Winter 2020 ISSN 2632-7732

Fiona Norman Robert Ovetz Sean Winkler Alberto Bayo Lewis Hodder Luca Wright Joel Hellewell Aflie Hancox Winter 2020

3 Editorial no. 2

4 Reflections on Hong Kong

6 When workers shot back Robert Ovetz

12 Social democracy and its discontents Alfie Hancox

17 Bolsheviks without Soviets Luca Wright

20 Lessons from LulzSec Alberto Bayo

22 Fully Automated Luxury Communism Lewis Hodder

24 People's Republic of Walmart Sean Winkler

26 Bullshit Jobs Robert Ovetz

29 Why We Lie About Aid Joel Hellewell

30 Who Killed Cornelius Cardew? Fiona Norman

Robert Ovetz, Ph.D. is a contingent lecturer in political Joel Hellewell researches methods for forecasting infectious science at a university in California in the US. He is the author disease outbreaks at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical of When Workers Shot Back: Class Conflict from 1877 to Medicine. You can follow him at @HellewellJoel. 1921 (Brill 2018, Haymarket 2019) and the forthcoming tentatively titled Workers’ Inquiry: Strategies, Tactics and Sean Winkler is a postdoctoral research fellow in Philosophy at Objectives of the Global Working Class (Pluto Press). the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. His areas of specialization include Early Modern Luca Wright writes on Marx and historical communist Philosophy and the Sociology of Science/Technology, and his movements and from time to time helps out at Ebb Magazine. areas of competence include 20th-century French Continental Philosophy, Daoism and Soviet philosophy. Alfie Hancox is an MA student at the University of Warwick researching the British Black Power movement. Alberto Bayo is an editor of Ebb Magazine and a Marxist-Leninist from the United Kingdom with a background in engineering. He is Fiona Norman is a community musician based in Berkshire. interested in orthodox Marxism and its role in 21st century politics as well as technology, infrastructure, and other hands on ways to Lewis Hodder is one of the editors of Ebb Magazine. improve people's living conditions.

Editors Lewis Hodder Alberto Bayo

Editorial Assistant Luca Wright Summer Oxlade

All content is available online to read and download for free at www.ebb-magazine.com. You can also follow us on Twitter @ ebb-magazine and support us on Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/ebbmagazine. If you want to contribute to Ebb, you can submit your work to editorial@ebb-magazine. More details can be found on https://www.ebb-magazine.com/submit

Cover image Edvard Munch, Workers in the Snow, 1912

ISSN 2632-7732 Editorial no. 2

n our last editorial we asked, ‘What would it take for people to believe that the UK, US, and Europe aren’t the “good guys”?’ amid constant news coverage that demonised Nicolas IMaduro’s resistance to the attempted US-backed coup. Since then, reactionary forces in Bolivia bolstered by the US have removed Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, and forced him into exile in Cuba.

After the failure of the coup against Nicolas Maduro people on the left saw this as America’s paper tiger falling under its own weight, as its privatised military becomes increasingly bloated and inefficient, but this failure only testifies to the class consciousness and strength of the Venezuelan people and its military. To paraphrase Nietzsche’s famous dictum, that which is falling must be pushed – and that push cannot come any sooner; Iran and Iraq’s right to self-determination has been obscured and played against them after the tragic downing of a passenger jet from Iran to Ukraine, and the ground that the US has been preparing in raising tensions with China is paying off in the rabid Sinophobia we see reaching new levels over the outbreak of coronavirus in China.

Those on the left that swear by the strict definition of socialism and communism to discredit countries in imperialism’s sights must instead turn their attention to our bourgeoisie. To quote Lenin in his ‘Theses for an Appeal to the International Socialist Committee and All Socialist Parties’, a ‘socialist of another country cannot expose the government and bourgeoisie of a country at war with “his own” nation, and not only because he does not know that country’s language, history, specific features, etc., but also because such exposure is part of imperialist intrigue, and not an internationalist duty.’

At the same time, those focussed on our bourgeoise must not overlook all the ways in which oppression manifests itself and fall into reaction. It remains essential to not fall behind the working class but to lead it. As Luca Wright recognises: we see ‘communist parties in the UK struggle with basic social problems that are easily resolved elsewhere, condemning trans- struggles as a conspiracy and reverting to homophobia and racism of the most reactionary element of the working class.’ In Britain especially, reaction continues to grip much of the left as social democracy received a decisive blow – yet social democrats are determined to relive this loss as they prepare for the next Labour leadership battle. While, on the other hand, opportunists parrot the right’s renewed zeal with the creation of Worker’s Party, a rebranding of the CPGB-ML (flat-caps and all), as they declare that ‘obsession with identity politics, including sexual politics, divides the working class’, and calls for a ‘socialist system’ with ‘control of our borders, both physical and financial.’

It is a sad state of affairs when Britain’s communist parties cannot conceive and overcome basic social problems; when they sooner turn to the right and believe the media of the bourgeoisie rather than the oppressed in their own countries; when communist and workers’ parties have been overtaken by liberal movements in their demand for citizens’ assemblies and strikes. But the question remains; the question of workers’ councils.

3 Ebb Magazine Reflections on Hong Kong

estern propaganda has be another ‘brown’ country the US can the measures to protect the Chinese a foothold on audiences invade, it still bears the same hallmarks Communist Party, revolution, and around the world. of racism, bigotry, and shallowness the their people. But to fall for the West's Without basic fact- imperialist media utilises in its quest for propaganda and allow its Orientalist Wchecking or even the pretence of unbiased regime change. narrative to take root in our perspectives rhetoric, mainstream media pounces China's current and historical ‘author- against China is unacceptable. They are on enemies of capital with ludicrous itarian’ rule has been misrepresented for our comrades. They are closer to our accusations. After Iraq and Venezuela, the benefit of Western propaganda, from ideals than any capitalist country in the Western media now has its sights on China the Chinese revolution, to the Cultural West. Without the proper diligence, we to continue its imperialist agenda with all revolution, all the way down to Tianan- may be aligning ourselves with the true its ‘credibility’ still intact. It also just so men Square, and Westerners in the left oppressors (whether it’s the US or the happens that Hong Kong is rallying, with continue to gobble up Western propagan- CIA), rather than those fighting against the United States' fingerprints all over the da that goes against the country. But let's them with established socialist countries unrest. say there are leftist, Marxist, or even com- that have overthrown capitalism and The mainstream media approach to munist groups in Hong Kong that are ad- feudalism. the protests in Hong Kong is nonsensical vocating for independence; let's say they Demands for Hong Kong’s independence and war-hawkish, and they are waiting have strong theories, praxis, and reasons from China become increasingly absurd. and goading on another ‘Tiananmen’-like as to why independence will be great for Hong Kong heavily relies on China for its massacre while the Chinese government the masses. In this hypothetical situation, own financial stability, despite its gigantic has done everything they can to let’s go far as to say that they were 100% economic inequality; 55% of Hong Kong’s preserve peace and respect the Special independent and not using any western trade and 80% of its tourists are from Administrative Regional Status. Those funding or backing, they are still a mi- mainland China. Hong Kong’s GDP with white-saviour complexes nevertheless nority. But 37,000 NGOs in Hong Kong growth slowed down but by 2017 it was promote the same false narratives, and receive money from the corrupt NED back on track, only to be hit by the trade Hong Kong protesters are using this to organization, US State Department, and war with the Anglo countries – which is a their advantage – waving signs in English, CIA, and numerous Hong Kong leaders bigger obstacle than the local unrest. American flags, and even singing the US and organizers have met with US officials If Hong Kong protesters were not national anthem as they make their way to including Ted Cruz – all drowning out waving imperialist flags, or even refusing US consulate. any chance of promoting a working class and rebuking the aid of the West for its If you want to witness the epitome of agenda. Does any leftist sincerely think independence, this conversation will be mainstream media failure, just see the that an independent Hong Kong would vastly different. If this was not the case, shallowness of their coverage of the Hong allow any sort of socialism or Marxism in communists could really analyse how Kong protests. But it’s the same with their country? China might deal with this problem Venezuela only, this time, they have a We can no longer ignore the semantics internally. But the fingerprints of the stronger agenda and target: China. Even around China. They are an economic CIA and US state department (along with among the left, China is a controversial threat to the hegemony of the West, and British and other Western counterparts) government but – because of this these tensions are manufactured. We are all over this, at the most convenient weakness – they are able to pounce on it can argue about the correct measures to time at the height of a trade war. Proof of all the more easily. And while it may not help our comrades, while understanding this includes: 4 Ebb Magazine British imperialist who have come by China. Additionally, there is extreme • Laws were passed to ensure that from thousands of miles away to doubt as to whether these crowds are as no Chinese people would live in seize our land by force and kill our large as they seem, with media drastically the most desirable areas in Hong compatriots.’ giving wrong calculations and numbers, Kong, which the British wished to • Sex slavery was a booming market, while Pro-Beijing Rallies in Hong Kong preserve as their exclusive enclaves. as girls were bought and sold by have gone completely unreported. wealthy Chinese and British men. The ‘blind equality’ that some leftists • In a land in which ninety-eight British rule legalized the sale of nevertheless give to all police without percent of the population was human beings and slavery, despite comprehending the systems, cultures, Chinese, English was the official it being illegal in England. economics, and back stories of such language. The Chinese language • Chinese residents were given institutions demonstrates a failure to was not permitted to be used in curfews, and criminal punishments understand the necessary function of the government offices. Laws regulating would range from legal physical Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Police in conduct were written exclusively in beatings to bodily mutilation China are not the same as police in the US, English, a language which the vast (compared to British rule breakers which are deeply rooted in racism, slavery, majority of the population could who would just pay a fine). and mass murder for the sake of private not understand. property. While we do not support brutal • The British unleashed a horrid These are only half of the atrocities listed repression, we do point to the hypocrisy opioid epidemic on the Chinese in Richard Daniel Klein’s ‘Law and Racism as leftists fail to acknowledge the far more through Hong Kong. Michael in an Asian Setting: An Analysis of the extreme measures taken by police in their Parenti stated that, ‘when the British Rule in Hong Kong.’ own countries – all while protesters attack communist liberated Shanghai Hong Kong has one of the highest anyone speaking Mandarin, the stabbing from the sponsored Kuomintang income inequalities in the world, along of a police officer in the neck and setting reactionary government, in 1949, with a horrid housing crisis, with people them alight with Molotov cocktails – and about 20% of the population of sleeping in cages. On August 6, 2019, the bloodbath that would quickly ensue if Shanghai, 1.2 million people, were The Hong Kong Federation of Trade these tactics were exported to the US. And drug addicts.’ Unions; the largest union in Hong Kong so China does not even come close to the • ‘The slave trade was merciful with over 410,000 workers and a pro- repressive measures taken in ostensibly compared with the opium trade. Beijing orientation, makes a statement democratic countries, even as Michael We did not destroy the body of the vehemently opposing the one-day strike Parenti explained why every leftist must Africans, for it was our immediate launched by the anti-Beijing Hong Kong comprehend ‘authoritarian measures’ interest to keep them alive; we did Confederation of Trade Unions. taken by socialist governments. But as not debase their natures, corrupt According to a survey conducted by Mao Tse Tung said: ‘Communists firmly their minds, nor destroy their souls. the Chinese University of Hong Kong stand for peace and are against war, but if But the opium sellers lays the body (CUHK) in July 2016, only 17.4% of overall the imperialists insist on war, we shall not after he has corrupted, degraded respondents supported independence. be afraid of it.’ and annihilated the moral being of This suggests over 80% of the population unhappy sinners.’ support either the current ‘one country So, Chinese comrades, we support you. • The more distressing part two systems’ policy, or direct governance about this was that the Chinese government seized some of the opium and destroyed it but, after the opium wars, they were forced to compensate the very people that were poisoning their country. • ‘The highest-level British official in China in the late 1840s described Hong Kong as the ‘great receptacle of thieves and pirates protected by the technicalities of British law.’ • ‘Hong Kong has been Chinese Territory since ancient times. This is a fact known to all, old and young in the world... British imperialism came to china by pirate ships, provoked the criminal “opium war”, massacred numerous Chinese people, and occupied the Chinese territory of Hong Kong… It is the

5 Ebb Magazine When workers shot back Robert Ovetz

hile the literature on ‘terrorism’ in sectarian tirades against the key theorist of revolutionary terrorism, he political violence is Bolshevik’s tenuous social revolutionary really had little to say about it. His polemical bulging at the seams, the allies. In 1905, Lenin distanced himself commentaries lack a clear articulation of its theoretical literature on from terrorism as a tactic wielded by a tactical and strategic deployment. There is Wthe use of violence in class conflict is far less vanguard elite, only to later advocate no subtlety of its use at certain moments developed. Since the urban rebellions and for its use against the Bolshevik’s class when the balance of power shifts, whether uprisings of the 1960s, almost no work has enemies during the 1917 revolution. He it is to disrupt and destabilise or to advance been done to understand when working- advocated that tactical terrorism was not and seize space. If violence grew out of the class insurgents resort to violence. The little apart from the mass movement, but grew mass movement, Lenin seemed incapable that does exist suffers from the theoretical organically from it. ‘Its strength was the of understanding how and why violence paralysis of the burgeoning cottage industry strength of the revolutionary movement of was deployed. Calling political violence of anti-terrorism, plagued by flawed theories the people … That terrorism was due, not ‘terrorism’ also muddied the waters and of violence as theological, ideological, or to disappointment in the strength of the illustrated a lack of understanding of how moralistically driven. Fueled by countless mass movement, but, on the contrary, to tactical violence can be tied to specific amounts of funding from governments and unshakable faith in its strength…’ Violence class strategies and objectives. Though a inter-governmental organisations in the was not a tactic apart from the movement self-described ‘communist’, Lenin’s theory perpetual war on terrorism, the field is far but, rather, ‘fused’ to it. Lenin’s point was of violence hints at but offers no class too vast to be explored here. that the use of tactical violence could not analysis. Rather, Lenin’s reputation as a The anodyne days of thinking about be a substitute for the strength of working theorist of revolutionary terrorism has violence in working-class struggle occurred class, but his analysis was opportunistic. been exaggerated far beyond its scope between the first Russian Revolution of Since the 1905 revolution was defeated, because the Bolsheviks were one of the first 1905 and the twilight of global colonialism. Lenin could effectively denounce the to deploy it in order to actually seize state Spurred by the literary dramatisation of use of terrorism by other revolutionary power and control of the economy. anarchism and the Russian Revolution groups when the working class was weak as The lasting impact of the Russian in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent premature, and later as ‘infantile.’ (Lenin, Revolution made armed struggle a and Jack London’s The Assassination 1920) legitimate strategy for contesting and Bureau, Ltd, a debate raged in the decades Lenin’s analysis of tactical violence is seizing power. The Bolshevik use of armed between V.I. Lenin and Frantz Fanon slim but remains influential, if hypocritical. struggle was increasingly emulated globally that is mostly forgotten today, relegated After October 1917, he began to advocate by independence movements, nationalists, to the margins of anarchism and armed its use in light of the Bolshevik’s relatively anti-colonialists, and the left in the insurgent groups. The role of violence as a small size and limited mass support – networks of European colonies and home political tactic of the working class suffered exactly the conditions he had denounced his countries across the globe. The next half from the ideological remnants of Lenin’s adversaries on the left for doing so twelve century was perhaps the longest sustained unsophisticated labelling of violence as years earlier. While Lenin is credited as a period of global revolutionary activity in

6 Ebb Magazine two millennia of human history. As anti- many, and warned that it is more likely to urban masses (read: people of colour in poor colonial movements escalated along the be used when the insurgent is dehumanised neighbourhoods) in response to frustrated trajectory of political conflict by deploying and denied access to existing political attempts to share in the promises of affluent armed struggle and terrorism, colonial spaces in order to fight for political power capitalist America. The theory of political militaries staggered to meet the challenge according to the normative rules of politics. violence has not progressed very far since of a shift from a war of attrition to a war In this way, Fanon peered into Lenin’s mass Le Bon’s ‘psychology of the crowd’ in which of manoeuvre against non-state actors, in to uncover the conditions of the insurgency the faceless mass of automatons are swept what today are called ‘small wars.’ when violence is deployed. But, like Lenin, up in a contagion of fury and violence. (Le Fanon added further confusion by hinging Bon 1896, pp. 1-35.) Though the scope of one important the use of violence as a tactic deployed based Relative deprivation theory argued that debate is far beyond the focus of this on the psychological predisposition of the individuals and groups will revolt when they book, and was lacking a class analysis, the insurgent, rather than the composition of perceive that they have been denied their posthumous debate between Frantz Fanon class forces. share of society’s affluence and are locked and Hannah Arendt addressed key themes If Fanon attributed the use of violence to out from access to the polity, generating of the role of political violence used by the psychology of the oppressed, Herbert emotional turmoil that leads them to insurgents. After Fanon had died, Arendt Marcuse, when writing about the revolts commit irrational violence.[2] The theory took issue with the psychological basis of of the 1960s, disconnected tactics from the gained prominence in its explanation of his theory of the role of political violence balance of power entirely. Portraying it as a the urban insurgencies of the mid-1960s by insurgents. For Fanon, ‘violence is a desperate act of last resort, Marcuse wrote that transformed into armed struggle cleansing force’ that frees the colonised that ‘as long as the opposition does not have groups such as the Black Panthers, Weather (he called them ‘natives’) from the violence the social force of a new general interest, the Underground, Brown Berets, Young Lords, and resulting inferiority, fear, inaction, problem of violence is primarily a problem White Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation and despair of colonialism. (Fanon 1963, of tactics’. (Marcuse 1967) Mistaking the Army, and the Black Liberation Army. pp. 94) In this way, Fanon saw violence as lack of mass support as a rationale for While relative deprivation theory has lost its psychologically cleansing, wiping away resorting to the tactics of violence was to explanatory power and has withdrawn from blockages that impeded the revolutionary prove a tragic strategic blunder, as many the academic spotlight, its undue influence consciousness of the colonised. Because left wing armed insurgencies formed out of over counter-insurgency theory in the age colonialism ‘is violence in its natural state the mass movements of the time to speed of an endless war on terrorism continues and will only yield when confronted with up the revolutionary conditions. Not only under the guise of ‘winning hearts and greater violence,’ Fanon observed that did these armed groups mistake strategy for minds’, and in deploying democratisation violence would be necessary to unhinge the tactics, they also cut themselves off from and NGO-led development as a weapon. power and violence of the colonist and end the mass movements that birthed them, and Few disputed this social science consensus colonialism. All efforts by the colonised helped to undermine them, by substituting that eventually informed the decades-long middle class for redress of grievances a clandestine tactic for the recomposition legislative, police, and military counter- demonstrated the truth in the National of working-class power.[1] insurgency that underlies what Alexander Liberation Front’s (Front de Libération What few realise is that Fanon’s today calls the New Jim Crow. Nationale) assertion that France ‘will only influence on armed insurgencies such Arendt not only equated the counter- yield when there is a knife at its throat.’ as the Black Panthers was parallel to his punctual violence of states and insurgents, The colonised, seeing all ways to peaceful influence on social scientists conscripted but inextricably linked violence to the resolution of their suffering blocked and into theorising a new strategy for urban struggle over state power. For Arendt, repressed, will respond by escalating their counter-insurgency. Over the next decade, states that lose authority, legitimacy, and tactics using violence in proportion to several federal commissions, congressional obedience increasingly resort to the use of the violence deployed by the coloniser, investigations, and private foundations violence or terror. States resort to terror resulting in a spiral of conflict towards ‘a delved into the causes of political violence because they lack the numbers and, thus, point of no return.’ (Fanon 1963, pp. 88-9) in the aftermath of Malcolm X, waves of the power. But this dynamic feeds on itself Fanon’s presumption that violence urban revolts and riots between 1963–8, as the lack of power continues to require the becomes a tactic of the oppressed when all and the rise of armed struggle groups. resort to terror, which further erodes power other avenues were closed proved a sound What emerged from these exhaustive and ultimately erupts into a revolutionary one. It is no accident that his works and the investigations has dominated the thinking situation: film The Battle of Algiers, which is based of social scientists and anti-terrorism to this on his theory, have been used by the U.S. day. So-called ‘relative deprivation’ theory 'Where commands are no longer obeyed, military as training materials. Fanon viewed covertly drew on Fanon’s ideas to argue that the means of violence are of no use; and the role of violence as one tactic among political violence is a tool deployed by the the question of this obedience is not 7 Ebb Magazine Kosarev, Searching Bolsheviks for weapons, November 1917, via The Calvert Journal

decided by the command-obedience about existing theories of revolutionary of dehumanization. Rage is by no means relation but by opinion, and, of course, violence. ‘Textbook instructions on “how an automatic reaction to misery and by the number of those who share to make a revolution” in a step-by- step suffering as such; no one reacts with it. Everything depends on the power progression from dissent to conspiracy, rage to an incurable disease or to an behind the violence. The sudden from resistance to armed uprising, are earthquake or, for that matter, to social dramatic breakdown of power that all based on the mistaken notion that conditions that seem to be unchangeable'. ushers in revolutions reveals in a flash revolutions are “made.”’ (Arendt 1971, (Arendt 1971, p. 63) how civil obedience to laws, to rulers, p. 48) She simultaneously refuted both to institutions – is but the outward Fanon and relative deprivation theory for Rather, Arendt agreed with Fanon’s manifestation of support and consent.' essentialising violence. ‘Violence is neither notion that violence is a tactic to be deployed (Arendt 1971, pp 48-49) beastly nor irrational,’ Arendt posited. when reform is impossible. Insurgents that deploy violence must be sensitive to Arendt put the tactical violence of 'Under such conditions [concentration the legitimacy of their grievances and the insurgents in counter-point to the violence camps], not rage and violence, but their terror arrayed against them preventing of state power while remaining doubtful conspicuous absence is the clearest sign their redress. Arendt acknowledged the

8 Ebb Magazine tactic of violence while dismissing its learn how to counter it. (Freedman 2013) when and why they choose to use violence objective as incompatible with state power John Boyd was one of the foremost becomes moot, if not impossible. As a and governance: ‘violence can be justifiable, military strategists articulating a ‘conceptual result, violence becomes conflated as but it will never be legitimate.’ (Arendt spiral’ in which insurgents deploy guerrilla ideologically, rather than tactically driven 1971, p. 52) Violence is justifiable when warfare to ‘disintegrate existing regime’s — and studying when and why violence is the political system is closed to insurgents’ ability to govern.’ (Boyd 1986, 1987) The aim used becomes further conflated, seeking to pursuit of peaceful redress. ‘Violence does of a ‘war of manoeuvre,’ according to Boyd, justify its existence rather than explaining not promote causes, neither history nor was to apply the strategy to the military in it. revolution, neither progress nor reaction; order to ‘generate many non-cooperative Avoiding the origination fallacy makes it but it can serve to dramatize grievances centres of gravity, as well as disorient, necessary to analyse the political conditions and bring them to public attention’. (Arendt disrupt, or overload those that adversary in which violence is used. For this we 1971, p. 79) In this way, Arendt argued that depends upon, in order to magnify friction, can turn to sociologist Tilly’s ‘theory of violence cannot be the end goal or objective, shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and contention,’ which guided his study of transforming the irrationality of violence bring about his collapse’. (Boyd 1986, 1987) French peasant uprisings and the French into the rational, a means through which In his wide-ranging historical overviews Revolution. (Tilly 1977, 1978, 1989, 2003, to achieve a short-term goal. (Arendt 1971, of evolving strategies of armed violence and Tilly and Tilly 1998) Tilly examined pp. 66 and 80) As D’Arcy similarly argues, by the military and insurgents alike, the political conditions and changing mode the use of militancy, including violence, Boyd’s theoretical work illustrates how the of production under which insurgents can be a legitimate tactic if it serves the military has come closer to conceptualising operate in order to surmise the appropriate objectives of democracy and social justice the tactical and strategic role of violence by time to deploy violence as a tactic from a by bringing attention to unmet grievances. insurgents than anything by Lenin, Fanon, ‘repertoire of contention.’ He insightfully (D’Arcy 2013) and other theorists of revolutionary armed explored how insurgents will study the While much has been written about struggle during the bulk of the twentieth conditions in which they struggle, their political violence as a weapon in anti- century. level of mass support, and the balance of colonial struggle between the Russian power between ‘contenders’ to decide on Revolution and the 1970s, it remained which tactic to deploy. primarily framed as an ideological rather Contention theory: steps in the The period from 1877 to 1921 was an than tactical premise: whether or not spiral staircase exceptionally tumultuous and bloody time to use it, rather than when, how, and by in American history, not merely because whom. What Lenin, Fanon, and Marcuse What is widely missing from both the anti- capital resorted to political violence in all missed is that political violence can colonial and military theories of political an attempt to assert its dominance, but be explained by social conditions, not violence is a nuanced conceptualisation because its power was being contested while individual consciousness. Since we still live of how, when, why, and by whom violence the balance of power shifted dramatically. in a capitalist class society, it is necessary is used to achieve a political objective. Workers had found vulnerable links in the to look at the struggle of class relations Their approaches are roundly ahistorical, industrial production process, distribution, to find the source of violence. According attempting to construct a grand unifying and the movement of capital and goods. to Tilly and Tilly, ’The formulation tells theory without providing the theoretical They were willing to use all available us where to look for explanations and tools to examine the political conditions means to disrupt individual companies, their confirmation: not in the abstractly under which violence is ultimately deployed entire industries, and even the entire conceived interest or motivation of an as one tactic among others. country during wartime as leverage to average individual workers, but in the social Existing theories of political violence have their demands met. Emerging from relations and culture laid down by previous suffer from what I call the ‘origination immigrant and indigenous mutual aid and interactions of work and contention.’ (Tilly fallacy.’ In other words, without an analysis cultural organisation, the working class and Tilly 1998, p. 237) of the conditions in which violence is was able to parlay its new power into new In contrast, military counter-insurgency deployed by insurgents, the appearance forms of organisation to expand mass theory has made great strides in addressing of violence is perceived to be the starting support and new tactics to assert their the question of violence as a tactic. As point of the insurgency. In reality, violence power. These tactics spanned a continuum Lawrence Freedman documents in his often appears as a tactic in later stages of from constitutionally protected rights to exhaustive book Strategy, after the Russian a mature insurgency after it has already assemble, speak and petition to coordinated Revolution and during the anti-colonial churned through a repertoire of other military assaults by worker armies. In a movement, military strategists shifted their tactics of escalating intensity. By perceiving spiralling of action and reaction between focus so as to understand when insurgents insurgents to have launched their campaigns workers and capital, an escalation of tactics resort to violence as a tactic in order to with violence, methodically understanding from force to threats and ultimately political 9 Ebb Magazine violence took place in an environment in theoreticians of war. The legendary British (although our focus here is on the latter). which legal political action was blocked, intelligence agent Thomas E. Lawrence, Tilly explains that they repressed, or co-opted. In order to defeat i.e. ‘Lawrence of Arabia,’ succinctly linked the insurgencies and diffuse their potential tactics to strategy while working with the 'result from an interaction between to launch new insurgencies in the future, Arab guerrillas who harassed and blunted challengers and other groups. In the capital itself underwent a reorganisation the superior Turkish Army during WWI. terms we have been using here, they and introduced new forms of social control He wrote: result from the interplay of interests, both inside and outside of the workplace. organization, and mobilization, on As insurgents present demands for 'The task was to analyze the process, both one side, and of repression/facilitation, redress of grievances, they must take from the point of view of strategy, aim power, and opportunity/threat, on the into consideration the factors of support, in war, the synoptic regard which sees other.' (Tilly 1978, p. 138) threats, and opportunities to achieve gains. everything by the standard of the whole, When the political system is closed as and from the point of view called tactics, This interplay of contestation to counter- elites manoeuvre, so as to block insurgent the means toward the strategic end, the contestation to response to counter- access to the available political space, the steps in the staircase.' (Lawrence 1929) contestation can spiral about one another latter must escalate their tactics in order infinitely in a danse macabre until one to pursue their objectives. The question Gene Sharp, the pre-eminent theorist contender is defeated, disbands, disarms, is: what kind of tactics will they use to of tactics and strategies of non-violent de-escalates or both sides disarm, de- carry on their struggle? What causes struggle, fills in the crucial elements escalate, and negotiate. Each preparation political violence to take so many different of tactics and strategy missing in Tilly. for the deployment of tactical escalation forms? These questions present what Tilly He explains that ‘tactics describe how signals movement along the tactical describes as the ‘problem of explaining particular methods of action are applied, or trajectory of violence. variation in the character and social how particular groups of resisters shall act The use of Tilly’s calculus of contestation organization of violence.’ (Tilly 2003, p. in a specific situation’. (Sharp 2005, p. 459) for elites and insurgents to move along the 13) What occurs, and when, can only be In contrast, strategy is trajectory of political violence also raises answered by addressing the great variation issues of splits, pairing, or switching. in political conditions, balance of power, 'the conception of how best to achieve Insurgents may not exclusively deploy and the sometimes rapid shifts from one objectives in a conflict (violent or a single tactic but put several into the form of political violence to another. nonviolent). Strategy is concerned with terrain of struggle at the same time. whether, when, or how to fight, and how Facing a rising threat of repression and 'The point is not to establish general to achieve maximum effectiveness in costs, insurgents may open negotiations laws for all sorts of violence but rather to order to gain certain ends. Strategy is to pursue de-escalation and disarming identify crucial causal processes: those the plan for the practical distribution, while also holding the level of tactical that operate similarly in the short run adaptation, and application of the escalation, or even increasing its intensity. across a wide range of circumstances yet available means to attain certain In this way, insurgents may simultaneously produce dramatically different forms of objectives.' (Sharp, 2003, p. 21) deploy tactics at different points along collective violence depending on their the trajectory. Doing so offers them the settings, combinations, and sequences.' By understanding the interplay between leverage of ramping up the intensity of (Tilly 2003, p. 23) tactics and strategy, trajectory theory can tactics if they are perceived to be weak at also be understood as a strategy of tension the negotiating table, or if their offer to Identifying the complex causal factors that because each new tactic is chosen with negotiate is spurned entirely. Insurgents produce violence is the objective of this the intent of gradually ratcheting up the will sometimes be willing to unilaterally book. The trajectory theory of violence is tension that provides leverage to achieve de-escalate to negotiate if elites also exhibit based on a careful examination of tactics one’s objectives. In this way, as the intensity the willingness to do so according to an and strategy in the context of the available of tactics rises and falls in relation to absolute gains strategy. political space, balance of class power, and strategy, political conditions, opportunity When the threat of repression and costs class composition. Each step along the and costs, Lawrence’s staircase could be are extremely high, and offers of negotiation trajectory is the tactic, and movement to better described as a spiral staircase. need to be tested, insurgents may replicate a higher intensity tactic is determined by The categories of tactics along the a parallel ‘above ground’ organisation the strategy to achieve the objective. The trajectory allow us to distinguish between while continuing ‘underground’ tactical relationship between tactics and strategy types of tactical violence, the conditions escalation. In such cases the amoebic split is elusive, especially on the left, even while under which they are likely to be used, off is subordinate to the underground it has been conceptually mastered by the and whether elites or insurgents use them challengers. This pairing of de-escalation 10 Ebb Magazine and escalation may also create a split in the struggle. Rather, as Arendt asserts, violence insurgency as the above ground group gains was used tactically as a means to overcome recognition, authority, concessions, and is blockages, to counter threats of diffusion integrated into the elite coalition, while the and co-optation, to exploit the weakness underground group continues to mobilise of elite power, and to achieve short-term and escalate. goals. Faced with a closed political system If insurgents demobilise and de-escalate dominated by elites, judicial, police and in order to obtain concessions, reforms, military repression, and efforts to deflect, compromises, and access to the polity, they divert, and co-opt their struggles, workers risk abandoning the disruptive tactics that escalated their tactics to deploy violence to made it effective in the first place. For this achieve their objectives. This book offers reason insurgents face the Sisyphean task of an alternative perspective to historians attempting to move an insurgency forward who found the use of political violence by as tempting concessions appear from workers who had not articulated an explicit behind and storm clouds of repression mass class consciousness or theory of revolution on the horizon. or socialism to be pursuing economistic and conservative objectives. Self-organised workers whose efforts to unionise had Cycles of struggle faced violent repression leapfrogged Excerpt from Robert Ovetz’s over these impediments to attempt to When Workers Shot Back: Class Unfortunately Tilly only gets us part of the disrupt capital accumulation in order to way, as, like the anti-colonial and military achieve their objectives. When they were Conflict from 1877 to 1921 theorists, he lacked a class analysis. successful in doing so, it was because they Although his theory of contention operates had successfully managed to recompose Haymarket Books, 2019 in the context in the relations of production, their class power providing them with the 9781642590593 he did not provide a class analysis of the necessary leverage to extract concessions. struggle between capital and workers. In cases where they were defeated, it was To understand how the composition because the new composition of capital of class forces shapes the decisions about had tilted the balance of class forces against which tactic to deploy from the workers’ them. repertoire of contention, we must draw upon autonomist Marxists Alquati, Bologna, Cleaver, Glaberman, Holloway, [1] D’Arcy also observes that clandestine and Tronti. Cleaver identified the necessity armed struggle, in contrast to a peoples’ of a ‘strategic deciphering … which helps to militia for self-defence, presents itself clarify and develop working class struggle’ as a ‘self-appointed counter-elite’ that from the perspective of the working class. usurps authority over a mass movement (Cleaver 1979, p. 10) Workers study what replicates the same dynamics of power the autonomist Marxists call the class the movement seeks to struggle against. composition to decide what tactics to See D’Arcy 2014, pp. 179-81. deploy, which shapes the outcomes of their struggle. By fusing Tilly’s theory of [2] While ‘polity’ ordinarily implies contention to autonomist Marxist theory the institutions of politics including of class composition, my trajectory theory governmental and extra-governmental illuminates why class conflict between institutions, Tilly’s use of the term can be 1877 and 1921 was frequently characterised understood more broadly as the political by violent armed struggle, as well as the processes in which contending forces, conditions, factors, and balance of power including workers and capital, struggle that can confidently assess not only its use for power. but also the potential responses to it. Trajectory theory tells us that the use of tactical violence was neither a start nor an end point during these four decades of class 11 Ebb Magazine Social democracy and its discontents: Race and class in the fallout of the UK general election

Alfie Hancox

he hard-right has secured media commentary on the election result total capitalist system of wage-labour a victory in Britain. On 12 has comprised gloating middle-class exploitation. Here, important lessons can December, almost a third of centrists blaming Corbyn for being ‘too be drawn from the British Black Power the British electorate voted into radical’, when in reality, as argued below, movement of the 1960s-70s. Tpower Conservative Party leader Boris Labour’s promises fell short of offering any Contradictions in the working Johnson: a man who has called Black convincing socialist alternative capable class people ‘piccaninnies’ with ‘watermelon of overturning decades of anti-working- smiles’, and niqab-wearing Muslim class policies in Britain. A more insidious In venting their frustration on social women ‘letterboxes’; written about Arabs narrative surrounding the election result media immediately after the election, many Corbyn supporters played into with ‘hooked noses’ and ‘slanty eyes’; and is that Corbyn and the Labour left erred the narrowly-homogenised construction derided gay men as ‘bumboys’. The elected by subordinating ‘authentic’ class issues, of ‘the working class’, who they blamed Tory government is set to strengthen supposedly represented by Brexit, to for fecklessly voting Johnson into Britain’s hostile environment of arbitrary ‘identity politics’ and ‘diversity’. In office against their own interests. The particular, much of the left has bought deportations, inhumane asylum Conservative vote, though, beat Labour detentions and racist labour hierarchies, into a false race-class dichotomy pitting across all social grades: most markedly in addition to initiating ‘legislative a purported ‘traditional’ (i.e. white) among the declining category of skilled cleaning’ against Gypsies, Roma and working class against ethnic minorities. manual workers, but least markedly Travellers. Johnson also seems committed Most worryingly, too many leftists have among semi-skilled and unskilled manual to completing the transformation of abandoned the fundamental socialist workers, the unemployed and lowest Britain into a deregulated, low-tax question of working-class control of grade workers (the so-called ‘precariat’). haven for international finance capital, the state and economy, and internalised Significantly, some 15.5 million people with workers’ rights and social security euphemistic far-/‘alt’-right rhetoric – more than voted for Johnson – didn’t reduced to nothing. about ‘cosmopolitanism’ and the catchall bother casting their ballot. While Labour At a time when fourteen million are of ‘postmodern identity politics’. The left got the vote of the youth, many of whom living in poverty, while the number of must completely abandon conspiratorial are facing decades of debt, precarious resident billionaires has exceeded 150, populism, and seriously address the employment and insecure living arrangements, the, the election was also Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party – running racial contradictions that exist within characterised by a strong racial divide on a social-democratic platform of the working class (in addition to gender, – but this fact cannot be disentangled moderate wealth redistribution and sexuality and dis/ability differences), from class. Labour held 61 of the 63 most national planning – failed even to prevent while emphasising the shared class ethnically diverse seats, most of which interests in combatting austerity and the a Conservative majority. Much of the are relatively deprived. It’s certainly the 12 Ebb Magazine case that the white working class in the class poor were vilified by the bourgeoisie Perhaps surprisingly though, much deindustrialised North and Midlands in a language previously reserved for of the British far-left, including the of England do not have (or owe) much racialised minorities. Tellingly, in the Communist Party of Britain, a number loyalty to Labour. But the mainstream aftermath of the 2011 London riots, of leading trade unionists, and Trotskyist narrative of the ‘traditional’ working class historian David Starkey declared on Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leader ‘left behind’ is misleading and divisive. BBC’s Newsnight that ‘the whites have Alex Callinicos, have also framed Brexit Omar Khan, director of the race equality become black’. The white working class as an authentic working-class demand. thinktank the Runnymede Trust, points are now routinely denigrated in popular In an immediate sense, it is undeniable out the simple reality that metropolitan media as aggressive thugs or bigots, while that Brexit was partially an expression of working-class communities (as well as the fact that the white middle and upper working-class anger: carried by ‘several ethnic minority communities across the classes are just as prejudiced is rarely, if million workers who don’t usually vote country) have been equally ‘left behind’: ever, interrogated. The last few years have but who seized on the referendum to London has some of the highest also witnessed the explosion of ‘poverty register a protest against deteriorating poverty, highest pollution, and largest porn television’, reinforcing stereotypes social conditions and demonstrate their working-class community in all of the of working-class laziness and ignorance. disenchantment with centre-left and UK. Seven of the top 11 local authorities Many participants on Benefits Street centre-right mainstream politicians’ – in in terms of child poverty are in London, (2014) claimed they ‘had been bribed addition to the openly racist and anti- while the capital records the highest level and encouraged by Channel 4 bosses to immigrant dimension. The opposing of air pollution in the country … Why exaggerate their lives to make “good TV”’. ‘Britain Stronger in Europe’ campaign aren’t the ethnic minority and migrant The racialised assault on proletarian was made on the basis of financial fear, people who live in tower blocks and dignity, coming on the back of the including warnings of corporate flight experience disproportionate levels of erosion of community and workplace and declining house prices; but ‘the child poverty (rising to 59 per cent for bonds caused by deindustrialisation, threat of another economic recession had Bangladeshi children) viewed as working helps explain the appeal of nationalism little purchase in the former industrial class? Why aren’t those living in cities, and white-identity politics in Britain’s heartlands, which were still deeply mired or who die in preventable fires also ‘left former manufacturing regions, in the in the last one’ (Fekete, 2019, 119). In behind’? absence of any radical socialist politics their analysis of working-class support Those blaming ‘divisive’ identity capable of assuaging the basic grievances for Brexit, based on interviews with politics for Labour’s defeat are often of the working-class poor, cutting across voters in the North East conurbation the same journalists and politicians ethnicity lines. of Teesside, Luke Telford and Jonathan participating in the disaggregation of the Wistow concluded: ‘The logic of capitalist working class. Narratives pitting class Brexit, class volatility and the realism – there is no alternative – had against ‘diversity’ and ‘multiculturalism’ limits of social democracy been internalised by the participants arose simultaneously with the top-down … They fully expected things to get construction of a homogenised ‘white The right-wing of the bourgeoisie worse, all they could do was adapt to the working class’ identity, during New presented the 2016 vote to leave the inequalities of neoliberalism.’ (Telford Labour’s regime of racial neoliberalism. European Union as the authentic and Wistow, 2019, 12) As racialised minorities were subjected ‘popular will’ of the same ‘left behind’ Left-wing Brexiters (‘Lexiters’), then, to heightened repression under the constituencies they themselves have argue that Labour’s promise of a second rubric of the ‘war on terror’, race equality denigrated. In March 2016, Secretary referendum determined its loss of many discourses emphasised the minority of of State for International Trade, Liam Leave seats in Britain’s former industrial Black and Asian people achieving middle- Fox, a strong supporter of economic ‘heartlands’ in the general election. class status, while ‘the working class’ deregulation, opined that, ‘Everyone However, despite the media attention was racialised as white (Kapoor, 2013, talks about the need for diversity and on the ‘left behind’, the 2016 Brexit vote 1038-9). At the same time, New Labour yet nobody seems to worry about poor ‘was disproportionately delivered by the launched an indiscriminate attack on the white boys.’ The Right’s cynical appeal propertied, pensioned, well-off, white so-called ‘undeserving poor’, including to white working-class identity politics middle class based in southern England, its extension of workfare conditionalities is straightforward. For instance, wealthy not the northern working class who have and sanctions that even encompassed the broadcaster and Spiked contributor been more commonly held responsible disabled and mentally ill, and Anti-Social Julie Burchill claimed that ‘Brexit is the for the outcome.’ (Bhambra, 2017, 215) Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) that imposed most genuinely working-class movement The proportion of Leave voters in the curfews on deprived neighbourhoods in Britain’, while likening the fictive lowest two social classes was just 24%. (Shilliam, 2018, 120). ‘trans[gender] lobby’ to ‘wretched inner- Remain also won ‘in most of the great The constriction of social security city kids who shoot another inner-city kid working class regional capitals (Bristol, accelerated after the 2007/2008 financial dead in a fast-food shop for not showing Cardiff, Leicester, Liverpool, Manchester, crisis, and in the process the white working- him enough “respect”’. Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.)’. The 13 Ebb Magazine Tories’ 1.2% vote share increase in the McClusky’s views are unfortunately neutral pronouns ‘offending the English 2019 election was as much to do with the popular in the union movement; language’, suggested that gender and race intensified media attacks on Corbyn by testament to the weakness of the present have nothing to do with class, and enacts Britain’s billionaire-owned press as it was left on issues of internationalism and a self-aggrandising, machoistic approach about Brexit. Ultimately, the left faltered anti-racism. Stephen Ashe, who co- to politics (telling those who call out his not by hesitating over Brexit, but in failing authored the Trades Union Congress bigotry to ‘come and have a go if you think to confront the fundamental causes of report Racism Ruins Lives, found that ‘a you’re hard enough’). In the context of far- universal working-class anguish. significant number of white British trade right resurgence throughout Europe and Lexiters failed to transcend the terms unionists used the [‘Racism at Work’] in North America, it is not unreasonable of engagement set by the Right: the survey to voice the same kind of political, to point out the danger of this brand of essential socialist question of working- media and academic arguments that ‘socialism’ coalescing as a ‘left’ wing of class control and ownership of the state orbit in and around Brexit with regard to fascism. and economy was displaced with vague the notion that the “white working class” The answer to Corbyn’s defeat is not a notions of foreign control. Lexiters have is being “left behind”.’ further capitulation to nationalism and been correct to identify the imperialist Lexiters’ targeting of finance capital right-wing conspiracy, but a complete and anti-working-class nature of the and ‘the City’ (of London), without transcendence of social-democratic EU project, but on all other points of connecting this to a fundamental illusions. Claims that a ‘return’ to contention have been wrong. They have Marxist critique of the capitalist state centre-left politics is needed to stave off assumed that a Labour-led Brexit would as the arbiter of exploitation (whether the hard-right are farcical. It was New have been a clean victory of workers Labour or Tories are at the helm), has Labour that abandoned the industrial over European finance capital. But under given predominance to vague notions working class. The years 1997-2010 saw a conditions of severe economic strain, and of foreign control, not dissimilar to massive expansion of the financial sector, in the absence of any mass anti-capitalist those promoted by the Right. In the Sun while manufacturing jobs declined from movement, social democracy, which it was claimed that Corbyn’s ‘Marxist 4.5 to 2.5 million. Inequality further attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable revolution’ failed because, against British skyrocketed, and Britain fell from 15th interests of capitalists and workers, will ‘common sense’, it aligned ‘with the place to 18th in the human development side with the former: in the mid-1970s, fashionable progressive elite, the party index. The problem with Corbynism was the newly-elected ‘socialist’ Labour Party chiefs preferred globalism to patriotism, that it wasn’t radical enough, promising swiftly capitulated to the International identity politics to immigration controls, only to undo the damage of the last decade Monetary Fund, accepting loans to transgender rights to toughness on crime.’ of Tory austerity. Labour’s proposed bolster the financial sector in exchange Here clearly ‘globalism’ refers not to corporate tax rates were lower than for huge public spending cuts of over capitalist globalisation processes, which current levels in Germany and France, £3bn. (Clough, 2014, 164) And financial Johnson rampantly supports, but far- and its pledge to build a million new parasitism is an expression, not cause, of right conspiracies of foreign domination houses over a decade was less impressive capitalist exploitation. Social-democratic and the erosion of patriarchal values. in the context of a social housing crisis Labour would not put the economy into The ideological success of the Right in in which a million new homes are the hands of workers, and a century of Britain has encouraged a trend towards needed immediately. Labour’s proposal attempts at far-left entryism suggest the ‘left-wing’ ultranationalism. The ‘Blue to nationalise a few industries is unlikely futility of a ‘two-step’ approach of electing Labour’ advocacy group responded to have been accepted as any sustainable a Labour government and then exerting to Corbyn’s defeat by calling for ‘a social security advancement, by workers ‘pressure’ on the Labour left to implement socialism which is economically radical who have lived through the experience of socialism. Given the conspicuous lack and culturally conservative’, and for ‘a denationalisations and job losses. of any firm internationalism or radical patriotic, communitarian, one-nation Most damning, since Corbyn’s critique of social democracy, Lexiters party’, while lauding Jordan Peterson, leadership of the party, Labour councils have played into the hands of chauvinists. an influential figure among the alt- and across the country have continued to Unsurprisingly, many Lexiters are openly far-right. Immediately after the election, implement austerity, while holding xenophobic. Len McClusky, general George Galloway, who once led the steadfast to a ‘blame Tory cuts’ line. secretary of Unite the Union (the largest socialist Respect Party, launched his ‘Councils in Ealing, in west London, affiliate of the Labour Party), has declared ambiguously-named Workers Party of Bristol, Brighton and Cardiff – all of that ‘The next [Labour] leader needs to Britain. This party’s programme declares them Labour – have washed their hands understand communities that gave birth that ‘obsession with identity politics, of their statutory duty to homeless to the labour movement, and realise that including sexual politics, divides the families by rehousing them in repurposed the whole country is not very like Labour working class’, and calls for a ‘socialist shipping containers that are like saunas London.’ Given the way metropolitan system’ with ‘control of our borders, in the summer and freezers in the Labour has become synonymous with both physical and financial’. Galloway winter.’ Corbyn supporters mourning the ‘diversity’, it’s clear which ‘communities’ himself has engaged in rape apologia, ‘inexplicable’ defeat of Laura Pidcock, the McClusky thinks should be prioritised. made YouTube video rants about gender- ‘anti-austerity’ candidate for North West 14 Ebb Magazine Durham, are presumably unaware that as democracy is anathema to the true spirit conspiratorial rhetoric produced by councillor for Northumberland she voted of socialism; the internationalism of the far-right magazines Spiked and The for £36m worth of cuts in 2017-20. workers and oppressed peoples. Spectator. It is becoming increasingly If Labour never presented sufficient clear that when certain leftists, including plans to restructure the economy in line Lessons from the British Black the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), with working-class needs, it also failed Power movement attack ‘post-modern identity politics’ to really challenge the logic of racial they are not actually referring to the neoliberalism; appearing benevolent The same socially-conservative left that postmodernist (and anti-Marxist) on ‘race’ issues only in comparison to exploits contradictions in the working class academic turn during the 1990s. Rather, Tory populism. Despite all the rhetoric has taken an especially derisive attitude this is a ‘dogwhistle’ signalling their of ‘diversity’ from both its supporters towards intersectionality. In simple short-sighted opposition to struggles that and detractors, Corbyn’s Labour upheld terms, intersectionality is a framework go beyond the immediate worker-boss the anti-immigration status quo and, for foregrounding the interplay of race, antagonism: struggles that specifically like Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France class, gender, sexuality and dis/ability. A address racism, sexism, anti-LGBTI+ Insoumise and Die Linke in Germany, Marxist approach to this centres class as oppression and discrimination against remained firmly within the tradition the overarching structuring relationship, the disabled. In the case of the CPB and of ‘nativist’ social democracy. In 1978 and particularly emphasises how the socialist Morning Star newspaper, this a London-based Black Power group, imperialism raised up ‘race’ and gender position is used to justify vitriolic attacks the Race Today Collective, reflected hierarchies, which in turn shaped the on transgender people. A variation of the on Labour’s anti-immigrant record development of capitalism. As Ashley dogwhistle is used by fascists, who now and recent assault on the trade union Bohrer points out, ‘the foundational refer to Jordan Peterson’s formulation of movement, and lamented how the British theorists of intersectionality — Patricia ‘postmodern neo-Marxism’ as a catchall radical left was perpetually enmeshed Hill Collins, bell hooks, the Combahee to describe anyone challenging their in ‘the struggle between the conscience River Collective, Audre Lorde, Cherrie patriarchal, white supremacist ideology. and reality of the Labour Party.’ (Race Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Angela Davis, Sara Ahmed has usefully explained the Today, 10:6, 1978, 129) Only a month Barbara Smith, and Beverly Smith — treat incoherence of leftists like Slavoj Žižek after meeting survivors of the Grenfell capitalism and exploitation as central who counterpose working-class politics Tower Fire (in which many of the to an intersectional analysis’ (Bohrer, to cultural diversity. The reality is that victims were migrants, including from 2019, 14). Yet when organised socialists multiculturalism, associated in Britain North Africa), Corbyn gave legitimacy have discussed intersectionality, they with New Labour, was never the dominant to nationalist sentiments, arguing on have often failed to seriously engage ruling-class ideology; rather, the ‘speech the The Andrew Marr Show against the with such theorists, instead dismissing act that declares liberal multiculturalism ‘wholesale importation of underpaid the concept outright as a brand of as hegemonic is the hegemonic position’: workers from central Europe in order to postmodern liberalism. Obviously, there destroy the conditions, particularly in are liberal iterations of identity politics The explicit argument of New Labour the construction industry’, in favour of and intersectionality, under the rubric of [was] that multiculturalism went ‘too jobs ‘in the locality first’. It should also which some minorities are co-opted into far’: we gave the other ‘too much’ be remembered that, in a country with the exploitative capitalist system. The respect, we celebrated difference ‘too a greater proportionality of incarcerated induction of a few minorities into the much’, such that multiculturalism is Black people than in America, it was unequal channels of ‘upward mobility’ read as the cause of segregation, riots Corbyn’s Labour that first proposed has diverted attention away from the task and even terrorism … We have a reversing cuts to the police force, and then of social alleviation for the majority of double fantasy here: both that migrants exceeded Johnson’s promise of 20,000 the Black and Asian working class, and were respected or received with love extra officers. Labour’s 2019 manifesto newer migrant workers. The poorest (as a description of the history of race further stressed the ‘national security’ Asian and Black families in Britain have politics in the UK [I] suspect we are framing that has underpinned the been hit hardest by austerity measures, talking here about history as a national repression and demonisation of racialised both suffering a drop in living standards fantasy, or the nation as a historical minorities in Britain. The Institute of Race of 20%. But dismissing intersectionality, fantasy), and then that this love was Relations has shown that in 1991-2015, at or various struggles against oppressions abused. least 509 people from Black and Minority not automatically covered by the Ethnic, refugee or migrant communities ‘traditional’ class struggle, wholesale The left must reconfigure its understanding died ‘in suspicious circumstances in as ‘un-Marxist’ is as absurd as equating of the ‘traditional’ working class. As which the police, prison authorities or the socialist feminism of Angela Davis labour historian Satnam Virdee has immigration detention officers have with the neoliberal feminism of Hillary argued, ‘we need to stop thinking about been implicated’, revealing ‘patterns of Clinton. the English working class as a single control or care which suggest … forms of In their myopic dogmatism, many entity; it was made up of many ethnicities, direct or indirect racism.’ Nativist social socialists have begun parroting the of men and women but occupation and 15 Ebb Magazine skills levels stratified it. Both racism and many Black radicals were simultaneously relates to Britain’s ongoing imperialist anti-racism were present in the making of committed to building alliances with exploitation of the Global South – all the English working class.’ Undoubtedly, white workers to transform and radicalise while emphasising common working- as Lenin recognised, the relative wage trade union structures – despite being class interests against the bourgeoisie. advances and consumption subsidies denigrated by the main socialist parties This difficult task is eschewed by a certain that were facilitated by British colonial as ‘black separatists’. Black radicals strand of anti-imperialism in the west plunder abroad engendered a material recognised that white workers’ racial which writes off the socialist potential basis for national chauvinism, and for identity was blinding them to ‘the future of the Global North working classes. For the racist defence of narrow ‘sectional’ of a leaner and meaner nation-state’ instance Zak Cope, in his recent book The interests, among the white working class. and emphasised the shared need for a Wealth of (Some) Nations, discusses ‘the In the interwar years, there were violent revolutionary anti-imperialist politics. fundamentally bourgeois class structure pogroms in multiple port cities, including (Narayan, 2019, 956) This perspective of Britain’ (Cope, 2019, 195) at a time Liverpool and Cardiff, targeting Black was not exclusive to Black radicals: the when one-fifth of the population are and Asian seamen. But this is just one half Race Today Collective received a letter living in poverty, while nearly 60 per cent of the story. During the American Civil from a white Londoner, declaring that of low- and middle-income households War, many mill workers in Manchester ‘Working class power in West London have no money set aside; an increase of a and Lancashire supported the cause of during the past 20 years has been black quarter since the last financial crisis. The anti-slavery despite the region’s reliance power. From the many struggles fought, majority of wage-earners in Britain have on cotton imports: ‘In workers’ meetings whites have gained greatly – a new more interests in common with each across the region, people recognised self-respect, a militancy in the young, other than with the ruling class. that they had common cause with the a readiness to stand up for ourselves Black radicalism, like other anti- enslaved workers who picked the cotton as tenants, claimants or whatever.’ capitalist movements, was eclipsed in that fed their looms’. Formed in 1920, (Race Today, 8:3, 1976, 67) In the years the 1980s through a combination of the early Communist Party of Great leading to Lewisham and Grunwick, repression and co-option. Today, the Britain comprised not only Anglo-Saxon Black radicals and white socialist allies Labour Party’s electoral ‘black hole’ has workers, but also many from the Celtic spoke to workers, produced political swept up and defanged many of the new fringe, as well as Jews and radicals from propaganda and organised several anti- radical extra-parliamentary movements Britain’s colonies in Africa, Asia and the racist trade union conferences. Crucially, that have emerged to confront austerity, Caribbean. advances came when socialists accepted racist border controls and the threat of The problem is that the mainstream the particularities of oppressions, rather climate destruction. With the seeming socialist left has vacillated between than subsuming contradictions within death of Corbyn’s progressive reforms, assuming that the white working class is the working class with facile slogans like social movements should take stock and spontaneously anti-racist, or inherently ‘one race the human race’, or ‘black and recognise the need to rebuild working- racist. With the former assumption, white unite and fight’. class power outside the stifling bounds references are made to heroic moments Spreading anti-racist class of social democracy. Socialism is not like the anti-fascist Battle of Lewisham in consciousness was never easy, and our a ‘zero sum’ politics, where a gain for 1977, or the mass trade union support for anti-imperialism today cannot remain one is a loss for others: if encompassed the strike at Grunwick film-processing abstract. In their survey of working-class within the overarching struggle against plant in 1976-8 led by Asian women. But supporters of the fascist English Defence capitalist austerity and the total system this solidarity didn’t appear out of thin League (EDL), Simon Winlow et al. came of wage-labour exploitation, battles air. Racist sentiments in Britain were across ‘Colin’: ‘I wasn’t responsible for against racism, transphobia, misogyny fuelled by the abrupt end of the post- fucking slavery. I didn’t fucking benefit! and ableism etc. will only strengthen war economic boom, and throughout the Lots of fucking MPs, their ancestors did. working-class unity. The inexorable 1970s the fascist National Front achieved Mine would’ve been fucking hauling coal, rise of the Right leaves little room for a significant foothold among white would’ve been more like the slave than a misrecognition of this point. workers. Proletarian solidarity, including slave owner.’ (Winlow et al., 2017, 132) To paraphrase the late socialist and the participation of tens of thousands of Vague invocations of ‘white privilege’ Black Power activist Ambalavaner workers in the anti-fascist movement, would not be an especially convincing Sivanandan, the Tories have stolen was a long time in the making, with rebuttal to this; what’s required is UKIP and the EDL’s clothing, lending a critical role being played by Black sustained and patient socialist education orthodoxy to fascist thinking and Power militants (including many South about structural racist discrimination in softening up the white working class Asians, who adopted a politicised ‘Black’ the labour market and in social service for fascist blandishments and fascist identity). British Black Power groups provision (and not forgetting that the ideology. In the four weeks following the fought community-based battles against welfare state itself was a racialised EU referendum, over 6,000 racist hate racist immigration controls and police construct, serviced by hyper-exploited crimes were reported to the police, and brutality, drawing attention to prejudice workers, especially women, from former the election of an openly racist prime within the white working class; but British colonies); and how this all minister will further embolden fascistic 16 Ebb Magazine violence. Johnson’s new government urban areas into social collapse, and The last word goes to Sivanandan: has been endorsed by the far-right conceivably spark further uprisings like fringe, including media personality those in 1980-1, 1985, 1999, 2001 and There are still the values and Katie Hopkins, who once tweeted that 2011. During previous ‘riots’ there were traditions that have come down to us “Racial profiling is a good thing, call sometimes explicit tensions between from the working-class movement: me racist. I don't care”, and former EDL white and racialised minority working- loyalty, comradeship, generosity, a leader Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (alias class communities, but more typical was sense of community and a feel for Tommy Robinson). Socialists will have to shared anger against the bourgeoise. One internationalism, an understanding seriously think about what the election of thing is certain: socialists must confront that unity has to be forged and a hard-right populist government means racism head on, and foster working-class reforged again and again and, above in a country that is highly militarised and unity in all its diversity, while refusing to all, a capacity for making other people’s securitised. Economic crisis, exacerbated temper our criticism of capitalism. fights our own – all the great and by Brexit, will likely tip many deprived simple things that make us human.

Bolsheviks without Soviets

Luca Wright

he question of revolutionary Given the history of successful that it was the ‘workshops with its parties in the UK has been examples, building revolutionary internal commissions, the socialist a consistent race to the parties should have been the easy part clubs, the peasants communities’ that bottom. Rather than creating – and once a principled cell had been were the organs of working class life Ta highly class-conscious cell of party established the question of workers and democracy (Gramsci, Workers’ members that articulate the problems councils should have been broached, Democracy). These institutions ‘are of contemporary Britain and agitate as Gramsci did in Italy following the organs of workers’ democracy which among the working class, they have success of the Bolshevik revolution in must be freed from the limitations been playing at Lenin and worrying Russia. But instead the only tactics we imposed on them by the entrepreneurs, about the pedigree of their central hear are ‘build the party’, ‘build the and infused with new life and energy.’ committee and – in the worst cases, like party’, no matter what the material But decades of impoverishment and the Revolutionary Communist Group – circumstances, even being overtaken cuts to vital community services has have even sheltered known abusers and by liberal movements in their demand left rid these institutions of any social utilised their party structure to obfuscate for citizens’ assemblies and strikes. And function. any attempt at justice for the victims. although they model themselves on the And while British unions’ complicity Parties have become simultaneously successes of the October Revolution, with the bourgeoisie and imperialism clandestine and autonomist, all under the Bolsheviks’ central demand – ‘All is clear to see, this truth has eliminated the banner of Marxism-Leninism; power to the Soviets’ – is entirely lost the question of workers’ councils almost revelling in anonymity and separating on them, and should they get a sniff of entirely. British revolutionary parties’ themselves from the working class power they would revert to a Blanquism concession of the organised working while welcoming as many people as that demands ‘All power to the party.’ class to the unions have meant that possible and maintaining the pretence Gramsci recognised that it would they fester on the fringes of society, not of respectability for local elections – take the socialist parties and trade only resulting in a lack of organisation combining the worst of these disparate unions years, even decades, to absorb but – content to remain in this tactics. the whole of the working class, and fringe and wait for the revolutionary

17 Ebb Magazine element of the working class to arise a soviet did exist today in its most laws introduced in 1992. If we were to spontaneously and come to them – decisive elements, it would be written embark on establishing soviets from workers are able to be dismissed for any off by many communists because it isn’t scratch, without this union base, any progressive qualities that exist outside the Bolsheviks themselves in their most difficulty in gaining new members of the party. And so we see communist decisive and influential form in 1917. would increase dramatically. Secondly, parties in the UK struggle with basic But how do we go from where we this minimises the contradictions of social problems that are easily resolved are now to fully formed soviets ready the July Days as experienced in the elsewhere, condemning trans-struggles to take state-power? Gramsci wrote in Russian Revolution. As representative as a conspiracy and reverting to his ‘Action Programme of the Turin bodies of the working class, the soviets homophobia and racism in spite of the Socialist Section’ in 1920 that the began to lag behind the consciousness slogans on their pamphlets. workers’ councils should first be an of the factory councils established in But the question of workers’ councils extension of trade union action, then the workplaces themselves and instead must be broached, and the only single direct their attention ‘no longer at began to cooperate with the provisional existing organisation that can fulfil winning improvements in hours and government that sought to keep Russia in the role of the soviet in Britain is the wages, but at bringing to the fore of the First World War. A speech by a factory IWW. If revolutionary communists the question of proletarian control over delegate epitomised this contradiction recoil in horror at this suggestion, then the instruments of labour and over when he said that ‘We demand the they should reassess the relationship industrial and agricultural production.’ departure of the ten capitalist ministers between soviets and the Bolsheviks: the The IWW has had a substantial head- [from the Provisional Government]. soviets were not a revolutionary party start on its focus on union activity, We trust the Soviet, but not those but instead the mass of the Russian against the casualisation of work, zero- whom the Soviet trusts.’ (Gluckstein, working class and peasantry, with both hour contracts, and unpaid wages. p. 36) With the IWW simultaneously its more progressive and reactionary Building on the IWW’s existing acting as a representative body and the elements. Donald Gluckstein, in his organisation as one that is able to factory council, the distance from the book The Western Soviets, reassess the supersede trade and industries, and demands of the working class should be successes and failures of each apparition is able to move without political ties minimised and able to keep pace with of soviets in Europe and Russia at the to any party, it should be a priority to the changing demands necessary as beginning of the 20th century writes, establish members in all areas essential history moves forward. to the running of the state, replicated in But the necessity of factory councils, ‘Even during revolutions the party every county in the country: in housing, of workers organising into cells in cannot substitute for the workers’ healthcare, the environment, education, workplaces across the UK, will ultimately council. … Though the revolutionary culture, industry, and infrastructure. depend on the swiftness of the IWW party must be big enough to Private enterprise should too be to fulfil this new role as a soviet. If encompass the leading workers, organised, with one representative in workers are able to organise within the under capitalism these are a minority. every department, but public sector IWW, then this will be an unnecessary Even at the moment of insurrection should be the utmost priority. Across all step as the IWW will be able to move the party is not flexible enough to the sectors of the working class – who, at the rate of the class-consciousness of recruit whole factories at a time, today in Britain, are overwhelmingly in the workers. If the IWW solely retains with their vase range of opinion from the service industry. As in the case of the function of a union, however, then reactionary to revolutionary. Indeed Russia, where ‘even before the October factory councils will be necessary as to do so would mean to abandon its revolution, the soviets took over the the motor of the working class while political principles. Only the workers’ maintenance of transport, food supplies retaining the protections offered by the council can provide the vital link and public order’, (Gluckstein, p. 234) IWW. It is therefore decisive that the connecting a vanguard party and the Communists in Britain must work IWW fulfil these decisive roles. masses.’ (Gluckstein, p. 235) towards this reality. If we can decisively eliminate this Nevertheless, with this strategy, the potential contradiction and move As Lenin asked in ‘Our Tasks and the IWW would then act as both a factory forward at some speed, we will be able Soviet of Workers’ Deputies’ in 1905: council and a more broad workers’ to make the appropriate demands – yet ‘The Soviet of Workers’ Deputies or council, offering two advantages. Firstly, while the events and contradictions we the party? I think that it is wrong it offers concrete benefits to workers see today necessitates the most strict to put the question in this way and that factory councils – organised as and decisive action by all communists, that the decision must certainly be: collectives in each workplace, only the pace and starting point of these both the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies limited to that workplace, starting actions are dictated by the previous and the party.’ In their confusion, from scratch – would be unable to inaction and lack of strategy. British Marxist-Leninist parties have offer; they would have protections The only way to guarantee workers’ attempted to take on this function of and additional weight and legitimacy rights is the establishment of workers’ both a soviet and a party and, if such under the increasingly strict striking councils and aiming for Dual Power. 18 Ebb Magazine When this has been established, and workers’ councils and, amid intense whether the IWW, or any other similar the contradictions of capitalism make government repression, guide the organisation, will be able to fulfil this itself clear that a Labour government workers’ councils to power. function. But we come to the question cannot resolve them, a vanguard party of workers' councils so late that starting can make its influence felt most keenly If Marxist-Leninist parties continue workers’ councils from scratch will be and decisively. As we have come so to overlook the function of workers' infinitely more difficult, and citizen’s late to the question of building soviets, councils in existing industrial assemblies have no executive power we are behind and unprepared for the revolutions, we remain in the same of their own but can only exist as an tasks ahead. Nevertheless, adapting position that we are in today: the advisory body to Parliament – repeating Lenin’s ‘The Stages, the trend, and the working class will ignore revolutionary to them what it already knows but prospects of the revolution’, in which parties, and, in turn, the revolutionary chooses not to acknowledge. A citizen’s he outlines the necessary stages the parties will condemn the working class assembly, taken at random, or even revolution must undertake from 1906, for its lack of organisation and class taken while acknowledging racial and we can outline a strategy that makes consciousness. British communists have class disparities in Britain, will have best use of the soviets in the coming failed to recognise is that it is through no say or weight over the power of the years: the workers’ councils that so much of state or the organisation of labour – the working class can come to class and without this base will vanish out 1. The Tories take us out of the EU consciousness, and that, in Russia, this of existence as quickly as it came into without a deal. turned the working class and peasantry it. Workers organised through radical towards the Bolsheviks. We also saw unions and organised into workers’ 2. Cuts worse than those we saw this guiding to class consciousness councils, controlling the functions under austerity further decimate during the shop stewards’ strike in of the state, will not be so difficult to ignore. services as Britain’s finance industry with the origins of the Clyde Workers’ continues to decline. Committee during the First World War. As Donny Gluckstein writes: 3. Revolting against this, the Labour Party offer mild reforms and are voted ‘The majority of workers accepted into power but they cannot resolve the war and the resultant social truce the fundamental contradictions of between workers and employers. British capitalism. Only socialists, who believed there 4. The revolutionary potential that was nothing to gain from imperialist was frustrated with social democracy war, would fight to save the workers’ turns against the Labour Party, and movement from strangulation in this is crystallised in the organisation the name of “King and Country”. of workers’ soviets as Extinction But very few workers shared their Rebellion and other liberal opinion. These socialist stewards organisations continue to hedge their would have had no impact if they bets on progressive candidates. had campaigned on their ideas alone. 5. Having established itself in Yet they were able to lead thousands every branch of the public sector, out on strike, because they had a the question of dual power and the reputation among the rank and file as workers’ councils is raised by the fighters on bread and butter issues.’ new revolutionary party as it is clear One advantage that will aid the that no other organisation can fulfil efforts of Marxist-Leninists today is this demand. this immediate connection between 6. The government forgoes any particular and general issues, and notions of progressive elements in the transparency between peoples’ order to save capitalism and maintain livelihoods in their everyday jobs its class position, intensifying the and wage struggles and the Britain’s repression against communists and larger political issues with Brexit. This the workers’ councils as they fight links bread and butter issues to class back with organised industrial action questions for the whole of Britain, and and general strikes. even exposes the political class as a 7. A revolutionary party will bourgeois class increasingly incapable crystallise the demands of the of running the country. The decisive question will be 19 Ebb Magazine Lessons from LulzSec

Alberto Bayo

or a brief period in 2011 LulzSec made machines with anti-nuclear proliferation and said he became a hacker because he was headlines by going on a global hacking propaganda. It would display the WANK logo bored. They are already critical of society, rampage. Despite a short existence, along with a random message, before randomly they just need to learn that it is capitalism the group's activities provided a attempting to infect other machines on the that is the cause of problems in society and Fuseful insight into the consciousness and network. The random messages included not whatever the latest fascist scapegoat is. capabilities of a small group of determined ‘vote anarchist’ and ‘the FBI is watching YOU. If communists are trying to build a party, hackers as well as and the response from the But just as often as there were left they should be considering engaging these state. Using this as a case study, and drawing wing hacktivists, there were well meaning communities. from other examples, we can learn what is individuals whose actions were assisting The imperialists states already know this, possible, why it might be useful, and how to imperialism. In 1998, hackers collaborated FBI agents (or at the very least informants) protect ourselves. on a DDoS attack in support of the Zapatista were found posting on anti Russian conspiracy First, I want to examine the political Army of National Liberation (an armed far- theories on 8chan. And the Olympic Games consciousness of historical hacktivist groups. left libertarian-socialist group in central leaks suggest that there's a whole room of Before 4chan became a cesspool of fascism, America) but that same year a US hacker people from these communities working for groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec group declared cyberwar on China and Iraq. the NSA developing new cyber weapons. emerged from this fringe of nerd culture Though it didn't make much of an impact, The US military recognises both ‘cyber’ promoting slogans such as #fuckfbifriday and I'm sure the NSA appreciated the free help. and ‘people’ as domains of war, alongside air, free Chelsea Manning. There was a loosely Hacktivism became a big talking point in sea and land. Meaning that they are already anti-imperialist and anti-police distrust of the mid-2000s at the time of 4chan and actively engaged in online astro-turfing the state. It didn't appear to form a coherent wikileaks. Distrust of Western governments as well as cyber defence and offense. They leftist ideology but nonetheless recognised was high in the wake of the Iraq war, and understand how important it is to be active many of the key criticisms of capitalism. Wikileaks was airing the imperialists' dirty in these spaces, it's time leftists did too. We Core LulzSec member Jeremy Hammond laundry by publishing a slew of hacked know CIA staff have been editing wikipedia was a self-identified anarchist and actively and leaked information. Anonymous were articles in their free time. And that 'Bolivian' encouraged what he called ‘electronic civil feeling bold and empowered after launching anti-Morales propaganda tweets originated disobedience. Project Chanology; a campaign that had in Virginia - coincidentally the same state First, I want to examine the political demonstrated to themselves that they could as the CIA headquarters. These are only a consciousness of historical hacktivist groups. be very disruptive once organised towards few small examples where rogue agents have Before 4chan became a cesspool of fascism, realising a common goal. Attacking Bank of been sloppy enough to get caught, imagine groups such as Anonymous and LulzSec America and supporting student protests, what they are capable and inclined to do in emerged from the fringes of nerd culture they saw themselves as 'bastions of freedom,' officially sanctioned astro turfing campaigns. promoting slogans such as #fuckfbifriday, but the kind of freedom most important to Hacktivist groups like LulzSec ‘free Chelsea Manning.’ There was a loosely them were bourgeois individiaul liberties. demonstrated the capability of individual anti-imperialist and anti-police distrust of They saw Ron Paul as the only politician activists, collectives, and large self organising the state that didn't appear to form a coherent criticising imperialism and promoting online groups to cause major disruption. leftist ideology but nonetheless recognised individual liberty and, ironically or not, More importantly the possibility to expose many of the key criticisms of capitalism. 4chan began the memeification of Ron Paul's imperialist lies, state sanctioned terrorism, and Core LulzSec member Jeremy Hammond 2012 election campaign and began its long illegal spying. Some of the hacks conducted was a self-identified anarchist and actively descent into right libertarianism followed by by LulzSec were, in their own words, ‘so easy encouraged what he called ‘electronic civil its natural conclusion - fascism. a child could do it,’ which was inpsiration for disobedience.’ Many of the individuals in these groups are their tagline ‘laughing at your security.’ Hacktivism dates back to 1989, when bored teenagers, or socially outcast. LulzSec One of the most important lessons learned a program was written that would infect member Jack ‘Topiary’ Davis lived in Shetland 20 Ebb Magazine from LulzSuc is that it demonstrates the size the IRC server over an anonymous encrypted USB keyloggers can record anything typed and scope of law enforcement response to relay network called The Onion Router (Tor). on a keyboard, including usernames and this type of activity. What tools they can use Ironically the core principles behind Tor were passwords. This isn't even a wishful fantasy, to track down hackers, and what defences created by the US Naval research laboratory security researchers wouldn't still have jobs hackers used that were effective. and, as leaked FBI documents have suggested, if they couldn't demonstrate that they are The state is constantly expanding their they are not capable of directly breaking regularly able to walk into buildings and steal powers in this regard. The UK recently passed Tor encryption. It's a shame then, that Sabu sensitive information using cheap tools they a data sharing law that allows data held in accidentally forgot to connect to Tor before bought online. The reason breaches don't the USA (for example your private data that logging onto the IRC server and in doing so happen more often is that people don't know is saved on Facebook's or Google's servers) exposing his real IP address. it's possible, don't have the skills and, most to be accessed by British intelligence officers. As part of a plea deal with the FBI, Sabu importantly, don't have the motivation. They've carefully worded the document with started started trickling information to the One of the biggest relevations in US promises to the public that the data will be agency and eventually lead to them having political history was when FBI documents handled safely and they'll only use it to catch enough evidence to warrant a wiretap on were stolen from a filing cabinet. Documents pedophiles and terrorists. Now anyone who another suspected LulzSec member — that challenged the US’ narratives of itself to complains about it can safely be accused Anarchaos. Since they couldn't directly break such an extent that newspapers wouldn't print of being a terrorist sympathiser (or a pedo Tor encryption, they instead used a correlation them - documents that proved the conspiracy sympathiser - a charge the Murdoch press attack — simply watching his internet activity theorists correct; they revealed the illegal very quickly levelled at Corbyn when he and correlating when the person suspected FBI operation codenamed COINTELPRO. raised questions about the proposed bill). of being Anarchaos was at home using his But these agencies aren't keeping their files As long as the state is only enforcing internet, and when the 'Anarchaos' account in a poorly secured cabinet anymore, they're this bill to catch pedophiles and ‘terrorists’ was logged into the IRC channel. on a server somewhere. Who knows what then how can any moral upstanding citizen These events have given us valuable secrets they are keeping there - waiting for complain? That entirely depends on how the learning experience. First, use good opsec. someone to steal that information and release state defines ‘terrorist.’ In an era of austerity, TAILS or I2PIRC are good for anonymous it, like Snowdon did, like the anonymous NSA imperialism, monopoly capitalism and communication, and won't let you accidentally employees in 2016 who leaked the Nitro Zeus ecological destruction, anyone who opposes forget to anonymise like Sabu did. Second, program - a US Israeli collaborative cyber these things is de facto an enemy of the state. don't be a snitch. Third, don't reveal any project that was designed to disable Iran's And anyone who stops passively accepting personal information, in case a team member national electrical power generation ahead of them and starts organising against them can is a snitch trying to build enough information an invasion. Something even US government very quickly be labelled a terrorist, just ask about you to warrant a wiretap on your home. employees thought was so immoral they the Palestinians. The City of London police Sabu was so useful to the FBI that only one leaked it. already included Extinction Rebellion in LulzSec member was never identified - which There are people who have the skills to a list of "key threats" in a counter terrorism goes to show that if you're careful you can still hack but have neither the motivation nor assesment. Former Met officer Paul Stephens stay anonymous even when you're chatting to the political consciousness to use these skills even speculated that they were designated an FBI informant. for the benefit of society. Similarly there are terrorists to facilitate intelligence gathering. If you want to learn how to hack yourself, people are politically conscious but have Anyone who wishes to organise against you can find books on the subject. You can get limited their political activity in trying to imperialism and in defence of the environment a great overview with the very concisely titled recreate the 19th century political agitation. and workers rights should be aware of the state's 'Linux Basics for Hackers Getting Started with Dogmatically sticking to old methods and capabilities in this regard. Western Marxists Networking, Scripting, and Security in Kali. tactics, some which went obselete decades fantasise about smashing the state but are pdf' I would recommend starting by installing ago. As a result, the ‘online’ propaganda war often ignorant on cyber, leaving themselves Kali on a burner laptop, very helpfully the first is being lost to proto fascist FBI informants, very open to compromise. Not only can the chapter explains exactly how to do this. hacktivism has largely fallen by the wayside, NSA read your private communications, they But hacking, in the broadest sense, means and the last generation of hacktivists all ended can remotely hijack a car, or even shut down getting somewhere you shouldn't be. It also up in jail. an entire country's power grid at the press of includes ‘social engineering’ attacks - which Leftists need to recognise that a) technical a button. Finding and arresting activists with can be as simple as following someone into skills are necessary to understand and protect poor opsec would be childs play for them. It a building while holding a clipboard, or against advanced cyber abilities of the state; is essential for an activist in the 21st century pretending to be a network technician or b) cyber is a domain where they should be to be aware of and knowledgeable about cyber repair technician. Self-proclaimed 'non actively engaged in promoting and recruiting; security, both from a defensive position (how technical' security researcher Jayson E. Street and c) hacking can be used as a very effective to communicate and organise without being revealed how easy this in his DEF CON talk method of activism. Bolsheviks used hidden spied on) and an offensive position. This means titled 'Steal Everything, Kill Everyone, Cause presses to communicate and robbed banks to learning about some of the technical details Total Financial Ruin!' He describes walking fund their revolution, activists of the future about hacking, demonstrated capabilities, into financial offices where employees had may be using encrypted p2p messaging and and legal consequences. passwords written down next to computers, stealing cryptocurrencies. Lulzsec again prove a useful case study on laptops not secured, sensitive financial These lessons have already been taken fully this point - an example of what not to do. The documents in open containers; key fobs, car on board by the alphabet soup agencies, it's group were organising on Internet Relay Chat keys, wallets and name badges left on desks. time for left activists to learn these lessons (IRC) a once incredibly popular protocol for Anyone could enter a building using these too. group chats. IRC isn't encrypted, so in order social engineering techniques, and place to maintain anonymity they would connect to hardware in the network that steals data.

21 Ebb Magazine Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Lewis Hodder

aking up under mosquito nets a series of incomplete manuscripts to one class. each morning, we would use remaining unpublished in Germany until Continuing along this line, Bastani W plastic jugs to fill the cisterns 1939.’ And although we should be thankful entirely ignores the actual gains of of the toilets and hose ourselves down with that Bastani has uncovered the Penguin communism while attempting to do-battle cold water in the showers. For breakfast Classics edition of the Grundrisse, it with capitalism over consumer culture; there’d be bread and eggs again, so I’d just is here that Bastani’s use of Marx both rather than looking to the countless grab a banana and bag of peanuts before abruptly begins and ends. people raised out of poverty, instead I got on with hand-washing my clothes The book itself is a slog to get through, Bastani looks to Silicon Valley, space, and to get rid of the red dirt that stuck to our and it feels like you’re reading pages music videos. These concessions bring to trousers while we worked. But looking out among pages of PR directly from Silicon mind an instance from Edgar Snow’s Red over the Cuban landscape as I brushed my Valley. After a certain point Horkheimer’s Star Over China, if only to demonstrate teeth each morning, watching the cattle in throwaway line in Towards a New the contrast between the conception of the next field as the sun rose, any notions Manifesto, ‘I couldn’t care less about communism in imperialist countries of luxury were entirely forgotten. Outside sending spacecraft to the moon’, begins Caimito, on a small camp, we worked with to resonate on a personal level. FALC farmers who used old tools that were fixed works as a catchphrase that attempts to with rusted nails and sheer force – bent fulfil the negative function of criticism; it back into shape again and again until they contradicts the caricatures of communism were broken beyond repair. Had I got my as a mass of faceless workers bound to hands on Aaron Bastani's Fully Automated the fate of being able to buy one type of Luxury Communism sooner, I’d have cola. Yet at the same time FALC takes quoted to the farmers, ‘Communism is these caricatures at face value and readily luxurious – or it isn’t communism’, and we agrees with them. In an attempt to all would have laughed. distance himself from these caricatures of Now, sat in England, turning to my communism he even goes so far as to say tattered review copy, it’s difficult to muster that, under FALC, ‘when you’re relaxing, the same sense of humour. It’s hard to it will look like a music video.’ Showing not see this book as a vanity project. Not someone photographs of East Berlin in the sense of social media personality fashion would more constructively fulfil writes a book, but in how Bastani places this function of criticism, or even recalling himself in relation to Marx and his Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Fully Automated Luxury Communism audience. ‘The reason you’ve likely never Enlightenment which reminds us that Aaron Bastani heard of either before’, he writes, either ‘the actual working conditions in society being the Grundrisse itself and the small compel conformism’ – that the material Verso, 2019 section ‘Fragment on Machines’, ‘is that conditions of capitalism can only offer the 9781786632623 the Grundrisse never extended beyond bright individuality central to its promise

22 Ebb Magazine against the conception of communism in ‘There was never a workers’ revolution elections when large sections of society communist countries. When Snow asked that overthrew the system – at least not – particularly the most exploited – are a Chinese peasant whether they liked the on a global scale.’ At least is doing a lot of open to new possibilities in how society Red Army, he ‘looked at me in genuinely work here. works and able to perceive how previously amazement.’ The peasant replied, ‘The Red Reading the book, it soon becomes distinct issues share both common Army has taught me to read and write… necessary to seriously reconsider the cause and prospective solutions.’ And Here I have learned to operate a radio, and purpose of communism. Is it a political once a Corbyn government is in power? how to aim a rifle straight. The Red Army theory that we must use to liberate the Government spending, co-ops, and free helps the poor.’ Another peasant joined in, working class and the Global South? To buses. adding, ‘Here everybody is the same. It is lift people out of poverty? Raise literacy? We can be confident that FALC isn’t an not like the White districts, where poor Decrease infant mortality? To save the attempt to raise people out of poverty, or people are slaves of the landlords and planet? Or is it a rhetorical device to to resolve the contradictions of capitalism the Kuomintang. Here everybody fights do-battle over consumer culture? It is and imperialism, yet it can’t even be said to help the poor, and to save China. The incredible to see just how far leftist thought that it’s an attempt to pry hegemony away Red Army fights the landlords and the has been taken in by the machinations of from the bourgeoisie; it’s a catchphrase White bandits and the Red Army is anti- imperialism that someone who endorses raised into a principle, that someone has Japanese. Why should anyone not like Marx shies away from the gains of his then had to laboriously work backwards such an army as this?’ philosophy, and instead writes that ‘Marx into a contrived set of political positions. It is getting increasingly tiresome considered the working class to be the key Bastani criticises ‘capitalist realism’ for that leftists in the imperialist core turn to a future society, but only because its the poverty of its imagination, yet FALC their nose up at communist countries revolution was uniquely able to eliminate demonstrates the worst in the imagination because they have had to develop and work’, or that FALC is not ‘substituting and scope of leftist thought. It takes every struggle against attacks from those same one class for another’ as other communist piece of PR and propaganda at face- imperialist countries. As the memory projects hope to – reducing Marx to an value, parades around empty phrases like of Soviet Russia and communism is infantile anarchism, ignoring the essential populism and globalism, and can’t even increasingly weaponised by NATO and role of resolving class struggle. Bastani conceive of imperialism on a basic level; the US to bolster their crumbling corpses, goes on to emphasise that FALC will not instead it talks about the ‘outsourcing FALC cedes this ground entirely as an ‘be delivered by storming the Winter economy’, or the ‘spacial fix’ which extension of the ultra-leftism that says, Palace’, and even that communism was ‘underpins contemporary globalisation’, ‘communism has never existed’, that the impossible until the beginning of the even British manufacturing ‘going USSR, People’s Republic of China, the ‘Third Disruption’ – since the advent of elsewhere.’ And when discussing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, information technologies. But, after all Global South’s capacity for solar energy and Cuba were never really communist, of this, how does Bastani hope to achieve as a natural resource, Bastani writes – they’re all bastardised attempts. This is a this communist vision? He takes Labour’s without a hint of irony – that ‘nature’s gift position that’s infinitely played out, but electoral strategy as its blueprint: becomes an economic blessing.’ it appears again here – almost word-for- I miss Cuba, and brushing my teeth in word: ‘While it is true that a number of In isolation electoral politics will not the morning sun. I’m starting to think that political projects labelled themselves give us the world we want, but allied the real luxury is being thousands of miles as communist over the last century…’ with a constant movement to make the away from these people. But, if I have to, After reading that I seriously considered potential of the Third Disruption clear the most positive thing I can say about putting the book down for good. While I to everyone – along with the necessity the book is that I don’t doubt that it will would agree with Bastani that that there for a collective political response – be Elon Musk’s favourite book of 2019 – are technically no communist countries, it shapes the parameters of what is and he’ll tweet about it as he prevents his only socialist countries working towards possible. workers from unionising. No one else – communism, the purpose of this whether those farmers in Cuba, the literal technicality isn’t in staying true to Marx’s I almost did a double take when I read this. hundreds of millions of people lifted out definition but only in ignoring those This is exactly Corbyn’s and Momentum’s of poverty in China, or even communists countries who are closest to achieving strategy. ‘After all,’ Bastani concludes organising in the imperialist core – will that goal. This is clear when he writes, in his own way, ‘it is often only around pay attention.

23 Ebb Magazine The People's Republic of Walmart

Sean Winkler

eople’s Republic of Walmart: How experiments had only dreamed of. As a national economy would be so vast the World’s Biggest Corporations the third largest employer on the planet that it would impede the planning itself, are Laying the Foundation for – outsized only by the U.S. Department and that anything short of the utmost P meticulousness was bound to inefficiencies Socialism (2019) is a recent release of Defense and the People’s Liberation from Verso’s Jacobin series and the first Army of China – and the largest private in the forms of mass shortage or mass collaboration between authors Leigh employer, Walmart also happens to be the waste. Capitalism, they argued, presented Phillips – journalist, science writer world’s 38th largest economy, putting its the best of all possible worlds, because the and author of Austerity Ecology & The revenues on par with the GDPs of mid- central mechanism of the marketplace, i.e. Collapse-Porn Addicts (2015) – and sized nations like Sweden or Switzerland the price, comprehended the necessary Michal Rozworski, blogger, economist, and that of the Soviet Union in 1970, information for determining supply organizer and writer. Following the when it was the world’s second largest and demand; the market itself, so they lead of American Neo-Marxist Frederic economy (adjusted for inflation). Where believed, held all the right answers and Jameson, the authors premise their claims socialists of the past had to conceive bore an innate tendency to equilibrium. As on the notion that corporate behemoth, of ways to turn institutions like central Walmart, may be confronting the socialist banks, the post office, into mechanisms movement with an unlikely opportunity. of economic planning, Walmart is a (Frederic Jameson. Archaeologies of the planned economy on a nationwide scale, Future. London: Verso, 2005) Though the which, though not simply a ready-made embodiment of some of capital’s worst apparatus, provides a key element in exploits, Walmart may also be something the foundation for a more just society. of an apparition from the future; it has Thus, Phillips & Rozworski claim, while ascended to dominance on the free market a socialist strategy should (obviously) through the payment of poverty wages to continue to denounce Walmart’s labour its employees, ruthless union busting, etc., practices, part of that strategy should also but its successes have also been predicated incorporate demanding to nationalize on a unique corporate structure through and democratize Walmart (and other which it has virtually eliminated its like corporations) to reap the benefits of own internal market. In other words, as its logistical marvel and more generally Phillips & Rozworski claim, Walmart, apply them, while also overcoming its ‘this epitome of capitalism, is also, authoritarian labour practices. paradoxically, a vast planned economy.’ Phillips & Rozworski shine in their Quoting Jameson, Phillips & Rozworski renewal of the so-called ‘economic insist that Marx was right in showing calculation’ debate from the early-20th People’s Republic of Walmart: How that Walmart is ‘the purest expression Century, the explicit discussion of which the World’s Biggest Corporations are of that dynamic of capitalism which carries much of the book’s first half. Laying the Foundation for Socialism devours itself, which abolishes the market The debate refers to a theoretical battle by means of the market itself.’ (Frederic nearly a century ago among economists Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski Jameson. Valences of the Dialectic. over whether or not it was possible to London: Verso, 2009) Facilitated by its use plan an entire economy. Pro-capitalist of ‘big data’ and innovative information theorists, of course, challenged the very Verso, 2019 technology, the company has managed idea of socialism on the grounds that the 9781786635167 to plan on a scale that previous socialist amount of information needed to plan

24 Ebb Magazine Phillips & Rozworski point out, however, full agreement with this position that by the Soviet state were also attributable beyond the price mechanism’s failure to democratic planning is of paramount to the conflicts of interest in the social communicate the necessary information importance for realizing a more just relations of production – between the about the distribution of resources in society and that such a regime of planning proletariat and the peasantry, the poor society, it elicits ambiguities of its own as should rely on pre-existing institutions. peasants and the wealthy peasants, against the greater the number of exchanges in Upon closer scrutiny, however, the the retaliating Tsarist forces, international any given supply chain result in the so- term ‘democracy’ appears somewhat intervention. To be fair to Phillips & called ‘bullwhip effect.’ Walmart, via its paradoxical in the text; on one hand, it is Rozworski, history has yet to provide a acquisitions of suppliers and distributors, the animating term of the book, but on satisfactory resolution to this problem, sought to minimize this effect by virtually the other, it is the term which the authors but the nature of class politics and the state eliminating its internal market, bypassing appear most reluctant to define. The reason has changed considerably over the course the inefficiencies incurred by the price for this is that Phillips & Rozworski devote of a century. However, this only makes an mechanism from within. Reliant on most of their attention to the means of analysis of the social relations of production its use of big data, Walmart has shown production, at the expense of conflicts in and the state even more essential for their planning at the corporate level to eclipse the social relations of production and the main argument, not to mention their anything achievable by internal market. ideological superstructure. (Marx, Karl. A corollary claims that democratization Because of the amount and speed of the Contribution to the Critique of Political would help provide a better answer to the data that information technology allows Economy. London: Lawrence & Wishart, problem of surveillance, the reduction and of the transparency with which 2010) In other words, they do not focus of consumption, etc., particularly when supply and demand can be communicated on the conflict over the mechanisms of we are speaking of democratizing and via planning, Walmart has managed power. By doing so, they sidestep a central nationalizing companies that are central to, paradoxically, show that nation- problem – which is that the conflict over to consumerist ideology. They do not scale planning is not only possible, but the means of production is not only one altogether dodge the issue social relations desirable. By centering the discussion of logistical efficiency, but of conflicting of production, as they do argue that: on economic calculation, Phillips & interests and that these interests shape the Rozworski have made an important extent to which the means of production Any future Left that takes the contribution to the literature by firstly, can be managed democratically. Phillips & question of planning seriously will also showing a way to speak the language Rozworski suggest that this problem can be have to depend heavily upon talents of the capitalist better than he/she can circumvented by the planning mechanism; from computer science, operations and secondly, showing a way to turn a a point which they articulate outright research, combinatorics and graph capitalist symbol inside out. This two- in their discussion of the history of the theory, complexity theory, information fold dimension to their approach places a Soviet Union. The authoritarian nature of theory and allied fields. And the powerful logical argument and rhetorical Soviet economic planning, they maintain, transformation needed if it is to be device at the left’s disposal. Regardless of was the product of the Bolsheviks’ lack of democratic, rather than technocratic, what one thinks of Phillips & Rozworski’s a clear economic plan from the beginning, will have to be led by, not on behalf conclusions, framing the problem in this which gave rise to an authoritarian state of, workers at Walmart, Amazon, way is considerably persuasive. apparatus and the persistence of that Facebook and other transnationals. However, the major drawback to the apparatus once economic planning was book is that the authors sidestep one of underway, which was its eventual undoing. But they ultimately maintain that giving the most difficult, but also one of the most Based on this argument, they assert that this issue its due diligence ‘would be essential questions in socialist strategy – ‘while the replacement of the market with another book in itself.’ Nor do they avoid the which is the question of ‘power’. Phillips planning is a necessary condition for an issue of the state, but their remarks in this & Rozworski’s central aim is to show egalitarian society, it is not a sufficient capacity are also rather preliminary: ‘[w] that Walmart has refined a mechanism condition. . . . [I]t is not that degradation hether state-administered or otherwise, for economic planning that is ripe for of economic information as a result of we must ensure that any nonmarket mode management in a ‘democratic’ form; planning leads to authoritarianism, but of global governance adheres to genuinely as they state: ‘When we say we want an that authoritarianism drives degradation democratic principles.’ In sum, Phillips equal society, what we’re fighting for is of information, which undermines & Rozworski have covered significant democratic planning. There is no machine planning.’ I am inclined to agree with the ground and provided considerable that can simply be taken over, run by new authors here that the lack of planning material worthy of debate here. In doing operators but otherwise left unchanged; was instrumental in the catastrophes that so, however, they have also shown how but there is a foundation of planning that would ensue in revolutionary Russia. much there is much discussion to be had a more just society could surely take up However, there is ample reason to believe and work to be done. and make its own.’ This reviewer is in that the authoritarian measures taken up

25 Ebb Magazine Bullshit Jobs Robert Ovetz

eclaring war on work is close to my is necessarily an anarchist.’ In Bullshit Jobs, But Bullshit Jobs cannot be the last heart. I have declared my own war Graeber has left his socialist behind. call on the issue of work and the struggle Don pointless work which guided me against it. The core reason for this is that into higher education, a place where fellow The Left’s Malcolm Gladwell Graeber’s thinking is often incomplete, academic David Graeber gleefully finds as strained, trapped in dead ends, and just much bullshit work as anywhere else in the Graeber is a gifted and accessible writer. He plain wrong. While you will want to read capitalist economy. We should give a lot not only writes clearly in the vernacular, every page, Bullshit Jobs delivers like a of credit to Graeber for declaring war on but he writes with ease and heart that can left Freakonomics. It is a compelling and ‘bullshit jobs,’ the catchy title of his new probably reach the widest audience in entertaining geewhizzer type of book full of book. His objective is far more reaching translating the esoteric ideas of anarchism head turning stories and facts about work than just denouncing what he calls pointless and libertarian socialists. He is, without that is only loosely anchored to a substantive work — he has declared war on nearly all a doubt, the Malcolm Gladwell of the analysis that can help explain the cause for work in a capitalist society. autonomous left, translating complex the very phenomenon on which it is focused, While Graeber’s war on work is virtuous, theories in a way anyone can relate to and let alone what to do about it. Sadly, while it’s compromised. He is torn between use. He has proven with his co-launching of he hesitates to venture down the ‘solutions’ charybdis and scylla, denouncing clearly the Occupy Wall Street movement and his road, Graeber has little to offer. pointless, destructive, and useless work widely read and discussed book Debt: The while trumpeting a call for ‘good’ work First 5,000 Years that he will be read and — reproductive labour or what is widely heard by a much wider audience that us now called caring work — to be defended, ‘usual suspects.’ demanded, and expanded. He can spare But that pop accessibility comes at a cost. caring work because he doesn’t have a Like Gladwell does for the behavioural and theory of how human labour is exploited, social sciences, Graeber sacrifices the rigour whether it’s useful to society, pointless, or of theory for the relatable and digestible destructive. Bullshit Jobs ends up doing catchy idea — an otherwise acceptable exactly what he criticises unions, liberals, compromise to get the ideas out to a wide and the left for doing — demanding ‘good audience. Graeber is a genius at marketing jobs’ — except as long as it is work that cares his ideas. The core of his book, for example, for others. speaks to what nearly everyone already Though captivating to read, Graeber will knows: work is exhausting, oppressive, and not have the final word on bullshit work pointless. But he takes it much further than because his book fails to answer two key any other pop writer on work by arguing issues. First, he is never able to tell us how for its democratisation: everyone should much bullshit work is being done. Second, be able to choose the work they do, and to he does not have a convincing explanation do so socially as a community, movement, for why it exists. His self-described or collective. He’s talking about radically

anarchist analysis of bullshit work fails democratising the economy, a crucial topic Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless to explain how it serves capitalism. This on which there is a drastic shortage of Work, and What We Can Do About It second point is crucial because if there is thinkers, which is extremely commendable. one thing anarchists and Marxists agree on We certainly don’t hear that too much about David Graeber it is that capitalism is a system of imposed it from popular writers with the exception work in which the worker is exploited to of science fiction. This book, like his co- make profits. As Haymarket martyr Adolph authored manifesto that sparked the Occupy Penguin, 2018 Fischer insightfully reminded us, ‘every movement in which I participated, is likely 9780141983479 anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist to become a manifesto for the ages.

26 Ebb Magazine portrayed in the many fascinating first- of these workers are unable to see the Work and Capitalism hand accounts and testimonials from consequences of the button they literally respondents to Graeber’s social media push once or a few times a day. But the value Graeber has little use for the socialism survey and interviews is the product of this of their minuscule task does not measure Fischer identified as a core tenant of vast global division of labour. There are the value of their labour; it is a small share of anarchism. This shows up in his oft repeated many stories about how their work requires the total output of the entire assembly line. description of work as ‘neo-feudal’ and his that they tend a phone, computer or device One of the best testimonials in the book was outright dismissal of the labour theory of for days, weeks, months, and years in the from a worker who literally waited all day value. As a result, Graeber does not have an event they are needed to carry out work that to literally just push the proverbial button. analysis of all work. takes minutes or a few hours to complete, That worker, however, cannot see the larger Graeber repeatedly dismisses the often fixing (‘duct taping’ as Graeber calls systemic impact of that one button being modern workplace as structured along a it) or cleaning up after the incompetence pushed. This is why we don’t substitute feudal system of relationships in which of other co-workers or bosses. It’s no anecdotes for theory. management serves as the lord of the surprise that these workers find their work What Graeber misses is that these bullshit manor and the workers, subjected to pointless, tedious, and boring. Their work workers are productive, not because of any pointless bullshit jobs, are the serfs. This is characterised by the minutiae of their substantive measurement of the value of is just plain wrong and a theoretical dead highly rationalised role as ‘bolt screwers’ in what they produce, but because they put end. There is nothing even remotely related an assembly line so vast they can neither see other people to work. Such bullshit work to feudalism in work in a capitalist system. its start or finish. is productive not simply because of any The workers are not tied to the land and the Many of the jobs carried out by what tangible thing they make or service they lord but can sell their labour (or not) with Graeber calls ‘flunkies,’ ‘goons,’ ‘duct tapers,’ provide. It is productive precisely because or without coercion (such as the necessity ‘box tickers,’ and ‘task masters’ might be they put people to work. To miss that is to of eating). To call it feudal is a-historical, bullshit, mindless, and unfulfilling but they miss the very analysis of unwaged work that as if the capitalist revolution that displaced are not pointless. The first basic reason is Graeber praises the Wages for Housework feudalism and ‘freed’ the serf as a waged that no matter how distasteful the work, movement for in the last chapter. slave never happened. Managers are not they are various forms of abstract labour. Graeber is absolutely correct to attack lords but highly paid workers (at least those Each of these workers are at work and the social democratic left’s obsession with who don’t own the company), who oversee whether they produce anything at all they creating more work, ‘better’ work, and for and have authority over and serve to impose are still reproducing capitalism because they higher pay. But, like them, he misses a deeper work on other workers lower in the pay are being disciplined and/or disciplining point: what is work for? Because he cannot and power hierarchy. The workplace is not others to work. They are also paid a wage see any ‘value’ (he calls it ‘social value’) a feudal relationship of production. The which they then spend to generate more in their work he dismisses it as pointless. source of profits is not the land, acquired demand for abstract labour to produce Attempting to measure the value of work only through monarch, family, war, and the good or service they purchased. These leads to what Cleaver calls the ‘phlogiston’ conquest, and not sale on the market. Profits workers, as despicable or laughable their theory of value. Cleaver reminds us that are generated by exploited labour power in work may be, are productive parts of the Marx’s analysis of the exploitation of labour excess of the cost of purchasing access to global assembly line, a system of production to produce surplus value is not about that labour power. Authority is not passed which any single worker will strain to fully measuring a substance. It is an analysis of the by monarch, blood, and god but acquired comprehend their place. As Harry Cleaver relationship that perpetuates the system that from HR. explains, ‘As with abstract labour, labour imposes work. Capital is unable to produce This conceptual and historical confusion time must be grasped within the totality of anything if it cannot get the worker to the between the epochs of feudalism and capital. The measurement of abstract labour machine or the sink and make her work. capitalism not only muddies the waters time can only be done within the framework To impose work is to transform potential but sets up Graeber’s failure to explain why of the total social mass of homogeneous, labour power into actual work. By imposing bullshit work exists on such a vast scale and abstract labour time coerced from workers work, capital perpetuates itself. The key what to do about it. unit by “innumerable unit.”’ (Harry Cleaver, here is any work, pointless or otherwise, is There is one brief moment of lucidity Reading Capital Politically, 1979, p. 218) what produces value. That value is not to when Graeber raises the issue of the global Graeber has little use for any analysis us (Marx calls these ‘use values’ although division of labour. Here he begins to explain of this global supply chain. While he they are useful to capital as well) but to what many of these jobs do and why they acknowledges that they workers are running capital in its objective to maintain control probably exist. In the past four decades the the minute details of the global system he and perpetuate the system of exploitation global economy has been transformed so dismisses them as worthless dumb jobs that and domination. Value is not some thing that waged work is no longer done in house contribute nothing. In over-emphasising excreted by workers working. It is the power by a company’s workers and manufacturing the particular he loses sight of the system. to impose work. Cleaver explains, work is no longer completed on a single We need to recall Marx’s analysis in Capital, assembly line. Rather, the entire supply Volume III (1894) that the share of profits Unfortunately, many tend to think that chain for production and service work doesn’t just go to the capitalist at the end the magnitude of value of a commodity is now global with its parts rationalised, of the supply chain but is shared by all is determined by the amount of abstract broken up and distributed along multiple the capitalists who are part of the entire labour time incorporated into it by the assembly lines in a global supply chain in production process. In this way, the bullshit worker who produced it. But, to conceive which each worker is separated by great workers carry out not pointless work but of the value of a commodity as being the distances, language, etc. minuscule tasks that in total contribute to direct result of the work of producing Much of the pointless bullshit work managing the global assembly line. Many that individual commodity is to lose the

27 Ebb Magazine social character of value and to see it Graeber briefly discusses. If there is any type higher wages for more exploitation). That is instead as some metaphysical substance of free market jobs program, it’s creating extremely admirable. that is magically injected into the product countless shitty jobs at starvation wages to Since Graeber self-identifies as an by the worker’s touch. Such a theory of do what can’t be automated or cheaper to anarchist my expectations were sorely value is akin to the old chemical theory of do with human labour. Third, the complete disappointed. Although he does celebrate phlogiston in which the principle of fire opposite is occurring as politicians take large the resistance to and refusal of work, he was conceived as a material substance campaigns donations from the corporate doesn’t have any tactics or strategies for incorporated into inflammable objects. sector to make it easier for them to engage in ramping up the struggle against work. A phlogiston theory of value leads to mass layoffs, outsourcing, automation, app- Rather, he eventually concedes to offering such bizarre and politically dangerous based work, contingency, etc. Lastly, the policy solutions by redefining all work results as identifying ‘value-producing’ well-paid bullshit jobs portrayed in the book as caring work and supporting Universal workers only as those who do physical are rare inside and virtually non-existent Basic Income (UBI), an idea hatched by work directly on the product. From outside the global north because these jobs libertarian capitalists. Drawing on the Wages here it is only one step to the ritualistic exist to manage the global division of labour for Housework’s critique of reproductive categorisation of ‘real’ workers and in which the workers in the rest of the world or caring work and emotional labour as ‘unproductive’ workers and the political are engaged in shit jobs. unwaged labour, Graeber simply redefines positions usually associated with such Here we return to Fischer’s point. all work as caring labour. He argues that an approach. (Cleaver, Reading Capital Graeber’s fetishisation of value as a thing whether working in an office, helping Politically, 1979, p. 218) blinds him to the productive role of bullshit customers in a call centre or taking care of jobs. They produce surplus value because your children, virtually all work ultimately This raises a second theoretical flaw in these ‘bullshit’ jobs exist to manage and serves others and should be considered care Graeber’s analysis: his dismissal of the exploit countless other workers downstream work. Once all non-caring bullshit work is ‘labour theory of value’ which he correctly along the global division of labour. There automated, Graeber foresees all the work attributes to Adam Smith and Marx’s is no denying most of these jobs are soul that will be left will be caring work — the critical expansion and application of the crushing and mind numbing. But saying that quintessential ‘good’ work he tries so hard concept. These thinkers both surprisingly is not the same as demonstrating that their to avoid for most of the book. And once agreed that all value is produced by labour, labour does not contribute to capitalism. UBI is established, people will be freed only that Marx sought a way out of that They are productive to capitalism because up to do only caring work. It is hardly an trap. Because bullshit work is pointless, they keep one person at work instead of anarchist solution to propose a policy Graeber cannot see how it contributes doing all the unlimited activities Graeber prescription that leaves us dependent on the to the social relations of production and celebrates for a life beyond work. At worst, state to collect and transmit the profits of reproduction, erroneously concluding they dominate and exploit many other the capitalist economy. that the labour theory of value no longer seen and unseen workers who likewise So ultimately, Graeber’s prescription in applies. Overturning two centuries of work are subordinated to endless work. Either the title, ‘what we can do about it [bullshit critiquing capitalism, Graeber returns us to way, they produce value because they are work],’ is to choose caring work, either a feudal system of workers trapped in their imposed work and in turn impose work on waged directly or paid for by a UBI payment. bullshit jobs to survive. others. The fundamental fact of Graeber’s In the end, it’s not a collective global class respondents are evidence of his mistake struggle against the exploitation of human Free Market Jobs Program — these workers are informing him about labour in order to buy the essentials of life to their work. The fact that they are working, survive. It’s not mass strikes and other forms The strongest evidence of Graeber’s mistake however absurd they might be, is evidence of job action to drive down work hours and is the explanation for why these jobs exist that they produce value — for capital. drive up wages so as to make human labour in the first place. Many of his respondents unmanageable and prohibitively expensive. humorously acknowledge that their Caring to Struggle It’s not a revolutionary reorganisation of jobs need not exist. A robot, computer society to meet the needs of all the planetary algorithm, or efficient restructuring could If Graeber is missing the socialism central to inhabitants. In the end we are left with a easily automate, eliminate, or absorb their anarchism by dismissing the labour theory of policy prescription to choose caring work, pointless tasks. Graeber refuses to take the value, he is further missing it by completely work that reproduces the labour power of capitalists’ word at face value that they need ignoring class struggle. As someone who others to work. What a letdown. people to do this work and instead, without did NGO advocacy work for years and now Although we ultimately learn that evidence, argues that bullshit jobs are part of teaches political science, I admire Graeber’s Graeber’s stream of anarchism is the moral a preposterous free market jobs program in refusal to propose policy prescriptions for kind, Bullshit Jobs is a humorous page which corporations continue to create jobs what we should do about bullshit work. He turning assault on meaningless work you’ll in response to demands from political elites especially refuses to make any proposals that spend your rare ‘time off’ from work to read. so the later can get elected and re-elected. do not allow workers ‘the means to manage But once you finish his moral denunciation There are a few problems with this their own affairs’ but rather empower the of pointless work, you’ll still need to make claim. First, there is no evidence that such state and corporations. ‘Yeah, so this work lunch for tomorrow and hit the sack early a corporatist social contract exists. The is bullshit. What should we do about it?’ is for yet another gruelling commute and headlines don’t scream ‘20,000 new jobs often framed the wrong way. Graeber insists endless day of absurd work. In Bullshit Jobs created by company X today’ but that they that he does not want to make work better. we now know our jobs are mostly pointless. destroyed the jobs. Second, the number of He did not set out to make the union, liberal, We still don’t know yet how to get rid of well-paid bullshit jobs being created are and social democratic prescription for more them — and all work for that matter. far eclipsed by low paying shit jobs which work (eg, exploitation) or ‘better’ work (eg,

28 Ebb Magazine Why We Lie About Aid Joel Hellewell

here was outrage in September 2019 between intentions of funders and the provision is scarce. when it emerged that the Royal wider development community. However, Yanguas states several times that he is National Lifeboat Institution spent Yanguas never explicitly questions how the aware that aid might have more ‘mundane’ 2% of its annual income overseas. true goals of the development agencies of goals than genuine charity, but there are TThe money, totalling just over three million imperialist capitalist powers might differ many passages that are crying out for any pounds, went towards overseas partners from – or even contradict – their stated analysis of the ulterior motives that might lie working to reduce deaths from drowning goals. It is not contentious to suggest that behind foreign aid. To give one such example: across the world. Tapping into the popular foreign aid is often used as a political tool ‘It would not be until the 1990s that politics sentiment that the UK spends too much to achieve policy objectives on behalf of was finally allowed into the development money on charitable causes overseas, Tory the donor country. The very content of agenda, and that was only after the debacle MP Andrew Brigden said, ‘It’s not the aid can be shaped to produce the political of external debt and structural adjustment Royal International Lifeboat Institution.’ outcome desired by the donor nation. When that left many countries worse off.’ Politics, In fact, the UK government’s foreign aid Venezuela’s economic crisis deepened as a then, is when development agencies became budget comprises only 0.7% of the national result of further US sanctions, the Bank of concerned with co-operating with recipient budget. In Why We Lie About Aid, Pablo England decided to freeze the $1.2 billion governments to help them develop into Yanguas points out that this percentage in funds held there on behalf of the Maduro western-style capitalism, and apparently remains relatively unchanged, irrespective government. The UK government then of the political party in power. Up until the announced £30 million in humanitarian aid millennium at least, the difference between would be delivered to Venezuela in the form the approaches taken by progressive and of clean water and medicines. conservative governments has been the The key to this strategy is to steal the difference of a few tenths of a percentage of money that could be invested in production the gross national product that goes toward to help the country become self-sufficient foreign aid. His two types of government may and to only provide aid as consumables disagree about precisely how and where this to make the UK appear as a helpful donor money is used, but both view development rather than as part of the international as ‘the pursuit of fair markets, efficient states, effort to bring the Maduro government and personal freedom.’ Since the mid-2000s, to its knees and make Venezuela reliant achieving this specific view of development on foreign aid. This critique of the form has been threatened by the funding practices of foreign aid is echoed in the thinking of of governmental development agencies the revolutionary Marxist and president of such as the Department for International Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara. He called Development (DFID) in the UK. In 2010, for aid in the form of ‘ploughs, tractors, DFID began requiring stringent cost- fertilizer, insecticide, watering cans, drills, effectiveness analyses before they would dams’, i.e. the means of production, rather fund development projects. The ability than food, which is consumed and then you to demonstrate impact in financial terms are again left needing the help of imperialist leads to the funding of projects that lend nations. The former demonstrates how a themselves to being audited, rather than communist approach to foreign aid differs to projects, such as those relating to anti- that of imperialist nations. For example, the corruption and democratic freedoms, that Cuban government has paid out of its own Why We Lie About Aid have less easily quantifiable effects. pocket to house, train, and feed thousands Pablo Yanguas Having worked at DFID for nearly of doctors from the poorest countries in the two decades, Yanguas is perfectly placed world, provided that they return to their Zed Books, 2018 to provide insight on the contradiction country to help communities where medical 9781783609338

29 Ebb Magazine not when the World Bank and International foreign aid as a punching bag for decrying Through anti-capitalist critiques of this Monetary Fund spent the majority of the the evils of colonialism and capital.’ But this policy we can begin to understand how poor 1980s making aid conditional on countries is to fundamentally misrepresent the point countries opening their markets benefitted adopting laissez-faire economic policies of anti-capitalist critiques of foreign aid. the western capitalist class at the expense of – at the expense of their actual economic Such critiques don’t focus on aid merely to the poorest people on the planet, ultimately development. ‘get at’ capitalism, regardless of how much coming to understand how this may well Only in the last chapter is it revealed why the struggle to prevent millions of people provide a reason why the policy was pursued the book treads such a careful line between each year dying from starvation and easily so extensively. It is unclear how useful an acknowledging anti-capitalist critiques of preventable diseases might suggest. Anti- application of ‘contentious development aid while at the same time never substantially capitalist critiques reveal the rift between politics’ would have been during this participating in them. Yanguas lays out his the hidden and stated goals of foreign aid, as economic restructuring, given its reluctance new vision of a ‘contentious development well as bringing into question the methods to question the intentions with which the aid politics,’ which he feels is needed to ‘step used to get there. is given. Even so, now that ‘politics has been away from the straw men that all too often In donor nations, foreign aid is sold to allowed into development’, with a new focus grab the spotlight in development debates.’ the public as a moral requirement where on anti-corruption measures and under the Yanguas is then willing to co-operate with imperialist countries show their humanity pretence of building stable democracies neoliberal donors and autocratic regimes by preventing suffering in uncivilised rather than pro-actively harmful economic for the benefit of people who suffer the and underdeveloped countries – whose liberalisation, is there no longer a need for most in some of the poorest countries, but circumstances are never tied to the wider anti-capitalist critiques? he longs to perform this task in a funding context of imperialism and colonialism. On the surface, corruption in recipient arena that acknowledges that the path to The economic restructuring prior to the governments channels money away from creating western capitalist democracies will 1990s was not implemented with the the people whose lives it is being donated be slow and non-linear. One group of straw understanding that it would ultimately make to improve. Less corruption is therefore men to be avoided are ‘anthropologists things worse off for working class people good. A campaign against corruption also and self-styled critical scholars, who use in the countries undergoing restructuring. happens to be the next step in ensuring that

Who Killed Cornelius Cardew? Fiona Norman

n 13th December 1981 of a life marked by dramatic breaks and Cornelius Cardew, seen as the frenzied energy was explored in front of most important avant-garde a full and enthusiastic audience, where O Cardew’s life story was presented through British composer living at the time, was killed. Returning from a meeting of the electroacoustic performances of his key Central Committee of the Revolutionary work and accompanied by projections of Communist Party – Marxist-Leninist, to his graphic scores. which he belonged, he crossed the road Cardew, born in Winchcombe, from Leyton Underground station and was Gloucestershire, was both a Marxist- the victim of a hit-and-run. His involvement Leninist and a musical revolutionary. with anti-fascism, Irish solidarity, and Between 1953-57 he studied piano, cello, advocacy of Marxist-Leninism, led to and composition at the Royal Academy suggestions that his death was politically of Music. Winning a scholarship to study motivated rather than accidental. ‘Who electronic music, he went to Cologne to Killed Cornelius Cardew?’ was the title of become assistant to Karl Heinz Stockhausen a performance at the Hastings Fringe by and was drawn to the minimalist and Performed by Amusia Production on Amusia Productions. Amusia, who have experimental music of artists like John the 8th of August 2019 previously covered the French composer Cage. Then, in one of the sudden breaks Erik Satie, combined music, visuals, that marked his career, he denounced spoken word and audience participation. all of this as elitist and undemocratic. The musical and political importance He wanted to make a music for and with the people. Indeed, later in his career he 30 Ebb Magazine formed a Marxist rock band called People's life to militancy. His political involvement longer, he would have continued to practice Liberation Music, with an album entitled seems to have occurred because of the intense political and musical commitment. 'We only want the Earth'. collapse of the Scratch Orchestra, the The musicians in Hastings offered Cardew is best known for his use of improvised group of musicians that he a series of highly assured and artistic graphic scores, a term that requires some had put together in the 1960s as part of performances; graphic scores were used explanation. The concept of graphic his efforts to produce a democratic and expressively and with sensitive sonic notation can feel somewhat alien and participatory musicianship. A Marxist diversity. The projections accompanying uncomfortable even to seasoned musicians. faction amongst the musicians argued that the music provided the listener with a sense Rather than the composer providing the this approach remained ‘bourgeois’, a crisis of context to the sounds they were hearing, specific pitches and rhythms required ensued, and the Scratch Orchestra broke creating an immersive and intimate through the medium of clefs, staves, quavers up. Influenced by his friend and musical experience as well as opportunities for and time signatures, they instead provide collaborator Michael Rowe, he embraced audience participation in the spirit of both instructions or suggestions through other that beliefs and practices of the faction and the compositions and their performance. visual means. This could be anything from joined what was then the Communist Party Audience members were offered the a modified version of traditional notation, of England (Marxist-Leninist). This was chance to join in with the musicians using a through to pictorial images, to abstract an anti-revisionist party, one of a number selection of percussion instruments, as well shapes. Cardew’s scores are iconic and internationally that argued that the Soviet as having a go at singing one of Cardew’s quite beautiful, featuring geometric shapes Union had ceased to advocate revolution compositions as a group. and lines from which the performer creates and had become revisionist. A product The musicologist in me would have liked their musical interpretation. The use of of the split between China and the Soviet the show to last for perhaps twice as long, this type of score creates a necessity for Union, anti-revisionism initially embraced with a full panel discussion of the musical collaboration between the composer and Maoism before settling for Enver Hoxha, choices made and analysis of the outcomes. the musician; the music is in a process of the Albanian leader, for inspiration. In 1979 After the performance ended it was moving being invented as it is performed, and there it became the Revolutionary Communist to hear one of his former comrades who is little chance of it sounding the same way Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist). It still was in the audience, an ex-Ford Dagenham twice. exists today and has a bookshop in South car worker, speak briefly about Cardew’s Cardew’s intention was the ‘socialisation’ London. life and death. While his death remains of music. Reading a graphic score is not like The performance showed how Cornelius a mystery, his comrade noted that the reading traditional Western notation, where Cardew’s music and his politics moved intelligence services routinely infiltrate left there is usually a single correct reading of a together. In the years before his death he wing political organisations, and with Mrs note or other feature. As such, the concept addressed meetings, composed music in Thatcher in power, the pressure on the left is useful in non-traditional music education praise of Mao, Irish republicanism and was high in 1981. However, it seems true to and community music, allowing a shared workers’ struggles. When he died aged just the essence of the music involved that the music-making or composing experience 45 in 1981, it is worth remembering that the audience is left to interpret the experience with no need for training in music theory. Hunger Strikes in the Maze Prison, which for themselves. Increasingly radicalised during the left ten Irish Republicans dead including 1960s, Cardew joined an anti-revisionist the iconic Bobby Sands, had occurred just Marxist political party and devoted his a few weeks before. No doubt if he had lived

One of Cornelius Cardew’s graphic scores for ‘Treatise’

31 Ebb Magazine