& Workers’ Liberty

SolFor siociadl ownershaip of the branks aind intdustry y No 513 17 July 2019 50p/£1 FIGHT THE TORIES’ Labour and BREXIT COUP PLOT antisemitism Page 16

Automated luxury? Bruce Robinson reviews Aaron Bastani’s book Fully Automated Luxury Communism Pages 8-9

Climate action debate The relation between workplace and campus action, and large-scale political If Boris Johnson prorogues (suspends) called Parliament for a debate. folly” to rule out suspending Parliament so mobilisation Parliament to force through his no-deal As we go to press on 15 July, all reports that he can push through a “no deal” Brexit Pages 6-7 Brexit, then, says Tory maverick Rory have Boris Johnson well ahead of Jeremy over the heads of the MPs. Stewart, “I would work with colleagues Hunt in the race to become Tory leader and If it seems improbable that he will attempt simply to organise another parliament prime minister on 23-24 July. that, it is only because of the angry response Renew Labour across the road. What Johnson will do as prime minister of dissident Tories like Stewart. “That sounds quite Civil-War-ist, but that (and what difference it will make if somehow Labour has consistently opposed “no is what happened in 2002 when Blair tried Hunt wins) we don’t know. deal”. But more limply than the dissident To - not to have a vote on the Iraq war”. We can most firmly exclude what Johnson ries. Labour has now said it will demand a The horseshoe Tony Blair had tried to push along his sup - (and Hunt) say they will do: negotiate a new public vote on any Tory Brexit formula, port for the invasion of Iraq while Parliament “backstop”-free deal, very different from deal or “no deal”, and back Remain in that was not sitting. The backbench Labour MP Theresa May’s, and have it done and dusted new public vote. But with ostentatious reluc - theory Graham Allen booked a hall to convene MPs by 31 October or soon after. tance. “unofficially”. Blair backed down and re - Johnson has said he thinks it “absolute More on page 5 Page 4 2 NEWS More online at www.workersliberty.org Trump’s Gulag-on-the-border

allowed to start bathing four days By Martin Thomas ago (when the visit was an - Nearly 550 workers at the Way - nounced)”. fair company in San Francisco The CBP people were openly and Boston have staged walk - hostile — a Facebook group includ - outs outside company head - ing 9,500 out of their 20,000 number quarters after hearing that the has been revealed, which carries company had taken a $200,000 openly racist and abusive comment order including kids’ beds for a — and made the members of contractor known to work with Congress hand in their phones be - detention centres. fore the visit. But one Congress - That protest, and others, were man, Joaquin Castro, was able to sparked after Alexandria Ocasio- get a phone in. Cortez and other members of the “The members of Congress asked US Congress got to visit the Cus - the women’s permission to photo - toms and Border Protection (CBP) graph — they said yes, please share detention centre in Clint, Texas, on what’s happening”, reports Ocasio- 1 July. Cortez. CBP did some “cleaning up” be - Women and children are held in fore the members of Congress ar - crowded rooms, with little access to rived. A group of women, pictured washing facilities. They are refused above, told Ocasio-Cortez that they soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, were moved into the crowded and given only sachets of shampoo. room from outside tents before our When they ask for water, they are The Customs and Border Protection camp in Clint, Texas: there, some men are held in rooms with standing room only arrival. “They said they’d gone 15 told: drink from the toilet. days without a shower, and were Men are held in rooms so children in federal custody is that enforce custody since Donald local people have tried to donate crowded that it is standing-room the Trump administration has Trump took office. stuff, CBP has refused the dona - only. The same was done by the threatened to arrest and deport the A “stench” pervades the Clint de - tions. Stalinists in eastern Poland in 1939, parents or other adults if they don’t tention centre — stained clothes, The Trump administration has when they rounded up Poles for have legal status. Even immigrants toddlers without nappies, and ba - responded with a grudging admis - deportation into the USSR. This is with legal status are afraid to claim bies caked in dirt. Fluorescent sion that some things need to be in a rich, supposedly democratic the children. lights remain on overhead 24 hours fixed up at the detention centres — country. Lawyer and child advocate War - a day, the building is often cold, and a message from Trump person - And much of this is done for ren Binford told the New Yorker children and adults lie on concrete, ally to the Congresswomen (all profit. Many of the USA’s detention magazine after she and a team of sometimes under an aluminium non-Anglo, but most born in the centres — not Clint, but many oth - attorneys interviewed dozens of foil blanket, sometimes not. USA) that they should “go home”, ers — are run by private contrac - children detained at Clint. “They In June, US government lawyer plus a threat of renewed swoops tors, who turn a tidy profit. GEO are not safe, because they are get - Sarah Fabian argued in court that and deportations of “illegal” mi - Group and CoreCivic, the two ting sick.” Dolly Lucio Sevier, a the law’s “safe and sanitary” stipu - grants. largest private prison companies, doctor, has called the conditions: lation doesn’t mandate that the Close these detention centres! are known financial supporters of “tantamount to intentionally caus - government provide detained chil - Let families be reunited! End the Trump. ing the spread of disease.” As of dren with soap or toothbrushes. deportations! Legalise the USA’s There are 300 children in Clint. June, two dozen detainees have CBP currently holds 2,000 children millions of “undocumented” One reason there are now so many died in Immigrations and Customs in federal custody a day. When people! Open the borders! New setback in USA Socialist Party calls a special conference on 21 July and Solidarity, and the main - of the SP’s weekly paper and from nistic cartoons of Margaret By Rhodri Evans stream Orthodox Trotskyism of By Pete Boggs the SP’s Executive Committee. Thatcher (bit.ly/th-ctn). There is no public announce - Ernest Mandel, represented The SP (Socialist Party) is hold - Evidence for the NFF’s claims of The SP has come a long way ment about this yet, but we reli - within Solidarity. ing a special conference on 21 bureaucratism comes from an since the 1980s, but even now it ably hear that the conference of Workers’ Liberty has had July to discuss issues from the email sent in error by Taaffe-sup - feels like much of their politics on the US revolutionary-socialist friendly relations over the years conflict in the international net - porting CWI secretary Tony such issues has merely been group Solidarity on the week - (as well as political differences) work linked to the SP (Commit - Saunois to every national section grafted on to avoid putting off all end 29-30 June voted to set up with Solidarity, and we see this tee for a Workers’ International, revealing plans to expel Taaffe’s but the most backward recruits. a committee to explore convert - as a setback. We hope to learn CWI), and a split looks likely. opponents if they convened a There is little evidence that the more. ing it from an organisation into SP doyen Peter Taaffe has meeting of the CWI’s leading com - NFF or the Irish section have fallen an educational centre. formed a faction in the CWI, “In mittee. into identity politics or a wholesale This follows the decision by the Defence of a Working-Class Trot - The history of the SP, and before abandonment of working class larger International Socialist Orga - skyist CWI”. They contend that it Militant, also includes antipathy politics. The greater fear should nization (ISO) in March-April to the Irish section has moved into to movements which fought not be that they are openly propa - dissolve itself. “petty-bourgeois Mandelism” against oppression outside of gating opportunist politics now, With Solidarity, there is no hint The date on the front page of Sol - through its work in its feminist solely class boundaries. but rather that if flung out of the of a scandal or row triggering the idarity 512 (3 July) was given pro-choice campaign ROSA and an SP they will flail around and then dissolution. The word is that the wrongly on the front page as “2 overemphasis on students. CRITICAL descend into the opportunism group came to consider itself too June” (though it was right on the The “Non-Faction Faction” Autonomous struggles for which they have been accused of. small, weak, elderly, and divided back page). This year’s Workers’ (NFF) in the SP, aligned with the women’s, gay, or black libera - SP comrades who have been to function as an organisation. Liberty summer camp is the majority in the CWI, charges Taaffe tion have been dismissed as un - prompted to rethink should make These moves mark the expiry ninth , not the eighth. Carola with bureaucratism and being un - necessarily divisive. a critical reassessment of the whole (at least for now) in the USA of Rackete’s name was misspelled able to relate to the new wave of In a factional battle when Mili - SP/ Militant tradition and the “Or - two major political traditions orig - as Rakete. left-wing and liberation move - tant had hegemony on Liverpool thodox Trotskyist” legacy of which inating from the Trotskyism of the ments across the world. City Council in the mid-80s, its it is a splinter. The Socialist Party is not the days of Trotsky: the Heterodox Taaffe’s faction has a comfort - members spread racist slanders Solidarity 514: 14 August party of Lenin and Trotsky, but Trotskyist tradition of Max Shacht - able majority in Britain, and has about the Liverpool Black Caucus rather a much-downgraded ver - man and Hal Draper, consider - Solidarity 514 will be printed on been able to remove NFF support - being “pimps and gangsters” sion of those of Zinoviev and ably-mutated follow-ons from 14 August, and 515 on 4 Septem - ers Sarah Wrack and Claire Laker- (bit.ly/lpl-bc). Around the same James P Cannon in his post- which operated within both ISO ber. Then usual weekly schedule. Mansfield as (successive) editors time its paper published misogy - 1940 phase. Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty NEWS 3 £25,000 by Hong Kong confronts the CCP 9 December tors were barred from holding of - The public image of the police, target leaders, like in 2004, it does Chen Ying writes from fice. Only half of Legco is directly already tarnished since 2014, has beg the question of what will hap - Hong Kong elected, and the pro-democracy mi - further plummeted. The attack on pen next. Our new fund drive, aiming to nority has been further the Legco building expressed ac - The government is totally paral - raise £25,000 by 9 December, Within an explosive period of six marginalised by disqualifications tivists’ frustration that the neutered ysed and has lost its credibility – was launched at our summer weeks, we have seen protest and tightening of Legco procedures Legco no longer functions as any the ruling elite, including those school, Ideas for Freedom, on marches totalling close to five to restrict debate. check against Government ex - who are strongly pro-Beijing, think 22-23 June. million people, together with the Five years on, with near-total cesses. Society appears sharply po - they are a complete failure. Beijing, We raised £8,515 there. Since most heavy-handed use of police control over Legco, the HK Gov - larised between blue and yellow through its liaison office in Hong then we’ve had in another £1,300, firepower since 1997. ernment exploited the case of a camps – the blue pro-government, Kong, already calls all the shots. from donors who want to be The invasion of the Legislative Hong Konger who committed a pro-Beijing and pro-police camp on A serious flight of capital has anonymous, so we’re at £9,815. Council building went viral around murder in Taiwan to attempt to the one hand, and the much larger begun, with Singapore the main Our income from regular the world. This level of sustained push through an extradition law. oppositional yellow camp. destination. Those with the capac - supporters’ contributions and social protest has not happened This touched upon a raw nerve. All this is occurring against a ity to emigrate are actively plan - literature sales covers our basics: since the march of 1.5 million peo - Hong Kong is already weary of the steadily deteriorating economic ning to do so (as many did before rent, utilities, office supplies, ple in Hong Kong against the arbitrary disappearance of people background. In the past two 1997). The fear an economic col - stipends for some of our office Tiananmen massacre in June 1989. taken across the border. The new decades, Hong Kong’s economic lapse of confidence and a free-fall staff. Hong Kong has had enough. law would enable many more peo - importance to China has dimin - for the Hong Kong currency, cur - Other things — such as buying This is our city’s reaction to ple to be extradited to China. ished dramatically. 1n 1997, HK’s rently pegged to the US Dollar. in outside expertise to help with decades of Beijing’s undermining GDP was 20% of China’s (though Hong Kong is in an unprece - our website, paying organisers’ of the “one country, two systems” with six million vs 1200 million dented crisis, not seen in a couple fares to travel to meetings, accord, signed with Britain in 1984. SPILLED The massive explosion of oppo - people) and it handled about half of generations. This is happening printing new pamphlets and In 2003, 500,000 marched against sition spilled over into a society- of China’s international trade. Now during an epoch where China is on books — depend on the fund- the enactment of an anti-sedition wide protest against the its GDP is 3% of China’s and falling a collision course with USA. Pro-in - raising. law, Article 23 , which eventually Government’s arrogance and its further, overtaken by Shanghai and dependence political forces in On 11-14 July Workers’ Liberty forced the first post-1997 Chief Ex - refusal to address many eco - Shenzhen. Hong Kong and Taiwan are already ran a residential week school, on ecutive Tung Chee Hwa to step nomic and social ills: The Gini coefficient in Hong in close dialogue. the Wales-England border, about down. Kong is very high at 0.54, with a A majority of Hong Kong people the lessons of the several Five years ago, the 2014 Occupy Expensive housing, low pay and long working hours, deteriorating minute layer of super-rich individ - still consider themselves culturally revolutionary crises in Germany Central or Umbrella Movement uals exercising an uncurbed mo - as Chinese, and see their future between 1918 and 1923, and the started after the Standing Commit - health care and no retirement pen - sion for an aging population, plus nopolistic stranglehold over the destiny as part of a modern Chi - efforts then to build a solid tee of the National People’s city. The movement’s immediate nese nation which is liberated from German Communist Party Congress (NPCSC) blocked pro - the emphasis on Putonghua (Stan - dar Mandarin) over the local Can - demands are very focused and the stranglehold of the Chinese (which after 1923 were snuffed posed reforms to the Hong Kong enjoy widespread support – with - Communist Party. The CCP itself, out by “Bolshevisation”, then by electoral system. The occupation of tonese language in schools, the attacks on press freedom, the in - drawal of the extradition proposal, whilst forever plagued by infight - Stalinism). Hong Kong’s Central District paral - the resignation of Carrie Lam as ing and power struggles, will not In one session we looked at the ysed traffic for 77 days. At the peak creasing numbers of super-rich mainlanders. chief executive, amnesty for those just implode or give up its basic routines of that Communist of the protests, on one afternoon 89 arrested, and an independent com - monopoly of state power on its Party when it was a real tear gas canisters were launched. During 2004, a Hong Kong Lennon Wall sprang up – thou - mission of inquiry into the whole own. revolutionary party, 250,000 Occupy Central was defeated. event, not just police brutality. The necessary task of uniting strong or more, in 1922. Whilst repeatedly mobilising over sands of post-it notes, cultural rev - olution-style big Chinese character However, its political leadership the best elements of the protest It levied dues of the equivalent 100,000 people to demonstrate, and more long term programme is movements in Hong Kong, Tai - of £50 per month from the without a clear programme or lead - posters, works of art etc. Today, there are over a hundred Lennon currently not clearly formed. wan and mainland China to build average member, who was then a ership the protest lost its focus. Its Whilst this has made it impossible a proletarian party to take on the manual worker in a much poorer leaders were given jail sentences Walls springing up all over differ - ent neighbourhoods in Hong Kong. for the government to identify and CCP will be a huge challenge. Germany, where the great bulk of and some pro-democracy legisla - wages went to basics of food and shelter. It demanded much more from its better-paid members. It organised each member rigorously into two regular Sudan: protests against stalled deal streams of meetings, their workplace “fraction” and their neighbourhood “group of ten”. The Central Committee of Su - While negotiations may well stall forward, crowds celebrating the It ran residential Marxist- By Simon Nelson danese Doctors (CCSD) has said on again, the AFC appear to have been agreement were fired upon with education schools, one month or three months long, and provided Further demonstrations have Twitter that six civilians have been far too accepting of the proposed live rounds by the RSF. Already financial support for workers to been held in Sudan’s capital killed in Sudan over the past three transitional arrangement. In a state - longer standing opposition move - attend. Khartoum following the killing of days. The CCSD said the Transi - ment they said: “What we have re - ments have rejected the deal. Many Without that sort of effort, the a civilian in El-Souk by the Rapid tional Military Council (TMC) must alised today is a gateway to the of these are armed groups that have question of the party leading a Support Forces (RSF) militia. be held responsible for the deaths. application and the realisation of fought the government and the RSF revolution would not even have There had been demonstrations Negotiations between the Al - the goals of the revolution. We will in different formations in Darfur liance for Freedom and Change continue our road through a vast and elsewhere. They do not pro - been a possibility. in El-Souk calling on the RSF to That mass Communist Party leave. (AFC/FFC), an umbrella group for partnership with all the national vide an alternative, but their dis - the opposition dominated by the forces that have not fallen in the trust is not misplaced. stemmed from an initial all- The demand for civilian rule and Germany meeting of socialists an end to the Transitional Military Sudanese Professionals Association mire of the oppression of the late Worryingly, the deal has not (SPA), and the TMC have stalled regime of al-Bashir.” raised the ire of Egypt, Saudi Ara - willing to organise against World Council (TMC) regime that re - War 1, canvassed for placed that of Omar al-Bashir is in - but are due to start again as Soli - A vast partnership with all na - bia or the UAE. All of them are key darity goes to press on 16 July. tional forces that were not a part of players in the Arab League and energetically by Rosa Luxemburg creasing. in 1914, which drew just seven A rotten deal, not yet signed, Following the initial agreement, the oppression of the Bashir regime want to see “stability” in Sudan. And we should remember that people. (Others said they would allow the military to govern protests have continued with an - cannot by rights include the mili - Bashir provided that stability opposed the war, but they felt for 21 months and then hand other “million man march” on Sat - tary. until recently. unwell, the journey was too long, power to a civilian administration urday 13 July to mark 40 days since With the prospect of the army the violent break-up of the Khar - having almost two years running they had domestic problems…) for a further 18 months. In face of At all stages, from the tiny that, the protests have continued. toum sit in on 3 June. the country, with the AFC’s consent Details of the massacre and the at least for now, the danger of a mil - •An audio recording of the nucleus to the big party, The deal would form an 11 mem - revolutionary socialist politics is ber council, five civilians, five mili - atrocities committed by the TMC itary consolidation of power and speeches by Namaa Al-Mahdi and backed RSF and other militias are the crushing of the burgeoning Stephen Wood from Workers’ Lib - impossible without fund-raising tary representatives, and an 11th efforts. person elected and agreed by both only now coming to light. Videos labour movement and civil society erty London Forum, “Sudan: and pictures can be shared after the is very real. democracy and revolution”, can be Help us! sides. The first person put forward workersliberty.org/donate was a retired military officer! TMC allowed internet usage to re - To give an indication of the con - found at workersliberty.org/audio sume. trol the military still seeks to put 4 COMMENT Email your letters to [email protected] Who needs the “horseshoe” theory?

cesses of what already exists.” more competition for badly paid jobs,” says ing a second referendum and a Remain posi - Later in the article, Akehurst complains Wagenknecht. tion for Labour. That would, says the author, that “the existence elsewhere in Europe of The support for Brexit by the SWP, Coun - represent the “Syrizafication” of Labour, forces like migration-sceptical left-wing party terfire, the Socialist Party, George Galloway making “Tony Blair’s political divorce of the Aufstehen in Germany, has been deliberately and especially the Morning Star is another party from Labour’s working class base irre - By Jim Denham twisted by neoliberals keen to play up the case in point; Corbyn’s betrayal of the prin - versible” and mark Labour’s going over “to ‘liberal’ side of their credentials as demon - ciple of free movement, yet another. the elite resistance to Brexit” … “the middle Having to follow the Morning Star (and, strating that the left is not much more pro - Not so long ago, the Morning Star was de - classes [and] big business.” therefore the politics of the Communist gressive than the far right”. nouncing the Brexit Party. An editorial on Ramsey, with fellow-academic Chris Bick - Party of Britain) on a regular basis, “To this end”, continues Akehurst, “evi - April 24th sneered: “Even the news that the erton, has an article on TFB’s website on the teaches you to read between the lines. dence as absurd as the existence of Mette Brexit Party confected by Nigel Farage is to Irish border question and Brexit which effec - Various themes and leitmotifs are hidden Fredricksen in Denmark (a mainstream social present the Moral Maze’s shape-shifting tively recommends: send in British troops. away in apparently innocuous asides (eg pro- democrat who is a migration-sceptic) or Claire Fox as a candidate fails to astonish. “Behind the intransigence of Michel Remain forces within Labour routinely re - Jeremy Corbyn’s relative pragmatism over There can hardly be a more suitable candi - Barnier and Leo Varadkar”, the article contin - ferred to as “Blairite”) or contained in articles the Brexit referendum is conscripted into the date for the Brussels talking shop than a ues, “we find potential threats from diehard that are superficially about something else narrative of a radical left that can be thrown motor-mouth Trotskyite turned right-wing republican grouplets, effectively recruited as entirely. in with the far right in a bag labelled ‘pop - libertarian.” the armed wing of the European Union. In Thus last Wednesday’s Morning Star car - ulism.’” Claire Fox and her in-absolutely-no-way- London, we find a British political class that ried a quite lengthy piece by one Nathan I’ve never heard the (simplistic and un - Trotskyist organisation, Spiked! support has been willing to send its armies on bloody Akehurst, denouncing the so-called “horse - helpful) “horseshoe theory” used in political something called The Full Brexit (TFB), a pro- adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, but is shoe” theory which posits that the far right discourse. Undeniably, though, significant Brexit organisation that claims to be on the unwilling to face down even the slightest hint and far left eventually converge. sections of the left, or what considers itself left. of violence closer to home to ensure that a Akehurst claims that the recent BBC drama the left, are pandering to nationalism. Another leading light of the Full Brexit is democratic decision over the constitutional Years and Years , in which a radical left govern - Aufstehen’s Sahra Wagenknecht in Ger - Peter Ramsay, Professor of Law at the Lon - future of the UK can be implemented.” ment in Spain clamps down on migrants, is many and La France Insoumise’s Jean-Luc don School of Economics. And who do we Also on TFB, Ramsay has argued that an example of this “theory” being used by Mélenchon in France are both militantly na - find writing a conspiratorial, nationalist although Farage’s Brexit Party is not “the “centrists” to attack the left as anti-migrant. tionalist and anti-migrant: France is no twaddle for the Morning Star on 9 July? answer to the deep problems of British Akehurst protests that “the left at its worst longer an “independent country”, says Mé - Why, none other than Peter Ramsay. His ar - politics”, nevertheless “all democrats” has merely failed to oppose the violent ex - lenchon; “Open borders in Europe means ticle denounced John McDonnell’s for back - should support it. Disabled, not impaired “Inspired by internationalism” By John McDonnell MP ogy and learning style. But he may have been First, I fear that Johnson is willing to tip able to participate in collective learning and our country into the disaster of a no deal. discussion in a different format (for example We must work across the House to pre - in a different physical environment, through vent this being inflicted on our commu - differently-structured activities, online, in nity. Martin Thomas is still insisting that the written correspondence, in a smaller group, We cannot stand by and allow Parliament student he referred to in a previous letter etc). Unless you know for sure that this is not to be prorogued or ignored. Johnson and his is impaired, but has yet to offer convincing the case, then the assertion that he is im - wealth friends will be largely protected from evidence of this. paired remains open to doubt. the increased food prices, threat to NHS He appears to conclude that if we don’t Moreover, “collective learning” is only one drug supplies and eroding living standards recognise this student’s impairment, then we form of learning. I’m not sure that there are caused by a no deal Brexit. are denying the existence or significance of sufficient grounds to assume that learning in I warn you not to underestimate the reck - impairment. largeish groups is such a superior form of less, ruthless self serving ambition of John - I am comfortable with being labelled “dis - learning that it warrants “hard-wired” pref - son, who is willing to put our people at risk abled” as an autistic person, because society erence for learning alone or one-to-one as to secure the temporary keys of No. 10. disables me by being geared to neurotypical “impairment”. Second I am tremendously pleased that interactions and sensitivites. I don’t think my Of course we can not blame capitalism for we are now committed to a referendum in autism is an impairment. I accept that for impairment being a significant factor. But we which we will campaign to Remain. This re - some people, their neurodivergence — or as - can indict capitalism for the massive barriers flects the increasing level of awareness of the pects of it — may be impairment. it puts in the way of people with impair - impact Brexit would have on our economy I have no problem in accepting that impair - ments — and of people with differences. and the jobs of the people we represent. favoured consideration of the use of Citi - ment exists, and that it exists in varying de - Sometimes those barriers are such that they Third, in any future campaign we must zens’ Assemblies before any vote to both grees. I spend a fair amount of time arguing make difference look like impairment even learn the lessons of the last referendum cam - better inform the debate but also build un - with approaches that appear to be, or which when it is not. paign. I campaigned in that referendum derstanding and, wherever possible, con - risk, denying this, which might potentially We can also blame capitalism for its narrow with others on the slogan “Another Europe sensus. erase impairment by insisting that everything definitions of what is the “norm”, including is Possible.” I believe that we failed in the Finally, we now need to campaign with is merely difference. in learning and interaction styles, and its con - last referendum because we failed to con - idealism. Of course the economic argument Disability and impairment are not the same sequential assumption that those who differ vince large areas of our country that another is critical to our campaign but we also need thing. Disability is the way in which society from that norm are impaired. Capitalism op - Europe was possible. We didn’t promote to inspire people with the principles of in - creates barriers and difficulties to people erates what we might call a “neurocracy”: a sufficiently the transformative policy pro - ternationalism that assert the unity of peo - with impairments and differences. It is pos - rigid conformity, arising in large part from gramme we are constructing for many of the ples rather than the separateness of nation sible to be impaired but not disabled (for ex - the conformity it demands of workers’ roles areas that in frustration and anger voted for states. ample, a short-sighted person whose vision in production. Brexit. At Labour’s International Social Forum is easily corrected with freely-available But let’s end by reasserting that whether a So we must campaign for Remain but also at the weekend we agreed that a new In - lenses), and also to be disabled but not im - neurodivergent person (or any other disabled the change that many of our communities ternationalism was not only possible but paired (as, for example, some autistic people person) is impaired or not, our demands re - desperately need after decades of neoliberal needed. We should reframe our debate are). main the same: equality, dignity, rights, the dominance and years of harsh austerity. and campaigning over Europe into that Martin argues that his student was im - removal of barriers. Fourth, that transformative programme inspiring vision. paired in “participation in collective learning For many of us, this will require not just includes both the large scale economic in - and discussion”. I am still not convinced that adjustments or workarounds, but major vestment needed in these towns and also • This was the message from Shadow Chan - Martin can know that for sure. societal changes. proposals for reform of the way the institu - cellor John McDonnell to the “Love Social - His student was certainly disabled in an Janine Booth, Hackney tions of the EU operate to increase account - ism, Hate Brexit” meeting on 15 July. environment which did not suit his neurol - ability and participation. That’s why I have Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty WHAT WE SAY 5 Fight the Tories’ Brexit coup plot

From front page It has opposed “no deal” only through parliamentary manoeuvres. Socialist internationalists demand Labour take the idea of an “unofficial Par - liament” out of the hands of Rory Stewart and running with it. We demand that Labour plan for mass protest demonstrations in every city if Johnson attempts to suspend Parliament. Besides that Labour should be supporting the anti-Brexit marches on 20 July and 12 October and putting a Labour-oriented po - litical stamp on them. Boris Johnson is enough of an unprinci - pled opportunist that we can imagine he might do a u-turn once prime minister, dish his supporters, and delay Brexit. If he tries that, or anyway, an energetic Labour campaign could force him into call - ing a general election. One of the less-improbable improbabili - ties of the next few months is that he may Labour shifts on Brexit. Now clinch a victory! call a general election anyway, gambling that he can scoop back the Farage vote. its approach has been timid and has accom - “we’ve done all we can” feelings gaining Whatever the variant, we must work to By Colin Foster modated anti-migrant narratives. ground among the anti-Brexit majority of mobilise the labour movement to fight and “No matter what deal is on the table, and “Our 2017 manifesto accepted that free - labour movement activists. bring down the sub-Trump demagogue dom of movement would end, and Labour Such weariness, such force of inertia, is Johnson. which party has negotiated it, our position must be to remain in the EU and oppose was initially reluctant to oppose the Tory Im - what the power of the ruling class always For that to work politically, we must migration Bill, which threatens to give Boris rests on. The great appear great because push Labour into sorting itself out. any form of Brexit”, declared shadow for - eign secretary Emily Thornberry at a Johnson’s future cabinet a blank cheque to we are on our knees. Let us rise! Into making a clear call against Brexit, for rewrite migration laws. “Remain and Transform”, for free move - “Love Socialism Hate Brexit” meeting in Parliament on Monday 15 July. “If the new Leave campaign is anything ment and migrants’ rights. like the last one, we must be ready to tackle Into tackling antisemitism, and declaring Diane Abbott, Dawn Butler, Jon Ashworth and Keir Starmer also spoke. John McDonnell head-on its agenda of racist scapegoating. We clearly that hate-Israel conspiracy theories know that it’s years of austerity, privatisation, are off limits and, besides, no help to Pales - and Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard sent messages of support. deregulation and attacks on trade unions that tinian rights. are to blame for poverty and inequality – not Into standing firmly and emphatically “Love Socialism Hate Brexit” (now re - named “Love Socialism Rebuild Britain fellow working people with foreign pass - with workers on strike, committing to re - ports. peal all anti-trade union legislation. Transform Europe”) was at first, when launched in February, a small group of nine “We can only beat hate and division by Away from reducing its anti-cuts mes - combining a socialist programme with a sage to a call for more spending on the po - left Labour MPs, Clive Lewis, Lloyd Russell- Moyle, Alex Sobel, and others. strong pro-migrant message”. lice, and into pledges to tax the rich to The union position had a second clause, restore the NHS, education, and benefits. Agitation and campaigning from the grass roots by groups like Labour for a Socialist Eu - suggesting that a Labour government in the Into serious action on climate change. near future would seek a better Brexit deal And to drastically extend public own - rope — the huge anti-Brexit demonstration on 23 March, street stalls, meetings, motions and then call a public vote between a revised ership and democratic control of eco - deal and Remain, leaving open Labour’s rec - nomic life. through local Labour Parties — have ex - panded its reach. ommendation in that case. The real, though mealy-mouthed and inad - Insider reports say that the Labour shadow equate, shift in policy on 8-9 July by the cabinet rejected that second clause. Labour’s Labour-affiliated trade unions (TULO) and public statement said nothing on the ques - then by the Labour Party also shows the im - tion, and left open what Labour would say pact of that campaigning effort. about Brexit in an early general election. Jeremy Corbyn said on 9 July: “Labour There remain those who want to rebuild A pamphlet from Workers’ Liberty would campaign for Remain against either walls between nations in Europe, turn back summarises our arguments on Brexit, no deal or a Tory deal that does not protect the economic and social clock, divert atten - Europe, international solidarity, free the economy and jobs”. tion from class struggle against our own rul - movement, immigration, and how to build As Alena Ivanova and Ana Oppenheim ing class towards shadowy but above all socialist politics cross-borders. have written (Labour List, 10 July): “We are “foreign” officials in Brussels, make barriers getting closer and closer to becoming an anti- between British-born and migrant workers, 40 pages A4. Cover price £4. With postage Brexit party. and spin varieties of illusion about the possi - — non-UK £6, UK £5. “This policy shift… follows many months bilities for a reshaped “capitalism in one Arabs Jews and Socialism: The socialist of sustained pressure from the grassroots, country”. Nigel Farage. Boris Johnson. Cheap rates for bulk orders: four for £15, debate in the 1980s and 90s on Israel and from the same mass membership that se - Jeremy Hunt. And, on the self-proclaimed ten for £35, twenty for £60. Palestine, and the development of Workers’ cured Corbyn his leadership victories on the left, the Morning Star , and the Morning Star’s Liberty’s ideas . promise of listening to the movement”. allies in Labour’s Leader’s Office, Seamus • Buy online at bit.ly/r-rebel £5 cover price, £6.20 including postage. They add: “Labour must have the courage Milne and others. to win the argument on immigration. So far, Their hope now rests on weariness and 6 DEBATE More online at www.workersliberty.org Start local for climate action Workers’ Liberty activists have been and create activist-leaders to affect change solution required for climate change is simply “lifestyle politics with a syndicalist proposing and debating initiatives on climate through the existing decision making pro - (again) propagandistic, “advocating for soci - spin” (as Mike has previously called it) but change. cess. While Mike is right to call this “liberal”, ety-wide changes and supporting youth cli - rank-and-file struggle. its alleged localism not a fault but a strength mate strikers” along with fighting for a more c. Transition . In areas where moves to a car - (building activist movements and winning climate-relevant school curriculum, more re - bon neutral economy would have a serious By Matt Cooper majorities). Their flaw is using this as a foun - search in universities and (vaguely) the or - effect on the industry (e.g. motor, construc - dation for traditional lobbying, or, at best, a ganisation of workers in key industries. tion, transport, aerospace, tourism, agricul - In his article in Solidarity 512 (bit.ly/cc- generational shift in opinion leading to an en - While Mike states that workplace campaigns ture) seek to create workers’ plans for 512) Mike Zubrowski argues that a focus vironmentalist march through the institu - are important in “creating a sense of agency” transition. on limited local issues and (by implication) tions. he does not seem clear about the fundamen - d. National union policy . Demand that workplace initiatives “distracts from the tal nature of struggle in the workplace. the union’s leadership escalate climate real forces at play” which are international Socialists’ next strategic goal is to win change disputes to industrial action auto - and require that the working class “take INTERNATIONALISM Instead Mike states that we need “bold, workers’ action alongside the school strikers. matically. This would allow climate related democratic public control” of key sectors This might not be possible for the next round strike action, initially in response to the of the economy. internationalist politics” without any indi - cation of what these might be. in September. While we should do what we school strikes. I would suggest that we need more debate can, union activists will be hindered by about the degree to which the response to cli - Without a movement in community or workplace, there is no local movement. With - (among other things) such strikes’ illegality. mate change should be predicated on suc - Our approach must be based on workplace Upcoming climate events cessful socialist transformations around the out local movements, no national movement. Without national movements, no interna - issues, not only to build awareness and sup - world (but I do not have space to deal with port but to create a route to legal strike action. Workers’ Liberty activists and support - this). Here I will focus on the immediate need tional politics, bold or otherwise. Without a ers are supporting, building and attend - base, internationalism is passive propaganda The demands will necessarily tend to the to start a struggle against climate change local (focused on the employer), although ing the following events. Please join! based in workplaces based on a focus on im - aimed at existing school strike and Extinction At them, we will advocate working-class Rebellion activists lacking the ability to create posing these in a wider context is not diffi - mediate local issues which Mike disdains. cult. They could include: climate action, with bulletins and more. the agent for its implementation. Such di - • 25 July, 6.30pm, London: discussion or - rected propaganda is necessary but we need a. Transport . Rather than selling the car THE STRAW MAN OF LOCALISM park, we should demand that employers ganised by the Free Our Unions campaign to present these activists with a cogent alter - to contribute to building workers’ climate Mike argues local actions are inadequate native. recognise why many workers are forced to to deal with the threat of climate change. drive to work: demand the employer sub - action on 20 September. bit.ly/cc-fou This is a truism. sidises public transport costs, accounts for • 26-31 July, South-East of England: Some climate change NGOs build activism CLIMATE CHANGE AND CLASS the extra time as part of the working day, al - camp taking action against new gas-fired with virtue-signalling lifestyle politics that POLITICS lows the necessary flexibility in working ar - power stations, plus workshops on climate appears to be such localism, most egre - The criticism of localism, when trans - rangements etc. and migrants’ rights action. bit.ly/rtp19 giously the Earth Day Network’s “Billion ferred to the workplace, is even more b. Discussing emissions on the level of collec - • 20 September, globally: young people Acts of Green” of urban tree planting, “sus - problematic. tive agreement . Make emissions part of the for - and students, will walk out to demand ac - tainable cuisine,” campaigns for climate Mike writes: “For socialists to advocate … mal worker-employee relationship making it tion on climate change. This time there change on school curricula and the usual this or that workplace becoming ‘decar - clear that the workers will fight for the em - have been calls for workers to join. While #NoMorePlasticBags fluff. However, this is bonised’ or ‘carbon neutral’ is to perpetuate ployer to bear the cost of mitigation. This a general strike is unlikely, we are organis - not (in the parlance of NGOs) their “theory muddled thinking” (original emphasis). But could extend to workforce refusing to under - ing for strikes, walk-outs and other actions of change”. These activities are not their end Mike’s proposed bridge between workers or - take damaging activities (e.g. shop workers where possible. bit.ly/cs-20sep product. Such NGOs seek to build awareness ganised in workplaces and the international refusing to handle certain goods). This is not Contact us to co-ordinate! Climate activism in the workplace Green reps can demand the employer to to reduce carbon emissions in the workplace These funds should be used to benefit work - By Paul Hampton carry out a feasibility study to install wind by imposing workers’ control. This means ers, not swallowed up by shareholders as Business and government rely on work - turbines and solar panels in the workplace. workers taking decisions usually left to man - profits, or given to managers has fat-cat ers’ passivity to do what they want to do This has already happened in many work - agement’s prerogative. It is imposed because bonuses. Serious energy saving could be – which is to make profit, while polluting places, such as Tilbury docks, the BBC, BT, management will probably not allow it with - used to stop job cuts. freely. Workplaces are an important site of numerous universities and other big sites. out a fight. Workers need to see that action on cli - struggle to reduce carbon emissions. Insulation makes the workplace more com - We fight for the right to know about real mate change leads to direct, tangible ben - efits for them and their workmates. Individuals have little influence; but work - fortable to work in, as it balances out the sea - scale of workplace, industrial and employer Radical green reps can ask questions, ers at the point of production have tremen - sonal impact on internal temperature, and greenhouse gas emissions, energy use, trans - and demand answers about who pays and dous collective power. saves money while reducing emissions. Old port arrangements, waste etc. Demand your who benefits from climate-related mea - One of the results of concerted trade union buildings should be upgraded – new build - employer account for all their emissions – sures. campaigning over a number of years around ings should adopt the best available tech - and not fob them off by carbon credits, out - issues of workplace health and safety was the nologies. sourcing or cuts. • Abridged from a briefing produced by Workers’ winning of “health and safety reps”. Automatic sensor lighting and energy-sav - Energy efficiency reduces carbon emis - Climate Action in 2010 (bit.ly/wca-2010). Many unions have fought for the election ing bulbs make a big difference. Similarly, sions. It also saves bosses a lot of money. of “green reps” to play a similar role, and new IT equipment will make workers jobs sometimes won management recognition for easier while using less energy, if power-sav - ing devices are included. such positions. The urgency of tackling climate change makes Get the boss to commit to a green travel Of course, it is entirely possible for green serious strategy to halt it only more important. plan! This means the employer subsidising reps to be management toadies, allowing The third edition of our pamphlet, “For public transport use e.g. by paying for annual themselves to be used to publicise and pro - workers’ climate action: climate change, travel passes. A loan is a start, but better if it mote management’s environmental policies capitalism and working class struggle”, is free for workers. which often seek to shift the blame for envi - December 2018, offers such strategy. Bosses should also be paying for bikes, as ronmentally-damaging waste in the work - This is a collection of articles and reviews well as the safety equipment, storage and place onto workers. on the fight against climate change, showers to freshen up. Where driving is es - But green rep positions can be used in a capitalism and on the role of workers’ sential, employers should buy dual fuel and radical way. Green reps should be fighters, organisation and struggle in that. electric vehicles, especially for urban areas. rather than a management stooge who just The 2018 edition adds a new introduction, Drivers should get training for fuel efficient goes round telling workers to turn their lights several new book reviews, an article from our driving. off. 2017 bulletin at Ende Gelände, and our 2018 Employers should organise recycling A low-level start is to organise a green day, Labour Party conference motion schemes for metal, plastic and other materi - show a DVD or environmental awareness 40 pages A4. Cover price £3. With UK als, not just paper. It should include food film, or run a Q&A or informal debate, or postage £4.20. Cheap rates for bulk orders. some other public event to start discussion waste, water use (e.g. rainwater for toilets). The basic strategy of a radical green rep is and meet people. •Buy at workersliberty.org/climate-pamphlet Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty CLIMATE 7 Start small, but aim big tional solution required for climate change is By Mike Zubrowski (again) propagandistic, “advocating for society- I must admit to being disappointed with wide changes and supporting youth climate strik - much of Matt’s response to my article in ers” along with fighting for a more this Solidarity . climate-relevant school curriculum, more research He makes various insightful points, and in universities and (vaguely) the organisation of points I agree with. He has previously made workers in key industries. While Mike states that other thought-provoking and good points. workplace campaigns are important in “creating However, he seems to misrepresent me quite a sense of agency” he does not seem clear about seriously, replying at an angle to my argu - the fundamental nature of struggle in the work - ments. I’m sure this is unintentional, so sig - place. nificant fault presumably lies with me for There is a disagreement here, as I don’t see insufficient clarity. I guess underlying per - the workplace demands my previous article spectives are being read into my article which advocated calling for as “propagandistic”, aren’t there. but more than that. There are, or have been, disagreements, I said “To get to a sustainable world re - Movement against new road which I have no desire to soften. However, its quires not just promotion of, persuasion to, construction near Hastings necessary to be clear about what is being de - education about environmental socialism, at bated, what my previous article was arguing. least in a narrowly conceived way. It also re - quires a raising of the confidence, horizons and organisation of the working class – the CLARIFICATIONS force capable of winning such changes – Matt : In his article in Solidarity 512 ( bit.ly/cc- through struggle, including environmental Intertwining the threads 512) Mike Zubrowski argues that a focus on lim - struggle. ited local issues and (by implication) workplace “In part this must be through trade union a drop-off in big political demonstrations on initiatives “distracts from the real forces at play” branches, workers organised at the point of By Martin Thomas environmental issues. The new rise in big po - which are international and require that the work - production, advocating for society-wide ing class “take democratic public control” of key changes, and supporting youth climate strik - The main sources of carbon emissions litical demonstrations (school students, XR, etc.) can and should intertwine with a re - sectors of the economy. ers. But there’s more that can be done.” are: I do not say that focus on local initiatives “There are immediate possibilities for ac - • power generation (25% worldwide, 28% newal of workplace and campus activism. You can’t allocate a precise carbon-emis - — and even less so workplace initiatives — tivism which engages wider levels of work - USA) distract from the real forces at play. I said “... ers, widens their political horizons, brings • other industry (18% worldwide, 22% sion figure to each segment of society. But you can do it roughly, as has been done in the approaches which see bit-by-bit ‘carbon neu - them into conflict with their bosses, and USA) trality’ as the solution. Implicit in the lan - helps to move the trade union movement as • transport (14% worldwide, 29% USA) figures I cited at the start of this article. With - out doing it roughly, you can’t even know guage of a single ‘carbon neutral’ a whole forward on these issues.” • agriculture (20% worldwide, 9% USA). institution...”, i.e. certain ideas promoted Matt : Discussing emissions on the level of col - So the major steps to decarbonise are: where a workers’ government would start with a socialist environmental program. about the role of local transitions, not transi - lective agreement... is not simply “lifestyle politics • converting from coal, oil, and gas power tions in themselves. with a syndicalist spin” (as Mike has previously to renewables and nuclear power Google defines “decarbonise” as “reduce the amount of gaseous carbon compounds Matt : … immediate need to start a struggle called it) but rank-and-file struggle. • converting to low-emissions transport, against climate change based in workplaces based There are disagreements here, I believe, in expanding public transport, restructuring released in or as a result of a process”. The current use is an adaptation from the older on a focus on immediate local issues which Mike emphasis and presentation, but again more. work and cities to reduce travel disdains. What I was referring to previously was not • reforestation one — removing soot and other carbon accre - tions from an engine. The word is ok: to use In my introductory section, I summarised rank-and-file struggle over emissions, collec - All of those require government action, my overall argument (emphasis added): tively, in itself . It was the idea or goal which I and can’t be completed through a linear- the single word “decarbonise” rather than the two words “reduce emissions” carries no “In this article, I make the case that (I) the saw as implicit in slogans of/and the propos - build-up of local activities. forces driving climate change are internation - als at the time, “decarbonise your work - Thus far Mike Zubrowski ( Solidarity 512, necessary implication of illusion. Stanford University in the USA has re - ally entwined, an integrated whole; (II) that place”, which I believed were promoting the bit.ly/cc-512) is right. He recognises that climate change can’t be fixed by focussing ex - idea that individual institutions could go local activities are important too: “Environ - duced its emissions drastically. As far as I know, the reduction was driven by the uni - clusively at a local level ; (III) that dominant ide - “carbon neutral”, and all the associated ideas. mental workplace activism... helps to pose ological currents push in the direction of such the question of power in the workplace: who versity management wanting to look good, rather than by students and workers organ - a limited focus, hence the importance of cri - TAKING STOCK does and should run it, workers or bosses? tiquing them; (IV) what we can and should Socialists should initiate such campaigns”. ising. Perhaps my emphasis read as unbalanced, But rather than leading to complacency, the do, on a local and wider level, and how. Local I aim to clarify below. Some small-scale greenery is fake. The cor - campaigning has a crucial place, which we must poration that wins environmental awards for university’s plan has led to students agitating The local workplace, for organising against for further reductions in the carbon emissions contextualise within a broader perspective: the climate change, is a the necessary starting its new office with neat energy-saving tricks final section gives suggestions on how.” in the green countryside induces more car - from travel connected to Stanford. They urge point; the working-class are the agent for so - the university to deal with “Scope 3” — “all What I argue against is thus, I repeat, not cial change we orient to. However, tackling bon emissions through all the driving to and “focus on immediate local issues”. Perhaps fro than one which fixes up an old building other indirect emissions that occur in a com - the fossil economy, and the society-, nation- pany’s value chain”: bit.ly/st-sc3. — but at worst — I underplayed or underem - and world-wide social relations driving cli - in a dense city. phasised the role of such foci. But Mike is wrong, I think, to say that a big The initial “decarbonisation” activity at mate change are necessary starting points for Stanford has led to more attention to wider Matt : Instead Mike states that we need “bold, the slogans and associated ideas we promote. ailment of environmental activism has been internationalist politics” without any indication a “tunnel-vision of institution-by-institution carbon emissions than on campuses which This is not to suggest, by analogy, that we belch out carbon emissions without com - of what these might be. should not demand wage increases, or “the focus”. There has been lifestyle and win-en - I said that “Workers’ Liberty has and con - vironmental-awards greenery. But that’s not ment. Not to tunnel vision, but to wider vi - living wage” without demanding socialist sion. tinues to argue for bold, internationalist pol - revolution. But it is to suggest that we should really activism. itics to fight climate change;” the indication The chief ailment on the activist side has The Stanford action is also significant be - not advocate demanding “fair pay”, or “a fair cause it has acted as a test-bed for low-emis - is in my reference, to what we have argued day’s wage for a fair day’s work”. This is gen - been an intertwined running-down both of for more widely. These are sketched within worksite or campus level activity and of sion energy techniques which could then be erally attached to specific demands over pay spread to other large institutions. our recently reprinted pamphlet For workers’ and perhaps hours, which even at their bold - large-scale government-focused activity climate action: climate change, capitalism and (demonstrations etc.), or at best a turning-to- University campuses are a good focus for est necessarily leave the exploitative relation workplace decarbonisation because they are working-class struggle ; our 2019 pamphlet Re - with the employer intact. Implicit in such a the-defensive on that front (stop fracking, main and rebel: a socialist manifesto for Europe ; stop Keystone XL, etc.). some of the largest workplaces around these demand is the widely endorsed assumption days. A big university in England will have many of weekly environmental articles I have that the fundamental ills of society can be ad - The “green bans” by the New South Wales written for Solidarity ; in our motions to trade Builders Labourers in the 1970s, which first maybe 50,000 students, academics, and other dressed — made “fair” — by slightly higher workers. union and Labour party branches; in cam - wages, a slightly lower rate of exploitation. put the word “green” into large-scale politics, paigns we’re involved in; and beyond. were all disputes about particular worksites. Universities also have on-site expertise for I’ll comment more on substantive points in emissions audits and emissions-reduction Matt has correctly highlighted, elsewhere, future articles: my reply to Martin partly does In the earlier years of the 21st century there that we haven’t directly proposed — any - was a scattering of workplace union actions technology. (bit.ly/mz-reply). Campus emissions-reduction efforts where — a fleshed out international pro - to reduce carbon emissions significantly. “Where the chains of capitalism are can be used as test-beds for new tech - gramme on climate change. I will do so in They were nourished by and nourished the forged, there must the chains be broken” nologies, and can be used to stimulate future articles, but unfortunately there has big political demonstrations. — Rosa Luxemburg’s proclamation re - further research of wider application. been no appetite in this or the previous issue mains as true today as ever. New mean - Paul Hampton, the researcher who docu - for a twenty-page paper. mented those union actions, says that since ing, and fresh urgency, is breathed into Mike Zubrowski’s reply to this is online. See Matt : But Mike’s proposed bridge between Marx’s “[t]he proletarians... have a world then the “activity has dropped off because of workers organised in workplaces and the interna - union indifference”. That drop-off came with bit.ly/mz-reply to win.” These need not be in tension. More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Hipster reformism and the technolo

based on the assertion that “ capitalism is in - Technocrats or workers? compatible with natural abundance”. If the first part of the book might be con - “Facing such conditions… production for sidered an exercise in utopian thought, the profit begins to malfunction.” FALC is there - second brings us back to earth with a crash. fore the conclusion of the Third Disruption – Purporting to set out the political and eco - By Bruce Robinson capitalism will be driven by its own dynam - nomic road from here to FALC, it aims to pro - ics to innovate and thus hasten its own vide theoretical ballast for Corbynism. In Back in 2013-14 there was a lot of excite - demise. doing so it embraces various classical re - ment on the left about “left accelera - This represents an extreme but not original formist aims and methods put in a modern tionism” and the prospect of a transition reading of Marx which takes his words on the context. to a “post-capitalism” fuelled by techno - development of the productive forces under logical advances based on information. capitalism (narrowly understood as technol - “CONCRETE POLITICS” Aaron Bastani coined the meme of “Fully ogy) to imply its transcendence. Productive The “concrete politics” consist of “a break Automated Luxury Communism” (FALC), forces clash with the social relations of pro - with neo-liberalism, a shift towards and it led a fitful life on the Internet. It has duction and capitalism cannot survive, in this worker-owned production, a state-fi - now returned in the form of a book which case because it cannot deal with “extreme nanced transition to renewable energy sets out to be a manifesto. Since 2015 Bastani supply”, even though, as Bastani accepts, and universal services.” has moved from a politics rooted in “post- today’s capitalism is finding ways to circum - Bastani’s “communist means” are based on workerist” thinkers to become a born-again vent that by controlling and restricting sup - “reforging the capitalist state”, “demanding supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. ply through enforcing monopoly rights. that the conscious, intentional planning at the The book divides into two parts: the first heart of modern capitalism be repurposed to containing the basis for and outline of FALC ABSENCE OF HUMANS socially useful ends.” This rests on “the re-lo - as a future communist society near the “end In one of the many absences from the calisation of economies”, “socialising fi - of history”, and the second providing a polit - book, the human side of the social rela - nance” and a range of free services that will ical and economic platform rooted in the pre - tions of production gets little attention, put much of the economy under public own - sent, self-consciously populist and whether in the workplace or society in ership. anti-globalist, in which FALC is “a beginning, general. Bruce Robinson reviews Aaron Bastani’s book Relocalisation is based on the premise that not a destination”. Both the working class and class more gen - Fully Automated Luxury Communism also underlies Bastani’s opposition to “glob - The basic thesis underlying the book is that erally are absent as agency and struggle. alism”: that “locally we can start right away” we are undergoing a “Third Disruption”. The Class struggle also affects not merely the His vision of communism is “a society in and “break with neo-liberalism without first was agriculture, the second industry and way in which technologies are developed which work is eliminated, scarcity replaced needing national state power” via “local pro - the third is based on information. and implemented under capital but also the by abundance and where labour and leisure tectionism” (the Preston model). But, for Bas - “The defining feature is ever-greater abun - content of the technologies themselves. We blend into one another”. He takes up Marx’s tani, the national state is the best dance in information.” As information goods need a means for the democratic assessment notion of “free individuality” as the essence environment for beginning FALC. have a cost that declines to almost zero as of technologies. Instead here we have uncrit - of communism, but ignores its grounding in This approach, like Brexit, is both regres - more are produced, we live on the brink of ical technophilia. social labour, leaving out the need for collec - sive and utopian in trying to reverse capital’s “extreme supply”, a post-scarcity society de - His reading of Marx leads Bastani to con - tivity and forms of social solidarity and integration and development across local and livered by courtesy of technological break - clude that the productive forces needed to democratic control that flow from the need to national boundaries. Of course useful action throughs produced by capitalism. Labour is support “a post-scarcity, post-work” world produce. can be taken at national or even local levels, also no longer scarce. (There are a number of were in existence only from the late 60s. To The realm of necessity – the labour of the but to see the local as the source of spreading economic objections to this, and issues of vi - attempt socialism before then was impossi - associated producers — is not abolished, worker enterprises that will eventually bring ability, which I will skip over for lack of ble: “You could conceive of it… but you however many robots there are, but rather di - us to FALC is an illusion. space). could not create it. This was… simply an in - minishes relative to free time. Even if central and local bankers favour On this basis, Bastani details a number of evitability of history.” worker-owned enterprises (Bastani believes technologies that he claims will resolve con - But it was well within the economic poten - central bankers should become central plan - tial of the mid 20th century to provide suffi - INDIVIDUALIST VISIONS ners), they still have to compete with much temporary crises. Energy scarcity will be With social labour deleted, Bastani’s com - cient housing, healthcare food and education larger capitalist enterprises. The Preston overcome by harnessing solar energy on a munism reduces to individualism. Free - to create a viable socialism, even if not a post- model does not “scale”. massive scale. Raw material scarcity will be dom is “self-authorship… Liberal ends… scarcity utopia. It was quite possible to pro - As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out in her overcome by mining in space, using aster - are impossible without communist vide a number of the free services that 1899 reply to Eduard Bernstein’s “revision - oids. means.” Bastani advocates as transitional measures to ism” of that era, cooperatives can only sur - Problems of an ageing population are FALC is “the politics of the self-help guru FALC. vive if protected from the operation of solved by gene editing to prevent genetically – be precisely who you want to be – embed - For Bastani revolutionary socialists in the capitalist competition. Rather than being the determined illnesses. The provision of suffi - ded within a programme for political 20th century were simply before their time means to implement new technologies as cient food is ensured by the creation of syn - change.” and their failure an inevitability. The Russian Bastani argues, small and local firms, even if thetic protein that’ll taste as good as meat and Looking at “full automation”, Bastani ar - Revolution was “an anti-liberal coup”. (Was worker-owned, are less likely to be able to af - by the completion of the Green Revolution of gues that, despite the waged working class Kerensky really a liberal?). ford and be able to implement the new tech - the 50s and 60s that introduced higher yield - having grown massively to be the majority The consequence of that reasoning is to air - nology that he sees leading to FALC. ing crops and the use of chemical fertilisers on the planet, we have reached “peak brush Stalinism as something inevitable and Why are they able to deal with “extreme to countries such as India. These measures labour” and that AI and automation will indistinguishable from the revolutionary supply” if large capitalist enterprises can’t? combined will enable a slowing and eventual shrivel the amount of work that needs to be years of the USSR: “Its [the Soviet Union’s] A big gap remains between the communist end to global warning. done. Such projections remain speculative. seven decade survival was one of the great model supposedly just around the corner and As Bastani conceded, not all jobs will dis - political achievements of the last century.” Bastani’s immediate programme, which es - appear. (He points to health, education, geri - TECHNOLOGICAL FIXES sentially gives a contemporary gloss to long A lot of the book is taken up with advocat - atric care and jobs requiring creativity and established social democratic strategies for ing these technologies and demonstrating emotional connection). If social labour con - improving the capitalist state piecemeal. that they are already exist – or are about tinues, then the need continues for decisions Having freed himself from any concept of to – so that in places it reads like a pub - about how remaining work is divided up and class, Bastani unashamedly embraces pop - licity blurb for synthetic hamburgers or how a division of labour is put in place that ulism. “The people [is] not “a permanent and reusable rockets. enables needed skills to be developed. immutable entity” but has its roots in “certain This is the politics of the technological fix, Bastani never considers whether full au - kinds of assembly, social trait or capacity.” He where social and political problems are taken tomation is something desirable from the to have technological solutions. The tech - point of view of a socialism that puts humans nologies are assumed to function well and and the environment first. Should we just as - not to have detrimental social, economic and sume there is no alternative to the technolog - environmental side effects. (The Green Rev - ical path enabled by capitalism? olution is disputed on all three grounds.) For example, the machine learning tech - If you look closely, Bastani has caveats — niques on which contemporary AI is based not quite there yet, but success is just coming. are inherently open to bias, false assumptions Those are not allowed to tarnish the overall and false positives. Do we want to live in a confidence that the technology developed machine-run society? Who decides on how under capitalism will lead to FALC. This is Mock-up of DC-X reusable launch vehicle, ‘95 technology develops and is implemented? The world’s first “cultured hamburger”, 2013 FEATURE 8-9 “Islamophobia”? It’s anti-Muslim racism victimhood, a situation of each group vying gical fix to be the ultimate victim. “Antisemitism” exists as a term distinct from recognises that there is nothing fundamental racism: in fact both the term, and the reality de - here to distinguish this from the populism of By Pragna Patel scribed, are older than racism (in the form of the right – it just depends who you think the Christian antisemitism, for example). Some of us people are and which traits you choose. The We were against the idea of having a spe - would say that today, too, there are forms of anti - book doesn’t give a clear answer on Bastani’s cific definition of “Islamophobia”. semitism which are not racist, and in any case an - criteria here. Racism against Muslims exists. It is perva - tisemitism operates in different ways from regular How are the “people” mobilised? Here the sive and needs to be resolutely challenged. racism. Why not a specific term for “Islamopho - Bastani of 2010 who favoured the network or - “Islamophobia” conflates legitimate criticism bia”? ganisation of the Internet reappears: “the of religion, which groups like Southall Black Pragna Patel from Southall Black Sisters I don’t see that racism against Muslims acts party form… makes increasingly little sense. Sisters have always engaged, with racism to - spoke to Martin Thomas from Solidarity about in any different way from other racism. Using The same is true of worker organising, radi - wards people of a particular minority. the controversy over the Government’s the classification “anti-Muslim racism” cre - cal or reformist, which are [sic] erroneously The use of the term “Islamophobia” makes rejection of the All Party Parliamentary Group ates a broader platform which enables people premised on the society of work enduring it very easy to label criticism of religion as (APPG) definition of “Islamophobia”, see to come together. While recognising that forever.” But a few lines later the Bastani of “Islamophobic”. bit.ly/appg-i racism can take different specific forms, that 2019 counters “The role of the labour move - It is a linguistic minefield. There is no sat - allows for solidarity, because groups are not ment is to liberate the working class... We isfactory interpretation of what “Islamopho - religions to find similar terms of their own. competing with each other to claim the great - must build a workers’ party against work...” bia” means. Even the Runnymede Trust, Some Hindu fundamentalists are now push - est victimhood. Bastani here makes increasingly little which put the term forward in 1997, accepted ing the term “Hinduphobia”. sense. its own definition as problematic. Why “phobia”? Racism, such as the far There are issues about the words chosen for the This book is notable for a number of ab - Why not speak instead of anti-Muslim right’s agitation against immigrants, is not definition, as well. They are: “Islamophobia is sences. There is no conception of working racism? Anti-Muslim racism is like any other based on irrational fears. It is calculating. rooted in racism and is a type of racism that tar - class self-activity either in bringing FALC form of racism — the vilification, the attacks. Groups who challenge conservatism and gets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Mus - about or in managing production under it. religious fundamentalism are often accused limness.” If it is a type of racism, then it can’t add There is no conception of democratic control Can’t it be said that it is a merit of the definition of “Islamophobia”. That creates an environ - anything to say that it is “rooted in racism”. The in the workplace, in governance of technol - that it says explicitly that criticism of Islam is not ment for harassment and even death threats, words accept that we’re talking about a subtype ogy or in society more generally. There is no necessarily Islamophobic? as we saw with Salman Rushdie. In 2016 of racism, but where racism is surely about preju - notion of struggle from below to transform I don’t accept that. This defining of Islam - Asad Shah was killed in Glasgow because he dice towards or ill-treatment of people, the words economy or society. Those things are presum - ophobia creates a norm within society which came from the Ahmadi sect and was not con - say that this is about disapproving attitudes to be - ably out of date. makes it hard to speak out. We’ve seen it sidered Muslim. haviour. Instead the book combines a view of a fu - many times. Why call it Islamophobia? Why In much of our work, whether about gen - Yes, the wording conflates racist views ture close by in which technology enables us not just talk of anti-Muslim racism? der segregation in schools or about Sharia tri - against people with criticism of anything to forget the collective and focus on self with bunals, we’ve constantly been accused of they believe or do. Who decides what is an immediate platform for Corbynism which Isn’t it too late? We wouldn’t have chosen the being “Islamophobic”. “Muslimness”? Some people perceive repackages some traditional left social demo - term Islamophobia, but it’s current now whether This language prevents solidarity being Southall Black Sisters’ criticism of gender cratic policies and ideas about how it might we like it or not. formed between different groups which ex - segregation in schools as an attack on “per - come about. These ideas may become fash - Just because something has existed, doesn’t perience racism. ceived Muslimness”. ionable for a while in the same way as Bas - mean that it should continue. The language tani’s original meme. has long existed to challenge racism. In the Groups which challenge religious conservatism What do you think will happen now that the Gov - But, however well- wrapped in the ultra- 1970s we were able to come together on a are also often simply called “racist”: for example, ernment has rejected the APPG wording?” modernity of new technology in a sort of platform of anti-racism. the SWP calls the Council of Ex-Muslims I don’t know, but the voices demanding to hipster reformism, they do not offer a road The term “Islamophobia” is mostly not “racist”. So not having the term “Islamophobia” have “Islamophobia” accepted as a term are to emancipation from capitalism. used against the racists. It is used against doesn’t fix the problem. rising. people from within or around the Muslim re - I don’t see what the term “Islamophobia” We’ve seen what’s happening around ligion who are dissident or more secular. adds. On the contrary, it serves only to create schools in Birmingham. Its use is also creating the space for other groups which can claim a privileged sense of

Arguing for a The real Otto Rühle’s society based history of the abridged on human 1917 version of solidarity, revolution, of Capital, putting social the Stalinist aside current ownership of counter- factual material, industry and revolution, illustrations, banks, and and of the polemics, is a political, lessons good lead-in for economic learned. the full book. and social 131 pages , £6 democracy. 374 pages, £12 plus postage 182 pages. plus postage £5 + post.

A socialist approach Defending within the the new Bolsheviks “wave” of and their feminism. relevance today. 102 pages, 312 pages, £5 plus £10 plus 40 pages, £4 + post 408 pages, £12 + post postage The Two Trotskyisms £20 ; Fate of the Russian Revolution £8 ; postage Miners’ strike £9 ; Democracy, direct action... £5 ; In an era of wars and revolutions £9 ; Anarchism £5 ; Can Socialism Make Order from www.workersliberty.org/books. Add £2 per book for postage, or 50p for 1919 book. If you buy three or Sense £12 ; Gramsci in Context £6 ; How Solidarity... £6 . All more books, post is free, and the third and subsequent books are half-price. Pay at www.workersliberty.org/payment plus postage. 10 HISTORY More online at www.workersliberty.org Corbyn and us in the 1980s ties entity. What else should socialists in Britain — including Jeremy Corbyn — have done? Wag our fingers at the people trapped within the artificial Six Counties entity and Sean Matgamna talks to Solidarity told them: “No, no, no, you don’t fight back”? We have serious political differences with You didn’t have to think what the IRA was Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour doing was the best sense to side with them as Party. against our own state and government, im - But Corbyn has the record of an hon - posing severe repression to maintain the par - ourable, serious left-winger, who — unlike tition status quo. many others who had some association with It is to his credit that Jeremy Corbyn Socialist Organiser in the 1980s — did not backed the Catholics, and did not indulge in change his coat in the years of Blair’s New typical British politicians’ cant to denounce Labour Party. He never gave any sign of the Republicans. being a careerist. He was not one to hide his In relating to Socialist Organiser , Jeremy politics. Corbyn was also linking up with the only Nobody needed to dig in old archives to people on the revolutionary left who at - know what Corbyn is and was in politics, or tempted to produce sober and accurate cov - what Socialist Organiser was. erage and debate on Ireland. The Times of 6 July 2019 ran an article by Dominic Kennedy, “Corbyn’s hard-left blueprint Socialist Organiser was the only paper on revealed”, attacking Jeremy Corbyn for his links in the 1980s with Socialist Organiser , a The Times condemns Socialist Organiser the left where you would get serious discus - forerunner of Solidarity . Sean Matgamna was editor of Socialist Organiser at the time. for its comments on the October 1984 sion on Ireland, and attempts to deal with bomb attack by the Provisional IRA on questions like the rights of the Protestant ists which included Ken Livingstone, Ted Afghanistan after Christmas 1979. Margaret Thatcher and other Tory leaders, community in Ireland. Socialist Organiser car - Knight, and others. In any case, in the Labour Party, being re - and Corbyn for being associated with So - ried articles defending the rights of the There was a division in the ranks of the organised as it was then, we were for the af - cialist Organiser after those comments. Protestants in Ireland, despite our continued SCLV, with Ken Livingstone on one side and filiation of the left groups that wanted to The article about the Brighton bombing re - general support for the Catholic revolt. We us on the other, over policy for the Labour left affiliate, including the Communist Party if it ported accurately the feelings in the labour had a vigorous debate in the paper in 1983, in local government, where it was then had wanted to. Heffer was acting against movement. No doubt at all: across the coun - which you can find collected on our website strong. Corbyn can be found signing a docu - that. try vast numbers of people regretted that (bit.ly/wl5-pp). ment of people who defended Livingstone’s Yet probably the most frequently inter - Thatcher had survived the bombing. peaceful coexistence with central govern - viewed MP in Socialist Organiser over its en - The level of hatred in British politics at that The Times accuses Corbyn of being ment. tire history was Eric Heffer. In the years point was very high — and in both direc - linked with a paper which was revolution - That group seceded from Socialist Organiser before the proscription of S ocialist Organiser tions. Thatcher had a small-shopkeeper, ary socialist rather than reformist. in 1980 to found London Labour Briefing . Cor - in 1990 and Heffer’s death in 1991, he was the petty-bourgeois hostility to the working Yes, the people who ran Socialist Organiser byn continued to write for Socialist Organiser . nearest thing to a “Third Camp” socialist MP, class. She was a spiteful Victorian throwback were certainly not reformists. We were proud But in terms of his political genealogy he had or even a “ Socialist Organiser ” MP, in West - to attitudes which the Tory party had seemed to identify ourselves as revolutionaries dedi - sided with the reformist group which se - minster. to be “educated” away from over decades. cated to the overthrow of the bourgeoisie and ceded from Socialist Organiser . Heffer held no grievance against us for our Dominic Kennedy quotes Socialist Organ - of capitalism. He became less involved with Socialist Or - criticisms. iser as saying: “Thatcher is a Tory pig”. That At the same time we saw Socialist Organiser ganiser from the mid-80s, though he still oc - was unfair to every halfway-decent pig in as a paper of the broad labour movement, casionally wrote for us. The Times concludes by equating the Britain. and we had many mainstream Labour fig - The Times cites an article he wrote in 1990 Labour Against the Witch-hunt of Tony In October 1984 the miners’ strike was still ures writing for us or being interviewed. opposing the USA’s plans for the first Gulf Greenstein today with the Labour Against being fought. Over 12,000 miners and sup - For example, The Times quotes Jeremy Cor - war. Opposition to the first and second US the Witch-hunt which Socialist Organiser porters were arrested in that strike, hundreds byn as advocating in Socialist Organiser some - wars against Iraq are not positions that any - and Corbyn supported in the early 1980s. were jailed, over 50 were injured in the “Bat - thing like the Alternative Economic Strategy body, reformist, middle-of-the-road, or revo - The equation of the left of the early 1980s tle of Orgreave” (June 1984) alone, two pick - then popular on the Labour left. Those views lutionary socialist, needs to apologise for! with the antisemites of today made by quot - ets were killed. appeared in Socialist Organiser , and so did de - Jeremy Corbyn had no organisational con - ing Tony Greenstein is completely off-beam. The article also said that the bombing was bate with them from a revolutionary socialist nections with Socialist Organiser . If there was The word “witch-hunting” is now tossed not a good way of fighting the Thatcherites. perspective. any particular point at which a separation around in the labour movement as a charge We made a distinction between the right of For another example, we had an interview took place between him and us in the mid against reporting on any information some - the Irish Republicans to take military action, on Ireland with Clive Soley, who was the 1980s, I have no memory of it, and neither do one thinks is not favourable to them. It is just and the advisability of what they were doing. Labour front-bench spokesperson on North - others who were involved then. cant. But, yes, the Cabinet was a legitimate mili - ern Ireland from 1981 to 1984. The interview, But the Corbyn who wrote for the Organ - In the 1980s, the left was really being witch- tary target, as The Times quotes us as saying. which became a debate, was conducted by iser belonged to what might be called the hunted — as the cases of Peter Tatchell and That is incontrovertible unless you think that Jonathan Hammond, president of the Na - Trotskisant left, and over time he gravitated Tariq Ali, the banning of Militant and then the Republicans had no right to fight. tional Union of Journalists, and me. towards the Stalinoids of the Morning Star . Socialist Organiser, showed. It is easy now to forget what the British We had comment from Tony Benn on The equation today is with the purge car - were doing in Northern Ireland then. The Six many questions — for instance, we inter - The Times holds it against Jeremy Corbyn ried through by Labour Party officials, espe - Counties entity imprisoned a Catholic minor - viewed him on the EU (then called EEC), that he criticised Michael Foot in 1982. cially in 2015 and 2016, to try to exclude ity which was about one-third the whole with Benn supporting “Brexit” and us oppos - Of course Corbyn criticised Michael Foot left-wing Corbyn supporters. population at the time of partition, and a ma - ing — and Benn was not a revolutionary so - as Labour leader! Despite Foot’s left-wing Many of those purged then are still ex - jority all along the border areas, including in cialist. Jeremy Corbyn, as a past, there was nothing left-wing about his cluded now. The organisation campaign - Northern Ireland’s second city, Derry. non-revolutionary, was not at all an unusual policies as leader. ing against that is not today’s “Labour Gerrymandering of the borders meant that figure in the pages of Socialist Organiser . The Organiser carried detailed arguments Against the Witch-hunt”, which did not stir for decades there was no political redress for against Foot, and later on, in 1994, I debated until October 2017, but Stop the Labour the built-in Catholic minority. That is what The Times suggests that the Labour Party him face-to-face in Conway Hall over the is - Purge. led the IRA to resort to military action. was slow to realise what Socialist Organ - sues of the early 1980s. You can find that de - Whether you thought that advisable or not iser was, but banned it in 1990 when they bate in print. (bit.ly/foot-d) — and I would have said it wasn’t advisable realised it was revolutionary socialist. The fact that Corbyn criticised Foot only Audio of Solidarity — there was no mystery about it. It wasn’t we who had changed, or become meant that he was broadly left-wing, not that The British army was holding the existing more visible. The Labour Party had changed, he was a revolutionary socialist. Many thanks to the volunteers who have system in place — even after Britain abol - becoming narrower. enabled us to produce an audio version of ished Protestant majority rule in Northern And that Corbyn criticised Eric Heffer over the paper. Links to the audio version are at Ireland, in 1972 — and trying to beat down But Jeremy Corbyn eventually moved Tariq Ali’s attempt in 1981 to join the workersliberty.org/audio, and can be the Catholics by terror, internment without away from Socialist Organiser ? Labour Party found through many podcast providers: trial, collusion with Unionist assassins. Corbyn, who became an MP in 1983, was Heffer deserved to be criticised over that. search “Workers’ Liberty” or “Solidarity & Of course we backed what the Republicans involved in the group that set up Socialist Or - Ali had broken with the Fourth International More”. Email [email protected] for were trying to do against the British war to ganiser in 1978 — the Socialist Campaign for because they supported, and he opposed (as e-reader versions of Solidarity . maintain the blatantly untenable Six Coun - a Labour Victory, a broad front of Labour left - did we), the Russian occupation of Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty REVIEW 11 Leonardo and the oligarchs chased the Salvator Mundi at auction looked at what they’d got, they thought it might be a Luini.

ART AS COLLABORATION By Cath Fletcher “A beautiful Luini would be into six fig - ures”, Alex Parish told Lewis, “and let me On 13 April 2019 The Times splashed on tell you, that’s exactly what I want”. the headline “Fresh doubt over world’s It is tempting to see the whole Salvator most expensive painting”. Mundi affair as the workshop’s last laugh Accompanied by a picture of the Salvator against the people who hype up only the Mundi , controversially attributed to master’s true genius, forgetting that Renais - Leonardo da Vinci in a National Gallery ex - sance art was a collaborative business. hibition of 2011, the newspaper reported on Leonardo was well-known for not getting claims in Ben Lewis’s book The Last Leonardo projects finished (Vasari said as much). Fewer that the attribution was now in doubt. than twenty paintings are now attributed to The Salvator Mundi sold at auction for $450 Leonardo rather than his workshop. million in November 2017. (A picture of A buyer at the turn of the fifteenth to six - Christ holding a crystal globe, its title means teenth century who wanted a painting in Saviour of the World.) The buyer is believed Leonardo’s style had a much better chance of to have been acting for the Saudi Crown getting one if he or she was prepared to ac - Prince Mohammed bin Salman. cept one produced by the workshop, rather He bought it from one Dmitry Rybolovlev, Cath Fletcher reviews Ben Lewis, The Last than insisting on the master’s hand alone. who had purchased the painting four years Leonardo (William Collins, 2019) Then as now, a range of paintings at different earlier, for $127.5 million, plus 1% commis - price points were available. sion for the middleman, a certain Yves Bou - Freeport locker full of Old Masters. In fact, Leonardo himself was as interested Salvator Mundi: one of the may versions vier. Bouvier in turn had bought it for $80 What would Leonardo da Vinci himself in pursuing aspects of mathematic and scien - million, netting himself a profit of $48 million have made of all this? I doubt he would have tific study as he was in delivering paintings king’s goods during the English Republic are in the space of a day. You will not be sur - been impressed. “That is not riches which on time, perhaps more so. one of the key sources for early modern art prised to learn that litigation is ongoing. may be lost”, he wrote. “Virtue is our true So if the workshop could deliver or, even history, not least when it comes to the detec - Bouvier’s profit is not, though, as spectac - wealth and the reward of its possessor... As better, if he could attract a patron who re - tive work of tracking down who owned ular as that of the two dealers who sold him for property and external riches hold them quired rather little in the way of actual art - which Salvator Mundi when. the $80 million painting, Robert Simon and with trembling; they often leave their posses - work that suited him. Fortunately Leonardo Lewis pieces together this tale in some de - Alex Parish. In 2005, they bought it at an ob - sor in contempt and ignominy for having lost was in demand by the competing royal tail (though we’re promised an account from scure New Orleans auction house for just them”. courts of Europe, for whom art patronage the people who did the pre-sale research later $1,175. Even after substantial costs, they can He described money and gold emerging was a means to burnish their princely status, this year, and it will be interesting to read presumably afford to retire. “out of cavernous pits” and making “all the and also by the leading oligarchs of his age, both together). What makes a thousand dollar painting be - nations of the world toil and sweat with the for whom a knowledge of art shored up their It was announced in 2018 that the Salvator come a $450 million painting? The answer is greatest torments, anxiety and labour, that cultural credentials. If the Salvator Mundi is Mundi would be shown at the Louvre Abu a great deal of restoration and enough promi - they may gain its aid”. He wrote of metals as indeed now owned by a prince of an abso - Dhabi. But two weeks before it was due to go nent experts willing to say that this is indeed a monster that “shall increase the number of lutist regime, it is close to being back where on show the exhibition was cancelled. It re - a Leonardo — or at least, that enough of it is bad men and encourage them to assassina - it came from. mains to be seen whether it will be shown at a Leonardo. tions, robberies, and enslavement”. (Whether Over the centuries, collectors have decided the major Leonardo da Vinci exhibition in That’s where the controversy comes in. he was speaking of the production of coins or that a “real” Leonardo should be worth more Paris later this year. Lewis has done a great deal of work to show weapons there is a moot point.) than one partially or exclusively executed by Even if it does appear, it may well be a dis - that in fact many experts were rather doubt - The Leonardo who may or may not have assistants. From the seventeenth century on - appointment. It was in extremely poor con - ful about the attribution. Key research was painted the Salvator Mundi was born in 1452, wards, art collecting has been a cut-throat dition on purchase and has been extensively not available for public scrutiny before the though almost certainly not at the house in business, with wealthy patrons often hiding restored. sale. Plenty of buyers wavered, aware that the Tuscan village of Vinci that is now his behind anonymous agents so as to avoid the Yet whatever the state of the painting — whatever the National Gallery claimed there “birthplace museum”. Apprenticed to An - price being forced up when sellers realised and whether or not it proves worth the price was good reason not to open their wallets. drea Verrocchio, a prominent painter in the what they might pay. paid—its story remains fascinating. Five hun - “It was clear”, Lewis writes, “that it would nearby town of Florence, Leonardo worked dred years on from the point when Leonardo take a very particular kind of collector to buy across painting, sculpture and engineering da Vinci was employed by the duke of Milan, the Salvator Mundi . He would need to be very ART AND POLITICS the government of Florence and the king of projects, as well as filling notebooks with all Charles I — the king who lost the Civil War rich, of course, but also less discerning than France to produce their propaganda, his art manner of scientific studies. and with it his head--was an acquisitive those who came before him, or more desper - is still entwined with politics. Giorgio Vasari, whose sixteenth-century purchaser who snapped up multiple ate to own a Leonardo, or poorly advised”. This time, however, it’s the politics of book Lives of the Artists is a founding text of works (including a Salvator Mundi ) via The painting, so far as anyone can work offshore finance, the Russian oligarchy modern art history, described Leonardo as overseas agents. out, is now sitting in a warehouse in the and Saudi royals. Plus ça change . “truly wondrous and divine”, a man who The documents from the sale of the late Geneva Freeport, a holding facility near the “left behind all other men”, a “genius en - city’s airport that is legally neither in French dowed by God… rather than created by nor Swiss territory. Freeports are a key ele - human artifice”. ment of the offshore financial industry, en - The emphasis on Leonardo’s individual ge - Workers’ Liberty Summer Camp abling the storage of high-value items nius, however, obscures the reality of Renais - outside any tax system. (Just last week, Boris sance art production. Like all the star names Come and join our now-legendary an - Johnson proposed that post-Brexit Britain of this period, Leonardo ran a workshop, nual socialist summer getaway above might establish its own.) with numerous assistants who contributed to Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire on 8- his works. The workshop system lies at the 11 August. ART AS INVESTMENT heart of the dispute about the authenticity of This is the ninth year we’ve run the Art has become an increasingly important the Salvator Mundi . camp; it’s always great fun. mechanism in offshore transactions too. There are in fact several versions of the This will be a long weekend of music, That’s because (as the Salvator case shows) painting, most of which are attributed to campfires, food, drink, socialist discus - its value can be highly volatile. A price that Leonardo’s assistants. Numerous artists were sions, workshops, tree climbing, and arsing might seem “over the odds” can be the con - associated with the workshop, among them about in the great outdoors — open to all! sequence of a new attribution, or simply Giovanni Boltraffio, Andrea Solario, Cesare Tickets — which include food for the someone’s passion for a work. da Sesto, Francesco Melzi, Bernardino Luini, weekend but not booze — are £20 Moreover, art isn’t subject to the trans - Marco d’Oggioni and Gian Giacomo school/college students or unemployed; parency rules that have been tightened in re - Caprotti, who was known as Salaì. £25 low-waged; £35 waged. They’re more cent years for other sorts of investment. Hence the business of expert attribution to expensive after 1 August. Today’s equivalent of the old anonymous determine the artistic whodunnit. When the Swiss bank account is a not-quite-Swiss two small-time art dealers who first pur - • See www.workersliberty.org/camp 12 FEATURE More online at www.workersliberty.org Why and how the left has shifted on Israel In the 1990s, with the end of the Soviet pation has been going on a long time, and the Union, the genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia trajectory of internal Israeli politics is horri - made me think anew. Like a lot of people ble. formed by the Vietnam movement, I began to But for a lot of people the hostility to Israel reassess the question of military intervention. has a faux moral quality and moral clarity not By Susie Linfield I started thinking a lot more about the Mid - attributed to other issues. dle East pretty late. What jolted me was 9/11. There is also a very long history — as in, Many of the eight writers you analyse had I started reading a lot more about what was 2,000 years — of identifying the Jew as the their thinking on Israel shaped by Stalin - going on in the Middle East. I had always problem in Western culture, whether it is the ism. But you don’t mention Stalinism. subscribed to MERIP Reports , but now I came Jew as Christ-killer, the Jew as communist That was most true of Maxime Rodinson. to think that something systemic was wrong and revolutionary, or the Jew as capitalist. In He was a Stalinist, and even after he left the in the Arab world. some ways, to be rabidly and ignorantly anti- Communist Party, he remained a Stalinist. Some people may think that is a very “Ori - Israel is a continuation of that trajectory. Then in some ways he substituted what he entalist” thing to say, but I think many Arab The subtext is: “If only Israel did not exist, called the Arab Revolution for the Soviet intellectuals would agree that it is true. how much better the world would be”. But if Union. I belong to a group called the New York In - Israel did not exist, all the other conflicts of He was acutely aware of the regression, au - stitution for the Humanities. I was put in the Middle East would continue. tocracy, dictatorship of the Arab states. But at charge of organising a series of talks about I’m not saying that to be critical of Israel is many times he tried to overlook that. 9/11. We had all sorts of different speakers — necessarily to take part of two thousand Isaac Deutscher was different. He was ba - Iraqis and Iranians and Palestinians and Is - years of antisemitism. I am saying that it’s sically a Trotskyist, but he believed a “demo - raelis — and I was listening pretty carefully. hard to look at the obsessiveness of the vitriol cratic Communism” would emerge in the Each of them challenged many of my precon - that so many of the people direct at Israel Soviet Union. He was also very critical of ceived notions — and my ignorance. I started without thinking about that much longer his - Maoism. He wrote to the effect that it was too reading a lot. tory — and thinking honestly about where bad that socialist revolutions had happened Also, when I wrote the chapter on Robert your criticism fits into it. in the underdeveloped world rather than the Capa in my photography book, I realised For a lot of people on the left, Israel has more developed countries, but that was how how passionately pro-Israel he was when he come to represent everything they hate. It history had unfolded, and we had to live covered the 1948 war. And not just he, but a represents nationalism, colonialism, imperi - with it. Susie Linfield, author of The Lions’ Den: whole panoply of left-wing activists who saw alism, religious fanaticism — everything Alberto Memmi never, I think, looked to Zionism and the Left , talked with Martin the fight for Israeli independence as part of which they see as against a multicultural cos - the Soviet Union. Arthur Koestler joined the Thomas from Solidarity the anti-imperialist struggle: England was the mopolitanism. There is an irony there, since German Communist Party and then became imperialist, and those terrible feudal Arab Israel is more multicultural and cosmopoli - crazily anti-Communist. school then, but there was a tremendous be - monarchies. I started to think about how dif - tan than any other country in the Middle Noam Chomsky has always been clear that lief in the North Vietnamese revolution. ferently things are seen today. East. Stalinism, Maoism, Trotskyism are all anti - Teaching at a university in New York, you My book is in part an attempt to figure out thetical to his thinking. How did you make the choice of whom to discuss can’t not be aware of just how reflexively why Zionism is considered as so different in the book? Why, for example, not include Ed - anti-Israel — I don’t mean just anti-Occupa - from any other national liberation move - Stalinism had defined alignment with the sup - ward Said? Or Hal Draper? Or Moishe Postone? tion, but anti-Israel — the whole left is now. ment, and it’s hard to ignore the peculiar role posed “Arab Revolution” as a “left” stance as Thinking about it now, I wish I had in - Most of the lefty professors at NYU [New which Jews have played in the history of the early as the late 1920s. Stalin’s support for the cluded Said. Actually, the choice was a bit of York University] are pro-BDS. West, and now of the East, when considering Jewish community in Palestine in 1947-8, driven a game of telephone, where one writer led to I was aware of a sort of Pavlovian anti- that. by hopes of disrupting the British Empire, was a another. Zionism. Of course vehement criticism of Is - The left here isn’t intellectually sophisti - temporary wobble on that path. For example, I was reading a book by rael is absolutely justified, but by cated. I find that people have read a little of Rodinson was living in Damascus and in Michael Walzer, and he mentioned Memmi. “Pavlovian” I mean that the hostility to Israel Arendt, they’ve read Chomsky, they’ve read Lebanon during World War Two. Describing I hadn’t read Memmi, but once I started, I is a reflex, often without any historic knowl - Edward Said. They’ve read Judith Butler, his circle of associates there, he writes to the was fascinated. edge. who may be a brilliant gender theorist but effect that “we viewed the UN Partition vote I knew that I wanted to begin with Arendt, who knows very little about the history of the in 1947 in the same way that people viewed though it took me a long time to wade British political culture has been shaped over Middle East or of the Zionist movement. the Hitler-Stalin pact”. He went along with it, through all her writings and figure out what decades by a strong “Arabist” current in the rul - but he was surrounded by people who I thought. ing class — with the idea that Britain would do In an interview with Fathom, you expound your thought it was a travesty. From a certain point I knew that I would well in the Arab world were it not for the uppity “two states” view on Israel-Palestine as part of a Rodinson also knew a lot about what was end with Chomsky, because of how influen - Jews — and more recently by an “absolute anti- general anti-utopianism, saying that the problem going on in the Arab regimes. He knew that tial he is here in the left. Zionist” activist left which is much more influen - with the left is that it is enamoured with building Iraq under Saddam, or Syria under Assad, I had long been a big admirer of tial than its equivalent in the USA. But how does a whole new world. But the “left” views you’ve had nothing to do with socialism, and he Deutscher’s biographies, and I was interested that reflex hostility to Israel arise in the USA? criticised sound to me not utopian at all, but re - sometimes criticised them; but I think he still to see what he had to say. I knew that I would In all honesty, most people on the left here active and a-utopian. looked to the Arab states, or at least to what include I F Stone. First off, I admire him as a know little and care less about the Arab I guess you’re right. Leftists now do not he called the Arab masses, as representing a journalist and for his anti-McCarthy stance. world. The left here has for the most part have the dreams the Bolsheviks had. Maybe transformative project, or at least a potential My parents read him when I was a kid, and I been shockingly silent about the Syrian civil naivete would be a better word than utopi - one. think that in terms of views on Israel he was war. anism. Unlike some other intellectuals, Michel very influential in the USA not just among But there is an obsession with Israel-Pales - But when I hear people saying a one-state Foucault for example, he immediately saw leftists but also among liberals. tine, which is really an obsession with Israel solution for Palestine would be democratic, that the Iranian revolution was a regressive Hal Draper? I’ve heard of him a little bit. — and frankly, I think, with the Jews. and everyone would be equal, I wonder what disaster. Maybe if I do a second edition I could include My university has a campus in Abu Dhabi, world they’re talking about. Do you honestly Fred Halliday came of age politically in him. But he’s not very influential in the USA. which is completely financed by a sheikh. think that Jerusalem and Ramallah are Berke - 1968 in Britain, when much of the left was not Moishe Postone? I’m an admirer of his Talk about corruption! Abu Dhabi has an ap - ley and Brooklyn? Here they are sitting in looking to the Soviet Union. He is the figure work, but I fear he has little influence here, palling human rights record. There was a America, and they’re advocating taking two in the book who became most disenchanted except among a small group of academics. meeting at NYU in New York about the cam - peoples who have been killing each others’ with the idea of “anti-imperialist revolution” pus in Abu Dhabi and the lack of academic children for a hundred years, smushing them as equalling a transformative socialist project. As you said, you remember the left of the early freedom — but the discussion kept going together like baking a cake — and suddenly 70s, which was mostly saturated with the idea back to Israel, as if people couldn’t focus on they’ll have this civic, democratic culture of Halliday, when young, was a disciple of that the revolution was happening in Vietnam. anything but Israel. equality. That seems to me to have nothing to Deutscher . How did your thinking about politics develop in Whatever you think about the Israel-Pales - do with what we know about history and He was also very much influenced by the decades after that? tine conflict, it has absolutely zero to do with what we know about human beings. Rodinson’s writings on the Arab world and Like many left-wing Jews, I was very criti - the repression in the Gulf states. On all sides in Israel-Palestine there are on Islam. cal of Israel, but back then I wasn’t particu - many well-meaning people, but to create a larly interested in the Middle East. My To what extent has that culture been shaped by the viable and democratic state you need a lot And Chomsky came into politics as an activist formative influences were the civil rights writers you mention? more than that. against the Vietnam war, in a political environ - movement and the movement against the Especially among young people, to be anti- If Israel could get back to its democratic ment shaped not just by opposition to what the Vietnam war. Zionist or to have a blanket hostility to Israel institutions, and the Palestinians could USA was doing in Vietnam but also by the idea Then for many years I was much more in - has become the way to be a leftist or a pro - have a reasonably functioning state, that’s that Ho Chi Minh and his associates represented terested in feminist politics. I was very influ - gressive. You don’t have to know anything or enough. Forget utopia. some sort of progressive, liberating revolution. enced by Silvia Federici and Selma James and have any position on many other issues. Yes. I remember that. I was only in high Wages for Housework. I can see some reasons for that. The Occu - Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty FEATURE 13 “Labour should work with Standing Together”

The extension of settlements on the West with people like Standing Together. I would Bank has also been pushing against us. But I like to see better links with the left wing in Is - don’t think the “two states” solution is dead. rael, such as Hadash and Meretz, and more Most of the settlers are in a small area. I understanding about what is going on. have always been of the opinion that those At the moment, I’m afraid the Labour By Steve Lapsley people are building on internationally dis - Party is talking in clichés. Of course we puted ground and should a two-states solu - should ban arm sales to Israel or to any gov - Israel is in a very dark place. We have a tion come about, they will be living under ernment that abuses human rights. very right-wing coalition government, Palestinian authority We need to go against Donald Trump. there are more elections in October, the When people are building these settle - There is no doubt that he is attacking Pales - formal opposition is not left wing. ments, they need to know that. tinian rights, bringing forward his ridiculous Netanyahu has aligned himself with Don - “Two states” is in trouble; however, it is deals that no-one wants, other than probably ald Trump, Modi in India and Orban in Hun - probably the only option. You cannot imag - the Americans and Saudis. We should clearly gary and right wing leaders internationally. ine a single federated state with Hamas and back away from that rubbish. Israel is doing huge damage to its reputation the settler movement living happily side-by- What I would prefer the Labour Party to It is far too easy now for people to say you and standing internationally, and is the only side. That is away-with-the-fairies stuff. do is to work with our partners across Eu - are only focusing on Israel. Some argue that country whose right to exist is continually I have friends who advocate a single rope — though that cooperation is now it is antisemitic if you focus on the only Jew - questioned. “democratic secular” state. There are things I under threat from Brexit — to push for prac - ish state and not the others. Whatever you The Israeli Labour Party has been in de - completely understand about it. What I can - tical solutions in Palestine/Israel — things think about that argument, you do have to cline for some time. But even the genuinely not see is how it could possibly come about. that can work, that can bring peace. Things wonder why it is only Israel human rights left wing parties like Meretz and Hadash, There are two clearly separate peoples. In an that can bring a better hope for the future for abuses that are focused on all the time. which is the Arab-Jewish Party, have not ideal world we would want both peoples — everyone. Most British Jews, Israeli, and probably made many inroads lately. and others — living together in harmony. I have no problem focusing on Palestinian American Jews, still have a cultural link with There has been talk of them merging or That is what we all want. But right now, Is - rights, because they are an oppressed people. Israel. Many have family there. There is still some new joint Jewish-Arab political project. rael is going further to the right. Many Pales - I think we should recognise a Palestinian the idea that Israel was a safety net for Jewish But every time that gets close, and this has tinians, certainly Hamas in Gaza, are clearly state. We should have done that a long time people – a Jewish homeland. There is some been the case for twenty or so years, every - stating that they don’t want such a single ago. It is good that some European countries basis in religious prayer and other culture for one seems to back away. state. that are now doing that. Those countries are that. The more promising stuff is less from po - It seems to be based on a moral resurgence. now coming under great pressure, especially The older generation of Jewish people litical parties but from civil society. Standing Anyone who has been in Israel, as I have, from the US, which is quite absolutist. tends to defend Israel, no matter what. Together is growing quite well and there even with my friends there on the left who I In my speech at the 2018 Labour Party con - I see that slipping with younger Jewish have been some impressive demonstrations generally know, will not see any the required ference I made reference to Robin Cook’s eth - people. That is a good thing, as the Jew - over the last few months. I think that is the resurgence that matches that aim. ical foreign policy. The foreign policy I want ish diaspora has a big role to play in chal - future for the left in Israel. It is idealist. It is utopian. On the left we to see is that we ban arms sales across the lenging where Israel is now. But things are difficult at the moment, par - can dream of that solution, but practically it board to any rights-abusing countries. ticularly as the demographics change, as they is nowhere near. I realise that the two-states Israel is certainly one of those countries. • Steve Lapsley is a Labour Party member in have, a lot, over the last 20 years. solution is battered and bruised and under But I do worry about the party exclusively fo - Nottingham, and a candidate this year for There is no doubt that the “two states” so - attack from everyone from Netanyahu to cusing on Israel – not just at the top and at Labour’s National Constitutional Commit - lution is struggling as a concept at the mo - Donald Trump. But practically two-states is conference, but in the number of motions that tee: bit.ly/sl-ncc. He spoke to Pete Radcliff ment. Primarily because the Israeli the only solution which can lead to peace. go through branches and CLPs that are very for Solidarity. government has acted wilfully against it. I would like to see the Labour Party talk Israel-Palestine focused. Greece’s election: end of a chapter

There was a swing from loose Golden Dawn pean elections in June 2019. positions on issues such as Greek-Turkish re - By Theodora Polenta voters to ND. Antarsya (a left coalition including SEK, lations and the Cyprus question. The 7 July election in Greece confirmed Due to fears about ND leader Mitsotakis’s linked to the SWP in Britain) got 0.4% (23,000 Despite the militancy of Antarsya activists the trends that emerged in the Euro elec - tough neo-liberal agenda, Syriza kept 31.5% votes), half what it got in September 2015 and in social struggles and some good results in tions: of the vote. Statements from Syriza leader less than its 36,000 in this year’s European municipal and regional elections, its score re - • a comfortable ND (New Democracy, Alexis Tsipras show him recognising no elections. The remaining left-wing lists took vealed a strategic deadlock. Its programmatic equivalent of the Tories) dominance that re - structural error in their politics. Instead he less than 0.1%. and political inadequacies, its limited social volved around engaging the centre right and wants a “transformation of Syriza into a great Instead of the Leftist leaders to reflect on composition, and the contradictory choices of alt right voters democratic party” (that is, a party whose sole this electoral defeat, it seems they are trying its components created confusion for its • a lack of momentum from Syriza (the aim is to take power). to blame it all on a shift to the right of the physiognomy and its political orientation. leftish party that has governed since 2015), The most positive development in the elec - electorate. Maybe, I think sometimes, the only way to which paid the price of its capitulation and tion was the non-entry of the Golden Dawn MERA25 convinced a part of society with learn to fly is when all of our roads are transformation into a pro-memoranda, pro- neo-Nazi gang into parliament. its positions where the left could not. Yet it is blocked, when their fences are even taller, austerity party That development was due to a number of only a regroupment of former left-wingers and their labyrinths have no way out. When • the weakness of the anti-capitalist Left to factors, but one was the constant mobilisation with neo-liberal pro-Europeans and others the dim light is diminished, then, maybe persuade and inspire of the anti-fascist movement exposing the on a mixed-economy euro Keynesian pro - then, the need for escape and resistance • the continuing fall of the Golden Dawn, criminal Nazi gangs, and the ongoing trial of gram against austerity. grows. When our legs have no roads to tra - leading them out of Parliament for the first the Golden Dawn leadership. There must be LAE had already eliminated all references verse, then maybe we will grow wings in our time since 2012. no illusions that fascism has died in the polls. to Marxism and the working class, trans - backs. Abstention was at a historically high 45%. forming it into a petty-bourgeois party with Those who dream know deep inside that We are entering a new period in which a two- THE LEFT nationalist leanings. Its degeneration comes sooner or later our tomorrow will arrive... party system similar to the old one between Aside from the relatively good result from from a refusal to break with Stalinism, its tra - Part of the revolutionary communist left... ND and Pasok seems to be there, but without MERA25, a new party set up by former fi - ditions and practices. It is high time to open an in-depth discus - the depth or the stability of the old . nance minister Yanis Varoufakis which got LAE offered a “drachma road to social - sion in the subversive left, to discuss the mis - New Democracy got 39.8% and 2.2 million 3.44% (194,149 votes), the left did badly. ism”, a pseudo-technocratic focus on the takes, and put forward a transitional votes. It regained the number of votes it re - KKE (the Greek Communist Party) lost benevolent development of the productive program with subversive positions which ceived in 2009, but remains far from its num - votes slightly, staying around 5.3% despite an forces, and triangulation to the alt right. have a direct connection with the current ber of 2007 (three million). ND did not collect active election campaign and the erosion of It had carried articles describing the move - phase of the movement, and to create a left a large number of votes from those who Syriza. ments supporting Donald Trump and Marine front that can give a way forward to the pop - voted Syriza in the 2015 elections. The elec - LAE (Popular Unity, a party set up in Au - Le Pen as anti-systemic, anti globalisation ular strata. In the coming period, attacks on work - toral percentage of ND was largely due to the gust 2015 by former Syriza Leftists) contin - forces). It had taken over the alt-right nation - ers’ and people’s rights will intensify, es - mobilisation of the votes of centre-right and ued on a course to annihilation, receiving alistic narrative on Macedonia (against the pecially as a threatening new international the collapse of alt-right formations such as 16,000 votes, just 10% of its score in Septem - Syriza “traitors” who negotiated the Prespes recession looms. Anel, who did not participate in the election. ber 2015, and half of what it got in the Euro - agreement to recognise “North Macedonia”). It had adopted chauvinistic nation-centric More online at www.workersliberty.org Workers’ Liberty @workersliberty Where we stand

Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour Diary of an engineer power to another, the capitalist usually with two or three contrac - self. I change into overalls, boots, various bottled gases. class, which owns the means of tors’ trucks collecting waste ash gloves, hard-hat and protective To the right of the cabins is the production. and metals from the incineration glasses, then walk to the Fitters’ Stores building, where all new The capitalists’ control over the process. Closer to the entrance is a workshop. equipment, from socks to motors, is economy and their relentless drive large water storage tank, about the I go back outside, then back in delivered, catalogued and stored. to increase their wealth causes By Emma Rickman size of a semi-detached house. through a concrete corridor, pass - The Stores’ manager is one of the poverty, unemployment, the I sign in by pushing a slide across ing several rooms full of chemical Steves I remember, because he blighting of lives by overwork, I’m a first year engineering ap - the “Out” plate next to my name on treatment systems, then through spends some of his empty work imperialism, the destruction of the prentice at a Combined Heat and the board. I check the board to see the Low-Voltage switch room. The hours building old electric bicycles. environment and much else. Power (CHP) plant in Sheffield. who is already in; there are around grey metal cabinets are laid out in Behind Stores is the Bernard Against the accumulated wealth The plant takes domestic black 50 workers in the plant, and for labelled rows and they hum Road Boiler House, which is the and power of the capitalists, the bin waste and burns it at high tem - some reason a lot of Johns, Deans slightly. I’m careful not to knock main distribution centre for District working class must unite to peratures to heat steam, which and Steves (I haven’t managed to anything with my elbow as I walk Heating; to the left of that, the Fit - struggle against capitalist power drives a turbine and an electricity keep track of the Steves). through. ters’ Shop, and behind all that, a in the workplace and in wider generator. There are two other apprentices, To the left is another cabin for large fence and the railway line. society. The excess steam from the tur - one in the year above me. Appren - high voltage switches, which is Above all of this and set slightly The Alliance for Workers’ bine is then used to heat water, tices work with different teams kept locked at all times — for obvi - away from the main building is the Liberty wants socialist revolution: which is pumped around the city to week-to-week, and this week I’m ous reasons, as the switches carry Stack. It’s a 75 metre tall concrete collective ownership of industry heat buildings — such as the local working with the Mechanical Fit - 11 kilavolts. chimney connected to the plant by and services, workers’ control, swimming pool. ters. I notice that at least one Fitter I pass the Electrician’s (Sparkies) a wide stainless steel pipe. I learned and a democracy much fuller than This morning I cycled the two — P aka ‘Raggy’ — is clocked in shop, then open a door onto the from the older workers that the the present system, with elected miles to work in the sunshine, all and that’s good, because I can’t ac - yard. The ERF is gearing up for a previous incinerator building was representatives recallable at any downhill. Because it’s midsummer, cess the fitters’ workshop without two-week annual maintenance occupied by Greenpeace in 2001, time and an end to bureaucrats’ lots of work is taking place on the him. shutdown, where hundreds of protesting against pollution regula - and managers’ privileges. District Heating network while de - I go up to “Level 3” which is workers employed by outside con - tion breaches. We fight for trade unions and mand for heat is low, so my route Amenities — most of the plant tractors will be working on site, They climbed up the stack with the Labour Party to break with passed a lot of cordoned-off con - smells of bin waste, but efforts are and these workers need space to ropes and painted “Toxic Crime” “social partnership” with the struction works. made to keep the showers and wash, eat and sleep. A lorry is un - down it, then camped in hanging bosses and to militantly assert I arrive in the car park at 7.40am mess-room clean. I pass the physio - loading metal cabins — roughly the tents until the police removed working-class interests. and will leave around 4.15pm. I’m only an apprentice so I work 8-4, no therapist’s studio, who visits sev - size of two shipping containers — them. Most of the operations team eral times a week to treat plant into the yard and stacking them on agree with the protestors “It was In workplaces, trade unions, shifts; although I know other ap - employees and bin-collection top of each other. toxic crime! The old plant was ter - and Labour organisations; prentices in steel and manufactur - workers (“waste operatives”). Other workers are building steps rible…” and of course unlike other among students; in local ing who went straight onto nights. Many of the plant operators have to access the first level cabins, and shutdowns, there was no work to campaigns; on the left and in I lock up my bike and scan my ID worked in collections, and they tell the Sparkies are fitting electrical ca - do until the activists left, even if wider political alliances we card to enter the metal gate that me on average a bin worker walks bles into others. Beside these are bonuses and overtime were lost. stand for: surrounds the plant. The Energy or runs 20 miles a day. thousands of scaffolding poles, Since then Veolia (previously • Independent working-class Recovery Facility is roughly the The physio treats all kinds of in - brackets and wooden platforms; known as Onyx) have rebuilt the representation in politics. height of a 12 storey office block. To juries, and is one of the three most of this will be erected inside plant to meet the Environment • A workers’ government, your left as you walk in is a large women who use this floor; the the furnace, which is seven storeys Agency emissions limits, as per the based on and accountable to the rectangular building on stilts, women’s changing room is just high, so that workers can clean and European Waste Incineration Direc - labour movement. which drags the air beneath it up used by me and M, the office and inspect the insides. tive (WRAP). • A workers’ charter of trade through two enormous fans — this cabin cleaner. I’m glad of this, be - Also piled up in the yard are the Despite researching, I’ve been union rights — to organise, to is the air coolant system that con - cause from what I hear the men’s large, heavily insulated pipes used unable to find out WRAP’s rea - strike, to picket effectively, and to denses steam back to water once showers are huge, filthy and there in District Heating; manifolds of soning — why are the limits set take solidarity action. the plant has extracted as much en - is very little privacy. The tiny pipes for furnace “feed water”; as they are, not lower or higher? • Taxation of the rich to fund ergy as it can. women’s changing rooms are skips and forklifts; traffic cones; However, there have been no decent public services, homes, To your right is a large dusty where I go when I need time to my - and fenced-off storage areas for the protests at the ERF since 2006. education and jobs for all. warehouse called the Ash Hall, • A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full equality for women, and social provision to free women from domestic labour. For reproductive justice: free abortion on demand; the right to choose when and Land and the oligarchy whether to have children. Full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Black wealthy elite from the time of down from 14.5 metres per FTE to toric site of the Diggers’ Commune and white workers’ unity against William the Conqueror up to the 8 square metres per FTE and re - – a radical group of dissenters who, racism. present day. Brett Christophers’s cently a new target of 6 metres per at the end of the English Revolu - • Open borders. The New Enclosure deals almost en - FTE has been established for gov - tion in 1649, established a commu - • Global solidarity against By John Cunningham tirely with the privatisation of pub - ernment multi-regional depart - nity based on communal global capital — workers lic land by the ideologues of ments (or “Government Hubs”). ownership and working the land in everywhere have more in The appearance of two books on neo-liberalism, from Margaret This reduces workers to the level of common, the very antithesis of common with each other than landownership in Britain [1] , within Thatcher, through Blair and Brown, battery hens. Take a second to mea - what St. George’s Hill is today. with their capitalist or Stalinist the space of a year or so, is yet to Theresa May. sure it out on your living room One of the prominent Diggers, rulers. another “flagging up” of the Successive governments have en - floor and you’ll see what I mean. Gerald Winstanley, proclaimed: • Democracy at every level of growing importance of the “land couraged and coerced the sale of The fundamentally undemo - “The Earth must be set free of in - society, from the smallest question” and a “wake-up call” land to the private sector from cratic, oligarchic, greed-driven na - tanglements of Lords and Land - workplace or community to global for the Left. school playing fields, one-time na - ture of landownership in England lords, and…become a common social organisation. We have to take the question of tionalised industries such as British is shown by a picture in Guy treasury for all”. • Equal rights for all nations, the land on which we live – who Rail, the NHS; and the Ministry of Shrubsole’s book, with a sign read - These ringing words come to against imperialists and predators owns it, how it is exploited, how Defence. ing: “St. George’s Hill. Private Es - us across a void of over 350 big and small. the overwhelming majority of us The neo-liberal drive for profit tate. Restricted access. Next years, but they retain all their • Maximum left unity in action, are excluded from it – much more has fuelled such bizarre calcula - Entrance 200 yards”. truth and validity today. and openness in debate. seriously than we have in the past. tions as the so-called “space-utilisa - The “private estate” referred to is [1] A review of Who Owns Eng - Guy Shrubsole’s Who Owns Eng - tions targets”. In other words, how a gated community, with a private land? by Guy Shrubsole (William If you agree with us, please land? gives us a long term overview little space does a full-time em - golf course, of mainly, offshore- Collins, 2019) and The New Enclo - take some copies of Solidarity of how the land in England has ployee (FTE) need to perform their owned mansions (the Beatles once sure: The Appropriation of Public Land to sell — and join us! been progressively exploited and duties? owned some of the properties). in Neoliberal Britain , by Brett expropriated by an obscenely The figure has been whittled St. George’s Hill is also the his - Christophers (Verso, 2018) REPORTS 14-15 All out strike at BEIS

By John Moloney, Assistant General Secretary, PCS union (pc) Cleaners and catering staff at the Department of Business, En - ergy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) began an all-out, indefi - nite strike on 15 July. This is extremely significant. It’s NEU “maybe” on ballots the first all out strike in a Whitehall government department for decades. The demands include the for boycott London living wage, sick pay, and direct employment. members vote for the action. The The union is paying full strike By Patrick Murphy ballot indicated that at least 10 dis - pay. We won’t let these members be tricts would meet those thresholds starved back to work. Fundraising At the NEU (National Education with another group close behind. for the strike funds is one of the Union) Executive on 13 July, the It was argued (by ESN) that the best things activists in the wider decisive amendment, passed testing regime is very vulnerable labour movement can do to help with just one vote against, pro - to any significant boycott, reliant these workers win. posed that the union consider as it is on all schools completing On Thursday 18, there’ll be a On Monday 22 July, the BEIS we’re fighting against office clo - formal ballots to boycott the the tests so that meaningful league joint march of striking outsourced strike will expand, as security and sures, for example of the tax office tests in selected areas. tables can be produced. workers, involving workers at post room staff join the strike for a in Ealing, where workers have pre - The consideration is to be in It is a pity that the substantial BEIS, the Foreign and Common - week. They plan to take further ac - viously struck. Our demand is to consultation with the branches, positives in the ballot were not re - wealth Office, and cleaners from tion in future. On 26 July, the union keep offices open, but even if they and for areas which achieved the flected in the Executive’s report HMRC offices in Merseyside. We’re will meet with Interserve, the com - close we refuse to accept that this required 40% yes vote of eligible and even less so in how it was pre - planning to take a more systematic pany which employs outsourced means workers should lose their members and those who were sented at the 13 July meeting. approach to organising outsourced workers at the Foreign and Com - jobs; in the 21st century there’s no close to it. This was the highest turnout in workers in the civil service, looking monwealth Office, to discuss the reason why many office workers The Executive report on the bal - any national ballot in either the to spread the energy of these dis - dispute there and possible union can’t work remotely or from home. lot had included some recommen - NUT or ATL in over 20 years with putes. recognition. Some branches in the Department dations to take the campaign one exception. The exception was Elsewhere in the civil service, for Work and Pensions are also forward, but none had involved the pensions ballot of 2011 which gearing up for disputes, over work - any further consideration of action achieved a turnout just 1% higher. That was a ballot of all members, Our new pamphlet , The German load and management bullying. to boycott. Shortly after taking office as As - An amendment from support - whereas this involved primary Revolution , has Luxemburg’s major members only. article s from 1918-9. sistant General Secretary, I pub - ers of the Education Solidarity lished a statement detailing exactly Network (ESN) argued for calling The turnout in secondary They span from when the 1918-9 schools and sixth forms is always German revolution began, until her how I’d be enacting my policy a special conference of primary pledge to take an average workers’ members and branch secretaries in higher, and it is extremely unlikely murder by a Social Democratic that the primary turnout was even protected right-wing militia. wage. This has had a positive im - autumn to consider the ballot re - pact with rank-and-file reps. sults in full and debate the options close to 40% in 2011. On the last Paul Vernadsky’s introduction three occasions when the NUT tells the story of the German I’ve had a good response even for action. It listed the main op - from reps who don’t agree with tions as a national ballot counted balloted only primary members, revolution and discusses findings of the turnout was well below the recent scholarship on it. the policy but who think it’s re - in a way that allowed disaggrega - spect-worthy that I’m keeping tion, ballots in areas which vote in this recent ballot. 56 pages A4. Cover price £5. Buy From November 2018 to Jan - onl ine at bit.ly/rl-gr my commitments. reached the thresholds in the in - dicative ballot, or no ballot for ac - uary this year the NEU ran a full tion. Our amendment was heavily national ballot on pay and fund - defeated. ing for all members in all sectors. RMT halts ballot ESN Executive members sup - The ballot was open for over two ported the successful amendment months. The testing ballot was for More coverage online By Ollie Moore as well as our own. primary members only and ran A proper discussion with pri - for just four weeks. • Eduardo Tovar reports on the latest actions by Tube union RMT has halted a mary representatives and Every branch and every region ballot of around 2,000 workers branches which kept all options saw a higher vote in this ballot. “Workers in Struggle” in Venezuela, against both on London Underground, mainly on the table would have been This campaign has galvanised and Maduro and Guaidó: bit.ly/ven-wkr in engineering grades. preferable, but this outcome is bet - motivated union branches and ac - The workers were being balloted ter than many expected. It keeps tivists. It has pushed testing for strikes to stop job cuts proposed the prospect of a selective boycott higher up the union and political • Barrie Hardy reviews a book about the Bavarian Soviet as part of Transport for London’s alive, though very far from cer - agenda, it has demonstrated the Republics of 1919: bit.ly/mun-19 “Transformation” scheme. The tain. overwhelming support amongst scheme also includes a proposal to Much of the information dis - school staff for ending high stakes testing, and turned many NEU • Daisy Thomas, a climate-change activist in Brisbane, outsource a section of waste dis - cussed at the Exec meeting was posal staff currently employed di - confidential, but the basic picture branches out to their primary talks with Janet Burstall about the Workers’ Liberty rectly by London Underground. from the consultative ballot was members. It is likely, in time, to pamphlet For Workers’ Climate Action : bit.ly/dlt-iv The ballot had been due for re - fairly clear. 97% of the members have improved union organisa - turn on 16 July. The union says it who responded supported for the tion and rep density in primary plans to rerun the ballot with an union’s campaign to abolish them schools. • Natalia Cassidy recounts the history of the LGBT+ expanded electorate, as it be - the testing regime. The fight to achieve a mean - subculture in interwar Berlin and the Institut für lieves the cuts may be more ex - A clear majority also supported ingful boycott of the 2019-20 Sexualwissenschaft: bit.ly/mh-isw tensive than first thought. a boycott. But the turnout didn’t tests is not over. Activists will suggest that the draconian thresh - be working to build as far as olds required by the anti-union possible on the limited opportu - • Daniel Randall debates with Tribune editor Ronan Stop Brexit: Left Bloc on “No to laws would be met in a formal na - nity opened up by the 13 July decision. Burtenshaw about Brexit: bit.ly/dr-rb Boris, Yes to Europe” march tional ballot. For action to be legal in schools the law imposes a double test. We • Patrick Murphy is a member of • Barry Finger replies to Rhodri Evans on binationalism 11am, Saturday 20 July, are required to get a 50% turnout the NEU Executive, writing in a personal capacity. and Israel: bit.ly/bf-binat Stanhope Gate, W1K 1, London and to have 40% of all eligible SolidaFor a workers’ giovertnment y No 513 17 July 2019 50p/£1

Campaign Against Antisemitism protest Labour and antisemitism: yes, it’s a real problem

sponse included 3,000-plus replies sands. And it is an interim figure, on Twitter) as being an unreliable current government). Because, By Cathy Nugent to a Tom Watson tweet, telling him produced when there is known to witness because back in 2015-16 given the still-recent history of the The BBC Panorama programme to do one, echoing Len Mc - be a big backlog of complaints! she worked as a public affairs offi - Holocaust, most Jews have some (10 July) about Labour’s anti - Cluskey’s unparliamentary lan - Putting “the tiny percentage” into cer for the Israeli Embassy (before affinity with Israel, this root-and- semitism problem has intensi - guage at the Durham Miners’ Gala. circulation, to be repeated across becoming a director of the Jewish branch hostility to Israel is always fied the Party’s internal row. The silliest response from the Twitter so many thousand times, Labour Movement). going to communicate hostility to Unfortunately, because the pro - (non-Labour) right has to be seems to me to be a hostage to for - Not my dream job, but does that Jews in general, in a variety of con - gramme was not well done, and Rachel Riley’s tweet that a brass tune. Who knows what the actual mean she has not been the victim texts. because Labour’s response has band playing the Hebrew folk figures of antisemitic incidents will of antisemitism? No one can possi - Absolute anti-Zionism teaches been to “shoot the messenger” as song Hava Negila at Durham was be if, and when, they eventually bly know that! its supporters that when Jews are Emily Thornberry rightly put it “as tasteful as showing Black Pan - come out? Where does this “bad faith open and proud about their affin - when criticising that reaction, the ther at a Klan rally”. The band thinking” come from which leads ity with Israel and therefore self- renewed row has brought very lit - plays a variety of tunes from WILFUL IGNORANCE people to conclude that she and described as Zionist – people like tle light so far. around the world every year. No evidence? Arguing there is other Jewish Labour members on Ella Rose – they can never tell the Thornberry said: “I think that we The reaction to Panorama from “not one jot of evidence”, in face the programme must be lying, or at truth. And the conclusion echoes shouldn’t be going for the messen - Corbyn-loyal antisemitism deniers of all the news reports and shar - least exaggerating? That’s what the the old trope that Jews are chroni - gers, we should be looking at the has been stunningly poor. It has ing of screenshots across social Labour Party said about former cally untrustworthy, devious, con - message. I think that is what is im - displayed the standard responses media, is the equivalent of: “I’m staff members on the programme... spiring. portant. to all complaints of antisemitism in going to stick my fingers in my The problem here is much The Labour leadership have a “Nobody can pretend that there Labour. First, that the number of ears and shout I can’t hear you.” deeper than bad faith or a lack of duty to set the tone of the conver - isn’t an ongoing problem within cases is tiny. Secondly, that It is difficult to know where to empathy or faulty logic. There is sation on this issue, and they are the Labour Party about anti - Panorama shows not a jot of evi - suggest such wilfully unobservant also a political problem of defini - currently failing spectacularly. semitism, about our processes for dence. Three, you can’t trust the people go to for “evidence” that tions. Whatever the rights about defend - dealing with it.” messenger. they won’t consider tainted by the Labour presents the issue of an - ing themselves against the likes of Twitter is always a forum where Numbers are tiny? A few unreliability of “right-wingness” tisemitism as one of simple Watson, they have escalated an any kind of intellectual or moral months ago Jennie Formby gave and “Zionism”. But they can begin “racism”. Hence, it is often said often ludicrous but always nasty light finds it hard to shine. The row an interim report on the number of with Socialists Against Anti - Corbyn is an anti-racist, so he can’t and ignorant exchange of hate on over the Panorama documentary, antisemitism cases that Labour’s semitism (website saasuk.org, and be antisemitic. But beyond the social media. as played out on Twitter, has been Complaints Department had pro - Facebook page), who have a grow - Holocaust deniers and conspiracy That can and will spill over in no exception. cessed and where action had been ing collection. theorists, antisemitism on the left real live Labour Parties, where it After Tom Watson put the boot taken. Labour itself continues to re - Unreliable witnesses? One of the is usually an issue of absolute anti- will make it difficult to have a ra - into Labour’s General Secretary peat the number as a tiny percent - Jewish Labour members who ap - Zionism rather than theories about tional exchange of views and as - Jennie Formby, currently undergo - age (less than 1%) of the peared on the Panorama pro - a Jewish “race”. sessments. Labour needs to change tack, ing treatment for cancer and membership, as if it is a known fact gramme, Ella Rose, has been called Absolute anti-Zionism is a viru - and soon. signed off sick, the predictable re - which will stand for all time. out by Asa Whinstanley of the lent political hostility to Israel (to But “less than 1%” is some thou - Electronic Intifada (31.1k followers its very existence, as opposed to its Contact us Subscribe to Solidarity To: ...... (your bank) ...... (address) Account name ...... (your name) 020 7394 8923 Trial sub (6 issues) £7 o Six months (22 issues) £22 waged o, £11 unwaged o Account number ...... 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