Brace yourselves because there is going to be a ton of fucking swearing in this post.I am getting abso-fucking-lutely sick to the back teeth of the sniping and back-stabbing that appears to pass for 'solidarity' or 'unity' among the vast plethora of socialist blogs/commenters out there.
Here they are pissing their pants with glee when Lindsey German resigns from the SWP. Here's another one about the SWP shrinking. Here's one supporting Len McCluskey for GS of Unite and, what a surprise, here is one criticising the same decision.
It isn't so much the blog posts themselves, I am sure all of those concerned are charming people, it is the degeneration apparent in the comments once they get fucking going. "If you haven't got anything good to say then don't say anything at all" always seems a reasonable commenting policy to me. But not for Socialist Unity apparently.
Nasty factional nonsense about far-left, ultra-left, right-left, left-right, inside-left, left-wing and left behind in the changing room. It is utter fucking rubbish. Do socialists really think that the average working class man or woman gives a flying fuck about the SWP's problems? It would be good if they did. But they don't. They probably haven't even heard of the SWP. Which is a shame.
Does the average Unite member give a toss about who runs for GS? They should do. But they probably fucking don't. Which, again, is a shame. Even if they did care. Are they really so up on Marx, Trotsky et al to distinguish between which grouping is supporting which fucking candidate? No, of course they fucking aren't.
I've said all this before in a roundabout kind of way but the Left's own magnified self-indulgence is its biggest weakness. It hypothesises and theorises while disengaging from reality, splinters into bitter factions who divvy up and then argue over dwindling numbers of members and subsequently descends into politico-babble about fucking 'dialectics'. Who the fuck cares?
I am not a member of any far left group and I am not a member of the AF (from whose site I filched the picture). Indeed, I am not a member of anything other than my union (the wholly mismanaged Unite). I am happy to work with anyone who believes that getting rid of capitalism is a fucking brilliant idea, who thinks that war is a shit idea and who doesn't give a toss whether you're male/female/black/white/gay/straight/what-the-fuck-ever. If they believe in the individual right to self-determination, the right to free association and the abolition of wage-slavery then I am not going to get into a dick-waving contest over who has read more Marx. It doesn't fucking matter. Even if they have no fucking clue what those terms mean and just want better pay and conditions then that's a start isn't it? The "Revolutionary Education By Numbers" (Standard Socialist Pamphlet No. 365) can come later.
But I will say that my heart and mind are firmly with the anarchists these days. At least they don't fucking kid themselves.
3 comments:
Well said H. If the libertarian / socialist wing want to capture the attention of the people they claim to represent they need to take a hefty dose of 'be here now' and start addressing the issues of the day rather than engaging in all this pseudointellectual swordplay.
Freedom. Period. That's the only manifesto you need.
>"Standard Socialist Pamphlet"
I see what you've done there. You sectarian bastard. ;-)
As long as the struggle against Control & power is rooted in the binary opposition of left/right any true resistance and transformation of everyday life is doomed to fail. Marxism/socialism/communism/anarcho-syndicalism is a necessary function of (post) modern commodity capitalism, it provides a simulation of opposition and resistance and as subjects we are caught in a trap, forever oscillating between the "left" and the "right". At this point I should add I am talking about ideas and ideology, not the lived experience of millions of people who have fought and died in the struggle against capital in all its forms regardless of the labels and ideologies they have chosen.
While I would personally align myself with theorists such as Foucault, Deleuze & Guattari and Guy Debord in their analysis of power, control and capital, in terms of history, I would suggest everyone read Anthony C Sutton's book "Wall Street & The Rise Of The Bolshevik Revolution" (online version at http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/) where he painstakingly documents how the Russian "revolution" was bankrolled by Wall Street, it really puts things into perspective & while Sutton is often tagged as "right-wing", even a little research will back up his claims in that the events he discussed actually happened.
Speaking personally,the Crass song "Bloody Revolutions" summed it up completely, especially the line: "Government is government and all government is force. Left or right, right or left, it takes the same old course...."
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