A Very Kimist Purge

Purge

EXTRACT: Of course, the bourgeois press delights in North Korea - feeding us near endless stories about its bizarre control freakery and quite literal deification of its leaders. The odious Kim Jong-un is regularly described as a “great person born of heaven”, the “eternally immovable mental mainstay of the Korean people”, the “people’s spiritual pillar and the lighthouse of hope”, etc. All totally revolting, it goes without saying.

But then again, Marxists do not buy into the idea assiduously promulgated by the western media that North Korea is the weirdest place ever to have existed - or, conversely, that the UK is the most normal society on the planet. For the most part, generations of schoolchildren have been told that Britain has a glorious and uninterrupted history going back to at least 1066 and that from medieval times onwards dynastic succession was believed to be divinely sanctioned - all perfectly normal. You might get ‘good’ monarchs and ‘bad’ monarchs, but that is just part of the divine deal. Ours is not to wonder why. Think about our present unelected ruler, Elizabeth II. She is the “defender of faith” and has two birthdays. Why is this any less weird than North Korea’s “eternal president”? Face it. The UK is a bizarre, fucked-up, place - as we communists constantly emphasise. When it comes to absurd ritual and mindless dynastic pomp you can never beat the UK. Sorry, Kim.
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Aiming for the Mixed Economy

Kim Stanley Robinson: social democracy on a terraformed Mars

EXTRACT: Why the timidity? The lack of clarity? The desire to blur programmatic differences? It is clear that the left no longer believes it can win. That what it needs to aim for is not the rule of the working class and human liberation, but something much, much more modest. Given the domination of one particular story in current news reporting, it is worthwhile contrasting this lack of self-belief with Nelson Mandela and the leadership of the African National Congress. They always knew that their struggle against apartheid would be successful. That is what imbued courage, spurred them in action and enabled them to endure years of exile or harsh prison sentences.
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Combating the Fascist State in Brixton

Beware!

EXTRACT: There have been scattered insinuations in the mainstream press to the effect that the Workers’ Institute for Marxism- Leninism-Mao-Zedong-Thought is somehow a reflection of the far left in general - that we are all guilty of such behaviour to one degree or another. This is where communist politics ultimately gets you - the mad house and despotism. Stay at home and watch Strictly come dancing if you want to remain sane. Whatever you do, never get involved with loony lefties.

Yet, as we have seen, the entire far left knew that the institute was out to lunch - therefore it is stretching things to breaking point to draw any broader implications from the near comical activities of ‘comrade Bala’. That would be a bit like making inferences about the nature of Protestantism in general from the snake handlers. So far even the Daily Mail has not managed to link the Workers’ Institute to Ed Miliband and the Labour Party. Still, watch this space ...
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Degeneration of a Time Lord

Made safe for the establishment

EXTRACT: Doctor Who’s conflicted nature provided a stark contrast to the triumphalist tone of US science fiction TV shows, the ultimate, of course, being the original Star trek series. Captain ‘JFK’ Kirk and his nominally multicultural crew aboard the USS Enterprise have absolutely no moral qualms about their historic mission, which is to explore the “final frontier”, just as Captain Kirk’s antecedents had moved west centuries before - spreading US civilisation, conquering the aboriginal population and defeating all colonial/imperialist rivals.

Unlike his previous incarnations, the contemporary Doctor Who - as revealed by the November 23 big-budget extravaganza - is a safe defender of the status quo: all his contradictions have been ironed out. Succumbing to a fate far worse than anything the Daleks had planned for him, Doctor Who is part of the modern establishment’s cultural and ideological identity - an image they want to project domestically and abroad. Tellingly, the Doctor is now a pacifist who associates with prettified monarchs, as opposed to seditious miner.
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Celebration of Imperialist Crimes

Head of state, head of church ... very political

EXTRACT: In many ways it is an extraordinary state of affairs that in a country where Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sasson are still taught almost universally in schools (this writer studied them for his O level in English literature) there is such automatic hostility to anyone who questions the official narrative and rituals that surround war commemorations. But Remembrance Day has been totally institutionalised in a manner akin to Holocaust Memorial Day, and to raise doubts is not just disloyal - it is a violation of the natural moral order. It would be more accurate to say that Remembrance Day is actually misremembrance day.
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Gangster Bosses and Special Measures

Jim Ratcliffe and yacht

EXTRACT: So what should have been done? The CPGB’s Draft programme (section 3.7) says that, when “faced with plans for closure”, we should raise the demand to “nationalise threatened workplaces or industries under workers’ control” - and under certain circumstances it would be a perfectly legitimate tactic for workers to occupy the workplace in order to back up this demand. Indeed, it would be a matter of pure self-defence.

Having said that, however, it is difficult to see how this could have happened on this occasion. As I understand things, the majority of workers cheered when they heard news of the settlement. We certainly need to appeciate that the Grangemouth workforce were unlikely to vote for an occupation, given that there had been no concerted campaign to win and prepare them for such a tactic. If they had been prepared to occupy and demand nationalisation under workers’ control, that would certainly have put enormous pressure on both the UK and Scottish governments. But that is to stray into counterfactual speculation. Therefore, whilst we can easily criticise McCluskey on this or that point, even his entire strategy - he is a left bureaucrat at the end of the day - it is equally fair to say that, given his political limitations, he was faced with a Hobson’s choice: continue to resist and risk the total defeat of the union, or temporarily retreat in order to fight another day.
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Stirring Stagnant Saudi Waters

Amidst the huge wealth, huge oppression

EXTRACT: True to form has been the staggering hypocrisy of the west over Saudi Arabia. Part of the justification for imperialist intervention in Afghanistan and elsewhere was the need to protect and defend women’s rights. There has even been talk from William Hague that support for the anti-Assad opposition in Syria will lead to an “improvement” in women’s rights. So where are the loud messages of solidarity for the October 26 group from William Hague, or Harriet Harman for that matter? You must be joking. Wretchedly, Hague just mutters that the UK does a “lot” of business with Saudi Arabia, and, of course, it would be foolish to jeopardise valuable contracts.

In reality, as everyone knows, Saudi Arabia is supporting the most reactionary and fanatical elements in the Syrian opposition - ditto in Iraq, where there has been another wave of deadly sectarian attacks targeting Shi’ite-majority areas. Women’s oppression would surely intensify under the control of such Saudi-backed groups - groups that are indirectly armed by the west.
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Daily Mail: Patriotism and the Sins of the Father

Time to say goodbye to Paul Dacre

EXTRACT: We in the CPGB could not be any more explicit about where we stand on this issue. We may hate the Daily Mail - and the entire moneyed bourgeois press, for that matter - but we oppose any attempt at state censorship or control of what is published. If that means we are on the same side as Paul Dacre, Richard Littlejohn, Hugh Whittow, Tony Gallagher, etc - so be it. A price worth paying. We demand freedom of the press and will not tolerate some bureaucratic creep trying to interfere - for example - with the Weekly Worker. Our communist project of human liberation cannot succeed unless we convince the majority of people of the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of the bureaucratic capitalist state - not an obvious or ‘common sense’ message. Hence we fight for the right to openly say what we want in the way we want, in whatever medium we care to choose.
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Drugs: Stench of Hypocrisy

Stop the war

EXTRACT: Given that the ‘war on drugs’ is not only failing, but is positively counterproductive - a war that can never be won - the question we have to ask is: why on earth are they still pursuing it? The only explanation is that it is used as a means of social control. It is aimed at those below and it is very rare now that a top pop star or actor is arrested for drugs use - only the poor schmucks get done. Sir Mick Jagger will never be arrested again - something I will bet the farm on.

Yet use of illegal drugs is just as common at the top. I wonder what the results would be if, say, delegates to the Tory conference in Manchester agreed to be tested for certain substances. I suspect many of those attending would be high on one thing or another. And the same is true, of course, for the City, BBC, newspaper offices, West End and even - heavens forbid - the House of Commons. The hypocrisy stinks.
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Ukip: Dangers of Nationalism

Virulent

EXTRACT: But the plain fact of the matter is that Ukip’s increasingly loud anti-immigrant message, when all is said and done, does not differ in any essential way from mainstream national chauvinism - any more than Gillian Duffy’s “flocking” comments were that much different from Gordon Brown’s own “British jobs for British workers”, as he put it in his 2007 address to the GMB union. Which in turn was not that far removed from Margaret Thatcher’s notorious January 1978 World in action interview, where she talked about how the British people are “afraid” that the country might be “swamped by people with a different culture” - thus undercutting electoral support for the then resurgent National Front. Over the years we have witnessed a grotesque Dutch auction of bourgeois politicians outbidding each other in demanding stricter and stricter controls over immigration.
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Lib Dems: Desperate to Avoid Wipe-out

Nick Clegg: mania long gone

EXTRACT: Faced with such discontent within the ranks, Nick Clegg is desperate to hold the line - the coalition government is here to stay right up to the day of the election - and beyond that as well, if the votes fall in the right way. A message hammered home on the BBC’s Andrew Marr show on September 15, Clegg arguing that the creation of another coalition government in 2015 was the only way to achieve “balanced politics” and a “sustainable recovery”. During the interview, though naturally he never explicitly said so, it became fairly clear that a second term in partnership with David Cameron was his favoured option - dismaying many on the left of the Lib Dems. Labour would “wreck the economy”, Clegg claimed, and the Tories would provide the “wrong kind of recovery”. So Clegg and Cameron, like partners in crime, are in this together right to the bitter end ... and maybe beyond.
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Lobbying Laws: Crude Attack on the Unions

Gagged

EXTRACT: Even worse in some respects, though this aspect of the bill has had far less coverage in the mainstream media, any organisation that spends more than £5,000 on political campaigning (or £2,000 in Scotland and Wales) must register with the electoral commission - if not, then they could possibly be closed down. Made de facto illegal. Naturally, registering with the commission will impose a series of bureaucratic rules and regulations on groups, placing anti-democratic obstacles in the way of campaigning and political work in general. Remember, this is the very same body that in 1995 ruled that the CPGB and the Socialist Party in England and Wales were unable to stand under their own names - the electoral commission having awarded the entire franchise for ‘Communist Party’ over to the dozy social democrats of the Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain and ‘Socialist Party’ to the propagandist SPGB. SPEW ended up with the ‘Socialist Alternative’ moniker.
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WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?

Syrian Crisis: Miliband Well Placed to Benefit

EXTRACT:  More worryingly some in the STWC - eg, Kate Hudson - are claiming responsibility for breaking the “bloody links” between Britain and US imperialism. This is delusional. France might now be called America’s “oldest ally. But, be warned, the UK is still credited with being America’s “closest ally”. And because the mass anti-war sentiment is politically unorganised it is ripe for the picking. Nigel Farage and Ukip noticeably opposed a Syrian intervention. However, the chances are that it will be Miliband who will gain the most.

The Labour leadership certainly feared another mass anti-war movement. But, given the STWC at a very low ebb, and the general weakness of the left, it will be relatively easy for Labour to appropriate anti-war sentiments for its own advantage - quite grotesque when you remember that it has been consistently pro-imperialist from its very inception. Labour can enjoy, for the time being anyway, presenting itself as the ‘anti-war’ party, now that the Lib Dems can no longer claim that mantle.
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We can work it out

EXTRACT: This theme - what party model? - was revisited by comrade Mike Macnair in his fascinating talk (at least for this journalist) on ‘Lukács, Korsch, et al: philosophers of Leninism or ultra-left?’ - focusing mainly on Georg Lukács. The latter is significant because his short work, Lenin: a study in the unity of his thought, and History and class consciousness have essentially operated as organisational text books for the British far left. Alex Callinicos (‘Stalinicos’) and John Rees have repeatedly praised the “master-work”, History and class consciousness, predicated on Lukács’s theories of reification and the vanguard party. Some have wondered whether Callinicos and Rees have done their homework properly. But in the forthright opinion of comrade Macnair, they correctly interpret Lukács’s theory of reification, the vanguard party, etc as a blueprint for a monolithic, militarised organisation - negating the real history of pre-civil war Bolshevism.

Similarly, comrade Moshé Machover in his informative ‘Do we need a Marxist party? Do we need a Leninist party?’ session, remarked that the far left is built upon an invented or phantom ‘Leninism’ constructed after the civil war by the burgeoning Soviet bureaucracy - then loyally regurgitated by the Trotskyites. Inevitably, as comrade Machover commented, instead of a mass party we have a mass of Trotskyite sects - that “multiply like amoebas”, refusing to accept that the post-1921 model does not work. A state of pitiful denial.
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Ukip Blocked by a Cynical Cameron

Nigel Farage: threat to Thatcherite Tories

EXTRACT: Of course, the fact that the debate over Lords representation and proportionality has focused so much on Ukip tells us something important about the period we are in - bleak though that may be. The winds of change in this country, insofar as there are any, are blowing to the right. This runs contrary to the dogmatic expectations of some on the British far left, who assumed that the economic crisis and the austerity regime would automatically lead to a growth in their ranks. To paraphrase an old slogan - first mass social despair, then us. But in reality the only significant development in British politics has been the rise of Ukip, not the left, which is almost nowhere to be seen - the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition is no more than a joke and, as things stand now, many in the leadership of Left Unity seem determined to repeat the same old ‘broad party’ mistakes that wrecked the Socialist Alliance, Scottish Socialist Party and Respect.

Some may try to delude themselves that the Ukip vote in May was purely a protest vote and will dissolve with the mist. But the vast majority of these people knew exactly what they were buying into - which was a brand of noxious rightwing populism, Ukip ultimately being part of a broader phenomenon in politics, whether in Europe or the United States. A movement that combines xenophobic national chauvinism - especially a withering contempt for migrants - with a reactionary, populist hatred of the out-of-touch liberal political establishment.
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Roar of the Dead Lion

New Mode Army: lessons

EXTRACT: We communists want to sweep away the entire British constitutional political system, not reform it or get rid of individual “parasites”. Logically, therefore, we fight for a democratic republic - something else you will never see mentioned in Socialist Worker, which fails abysmally to take democratic questions seriously (including the democracy in its own organisation, it goes without saying). Similarly, we treat with contempt the current craven Labour Party leadership. Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Harriet Harman, the “living dogs” of Labourism, find the very idea of republicanism - or any sort of radical change - utterly alien. They are her majesty’s very loyal opposition.

Rather, we admire the genuinely glorious tradition of radical republicanism, as represented by Gerard Winstanley, Thomas Rainsborough, the Levellers and the agitators of the New Model Army. We certainly need to learn from the example of Oliver Cromwell and his stunningly successful military campaign against the crown. Eg, Leon Trotsky favourably contrasted Cromwell’s decisiveness and revolutionary boldness to the flabby gradualism of the Fabians. “British workers”, he said, “can learn incomparably more from Cromwell than from MacDonald, Snowden, Webb and other such compromising brethren. Cromwell was a great revolutionary of his time, who knew how to uphold the interests of the new, bourgeois social system against the old aristocratic one without holding back at anything. This must be learnt from him, and the dead lion of the 17th century is in this sense immeasurably greater than many living dogs.”
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Turing: Calculated Pardon

The man and the machine

EXTRACT: But central to the sheer volume and intensity of the praise heaped upon Turing is the fact that it was a Briton who invented the computer and laid the basis for the worldwide web, and it was British ingenuity that rescued the world from Nazi tyranny, etc. Get the picture? Turing is now almost up there with Winston Churchill in the pantheon of national heroes. Hypocritically, Turing is being politically used to promote a narrow nationalist agenda.

There is another dimension to the Turing question which is far more welcome, however. Namely, the steady normalisation of homosexuality in society. No longer does being gay mean ostracism or criminal charges. Nowadays, even members of the Dáil in Ireland can mention they are gay without generating an uproar - a significant shift in societal attitudes. And virtually no-one in official Britain would bat an eyelid if an MP or government minister announced they were gay - so what? Stop boring us and get on with it.
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Crocodile Tears Over Salary Recommendation

Crying all the way to ...

EXTRACT: The communist position on this matter is unequivocal. An MP’s job should not be a lucrative career option. What of the idea that you need high wages to attract “high-calibre” people? Quite the reverse: anyone who wants to be an MP purely for the money is by definition the sort of person you want to keep out of the House of Commons. MPs should live on a wage close to the people they are supposedly representing, receiving the average wage of a skilled worker, plus any legitimate expenses. A communist MP would unilaterally do that, irrespective of what Ipsa finally decided. He or she would take only such an average, handing over the excess to the party.
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"The Job of the Artist is to Always Deepen the Mystery" (Francis Bacon)

Miliband’s Media-pleasing Funding Proposals

Ed Miliband: a welcome from Tony Blair

EXTRACT: The clash over Falkirk shows that the Labour Party remains a site of struggle. Therefore it would be foolish in the extreme to urge the trade unions to simply up and leave. Of course, that is exactly the position of Peter Taaffe and his Socialist Party in England and Wales. In response to Falkirk, SPEW declares that now is the “time to discuss the bold step of disaffiliation”, Falkirk demonstrating once again “the political transformation of Labour from a party based on workers, that had socialist aspirations, albeit with a pro-capitalist leadership, into a pro-big business party with similarities to the Democrats in the US”.3 Apparently, Labour is “unreformable” and ever since its leadership “accepted the free market” and dropped clause four (which “envisaged nationalisation and socialism”), it ceased to be a site for class mobilisation and struggle.

What is SPEW’s alternative for Unite and the unions in general? An “emergency executive council” should be called to discuss the crisis and pass a resolution for a “recall rules conference” which would remove the references to Labour Party affiliation, thereby “facilitating disaffiliation”. We further read that this conference should also “discuss political representation for the working class” - there should be meetings and conferences of trade unionists, from affiliated and non-affiliated unions, with the aim of “forming a new workers’ party” armed with a programme of fighting the cuts. In other words, unions should walk out of Labour and join the no-hope Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. Comrades, this is a pathetic, delusional fantasy - it will never happen.
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By Their Friends Shall You Know Them

Weapons from friends

EXTRACT: All of which poses an obvious question. Why is the dictatorship in Qatar supporting the “Syrian revolution”, as our comrades in the Socialist Workers Party have insisted on calling it? Fabulous wealthy despots do not tend to back popular uprisings. Yet as recently as June 18, comrade Judith Orr was worrying in Socialist Worker that “open” western military support for the anti-Assad forces “spells disaster” because “the revolution” will end up “becoming a pawn for imperialist powers”. Comments echoed, or repeated, in the same issue by comrade Bassem Chit of the Socialist Forum organisation in Lebanon - warning that if western intervention goes ahead then the “revolutionary struggle” in Syria would become “collateral damage”, the US doing everything it can to “suffocate” revolutionaries.

In reality though, the west has thrown its weight behind the anti-Assad movement, however you care to define it, almost from the beginning of the crisis - even if this was done under the cover of supplying advice and non-lethal items such as mobile phones, body armour and power generators. You did not have to be much of an armchair general to work out what the opposition would do with their ‘non-lethal’ mobile phones - to find out the location, size and composition of enemy forces then move against them with US and British made weapons delivered to them by agents of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

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Brazil: Half Riot, Half Carnival

Protesting against everything from to fares and football

EXTRACT: Not so long ago, large sections of the left were promoting Brazil as a model to emulate. Here was a country, we were told, which had defied the neoliberal consensus and developed an alternative economic strategy - leading to an economic boom. You see, Keynesianism does work. Just as enthusiastically, the Workers Party of Brazil - along with Communist Refoundation in Italy - was promoted as the model for a ‘broad’ and ‘non-dogmatic’ party of the left. Evidence for this, it was claimed, was the way it hosted and organised the World Social Forum - allowing for ‘consensual’ and ‘non-hierarchical’ decision-making.

Nonsense on sticks, of course. At the WSF, the WP leadership and its allies precisely used the ‘consensual’ but non-democratic and non-accountable mechanisms to bureaucratically manipulate the whole thing from beginning to end - it got all the results it wanted. The same goes naturally for WP’s much lauded ‘non-dogmatism’, which in practice meant the rejection of every working class principle. Hence it has steadily drifted to the right, now committed to running capitalism instead of challenging it. WP has held the presidency for 10 years and is part of the 11-party ‘For Brazil to keep on changing’ coalition, which after the 2010 parliamentary elections gained 352 of the 513 seats in the chamber of deputies, as well as 54 of the 81 seats in the federal senate - granting Rousseff a comfortable majority in both houses. She has used this to attack the working class, not empower it. Communists, on the other hand, argue that you should never form a government or enter a coalition unless you have a realistic chance of implementing the minimum programme - based on working class power and beginning the transition to socialism.
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Two Eds

EXTRACT: Indeed, Balls went on to argue, the cuts may need to continue “beyond” the end of the current parliament. In fact Labour could not and would not make “any commitments” before the next election to reverse the coalition government’s austerity policies. Why? Because, apparently, “we don’t know how bad things will be on jobs, growth and the deficit”. Hang on: is that not the kind of argument George Osborne made on becoming chancellor - once he realised just how bad the public finances really were, he had no choice but to inflict greater cuts than originally planned? In other words, if capitalism took another downward dive Balls would wield the knife. The incumbent government’s austerity has produced a double dip recession and expectations of long term stagnation, in the process decimating public revenue and the tax base. Therefore, reasons Balls, Labour should commit itself to … continued austerity. Economics of the madhouse.
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Turkey: Battle for Secularism

Many viewpoints

EXTRACT: Yet it is the barracks scheme, far more than the mall, that has infuriated millions of Turks, because it is symbolic of the creeping Islamisation of society by the AKP - even if it is still formally committed to secularism, albeit within the confines of “conservative democracy”. Hardly surprising, however, given that the core of the party was formed from the ‘reformist’ faction of the Virtue Party, banned in 2001, and dissident members of the highly conservative (but legal) Motherland Party. This salami-style Islamisation has manifested itself in various ways. Most visibly, of course, are the huge number of mosques - which are everywhere, thanks to a decade-long building programme, generously backed by Saudi Arabia. Indeed, Turkey now has 82,693 mosques - 3,113 of which are in Istanbul alone.

Almost inevitably, women have been increasingly lectured about the importance of ‘traditional’ values - how they should have more children, dress in a certain way, not flaunt themselves too much, etc. Perhaps most upsetting of all the very many secularist Turks are the increasing restrictions on alcohol - regarded as Sharia law through the back door. One of the latest edicts bans the sale of alcohol within 100 metres of any mosque or school and on June 11 the president, Abdullah Gül - also an AKP member - finally approved a bill declaring that retailers will no longer be allowed to sell alcoholic beverages between 10pm and 6am. Therefore a very large number of drinking places will have to close down and nightclub life was severely curtailed.
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Fraying at the Edges

David Cameron: right, right, right

EXTRACT: However, there is yet another nightmarish scenario to contend with - losing next year’s European elections to Ukip. A not impossible outcome, given the elections are conducted under a form of proportional representation. The latest Com Res/Open Europe opinion poll, for example, has Ukip ahead on 27%, with Labour on 23%, the Tories on 21% and the Lib Dems (not trailing nearly so badly when it comes to projections for the Euro PR elections) on 18%.2

It is fair to say that coming third in such a way would be catastrophic for the Tories. It would undermine the morale of the grassroots activists - already alienated from the party hierarchy - and further diminish any hope of forming an outright Conservative government in 2015. The fact of the matter is that Ukip supporters/activists will be far more motivated to vote on the day and, more importantly still, Ukip will be able to scoop up the ‘anti-politics’ protest vote - its message being far more simple, directly linking immigration with the European Union. While those ‘politically correct’ metropolitan leaders are out of touch, Ukip speaks plain common sense - the Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians, etc are taking our jobs and depriving us of our housing. A simple explanation that requires a simple solution - getting out of Europe and asserting our own destiny as a nation again. Totally false and reactionary, of course, but a potentially very powerful message that could bring success for Ukip - something the Tories know only too well.
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