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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