Universalism exists in Emancipation: Theoretical meanderings II

To write freely without a plan is an arduous task. The act is an attempt to muster the sub/conscious part of a being into a reality of interconnected existence, within a nonlinear timeframe, constantly self reflecting the next conception. Time is the valuable method used to deduce the next step in this dialectic. Over time the collation of a written piece can be drawn out through the method of re-reading what lies in front of the author’s amalgamation of inter-subjective conceptions. Serving this cognitive function an argument will undoubtedly be conceived, only, if the author is to write for a purpose; the purpose being to further the progression of human emancipation, only when this effort is taken will the produced work be of any value. The ‘value’ can in most instances be related to emancipation, a - universal value.

Taken as the case, emancipation becomes the purpose of any dialectical process. Emancipation does not in this instance pertain to suggest the enlightenment of the ignoble or the fetishistic disavowed: the contours of reality suggest that such a task would seem, as taken from a stoic perception, impenetrable, if it is understood that we live in an era of epicurean nature. To break out of this contemporary negation would be a paradox as to do so would require divine emancipation. That is to say, it is a conscious decision to either strive for material abundance, personal wealth, and therefore hostile alienation or to oppose such conjunctions in favour of being “truly universal...as radically singular, in the interstices of communal identities”, as suggested by Kant; the former is the embodiment of the liberal capitalist who supposes that this system propounds the promotion of the individualist, paradoxically, only inasmuch as one conforms to the stereotype! To be an individual in this instance one has to be part of the collective, or rather, to be idiosyncratic within capitalism is the anti-thesis of its core. Whereas, the latter suggests a radical break by suggesting; the universal aspect of individuality can only exist once the idiosyncratic individuals constitutes the communal identities. In other words, the capitalist conforms to communal stereotypes alienating true individuals, whereas in truth, society can only be universal if it is made up of truly individuals, where society requires idiosyncrasies, not alienates them, within the collective. This could only exist in an alternative society to the one we inhabit.

Whilst it is widely acknowledged that those living in the developed West live, in general, in ‘neat’ conditions, that is to say, they have not only the necessary tools to survive but may also live lives where leisure is a major part of living as opposed to those countries where survival is, by far, the dominating factor involved in day to day living. Here lies a cross-road. The decision, which way to turn has already onomatopoeically been reached, you can turn left or right (although this is not to suggest either has a monopoly on a standardised interpretations of ideology, such a suggestion requires further insight that will not be present here). It is those individuals who believe they took the left road but were in fact approaching the crossroad from the wrong direction that are of concern. These individuals can be understood to be Liberal capitalists who are themselves unaware or have, like most capitalists reached the point of utopianistic dreams, believing that the society we encounter is the only way to order society, giving the assumption that we have or will, if we follow the current path reach the best possible world. A capitalist will affirm this position through stating “ I have no time for politics” or “I don’t do politics”, such statements are the most ideological statements one can make, this sentiment is pure avocation of the ruling ideology. Therefore their actions reinforce the matrix of neo-liberal capitalism. Instances of belief that the current neo-liberal mechanisms help society are falsities. If anything fair-trade coffee and philanthropic gestures from the likes of Bill Gates and Gorge Soros debilitate the intricate capitalist matrix, furthering the process of alienation. Such institutions and acts are under the current guise necessary but these should be institutions of the past. In an emancipated universality such acts would not be necessary. See Video below...

Moral of the blog... strive for and cherish idiosyncrasies, accept that all public acts are intrinsically political, if you dispute this then you will be advocating the current status quo, and once you have accepted this now let’s contemplate ways in which to undermine the ruling power structure to facilitate an alternative future - a future which caters for the emancipation and eradication of alienation.  

Law: The Dood does NOT abide

Law is the mechanism highlighting the class antagonism and subsequently the class war that has been intensifying in recent months.  It is in the realm of the law that signifies the dynamics favoured by the state and its relation with whom they deem worthy and therefore worth sacrificing and those who are worthless and merely worth killing.

The Law is the state’s most powerful, civilian, controlling mechanism. From this understanding we can understand the challenges which face the radical left, the emancipatory movement, which is here to represent the majority, a category which the majority are unaware that they are a part of, in as much as the majority are unaware of their complicity with the ruling ideology of the day, neo-liberal capitalism, even those in the radical Left are unaware that they are involved in such a movement.

This may sound ridiculous but what is intended by this statement is to suggest that we are so ingrained within the contours of neo-liberal agenda that when we opposes the neo-liberal agenda we are actually reinforcing or legitimising it through our very opposition...

This statement needs elaboration however it will be left open-ended, although I will say that the Left needs to invoke a sense of radical social measures which, through its disregard for the contours of neo-liberalism, undermines the spectacle that has managed to distort the hierarchy of reality. That is to say, if one is able to live outside the contours of ‘acceptable’ social reality i.e. capitalist dogmatism, then an authentic left would be able to exist.

Is this not the true task of the Left today, to undermine the very structures which we bravely and admirably are fighting against?

It is for this reason that an analysis of UK Law will be critiqued in order to understand that; to stand and fight an enemy within the mechanisms that your enemy has created will only end in failure, or rather we may win some battles, but we will not win the war, to do so we need to stand our ground and draw the enemy towards a battle ground where capitalism is powerless through our very abstraction and mechanisms created through our abstraction.

Recent legislation that has been either enhanced or implemented under the Con-Dem regime give insight into the way the government favours and protects the wealthy and condemns the lower echelons for being just that, this is done through an uneven system which smothers the circumstances of all classes from birth.

Here are some examples of Law and its use to separate justice from the poor to the rich:

Recent legislation to abandon Legal aid for couples who wish to divorce will/has been axed in favour of ‘four way conciliations’ in governments attempts to keep couples together as it is much cheaper than having Legal aid to protect couples from domestic violence or forced marriage. Such legislation dissuades victims of abuse to seek help as they will have to stick with their abusive partner until they are able to unequivocally prove that they are abused. It is clear in this instance that those who can afford it will not need legal aid and therefore will be able to get a divorce as soon as they want, thus condemning abusive relationships to continue due to a lack of financial capital!

Although Cameron announced back in November that he would slack the intellectual property laws for start up internet companies, this did in no way go far enough. Intellectual property on all products; from pharmaceutical patenting, such as the patenting of AIDS drugs which creates scenarios of victims of AIDS unable to afford the drug treatments due to them having to pay the price of the intellectual property if they want to live. Yes there should be quality assurance on products particularly drug companies, but only when we abandon intellectual property rights will we live in a society which functions for the common good, and not for the wallets of domineering ‘individuals’.

Super-injunctions are another prime example of the Law which is there to protect its citizens. It is in fact a play tool for the rich and wealthy to stop arbitrary information being flung around, in order to save a ‘celebrity’ figure from his wife finding out about his affair, to the likes of Fred Goodwin being called a banker. If we all had the money to go to the Supreme Court to file cases against name calling or to stop rumours spreading, this would be a laughable practice. Such actions are merely the goings on of the rich and famous. Super injunctions are the pathetic instance where the Law is there purely as a servant of the rich. Any instance such as this is an attack on the poor as this is a mockery of the Legal system which is functioning for one class only.

Migratory Laws is the most explicit out of all the above examples of when a Law favours, it is also created just for the wealthy. The Con-Dem government has stated that rich migrants have tax exemptions if they leave £5 million in UK banks. This goes some way toward explaining the social apartheid that has been emerging over the past two decades with the likes of gated communities. What about all those migrants living in impoverished conditions in asylum houses, the equivalent of prisons, and the terrible treatment of migrants in this country who are subjugated to if they have little money. All states need migrants in particular poor ones to fill the jobs that many are not willing to do. On top of this all states have an obligation to accommodate migrants. In this world we live on a constant precipice, not knowing where nature will strike next, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, all these events have the ability to displace whole populations and it is our responsibility to produce provisions when such scenarios occur.

It is plain to see the ways in which Legal frameworks favour the richer groups in society at the detriment of the poor. The message the Left should take from this is to devise circumstances and ways we can undermine such power structures through abstracting the very laws which serve the rich. How to do this is not so clear, but if it can be done; a truly authentic left would exist, external to the contours of neo-liberal capitalism. 

The song that inspired the youth of Portugal to stand and Protest

Follow this link to Read more

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_PORTUGAL_FINANCIAL_CRISIS?SITE=NYONE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

See also their new entrants to the Euro-vision song contest - Revolutionary spirit is in the Air

The Perfidious Capitalist Animal: For they know not what they do

The use of the term ‘the capitalist animal’ here is to suggest that the homo-sapient is an animal. This is not to suggest that we are not human, rather, we are, in the basic sense, decedents from animals and subsequently the earth, therefore human life is no more important than the natural world, even though we are the ones making the ‘decisions’.

The fact that we believe we are, the order, which makes the decisions about how to use our environment, as a tool to cater for the capitalist system, is the crucial point. The notion that “Ultimately, all things being equal, an animal has as much interest in living as a human” is closer to the truth, of human’s interaction between each other and towards the ‘natural world’, than the notion that, we are ‘above’ nature.

Nature having its own order such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and so on, assumes nature has a dense impenetrability. Whichever way we alter natures order will shift the course of nature. The natural world is the best example to demonstrate that humans are not alone, we are responsible for, and at the mercy of, the natural world.  

It is all too familiar today to cross someone who speaks demeaningly about an Other. Here the Other is those who define you, those who you place your reality in opposition to, as a defining characteristic. To speak demeaningly about someone is merely an act of reinforcing ones identity, relative to whom they are demeaning. Of course we all do this to some degree or another; here I am no ‘multi-culturalist’ or ‘cultural relativist’ such terms suggests we should tolerate each other. Imagine if Martin Luther King would have said, he wanted people to tolerate the black population of America, or if Emily Pankhurst was calling for the toleration of women’s rights!

On the other hand, I will not tolerate capitalist endorsement, the intricate involvement in capitalism, or the current dominating constructs of capitalist system. There is a Roman law which epitomises the interaction between the capitalist system and its treatment of those whom it demeans, that is, the Homo Sacer, a life that is worth living but not sacrificing.

All things we deem to be outside of our ‘reality proper’- the survival of an individual, their concerns for desire, does not account for how we are to cope with the disastrous failings constituted in the socio-political, economic- ecological myriads we face. Our capacity to think is, believed to be, within capitalist culture, of a higher purpose by those whom have hereditarily received wealth, or due to a high level of intelligence are somehow ‘naturally gifted’ as if it’s a genetic gift.

We are using the natural world as an object to provide for our object petite a’ or objects of desire. Our desires for material to fulfil our being, induced, and enhanced, through the political economy of our cultural capitalist mediums are created to be representations and reflections of the ‘human glory’. Here one should assume that such a notion suggests that, the world constructed under capitalism, the world we live in, is a reflection of the way capitalist culture desires.

A capitalist is of the belief, that ‘it’ (‘It’, is a ‘Capitalist Human’) is somehow above our commons, or more worthy of living than those whom they exploit or that it pertains the knowledge to do as it pleases to peruse an environment which caters for the wish to accumulate capital on a scale which would jeopardise the already oppressed true victims of the manoeuvrings of capitalism. Take the people of the Congo as an epitome of what is to be understood as the worst victims of the capitalist systems political-economy.

The Congolese commons have been subjected to the worst traumas of the 21^st century “In many corners of the country, law, order, electricity and medicine are virtually nonexistent” (NYT, 2010). The violence which takes place in the Congo is devastating. Torture, rape, and murder are daily occurrences. To put into context the unimaginable suffering of the people in the DRC I would like to use the symptom, we in the West call, ‘post’-traumatic stress syndrome. The women, children and men of the Congo, do not have ‘post’-traumatic stress; they live in a constant trauma. This current human catastrophe in the Congo is a result of the fallout from the Rwanda genocide but let’s not forget we have been exploiting the Congo, one of the most natural resource rich territories in the world, for centuries, exploiting its; diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt.

The fact that very little attention is brought to the tragic consequences of capitalist exploitation of the Congo alongside the fact that the West has done little to appease the worst contemporary human catastrophe, is testament to the way neo-liberal capitalism interacts with the natural world and the people who inhabit areas of vast natural resources. The people of the Congo, unfortunately, epitomes today’s Homo Sacer.

 

We can do better than this...

Thus...to claim we have reached the peak of our civility embodied by the ‘democratic’ western capitalism, is an abhorrent misnomer. Democracy has only been around for 150 odd years. Just look at the Middle East and North Africa, we are being shown how what was once an impossibility is no longer true. If the West truly believes the current ‘democratic’ capitalist construct is the best and only way to engage with its inhabitancies and those outside the Western model state, and the best way to deal with our natural environment, the way we currently approach the exploitation of the earth, then they are truly mistaken.  

Yet I would like to think that people do not really believe that.

Here there are two options left ; is it that capitalists know that what we are doing has catastrophic consequences but will continue to in such a manner regardless – in other words through, fetish disavowal, or, is it that they care but see no way of radically altering the current models in favour of truly emancipatory; economic, ecological, socio-political mechanisms? For the later all we need to do is look towards Egypt, if the former is true we should be wary of the perfidious capitalist.  

There is no big Other telling you what your duty is... it is up to you to come up with what your duty is.

The Bohemian Revolution: A view from afar

The ‘British Perspective’

The British government has viewed the Egyptian uprising in typical fashion. In an Interview William Hague gave today in Tunisia, he, as all politicians do, took the position that officials and established Egyptians should be consolidating their powers to ensure; firstly, economic prosperity (his priority), and secondly political stability, not too distant from current and past governments collaboration with regimes like Egypt in the past -nothing awry there then. (seehttp://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2011/feb/08/williamhague-tunisia for Video of Hague)

My problem, which I may have for some time, is that officials of the state have an inability to advocate and consolidate the actions of protesters in Tahrir Square and across Egypt to debate on their terms a revolutionary government. Now I know this is, diplomatically impossible for a neo-liberal government to do, but wouldn’t an absolute avocation from the British government be a better slogan than, short this mess out, get your economy back in shape, and don’t let the Muslim Brotherhood get in power. A British government which would profess a Universalist message in solidarity with the Egyptians is one I would rather see. But who’s asking.           

The rise of the Far Right

Aside from the fact that dictators exists throughout the region as a result of colonialism and Imperial devastation, resulting in the Saudi and Iranian regimes  – alongside the catastrophic failures in the Israel/Palestine conflict in the region, when the West criticises the Egyptian uprising they have little ground to stand on!

The rise of the far right across Europe, such as Denmark, Sweden, the most advanced Liberal democracies in Europe, should be the major concern for Europe. We, here in the UK, are seeing an increase in the far right seen by the EDL. 


The UK government does little to oppose this political constellation so much for ‘liberal’ democracy. There was a recent review on BBC Radio 4, (for Radio program, go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yj88m). When we are seeing a shift to the right within the democratic process alongside the biggest capitalist economic failures since the 1930s, we are witnessing a Europe not too dissimilar to the politico-economic constellations of the 1930s, with Rhetoric of isolationist policies circulating the global community, parallels between now and the 1930s are becoming ever more constellated within the International community (see Paul Mason http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/paulmason/2010/11/g20_why_to_avoid_a_re-run_of_t.html). So the West should be seeking to tackle this shift rather than thinking that anything is wrong with liberation revolutions in the Middle East North Africa.

                                                                                                                                     

The Spark that lit the Flame

The people of Egypt saw the events in Tunisia and realised that retrenchment from political protests would stagnate or destroy the political ambitions of the revolution. It is for this reason that I believe Egypt to be a symbolic beacon which will hopefully light the way for the rest of the Middle East and North Africa to follow suit.  

The ‘chaos’ we are witnessing in Egypt is anything but such hyperbole.  I’m trying to give a perspective which reads through the lines...what I am seeing and reading is... the revolution of an Arab state which has lived under oppression for three decades... inspired by the literal spark of a student who set himself alight which began the Tunisian revolution... when dominoes are stacked tightly together they topple fast .

There is no specific way to enact revolution or written agenda of how to overthrow a regime.. All scenarios are case specific one method in the Middle East will be different from the way future European revolutions occur or even individual States revolutions (although I believe no revolution can be successful in isolation)... comrades are rejoicing with caution and jubilation, no-longer are they forbidden to protest no longer are they forbidden from criticising their corrupt regime. Tahrir square is what liberation in Egypt looks like after, the so far, marginally, dismantling of a tyrannical dictatorship.

The Bohemian Revolution

(By bohemian revolution I am trying to suggest the freedom of expression being felt and acted upon by Egyptians who have been suppressed for three decades)

Egyptians don’t seem to care of the immediate economic consequences of their actions, supported through their valiant reluctance to return to work, a dynamic which the Western media and Western governments are finding hard to comprehend or cope with. As long as Egyptians have; liberty, freedom, and all the Universalist tendencies – the left are the only ones who advocate and profess the Universalist position - not multi-culturalism, not cultural relativism but; universality, the emancipation of our global struggles - then the Egyptian revolution will not have been in vain.  The Bohemian character we see in Tahrir square was completely suppressed   under tyrannical dictatorship! Why should the economy matter in the immediate term when the need for revolution should be and is the main purpose of the Egyptians?

Tahrir square is populated by music, poetry, dancing, and most importantly above all else political discussion.


The protesters  were also willing to put away the “festival atmosphere” and defend themselves with force when the pro-Mubarak thugs came marching – proving their strength and belief a their principles. These cultural dynamics was suppressed under Mubarak, and in Tahir square we are witnessing an example of the explosions of long awaited and Universalist freedoms.

Long Live Revolution!

Tahrir square is more than just a mixed rabble accumulated out of a spontaneous bubble they are using this opportunity to come together organise and debate the path and the outcome of the revolution as each minute goes by! The populous, today, came up with the initiative to convict Mubarak for crimes against the state – this charge is Mubarak’s vast wealth, which completely misrepresents the economic position of population of the Egyptians.

According to Al Jazeera, Live news, today workers are meeting in their work place after two weeks of confusion, realising the bohemian and revolutionary activities in  the square and Alexandra Park and for the first time, are starting to join the protests. Revolutionaries in the square are calling for the civil service to join the protesters.

The revolutionary spirit will surely charm them to the square to further expose the illegitimacy of, and weaken the Mubarak regime, which has been recollecting its power after he felt the protest was calming. 

The only supporters of Mubarak are the wealthy and the corrupt. The wealthy are calling for ‘stability’, which means in plain English; the oppression of the workers and the general population - so that the circumstances are ripe once again for oppression and exploitation. If you call this stability then fuck stability.

Freedom is effective only through surmounting bourgeois formal freedom, which is mealy a form of slavery; the ‘state’ is the means by which the ruling class guarantees the conditions of its rule; market exchange cannot be ‘just and equitable’ because the very form of equivalent exchange between labour and capital implies exploitation; ‘war is inherent to class society as such; only socialist revolution can bring about lasting peace (Zizek, The Sublime object of Ideology, 1989 (2008.ed.), pp113).  Hopefully the Egyptians will succeed.

Theoretical Meanderings

Critique of Capital

The petty bourgeoisie want to maintain huge capital gains through exploitation of capital and fundamentally the workers, including the whole ecological edifice. Within capitalism the consequences of such action is of course, by the powers that be, negated.

An implementation of Minskian economics – that being the regulatory reformation of market capitalism in order for capitals profit mongering to continue in a regulated system - may preserve the life of capital exploitation as we know it and be able to curb capitalist’s inevitable devaluation, however the systemic failures of capitalism still remain.

The emphasis on profit as opposed to people’s welfare will remain dominant. More poignantly the culture which has come out of capitalism symbolised through; a symptom which is more prominent than greed. Greed is championed as the main tendency of capitalism, I tend to disagree. I believe it to be ENVY. Envy is far worse than greed and does much more to fuel capitalism than greed could ever do. Envy creates and maintains the culture of competition, and the culture of accumulating material possession, which is achieved through two means;

Firstly the exploitation of some means of production i.e. workers, ecology, poor/corrupt states and such like, secondly living beyond our means.

Both instances are unsustainable and therefore degenerate. What is needed is to radically reform capitalist dynamics in favour of emancipatory mechanisms which should exist, but currently do not exists, on the levels needed to provide for global welfare. Such a dynamic is far from actuality. Radical alternatives can only be created through an understanding of the critiques of capitalism whilst at the same time understanding the contemporary road which lies ahead.

Failings of the UK factionary Left

The UK Left wing fractions, in particular, the SWP and Workers Power, claim to already hold the alternative to capitalism or rather they don’t care for how to construct alternatives to capitalism (never mind the anarchist left, anarchism seems flawed from the start – we have no need for organisation or leaders! Then how is it you get together to effect change?!). Rather, those groups merely surmise that they want a word, that being ‘Socialism’ to replace Capitalism. This is not a serious or viable alternative to capitalism and is part of the Lefts failing in efforts to attract serious demographic infiltration of the liberal capitalist’s edifice. The UK left claim to want ‘revolution’ without an understanding of what constructs would be put in place after revolutionary change.

As much as I too champion the Revolutions we are witnessing in the Middle East and North Africa, in; Tunisia and Egypt, with the possibility of similar revolutionary situations occurring in; Algeria, Yemen, Jordan and hopefully one day soon in Iran and Saudi Arabia. What we the UK Left can learn from these revolutionary moments is that an organised solid socio-political organisation with clear thought out goals would have served to fill the power vacuum we are witnessing in Egypt. Egypt was unable to construct such forces under Mubarak, due to his dictatorship oppression. We in the UK are under no such forces and have the ability to achieve what the Egyptians were unable to enact.

On a positive note Tunisia seems to have an established Trade Union movement which is gaining power and with whom my solidarity resides (see - http://www.demdigest.net/blog/2011/01/tunisian-unions-eclipsing-parties-as-democratizing-force-2/).

Although it may be said that spontaneous and impromptu uprisings in the Middle East have been crucial to their successes, it does no harm in trying to form true alternatives proposed by the, alienated, minority Left in the UK.

To succeed in opposing the British government the UK left needs real alternatives as opposed to scape-goating this company, this bank, this resource and so on. That is to say, our global problem is truly global, the crisis, the imbalances, and the corruption in our global civility are SYSTEMIC, the whole system is flawed and whilst it is easy to stigmatises individual flaws within the system, our efforts would be much better served if we tackled the whole system, and not just fragmentary instances of injustice, which we know go on and which we should, indeed, have the facts in front of us as Wikileaks has enabled. 


We need to do better than just shouting abuse at individual companies exposed by insiders. Just think of all those corrupt companies we do not know about! They will be sniggering and rejoicing at how their competitors are getting abused whilst they get away with, possibly, worse injustices.

We need viable alternatives!

Rather than arguing over foreign policy, the UK radical Left should be setting up think tanks, committees socio-political events, conferences and such like - on a united front! together in attempts to “think the world” before we change the world.

The alternatives we have at the moment are not good enough and obviously do not create the substantial numbers the Left requires - arguably for good reason.   

We need to come up with solutions so that we can formulate new social realities. Both internal and external and in conjunction with our fellow Europeans with the potentials to go beyond, possibly one day to South America, or perhaps the Middle East, providing the Left gains power there.

I am an advocate for globalisation, but a globalisation much more radical than the one we see today. A globalised world which is truly global, would only be possible if those excluded from the flows and junctures of globalisation had an empowered and involved role in the dynamics which have alienated those excluded from globalisation for too long; the globalisation of sociological, political, economic alternatives to globalisations’ current construct need to be formed.

This should be the only foreign policy the radical Left in the UK are concerned with. This would be a truly emancipatory mission, opposed to the current outdated opposition to imperialism and such like.   

My beliefs are that we should ban privatisation or anything which claims to have ownership over 'our' commons (see Hart and Negri), such a suggestion is farfetched but only through united substantial organisation could such radical reforms be implemented as opposed to fragmentary opposition over the fundamental message the radical Left shares... the emancipatory potentials of our global civility.

   

Student activist to radical leftist worker or student activist – capitalist?

With all the activity during the months of November and December 2010, you would not have been see to be insane if you made suggestions that we might have a revolution on our hands, here in the UK - or just a bit of a lefty loony perhaps, but nothing is to suggest such a position is not admirable.

This type of wishful thinking, although in the spirit a Marxist tradition, or perhaps arguably Robespierre, depending on your political sensitivities, is, from my position of analysis, a far cry from where we are at this moment in history.

Left wing parties in the UK are somewhat in disarray for many reasons, before I continue I would like to state that the work rate, and passion imbued within left wing movements of the UK are inspirational. However there are too many failures for the UK Left to be able to gain the substantial support needed to effectively operate for the inherent functioning of the Left, which I deem to be, egality.

Egality is where society exists for the purpose of the ‘commns’. A truly functional space in which all who need to can use the commons for their provisions, as opposed to what currently exists, that being; an increased privatisation of the public space. An example is in areas such as the NHS.


The Con-Dem coalition, have been and will continue to operate in a manner which favours ‘market completion’, which they believe will be a circumstance of giving GPs managerial positions. In reality this means - services which were once publicly owned close to what could be seen as a common space, although not entirely, should only be provided to those who can afford to pay ‘competitive prices’.

What this suggests is that, only those who can afford the best services are the ones who deserve the best chances of survival if taken ill. We can play a lottery with shit odds for those who are unable to stump up the capital – those with the capital have in most circumstances accumulated such wealth off the backs of exploited workers or through distorting market prices for themselves and their fellow shareholders, at the detriment of innocent people. The most alarming cases of such action are seen in what has been taking place in the global food market. There is a surplus of food but due to price inflation many poor people are struggling to pay for it!

So...back to the main focus - the cracks in the left in the UK.

Eric Hobsbawm, has, in the past week, been quoted as saying that if there is a time for the left to stand up and act, that time is now. Unfortunately although much effort is being made by the hard core collective of workers of the left, such as those involved in NCAFC, the student activist seems, for the time being, to have gone into retreat. Perhaps after going home at Christmas they got a grilling off their liberal-capitalist/neo-liberal parents for being so ‘foolish’/ liberated, and have decided to get ‘back on track’. At the end of the day they will want jobs which generate them loads of money to become rich... and fat.


I hope I’m wrong and we will see the same amount of people, if not more, turn out on the 26^th and 29^th of this month in protest against this illegitimate, decrepit, spineless government. What we, the Left, need now more than ever is solidarity.

Solidarity is something the Left has been lacking, between one another, for a long time, and in may cases for good reason. Within the Left groups such as the AWL (of which I am a member, although my views, here, may not reflect their political conceptions), Workers Power, Counterfire and the SWP amongst others all oppose one another over one issue or another, particularly but not solely over foreign policy perspectives. Disagreements over foreign policy are although passionately felt, are not what will engage the wider public from my understanding.

At times disagreements are certainly necessary and on the whole a healthy sign of a continuation of political freedoms we here in the UK are privileged with, here my thoughts are with those who are politically oppressed from engagement and radical change within their respective regimes, such as those living in; Iran, Israel/Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Haiti, Cuba, Congo and such like. Unfortunately I cannot expand this list here or go into detail concerning the contours which may be entailed in this list. All I can say is that each state has its own unique political oppression of opposition to the respective regimes. What this list of states constitutes is the precise point of contention. That being, the Lefts inability to truly unite and generate a united front which would enable the Left to make real pathways toward affective change, and generate a substantial numerical shift of the British population towards the Left.

The speed at which momentum of student activists has dissipated is an example that the Left must be doing something wrong. (Right wing sympathies’ might say we are doing everything wrong but such a simple depiction is easily turned on its head!). It is my understanding that the disunity displayed in the Left on contentious issues such as Palestine/Israel is doing more harm than good to the movement as a whole. Such disagreement or even energy focused on issues such as these is a reason why the left is missing its opportunity to engage wholeheartedly and solely on the counterfire to this governments assault on our commons.

Organisations such as NCAFC, is a prime example of a radical Left organisation that has been formed solely to defend our ground against the government. Why the SWP feel the need to sabotage NCAFC is a typical example of the harm they are causing to the Left in the UK. NCAFC has brought the hard core radical Left together it would be a tragedy if its efforts were thwarted or discontinued or if other groups like it, groups which unite the Left over core issues affecting the UK, did not continue to occur, merely because they disagreed on issues which no one in the UK is able to solve.

Show your solidarity for foreign struggles, but save your energies for the struggle here in the UK.

Workers of the British Left unite.