1,000 words...

For anyone not aware, THIS is the problem with Sunderland FC employing Paulo Di Canio as manager. There is even more context than most people realise. He used to perform these salutes when he played for Lazio, a club that, on the basis of its followers, is known informally as Nazio, as the the lowest of the low. Di Canio was expressing solidarity, inciting his fascist brethren.

Four day weekend - part 2

The Coral - Grey Harpoon



Franz Ferdinand - Darts of Pleasure


Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm



Queens of the Stone Age - No One Knows

Four-day weekend - part 1

Lo Fidelity Allstars - Disco Machine Gun



Primal Scream - Burning Wheel



Death in Vegas - Dirt



Black Grape - Kelly's Heroes

More thoughts for the brain

Asteroids and comets are almost the functional equivalent of nuclear war today. They are a function of alienation in Marxism and the uncanny is Psychoanalysis. Despite the persistence (within the human context) of capitalist civilisation we know in our marrow that it is unsustainable. 

Despite various adventures, we always seem to be back where we began, like we’re in an ongoing sitcom. Ecocide and revolution are difficult to imagine. Only the prospect of existential cosmic calamity it seems can erase that. We rightly fear such an event, yet we do not sublimate or banish it from our minds, as often happens with climate change. The only difference between this and nuclear war is you can check the news every now and then - phew another asteroid will miss us.

A staffed mission to an asteroid is a good idea. We need to start working out how to defend civilisation from the threat of cosmic debris.

The dark side...

Alex Callinicos complaining on Facebook that he had his invitation to participate in the Historical Materialism conference in Delhi withdrawn at short notice by email, rounded off by saying: 

"This is to say nothing of the personal inconvenience and expense you are exposing me to by withdrawing your invitation a week after you had circulated a programme that included me as chairing one session and speaking at another, and barely a week before I was due to fly to India. This is quite unacceptable in what is meant to be an academic conference, and it is also not how socialists should behave towards one another." 

However one of the Facebook Four quite rightly pointed out: 

"YOU EXPELLED ME BY EMAIL". 

For someone who is a professor - Alex Callinicos is really quite dumb, and it shows where his priorities lie. What really gets his goat is the prospect looming of no more academic conferences.

Another green world - some ideas

There will of course be lots more refined ideas out there, but these are some suggestions that can act as both demands and an means to get people active:

Housing:
There should be an urgent house building programme, linked firstly to available brownfield sites and secondly to a plan for redistributing work around the country. All building materials to be locally sourced where possible. Priority should be given to key workers, then to workers in nearby industries, thus reducing the need and length of communing, reducing emissions and costs. New houses to be owned by an elected local government commissioner and administered by Tennants and Residents associations. Rent control to be administered

All houses, new and old, are to be properly insulated and supplied with solar panels where appropriate. Where possible houses to be redesigned to make them energy efficient more generally.

Controlled flooding should be carried out in vulnerable areas. The new land should be used either for recreation or as a wildlife reserve.

Transport:

The centre of all towns and cities with populations over 100,000 (or whatever appropriate figure) are to be pedestrianised, with vehicle access given only to residents and business access. This will reduce both emissions and lower accident numbers. This measure (combined with the reduction in commuting) will lower particulate levels, leading to a decrease in asthma, bronchitis and other lung diseases.

Food:

Brownfield sites not converted into new housing or parkland should be turned into city farms, all city farms should be twinned with local primary and secondary schools. All local shops and supermarkets should be sourced primarily by local  farms, with incentives given to farmers to use organic rather than artificial inputs. The cumulative effect would be to reduce both emissions and costs.

Results are in...

And counted. A grand total of 51 people voted. We would have liked to have got more votes than TUSC, but taking on such a mighty electoral machine in such a short space of time... we think we did well. So, anyway, puzzle no longer, the definitively tip-top best meme of the SWP crisis is, well, you can see it: That's quite a successful revolutionary organisation you've got there... Aaaaaaaand it's gone. It was quite a close run thing. The results are as follows:

Aaaaand it's gone - 31%
Creeping feminism - 25%
Don't X Y - it's petty bourgeois - 20%
We must observe socialist discipline - 12%
China Mieville is SCANDALOUS - 8%
Do you support this - 4%

Both the Whiff of autonomism and I've been on the internet... got no votes.

The seasons - with Brian Eno

Winter 

Spring 

Summer 

Autumn 

Another green world...

Using the non-pejorative sense, a utopian idea is an end without a means. One of the benefits of utopian, or perhaps thinking beyond immediate goals, is it can inform and refresh political activity. One of the sites I occasionally browse is the Long Now Foundation. As you can see it is quite corporate, and it’s very obvious the location within current social structure makes it utopian. Yet it's projects, from wildlife recording to language preservation to the general emphasis on planning and legacy are exactly the kind of things a communal society would be doing in earnest.

Here is a blog post about flood control, not the sexiest subject perhaps but given the fact of global climate change and how much of human settlement is based in low-lying areas it’s an important topic. The great investment the Dutch government made in flood control paid itself in a few decades. In order to allow residents to continue living in parts of the country the proposal is to convert farmland into flood land, another long-term project. The lives and livelihoods of affected farmers must be taken into consideration (I don’t know if they have been) but, apparently the cost-benefit ratio is worth it in terms of housing stock but I would guess also biodiversity.

I don’t like the term eco-socialism. It seems to me to be apologetic. The Green movement, judged on its own terms is not such a fantastic success, no more than any other movement. Socialists should incorporate environmental concerns without incorporating utopianism. The biggest difficulty for Green politics is agency. There are a number of ways in which environmental reform can be realised. Green politics can pull in several directions. Lest we forget, there is such a thing as eco-fascism though it’s usually an attack-term – Karl Max Schwarz anyone?).

Linking environmental concerns to working class agency of course starts with issues around the quality and cost of living, the first will be driven down and the second up as the legacy of climate change accumulates. Flood defence is one issue. Electricity generation is another. Why, in a country like Britain, with long hours of sunlight, consistent wind (Britainhas 40% of Europe’s wind energy but only generates 10% of wind-powered electricity) and three tidal rivers, do we not have cheap, clean and plentiful energy? Environmental concerns permeate issues such as transport, housing and food. It is still difficult to found a meaningful environmentalist practice though. Global climate change is an even bigger challenge than capitalist austerity. But solutions will need to come.

The interventionist leadership finally grinds into action...

And it's a calamity. Julie Sherry's article in the Guardian is appalling. It dodges every substantial criticism made of the SWP during this crisis. The only defence offered (that the matter was investigated and voted on) is actually what people find MOST offensive about the leadership's handling of the Delta case - that the leadership thought itself capable of investigating then ruling on an allegation of sexual assault. Even if it was a good article it has come out THREE months after the crisis broke; so much for interventionist leadership. 

Here is a link to an IS Blog piece responding to the Guardian article.

Actually existing news

The Labour Party is abstaining from a bill being rushed through Parliament that will create a retroactive law overturninghundreds of thousands of benefit rebates due to unemployed people wrongly sanctioned. What is more incredible, the fact The Party of Labour refuses to oppose workers exploitation, or the government’s explanation for the bill, that it will “protect the economy”?

Firstly the estimated total pay-out is £130 million, which is of course next to nothing in the grander scheme. It is nothing compared to Trident, nothing compared to Afghanistan, nothing compared to uncollected tax... You could go on. But there’s also a disturbing tendency in public life, which is fast becoming a blood sport, where the weakest in our society are hounded, sometimes to their literal death. These people have been wronged by a government department but because they're unemployed the rules have to be rigged so they always lose out. For shame!

There’s more though. The national economy is being dragged down by suppressed demand, job losses, part-time work, VAT rises, service cuts and closures all add up. Using the unemployed to fill entry level, often minimum wage positions saves a little in the short term, but only for favoured companies. The government is effectively subsidising companies like Poundland. But is depressing wages and knocking the bottom out of the economy. Without effective demand there is no recovery, just a downward spiral. 

Vote Now!

What is the best meme of the SWP crisis
	Don't X Y it's petty bourgeois
	Creeping Feminism
	The whiff of Autonomism
	China Mieville is SCANDALOUS
	I've been on the internet for 20 years and I must admit I'm lost
	That's quite an successful revolutionary organisation you've got there... Aaaaaaand it's gone
	Do you support this?
	We must observe socialist discipline!
pollcode.com free polls

You have one week!

Phil Space

The Sun is out over London right now. If the weather stays clement there might be a chance to see Comet PANSTARRS this evening.

A notice

Just in case anyone cared, all the people associated, in the past and presently, with this blog are supporters of the International Socialist Network. There will be developments soon, with ideally more to say about the necessity of left-realignment. Keep your eye on the IS blog.

All the hegemony you can eat

The way things have been if I don’t see another buttressing quote from either Lenin, Luxemburg or Tony Cliff for a long while I will be happy. So, in that spirit, let’s talk about Lenin!

One thing I have been adamant about for some time is that the revolutionary party was not Lenin’s key innovation. Firstly, even if he intended to found “The Bolsheviks” he did not intend his party to be a new party. He was trying to found a Russian SPD. Many Communist Parties were not made brand news but founded out of Socialist Party majorities. Despite instants of political hardship (not least of which was Hitler’s invasion of Europe) from the mid-twenties onward the CP was a realistic means for a political career. Lenin intended for the Third International to be revolutionary parties, but being in this case is only the same as doing.

Lenin’s real innovation was his discussion of nationalities. The 20^th century was in many ways the story of revolutionary nationalism. Lenin was so perceptive he was couple of decades ahead of everybody else, including the actual movements. This is important though, what we are talking about here is Lenin the ‘autonomist’, the man who pointed to an expanded revolutionary subject. His particular concern was linking the workers movement in the Russian heartland with the national movements in the outlying countries of the Tsar’s empire. But there are broader applications.

Firstly we are discussing the matter of hegemony. How do movements against aspects of capitalism become movements against capitalism itself? We’re talking not just movements against occupation or imperialism but for civil rights, women’s liberation, LGBT liberation and so on.

But, more importantly, we’re talking about how we build a working class movement in the first place. Wage labour and subsequent exploitation is based on the separation of workers from the means of production. This is an excellent founding fact but too abstract as a basis for day to day politics. People’s living and working conditions are defined by much more than this, by gender, nationality, sexuality, race and so on. We look both for weaknesses in the current capitalist set up but also potential strengths on the part of the working class. An example, in Lenin’s time whole villages would send their sons off to work in particular factories. There was often a pre-existing sense of solidarity, imported from the countryside. This added to the concentrating effect of Russia’s huge factories, made the turn of the century Russian working class a force to be reckoned with.

It’s this kind of confluence that we should be looking for today.

Thoughts for the Brain

What is Marxism? It is historical materialism as a means to progressively change the world. Why does Marxism as a political movement centre on the working class? Because of its position firstly as in independent class with its own aims, second because of its essential role in creating wealth, third because it owns no property in the means of production when it assumes power it has no other group to oppress or exploit, therefore workers power can be used as a means to escape to a classless society.

When we define working class we must insist on wage labour being the key determinant and not things like education or dress or personal consumption. Useful though this may be it is paper abstraction . There is no one who is simply a wage worker. People who insist we are working class and working class only get nowhere. Such an idea can pander to various prejudices, i.e. by suggesting women workers, ethnic or religious minority workers, LGBT workers etc must get over their petty oppression and deal with 'real' working class issues.

What defines wage labour? I remember thinking through why socialists advocate class analysis rather than patriarchy theory. The answer being the former relates to economics while the latter relates to ideology and of course men as a whole do not exploit women as a whole (exploit being the key word, rather than oppress). The former is more immediately economic than the latter but we would be abandoning historical materialism to insist there is an ideology without a basis. Wage labour is in part determined by women's oppression, as it is by racism, homophobia or any other systematic prejudice you can name.

So long as we're clear exploitation is the foundation of capitalism there is nothing wrong with trying to incorporate aspects patriarchy theory into Marxism.

The SWP leadership have sown the wind.

Now the SWP must reap the whirlwind. Sad to say a number of us saw this coming. If the In Defence of Our Party faction does not prevail at this Sunday's special conference it means several things. 1) The SWP is a rigged game - IDOOP has more supporters than the CC Faction yet fewer delegates to conference. 2) Either that or the SWP membership are sectarian themselves - or, of course, a combination of the two. 3) Either way the SWP is over. 4) Anybody who cares about the future of socialism in Britain must leave it.

For No Raisin

More supernature

I was mulling over my post on the Wikipedia list of cryptids when I turned to the list of extra terrestrial species. It is much shorter and simpler. Either people are much more imaginative when it comes to inventing earth creatures than they are spacemen or there are a few interesting cultural abstractions to be made.

It shows an instinctively shrewd understanding of natural selection. Humans are as they are as much because of their posture and their thumbs as their brains. We had pre-adapted large brains, nimble digits and forward facing eyes. Our ancestors moving permanently to two footed locomotion freed their hands to do other things. The ability to look at and manipulate objects in fine detail was the likely foundation for human consciousness. If we do meet intelligent extra-terrestrial life it will be uncannily familiar to us.

We will probably have to search for quite a while before we do find intelligent extra-terrestrial life. We know from the natural history of mammals that flippers and wings have evolved several times on Earth. This is called convergent evolution. Some mammals went back to the ocean, some took to the air. In both cases their found familiar solutions to the ongoing difficulties of locomotion. I looked up the evolution of the eye. Apparently while some of the prerequisites of vision evolved once (which means the rudiments of vision are quite ancient and spread across many species) image forming eyes evolved between 50 to 100 times. What does this mean? It means eyes flippers and wings evolved dozens of times in natural history. Human intelligence, as far as we know, only evolved once.

What do aliens mean? In folklore aliens mean two things. Firstly they are the angels and/or spirits of late capitalism. There is a strong affinity between alien abduction and the incubus/succubus phenomenon, although there’s also clear links with schizophrenia and drug abuse. They are also supermen. Alien encountered are cold, unknowable, superior and in control.

Tuppence for Hugo Chavez

Here are a few words for Hugo Chavez; and why not? He had plenty of words for everybody else.

The first thing to say was he was not a socialist. This is not to do the man down. He was a reformer and a powerful inspiration. I am quite particular about my socialism however. There is nothing more damaging to socialism than Actually Existing Socialism. A socialist movement does not need to whip out a mat and pray to Caracas five times a day. Socialism is critical or it is nothing. The Bolivarian movement’s achievements and setbacks have been marked by the lack of one crucial aspect, namely workers power.

What did Chavez mean for Venezuela? Well, I’m being undoubtedly being phenomenally crude, but this is my opinion nonetheless. Bolivarianism can be judged on three things:

1) Is Venezuelaa more or less egalitarian society? That is a big question. Venezuelais still an unequal society. It is still a very good place to be rich. Nonetheless it has become a better place for the poor. Even since the beginning of the global depression the Venezuelan government has tried to uphold living standards, whereas in almost every other country it is standard statecraft to drive them down and down.

2) Is Venezuela practically independent, meaning has Venezueladeveloped at all beyond being an oil export country? Thanks to the global agricultural market most countries import food to survive. I remember reading that 90% of the country is uninhabited. A radical government with time and resources would try to rebalance the economy and make the country agriculturally self-sufficient. If this process is underway it is likely to be an ongoing project.

3) Is Venezuelaa less violent and corrupt society? Not by a long shot. The old state structure remains intact. The centres of power in civil society remain largely the same, even if sometimes nationalised.

These three problems inform each other. The state is corrupt because economic power is concentrated in a few hands; the oil industry has long been a state within the state. Power is concentrated in a few hands because society is unequal.

What does Venezuelamean to the world? Well here I’m on surer ground. Chavez message at its simplest iteration is that another world is possible. There is a devious irony though that the Bolivarian Republic defied neo-liberal orthodoxy by using the wealth from oil sold on the world market during the neo-liberal boom, much of it to the United States. Despite its government, Venezuela, as constituted, can never be a socialist hegemon because it is an integrated part of global capitalism.

What happens after Chavez? Who knows? Let’s hope the Chavez supporters intervene decisively, like they did in 2002, when they raised a popular movement that restored their leader to power after a coup. That would be something.

The future and the past

In ten years time almost everyone who remembers the relief at the end of the war, the triumph over fascism and the refounding of society afterwards will be dead, as will most social provision. Then we will back at square one. It makes me truly sad and ashamed to think we will probably never see such days ourselves.

John Rae" (later headmaster of Westminster School), waiting on Bishop's Stortford station in July 1945 with his trunk. "My man," he called to the porter. "No," came the porter's firm reply. "That sort of thing is all over now."

Now that's what I'm talking about.