Quite why am I reading Robespierre? Specifically, his Justification of the Use of Terror. It’s terrifying (hah…):

It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty’s despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?

Emphasis mine. The doublethink inherent here boggles the mind. State-terror is justified should it be directed at enemies of liberty, he cries. That this terror requires a basic negation of liberalism appears beyond him. If some people are legitimate target of oppression, and others are not, then clearly freedom from that oppression cannot be a universal value. If that freedom isn’t a universal value, then we clearly aren’t born equal or free - and so on. Robespierre’s words are those of a tyrant.

They represent an extreme perversion; the enabling state gone bad. He posits that we must rid ourselves of tyrants to be free. True enough. But here he falters, with crashing rhetoric demanding an outright tyranny against tyrants. That requires a universal negation of liberty - and a restoration of tyranny. The enabling state exists to make basic freedoms viable for all. When, in order to create liberty, those basic freedoms are cut off - very literally, in Robespierre’s case - that concept ceases to make sense.

Now, let’s put this arcane rambling into a modern context. Quoth Robespierre:

Society owes protection only to peaceable citizens; the only citizens in the Republic are the republicans. For it, the royalists, the conspirators are only strangers or, rather, enemies. This terrible war waged by liberty against tyranny- is it not indivisible? Are the enemies within not the allies of the enemies without? The assassins who tear our country apart, the intriguers who buy the consciences that hold the people’s mandate; the traitors who sell them; the mercenary pamphleteers hired to dishonour the people’s cause, to kill public virtue, to stir up the fire of civil discord, and to prepare political counterrevolution by moral counterrevolution-are all those men less guilty or less dangerous than the tyrants whom they serve?

Emphasis mine. The same principles abound as before; some are permissible targets for Terror, and so liberty isn’t a universal value. We can kill some of you to make the rest free, and you’d better appreciate it or you’ll be next.

And guess where that logic crops up today? Substitute, “terrorism,” or, “anti-social behaviour,” for, “counterrevolution,” and it becomes clear. The same clear logic of the, “Justification of the Use of Terror,” runs through virtually all modern counter-terrorist thought.

Even the rhetoric matches, give or take the linguistic drift of 214 years and translation. Take that last question - on whether the servants of tyrants are as guilty as those tyrants. Doesn’t that sound just like Bush’s axiom that, “if you feed a terrorist, or fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist?” It’s exactly the same principle; if you’ve any connection with terrorism/counter-revolution, you are a terrorist or counter-revolutionary.

Thus, Melanie Phillip’s, “terrorist nation.”  A wall around the West Bank because Hamas exists there, regardless of the blameless children who also happen to exist there. Because, in this system, they’re not blameless.

And it goes beyond that. The enabling state and the values of positive liberty again become perverted. The 42 Days detention farce serves as the perfect example. Labour claims it protects the basic freedoms of life and liberty by introducing the measures; but effectively jeopardises those basic freedoms by allowing the police to grab a citizen off the street and hide them away for 6 weeks without telling them why. In a perverse twist of illogic whereby liberty becomes tyranny for liberty’s sake, liberty loses. And so do we.

It’s absurd to equate Revolutionary Terror with the present situation. But it’s the same thought that underlies both; freedom must be restricted for its own sake. It’s a perverse step which attacks the real purpose of the Enabling State. Certain intervention can make greater liberty available to all - but not when that liberty is undermined at a basic level. Modern politicians would do well to learn that, or face the consequences of their own petty tyranny.

(Scribo Ergo Sum at Marxism 2008 - part 4)

This time around I got to speak to some lefties before I even got into the festival, something which had only happened previously in order for me to ask some directions towards the location back on Friday. The reason for this was a pair of men who I overheard discussing some topic revolving around the Respect meetings and the SWP all having the same agenda upon arrival. This is (rather revealingly) something which caught my interest as the application of Democratic Centralism to coalition votes seems to have caused no end of complaints amongst the groups the SWP has worked in (the Socialist Alliance, Stop The War and, of course, the Respect Coalition). In fact I went so far as to presume that they were non-Left List/Alternative Respect members. It actually turned out that they were “critical” SWP members; quite an exotic breed. They spoke jovially about the state of Respect and stated that a split was effectively inevitable at some stage owing to the division which would have arose over whether to attack or back Ken Livingstone. Affable though they were they seemed slightly displeased with their position and perhaps a tad uncomfortable with the party. The less than glowing recommendation that I should probably not join the party if I didn’t believe what it did was given as we parted, perhaps their weak gesture towards participating in the recruitment side of this event.

By some unanticipated miracle I had avoided lateness, indeed it was the first speaker who was behind time, momentarily leaving me wishing that I had instead attended the one being held on Gramsci. This was exacerbated by her use of the phrase “Gramscian” when she did arrive and I had no idea what it meant (the reason for the delay was a breakdown in service from Oxford). But it quite quickly became clear that it was entirely worth it. Deborah Cameron is a linguistics professor and one of the few writers I have found that both share views concerning gender with me and have pierced mainstream media. She had a series of extracts from her book The Myth of Venus and Mars published in the Guardian earlier this year and reading them was what could only be described as a relief.

Cameron takes to task the substantial sub-genre of “Self-help” that effectively seeks to state that there are immense differences between men and women which are entirely inherent and that these should be understood and accepted as challenging them is a waste of time. Besides the obvious and intellectually cripplingly moronic failure to distinguish between presence and source these texts invariably exacerbate differences with the sort of selective pseudo-science everyone attempting to wield research as a weapon encounters. Where Cameron focuses, though, is her specialty: linguistics.

Male humans and female humans communicate in fundamentally different ways, the divisionists tell us: men speak far less than women and women talk about their feelings far more. Men are more assertive and women communicative, the former better in positions that lead and the latter in rolls revolving around empathy and emotional communication.

These are the claims but the evidence is scanty: Cameron started through telling us of an analysis which traced the myth of 20,000 words a day for women and 7,000 for men back to its source: a less extreme number in a Christian aimed book about marriage; which seemingly plucked the figure from thin air. Although in this instance she was able to obtain a retraction of the statistic from a well-respected book many other myths litter the memetic landscape that our and every culture consists of and she rattled through them at a satisfyingly brisk rate. There is no evidence that emotional words are used unequally between the genders besides swear words, which men do use more often (she notes that this never leads anyone to conclude that men are more emotional), men and women share conversation time equally when in equal status and it is only when there are more men higher in the hierarchy than women that they dominate conversations. Women are no superior at communication and men find women perfectly coherent as they speak the same form of English.

Where this starts to become of high importance is instances such as rape trials, where rapists can use this presumptuous nonsense to say that they somehow failed to understand women due to them not using explicit wording, when in reality almost all short of the mentally handicapped can understand signals of that nature under such conditions. She quoted the occasion in Cool Hand Luke where the prison guard tells the eponymous protagonist “What we have here is a break-down in communication”. Just as this was a euphemism for disobedience so is, for example, a man refusing to remove a bag of rubbish.

But many want to hear the reassuring signals of inherent difference and gender dichotomy being deeply entrenched, even if it means abandoning critical thought and relying upon shoddy readings of science. Challenging this is a vital task for any egalitarian as the division of humanity into an assortment of interacting but mutually distinct groups invariably should be pursued solely when necessary. This is not such an instance.

Before the meeting I had had a lengthy talk with a fellow who had seemingly been checking the room for anyone on their own and not in the Socialist Worker Party, for he quickly outlined to an extraordinarily attractive girl why she should prior to us leaving. He was another one of the charming young SWP members and he certainly seemed to consider it a positive organisation. I again expressed wariness at their organisational structure and today told that I was uncertain between social democracy and socialism (still truth) and thus uncertain if I’d be appropriate for an outright socialist party.

There were no communist groups around today but a few SWP were having something of a discussion on the grass outside Birbeck College with a pair of independent socialists. As this was ongoing I spoke to an Socialist Worker on the periphery who’s name was Simon. I later found out that he was from Belgium, where the left consists of four Maoists still talking about “Armed Struggle”. He had a sharp wit and when I told him my ideal for the left (a large structure with various factions) he told me that it already existed: the Labour Party. It takes your money and your vote and expects nothing else of you, he said. He told me that he was wary of working in an organisation where Stalinists or Maoists were also operative and I told him that I had not seen any such parties present at Marxism. His response was rather unexpected: he mentioned the CPGB. He stated that although they were not avowed in their ideology they followed such positions. Unfortunately the party in question weren’t around to ask.

He said that independent socialists had a role but could not expect their position to achieve a great deal, although they could of course be worked with in a popular front against fascism or the war or the like. He was opposed however to the autonomist anarchists who operated on in Sussex. As we left he paused and said that I should think about joining, because what with the 400 other people telling me to join the SWP I probably hadn’t considered it yet.

I headed out to check for any more interesting lefties around the corner but it seemed that only the SWP tents (and Stop The War and so on) were around so I headed kback to see a talk on “Zombieconomics”. This was a topic that intrigued me purely due to the name but which I knew nothing about, indeed in the room prior to the speaker’s arrival I engaged with another socialist about how it might be pronounced (with Zombie and Economics divided instead of combined, it eventually turned out).

The talk was given by Ben Fine, who had studied matters economical for decades and come to the conclusion that the subject was firstly dead: there was no room for growth or expansion as there were three main schools and hybrids between them but nothing beyond this could be envisioned. “Economics is dead” was not his message, however, in fact it was worse: rather than simply ceasing to exist economics had instead reached out and attempted to dominate the other social sciences, just as an unliving zombie has no essence of its own and seeks to forcibly extract it from those around it.

Much of his talk, as with Chris Bambery the day before, revolved around neo-liberalism but Fine made efforts to explain that this term can mean just about anything. Either a tendency to destroy public services to reform them, either an outright rejection of Keynesianism or a new form of it, theory or application, original form or current, these are all distinct varities that bear the same title. Comparatively the Respect/Respect split seems a matter of ease to understand.

The tone of his talk was in part hopeful: social sciences had moved away from post-modernism and neo-liberalism, he told us, although the extent to which he could go into points rather than merely touching upon them was limited. He was aware that he was not talking to a roomful of economists and confined by as much; but also avoided being condescending. To be honest though I still only half understand the meaning of “Financialisation”, although I accept that its implications seem to be negative ones.

I also don’t entirely understand the distinction between a political economist and a regular one but apparently it is primarily that the former are given less respect and purged from university departments more often. Apparently one of the speakers universities (in Sydney, as I recall) currently understands them to belong in the Arts department, something which they find most inappropriate.

In short it was mind-expanding stuff and probably the sort of stuff anyone wanting to become a Marxist would have to wrap their head around. Thankfully though I don’t have to and that’s one of the many reasons why.

I was considering just heading off home but decided to stage one final raid upon the mystical white “Marxism Attendees Only” tent, since that’s where all of the revolutionaries seemed to be at.

It seemed that my West London comrades were not in attendance but I caught up with Simon; who was behind a table stuffed full of food I eventually gained access to without paying. A discussion was underway between the assembled group about the Brighton bomb factory, a delightful but grim topic that revolved around the course of action to be taken against EDO. Apparently the aforementioned autonomist anarchists had taken up the course with force and were using a series of stunts and other direct action tactics to get the place shut down. A typical tactic was to chain themselves to the gates on a Wednesday and stay there until they got themselves arrested.

The anarchists had seemingly scared off the rest of the public from involvement with the cause; however they were also deterred by the obvious consequences: as great a blow as this would be for neo-conservatives in the short term (the factory makes door opening mechanisms for bombers that have been used by the Royal Airforce and US in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the Israelis against Palestine; therefore rolling a number of far-left issues into a potent cocktail) they would simply relocate and the effect upon the local economy from all the jobs lost would be disastrous.

Indeed I suspect that this was why the gentleman gently agitating in favour of action against EDO was struggling with the thus far non-commital SWP: much as they are often eager to take up a cause and take it to the streets in this instance they would be actively working in order to try and increase Brighton unemployment. But the activist in discussion with them stated that in capitalism everything was related to jobs and business and that any ethical projects would end up losing people jobs. This was simply part and parcel of operating politically within it and was unfortunate but had to be done and could be mitigated through demands including full employment for all the factory workers (who by, he did not outline).

Then there was the difficulty of methods: the suggestion of protesting on Saturday rather than the weekdays which had been done before (with the anarchists attempting to shame the factory workforce) was seen as an improvement but still considered warily. The difficulty was explained as there being no “Either or” choice between protest and direct action: the area had been cased and little willingness for factory closure found amongst the general public. Accordingly perhaps the only action possible is the sort that was apparently found legal by a judge in some similar case or other.

Just to complicate matters a little further the exact attitude of present company with regards to the autonomist anarchists was not precisely clear. They were dedicated activists and if direct action was to go underway doubtless valuable allies of some kind. But one of the Socialist Workers had heard that it was largely them that were scaring away any sort of mass movement over the issue of the bomb-delivery production plant. If so then any attempts at popular fronts would have to be formed without them and if direct action was the plan then they would have to be convinced to coalesce with socialists, at least to some extent.

In short I was receiving a quick vision first hand of just what a struggle it is to actually organise anything, even a local project with a specific aim.

The exact outcome of their in promtu meeting was indecided, but I was certainly well fed at the end of it thanks to a mixture of rolls, grapes and pasta. Stuffing the latter into the former was quite delightful, especially so because I got to do so while chatting to the chap organising against EDO. His name was Penny and he was quite possibly the result of the day. This I only discovered when probing (as one does under such conditions) his political affiliation. He was a member of Respect and told me his position within it when I told him that despite having covered it closely for a few months now and he replied that he was on its national committee and he still couldn’t.

This Respect is the Respect that isn’t Respect any more but was the Left List and now is the Left Alternative. Yes, the name is apparently around to stay, which I expressed my dismay over. Apparently he was plumping for the Left (too broad) or Left Solidarity (too close to Tommy Sheridan’s failed party for the electoral commission to handle) and the word “Party” was for some reason out entirely.

More importantly he was one of the seemingly rare Respect-but-not-SWP types I’d only met two of previously. I asked him how common his kind were and he said the split was either 50-50 or 40-60 in-not on the national committee, while on the local level the SWP bias was significantly stronger. He was not keen on Galloway but, unexpectedly, brought up Obama and expressed some considerable admiration. I told him that I also found it remarkable that he had defeated the Clinton Machine with such limited corporate backing and admired the transparency and skill that had marked his campaign, along with its top-down structure.

It was at this stage that I was approached by a Socialist Worker wearing an “Event Staff” t-shirt (weren’t they all?) who asked to see my ticket. I replied that I did not have one and he informed me that the tent was for Marxist attendees only. I replied that I was attending Marxism and he said he knew this as he was the one who had let me into Tony Benn and expelled me from the SWP student meeting. He reminded me that I had told him I had no money (perhaps presuming that I had paid for food). It was, I suppose, only a matter of time before they caught up with me. Too late. By this stage I did not even ponder resistance, when he told me I would have to leave the tent I didn’t even bother mentioning the ending of Animal Farm to him and obeyed his assertion of property rights, biding goodbye to the Respect member and then departing the area and the event.

On my way out I was stopped briefly by the Campaign Against Climate Change leafleteer, the first non-SWP sort I had encountered active that day. I mentioned the connotations of his leaflet with good humour and he laughed. We discussed the group for a short while and to demonstrate the Tony Been denying political bent of his organisation he simply pointed at his t-shirt, which declared Bush as “Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity” due to his stance on climate change. He spoke of the president now wanting to drill in Alaska and I told him how after the “addicted to oil” stuff this seemed to be junkie scrabbling. He laughed again and told me that it would make a fine cartoon; then I was on my way.

Marxism let me see a wide range of intelligent people for free and allowed me the peculiar opportunity to frequently be in a room-full of people who I was well to the right of. It allowed me to make some sense of Respect and conclude that everyone fucked up hard. My thanks to the SWP for putting on such a fine event. I’ll certainly trot along next year and hopefully can drag at least one of my SES comrades with me. In the meantime I’m still not a Marxist but I am far better informed than on Friday. Until next time, comrades…

Number of meetings attended: 10

Amount of money paid: £0.00

Number of infiltrations: 4 (Apparently the white tent counts, so my count of 1 yesterday was entirely inaccurate.)

Number of successful infiltrations: 3 (NOMNOMNOM)

Amount of free meals obtained: 3

Amount of offers to join the SWP: 400 a minute.

(Or: For Solidarity’s sake, comrade, don’t mention Kronstadt)

On a day where the Prime Minister appointed by his party declared himself against a return to the 1970s, a time which the far-left (and perhaps only the far-left) consider with some nostalgia, at least in contrast to the decade which followed who better to see first thing than Tony Benn?

Watching him at Marxism 2008 had a particular joy; in that it was one of the immensely rare occasions during which his audience would leave him substantially to the right. If, even after all these years of attendence, this left him unsettled it did not show an inch. I showed up very mildly late and he was in full swing; clearly in his element while speaker. His speech roamed over a broad number of points and annecdotes, distinctively Bennite in nature, covering everything from his rather surprising advocacy of rationing (the average height of the working class man rose by two inches due to it) to his ethical vegetarianism (his forward-thinking son Hillary told him fifteen years ago that if all the grain fed to animals was fed to people this would end famine).

It was obvious that the SWP presence (heavy) was left bristling by his outright suggestions that Labour was worth struggling to save and although his suggestion that Labour would swing left after a heavy loss to Cameron (something which would effectively require New Labour to end) he did acknowledge that Labour was not socialist but had socialists in it “Just as the Church has Christians in it”.

Speaking of which, he did not adopt an anti-religious tone but was opposed to religious authority. It occured to me later on (as well as the day before, when I was talking about the importance of imams concerning Respect) that Marxism falters when it comes to understanding the power of religious leaders. Its understanding being limited to wealth results in the power of a poor man standing on an upturned box and raving about a being that loves as it condemns being somewhat alien to them. Preachers often lack fortunes but are able to marshall people through belief in matters beyond the material. Although I would challenge the genuine existence of such forces as firmly as would Marxists I fear that their focus upon the tangible leads them to underestimate the might of that which is elsewhere. Even if it is merely steroid-fed speculation it gives copious power to the undeserving.

Regardless, Benn stated that his internet research had led him to the conclusion that all religions taught much the same message; which was that you should treat others as you would expect to be treated. Perhaps a rather simpler formation than the Universal Ethic tirelessly sought by renegade Catholic Hans Kung but the method of his learning struck me as interesting. When he was taken up on this point by an American concerned about the media (worse in his own country than here, he said, but perhaps America is simply more right wing I would suggest) who stated that the internet was inherently “structured” to favour the bourgeois Benn stayed firm, stating that he was sometimes uncertain why he still watched television as he got all the news he wanted from the websites he followed. A man after my own heart, clearly.

(more…)

(Or: SES at Marxism 2008, part 2)

This time around I managed to gather myself from slumbers early enough to show up in time for considerably more sessions than the day before, albeit not nearly as early as the brisk 10.00 start that the meetings began with. I actually underestimated my lateness and ended up ploughing into what I thought was Labour and Alienation soon after starting but which was in fact Historical Materialism about to finish. Consequentially entry was a matter of ease; although in hindsight I probably left a SWP doorperson or two baffled.

I honestly can’t remember a lot about historical materialism, but as far as I can tell there was somehow a conversation about ethics going on, which was topically innappropriate but entertaining all the same, if only for a chap with shoulder-length dirty blonde hair who took to the floor and began talking about Kronsdat.

Now if I was looking for a sharp start to my day here it was: once this world was uttered things seemed to ripple and the effect was as delightful as I had imagined ennounciating such syllables in a room full of Trotskyites would be. Indeed, I merely deemed it a pity that I hadn’t beaten the chap to the bunch.

He was immediately followed by a bleached-blond lass who would later turn out to be somehow important who gave it some typical blather. Safeguarding the Revolution and so on, you know the drill. Never mind that their hero had overseen and executed the crushing of the epitome of the revolution, had to be done to protect a structure that they didn’t even agree with, see? The alternative being a far more popular brand of socialism than the Bolsheviks seeing control of the country and that…Uhm…Anyway…

The room was still left unsettled. The topic moved on and it was about some other stuff, with my recollection failing me over the materialism stuff. What was interesting was that as he was headed out of the room the chap who had asked was verbally hailed by a pair of Marxism “Staff” t-shirt wearers from behind a table, who wanted to give him the Kronsdtat Chat. I stuck around to hear this and the first man was firm and pulled away quickly by duties while the second was softer but spoke to us for longer, accompanying us to the lift and staying with us for a while.

Their arguments seemed to consist of a mixture of emphasising the importance of crushing the Kronsdtat threat, claiming that there were none of the original Kronsdtat sailors left owing to attrition from the revolution(s) against the Csar and the heavy losses of the Civil War (concerning this, as with all other matters of detail, you must consult Douglas or some other historian who is of this field rather than early Medieval as I am) , launching ad hominems (those that bring this up are bourgeois or anarchists aiming to discredit Trotsky rather than achieve anything productive) and talking about how the Bolsheviks agonised over the decision.

They also stated that the Kronsdtat make up was Socialist Revolutionary rather than Bolshevik, and this irked me: even I am aware that when Lenin briefly allowed an experiment in democracy the very reason he rejected the outcome was that the SRs won in a landslide, crushing the Bolsheviks electorally and demonstrating a level of support for the militants of an immensely smaller scale than they liked to presume. This considered, that there were plenty of Kronsdtat sailors Social Revolutionaries is hardly surprising at all.

Unfortunately all Bolshevik apologists dislike you bringing up their almost total absence of mandate about as much as Trots do his authoritarian atrocities. So we didn’t get far but the people we spoke to were perfectly friendly and their response seemed more an earnest attempt to explain their position rather than intimidation or anything of the sort. As ever the SWP seemed like a misguided but ultimately lovely bunch.

As we headed outside I encountered a large number of groups that thought otherwise. This was a set of people who’d cleared off before I arrived yesterday and were in some ways who I was there for. The SWP I’d already heard plenty from and now it was time for The Rest of The Left.

(more…)

Due to failure on the part of Douglas to show up (he was collaborating with the bourgeois in the most foul fashion possible by seeking a job) I didn’t bother to turn up for Friday’s sessions of Marxism until late in the day, instead opting to watch Alladin. Quite a good call, I thought.

The main event was based around a series of stalls, but sadly not as diverse a one as those I witnessed when I covered Love Music Hate Racism. No, this had SWP tents and Stop The War tents and Left List tent and a SWP table and…Well, basically all but three of the set-ups were SWP connected. The first seemed to be some climate change group which the SWP had possibly only let in due to being then impressed at the amount of protesters the Climate Camp and so on were able to mobilise. The other were selling subscriptions to an underground socialist video collection group named News Reel which I didn’t have any money to go along with. I told the man that my money was all going on groceries (the truth) and he told me he knew the feeling well.

The third group were the most interesting by far: Turkish socialists. These types are rather penned in on all sides; struggling alongside the moderate Islamists while repulsed by their neo-liberal policies and incapable of doing anything about the more conservative Islamist movement uprising, while having nothing but disdain for the secularist far-right nationalist movement which seems to have the backing of the anti-democratic Turk generals.

On top of this they suffer, as with almost everywhere, due to a fractured left. They, like the SWP, aspire towards a grouping similar to Die Linke in Germany, which has united the left successfully and enjoyed increasing electoral success. But it seems like they have a good deal of work ahead of them if they wish to manage that. Not, perhaps, as much as the British left…

Speaking of which I got to speak to more people from within Respect. This opportunity was presented to me when I stopped by at the Love Music Hate Racism tent and talked a bit about Bexley’s old school racist nationalism amongst other topics and it turned that (as Londoners) these SWPers were Respect activists. Interestingly one fellow (the second I’ve met who fulfills these credentials) actually was not a member of the SWP and never had been, due to filling the rather unpopular position (at Marxism, at least) of being a reformist socialist instead of a revolutionary. Apparently this is the source of constant arguments between him and his Socialist Worker friends, which I can well imagine but am glad has not prevented them getting along.

He still stated that Respect was now called Left List, but apparently the name “Left Alternative” is also being floated. I hope very strongly that this is not the one they run with as it is truly dire. If they haven’t gotten themselves into a position where they can call themselves “The Left Party” and be done with it then that should be their top priority. A party describing itself as the “Alternative” has never won anything.

In order to try and get my bearings of the place I headed to the entrance of the School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS) where there was a large SWP tent. There I met a lovely middle aged woman who talked to me about the basic socialist stuff. She told me about the local level stuff the SWP get up to, I gave her a rough and weak outline of pragmatic socialism and she told me I should join. I find this an unnervingly frequent (not to mention predictable) occurrence with the SWP, but at least they make you feel wanted.

My response was perhaps not what she had anticipated: I told her that the now century old model of Democratic Centralism left me immensely wary, not only because organising a contemporary party along Leninist structures seemed to be more redolent of an exercise in historical recreationism rather than a serious political project; but also because I was less than keen on being bound in numerous ways by the majority will. She explained how as far as she could the democratic centralist structure was simply a means of getting things done but frankly I consider the continual failure of the SWP to achieve anything much is a testament to the ineffectualness of this argument. I didn’t tell her that, though.

On the upside: they did have free food. This was set up as a picnic in the green, where there was a concentrated crowd of Marxists sitting in circles and a pair of apparently illicit tents. Not a lot of it as I got there pretty late but enough to tide me over until I got home. My gratitude to the Bristol and Manchester SWP branches for the munchables. Much appreciated.

So I headed back through the area to pick up more perspectives. Another Socialist Worker seemed worth a chat so I asked him the time and then struck up conversation. As ever the gregariousness socialism demands of humanity was evident and regardless of their misdeeds as a body upon the left the SWP is characterised by a largely lovely membership. At least offline. This fellow was not from inside London but was the first from the SWP I found who admitted that there was opportunism “On both sides” concerning the Respect debacle. Indeed he went so far as to say that matters were far more complex than a “Left-Right split” and that trying to explain matters in such terms was far too simplistic.

It was now nearing 7 o’clock and I had a decision to make: Tariq Ali or Lenin. The latter was, of course, the blogger Richard Seymour, who was here under that name rather than his provocative nom de plume. The primary factor in my opting for the latter was my total lack of cash. No money to obtain tickets meant that opting for the room with spare seats was unquestionably preferable.

In the event Seymour’s room was pretty packed as well, but there was enough space for me not to be acting as a seat robber. I had a whole spiel planned involving mentioning that I was a victim of sub prime and still seeking employment in this crisis stricken economy (both true) but as it happens I turned up slightly late and the man on the door just waved me through.

Seymour was perhaps not how I’d imagined him but that was largely in the voice, which was a soft Irish one I probably should have anticipated more given he’s mentioned his origins on the blog. I was still expecting something a tad more harsh, firm, clipped and firebrand.

As for content, well it was concerning the pro-war left, who are his targets in “The Liberal Defence of Murder” (although interestingly three of his main subjects, Johann Hari, Nick Cohen and the especially despised Christopher Hitchens are all socialists or social democrats of some sort, although Hitchens seems to have shifted into not calling himself anything yet referencing Marx almost as much as before, if not more).

Both in person and in comments Lenin has described himself as “all over the place” structurally; but if this was truth instead of modesty it certainly didn’t show. There was clearly plenty he’d had planned but couldn’t get in, but this was seemingly because he’d done a vast amount of reading and research and it was to the degree that he couldn’t possibly cram it all in. He’d probably intended to say something about Yugoslavia, I suppose, but I never found that topic immensely interesting anyway so I’m rather glad he failed to. Likewise with Ol*ver K*mm.

As it was he managed to fill forty five minutes and then additional response time with a pleasingly fact dense speech that outlined the nature, power, motivations, methods and follies of the pro-war left. The talk traced how liberal interventionists of the contemporary era had directly borrowed from the colonial tradition (both of the far-right and of thinkers such as Mill and Tocqueville, not to mentioned the much-loathed Reformist Marxist Bernstein) and were now using rhetoric barely adapted from the times when you could get away with phrases such as “Adult race”.

Inbetween these two book-ends there was a discussion point where a surprisingly large number of audience members (including myself) were coaxed on stage to give views or ask questions. This felt pleasingly participative and it’s certainly a tradition I’m glad shows no signs of being abandoned.

Also in attendance was Naadir, former member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir and founder of Boris Watch, to which our own Gerry Fenby contributes. I had met him before at the Liberal Conspiracy “Summit” and he kindly bought me a pair of pints while we talked about everything ranging from historical materialism and its importance for Marxists to the Revolutionary Communist Party to Objectivism to the neo-liberal case for a global welfare state.

In all a very pleasing day and one I shall hopefully extend tomorrow by showing up before six o’clock. Given that I’m writing this at nearing half past twelve and haven’t had breakfast yet (let alone got dressed) I suppose that it will not be by all that much…

For those interested Marxism lasts until this Sunday and is held in a variety of venues close to the Goodge Street Nothern line Russell Square Piccadilly line stations. The official website is here.

Rowan Williams yesterday struck out at the break-away faction in terms that were certainly a lot more vigorous than he is known for. Desperate times call for desperate men.

In his piece on the matter last month Douglas argued that the schism was a cause for joy amongst athiests. This is of course untrue and instead appropriate for anti-clericists and anti-theists, a largely inter-locking pair of factions who the Anglican Church have perhaps done more than any other Christian denomination to consider the criticisms of. I can think of no mainstream Christian Church closer to harmless.

This Church being torn in two and half of it being now utterly unrestrained in its bigotry {which is rather formidable in places} is perhaps not the most pleasing state of affairs imaginable. We can but hope that the importance of all religion fades and that the division within the Church weakens its resources and causes both sects to die away. Rather like happened to failed political project, Respect. Not to mention a plethora of other political parties.

Sadly a protracted demise does not tend to happen to Churches for a while longer. Or at least has a far lengthier duration. At least mild amusement is resulting from this one. For instance not the phrase “Protestant sect” being used against the Conservatives, with a claim that this is all that they amount to. As opposed to the Anglican Church, which…?

Worth a read is Ali’s response, which is, as ever on these matters, so well informed and heavily considered I feel like an amateurish ignorant when approaching this issue by comparison. In it he opines that a split was “Inevitable”. I imagine so but articles such as this were doubtless unhelpful. Rational analyses of the institution of marriage were doubtless highly provocative, although not least because it left the conservative case entirely in shreds.

It also makes it pretty clear that considered thinkers such as Chane can not co-exist in a Church also including deranged reactionaries such as Akinola, especially not while both fill prominent positions. Of the two it would cause far more numerical damage to lose the latter, but intellectually I have little doubt as to which would be better to collaborate with.

So it was the position no leader of any organisation would want to place himself in: compromise quality and lose the masses or cede to fierceness and be forced to purge some of the finest thinkers the Church has? An unenviable position for any man, so perhaps for Williams, someone without a doubt a man with the air of the ditherer about him, the reactionary wing forcing his hand is something of a relief.

At any rate, we can only hope that the manner he has adopted in relation to this issue {if anything one too soft} is sustained. Whether I actually desire reconciliation between the two factions is somthing I am presently uncertain over.

Barely any coverage beyond the aforelinked on the Respect collapse. No word on the SWP website and only a brief mention for this major disaster on the Respect (SWP/Left List) website. That can be found here and I can’t help but find it more than a little folorn.

Respect/Left List supporters will continue to oppose New Labour and the other establishment parties.

They say, fully in the knowledge that such resistance will be futile.

We know that many in the working class movement look on the decline of the Labour government with mounting concern and desparately want a real left alternative.

They say, knowing that they are not it.

Respect may well be:

A party that struggles against war and the racism it breeds.

But given the ongoing (indeed, in Afghanistan escalating) war and the success of the BNP over the Labour Party in Henley and in the GLA elections earlier this year it looks like this is a struggle which they are increasingly failing.

Respect Renewal, meanwhile, took a chance to jab at the SWP/LL Respect, saying:

The defection of the three Left List councillors ought to sound the death knell of the Left List fiasco and finally lays to rest the lie that the split in Tower Hamlets Respect was between left and right.

Which was also the Left List Respect’s statement, except that they said that they were the ones on the left. Rather like the “No you’re the Neo-Nazi” exchange the BNP had going recently, only in reverse. It seems like either side is desperate to tar themselves as the extremists here.

RR also claim that one of the Respect (SWP, confused yet?) members joined the Tories, not something I have seen claimed anywhere else but certainly interesting and worthy of investigation.

As for Respect, Renewal says that:

They are determined to be more coherent and effective following what we are sure will be the last defection.

Also:

The split away from Respect by the SWP is now well and truly behind us. We look forward to playing our part in furthering the left as a whole, not simply our part of it.

So who knows, perhaps they might even be forced to try unity through sheer desperation? I wouldn’t count on it…

Both articles refer to the Labour Party as “New Labour” and neither seem to display much acceptance of culpability. Same old revolutionary politics, then.

Meanwhile, no word from Lenin’s Tomb. Presumably he’s still awaiting programming from Central Committee, or else they simply want this story buried. Democratic Centralism gets in the way of rapid reporting awfully…

Finally, if you want to see some socialists losing it completely then, as usual check out Socialist Unity, here and here. As ever, the deepest joys are to be found the murky depths of the site’s comment section. Consider this:

SWP members should now be asking themselves why after decades of political engagement, the party is still unable to build long-term and deep roots in communities that should be its natural constituencies.

I’m trying to create some witty addition to that, but “LOL, PWNED” is all that comes to mind, really.

That’s all from the far-left today. If you’re hoping for more I doubt you’ll be dissapointed but if you were under any delusions about them mattering even slightly then I would suggest now would be a good point to move on.

(Or: And lo, the imploded party did implode once more…)

As if the Left wasn’t having as disastrous enough a time as it was yesterday we heard that both the Left List and the Respect Coalition (or was that Respect Renewal? I don’t think anyone really knows any more) seem to have suffered such a substantial defection that the appear to have almost vanished from the political landscape. Worse still the traitors abandoned them not to form some third party {which would at least have been amusing} but instead went to Labour.

{Or “New Labour” as the hard-core socialists would put it. Not that they thought Old Labour was left enough either…}

That article fails to make it entirely clear but those Respect members were three parts Left List/SWP and one part George Galloway/Respect Renewal. This sort of a disaster could well be enough to finish both the Trotskyite party and assorted Galloway-tolerating leftist party and I imagine it may well. How exactly they feel about being deemed less desirable than the Labour Party has yet to be heard but some degree of humiliation is appropriate. Prepare yourselves, however, for some desperate, snarling spinning from the SWP’s Central Committee.

Their understanding of the split as a right-left schism with the SWP upon the left has, however, been thoroughly punctured. According to the SWP the Labour Party are crypto-rightist Neo-Conservatives interested in dismantling the welfare state via Neo-Liberalism who are entirely committed to neo-colonialism, yet all of their Left Listed councilors have opted to join it? Inexplicable.

There has been numerous references, hints, or allusions to a “Left Party” formed along the lines of the German party of the same name, which has enjoyed increasing success of late. The Campaign for a New Worker’s Party has, of course, always been keen on this idea but an increasing number of individuals have stated an inclination towards something fresh and left, including at least one union leader. This event will give such an suggestion momentum but it is also possible that both groups will continue to hobble onwards.

Hopefully, though, they will realise the futility of this pathetic spectacle and put an end to it. The scale of their failure considered what follows in the aftermath can scarcely be worse.

And about time to.

My own write-up of events is forthcoming although I might not get around to it seeing as I only showed up at about half twelve or so. Notably afterwards there was Buck Foris which led me to believe the Blonde Devil may well have lost the youth, so is most likely worth of an article or a half.

Their article is a fine one and was a front page article in the Times 2. Most pleasing, but a placing that has left many of the old school anonymous fearing that the next shall be flooded with “newfags” apparently convinced that protesting is sexy again. I wouldn’t worry.

Also note the article by Caitlan Moron. One of three in that edition. She started off as a singular tumour located in the Times 2 but her inexplicable popularity has led to her spreading through the newspaper like the cancer she truly is. It may be too late for chemotherapy and Murdoch doubtless considers this part of his lunge for Middle England and the logical next step (although unfortunately far from the conclusion) of his ongoing project to turn The Times into a more expensive Daily Mail so would never authorise it. Perhaps once he’s dead we can purge her, although to do so may require amputation of the T2 and extensive radiotherapy of the rest of our Paper of Record.

Regardless, her rise makes me thoroughly miserable. I do hope that it is followed by a particularly grisly downfall.

It seems like there is a project underway aiming to Bait Bush. He’s here on the 15th and although I have no idea what exactly the plan is I am certain that I want in.