Curmudgeonly Communism

Not his best but Youtube didn't have much.

I was saddened to hear that SWP central committee member and Marxist theoretician Chris Harman died on Friday night. His book How Marxism Works was my introduction to Marxism at the age of 15. My admiration for his book A People's History of the World was one of the reasons I decided to study history. Agree with him or not (and I do not on many points), that book is still one hell of an achievement.

It has been 8 years since I was a member of that organisation. Since then I no longer support theirs and Harman's defense of the Bolsheviks and Leninist organisation. Yet I still admired Harman's oratorical skills and written work and believe his death is a loss to socialism of any stripe. The next time I attend Marxism I know that his taciturn and curmudgeonly presence will not be there and a new generation will not hear him speak. But more than this: he was a living connection to the last revolutionary generation - The '68ers. A memory of resistance is being lost. In a world of identitikit political grey-men who make John Major seem like a maverick, students as 'consumers' rather than critical thinkers and a society that is both increasingly anxious about danger and bland in its conformity, that is the biggest tragedy for Harman's death for me.

Socialist Resistance's Obituary:

Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 66. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades.

A convinced revolutionary socialist all his adult life, Harman had played a key role in founding Socialist Worker and editing it until 2004. Harman was an internationalist from the start. That was reflected in myriad ways, from his participation in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the the late 1960 to the symbolic location of his death: Cairo.

Harman was a polymath, gifted as an author, speaker, editor, leader and economist. His book The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 is a powerful tool for revolutionary socialists.. His greatest work, A Peoples’ History of the World, is invaluable. He was also outstanding as an activist and leader of the SWP and its forerunner, the International Socialists. Harman played a major role in helping the organisation develop its political direction and in explaining its choices to a radical audience. His famous 1992 debate with Ernest Mandel on the bureaucratic Stalinist dictatorships in Quatriéme Internationale (now ContreTemps) was translated into English and is still in print as The Fallacies of State Capitalism. His analysis of SWP split from Respect was valued even by those who opposed the SWP’s decision: it was translated by Inprecor and published in Respect: Documents of the Crisis as the clearest exposition of the SWP’s viewpoint.

Harman took his role as an SWP leader seriously, but that did not stop him from having a transparent and comradely working relationship with socialists outside the SWP. Last month he was an active participant in the IIRE’s economists seminar, in which most participants were Fourth Internationalists. While there, he spoke at a public meeting sponsored by Grenzeloos, the magazine of the Fourth International in The Netherlands.

As one of our comrades, Clement, put it on hearing the news: “Harman was for me the person from which I discovered Marxism, and which showed and revealed that revolutionary engagement was compatible with highly demanding scientific investigation for understanding and changing the world.” Harman’s openness, his books and articles, his work in the struggle and the contribution he made to developing the socialist consciousness of tens of thousands of people are a fitting monument to his revolutionary life.

Socialist Resistance editorial board,

November 7 2009.

Chris Harman speaking on the German Revolution (mp3)

Chris Harman on Neo Liberalism (mp3)

Chris Harman on Capitalism Today (mp3)

My initial thoughts on this video

And the comments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJcgDH06wE

First things first. It's 10.30pm (at the time of writing). I get up at 5am, leave the house at 6am, get the world's shittiest bus service at 7 and have lectures til 5pm, which means I get home at 7pm. I'm fucked all week. I've got my first proper School Placement on Monday and the paperwork is a good ½ an inch thick so there is no way I am going to conduct research on anything else but that. So all this is right now is a work in progress. At some point these sketchy points are going to be filled in with references and what have you.

But not today.

Maybe in the Christmas holidays.

No wait, I have an assignment due just before the Christmas holidays.

So after them then.

No wait, I'm back at Uni on the 4th January and my second 60 day placement after that.

So July 2010 then in between job hunting.

So in the meantime...

And apologies for the stream of consciousness here. I would love to be more systematic about this but I am thinking as I write. This post is an attempt to get a load of contradictory thoughts in order. Okay, let's begin.

I am white. I am working class – in both the Marxist and the mainstream sociologist sense of the word. On paper I probably fit modern tabloid stereotype of the proles that infest 'Broken Britain'. I was born to a teenage mother. My father flew from the scene before I was old enough to remember what he looked like. We lived on a council estate. I still do. I did what – stereotypically – working class teenagers are said to do when I grew up. Smoking hash (it was hash in my day, it's weed now) being a nuisance, having gaol birds for friends, etc.

I am making the point because I am not a hand wringing middle class liberal. There's nothing inherently wrong with being middle class – it's constantly being used as an insult – and there's nothing wrong with being liberal. It is just that if this post was every read by more than half a handful, that would be the knee jerk reaction. I'm a liberal, I'm middle class, I don't live in the community, yadda yadda yadda.

Fuck off mate. I live in a town with with a South-Asian population of almost 20% . I'm not a person who pontificates about how wonderful it is to live in a 'vibrant' (every time you see the word 'vibrant' think dump) town/city while actually living in an all white suburb.

I'm also as has been established, a Marxist. The thing about being a Marxist is that it's a universalist world view. Most Marxists worth their salt care just as much about their comrades in say, Somalia or Minsk as they do in Dagenham or Boston. I'm not entirely sure that I go entirely with 'workers have no country' because while there is something universal about the working class as an experience and a culture, we have specific, historically conditioned cultures as well. But we do have a sense of comradeship that transcends boundaries. That's wobbled somewhat since the death of the 'actually existing socialist' regimes but it still exists. I'd put money on the fact that Maoists in Nepal would jump for joy if Scotland became a people's republic for example (I'm not advocating Maoism or people's republics by the way).

The point of this is that we come to the issue of immigration (aha! At last he comes to the point!) with a slightly different perspective than most, I suspect. We already think of ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent (depending on the zeal of the Marxist) as 'one people' as it were . Except of course for splitters. But splitters can be any colour. We care more that someone is a Kautskyist-revisionist than we would that someone is a Paki/Gook/Nip/White bread cracker/Nigger/Frog/kyke/Dago/Paddy/wop/Insert racial slur here. (Let's face it when it comes to being vicious bastards, we out do the right-wing any day. It's just that, like the Krays, 'we only ever 'urt our own').

(I am referring to the sectarian but ineffectual European left by the way. I am well aware that Uncle Joe and Auntie Pol Pot were known for for getting out of bed on the wrong side and sending a few to the Gulags)

You can add to that the long accepted (among the left) belief that immigration controls divide the working class and should be scrapped. I am an advocate of this.

So now it comes out and the jaws drop and the insults come my way. It will be assumed that I am living in a dream world, that of course I must live in an all white town/city and have never had to face the consequences of being invaded by Johnny foreigner.

Not at all. I share the concerns about loss of identity myself. There. I said it. I'd probably be tarred and feathered by the Leninists in a shot. Nevertheless. My fear is so great that I have very carefully crafted this blog post to avoid Americanisms. Things like 'a bunch of' instead of a 'load of'. Things like not beginning a sentence with 'so' I failed at that). But it's not just that. I fear the loss of fish and chip shops to Chicken shops and pizza parlours. I lament the loss of pie and mash shops. I hate the fact that teenage kids today look indistinguishable from Americans. I hate the loss of our collective memory. Where are our new Tony Benns? Where are our new Arthur Scargills? Where are our new Hurricane Higginses or George Bests? Where are we and who are we as a class and a community? We're lost. Is that true or my perception? Am I, even at a relatively young age a relic from a lost past? Maybe. But I feel it. I want our (English working class) to be enlivened and enriched by new blood and new perspectives, and it is, but I don't want the past to be drowned.

Neither do I want us to be fighting like dogs in the street over the last bone for resources. There is pressure over housing (thanks to the erosion of public housing stock) over jobs, over decent community centres and the like. And the perception is (rightly or wrongly) that instead of those in need coming first, resources are being allocated according to racial communities.

So it seems I want my cake and to eat it too. That's one way of looking at it. Another way is that I am not a mindless automaton, just shouting right-on slogans. When people talk about fear of losing their identity, I share that. I believe in a politics of class in which assimilation is taken seriously. Not foisted upon people, not forced to forget their mother tongue or culture but neither should people be treated as aliens in our midst the way they are now. The absolute stupidity of this is that the mainstream politicians want their cake and to eat too as well. Who falls over themselves to show how tough on immigration they are? Who tries to out BNP the BNP while at the same time saying 'oh no, we're not like them at all.'

NO. YOU ARE. The difference between them and you is the level of hypocrisy. That is all. You try and play both cards. You have created the problem of multiculturalism, which tries to reduce everyone to monolthic racial communities, squabbling amongst each other while at the same time denouncing people as 'illegals' and 'bogus'.

As for me, in a way I look to America and the republican tradition. Ehh, yes that country is racist in a way in which we can even look down upon. And yet communities there do find a way to assimilate. Not in a revolutionary proletarian way of course but it's something. Of course everyone in the US is a damned Johnny Foreigner anyway so the whole blood and soil bullshit of European nationalism out from the start. They had to forge a common identity from scratch after the 13 colonies had abandoned the mother country.

Ultimately I find myself agreeing with Phil:

One way to start to achieve this would be to break the popular support for the BNP by illustrating to the alienated white minority who have turned to them in times of need that the problem of contemporary society is not one relating to race and ethnicity, but rather one rooted in the new form of neo-liberal capitalism that plunges everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or age, into a precarious world, where everything is uncertain. The effect of this approach would be to dismantle the mythological connection between precariousness and race that enables the BNP and other parties of the far right to scapegoat minorities, and turn popular attention towards the real problem, the form of capitalism that turns people against each other like never before.

http://averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com/2009/11/capitalism-and-clowns.html

Anyway, to be continued and followed up with research. One day.

A.A. Gill is a massive cunt.

You see, you see you bastards? I can get some things right and no mistake. 'Ave some of that!

I had to do a short maths lesson on Tuesday and I was wracking my brains for a maths game when I remembered at college we once played a game called Fizz-Buzz. It's dead easy. Get a group together, form a circle and start counting. One person counts one, the next two...well you all know how to count. Anyway when a person gets to a multiple of 3 (3, 9, 12, 15, etc) they shout fizz instead of the number. If it's a multiple of five they shout Buzz! If it's a three and and a five they shout Fizz-Buzz! Hesitations, pauses and wrong answers result in being out of the game.

So what are the learning objectives?

Well it checks if children really know their 3s and 5s which they should know by year 3, all else being equal (SEN children will have different criteria). How? By changing the context of the multiples. Eh? Well look we all know the "one times three is three" rote learning method. Children can memorize that no problem. But change the way in which they have to recite the table and that's a proper challenge.

Not that they know that its a challenge. With any luck it just seems like a bit of a laugh with a sticker for the winnner and maybe a sticker for whoever made the most progress since we last played it. Its anti-maths maths. The success criteria is if we can get through the times table for 3 and 5 up to 30 with every child knowing at least one multiple.

Simple as, bish bash bosh. Its mostly in the presentation, which at least one person thought I did well.

Honest guv this was not written by me and no one was bribed!

By the way, my name is actually Ross. Anyone who thinks my name genuinely is Albert Soviets is a bit of a wally.

Ross Had used 'Fizz Buzz' as his oral mental starter (I'll leave the explanation of what it is to ross if he wants to

The things i liked about Ross's OMA was

1) I really liked to way he introduced the OMA to the children (Being us!). Instead of going straight into Maths, he asked us questions as to why we do exercise. After a few answers, we gave him the answer "to keep our mind working" and he explained how important that is. From a pupil perspective, Ross had managed to get his participants involved in what they were going to do and he didn't necessarily label it as Maths. In doing so, he had shown us an effective strategy to encourage children who might fear the words "now we are going to do some maths" into participating in Mathematical Activity.

2) Plain and simple-constant praise. Even when somebody had made a mistake, Ross just ignored the fault and congratulated us on our efforts.

3) He had managed to find a activity that could include all of the children. At some point during the OMA, Ross (the teacher) had one to one interaction with every pupil. From his perspective, it also appeared to be a great assessment opportunity.

If i had to choose one area for him to work on, i would say it would be to maybe interact with the children in this activity. He can show the children how it can be done through the means of modelling and he could make 'silly' mistakes which would make him seem humorous and approachable so that the children could then correct his mistake and help raise confidence.

Overall, it was a great OMA.
Well done Ross !!

I been fuckin' busy ain't I? Eh? You want some, eh? You slag?

Anyway, yes so I have indeed been busy and I still am. I had actually intended to close the blog as really I am not sure if there's anything I want to say any more. The original intention of the blog was to record my thoughts on my Grandad's illnness. The blog went pas that remit though and I found myself ranting about the little things try me as a spoilt consumer brat in an over indulgent, pampered, western decadent world. I did occasionally throw in some politics in there as well, which is nice but, I've never been one for yer mature and sophisticated analysis when calling someone a cunt does the job just as well.

These days though I've been living in a tiny little bubble around my PGCE (that's Post Graduate Certificate of Education, or Teacher Training to those of you who hate initialisms and stupid jargon wot like I do) and I don'tr spend much time thinking about owt else. Don't want to fill a blog full of, "I hate waking up at 5, have to write a lesson plan for MFL...etc.) 'cos taht'd bore the arse off me. It'd be like a really long version of fucking twitter.

Twitter, twitter? Shitter more like! It was bad enough a couple of years ago when the hipsters and the tech geeks were on it. At least I could pretend I'd never heard of it. Now every wanker with an iphone up his arse is banging on about the social web facemayspacetwitterfriendfeedwhataloadabollocks. It were IRC in my day. You knew where you were on IRC. trolls and star trek bastards. Proper internet!

See that's the sort of thing you'd get on the blog. The billionth rant that about twitter. What's the betting that I'll write about how twitter is just what people ate for lunch?

So there you go. The bar was never high on my blog but I'd doubt I'd even hit my own lowly standards. So after a very long absence my latest post may well just be to tell... um... well me really, seeing as I don't have what you'd call a readership as such...

Okay let's start that again. So after a very long absence my latest post may well just be to tell whoever is reading this that I may be packing up and going home. And I'm taking my ball with me.

But then you never know with me.

If I get my blog mojo working I'll be back but right now, running on empty. If I get me rant juice back, you'll be the first to know.

Until then, C U Next Tuesday!

I have only just seen the ad as I do not watch television, so please forgive me for being so behind the times. Now, I am not usually a defender of advertising, Probably comes with the commie territory. But having watched it on Youtube, I found it most endearing and quite funny. That is quite depressing in a way because on the few occasions I have watched television at my cousins house, I have sat resolutely po faced at Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Mock the Week, at anything Noel Fielding has ever said and as I have already commented on an earlier blog post, Touch Me I'm Karen Taylor. The fact that a 31 second tv ad can make me laugh while the latest in "comedy" cannot, reinforces my cast iron belief that modern television is mostly shit and you can stuff it. I could not however, even at my most curmudgeonly fail to laugh at the tough Noo Yawk Deli Man gesturing to himself and gruffly demanding "hey, ain'tchoo forgetting sum'in?" Come on, that's funny.

So what in the name of Satan's buttock sweat were people thinking when they complained? What bloody relevance did their complaint have? I do not mean how dare people find two blokes having a little peck on tv, I know people get their knickers in a twist about that. To be honest I think that has less to do with an ideological defence of the family or a deep seated revulsion for homosexuality. It certainly has sweet fuck all to do with "the children". I think it has everything to do with the "ew gross" attitude of people who see two blokes kissing, find it personally distasteful in that very childish way and want to make damned sure they never see it again.

I cannot play the holier than thou card here. The first time I ever saw gay pornography I knew that while same men are fanciable indeed, I knew the whole man on hairy man action was not my thing at all. I was alright while watching them missing the pink and potting the brown but the kissing... no, can't say I'm a fan. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite because I've snogged men meself. I thought I'd give it a go, but it's all stubble and aftershave and seems (in my mind and libido at least) an interesting fantasy but not my preferred way of spending an afternoon. I cannot believe however that the act would so scarring that it would leave children up down the country traumatised and dumbstruck. For one thing, is that unusual to see men kiss each other? I know the preferred method of male bonding is the awkward hand shake and a hesitant pat on the back but at some point, on very special occasions this does sometimes break down, surely? Well it does in my family anyway. And footballers kiss and hug each other when they score goals. I wonder how many football matches faced being banned from tv because Michael Owen planted on Beckham's cheek after he scored a screaming free kick in an England match. Actually given the paucity of scoring opportunities from England this is probably a moot point.

Okay so you could argue that kissing is one thing; this was a representation of "alternative family" life. Right but again there are precedents. Years and years back on eastenders there was that poncy bloke and his wide boy boyfriend Barry. They kissed on screen. The world did not crumble around their ears, butch Brut wearing casuals did not suddenly ditch their girlfriends and weekends of 10 beers and a stripper down the local boozer with the lads... for well, the lads, so to speak. Eastenders carried on as normal. Oh I daresay someone got their knickers in a twist over it mind you. Having read an article about the ad (which is how I got to see it) I understand that there are gay characters in both Emmerdale and Corrie.... so the ad may have been squeezed between these two shows then. Two shows in which presumably the characters have not be fired or the shows pulled. Again though, it is likely that people go arse over tit about those characters as well.

Okay so people get het up about all sorts of silly nonsense. On one level I think well so what. Everyone needs a hobby. If their hobby is being a prick, then okay. I am not perfect, I probably harbour less than wholesome thoughts about all sorts of people. That is to say, I do. When you consider things like an impending war in Iraq, the Labour government, etc. It is all small potatoes I suppose. It's annoying to think people don't have a sense of humour but then some people think Karen Taylor and Ali G are funny. To them it is me that doesn't have a sense of humour. Its also mildly irritating to note that people don't get the bloody ad in the first place. The point of it is not look at the gay family, the point of it is that having this mayo is like having a New Yawk Deli in your house. Or something. Alright so it may have been a bit clumsily done but jeez it's an ad, it's not Chekov. The finest minds of our generation are not working on making Heinz products more attractive. At least I hope not. If they are, the 21st century is worse than I thought.

What really irritates me is that apparently it took 200 people to get the ad pulled. 200. Thousands of people marched in Birmingham to save the Rover plant at Longbridge. The government could have stepped in, listened to what is franly their natural instinctive voters. They did not. Thousands marched in my home town to save Vaxhall. Same. Millions of people marched against the Iraq war and it didn't matter a toss. But TWO HUNDRED FUCKING PEOPLE GET AN AD PULLED BECAUSE IT OFFENED THEIR TINY IMMATURE MINDS. THE CUNTS. That's how fucked society is, that's what a shit nation we live in and that's our shittty democracy. Because it's all about fucking marketing and profit and shitty fucking mayonnaise. My mind absolutely boils. It fills me with nameless apoplexy to think that on such a trivial matter 200 sad sorry bastards just had to cock their little finger to change something for us all. On one level it is pretty tiny. It is just an ad. But commentators have long banged on about the power of the media and it's control. Some control. The spineless bastards pissed their pants because there would be 200 less people less inclined to buy their cunting mayo.

Maybe I am focusing on the wrong thing. It is equally sad to think that while we're doing much better, anti gay bigotry is still virulent in some quarters. The poor lad who was attacked for being gay earlier this week is testament to that. Yet the overriding thought for me is that I cannot help but think that something is broken somewhere when on the big questions no one in power listens, but some bastard ad executive bends over backwards to soothe the ruffled feathers of a few twats.

And to those 200 people I can only say look, on this matter alone I would never be a friend, acquaintance, lover or work colleague of yours. You may all be otherwise charming, delightful sweet and generous people. But that tiny, petty stupid little thing you did taints your soul. It's like realising that while Elvis was gyrating his hips and giving you that smouldering look while singing "you ain't nothin' but a hound dog" he had skids in his underpants.

Lug Radio Is now over. I'm just downloading the last show now. I think it's a real shame. As I never watch TV, a lot of my evenin's entertainment is listening to the radio and increasingly, podcasts. Lugradio, which I discovered back in series 2, was by far my favourite show. They talk about Linux and Open Source software, which is obviously not terribly interesting to most people, but they did so in such a down to earth and humorously blokey way that being at all interested in computers was never a necessary prerequisite for listening to the show. In a way it was like the Skinner and Baddiel world cup podcasts - I'm not a big footie fan by any stretch, but the shows were entertaining enough for that not to matter. As far as I am concerned they set a podcasting standard, regardless of subject matter. And they read out an email of mine (slagging off Eric Raymond)! So anyway, cheers guys, it's been a great show. It'll be sadly missed.

Metropolitan Police officers were rapped after an investigation into photos and comments posted on the Facebook site 'Look I've Had a Pocol' - slang for police collision.

The social networking site had more than 200 members around the world before it was taken down in January.

One photograph showed a police vehicle in an accident with a small white car.

The officer who posted it wrote: "I did him a favour. At 82 years old you just shouldn't be on the road and if you are, then most certainly don't go through a green light into the path of an innocent police car."

Another member wrote: "Ran over a drunk. I believe he has a permanent limp and a hefty payout. I was given a three-month holiday from job driving. Ooh, bummer."

One picture showed a uniformed officer giving a thumbs-up next to a vehicle, which seemed to have hit a fallen tree.

Another picture featured the wreckage of a patrol car after it had mounted the kerb and hit a lamppost.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan police said the offending officers were given written warnings for misconduct.

"Fourteen officers received written warnings and four were given a speaking to. The warnings will remain on their records. Another five had unofficial words in their ear," he said.

The disciplinary action follows a driving ban in January for a policeman who made 'thumbs-up' gestures to speed cameras while racing to emergencies.

David Mayes, 34, from Barnsley, was also fined £400.

Also in February, the Independent Police Complaints Commission concluded an probe into officers from South Wales who competed to see how far they could travel from the station while on duty.

The Gwent officers, nicknamed the "Seaside Five", took their patrol cars as far as the beach on Barry Island.

Two were told to resign from the force, another two were fined 13 days pay and a fifth resigned before the conduct hearing.

http://londonclasswar.org/newswire/index.php?itemid=257

So, I finished my access course. I have provisionally passed the course, I needed 48 credits at "Level 3" (A level equivalents) and I got 51. Plus I got my maths and science GCSEs. It was tough. We did 10 subjects all together - 8 A level equivalents and two GSCEs in a 4 day week in under a year. So tough in fact, that they've decided to drop the minimum credits to 45. Anyway, it's done now. It's still touch and go. We all had to keep our work in a portfolio for the internal moderator. If there's anything wrong with the portfolio that's it, you fail. Which is kinda harsh. Heh, of course if it wasn't for the fact that I know mine isn't excatly 100% even though I have passed everything, I would be a bit more upbeat about it. As it is I am still nervous. But it's up to them now.

Leaving meant saying goodbye to someone, which was extremely sad for me. I have gone from feeling distraught to numb to feeling like it was getting better back to bitterly missing them again. But with any luck the time will heal that wound. The memories hurt right now but one day I will be able to treasure them with no regret or sorrow. I am glad for that. I'm also glad that I managed to make my peace with almost everyone that I fell out with towards the end of the year. Everyone except for one person. My heart simply isn't big enough for that. Lastly, am I glad I will never have to see a certain person on the course ever again! Naw, she's not a bad person by any stretch, just very challenging.

It's been a year of joy and pain and all points in between but I am glad I did it. Still, no time to rest. I still have to go back on Monday and Tuesday and I'll be at school until they break up. After that we'll see. If I officially pass then I have to prepare for University and find a proper job that pays money. If I haven't officially passed then I have some thinking to do. Whatever happens, it was an experience alright. One I won't forget in a hurry. If I had my time again I would have done one or two things differently but most of it I wouldn't change. So that can't be bad, eh?