlessly imagined, of a 1970s-style wave of militant strikes, working class demonstrations, etc. In any case, such an approach was thoroughly economistic, as it downplayed the fight for democracy and high politics: ie, we must vote ‘no’ in order to get the national question out of the way and then return to ‘normal’ working class actions like fighting the cuts, and so on. But a ‘no’ vote was never going to magically deliver working class unity, especially if the vote was relatively close. What these economistic arguments fail to understand is that we first need the conditions for working class unity, which were obviously lacking, otherwise there would not have been a referendum in the first place.

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Jihadists and Spooks

Mohammed Emwazi, aka Jihadi John

EXTRACT: Communists, however, do not regard the likes of Mohammed Emwazi as just irrational - totally crazy people from a different world. Look at what imperialism is doing every day in the Middle East, with its actions and polices, leading to mass suffering, death and murder. Look at the liars, Jack Straw and Tony Blair, with their dodgy dossiers and phantom WMDs, pushing for a war in Iraq that had totally predictable results - social chaos, dismemberment and barbarism. Judged from this perspective, the jihadist response to imperialist oppression is understandable. The crucial point for us, however, is that organisations like IS are part of this barbarism, never part of the solution - which requires consistent and principled working class anti-imperialism.
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Austerity in the Colours of Syriza

Golden Dawn: on the march

EXTRACT: If you find yourself in a situation where there is absolutely no reasonable or viable prospect of carrying out your full minimum programme, then you should remain a party of extreme opposition - something that stands full-square in the Second International tradition, to which Lenin and the Bolsheviks fully subscribed. Regrettably, sections of the left think the Weekly Worker is mad for raising these issues - showing how they have lost their historical memory. But there are objective, material factors that cannot be overcome by an act of will or even a big popular vote. Greece, at the end of the day, is a small and economically weak country that does not produce much in terms of industrial production and, if placed under siege, would be unlikely to be able to feed itself: essentially it is a tourist and shipping country.

What Syriza should have done, if it had being any sort of a genuine Marxist party, is resist the temptation of government (‘taking power’) - let the pro-memorandum parties take responsibility for the shit they created. It should have concentrated instead on building up its own forces and digging deeper roots in society, to the point where it became genuinely hegemonic within Greece. Most importantly of all, it should have aimed to develop and deepen its European connections and contacts, with the eventual aim of taking power on a continent-wide basis alongside other working class parties.

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Dodgy Bankers, Dodgy Clients

Greedy for money

EXTRACT: We now have a crazy situation where most non-doms today inherit their status from their parents. As a result, it is perfectly possible for people who have been born, raised and educated in Britain to have non-dom status, even if they hold British passports. No wonder London has become a playground for the rich. Lawyers say they sometimes go back as far as the 1930s when they are establishing a non-dom claim. If that is not tax evasion, then what the hell is?

Yes, naturally, both Tories and New Labour said the non-doms rules benefited the country - incentivising them to spend extremely large amounts of hard-earned cash on houses, servants, cleaners, Rolls Royces, millionaire meals, etc. Watch the wealth trickle down. OK, sure, Ed Miliband has talked fairly passionately about cracking down on tax havens abroad (Cayman Islands, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, etc). There is no particular reason to doubt his sincerity, especially given that he is more reliant on union funds than either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown. But the main point is that Britain itself has become one vast tax haven, where the wealthy, rich and well-connected get to enjoy an obscenely privileged existence. One law for the rich, another law for us. Even more crucially, both the Tories and New Labour shamelessly sold their souls - assuming they ever possessed such a thing in the first place - to multi-millionaires and newspaper proprietors.

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