A paper of Marxist polemic and Marxist unity

Chris Knight pays tribute n CPGB aggregate n Stalin’s ‘history’ of 1912 to David Graeber, his n Alexander Hamilton ideas and his activism n CPGB 100 years No 1314 September 10 2020 Towards a mass Communist Party £1/€1.10 Voting for the rotten tradition of Millerandism: fittingly John McDonnell was given star billing weekly 2 September 10 2020 1314 worker LETTERS

Letters may have been modern post-agricultural revolution The internationalisation of global employment occupation. If those laws on the streets and, more importantly, in shortened because of humans, for whom malnutrition became trade and the accompanying reduction in of supply and demand were tilted in the workplaces. Hence why the SWP space. Some names a serious problem (witness the well trade barriers has been one of the long- favour of restricting immigration and is currently concentrating on recruiting  may have been changed documented decline in stature, reduction term policies and regulatory objectives the actual enforcement of existing laws amongst the Extinction Rebellion and in brain volume, appearance of dental of the transnational capitalist class for controlling immigration, there would Black Lives Matter protestors and caries and other chronic diseases of one reason: profit. It is a falsehood to be more ability of the organised worker activists. This example of recruiting the Obesity civilisation with the advent of the presume that that by opposing tariffs the and the individual worker to bargain vanguard and building the vanguard at James Linney’s article on obesity and agricultural revolution). Marxist left is opposing capitalism. In with employers much better pay and the same time is something the CPGB Covid last week was rather mixed One may also ask, what survival fact it actually strengthens the power of conditions. (PCC) can learn from. scientifically (‘Worse than useless’, advantage is there to a hunter-gatherer the capitalist, who exploits the differential If the practical curtailment of the There is also much that communists September 3). He asserts that “even if in an adaptation that causes them to between high-wage and low-wage power of monopoly capitalism and can learn from the experience of obesity was eradicated tomorrow, this become fat on their natural diet? Surely countries through voluntarily providing international capitalism is to be achieved, James P Cannon, founder of the US would only reduce a small portion of if eating high-calorie foods such as meat them with the ability to have goods then the Marxist must commence setting Socialist Workers Party, in building the mortality and morbidity from Covid-19: and fat (from, for example, the abundant manufactured in low-cost countries out the case against the maintenance revolutionary party, starting with a small there are other factors like age, underlying herds of buffalo that historically roamed and then as a consequence of trade of those four freedoms that underpin group of dedicated cadres and activists. comorbidities and deprivation. You the plains of Africa or North America) globalisation have those same goods the operation of neoliberalism and I highly recommend that communists cannot ‘beat’ coronavirus by simply had caused early humans to become imported into high-wage economies. transnational capitalism. read James P Cannon’s The history of losing weight.” obese, they would have soon lost the The working classes also benefit from Oliver Healey American Trotskyism. When Cannon was However, a retrospective cohort study ability to hunt and turned into prey these goods, but those workers are often Leicester expelled from the Communist Party in by Italian clinicians of 482 consecutive themselves. Although obesity does occur maintained on social security subsistence 1928, he and two other comrades started Covid-19 patients hospitalised between in indigenous populations like the Plains in order to redistribute the windfall from SWP is right a weekly newspaper, The Militant. This March 1 and April 20 found that among Indians or Australian Aborigines today, lower consumer prices to the higher- I agree with John Masters in was the scaffolding around which the these patients: this is invariably observed as a result of income groups. congratulating the organisers of then Communist League of America  A body mass index (BMI) between colonisation and the replacement of their How can it be in the interest of the Communist University (Letters, was able to get recruits across the vast 30 and 34.9 kg/m2, defined as severe historic diets by capitalist commodities. workers of the western hemisphere to September 3). I took part in the first six continent of the United States. obesity, significantly increased the risk Secondly, the medical literature be thrown onto the scrapheap of social sessions, but had to stop after my brain This is why in 2020 the Weekly of respiratory failure. considers it debatable whether the security by the tolerance afforded to became overloaded by concentrating Worker is so important in building the  A significantly higher risk of death metabolic set point posited by James international capitalists exploiting the on my small laptop screen for each revolutionary party. Both online and in was observed in patients with a BMI exists, and if it does exist how relevant workers of the eastern hemisphere? of the two-and-a-half-hour sessions. hard copy, it is a precious resource. It above 35 kg/m2, defined as morbid it is to the question of obesity. In the How can tolerating that disequilibrium However, I have since watched the rest is also our main weapon in combating obesity. article, ‘Is there evidence for a set point through opposing tariffs be conducive to on YouTube. identity politics and left Labourism. The existing medical literature that regulates human body weight?’, empowering the proletariat of the world? Like John, I too watched the session James P Cannon often told his comrades, makes it abundantly clear that obesity Müller, Bosy-Westphal and Heymsfield In the eastern hemisphere those from Jack Conrad on the origin of “In any activity in the working class does significantly worsen the course of note that “searching for the genetic goods are produced by low-wage labour. the CPGB with interest, especially its movement, it is a matter of what you Covid-19 in patients. Moreover, besides background of excess weight gain in a Wage-slavery is further entrenched by lessons for the work of communists in give, and what you get.” Given the being vastly more prevalent in socially world of abundance is misleading, since the fact that those workers are denied 2020. I agree with John that there is an CPGB’s current emphasis on work in deprived, working class and minority the possible biological control is widely their right to collectively bargain for elephant in the room - doesn’t winning the Labour Party, including the Labour ethnic populations in the advanced overshadowed by the effect of the better pay and working conditions. Their the vanguard entail winning new Left Alliance, the success of such work capitalist countries, obesity is known environment”, and regulation of body ability to collectivise as trade unions is members to that vanguard? I also agree should be seen by the number of new to be strongly associated with other weight “may be lost or camouflaged denied them very often through state- with John when he writes: “There is a recruits it is getting and the increase in underlying conditions and comorbidities, by western diets, suggesting that the sanctioned intimidation and violence, as younger generation out there drowning visitors to the Weekly Worker website. such as diabetes and cardiovascular failure of biological control is due in China. in the trap of identity politics, cancel Otherwise such work in the Labour Party disease, that are themselves reliably mainly to external factors”. That is, If the philosophical belief in culture, environmentalist doomsday- is a waste of activists’ time and money. reported in the medical literature to the primary evolutionary or biological ‘Workers of the world, unite’ is so mongering and the failure of Corbyn.” I am glad that the Weekly Worker worsen the course of Covid-19 in factor that James Linney uses to explain prevalent among Marxists, why is it that In my opinion the CPGB (PCC) has will shortly be available in hard-copy patients. the prevalence of obesity in western they have not articulated a case for tariffs lost its way. It is bogged down in what printed form again, now that the national Therefore, while James Linney is societies, and the difficulty in losing and trade protectionism as an instrument is known as ‘revolutionary socialism’, lockdown has been eased somewhat. correct to observe that there are “other weight, may be less important than of coercing those states in the eastern so beloved by the Militant Tendency and Apart from the Weekly Worker, I also factors like age, underlying comorbidities environmental causes and, in particular, hemisphere into affording workers their its successor organisation, the Socialist subscribe to Socialist Worker, Socialist and deprivation” that worsen Covid the deleterious effects of modern inalienable right to collectively organise Party in England and Wales. The Review, and International Socialism - outcomes, such factors, far from being western and industrial diets on the and bargain for better pay and working presenting of resolutions to meetings the weekly paper, monthly magazine independent of obesity, are in fact highly human metabolism. conditions? of the Labour Left Alliance doesn’t and quarterly journal, respectively, of correlated with it. While correlation does Thirdly, James seems here to Freedom of movement of people advance the communist movement the SWP. Unlike the Weekly Worker the not necessarily equal causation, and the subscribe to the conventional ‘calorie across territorial borders is another of one bit. This comes from the CPGB’s SWP because of its size has been able to observed worsening of Covid morbidity in, calorie out’ model for weight gain. those contemporary discourses that has mistaken idea that the Labour Party can continue producing hard copies of these and mortality with obesity may in fact As Gary Taubes has noted, explaining been left critically unchallenged by the be won to Marxism, instead of building three publications during the lockdown. reflect the action of some other as yet weight gain as being a result of taking Marxist left. There is a Marxist case a communist party independent of the This shows, as John Masters points unknown underlying factors, this is not in more energy than is expended is for limiting the freedom of movement Labour Party, but orientated to it at the out in his letter, along with Mike the argument that James is making. nothing more than a tautology - rather of people not on the basis of racial or same time. Macnair, the need to build the CPGB Indeed, while James appears to accept like explaining global warming as being cultural origins, but on the grounds of The CPGB through Labour Party and the circulation of the Weekly Worker that obesity does actually worsen the due to the Earth absorbing more solar limiting the use of economic instruments Marxists wants to convert the middle- through an orientation to the organised course of Covid-19, he still asserts that energy than it re-radiates into space. of coercion and control. class liberals so common in Labour left and the rest of the population at the “even a genuinely competent attempt at Similarly, a foetus or a tumour grows The theory of the reserve army of Party branches and CLPs to Marxism. same time. reducing rates of obesity would not be because it takes in more energy from unemployed labour that was developed To do so is like trying to build a house John Smithee able to reduce them quickly enough to its environment than it expends. As by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx on chicken legs: in the end the whole Cambridgeshire impact the harm from Covid-19”. Does scientific explanations, none of those was not based on immigration - though structure will collapse. Lenin often used James have any evidence to support statements are very enlightening, are at the time immigration was used by the expression, “An ounce of experience, Interference this bold claim? Let us suppose, for they? the governing classes to undercut the is worth a tonne of theory.” He was So who poisoned Alexei Navalny? The argument’s sake, that in the absence Apart from the above scientific subsistence pay levels enjoyed by also fond of the Russian proverb, “Life obvious answer is Russian military of an effective vaccine for Covid, differences, I agree with James English workers by, for example, Irish teaches.” The experience of Corbynism intelligence (GRU) or the internal society was able to achieve a long-term politically that the UK government will labourers, who could be hired for less was a laboratory experiment in left agency (FSB) under the direction of return to the levels of obesity that were only continue to grossly mismanage all than what English workers would accept Labourism. It ended in complete failure. Putin. There’s no great reason to doubt historically seen in western populations aspects of public health, from Covid to for the same job. This is something the CPGB (PCC) has this: like most national leaders he’s in the 1970s (ie, before the introduction obesity. Marx wrote: “Big industry constantly yet to learn from. perfectly capable of ordering severe of government dietary guidelines and Gary Simons requires a reserve army of unemployed It is interesting that this month is the damage to opponents, as he showed the subsequent explosion in obesity), email workers for times of overproduction. 50th anniversary of the Allende Popular in Chechnya and in the razing of its and that, in line with the Italian study The main purpose of the bourgeois in Unity government coming to power capital, Grozny. He also has a motive, quoted above, such a decline in obesity Marxist tariffs? relation to the worker is, of course, to in Chile. Three years later Allende’s since Navalny has been an energetic, resulted in a long-term “significant” The concordat between the international have the commodity labour as cheaply government was overthrown by popular and determined opponent of reduction of a few percentage points Marxist or Trotskyite and the international as possible, which is only possible when general Pinochet in a US-backed coup. Putin for some time. This may be a way in hospitalisations, respiratory failure capitalist is well documented, and the supply of this commodity is as large The result was that 30,000 socialists to neutralise him and/or warn anyone and deaths due to Covid-19. Surely, illustrated by the tolerance shown by as possible in relation to the demand for and communists were murdered, and else off - though it does seem to be a given that there is no effective cure or the international Marxist to the four it ... Overpopulation is therefore in the thousands more disappeared, were particularly stupid way to do it. guarantee of a vaccine for this nasty freedoms of movement that are the interest of the bourgeoisie” (‘Wages’, tortured or forced into exile. Given the But was it so simple? The cry goes infection on the horizon, even a modest substantive basis of neoliberalism: of December 1847). warning by US secretary of state Mike up that it was novichok that was used, drop in morbidity or death due to the capital, goods, people and services. Now with that substantive Pompeo about “push back” if Corbyn and only the Russians have that. But if disease would be something that we all The neoliberalism phenomenon that argumentation in place, there is a had been elected as British prime only the Russians have novichok how should welcome? we seek to challenge from our respective Marxist case for the limitation of minister, it is probably best for our safety can anyone else know that this is what In his article James Linney also ideological and ideational points of the immigration that would restrict another that Labour lost the December election. it was? This is not a plea for Putin’s fell into the trap of using what the spectrum is a philosophy that has been of those fundamental freedoms that Since the December election innocence - there are no grounds for palaeontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, demonstrated by technical assessment neoliberalism and the transnational debacle, I have had time to think about that on the face of it. It is just that his termed “just so stories”. Here, James and academic analysis to be the primary capitalist class have come to rely upon what communists should do next. accusers, the usual suspects, have no turns reality on its head, seemingly creation of the machinations of the to a much greater extent than in previous After much thought I have concluded great record of truth telling. in order to reach a predetermined international finance institutions. But epochs. Immigration is simply the rich that the Socialist Workers Party has Pretty much as soon as the accusation conclusion. Firstly, hunter-gatherers, not even a fraction of the objectives of and powerful way of expanding the the correct position when it comes to was made, the call has come for the and especially pre-Neolithic peoples, the long-stated aims of the communist reserve army of the unemployed or the Labour Party. As Socialist Worker construction of a new gas pipeline from had better overall nutritional status (as will ever come to fruition whilst their underemployed in order to suppress says each week in its ‘What we stand Russia to Germany to be cancelled, and recorded by the paleo-anthropological theoreticians remain grounded in the ability of workers to bargain for for’ column, “Socialism cannot come I think that we can be confident that the record, or pictures of Australian confrontational and oppositional modes far higher pay, especially when there through parliament”. At the same time, ‘leaders of the free world’ are a good Aborigines from 120 years ago) than of thought. is a shortage of labour in any given I agree with the SWP that real power lies deal more concerned about the pipeline BCM Box 928, London WC1N 3XX l 07903 054393 l www.weeklyworker.co.uk l [email protected] weekly worker 1314 September 10 2020 3

than they are about a Russian dissident and his family - though, as usual, no doubt, ‘Our thoughts are with …’ No, AGGREGATE they’re not. Western leaders bend over backwards to deny their own crimes. British prime ministers see no reason why British troops should be made to pay for war In close-quarter combat crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ireland or anywhere else. The US and Israeli Peter Manson reports on our assessment of and approach to the reformist Labour left leaders, to name but a few, are more than happy to assassinate political opponents he September 6 joint aggregate - by plane or drone, for instance. This of CPGB and Labour Party may mean, unfortunately, that relatives TMarxists comrades discussed and other civilians may get killed too, or two items: first, the Labour Left instead, but, hey, ‘shit happens’. So, in Alliance and secondly the prospects other words, a fair bit of ‘pot and kettle’ for resuming printing the Weekly name-calling goes on. Worker in the near future. Maybe the treatment of dissidents by Clive Dean of LPM opened on the US and its satraps is more nuanced? the LLA’s August 22 conference. Take Julian Assange, for example: He began by reiterating the key currently, and for many years now, aim of Marxists within the Labour he’s been undergoing torture in the Party: to transform Labour into a UK according to the UN rapporteur. permanent united front of the working Or Chelsea Manning - in and out of class. He reminded comrades that, prison while suffering regular physical, following Jeremy Corbyn’s election mental and financial pain. Their crime? as Labour leader, many thousands Annoying the powers that be by pointing joined the party. But very many did to their crimes. And then we have the nothing apart from paying their dues. Black Panthers suffering decades of Meanwhile, Corbyn was opposed by solitary confinement for, er, being Black the vast majority of the Parliamentary Panthers. Let’s leave Guantanamo with Labour Party, as well as the entire just a passing mention this time. state establishment. He and John The Guardian led on September 3 on McDonnell were targeted because the developments in the Navalny story, of their previous opposition to but in its ‘The long read’ of the very imperialism. same day we find “The death squads The two election manifestos of Operation Condor” - who let that drafted under their leadership made Fight against opportunism cannot be skipped through? Eight south American countries no mention of the aim of socialism, in the 70s and 80s - especially Argentina, but envisaged, instead, a nice, fair, problem, not part of the solution”. In random. Any democratic conference potential replacement for the Labour but also including Chile, Brazil, green capitalism. Worse, Corbyn and fact many comrades may now feel would invite the fraction concerned to Party and now fully stands in the Uruguay and others - had interconnected McDonnell not only appeased the more at home inside Momentum. select those speaking in favour of its tradition of crass opportunism. By death squads, which could freely travel right: they effectively participated LPM has an important role to proposals - the best way to bring out inference its last conference voted for from country to country, capturing, in the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti- play by continuing to put forward the arguments. ‘socialists’ to participate in capitalist kidnapping, torturing, raping and killing Semitism’ witch-hunt. In the end, its principled Marxist politics within Comrade Conrad was followed and shadow capitalist governments. It opponents of each other’s regimes. following Labour’s comprehensive the LLA, which has organised two by Mike Macnair, who pointed to the is important that LPM comrades put The Guardian is a little coy about defeat in the December 2019 general relatively open conferences. But “underlying dynamic” - the decline forward our politics in such groups. some of the details, but it says: “Condor election, there was a huge victory the “five-year blip” represented by of the Labour left. He thought that Replying to the debate, comrade effectively integrated and expanded for Keir Starmer in the subsequent the Corbyn era has now come to an Momentum was most likely to gain Dean thought the example of the the state terror unleashed across South leadership contest, as the vast majority end and we need to be prepared to from this impasse. He was followed UWC was a good one, However, America during the cold war, after of Labour activists, including many intervene in new struggles. by Stan Keable of LPM, who stressed it was important “not to reinvent successive rightwing military coups, on the left, believed that the party had that the LLA (as well as the Labour the old, but to intervene according often encouraged by the US, erased to prioritise a future election victory Debate Representation Committee) was a to circumstances”. He also agreed democracy across the continent.” And, by appealing to the ‘middle ground’. First to intervene in the subsequent “site for struggle”, like the Labour with comrade Harvey on the Labour “Although many of the men who carried While Starmer has subsequently debate was Bob Paul, who believed Party itself. You do not have to have left’s “nostalgia for Corbynism” out Operation Condor were alumni of consolidated his position, what about that, compared to other such groups, illusions in a particular organisation to and “refusal to look at its mistakes”. the US army’s School of the Americas - the left? For the majority, comrade the LLA was “not so bad” - thanks, work within it, said comrade Keable. However, while the LLA “might a training camp in Panama for military Dean believed, it was a choice to some extent, to the influence of James Harvey thought a major not always be our priority”, it was from allied regimes across the continent between two options: either give up LPM comrades. The alliance has question concerned how we should important to intervene in it right now. - this was not a US-led operation.” on the party or “go with the flow”. been very proactive in responding to orientate towards the current Labour Well that’s a relief: it wasn’t US- Yet the right has not exactly been developments in the Labour Party, he left with its “nostalgia for Corbynism”. Paper led. There could be a book - and in fact willing to give ground to the left: in said. True, it is very difficult to win The LRC in particular is refusing to Unfortunately, the second item there are several - about US backing for, fact under Starmer the witch-hunt has majority support for LPM positions, address what went wrong and our role discussed has been somewhat and involvement in, coups and military been stepped up. Branches are even but it is certainly worthwhile engaging is to revisit what we have previously overtaken by events. I introduced a dictatorships in South America and they instructed not to discuss disciplinary with the LLA. raised. Many are reluctant to come discussion on our plans to resume go on to this day: Honduras, Bolivia … cases relating to anti-Semitism, for Next up was Jack Conrad, who to terms with the failure of a left-led printing the Weekly Worker later this and Venezuela, they hope. The main instance. thought that the role of the LLA Labour Party and are looking instead month, but in the few days since the thrust of the article is that at long last, This was the situation in which should not be overstated. It has around to “spontaneous and disorganised aggregate took place, the number of after a few decades, one or two geriatrics the LLA met and in comrade Dean’s 2,000 signatories (not members, protest”. But it is important not to write Covid-19 cases has shot up. are being brought to trial and even view the conference was “chaotic”. note), compared to, say, Left Unity, off the LLA, he said, where some have The reason we suspended printing punishment. He reminded comrades that LPM which had ten times that before it was indeed moved to the left. back in March was, of course, However, also noted in this ‘long had affiliated to the LLA in May and formally launched. The conference Next was William Sarsfield, precisely because of the pandemic read’ is the arrest in Britain of general then formed a fraction on the LLA’s was made up of ‘delegates’, but this who stressed that, even with its and the physical dangers it posed. But, Pinochet of Chile. But “Pinochet was organising group, though this seems did not count for much and certainly small forces, LPM could make an with the number of daily new cases held for 17 months, while Britain’s to have upset some. comrades from LPM were speaking impact. In the past the CPGB set up and particularly deaths continuing law lords twice approved extradition At the conference LPM submitted on behalf of their own organisation. the Unemployed Workers Charter to fall since May, we were confident to Spain. Labour Party home secretary its alternative statement, which had the He agreed with comrade Paul that (UWC), which did just that. But now that the risks had been sufficiently Jack Straw stymied the extradition, backing of around one third of those on the LLA was currently the best on the it is important to “keep up our efforts reduced to allow our comrades to instead sending Pinochet home to Chile the LLA’s organising group, as well as Labour left, but that was not saying on the Labour front”. He agreed with come together in order to collate and on health grounds.” A hard act to follow, a motion and a substantial amendment very much. And, yes, there was comrade Harvey that the LLA was far mail out the paper. The plan was for but I’m sure Sir Keir will do his best. to the alliance’s constitution. The generally support for LPM positions more open to LPM influence than was the editing and layout to be done A leading light in the repression of alternative statement highlighted the from about a third of those present, the LRC. individually and then coordinated democracy in South America was, of economic, political and ecological but we “shouldn’t brag” about that. After Jim Nelson proudly pointed online as now, and the risk from our course, Henry Kissinger. And, as Tom crisis of capitalism, stressed the Looking at developments outside out that “we have the answers, but team coming together once a week Lehrer put it, “Political satire became necessity of radical democratic Labour, he pointed to movements like others don’t”, comrade Conrad came would be minimised by adopting obsolete when Henry Kissinger was demands and the need for working Black Lives Matter and Extinction back in to state that we constantly basic safety measures. awarded the Nobel peace prize.” class rule and sought to establish the Rebellion, which have no centralised need to review our approach to left All this was discussed and agreed Things have progressed since then, of aim of achieving a future socialist/ organisational form and therefore groups and, while we must point at the aggregate, but since then the course - Barack Obama has won the communist society. I will not go into cannot but be ephemeral. However, to the limitations of BLM, etc, we number of infections has soared. prize, and he got it before he even had the details of these here, as comrade while the LLA does have an should not sneer. He returned to the While new daily cases had dropped a chance to show that he didn’t deserve Dean explained it all in his report in organisational structure, he stressed question of the choice of speakers for into the hundreds by late June, within it! last week’s paper (‘Sticking to failed that what matters is its politics - it is and against a particular motion and a couple of months they edged up Did Russian intelligence poison politics’, September 3). Suffice to Labourite (and “slightly faddish”). It reiterated that the aim should be to slightly, before rocketing back up to Navalny? Probably. Did Putin order it? say, they were all defeated, gaining is on the extreme left of Labourism, “raise the level of debate”. In other just below 3,000 earlier this week. Maybe - or at least he might have had the support of around a third of the which means that it could become a words, the chair should prioritise While everyone who spoke at a ‘Will no-one rid me of this turbulent delegates. vehicle for aspiring bureaucrats. In selecting speakers who will put the the aggregate agreed that we should priest?’ moment like Henry II. Have Comrade Dean concluded by other words, it is “on the outer fringes question most clearly on both sides. resume printing, we have now had Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and looking at the LLA’s prospects. We are of bourgeois politics”. He spoke also about the LRC, which to revisit our decision to do so. other upholders of ‘western values’ the currently in a “hostile environment” He also pointed out that at is “much more of an establishment Hopefully we are going through a honesty and integrity to condemn the for the left, he said, but the LLA the conference there had been organisation” than the LLA, in that it temporary blip and the delay will be crime? Of course not. remains within the “tried, tested and insufficient time to discuss the two has organic links with the trade union very short, but it is possible that we Jim Nelson failed tradition of left reformism”, rival statements and, worse, many of and labour bureaucracy. This is the could see this new spike become the email which means that it is “part of the the speakers called were chosen at organisation that once saw itself as a feared ‘second wave’ l weekly 4 September 10 2020 1314 worker LRC Micro-debates, fatal decisions Stan Keable of Labour Party Marxists reports on an AGM that roundly voted to place itself in the rotten tradition of Millerandism. Fittingly John McDonnell was given star billing couple of weeks ago I was told reached members and was neither proposals had threatened to “suspend that there had been a “falling moved nor debated, as the procedural or terminate” the membership of Aout” between the Labour motion fell in the first vote of the individuals, affiliates or local LRC Representation Committee and its AGM: 21 for, 57 against, 6 abstentions. groups that are guilty of “wilfully president, John McDonnell. Although (With 84 votes cast and 122 people in misrepresenting the views of the this was not surprising, given his the meeting at this point, including LRC, its elected national bodies “sickening political decay”,1 I was half a dozen non-voting observers, the or officers, whether to other LRC at a loss to find any evidence of it. real number of abstentions was much members or the wider public, by any Indeed, the conference arrangements higher, nearer to 38.) means”.3 After the withdrawal of this committee (CAC) gave McDonnell Moving the NEC statement, vice- threat to freedom of speech, Gordon pride of place as the first panel chair Cathy Augustine stood in for Nardell was commissioned to draft speaker at the LRC’s delayed online political secretary Mick Brooks, its the present, pretty good, procedures. AGM/conference on September 5. main author, who was unwell. Cathy Now, however, the NEC’s proposal However, instead of apologising talked about “we socialists” being to dump them in an appendix was for his complicity in the witch-hunt “part of the opposition” within the carried by 51 votes to nine. Keep an and for pushing the Labour Party into party, and went on to “Starmer’s eye on this space. adopting the International Holocaust broken promises” and the current After a short break, the meeting Remembrance Alliance misdefinition “escalation of the witch-hunt”. After resumed with the only other significant of anti-Semitism, he used his speech two 10-member amendments, moved debate (still very time-limited) in the to tarnish the word “solidarity”, by Pete Firmin and Bisi Williams, shape of two 10-member motions, attempting to cover his present were carried unopposed, I was the both looking to replace the bankrupt treachery with hypocritical talk of the first to click on my blue hand to speak Centre-Left Grassroots Alliance, 1976-78 Grunwick strike (Jayaben - and was shocked to hear chair Matt which exists purely for the purpose Desai will be turning in her grave to Wrack (FBU general secretary) tell of drawing up a ‘left’ slate for Labour be misused in this way). Shamefully, me, “You have one minute”. NEC elections. Tina Werkmann’s the meeting went on to re-elect I barely had time to register my view motion, for LRC to withdraw from him, unopposed, as president of the All from the comfort of your own home that the statement should be rejected, the CLGA, fell by 16 votes to 62, organisation for another year. let alone explain my thinking. Corbyn while Graham Bash’s motion to work Of course, those not ‘in the know’ trade union delegates - 17 from the or barbarism”, she said: “We must had not merely made “mistakes”. for change “within and without” was have to speculate about divisions Fire Brigades Union and eight from replace the capitalist system” and His vain hope of delivering For the carried overwhelmingly. in the LRC leadership - what else the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers “build a powerful socialist current many, not the few without winning My 10-member motion, ‘Against can they do when the comrades hide Union - most of those present were within the Labour Party”. And our class for a democratic programme socialist participation in Starmer’s their political differences? ‘Cabinet there as individual members. There finally: “Support the Grassroots six to overturn the way we are ruled, is shadow cabinet’, gained 16 votes responsibility’, concealing political were motions from only two local in the NEC ballot.” But that slate is a failed strategy which should not be for and 44 against (106 people were differences, should have no place in LRC groups: Oxfordshire and Leeds. not “grassroots”, Laura. It is called repeated. The stab-in-the-back myth - present). As the motion had been the workers’ movement. Unhappily, So, while Labour Party membership “centre-left” - which translates into that Corbyn’s defeat was due entirely disallowed by the CAC for technical however, transparency is not in the rose from 150,000 or so under Blair plain English as ‘centre’. to his rightwing enemies - fails to reasons, and not displayed online with DNA of the LRC, nor of its Labour to over half a million under Corbyn, These platform speakers took up allow the left to criticise its own the other motions, my time as mover Briefing journal - nor of the other, the LRC - like the rest of the left, valuable discussion time in a four- failure, to ‘learn the lessons’ of defeat. was spent simply reading it out. The ‘original’ Labour Briefing. When the both inside and outside the party - has hour meeting, before the real business Tina Werkmann and Mark Lewis gist being that genuine socialists should ‘original’ was created after losing largely stagnated. could finally begin. both spoke against the statement - oppose capitalist governments and the vote at the 2012 Briefing AGM, After John McDonnell had given and comrade Wrack sensibly allowed shadow governments, not sit in them. both journals vowed never again to his ‘solidarity’ speech, we heard short Motions them to take a good deal more than Our task is not to save capitalism … mention the other, ensuring that the presentations from a series of invited Several motions were submitted to one minute, without interruption. Tina not even from itself. The one speaker political differences will fester in the speakers. We learned that Labour conference under the 10-member objected to the description of Corbyn against simply described the motion dark until they appear in crisis form. national executive candidate Nadia rule: any 10 paid-up LRC members as “heroic”. Sabotage had come from as “beyond parody”, unsurprising, Nonetheless, readers will Jama is a docker’s daughter, and also can submit one. This method speaks Corbyn, McDonnell and Formby, she having never before heard of the remember that the LRC joined with believes in solidarity. Jo Bird, who for the democratic good intentions said, and the leaked report shows that French ‘socialist’ Alexandre Millerand Labour Against the Witchhunt in the is on the ballot in the councillors of the LRC, ensuring that a minority Jeremy supported the expulsion of and how he joined the government summer of 2019 to launch the Labour section for the NEC elections, was view can be presented without having Chris Williamson and Jackie Walker. of ‘republican defence’ in 1899 and Left Alliance, but got cold feet and the only panel speaker to risk uttering to jump the hurdle of first winning Mark Lewis described the idea of how Second (Socialist) International withdrew in October, as the December the word “witch-hunt” (thank you, a majority locally, as members repeating the same failed strategy condemned the participation of general election approached. It is Jo), and recklessly awarded Jeremy must do in their Labour branch. over and over as “madness”: “Corbyn socialists in capitalist governments in hard to imagine that McDonnell had Corbyn (who sent apologies) the title The bureaucratic centralist regime objectively connived in this defeat. 1900 and 1904. But ignorance is bliss not applied pressure. Then came the of “honorary Jew” for the vilification practised in the Socialist Workers We need a forensic discussion on … and a defining moment. One must April 15 2020 launch of the ‘broad’, he has suffered. Jo called for support Party, for comparison, forbids such what has gone wrong.” presume that the majority wants more respectable alternative to LLA - in the NEC elections for Nadia Jama, horizontal political collaboration, and A “forensic discussion”, however, ‘socialists’ in capitalist governments ‘Don’t Leave, Organise’ (DLO) - Laura Pidcock and Yasmine Dar. expels perpetrators for factionalism. was not on the agenda, which allowed and shadow cabinets. In other words from the LRC, together with Jewish FBU delegate Andrew Scattergood, During the report of the conference only enough time for soundbites. politically the LRC is a Millerandist Voice for Labour and Red Labour. now chair of Momentum’s national arrangements committee (CAC) at the Graham Bash opined that “we need organisation. coordinating group following the start of conference, Tony Greenstein to be tougher” and “we gave too The motion had originally been McDonnell victory of the Forward Momentum had tried to move a procedural much ground on anti-Semitism” - an disallowed, as only nine proposers The AGM, which would normally be slate, spoke of “mistakes” (where motion - a “reference back” of the expression that was sufficient to get were deemed fully paid up members. held early in the year, was put on hold “treachery” seems more appropriate), section of the NEC statement entitled Chris Williamson disciplined. For One more was needed, although because of the pandemic lockdown, and urged us to trust the new “Learning from the mistakes of the Pete Firmin, however, “saying that another five were being processed, but in April the LRC announced Momentum and participate in the past five years”. Tony argued, in a Jeremy contributed to his own defeat but were “still to complete payment”. June 27 as the date for an online “refounding process” over the next written submission the day before is topsy-turvy”. The NEC statement Although formally in accordance with AGM. However, only 10 days later couple of years. The LRC should conference, that the weak position in was carried by 69 votes to 10, with the rule, the CAC handled this matter the ‘Diane Abbott/Bell Ribeiro-Addy affiliate to Momentum, he said. which Corbyn found himself as leader over 40 not voting. in an unthinking, non-political way incident’, at DLO’s first Zoom event, Unison assistant general secretary was “not as weak as is now made Next came amendments to the - as administrators, not as socialists. produced a retreat. After the two black Roger McKenzie, after reminding us out”, and in any case derived, at least LRC constitution, starting with its Likewise the two other 10-member ‘left’ MPs demonstrated their total that workers will need trade unions in part, “from his pitiful strategy of own disciplinary procedures. The motions which the CAC confessed lack of solidarity, promising never in the coming “big depression”, then appeasing those who were determined NEC proposal was to move the to having kept off the agenda, one of again to be seen in the company of disappointed us by implicitly advising to slaughter him”. Furthermore, the entire discipline section out of the them for the lack of only one “active witch-hunt victims Jackie Walker against holding Corbyn, McDonnell, statement constitution - which the NEC cannot member”. Socialists should bend over and Tony Greenstein, the May 16 former Labour general secretary Jennie amend - into an appendix, where they backwards to ensure that minority LRC executive meeting retreated Formby and co accountable for their omits one very salient question. Was can. I opposed the amendment, asking views are moved and thoroughly and postponed its online AGM. How failure: “Work with all the left” - which the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign what the NEC’s intentions were. Why debated, not administratively blocked. was president John McDonnell to sounds inclusive; but then: “Don’t and the attacks on Corbyn part of did they want to change the carefully That, of course, is difficult to arrange avoid expulsion for being in the same build a firing squad and turn inwards a state-directed attack on Corbyn crafted procedures honed by Gordon in a four-hour AGM with a “full meeting as Jackie, Tony, me and a host on each other.” Similar bad advice was in conjunction with the Labour Nardell? For the NEC, Andrew Berry business agenda”, as Cathy Augustine of other witch-hunted LRC members? given later by bakers’ union leader Ian right? All the evidence points that assured us that the procedures were called it in Briefing. And, yes, at the September 5 AGM all Hodson, who called for “unity”, whilst way, beginning with the Al Jazeera “fit for purpose”: they just wanted The defeat of Corbynism has not three of us were present! telling us not to “take chunks out of programme The lobby.2 to “tidy them up”. But we have been been fully and properly discussed. As the meeting was online, each other”. Better advice, after a here before. Perhaps the LRC executive can be members could participate at home disaster, would be to learn the lessons, Contrary to the bad advice of Roger persuaded to arrange a single-issue without the time and expense of so that it never happens again. McKenzie and Ian Hodson to Bureaucracy special conference to facilitate this l travelling to London. So attendance Laura Pidcock, without naming forego criticism, Tony called for “a In my report on the LRC’s November was slightly up on previous AGMs, names, spoke of “comrades labour movement inquiry into what 2014 AGM I wrote: “Thankfully, the Notes 138 officially registered - I noted masquerading as leftwing” and said happened, with figures like Mike thoroughly bureaucratic, intolerant 1. See my article, ‘Run, run, run away’ Weekly 129 for the NEC political statement Mansfield, Stephen Sedley, Geoffrey and dangerous proposal put before Worker May 28. “we were defeated by some of our 2. aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby. and only slightly less at other times. own”, but this was “not a defeat for Bindman, etc invited to become panel the LRC’s annual conference was 3. ‘Threat of witch-hunt averted’ Weekly Worker Apart from a few observers and 25 socialism”. The choice is “socialism members.” Tony’s text, however, never pulled at the last minute.” Those November 13 2014. weekly worker 1314 September 10 2020 5 HISTORY Tall tales of 1912 Stalin’s later version of the famous Prague conference of the RSDLP is a parody of his own views at the time, writes Lawrence Parker

avid Brandenberger recently compromise (p52). determined to root out ‘liquidators’, the Bolshevik faction” (p278). This introduced an outstanding From the files of the who posed an existential threat to is correct, in that the Otzovists were Dpiece of scholarship - the fruits Stalin’s corrections were, of course, St Petersburg police: the RSDLP through repudiating the removed from the Bolshevik faction, of his labour with Mikhail Zelenov part of what became the long- “information card on JV need for an illegal underground; but but not the RSDLP. Stalin renders - in the pages of the Weekly Worker dominant narrative about the 1912 Stalin” dated 1911 the division between pro-partyist this as: “The Bolsheviks announced (‘Stalin as historian’, July 23). This Prague conference: that it instituted and ‘liquidationist’ forces cut across that they had nothing in common new critical edition of the famous, a ‘party of a new type’, marking a By the time it came to the main RSDLP factions, and Lenin with the Otzovists and expelled them or infamous, 1938 Short course on final split with the Mensheviks in writing the Short course was quite prepared to work with from the Bolshevik organisation.” the history of the Communist Party favour of a homogenised Bolshevik Stalin was completely ‘anti-liquidationist’ Mensheviks: he This radically alters the meaning of of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) organisation without factions that reinventing Bolshevik did not simply see Mensheviks as the original text, moving it towards allows readers to compare the could be easily dominated by the history. Sadly, this history ‘liquidators’ and he did not simply the erroneous interpretation identified original draft of Soviet historians Y ‘dictator’, Lenin, and his cronies. equate the Bolshevik faction with the by Lih: the simple equation of the is repeated by modern‑day Yaroslavsky and P Pospelov and the There have always been salient whole RSDLP. Bolsheviks with the party, rather than many subsequent interpolations of JV facts, long known, that have never Trotskyist critics Lih mentions in the article quoted faction. And it now implies, at least Stalin.1 This piece will concentrate fitted this narrative. For example, the above that by the mid-1920s the according to Stalin, that the Otzovists on one controversial period of the attendance of a couple of Mensheviks whole idea of having a proletarian were removed from the party. Russian Social Democratic Labour at the conference, including Kiev party composed of factions had been Party’s history covered by the Short delegate David Schwartzman, who delegitimised, following the ban on Split course: the January 1912 Prague chaired the credentials committee.2 factions in 1921 by what had then This divide is carried over into conference. The plenary meeting also elected the become the Russian Communist the treatment of the 1912 Prague The work of Brandenberger and Menshevik, Georgi Plekhanov, as its Party. This sense is clearly present in conference. While Yaroslavsky Zelenov appears to show a Stalinist representative to the International the Short course. Yaroslavsky’s and and Pospelov did not produce a narrative that was still, as late as Socialist Bureau. Pospelov’s draft, when dealing with truthful narrative of this period, their 1938, a comparatively fragile one, Such an interpretation has been the emergence of Bolsheviks and ambiguity and hesitancy point to the necessitating Stalin’s own hand to more fully disputed by Lars T Lih, Mensheviks, states: “Organisational fragility of the whole ‘party of a new make it ‘coherent’, if not factually who has argued that, even though a differences were one of the major type’ narrative, as against Stalin’s accurate. As the editors’ introduction Bolshevik ‘party’ may have been a reasons for the party’s split at the more sure-footed, if mostly mythical, puts it, practical outcome of the 1912 Prague [second] conference into two factions treatment. (Stalin did not attend the conference, (groups). The Bolsheviks and conference, being in exile at the time, In his revisions to the Prague Mensheviks (p160).” Stalin removes although he was all too aware of the conference [section of the Short Lenin and the Bolsheviks as this text, along with the relevant true story.) course], Stalin rewrote entire a whole did not set out to subheading, because he obviously Such ambiguity is contained passages to emphasise the create a Bolshevik Party, does not want the RSDLP understood in the following passages, where Bolsheviks’ moral obligation did not think they had as an organisation with factions. Yaroslavsky and Pospelov seem to break with the Mensheviks, created a Bolshevik Party, In relation to a conference of to be suggesting there are two Liquidators, and Otzovists [so- and denied strenuously the enlarged editorial board of the processes taking place around the called ‘recallists’, who wanted that they had organised Bolshevik newspaper Proletary, 1912 Prague conference: the fight the RSDLP to withdraw the party the conference for this held in 1909 to discuss the conduct against ‘Menshevik-Liquidators’ caucus from the Third Duma]. purpose. Not only was of the Otzovists, Yaroslavsky and (historically accurate); and a split Once independent of these rivals, this outcome not a goal: it Pospelov - still continuing to hold with the Menshevik faction itself (a the Bolsheviks would be free to hardly even made sense to to the idea of party factions - wrote: subsequent invention). So the draft become a new type of party that them.3 “The Bolsheviks announced that reads: could pursue a revolutionary they had nothing in common with Leninist agenda without In Lih’s narrative, the Bolsheviks were the Otzovists and drove them out of In order to defeat the Menshevik- weekly 6 September 10 2020 1314 worker

Liquidators in the non-party “In fighting the Bolsheviks, the Trotskyists who do read this modern organisations - the surviving trade Mensheviks of all shades - from edition will have a distinctly unions, cooperatives and hospital Axelrod and Martynov to Martov and uncomfortable experience. Many and labour insurance offices, etc Trotsky - invariably used weapons have narratives around the 1912 - it was necessary to complete the from the arsenal of the west European Prague conference and the influence, rupture and cast them out of the Social Democrats” (ibid). or lack of influence, of the Second proletarian party (p286). Such nationalism, of course, International on the Bolsheviks that originates in the 1920s in the debates are very obviously garbled versions So far, so good, but Yaroslavsky and around ‘socialism in one country’ and of Stalin circa 1938. This is the case Pospelov then add: does not reflect what Stalin himself with monumentally dire sub-Stalinist wrote when he was a member of Spartacist productions, such as Lenin The split with the Mensheviks Lenin’s faction inside the RSDLP. In and the vanguard party (1977): also had to be resolved because February 1907, Stalin wrote a preface the existence of the formally to Kautsky’s The driving force and The Prague conference marked united organisation (and the single prospects of the Russian Revolution, the definitive organisational break party central committee) gave the which began unambiguously: between Lenin’s revolutionary Mensheviks (and the Trotskyites, social democrats and the among others) the opportunity, Karl Kautsky’s name is not new opportunist Mensheviks. In that along with the conciliators, to create to us. He has long been known important sense Prague 1912 was a lot of red tape and sabotage the as an outstanding theoretician of the founding conference of the proceedings of any party meeting social democracy. But Kautsky is Bolshevik Party.10 or revolutionary affair (ibid). known not only from that aspect; he is notable also as a thorough To indulge, as many Trotskyists do, Stalin marks both passages for deletion and thoughtful investigator of the Stalinist creation myth of the ‘party and substitutes his own simplified tactical problems. In this respect of a new type’ in 1912 is actually to and schematic narrative, therefore he has won great authority not only partake of a foundation stone for the ensuring we go from part of the truth among the European comrades, but idea of ‘socialism in one country’: ie, to none of the truth. He writes: also among us.6 Russia struck out on its own road to socialism, just as the Bolsheviks had The treacherous conduct of the This does not quite sound like a struck out from the faction-ridden Mensheviks in the period of the theoretician who was a member of a swamp of the Second International. Stolypin reaction [Stolypin was party that had begun to degenerate into One can only hope that the minister of internal affairs for an organisation of “social reforms” magnificent work of Brandenberger the tsarist regime after the 1905 after Engels had passed away. In and Zelenov helps render such issues revolution], their attempts to 1909 Stalin was stating that “our conscious and thus correctable l liquidate the proletarian party movement now needs Russian Bebels, and to organise a new reformist experienced and mature leaders from My thanks to Ben Lewis and party, made a rupture with them the ranks of the workers, more than Lars T Lih for their comments on inevitable … Unity with the ever before”.7 This after August earlier drafts. The interpretation Mensheviks within a single party Bebel, the leading German Social here is my sole responsibility. was thus assuming the character of Democratic parliamentarian (1840- a betrayal of the working class and 1913). Stalin returned to the example Notes its party. Consequently, the actual Georgi Plekhanov by Artsybushev: Bolsheviks voted him onto of Bebel on the occasion of the latter’s 1. D Brandenberger and M Zelenov Stalin’s master rupture with the Mensheviks had Interational Socialist Bureau 70th birthday in 1910, discussing narrative: a critical edition of the History of the to be carried to its conclusion: a “why the German and international Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) 8 London 2019. formal organisational rupture and is that they make Lenin’s and Stalin’s on a multitude of quack promises socialists revere Bebel so much”. He 2. See letter of VI Lenin to GL Shklovsky the expulsion of the Mensheviks writings of the period indecipherable. of an easy, smooth, immediate concludes: (March 12 1912): marxists.org/archive/lenin/ from the party (ibid). This is Lenin writing at the end of merger of ‘all’ factions.4 works/1912/mar/12gls.htm; and NK Krupskaya, 1911 about the so-called forthcoming Let us, then, comrades, send ‘Reminiscences of Lenin’: marxists.org/archive/ krupskaya/works/rol/rol16.htm. This is not merely a case of Stalin “rupture” with the Mensheviks: And this is Stalin writing in October greetings to our beloved teacher - 3. LT Lih, ‘A faction is not a party’ Weekly Worker erroneously equating Mensheviks 1912 about the standpoint of the the turner August Bebel! Let him May 2 2012. with Liquidators in the RSDLP: it is … only a rapprochement in the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda: serve as an example to us Russian 4. ‘The new faction of conciliators, or the virtuous’ rather a case of the Liquidators being work of these two strong factions workers, who are particularly (October 1911), in VI Lenin Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii Vol 20, pp335-36 (translation by Lars disappeared from the party’s history [Bolsheviks and Mensheviks] Pravda is of the opinion that in need of Bebels in the labour T Lih). and the general secretary boiling this - and only insofar as they only Bolsheviks and pro-party movement. Long live Bebel! 5. JV Stalin, ‘Results of elections in the workers’ all down to Bolsheviks (good) and purge themselves of the non- Mensheviks can be united into a Long live International Social curia’ in Works Vol 2, 1907-1913, Moscow 1953, Mensheviks (bad) as the pretext for social democratic tendencies of single whole. Unity on the basis Democracy!9 p266. 6. JV Stalin, ‘Preface to the Georgian edition of a rupture. Stalin carries on with this liquidationism and Otzovism - of dissociation from anti-party K Kautsky’s pamphlet, “The driving forces and into the detailed editing of the chapter, represents a real party policy, a elements, from Liquidators! Stalin’s standpoint in these years was prospects of the Russian revolution”’, in Works where “Liquidator Mensheviks” and policy that really brings about Pravda has always stood and that of an internationalist - inspired, Vol 2, 1907-1913, Moscow 1953, p1. Stalin adds: “Menshevik-Liquidator” are simply unity; not easily, not smoothly and always will stand for such unity.5 like Lenin by what he saw as the heroic “That is why our comrades have set to work so zealously to study Kautsky’s articles on tactics: erased or become just “Mensheviks” by no means immediately, but in a example of German Social Democracy ‘The state duma’, ‘The Moscow insurrection’, (see p291, for example). way that will produce real results, It is this invented narrative of a split and politically mentored by Kautsky. ‘The agrarian question’, ‘The Russian peasantry The problem with such renderings as distinguished from a way based with the Mensheviks that formed The insular, nationalist narrative of the and the revolution’, ‘The anti-Jewish pogroms in the basis of the ‘party of a new type’ Short course, with its vision of a sui Russia’, and others.” 7. JV Stalin, ‘The party crisis and our tasks’ Works mythology that was present in both generis Russian Bolshevism, was a Vol 2, 1907-1913, Moscow 1953, p156. the Yaroslavsky-Pospelov draft and complete fabrication. 8. JV Stalin, ‘August Bebel, leader of the German Fighting fund Stalin’s editing work. Therefore, The Short course is one of those workers’ Works Vol 2, 1907-1913, Moscow 1953, the former have the ‘classical’ books that everyone seems to know p212. 9. Ibid p214. Stalinist formulation: “The party something about, but no-one has 10. Lenin and the vanguard party (1977): strengthens itself by purging its ranks actually read. One cannot help marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/ Patience! of opportunist elements - that is one but think that some contemporary pamphlets/Lenin_Vanguard_Party.pdf. of the qualities of the Bolshevik aving just made our £2,000 quote our sole PayPal donor this Party, which is a party of a new Htarget in August, right now week to give you an idea why. type fundamentally different from we are going through that part KF writes: “I can’t wait to get the reformist parties of the Second Online Communist Forum of the month where things are the Weekly Worker in my hands International” (p291). Stalin here proceeding not quite so quickly as again. It’s easily the best on the crosses out “reformist” and replaces we’d like. left - even online! What other it with “Social Democratic”, as if to Don’t get me wrong. Over the paper not only believes in its ideas, damn all the parties of the Second last seven days, nine comrades but allows all sorts of criticism of International without exception. made their usual monthly standing them?” You’ve got it, comrade! order payment. Thanks go to AC The open exchange of ideas is the Nationalism (£50), CG and HN (£30 each), only way to get to the truth. Indeed, Stalin concentrates his fire GD and DV (£25), JS and LM But, when it comes to the on the Second International in line (£15), and JK and SM (£10) - a print edition, there’s bad news, with what Brandenberger noted in his total of £210 from SOs. And there I’m afraid. As Peter Manson recent Weekly Worker article, where was also one PayPal donation explains in his report on the much of the history of the Bolsheviks for £25 from KF. All that is very CPGB aggregate, we were hoping is recast in Russian sui generis terms. much appreciated, of course, but to start printing again next week. Stalin thus mused in 1938 that the it’s those three-figure payments But now the sudden increase in Bolsheviks “could not help seeing that (which usually come our way Covid cases has given us second after Engels’ death [in 1895] the west- later in the month) that make a big thoughts. But we will be printing European Social Democratic parties Sunday September 13, 5pm difference. again soon. Patience, comrades, had begun to degenerate from parties A week in politics Anyway, all that came to patience! l of social revolution into parties of Political report and discussion £216, taking the running total for Robbie Rix ‘social reforms’ …” (p287). from the CPGB’s Provisional Central Committee the month up to £461. With, as This, of course, leaves out the I write, nine days of September huge influence that the German Social If you wish to take part in these Zoom meetings, gone already, we’re running a bit Fill in a standing order form Democrats once had on people such email Stan Keable at: [email protected] behind, if we’re going to reach (back page), donate via our as Stalin. Instead, he merely chooses website, or send cheques, Organised by CPGB: www.cpgb.org.uk and that £2K once again. But, as to project such ‘foreign’ influences Labour Party Marxists: www.labourpartymarxists.org.uk always, I’m optimistic. Let me payable to Weekly Worker onto the enemies of the Bolsheviks: weekly worker 1314 September 10 2020 7 TRIBUTE Great questions of our time Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group discusses David Graeber’s ideas and activism hen I heard that David because, from around 1977, he took was potent. Graeber had died so to anathematising the entire discipline Take his response when Jeremy Wunexpectedly in Venice of evolutionary anthropology, Corbyn was being smeared as an on September 2, it seemed that a denouncing Darwinism in its modern anti-Semite by supporters of Israel massive chunk of my familiar world’s form as reactionary ideology, not in league with Britain’s racist intellectual and cultural ecosystem science.10 Anyone familiar with establishment. David talked movingly had suddenly gone. In some ways, it David’s work will recognise Sahlins’ about being Jewish in order to convey reminded me of the dread I had felt influence here. That barbed-wire his outrage at the way his identity years earlier on hearing of the death of fence segregating my good friends was being coopted to spread vicious sections of Australia’s Great Barrier who study chimpanzees from my lies. Or again take his willingness to Reef. other good friends who study humans risk arrest by putting himself forward David did his fieldwork in is still, unfortunately, very much with Extinction Rebellion activists Madagascar and taught in the United intact. to block central London’s bridges. States until Yale University decided At the opposite extreme was an When it really mattered, David would on political grounds not to renew his American figure who influenced be there. contract. He made frequent trips to Biology and evolution went unexplored David not directly, but in reverse. John Finally, on a more personal note, I London, where direct-action politics Zerzan is a ‘primitivist’. He seems to will never forget his publicly declared quickly brought us together. Delighted misleading term, ‘debt’. David’s book only discipline that actually takes think we should go back to the Stone solidarity at a stressful time in my that we had met up, in 2007 I invited proved an absolute sensation - read all of humanity into account ... Yet Age, renouncing modern technology. life, when the University of East him to write the lead article in the not only by anti-capitalist activists, it resolutely refuses to do so.6 He admires hunter-gatherers, London Corporate Management Team first issue of Radical Anthropology. but by many of the senior bankers claiming that these people are not suspended me for my activism. I still Titled ‘Revolution in reverse’, it was and economists whom David was Anthropology is the study of what alienated because they fortunately treasure David’s eloquent words: a thoughtful attempt to explain why, targeting. it means to be human. It embraces lack language, which he describes as quite suddenly, our hopeful slogans Here, as in much of his writing, human biology, psychology, genetics, an oppressive institution.11 Struggling The idea of suspending a professor of only a decade earlier - including David broke from mainstream primatology, kinship, religion, alongside my colleagues to keep up for saying they’d like to see a the very idea that ‘Another world thinking by highlighting the critical prehistory, evolution and many other with peer-reviewed science, I never revolution is absolutely chilling: is possible’ - now seemed so sadly role of violence, war and slavery things. Full understanding would found time to study such nonsense. I by that standard, half the people unrealistic. The article was tentatively in creating and shaping the basic involve transgressing the boundary am told, however, that among some whose work we teach would not exploring alternatives to what David institutions of what we now call between anthropology’s internal American anarchists Zerzan is taken themselves qualify to teach in our termed “the insurrectionary model” - ‘the economy’. For many of us in divisions - especially the brutal quite seriously. Here is David’s schools. It’s all the more ridiculous the idea that a worldwide proletarian the Radical Anthropology Group, and damaging barbed-wire fence response: considering everyone is perfectly uprising could overthrow capitalism all this was a hugely welcome segregating those who study biology well aware Chris is not an advocate and establish a global cooperative endorsement of Frederick Engels’ from those specialising in cultural Primitivists like John Zerzan who, of violence. Shutting down the social order all in one go. classic pronouncement that the state diversity. in trying to whittle away what seems Alternative Summit was absolutely Suggesting something more consists essentially of “armed bodies David felt comfortable only on one to divide us from pure, unmediated disgraceful. This is precisely the modest, he was encouraging us to of men” - and that, as a precondition side of this fence. While insisting that experience, end up whittling away kind of resistance to government celebrate elements of communism of communist liberation, the whole humans are instinctively communist absolutely everything. Zerzan’s policies - the thoughtful discussion in all our relationships, irrespective barbaric apparatus needs to be put creatures, consequently he stopped increasingly popular works end of alternatives - that one would of our wider political surroundings. aside and confined to a museum.4 short of teaming up with our biological up condemning the very existence have thought universities were His mentor, Marshall Sahlins, in a and primatological colleagues who of language, math, time-keeping, there to encourage. Does UEL touching obituary, put it well when Human origins for decades have been dedicated to music, and all forms of art and really want to go down in history he described David as determined Linked to David’s economic studies working out where on earth these representation. They are all written as opening a new page in the “to show how ostensibly dominated were his insights into the origins of sensitive, caring, other-regarding off as forms of alienation, leaving suppression of intellectual freedom peoples, by their own means, human language, symbolic culture and social instincts could possibly have us with a kind of impossible and freedom of speech? Because, subverted the states, kings and other distinctively human consciousness. come from in evolutionary terms. evolutionary ideal: the only truly if they continue this way, that’s coercive institutions afflicting them These are vastly complex issues and Why do humans have distinctively non-alienated human being was certainly what they will be most to create self-governing enclaves of not areas in which David chose to cooperative eyes, for example - eyes not even quite human, but more a known for throughout the world. community”.1 specialise. Nevertheless, particularly quite different in design from those kind of perfect ape, in some kind of In 2008, during the banking crisis, in his Fragments of an anarchist of any ape?7 Or again how, when and currently unimaginable telepathic “For a very long time,” David wrote David helped inspire unusually anthropology, David always managed why did evolving human mothers connection with its fellows, at one in the first chapter of Debt, “the imaginative demonstrations against to convey the most basic points in trust others to nurse, carry and care with wild nature, living maybe intellectual consensus has been that global governance by unelected refreshingly blunt terms. In this for their babies - something which no about a hundred thousand years we can no longer ask Great Questions. bankers and, in April 2009, against typical passage, David explains why chimpanzee mother would dream of ago. True revolution could only Increasingly, it’s looking like we have the London G20 summit. In order to violence is his central theme: risking?8 Suspicious of all schools of mean somehow returning to that. no other choice.” be with us and lend his support, David modern Darwinian theory and instead How it is that aficionados of this sort David could be loud, he could had temporarily interrupted work on Because violence, particularly recommending to us the theories of thing still manage to engage in be rude and he was certainly never his ground-breaking anthropological structural violence, creates propounded by the 19th century effective political action (because afraid to attack anyone. But he also study of debt. Two years later, this ignorance. If you have the power to anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, David it’s been my experience that many had a gentle, modest side to him - appeared in print as the book that hit people over the head whenever inexplicably showed no interest in do quite remarkable work) is itself shown when he once unexpectedly made his name - Debt: the first five you want, you don’t have to any of these questions. His interest a fascinating sociological question. came across my pet rabbit, Roo, in thousand years.2 trouble yourself too much figuring in human origins, then, stopped But surely an alternative analysis the hallway. Charmed by a rabbit at The book’s first and overwhelming out what they think is going on, curiously short at the most critical of alienation might be useful here.12 complete liberty, he gently stooped message was that historical origins are and therefore, generally speaking, point. down to say hello. important. You will never understand you don’t. Hence the sure-fire way Only recently have I felt able I cite these withering comments I have lost a good comrade and anything about money, debt, wealth to simplify social arrangements, to to understand how and why David because they may help explain friend l or economics if you have no idea how ignore the incredibly complex play positioned himself within his something which, at first, I could not the whole complex of concepts and of perspectives, passions, insights, institutional environment in this understand. Soon after I met David, it practices emerged in the first place. desires and mutual understandings way. As a North American recently became clear to me that he had little, Notes To explain the emergence of coinage, that human life is really made of arrived in England, the people who if any, interest in either evolutionary 1. nybooks.com/daily/2020/09/05/david- graeber-1961-2020. for example, David discusses how a is to make a rule and threaten to mattered to him were those who had anthropology or hunter-gatherer 2. D Graeber Debt: the first 5,000 years New York bandit or local warlord would gain attack anyone who breaks it. This profoundly shaped the intellectual research. Only with the passing of time 2011. a fearsome reputation for robbery, is why violence has always been and political landscape of his earlier did I realise that for David any mention 3. Ibid pp229-74. pillage and general brutality. To the favoured recourse of the stupid: years. Two hugely influential figures of hunter-gatherer egalitarianism rang 4. F Engels (1884) The origin of the family, private property and the state. New York 1972. retain the loyalty of his accomplices it is the one form of stupidity to - both American - stand out. The first alarm bells in his mind. Primitivism! 5. D Graeber Fragments of an anarchist in crime, he needed to hold out the which it is almost impossible was David’s teacher and sponsor from I wonder if David associated our kind anthropology Chicago 2004, pp72-73. prospect of continued conquest to come up with an intelligent his early years - the renowned cultural of radical anthropology with Zerzan. 6. Ibid p96. through violence, promising his response. It is also, of course, the anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins. That would explain a lot. Since our 7. M Tomasello, B Hare, H Lehmann and J 5 Call, ‘Reliance on head versus eyes in the gaze followers not just subsistence today, basis of the state. In the 1960s, Sahlins was discussions have tragically ended, we following of great apes and human infants: the but a specified share of loot from fascinated by the despotic sexual and may never know. cooperative eye hypothesis’ Journal of Human the robberies of tomorrow. Among David attacked the entire community social arrangements of monkeys and Fortunately, the debate about Evolution 52, 2007. pp314-20. the bandit’s followers, a metal coin of professional anthropologists for apes - and the extraordinary contrast hunter-gatherers and human origins 8. SB Hrdy Mothers and others: the evolutionary origins of mutual understanding London 2009. stamped as their leader’s personal persistently hiding their secrets away, between them and our own species, is sure to be enriched with the 9. MD Sahlins, ‘The origin of society’ Scientific ‘promise to pay’ would be treated as mapping landscapes of alternative which becomes evident when we publication of David’s forthcoming American 203(3), 1960. pp76-87; MD Sahlins, itself a form of wealth for as long as lifeways, only to confine their findings turn to the assertive egalitarianism book, The dawn of everything: a new ‘The social life of monkeys, apes and primitive confidence in future conquests held to obscure journals - apparently characteristic of human hunter- history of humanity, but continuing man’ Human Biology 31 (1959), pp54-73. 3 9 Reprinted in DD Quiatt (ed) Primates on primates. up. desperate to prevent ordinary people gatherers. Anticipating the later this crucial debate without David will Minneapolis 1972, pp3-18. 13 Such promises - seeds of today’s from knowing. He complained in archaeological concept of a ‘human be both frustrating and deeply sad. 10. M Sahlins The use and abuse of biology mountains of hallucinatory money Fragments: revolution’, Sahlins pictured the London 1977. - had no credibility beyond the transition from chimpanzee-style When it mattered 11. J Zerzan, ‘Running on emptiness: The failure of symbolic thought’ Anarchy: A Journal of Desire boundaries of the territory under In many ways, anthropology dominance to the egalitarianism Anthropological issues aside, David’s Armed spring/summer 1997, pp29-35. that warlord’s control. But today, as seems a discipline terrified of its of early humans as a momentous political judgement was consistently 12. D Graeber Fragments of an anarchist a consequence of globalisation, the own potential. It is, for example, social and political leap. But, to reliable. Having earned some fame, anthropology Chicago 2004, p74. entire planet has for the first time the only discipline in a position understand David, it is important to David had access from time to time to 13. David Graeber’s forthcoming book, The dawn of everything: a new history of humanity (2021), is fallen victim to the wider system to make generalisations about acknowledge that Sahlins did not mainstream media. When he used this co-authored with his colleague, the archaeologist, of violence concealed under the humanity as a whole - since it is the follow up these threads. This was to make political points, his eloquence David Wengrow. weekly 8 September 10 2020 1314 worker CENTENARY ‘All power for the workers!’ n August 1921, the CPGB stood few months earlier the miners had miners looked for support to their in. The miners were abandoned. election had been preceded by Bob Stewart as the CPGB fought a bitter struggle against the partners in the Triple Alliance Eighty Communist Party dramatic and telling events and Icandidate in a by-election in government and mine owners. - the transport and railway members were imprisoned during the following address, to the Caerphilly, South Wales. This On April 1 1921 over one workers - and plans were made this dispute, indicating the workers of Caerphilly, urged the was the fledgling party’s first million workers in the mining for solidarity strike action to fighting spirit and commitment of miners to break with the class challenge at the ballot box and the industry were locked out when start on Friday April 15. But the its militants. traitors of the Labour Party comrades went into battle with they refused to accept pay cuts miners were taught a bitter lesson Come August, however, it and return a genuine workers’ optimism and energy. The town of of up to 50%. The government about the irresolute nature of left was time to measure the newly champion to the House of Caerphilly was dominated by the declared a state of emergency reformism when the leaders of the formed party’s progress via Commons l coal-mining industry, and just a and brought in troops. The other Triple Alliance unions caved the ballot box. Obviously, the William Sarsfield To the workers of Caerphilly

Miners had been sold out by their ‘allies’ in the trade union bureaucracy

The Communist as agencies for laying you - and with defiance embodied in your ballot slave doctrines. We call upon you who  The Communist Party has faith in August 13 1921 you the rest of the British working vote; the leaders who in industry are unemployed to demand a man’s the working class and in its ability to Your heroically maintained struggle class - prostrate beneath the iron heel after industry accepted reductions life, and to allow no-one to insult you work out its own destiny, once it has against the coal bosses, backed by the of a triumphant capitalist tyranny. If and defeat in advance and with a with the offer of a puppy’s portion. been roused to the pitch of making the government, has barely ended before all else fails them, they can still fall mere pretence of consulting the rank We call upon you who are employed attempt. you are called upon to declare your back upon their ‘Black and Tans’. and file - these and not the rank and today to realise your community of  The Communist Party therefore will at the ballot box. What should be What in face of this appalling file constitute the Labour Party, as it interest with the unemployed and to urges the workers to perfect their your will? situation does the Labour Party offer stands. The best of men, if he were strive side by side with them, less the organisation, national and local, with That struggle has left you in a you? It ought to be, if its name is to be elected under their auspices, would boss use their misery and your apathy the determination to make easy the deplorable situation. Bad as were anything but a delusion and a sham, be paralysed by their vacillation or as the hammer and anvil on which to attainment of workers’ control over the conditions upon which the coal the party that seeks to rouse and rally crippled in the cogs of their controlling weld chains of slavery for you all. alike production and distribution; and lockout was terminated, they have the working class for a life-and-death machine. The Communist Party enters this in such a fashion and spirit as will been rendered still more vile by the struggle to maintain their standard The clearest proof we can give of fight to force to the front the whole enable them to defend themselves manner in which the masters have of life in the teeth of boss-class the need for a new spirit and outlook question of the working class and its from any pro-slavery rebellion of the used, and are using, the advantage encroachment and to urge and lead is found in the case of the miners. A place in the British state and society. master class, its allies or its dupes. they have gained. Being, as they are, them onward until they, the workers, fighting programme aimed (at any rate What is the working class today?  The Communist Party urges every determined upon reducing wages by are masters and controllers of their by the rank and file) at securing both Nothing! What does the Labour individual worker, man or woman, to progressive instalments until they means of living. Its leaders do no such their standard of life and a measure Party want it to be? Something! but cast his or her vote for the communist have reached the great end they have thing; nor will they do it. of control over the conditions of their not ‘too much’. What ought it to candidate as an open declaration set before themselves - the destruction They do not believe you are capable toil was scrapped, in a manner that be? Everything. of a will to work in solidarity with of the minimum wage - they are of taking over successfully the control cannot be characterised in words, for  The Communist Party fights on the their fellows until the victory of the using unemployment systematically of your lives, the management of an infamous agreement which ties the slogan, ‘All power to the workers’. workers has been won. as a weapon to break into pieces the production, the direction of industry miner hand and foot and leaves him  The Communist Party demands The standard bearer of the solidarity which three months of stress and the coordination of society. They thus at the coal bosses’ mercy for a for the miners (in common with the Communist Party is a worker - Robert and strain have failed to destroy. funked on Black Friday because twelvemonth. rest of the working class) an assured Stewart. He has been dignified at the The coal bosses are deliberately they had no faith in your ability to Those who cannot or will not see standard of life, and (in cooperation hands of agencies of boss-class rule victimising the bravest and boldest rise to an emergency. They showed this are not the man to use the floor with the organised working class) a by a term of imprisonment for his spirits and the most intelligent and the white feather then - they are not of the House of Commons as an arena control over their means of living and courageous battling on the side of the sturdy districts, in the hope that thus fit to be trusted with the red flag wherein to meet the boss class face to the conditions of their toil. workers. they will succeed in weeding out from now. They cannot or will not carry a face with a courage as defiant as their  The Communist Party demands for The Communist Party has decided the ranks of the workers in south Wales strike or fight a lockout to its logical rapacity is determined. the unemployed work or maintenance that, as a south Wales mining area all but the faint-hearted and weak- conclusion - how then can they deal Remember, the Labour Party at full trade union rates. was the scene alike of his offence kneed. They, and with them the rest with such a concerted assault as faces already includes (to the sorrow of  The Communist Party demands and his incarceration, a south Wales of the British boss class, are resolved you now? the working class) men - Thomas, as a solution to all international mining area is entitled to the honour upon pushing their advantage until The Labour Party, as it stands, is Clynes, Brownlie, Hodge, Bowerman complications the solidarity of the of sending him straight from gaol they have secured victory all along what its leaders make it, and they and others - who have made workers in all lands against the to the House of Commons as the the line. will neither lead you into battle nor themselves conspicuous by their international class that thrives on only logical answer a self-respecting They have shown that they will allow you to lead them. The leaders diligent propagation of the doctrine their subjection and rejoices in working class can give when asked to rest content with nothing short of the who brought about the Triple Alliance of ‘increased production’; for which consequence of their misery. express their will. unchallenged dictatorship of their disaster in spite of the splendid conduct they give the slavish excuse  The Communist Party demands Workers! Vote for Stewart and plutocracy. Our experience has shown solidarity of the rank and file; the that thus the worker may gain an for Ireland independence as a means demonstrate your confidence in your that the courts of law, the machinery leaders who beat back the miners after increase of crumbs fallen from the to enable the Irish worker to realise class, your defiance to the boss, and of the state and the public powers of a three months’ death grapple, and do loaded tables of the gorged boss class. James Connolly’s dream of an Irish your determination to achieve all coercion are all, with parliament, used so in contempt of the magnificent We call upon you to scorn these workers’ republic. power for the workers l weekly worker 1314 September 10 2020 9 REVIEW Defeat of syndicalism Ian Wright God’s beautiful sunshine: the 1921 miners’ lockout in the Forest of Dean Bristol Radical History Group, pp264, £11 ext year marks the centenary of of generations of miners and their the great coal lockout of 1921. families - not to mention Churchill: NRefusing to accept a cut in that was the history we grew up with. wages, over one million miners were But the NUR did resolve it would locked out of their work. not move imported or blackleg coal This book provides a rare focus under any circumstances. This then on the struggles of the miners of the started a war of victimisation by the Forest of Dean - 6,000 of them - and railway companies. The docks were their extraordinary resilience. It traces now manned by an army of blackleg the expansion of the coal industry volunteers, coal was moving and by in the 30 years before the start of the end of May rail and transport World War I - one of the greatest unions lifted their blacking of coal and catastrophes ever to hit humanity blacklegged themselves (with notable and the consequence of inter- exceptions, such as on the Glasgow imperialist rivalries. Coal had been docks). The situation was not helped the cornerstone of British industrial Gloucester police in 1921: fully mobilised to crush the resistance of miners by the instruction of the MFGB itself and imperial dominance worldwide. not to picket blackleg labour, which The miners meantime had become many saw as a licence to scab and a increasingly aware of their lack of powerful unions in the country - on condition the Miners’ Federation troops were withdrawn from Ireland failure of solidarity. benefit from this, and their own miners, transport and railworkers - of Great Britain called off any threat and moved into the coalfields, where In the end, desperate to find a social and industrial conditions, when united to take mutual solidarity action of strike action. they set up machine gun posts and solution, the MFGB leadership contrasted to other industries. With and watch each other’s backs, since In December 1919 Winston barbed-wire entanglements. decided to put the owners’ final coal had grown the organised power of all to one extent or another overlapped Churchill, the secretary of state The government bought more offer of another temporary subsidy the miners in the form of the Miners in their labour and strategic positions. for war and air, announced that he time by introducing a temporary to the members without making any Federation of Great Britain - by 1912 All three centres had been strongly supported the nationalisation of the subsidy on coal to offset reductions recommendation. The turnout was over a million miners belonged to it. influenced by industrial unionist and railways. Although a bill was passed, in miners’ wages, but most pits were overwhelming, with 180,724 in favour The aspirations of the miners were syndicalist visions of ‘One union, one enabling the government to take only working two or three days per of settling, but 435,614 for sticking it to an extent conceded by the virtual industry’. The power potential in such control of all transport, it was clear week, as coal sales had slumped - out. In the Forest of Dean the margin nationalisation of the mines to fuel an alliance was neutered at birth by that the majority on the government Germany was paying off swingeing was even greater: 5,222 for fighting the war effort. Many of the blatant World War I, as workers of all sorts wanted to go in the other direction, war reparations with coal exports to on, with only 659 wanting to accept injustices heaped on the miners were flocked off to follow the colours and with an end to all wartime controls Britain. the offer. At 88.79% it was the highest removed and a less brutal form of mine defeat the kaiser. But there were deep and regulations. Confrontation with In March 1921 a bill for decontrol rejection vote in any region on a 98% management ensued for a time. The and contradictory trends, and union the rail unions seemed inevitable. of the coal industry was passed by turnout. unions had at least to be listened to. membership soared - from 3 million In August the government declared 277 votes to 72. Notices were issued Incredibly the national officers The promise of a ‘world fit for in 1912 to 8.25 million in 1920. In against nationalisation and confirmed to every colliery in the country, of the union argued that they had heroes’ and the superhuman effort 1915 the leaders of the unions met the mining industry would be given cancelling all existing contracts and not achieved a national two-thirds made on the battlefield and within to confirm their pledge for mutual back to the coal owners. The miners agreements between the men and majority and therefore had no industry, not least down the mines, had support in industrial disputes. then sought to implement the pledge the masters. Wages, which were alternative but to call off the strike. raised expectations beyond anything of joint action through the Triple barely above starvation level as it It was a wilful and blatant betrayal: the government was contemplating. Strike threat Alliance. In early 1920 government was, were to be cut by 50% and any according to the rules, although Indeed, the end of the war brought Ian shows us how the potential power ministers discussed the use of man refusing the new rate would be two thirds was required to call the a sharp dip in demand for coal, and in this alliance was starting to test military force to put down strikes, sacked. Through the bitter months strike, only acceptance of the offer - most controversially - control was the mettle of the leaders, at a time while the miners sought solidarity of struggle the union was adamant by a majority vote could nullify handed back to the grossly inefficient when the end of the war had inflated from the Triple Alliance and the that, whatever else happened, the that decision, so the strike decision 1,500 different coal companies the expectations and demands of the TUC for a general strike to win the national wage structure it had won in remained valid, but on June 27 the operating some 3,000 mines. This was working class in an economy now nationalisation of the mines. 1912, against the owner’s insistence MFGB NEC recommended a return particularly true of the Forest of Dean, tottering on the brink. In June the TUC rejected this call, on district agreements, would be to work on the basis of district where 11 deep mines were operated Following the end of the war, the but despite this failure there was unity maintained. agreements. by eight separate companies. miners were on a collision course on stopping any military intervention On March 31, a million miners The history of the miners has been On the issue of women in the with the government. They had gained against Soviet Russia via a general were locked out and the National something of a tragic ‘Groundhog coalfields - a feature which was concessions owing to the mines strike. Churchill was livid, admitting Transport Workers Federation Day’ - we keep visiting and revisiting widely ignored, but is now crucial having de facto been brought under that the labour movement had stopped resolved to give the miners all the same scenario. Just as the defeat of to any study - the book demonstrates state control. While the government such an intervention in its tracks. assistance, including solidarity strike the 1984-85 strike had a cataclysmic their role in the community protecting now wanted to return them to the He resolved instead to go onto the action. The cabinet drew up plans impact on the whole labour movement, collective values, tin-panning wife- coal owners, the miners demanded offensive. In August the government, for the use of all available troops and the wretched, almost self-imposed, beaters and blacklegs, and joining nationalisation. The shortage of coal using the wartime Emergency Powers reserves, while 80,000 strike busters defeat of 1921 was devastating. Trade picket lines, as they have throughout was now impacting on the country Act, declared the threat of a national called “special constables” were to union membership collapsed from 8.3 our history. But they also organised and on the promise of ‘a land fit for miners’ strike as equivalent to a “state be recruited. Machine gun posts were million in 1920 to 5.6 million in 1922. politically in the Women’s Labour heroes’ - especially so for miners of war”. planned for pitheads. As the date for I agree with Ian’s conclusion: League. returning to the coalfields after being But after some false starts one solidarity strike action approached the defeat of the miners knocked Working conditions in the Forest demobbed. The miners demanded million miners struck in October 1920, some of the NTWF leaders started the radical victories of 1912 and the pits were said to be the worst in re-employment on full wages and a and the Forest of Dean was solid. After to get cold feet and put the date syndicalist visions of the working the country, yet boys left school at reduction in hours. some faltering, the National Union back. NUR general secretary Jimmy class sideways. It led to the growth 13 and started at the pit, ending up This was only one of a range of of Railwaymen agreed that, unless Thomas had warned that a strike such of Labourism and parliamentary underground by the time they were problems facing the government negotiations reopened on the miners’ as this posed a challenge to the state and constitutional methods as softer a year older. They were engaged at this time - not least the war of demands, a national strike of rail and had revolutionary implications options for redressing injustice. Bad in ‘hodding’ - a primitive transport independence in Ireland. The army unions would follow. The threat of a - which it did, of course, but he and enough, but this process was to be method, which involved being was on the brink of widespread mutiny triple alliance general strike threw the some of the others were not up for the gone through with even more blatant harnessed to a tub with sledge - there were marches and strikes government into a state of panic and it political challenge. treachery five years later, with many runners rather than wheels, which across the country. At Folkestone agreed to reopen negotiations with the of same key players in place. were dragged and pushed through the 10,000 soldiers marched, formed a miners. This resulted in the drawing Black Friday This is a thoroughly well and narrow tunnels. Hodders, we are told, Soldiers Union and took control of the up of a temporary agreement, pending The government was also aware of extensively researched book, which were still employed by the 1940s. demobilisation unit - within 24 hours the creation of a national wages board this revolutionary challenge in the gives us both the local and regional Like those in South Wales and the they had demobilised the entire base! in 1921. climate of rebellion and revolution aspect of the struggle, as well as northern coalfields, from 1910 through 20,000 troops were involved in such What needs to be highlighted, across Europe, and they met with a comprehensive overview of the the war and into the great lockouts of protests, joining action by striking although it is not covered in this book, Triple Alliance leaders without the national action. It demonstrates the the 20s, Forest miners were greatly French railway workers, while is the fact that Churchill was facing miners - Lloyd George later admitted dramatic history of the miners of the influenced by syndicalism, and also sections of the navy refused to move crises on a number of fronts. In March he viewed Thomas as the weak link Forest of Dean - not the family-based moved from the traditional miners against Soviet Russia. 1920, he let loose the murderous Black in the chain. He told them that, while ‘free miners’, but a crack unit in the support for the Liberals first to the Fife and Lanarkshire miners and Tans and their terrorist campaign flexibility on wages in some districts army of a million, with their trials newly emerging Independent Labour launched an unofficial strike, joining in Ireland, while also preparing for could be managed, there could be no at work in difficult seams and the Party and then the Labour Party itself. with the general strike in Glasgow. action against the miners and possibly movement on the ending of national divisive ‘butty system’; and in action This was a period in British labour The miners’ action was led by an rail and transport workers in Britain. agreements. in their union in what initially was movement history when the world of unofficial syndicalist union, which My own opinion is that Michael It was claimed that Frank Hodges, clearly a potentially revolutionary ideas was up for grabs: syndicalism, not only defied the official Scottish Collins and the Irish rebels did not the MFGB general secretary, was situation. Bolshevism, Labourism. Outlooks on Miners Association, but marched to understand the weakness the British prepared to go for an agreement based That it was defeated was not due to conciliation and direct action clashed their offices to hoist the red flag. state was facing. Churchill claimed on district settlements. This gave the any failure of syndicalism, but to the and overlapped, and few workers The government was keen to avoid he was holding all the cards, although green light to Robert Williams of lack of vision and backbone of leaders, would have been unaware of the any general miners’ strike in such in reality it was a busted flush. But the National Federation of Transport including those of the miners - the rank competing trends. an unprecedented situation. Lloyd immediately after the signing of the Workers to withdraw their offer of and file and their allies had been brave The Triple Alliance was formed George promised a royal commission hated Anglo-Irish treaty in October support. No wonder the names of and determined to the last l in 1914, bringing together the most into the running of the whole industry 1921 tens of thousands of British Williams and Hodges stink in the nose David Douglass weekly 10 September 10 2020 1314 worker REVIEW Positive and negative Christian Parenti Radical Hamilton: economic lessons from a misunderstood founder Verso, 2020, pp304, £20

t some point around the in 1943.1 By contrast, Hamilton, Not only did he father six children In 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s turn of the millennium, the man who tried to jump-start Alexander Hamilton: a by Sally Hemings, his deceased hip-hop tribute to Hamilton as an A US historiography flipped. American capitalism, stood for the thorough-going capitalist wife’s enslaved half-sister, but he opponent of slavery and a champion Previously, Thomas Jefferson - corporate dictatorship that would also authored a Virginia state law of immigrants turned into an America’s third president and the descend on America after the Civil programme for the fledgling criminalising any white woman who unlikely Broadway hit. After years author of its founding document, the War. United States which was only gave birth to a child fathered by a of opprobrium, as Christian Parenti Declaration of Independence - was Then came the great reversal. adopted following the second black man. One law for me, in other notes in this new study, Hamilton had the great democratic hero. While Ronald Reagan may have started words, another for thee. He believed suddenly become “hip”. revolution liberals and conservatives might it with a 1987 speech claiming that black people were ugly, that they But what does it all mean? Is the dwell on different aspects of his Jefferson for the anti-government were so primitive that they aroused Hamilton revival merely an attempt legacy, all agreed that the ‘sage of right: Despite that Christian Parenti the lust of orangutans, and that “Their to put a human face on neoliberalism Monticello’ best expressed the age of wants to recruit him for the left griefs are transient” - a convenient by presenting America’s most the common man that the American It’s time to finish the job argument for slaveholders in the enthusiastically pro-capitalist Revolution supposedly introduced. Jefferson began and to protect habit of snatching children from founder as tolerant and anti-racist? As for Alexander Hamilton, our people and their livelihoods their mother’s arms and selling Or is it an effort to better understand Jefferson’s nemesis from the early with restrictions on government them to the highest bidder. Black American history by viewing it from 1790s on, opinion seemed to be that will ensure the fundamental reasoning powers, he wrote in his the perspective of someone who tried settled as well. While he certainly economic freedom of the people Notes on the state of Virginia (1781- to put it on a different path? had his talents, America’s first - the equivalent of an Economic 83), are “much inferior, as I think Radical Hamilton clearly believes treasury secretary foreshadowed Bill of Rights. I’m certain, if one could scarcely be found capable the latter. It argues that not only did the stifling industrial and financial Thomas Jefferson were here, of tracing and comprehending the Hamilton play an important role in dictatorship that would descend on he’d be one of the most articulate investigations of Euclid; and … in gluing the country together after the the United States after the Civil War. and aggressive champions of this imagination they are dull, tasteless anarchic 1770s and 80s, but that his “Jefferson was the first example of cause. and anomalous.” 1791 Report on manufactures was that combination of philosopher, Interest in Hamilton meanwhile a milestone in dirigiste economics ideologist, man of science, organiser Sensing that the great man had rose as the Republican offensive that would help shape development of the masses and practical political his flaws, left-leaning scholars against ‘big gum mint’ advanced in late-blooming economic powers leader and statesman, which is began delving into the question on Capitol Hill. In 2004, Ron like Germany and Japan. As the necessary to bring into being the of Jefferson’s racism, which Chernow’s 800-page biography, title suggests, Parenti goes so far power of democracy,” declared none turned out to be more central to which stressed Hamilton’s pro- as to claim his man for the left, by other than US Communist Party his make-up than admirers had government beliefs, climbed to arguing that Hamiltonian industrial general secretary, Earl Browder, previously been willing to admit. the top of US bestseller charts. policy might prove useful in the weekly 11 worker 1314 September 10 2020 What we fight for transition from fossil fuels. “If we’re what the state insisted was legal boot. social breakdown. Addressing n Without organisation the serious about the climate crisis and tender. New York banned imports But Hamilton’s constitutional climate change hinges upon, among working class is nothing; with the reindustrialisation it demands, from New Jersey and Connecticut, proposals met with stony silence other things, a total transformation the highest form of organisation we could do worse than consulting and threatened to go to war with in Philadelphia. Undeterred, he of the world’s energy sector. We it is everything. templates from our own history,” he Vermont. Settlers from Pennsylvania signed on as Washington’s treasury must euthanise the fossil fuel writes. This is an attempt to update and Connecticut fought for control secretary after ratification and then, industry and build out clean-energy n There exists no real Communist Hamilton for the 21st century that, of what is now eastern Tennessee. after making sense of the country’s technologies and infrastructure. Party today. There are many unfortunately, does not quite succeed. Georgia and South Carolina battled shattered finances - a process that This means a project of fossil- so-called ‘parties’ on the left. In pro-British runaway slaves, who Radical Hamilton also describes fuel sector deindustrialisation, reality they are confessional sects. Analysis had taken to raiding back-country very well - he turned his attention coupled with a simultaneous Members who disagree with the Hamilton was a classic outsider settlers, while skirmishes with native to the problem of how to speed up green reindustrialisation [original prescribed ‘line’ are expected to - a native of the West Indies and Americans flared up and down the economic development. emphasis]. gag themselves in public. Either the only founder born outside western frontier. “Squatters settled that or face expulsion. British North America. He was also where they wanted, and, for lack of Progressive But this understates the problem, n Communists operate according illegitimate, the “bastard brat of a prosecution, killed Indians when they The result in 1791was his remarkable since America does not just face a to the principles of democratic Scotch peddler”, as John Adams put wanted,” Parenti writes. Washington Report on manufactures - a 40,000- climate crisis, but a perfect storm centralism. Through ongoing debate it, which pulls him down a rung or bemoaned “Land jobbers and lawless word document calling for the that is at once racial, economic, we seek to achieve unity in action two on the social scale. But he was Banditti who would bid defiance creation of a sweeping national constitutional and imperial. and a common world outlook. As brilliant and precocious, and had an to the Authority [of Congress and system, consisting of tariffs, Hamilton is not irrelevant in the long as they support agreed actions, outsider’s ability to size up his new the states] and more than probably infrastructure investment in roads historical sense, certainly. But while members should have the right to country’s predicament at a glance - involve this country in an Indian and canals, a national bank, plus his ideas make sense in an 18th or speak openly and form temporary not in part, but in toto. war”. targeted subsidies and rewards to 19th century national context, they or permanent factions. This was apparent in a couple foster new industries. have little to do with a modern n Communists oppose all impe- of pamphlets he dashed off at the Convention This is the other part of the black reconstruction programme that of rialist wars and occupations but age of 19 in 1774-75 just as the After indebted farmers rose up in legend - that of Hamilton as incipient necessity must be both socialist and constantly strive to bring to the fore revolutionary crisis was beginning western Massachusetts under a bourgeois monopolist. The charge is internationalist. the fundamental question–ending war to boil over. Already thinking in destitute ex-army captain named ahistorical nonsense, needless to say, Indeed, Hamilton’s real is bound up with ending capitalism. continental terms, he wrote that Daniel Shays, Hamilton declared that since monopoly capitalism was not significance may be very different n Communists are internationalists. America was so vast and rich that it the country had “reached almost the remotely on the horizon. Moreover, than what Parenti imagines. Rather Everywhere we strive for the closest had no need of Britain at all: last stage of national humiliation”. it ignores the revolutionary thrust than dirigisme, it may have more to unity and agreement of working class In a last-ditch effort to prevent of Hamilton’s ideas, since realising do with the futility of compromise. and progressive parties of all countries. Some parts of it are favourable the infant US from dissolving into them would have meant yet another Quoting the historian James Oakes, We oppose every manifestation to some things, others to others; total anarchy, he helped organise a confrontation with Great Britain, he notes that Hamilton was one of of national sectionalism. It is an some colonies are best calculated constitutional convention in May the leading economic power of the those “men in the middle - those who internationalist duty to uphold the for grain; others for flax and 1787 and then seized upon the day. Had Hamilton been “the finance considered themselves progressives, principle, ‘One state, one party’. hemp; others for cotton; and occasion to push for a no-nonsense minister of a developing country but who compromised with pro- others for livestock of every government that would put America today”, notes the developmental slavery extremists for the sake of n The working class must be kind: by this means, a mutually under firm, centralised control. economist, Ha-Joon Chang, “the ratification, and thereby secured a organised globally. Without a global advantageous intercourse may be Hamilton’s constitutional proposals, IMF and World Bank would certainly constitution that resisted much of the Communist Party, a Communist established between them all. If which he outlined in a six-hour have refused to lend money to this Revolution’s anti-slavery impulse”. International, the struggle against we were to turn our attention from speech a few weeks into the country and would be lobbying for Hamilton no doubt thought he had capital is weakened and lacks external to internal commerce, convention, marks the start of what his removal from office”. no choice, since southern planters coordination. we should give greater stability, might be called the black legend of If Hamilton’s plan had been had made it plain that they would n Communists have no interest and more lasting prosperity, to authoritarianism. Hamilton, it was implemented in full, according to leave the union if their demands apart from the working class our country than she can possibly said, wanted to impose a new system Parenti, the result would have been an were not met. as a whole. They differ only in have otherwise. of monarchy. While Parenti clearly early version of “one of the greatest But, while he thought he could recognising the importance of approves of one part of Hamilton’s developmentalist bureaucracies in forge ahead with his programme Marxism as a guide to practice. Indeed, he added, Britain might find proposal - ie, his call to break up the world history: post-war Japan’s regardless, the new constitution That theory is no dogma, but “in 50 or 60 years” that it was more states and replace them with equal- famously effective Ministry of proved him wrong by providing slave- must be constantly added to and dependent on America than America sized electoral districts - he describes Internal Trade and Industry”. But owners with a virtual stranglehold enriched. was on the mother country. The other aspects as “less appealing - in only bits and pieces made it through over national policy. Thanks to the n Capitalism in its ceaseless timing was off, but Hamilton was particular, lifetime terms for the the legislative meat grinder, due constitution’s notorious ‘three-fifths 2 search for profit puts the future still in the right ball park. president and for senators”. to opposition from slave-owning clause’, the south was able to use its of humanity at risk. Capitalism is Curiously, Parenti skips over It is hard to disagree. But Parenti southern agrarians, for whom an extra votes in the electoral college synonymous with war, pollution, such pre-revolutionary writings fails to mention yet another aspect activist national government and a to capture the White House in 1800 exploitation and crisis. As a global despite the light they shed on the of Hamilton’s ideas: his proposal growing population of free labourers and then, with the exception of John system capitalism can only be direction his thinking would take. that the new government include a posed an existential threat. “If Quincy Adams’s administration in superseded globally. But he is very good on the events national assembly “consist[ing] of Congress can make canals,” a North 1825-29, maintain an iron grip right that would cause Hamilton to persons elected by the people to serve Carolina politician observed, “they up to Lincoln’s election in 1860. n The capitalist class will never work out his ideas more fully. The for three years”, according to his can with more propriety emancipate.” So Hamilton’s great achievement willingly allow their wealth and problem facing America in the 1770s own notes. The phrase, “elected by Hamilton found himself increasingly was a negative one: to prove that you power to be taken away by a is familiar: how to create a new the people”, is key, since peoplehood isolated, and, in 1804, he all but cannot compromise with a snake, but parliamentary vote. political authority out of an old one is a concept that would have to be committed suicide by throwing away that ‘you’ve got to kill it before it n We will use the most militant that is being overthrown. Americans defined - not by the states, but at a his shot in a duel with Aaron Burr. kills you’, as Harriet Tubman would methods objective circumstances floundered about miserably. The new national level. With a uniform voting Hamilton was an ardent centralist, later observe.3 To be sure, Congress allow to achieve a federal republic Continental Congress authorised the standard - something the US still urbanist and industrialiser who tried eventually instituted a Hamiltonian of England, Scotland and Wales, creation of a revolutionary army, but lacks - extending from one end of the to push a somnolent new republic programme in 1862-64 by approving a united, federal Ireland and a local officials refused to supply it. country to the other and the electorate into the modern age. He was the true such dirigiste measures as a national United States of Europe. Soldiers went unfed and unpaid as a no longer divided along state lines, progressive in the Marxist sense, bank and a land-grant college system, n Communists favour industrial consequence, while generals refused democratic reformers would have not the faux egalitarian Jefferson, and authorising construction of a unions. Bureaucracy and class to follow orders. When Pennsylvania every incentive to scour the land who defended slavery, believed transcontinental railroad. America’s compromise must be fought and agreed to forward a shipment of for supporters wherever they could that the federal government lacked rapid industrialisation was already the trade unions transformed into cloth, for example, the governor find them: among non-property- constitutional authority even to the wonder of the world, but such schools for communism. specified that it was only to be used owning whites, among women and dredge riverbeds, and denounced measures kicked the process up to a n Communists are champions of to outfit the state’s own troops. among free blacks. Since every ex- urbanisation on the grounds that whole new level. the oppressed. Women’s oppression, Congress had no navy, no banks, slave would be a vote for the party “The mobs of the great cities add But radical Republicans - the neo- combating racism and chauvinism, no power of taxation, and not even that set him or her free, they would just so much to the support of pure Hamiltonians of their day - could do and the struggle for peace and a regular bureaucracy with which to also have every incentive to tackle government as sores do to the human so only after acquiring the capability ecological sustainability are just administer the war. slavery. With state governments out body.” to combat slavery, not before l as much working class questions “You can hardly conceive in of the way, there would be little to But claiming Hamilton for Daniel Lazare as pay, trade union rights and how dreadful a situation we are,” stop them. the contemporary left is another demands for high-quality health, Hamilton, a member of Washington’s Hamilton’s plan was thus more matter. After all, he was a capitalist Notes housing and education. general staff at this point, wrote to a democratic than the paralysing pioneer at a time when the 1. marxists.org/archive/browder/browder- fellow officer in 1780. He continued: system of checks and powers that American bourgeoisie was still in jefferson.pdf. n Socialism represents victory would eventually emerge - one that its revolutionary ascendancy - a 2. ‘The farmer refuted’, February 23 1775: in the battle for democracy. It is founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01- the rule of the working class. The army, in the course of the rendered slavery constitutionally period that has so faded into the 01-02-0057#ARHN-01-01-02-0057-fn-0041-ptr. present month, has received impregnable and set the scene for rear-view mirror that most people 3. “God won’t let Master Lincoln beat the South Socialism is either democratic or, only four or five days’ rations of a bloody civil war less than 75 cannot believe it ever existed at all. until he does right thing. Master Lincoln, he’s a as with Stalin’s Soviet Union, it meal, and we really know not of years later, which would take the Parenti argues that the climate crisis great man, and I’m a poor negro, but this negro turns into its opposite. can tell Master Lincoln how to save money and any adequate relief in the future. life of as many as three percent of gives Hamilton’s developmental young men. He can do it by setting the negroes n Socialism is the first stage This distress at such a stage sours the population. So if he is guilty of economics a new relevance. As he free. Suppose there was an awful big snake down of the worldwide transition to the soldiery. ’Tis in vain you authoritarianism, he is guilty “with an puts it, there on the floor. He bites you. Folks all scared, communism–a system which make apologies to them ... I hate explanation” (to quote Woody Allen because you may die. You send for a doctor to cut the bite; but the snake rolled up there and, while knows neither wars, exploitation, Congress - I hate the army - I hate in Bananas), in that his proposal Like that first generation of the doctor is doing it, he bites you again. The money, classes, states nor nations. the world - I hate myself. was more progressive than generally Americans, we contemporary doctor cuts out that bite; but, while he’s doing it, Communism is general freedom realised. With a freshly-elected Americans also face crisis. Ours takes the snake springs up and bites you again, and so and the real beginning of human A severe post-war depression only popular assembly facing off against a the form of anthropogenic climate he keeps doing it, till you kill him. That’s what Master Lincoln ought to know.” Although the history. made matters worse. With worthless lifetime senate and presidency, there change and the inability of laissez- movie Harriet transposes the speech to mid-1863, The Weekly Worker is licensed by paper money flooding forth from is little question as to who would faire ideology to address it. Modern it actually dates from January 1862. Lincoln November Publications under a Creative both Congress and the states, it was have won the tug of war. America civilisation must mitigate the causes signed the Emancipation Proclamation eight Commons Attribution-NonCommercial said that debtors in Rhode Island would have been on its way to of global warming and adapt to its months later. Marx described the proclamation as 4.0 International Licence: “tantamount to the tearing up of the old American creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ chased down creditors and paid becoming a centralised democracy, effects. Failure to face this reality constitution”. But, once the war was over, the legalcode. ISSN 1351-0150. them off “without mercy” with and a burgeoning industrial power to will mean almost certain violent constitution would be restored in full. No 1314 September 10 2020 Conspiracy theories get stranger by the day A very unlikely story Can anyone really believe that the US government is run by Satanist paedophiles? Paul Demarty investigates the QAnon phenomenon t seems we are living through a with raped children, and thus the rather attended - anti-vaccination ideologues, and an action-packed third act (“the crisis out of nothing, in the form of the golden age of conspiracy theories. ominous prospect looms that some not- some men carrying a British Union of Storm”). notorious opioid addiction epidemic; IThe vigorous state action required insignificant minority of the American Fascists banner and a good handful of All of which leaves aside what might where politicians are routinely corrupted in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, population has been lost forever. supporters of Q. seem the most pertinent question: how by lobbying; and where, indeed, the combined with the global rise of the There is secondly the matter that, The most striking thing here is not can people believe this garbage? It is very rich and powerful are permitted nationalist right, has produced a weird rather as such ‘conspiracies’ are usually the overlap of ideas as such - frankly, a question worth asking ‘naively’ for to sexually exploit the weak, including and wonderful bestiary of extremely tall supposed to, this one goes all the way to the idea that the world is run by Satan- a moment. Though one can no doubt minors, with impunity. tales - and even a resurgence in some the top. Though Trump himself has not worshipping paedophiles has no poorer find among them the semi-literate Suddenly, the thought-world of very old favourites, like belief that the openly endorsed QAnon (there would be an evidence base than the idea that rednecks of liberal stereotype, there is QAnon looks a little more familiar. Earth is flat. quite a contradiction involved, after all, vaccines are poisonous - but how easily no evidence that QAnon supporters are (Admittedly, none of that accounts for There are few such theories, however, if he were to claim out in the open that such a national agenda, focused on the abnormally unintelligent. Indeed, within the devil-worshipping angle, but every quite as florid as the ‘QAnon movement’, he was conducting a secret war against American deep state, can so easily cross the ‘hardcore’ followers on 8chan (now soup needs a little seasoning.) Indeed, we which - under the loving tutelage of its the US state apparatus due to culminate the Atlantic unaltered. The political 8kun after a series of legal troubles), already said that there is nothing about great hero, Donald Trump - has made in mass arrests and dictatorship), he has hegemony of the USA brings with it great exertions are applied to the task QAnon that is intrinsically less rational significant inroads into the Republican taken no clear stand against it, and indeed cultural hegemony, and it is not all a of working out what the latest cryptic than anti-vaccination memes; but that Party, with several candidates for office routinely retweets and shares material matter of asinine superhero movies. We pronouncements are all about. Q’s logic holds in less comfortable places. in the coming months having some from Q cultists. He knows very well that do not mean to minimise our country’s messages have gotten more vague over Suppose, for example, somebody had affiliation. it is the sort of fabulous lie that got him dismal contribution to the anti-vaxxer time - leading to endlessly inventive loyally followed the UK government It will be necessary, of course, to elected last time around, albeit unusually movement - it will only be necessary to games of word association. He likes to line on how to fight coronavirus through give a brief summary of the theory. It heteroclite in its content. mention the name, Andrew Wakefield, litter his messages with ‘codes’ - random- every wrenching U-turn, and agreed with originates from anonymous postings Beyond Trump himself, it is clear who continues to tout his wholly looking strings that may be passwords, the government that at every step it has from somebody claiming to be a - as noted - that the Republican Party discredited theories across the pond - serial numbers or whatever else; his fans taken the best possible action on the basis government official with high-level is increasingly riddled with QAnon but the sheer extent to which such ideas immediately set about deciphering them of ‘the science’. Surely we would have clearance (Q-level, which does exist in supporters. Two candidates for Congress have penetrated American society is as best they can, showing great energy to conclude that such a person was more the department of energy). The postings last year, in Florida and Minnesota, used Q quite frightening, and makes them good and imagination. deluded than the Q superfans of 8chan. initially appeared on 4chan - an image symbols and slogans in their campaigns; candidates for ‘re-export’. Yet there is no ‘there’ there - one Liberal alarm at QAnon and similar board that became the premier breeding and, among many bizarre features of Anti-vaxxers are interesting from sceptical password security specialist phenomena focuses on what it portends ground for alt-right ideology; although the Republican national convention last this perspective, since historically it is a analysed a sample of these ‘codes’ and about the direction of politics right now, they later moved to 8chan - an even month, there was a brief embarrassment rather politically ambivalent movement, concluded that the patterns of characters and finds depressing enough news there - wilder and weirder rival with a more when a speaking invitation to Mary with a ‘left’ (new-age, hippie) component involved almost certainly resulted the collapse of any sense of shared values monomaniacal rightist political character. Ann Mendoza of the Women for Trump and also a right wing (religious and also from somebody randomly mashing a throughout western societies, to the point Q claimed that the government political action committee had to be ‘libertarian’ in the American sense). In QWERTY keyboard (such keyboard that it seems there is no shared reference had long been controlled by a Satanist withdrawn, on account of her spreading the recent period, many commentators mashing is, of course, not as random as to the truth. The liberals are in fact being conspiracy he calls the Cabal. The Q-inspired anti-Semitic posts about the on the movement have noticed a decisive we think it is in the heat of the moment, over-optimistic, however, simply by primary activity of the Cabal is child sex Rothschilds - whoops! shift towards the far right. “Back when thanks to the way our hands get used to treating this as a strictly contemporary trafficking; it is essentially an enormous That brings us to the final matter - the I started covering the anti-vaccination certain movements and positions on the pathology, a product of ‘the Trump elite paedophile ring, although its way in which QAnon crossbreeds with movement more than a decade ago,” board, and so on).2 moment’ or, at most, the period since the participants are also alleged to drink the other kinds of far-right irrationalism. wrote Kiera Butler for Mother Jones Given that it provides, if you will, the election of Ronald Reagan in the States. blood of the children. Its tentacles stretch Mendoza exemplifies the stretching of Q earlier this year, “the loudest voices came grammar of most subsequent conspiracy Yet - as we often argue in these pages deep into the intelligence community, the mythology in one well-trodden direction: from politically liberal, mostly white, theorising, we may start looking for an - the root of the problem is that, in order Democrats, the media, Hollywood, and where there are hidden manipulators to be and affluent enclaves ... where parents answer in the X-Files - which also tells to maintain the rule of a minority class, it wherever else you like. But the Cabal discovered by rightwingers, it is unlikely worried about the side effects of what the story of a rogue ‘insider’ in a state is necessary that the masses be deceived has suffered a severe setback: the election to be too long before a Jewish character they perceive as toxins in vaccines.” But apparatus that has become dominated by into identifying their own interests with of Donald J Trump to the office of the is imposed on the matter. Overt anti- today, shadowy forces of dubious moral bona that ruling class. This is particularly true in president. The apparent chaos of Trump’s Semitism is not common, at least among fides. In one early episode, Fox Mulder capitalist societies, where the proletariat leadership is merely a phenomenal form; the more prominent boosters of QAnon, Instead of fretting over unwholesome is told by his mysterious informant - has a material interest in democracy, and what is really going on is a battle between but there is a substantial section of the additives in vaccines, members [of unimaginatively called Deep Throat - that where it is likely therefore that the class Trump’s partisans and the Cabal. Soon, in alt-right that maintains virulent hatred of online anti-vax groups] now rant “a lie is best hidden between two truths”. struggle on its own will bring extensions an event called ‘the Storm’, Trump will Jews, and the two meet in places. about government overreach. They of the franchise to layers of people make his ultimate counterstroke, arrest describe schools’ immunisation rules Direction of politics with interests opposed to those of the tens of thousands of Satan-worshipping Anti-vaxxers as an assault on their freedom, and It would be stretching credibility just a capitalists at one time or another. child molesters, and restore order to More immediately worrying perhaps is they swap theories about how Bill little to call Q’s lies ‘hidden’ - hidden in The gap between how things really America. The world will be safe - not the overlap with the clusters of conspiracy Gates is working with the government plain sight, let us say. The perspective are and how they must appear in order for democracy, but for a sort of military theories focused on Covid-19. Exemplary to control citizens with microchips.1 from which they are believable, however, to stay that way is quite real. It is in this millennium. here is a substantial protest of some is one where governments never let a gap that conspiracy theories, apocalyptic Seasoned followers of the American 10,000 people in Trafalgar Square on The role of more baroque theories like crisis go to waste and relentlessly chip religion and rank bigotry sprout their conspiracy scene will find some of this August 29 against lockdown restrictions those of Q is then straightforward: they away at civil liberties; where the stated poisonous leaves l familiar. QAnon is a clear successor to and the like. The organisers of the can knit together all the particularities reasons for state actions are often at ‘Pizzagate’, in which it was alleged that protest were a group called Stand Up X, of ‘government overreach’, all the wild variance from the true underlying Notes senior Democrats were involved in a whose main beef is the rollout of the 5G individual schemes for social control motives; where, indeed, the same is 1. motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/the-anti-vax- movements-radical-shift-from-crunchy-granola- paedophile ring. The ‘evidence’ for this network, which is blamed for Covid-19 proposed by different sorts of cranks, into true of vast corporations, such as that purists-to-far-right-crusaders. was a reading of the leaked emails from in place of the Sars-Cov-2 virus. A rather a straightforward narrative with heroes pharmaceutical companies have in living 2. threadreaderapp.com/ Democrat functionary John Podesta that more heterogeneous bunch actually (Trump), villains (Satanist paedophiles) memory manufactured a public health thread/1029136767704694784.html. assumed that various words were in fact euphemisms for trafficking: when Subscribe Name:______Standing order Podesta suggested ordering ‘pizza’, he 6m 1yr Inst. To ______Bank plc ______was not after a Dominos delivery, but a Address:______UK £30/€35 £60/€70 £200/€220 child sex slave (hence Pizzagate), and so Branch address ______Europe £43/€50 £86/€100 £240/€264 ______on. At the time (around 2016), it seemed Rest of £65/€75 £130/€150 £480/€528 Post code ______Account name ______that there were no more depths of baroque world ______Sort code ______Account No ______delusion to plumb, but Q - whoever he is New UK subscribers offer: (or they are) - has done it in style. 3 months for £10 ______Please pay to Weekly Worker, Lloyds A/C No 00744310 sort code 30-99-64, the sum of ______every month*/3 months* There are several reasons for UK subscribers: Pay by standing order and until further notice, commencing on ______This replaces any previous order from this account. (*delete) bourgeois and liberal alarm at the growth Tel:______save £12 a year. Minimum £12 every 3 Date ______of QAnon. One is precisely what we months... but please pay more if you can. Email:______have been mocking so far - people really Signed ______Name (PRINT) ______believe such things. It is difficult for Send a cheque or postal order payable to ‘Weekly Worker’ at: Sub: £/€ ______Address ______politicians of the establishment to imagine Weekly Worker, BCM Box 928, ______winning over people who confuse pizza London WC1N 3XX Donation: £/€ ______