Nothing Serious To the Left of the British Labour Party

As New Labour abandons social democracy, no serious force to the Left has emerged.

The last thirteen years of Blair and New Labour have seen the disappearance from British elections of a social democratic option on ballot papers. One issue for discussion is why Blair has been able to divorce the Labour Party so fully from social democracy (i.e. policies centring on redistribution and welfare universalism). The other – my concern today - is to focus on Labour’s challenge from the Left.

Three attempts at setting up left parties have been made since the 1990s: Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party (1996), Tommy Sheridan’s Scottish Socialist Party (1998) and George Galloway’s Respect (2004). Each one was set up by a charismatic and dominant leader, garnered a small devoted following, but soon fell to sectarianism leading to decline or implosion.

The two English left parties have been the least successful. Scargill’s party, based on authoritarian nostalgia, soon fizzled out into nothing. Respect retains a minor role thanks to its embedding in the Islamic community and support from the enduring SWP. The first-past-the-post electoral system (with the exception of elections for the Greater London Authority) has also hampered electoral prospects.

Scotland in 2003, though, was different. The SSP in the Scottish Assembly elections enjoyed a PR system that awarded seats to parties with approximately 5-6 percent of the votes. The SSP won six seats in five of the eight electoral regions. A start had been made. Yet within a few years the party had managed to split over a libel action about Sheridan participating in sex parties. In 2007 the Scottish electorate showed its contempt by wiping out the party from the assembly.

Setting up a new party is not easy even with PR. Convincing people that you are serious, and winning their trust, is hard. A successful party would need intelligent broad-minded socialists who can set up street stalls, campaign around local issues and get elected to local councils. Sadly in Britain the gap between New Labour and sectarian cultism has not been filled.

The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan

The nightmare of young children defending for themselves alone in 1970s Britain is imagined in this novel.

This is a short well-written tale of four children left alone after their mother's death. Their parents bequeathed them social isolation and ignorance. In the long hot summer of 1976 they attempt to live by themselves in their uncleared-up filth and incestuous psychological confusion. As with all McEwan’s novels there is a deeply sinister event; in this novel it is the encasement of their mother, after her death from cancer, in concrete in the basement of their house.

The story is narrated by the teenage boy of the household and is a powerful examination of the themes of adolescence.

Note

The number of people viewing this post - now running into the hundreds - is a complete mystery to me. I read this book a few years ago, found it mildly of interest and made a few mediocre comments.

McEWAN, Ian - The Cement Garden, Vintage 2006 (first published 1978)


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WALTERS, E. Garrison - Eastern Europe to 1945

Dorset 1988

Read March 2007

This is a well-written and well-set out account of the history of Eastern Europe from the end of the nineteenth century until the end of the Second World War.

The book has a somewhat encyclopaedic approach and is wide ranging in that it does not ignore geography of economics. Yet throughout the book has the feeling of giving of giving a useful overview rather than a detailed account of any specific period of history.

The premise on which the book is based is that there is a separate geographical and socio-economic entity of Eastern Europe as distinct from the western part of the continent. The author admits that he is retrospectively affected by the Cold War Divide and by the convenience of the ethnic line formed by the eastern borders of the German and Italian speaking world. This approach, of course, incorporates the Czech lands into the East whereas by many indicators they are more part of the West.

Overall the book is an excellent background text for understanding the background to the region.

hdsoaw

ROTH, Philip - Everyman

Vintage 2006

Read April 2007

This excellent short novel starts at the end – the funeral of the protagonist. As with ‘American Pastoral’ it is a tale of a man of immigrant Jewish parents who grows up in post-war America, but in ‘Everyman’ the structure of the story is simpler and more accessible.

Essentially the protagonist is an egotistical character who is plagued by ill health and failing marriages. In old age he experiences the death of those around him as he is inevitably driven to his own end. The book is in many ways a simple tale whose brilliance lies in the detailed description and Roth’s slow build-up of the protagonist’s psychological make-up.

hdsoaw

March 2007 Comments

House of Lords 2007.03.07
Unfortunately, the simplest and most democratic option for the House of Lords is not currently on the political agenda - abolition. If people are worried about the unrepresentative nature of the House of Commons, the obvious step is to elect it by proportional representation.

Against the existence of God 2007.03.07
The arguments people employ to sidestep reason and evidence in issues of divinity are never original. The problem for the scientific minded believer is however that religion does make statements about how the world is; and such propositions can be analysed in the same way as any other proposition. If religious people replace reason and evidence with faith, then of course it is - by virtue of that very reason - impossible to have a reasonable discussion with them. One issue is the argument about the origin of the universe which is, of course, the standard argument of the American creationists - now parading as intelligent design theory. Their argument is that for the universe to exist God would have had to have created it is weak. Why couldn't matter always have exited? If a creator is required, then the creationalist argument falls on its own assumptions, because who created the creator? And anyway even if the universe were created, science tells us that it didn't happen in the way the bible said it happened. Another argument is that the evidence for the existence of God is no weaker than that for the proposition that 'history is a history of class struggles.' I disagree, but the issue is irrelevant; for however weak the evidence may be for Marxism, it does nothing to strengthen the evidence for the existence of God. Believers then bizarrely introduce purported evidence for the existence of God, i.e. 'beauty of creation' - but the subjective aesthetic judgment of an object by people, however great the number, hardly creates evidence for the existence of another object; i.e. God. (If people changed their opinion would God then cease to exist?) It is indeed a fact that people believe in values (ought statements) and strive to change the world both for themselves and others. It is true that there is much we don't understand. None of this, however, implies that we should become agnostic in our beliefs, which would suggest that the evidence for and against the existence of God is either too complex or too equally balanced for us to make a decision.

Northern Ireland 2007.03.09
Commentary on Northern Ireland seems fixated on one issue: will the veteran Protestant and Unionist bigot, Ian Paisley, join a coalition with Sinn Fein to run the devolved province. What is not adequately noticed is that the ground on which Paisley is standing is washing away. Wednesday's provincial elections gave the unionist parties a five percent lead over the combined vote of Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Demography is against the unionists. Catholic population growth, however, is not the main factor. For seventy years, though poor, the north was a beacon of prosperity when set against the impoverished South. Today the centre of gravity is Dublin, and waves of prosperity pull the North - and in particular the Catholic border areas of the North - into the Southern economy. The Unionist power system has cracked, and Britain does not care.The next step, beyond devolved power sharing within a British ruled province, is power sharing the sovereignty of the province itself. The North should become a condominium of Britain and the Republic, using the Euro and adopting the Irish tax regime.

Northern England 2007.03.10
One thing is certain; the other is not sure. What is not sure yet is whether David Cameron's Conservatives will win the next General Election, but what is certain is that Labour will be the leading party in the north and will take a majority of its seats. The north of England, containing about a quarter of England's population, is actually a reasonably well defined area stretching from the historic counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire to the Scottish border. Though Cheshire and the countryside are conservative and prosperous, the vast majority of the population lives in economically impoverished former industrial towns. The northeast region, for instance, has a mere 60 percent of the average income per head of the UK; and none of the three regions comprising the north exceeds the national UK average.The dominant party of northern England, Labour, is internally undemocratic and is choreographed from London. Electoral success for Labour nationally does not depend on the north of England, leaving the north with neither collective identity in the minds of its people nor effective representation. While Wales should enjoy the same powers as Scotland, the north as one province in the UK should inherit the powers that Wales currently possesses: provincial identity, an elected assembly plus administration within the framework of devolved powers from London.

Britain's nuclear weapons 2007.03.13
With Tory support, it is almost certain that the motion in the House of Commons today to endorse the upgrading of Britain's nuclear weapons of mass destruction will be successful. Labour Party critics make two mistakes. First, they claim that having such weapons makes no sense. They are wrong: the possession of such weapons is just about Britain's only claim to be a world power. Second, they argue that having nuclear weapons sets a bad example to Iran and others. There is an insular arrogance here in believing that the rest of the world sees Britain as a moral example.Hopefully Britain's soon-to-be upgraded nuclear weapons will be as useless in the next half century as they have been in the past one. The case against them is that they are a massive waste of money, bind Britain's defence establishment into that of the US and make Britain a target for other people's nuclear weapons.

Abolishing prisons for women 2007.03.14
By all means highlight women's specific problems, but when or if the law is changed the rules must as far as possible be universal not gender specific. It is utterly unacceptable to have two entirely different codes of law - one for women and one for men.

Central European Language Salad 2007.03.19
March 15th (commemorating the Hungarian failed bid for independence in 1848) was a holiday in Hungary; and as it fell on a Thursday, the Friday was also free. Thus Hungarians were given a four-day break in the middle of March. We decided to travel abroad and leave the pompous official celebrations and the neo-fascist demonstrators behind. We went to Piestany (I can't type diacritic marks, but it is pronounced pi-esh-tyarni) which is a spa town in western Slovakia. I do speak a very little Slovak, but very soon I run into difficulties. Often, the solution, especially with younger people, is to switch to English, a language that I know well. But this is not always successful, particularly as 'taking the waters' is not so popular amongst the English. Instead, the regionally dominant language, German, exerts considerable pull as a majority of the tourists are German speakers. But if English and German fail what then? Of course the whole of Slovakia used to the Upper Hungary, and the imperial past combined with a significant Hungarian speaking minority mean that the Magyar tongue may well be understood. So in this situation we usually manage.You can mock, but I did not try Esperanto. Perhaps some of the people we met know it, but I will never know. Instead, I relied on imperialism to communicate - of the Habsburgs, Magyars and of US globalism.

School Uniform 2007.03.20
Today the Department of Education in England is issuing guidelines, which support schools which ban full-face veils on the somewhat common sense grounds that teachers otherwise wouldn't even know who was behind a particular veil. Yet, Education Minister, Knight, wants schools to consult with parents about religious sensitivities in school uniform policy.Britain, however, stands out from most other European countries in that most of its school children are forced to wear uniform. It seems to me a form of collective humiliation to impose these weird clothes onto the young. As an exception to the ethos of the age, the intention is to suppress individuality and to de-sexualise teenagers. Yet, the opposite appears to be the case: sexual fantasy is displaced onto school uniforms, as any quick survey of sex websites located in the UK will reveal. Aside from the ban on full-face veils, derogations in school uniform seem only to be granted on religious grounds, not individual choice. If a student wishes to wear a headscarf because a religious norm requires it, that is acceptable. If another wishes to wear one out of individual choice, it is not. We've reached a fine pass when a so-called centre left government upholds religious norms, but not those of individual freedom. Surely the socialist position on all this is simple: school pupils should be allowed to wear what they want to school (religious or not) unless what they are wearing impedes teaching and learning.

Blair's arrogance 2007.03.22
What turns the stomach about Tony Blair is not just his branch of neo-con policies and his humiliation of everything that Labourism ever stood for, but the sheer egocentric arrogance of the man. Here is a man who says of his job that he is stepping down, but disdains to say when. If anyone else in employment announced they were leaving within the next sixth months, but wouldn't say when, they'd get their marching orders immediately. Yet, that raises the question, just to whom is Blair accountable? In Britain's archaic constitutional system his employer is Elizabeth II. But according to convention (non-justiciable law), he is in office because a majority of the House of Commons (i.e. Labour MPs) acknowledge him as leader of the Labour party - a post he has held without election since 1994. It is the flavour of the democratic deficit that the ranks of hapless MPs and a hobbled Party outside Parliament stand idly by while Blair reduces the Labour Party to irrelevance.Two reforms are in order. First, different people should hold the post of leader of a political party and that of Prime Minister. Second, both should be subject to regular elections; the former by party members, and the latter by MPs.

Crimes and Misdemeanours 2007.03.23
The state promotion and funding of faith schools is a policy that runs counter to both socialist and liberal norms. Opposition is, therefore, correctly directed at the British government, which promotes this policy, and at the centre-left Labour Party, which perpetuates this betrayal of principle. However wrong this policy is, though, there is no sense in which it is illegal, nor that its proponents should face personal sanctions, other than progressive votes being cast against them in democratic elections. Blair's decision to order the British military to collaborate with the US in the invasion of Iraq is of a different order. This action, which to date has led to the loss of over half a million human lives, lacked any legal authority. The claim that Britain was acting in self-defence against the preparation of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was false. Even if Blair didn't know that Saddam lacked such weapons, he certainly had little credible evidence for believing that he possessed them - and in any event Blair had agreed on the invasion with George Bush months before. As the UN failed to sanction the invasion, and as the defence of self-defence fails, the invasion should be seen for what it was: an act of military aggression. Military aggression (something less than crimes against humanity) is nonetheless a serious crime, which means that Blair should stand trial. And if convicted, as I think he would be, he should spend the rest of his days, not travelling around the US lecture circuit garnering huge fees, but sitting inside a British jail. However far-fetched the scenario, that is what ought to be the case, and people on the left should say so.

Stephen Cambone 2007.03.26
It is outrageous that a man such Stephen Cambone should be given an official welcome to Exeter University. His role, as a former assistant of Donald Rumsfeld, in organising prisoner abuse and torture should have sent him to Exeter jail not Exeter University. There he could have awaited extradition to Germany. (In November 2006 the German Federal Government announced that it had decided to permit the war crimes prosecution of Cambone for his alleged role in condoning the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison during his tenure from 2001 to 2003 as U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.) Imagine the response if in 1979 a senior planner of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and an aid to Brezhenev, had been ceremonially driven to the University in the Vice Chancellor's car. If members of the Exeter University Politics Department ingratiated themselves to this man, they reveal themselves as brown-nosed apologists of torture for whom academic truth and human rights mean nothing.

Britain's three strata 2007.03.28
Is Britain now - following in the American tradition - a country of three strata: i.e. the society of thirds. In writing of three strata, I don't mean that they are equal in size, or that the boundaries between them are clear and defined, but that three types of social group can be clearly identified. The top third, centred on owners of capital and the upper professionals, live securely and with all their material needs adequately met, holidaying in France in summer and skiing in the Alps in winter. The middle third - the so-called middle England - are the mass of people with mortgages to pay and worries about paying for retirement, sickness, their kids education. They are people who are under the constant threat of redundancy in the flexible job market. Though well off by historical standards, they are nonetheless chronically financially insecure, worried about taxes (seen transfers to the bottom third), crime (attacks by the bottom third) and downward social mobility (entering the bottom third). The bottom third encompasses the low paid, marginally employed, disadvantaged ethnic minorities, people without their own homes, single parents, the mentally ill, criminals etc. Since 1979 both their relative and absolute standard of living has declined. Thatcher, Major and Blair have followed mostly the same policy agenda of promoting social inequality through commercialisation, deregulation and benefit cuts; along with along with a philosophy of victimising the poor for the effects of their poverty. Labour, however, distinguished itself by attempting to push the unemployed into low paying work (e.g. the minimum wage, the New Deal) and by increasing expenditure on education (offset for the poor by greater selection) and on health (offset by PFI schemes), as well as introducing a system of tax credits for the working poor with children. However, all this - when set against the effects of the market - has done nothing to dent inequality as recent reports and statistics indicate. As a result the working class in Britain has seldom been more divided, chronically insecure and de-politicised. The bottom stratum is an electoral minority even if it could be bothered to vote. For the political right the disadvantage of Thatcherism was that it produced opposition reaching well into the middle stratum; the great victory of New Labour is to tie the middle strata into political conservatism or apathy, thus destroying any prospect of social reform in Britain.

Monato 2007.03.30
Towards the end of each month my copy of Monato drops through the letterbox. Monato, as the name suggests, is a monthly magazine; it is published in Antwerp and is made up of original material in the Esperanto language. While it claims to be a politically independent review, the thrust of its content is left-wing (I doubt whether I would subscribe to it otherwise) Though the magazine contributors are heavily concentrated in Europe, the magazine does have writers based around the world in such places as Israel and Madagascar, but especially in Russia, China and Japan. Monato manages to provide something that left-wing English periodicals cannot. Community magazines, which consist of news and opinion pieces on events and issues, are imprisoned within their language communities. There is no reason why a German speaker would write up local news and opinion in English (why should they?) and for it to be read by - for example - French speakers. Few ordinary people around the world speak English well enough to feel confident of writing articles in that language, anyway. Do you know about the cost to Japanese pensioners of removing snow from the their houses, or what Belgians think of the Iraq war? Professional journalists and translators will tell you if there is money to be made, but this does not thrust the pen into the hands of ordinary people; this is where Esperanto and magazines like Monato come into their own.

The Labour Party Leader

One of the key campaigns of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in the 1970s was for the constituent units of the Labour Party (constituencies, trades unions and MPs) rather than the Parliamentary Party to elect the leader and deputy leader of the Labour Party. In the thirteen years from 1981 to 1994, the electoral college was used five times: 1981 Healey (as deputy leader against Benn), 1983 Kinnock, 1987 Kinnock, 1992 Smith and 1994 Blair. In the thirteen years since 1994 there have been no elections. In 2007, if Brown gets his way, he will be crowned without opposition from either a Blair acolyte or the hapless John McDonnell from the left.

Of course every institution of the Labour Party (Conference, NEC) has been de-democratised marginalised or both, so an election per se would assume significance, which is precisely why Brown is out to scupper it.

Vladimir Derer and his colleagues from the CLPD intended the electoral college as a means of empowering the rank and file, but instead the new system has had two negative effects. First, following the 1987 Benn/Heffer challenge to Kinnock, the rules were tightened to require 12,5% of Labour MPs to nominate a candidate rather than the previous five percent; thus without a large-scale coordinated rebellion among Labour MPs an election is impossible. Secondly, the non-regular use of the electoral college means that a leadership election would hit the Labour Party like an earthquake, destabilising Labour whether in opposition or in government. Thus, in practice, the effect of the electoral college system has been the opposite of what was intended; it has led to the strengthening of the leader. It was easier for the Tories to remove Thatcher than for Labour MPs to kick out Blair.

I would suggest three reforms, which would be required by law. First, the positions of leader of Party, leader of the Parliamentary Party and the post of Prime Minister (or prime minister designate) should be separated. Second there should be regular mandated elections for all three positions. Third, there should be time limitations on holding these offices. We don’t want a cult of personality of Blair, Brown, Cameron or anybody else.

hdsoaw

Defeatism and New Labour

Several writers recently (e.g. Ross McKibben LRB, Martin Jacques The Guardian) have elaborated the defeatism thesis to explain the failings of New Labour. In essence, the argument is that Labour’s fourth election defeat in 1992 propelled the leadership (after John Smith’s death in 1994) to replace social democracy with Daily Mail policies: no tax and spend, further commercialisation and a repressive agenda on crime – i.e. remoralising the poor through punishment. All this was intended to garner and retain the votes of so-called Middle England, and thus secure the repeated election of Labour governments.

The defeatism thesis contains more than a grain of truth. Yet it is hard to explain the right-wing Blairite New Labour agenda merely as the policies of electoral opportunism. The sycophantic relationship with George Bush and the Iraq war never had middle class backing. Middle England makes use of, but has never fallen in love with, faith schools. PFI is widely seen as the financial swizz that it indeed is. The repressive agenda (from identity cards to speaking CCTV cameras) goes way beyond assuaging middle class security concerns.

Defeatism didn’t simply involve Labour throwing policies overboard so it could reach port; defeatism enabled an new authoritarian captain to take on new cargo, turn the ship around and sail backwards.

NOTE

The defeatism thesis that McKibben, Jacques and others are putting forward is the belief in the Labour Party leadership by the early nineties that any Laborite reformism, however moderate, could not win an election for Labour. Hence the invention of New Labour and the choice of Tony Blair as leader in 1994.

I basically agree with this argument, but I go on to make the point that many of Blair’s policies, e.g. Iraq, are governed not by electoral calculation (as the defeatism thesis would suggest) but by a specific policy agenda adopted by Blair et. al. to move politically rightwards, irrespective of public opinion.

In essence, what was a first a compromise or tactic of moving rightwards became a raison d’etre for New Labour.

Comfort and Violence in Britain

I have just spent five days in England visiting Surrey, West Sussex and Hampshire; and apart from the security rigmarole at the airports, everything seemed orderly and comfortable. Yet of course the BMWs on the leafy lanes is only one side of the coin in Europe’s most socially unequal society, which also boasts the continent’s highest per capita prison population.

Interior Minister Reid is fearful that the House of Lords may throw out provisions in his bill to turn over discipline in private prisons to security companies (Meccas for sadists and bullies); he also expects opposition to his plans to privatise probation work. At the same time The Guardian newspaper carried a photograph of the Basra hotel worker who was tortured to death by British forces. No soldiers could be convicted because of their veil of silence over the issue. While rank and file solidarity might be expected, the fact that their commanders are not at the very least expelled from the army is a telling indicator of the government’s attitude.

The House of Lords - The simple solution

Unfortunately, the simplest and most democratic option for the House of Lords is not currently on the political agenda – abolition. If people are worried about the unrepresentative nature of the House of Commons, the obvious step is to elect it by proportional representation.

February 2007 Comments

Britishness 2007.02.01

In the on-going debate about ethnic diversity in Britain, the Blair government has resorted to a chauvinistic assimilations stance (‘They should become like us. ‘Britishness’ is good’) in an attempt to garner support among the white Anglophone majority. Opponents of the government rally around two polls: universal liberalism and policy multiculturalism. The first, universal liberalism, has two demands: first the establishment of a fully secular state which does nothing either to uphold or to penalise religious belief; and second, an modus operandi that individuals, not ethnic communities and their traditions, are right-holders in society. This is the tradition of individual liberty and equality. The alternative is 'policy multiculturalism' in which ethnic groups are encouraged by the state to live according to their traditional norms and other groups are required to 'respect' those cultural norms. If a film, for instance, offends the sensitivities of one ethnic group then there is a case for banning or restricting it. On this view the job of the state is not to uphold individual rights, but the integrity of ethnic communities. My preference is for universal liberalism.

Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia 2007.02.02

Some people want to compare traditional anti-Semitism in Europe with the current, politically generated, moral panic against Muslims. As with any comparison there are points of similarity and points of difference.The major area of similarity is the chauvinistic desire of the political elite to deploy ideological misnomers like 'the clash of civilisations' and 'alien threat' to drum up support among the ethnic majority in favour state power. One key difference, though, is this: the ideas which Jews played a role in promoting (socialism, internationalism) were not Jewish per se and were addressed to the wider human community. Sadly one feature of the Muslim community in britain today is that it has not thrown up new radical ideas that are addressed to the wider world, but instead much of its thinking is concerned with with 'going backwards' to religious dogmas.

Not all Jews are Zionists 2007.02.05

Brian Klug has written an excellent article in the Guardian today.Mr Klug rightly points out that because one is ethnically Jewish it does not mean that one is committed to defending the actions of the state of Israel. Not all Jews are Zionists, and not all Zionists (e.g. George Bush) are Jews.Jewish people have made valuable contributions to the history of humanity, not because they were Jews, but because they addressed their concerns to humanity in general. Examples abound: Marx, Freud, Zamenhof (Esperanto), Chomsky, and Kelsen (law). Many of the actions of the state of Israel are criminal, and one such crime is the government of Israel's attempt to make Jewish people around the world accessories to those crimes.

In defence of liberalism 2007.02.05

From a liberal socialist viewpoint, I argue that an ethnic group (majority or minority) should make no demand on the democratic polity for recognition as a group - at least in so far as the determination of legislation and state policy is concerned. Before the state, citizens stand as individuals. Associations of Christians, Muslims, Jews or whatever are voluntary civic organisations which have no legal demand on the state, nor should they have legal power over citizens who are their members (or indeed non-members). This principle can be broken down into three parts. First, ethnic groups have no right to demand a legal right to respect for their culture, religion or practices from other individuals society. That, for example, many Muslims find the depiction of the prophet Mohammed offensive is irrelevant from a legal point of view. Equally, Christians have no complaint against the art exhibition depicting the crucifix in a glass of urine, nor of a play portraying the buggery of Christ on the cross. In short, the right of free speech is not restrained by ethnic sensitivity.Second, ethnic groups have no right to exemption from universal legal norms. If it is held, for example, that ritualised slaughter is contrary to the norm of minimal suffering in animal butchery, then the fact that orthodox Jews and Muslims demand it is irrelevant. If schools can demand a uniform, then it is legitimate to exclude veils form that uniform. If people can wear what they want in a college, then it is illegitimate to ban students from wearing veils.Third, in the exercise of its powers the state should not recognise ethnic groups, except in one clearly defined circumstance. In so far as an ethnically defined group of citizens faces economic discrimination, social exclusion and/or attack, it is legitimate to recognise the groups in order to remedy the state of affairs. The struggle against racism, bigotry and discrimination is, however, the property of the whole society, not just of group concerned.

On Blair, Brown and Hain 2007.02.07

The current cabinet is full of moral bankrupts (i.e. people who are quite prepared support a war that they didn't believe it). However, I think none of that displaces Blair as the main criminal; i.e. the man who used every lever of his office to ensure that a war took place.

Cuba 2007.02.08

Let me start with this comment: 'a truth suppressed among friends is the readiest weapon of an enemy.' The truth is that Cuba is not a democracy and does violate political and civil rights. Having said that, Cuba has nevertheless achieved many social rights for its people particularly in health and education and has thus been a 'shining path' in Latin America. We should support Cuban socialism against US imperialism because if Washington gained the upper hand in Cuba, globalised capital would return the Cuban working class to poverty and penury. So socialism yes; human rights yes.

North Korea 2007.02.14

The US that was in a corner and was forced to deal with North Korea, thus denting US unilateralism and unconditionalism in foreign policy. The reason is clear: nobody outside a lunatic asylum could contemplate initiating a nuclear conflagration in Asia involving Korea, China, Japan, Russia and, of course the US.This tells us something about Iraq, too. The US attacked Iraq, not because it had weapons of mass destruction, but because it did not. The point has been well understood by Iran. Everyone should realise that American unilateral belligerence, backed to the hilt by Blair, is the major impetus for world nuclear proliferation.

The limits of historical materialism 2007.02.21

The social science part of Marxism, as opposed to its politics, is known as historical materialism. What historical materialism studies, i.e. what its subject matter is (in philosophy called its ‘object’) is the history of human society which is conceived as the history of social humanity's production of the means to life from nature. In other words, how we humans made our society from nature over history explains how our society works. The object of historical materialism is wide indeed. Quite obviously, this raw formulation, though, leaves many questions to probe as we move from such abstract considerations to the analyses of any actually existing society, e.g. Britain in 2007. But one question to ask is this: are all the concepts for analysing social reality reducible to, or deducible from, historical materialism? If the answer is yes, then historical materialism occupies the whole 'cognitive' space and we don't need to look for explanations outside historical materialism. If, as I believe, the answer is no, then two questions arise. First, what are those theoretical sources required for understanding society apart from historical materialism? And second, what are the boundaries between historical materialism and other sources of knowledge?

Two uses of the term multiculturalism 2007.02.2007

I have to say that I wasn't so impressed with Terry Eagleton's article in The Guardian today I think he was making an easy point which all the contributors to this discussion would endorse. Blair, and his New-Labour acolytes seek to confront multi-culturalism because they construct it as a dilution of Britishness (which they equate with all that is good). The issue, they say, is for other ethnic groups to be educated in Britishness and change their ways. This discourse is merely intended to appeal to the base prejudices of the white Anglophone majority. Two uses of the term 'multiculturalism' need to be distinguished. The first use is to describe a sociological result, i.e. to say that we live in a multicultural society. This is a statement of fact, and I have no objection to that being so. The second is a policy, i.e. to use the state to bring about and sustain multiculturalism through the adoption of collective rights or otherwise. I do not agree with this. (One ideological contortion of New Labour is that they promote multiculturalism through certain policies, e.g. support for faith schools, and then bemoan the consequences)

The oxymoron of militant secularism 2007.02.26

I have read Stuart Jeffery's muddled article in the Guardian (26 February 2007) and would like to make the following points. It is helpful to distinguish the sociological fact from comments about what ought to be done or not done. The sociological fact is this: after many years of gradual secularisation in England, religious practice and identification is rising, albeit at the margins. There are two sources fuelling the revival: one is Christian fundamentalism crossing the Atlantic; the other is Muslim fundamentalism driven by the economic and other failures of Islamic countries and the attacks on them by the West. Religion has also been given an unexpected and unwelcome boost by the Blair government's perverse decision to embrace faith schools. In reaction, a somewhat exaggerated sense of fear that religion might pose a threat to science and individual rights has led some (one particularly thinks of Richard Dawkins) to proclaim and write about the case for atheism.The term 'fundamentalist (i.e. militant) secularism' as a policy is an oxymoron and a deliberate red herring in the debate. Secular state institutions are agnostic: they do not take any view on faith matters. Put simply, they expel religion to the private sphere where it belongs; and fail to recognise religion as a criterion for public policy. It is certainly not the job of such institutions (e.g. schools, legal systems) to promote atheism any more than it is to endorse religious belief. So to argue that secularists are as fundamentalist as religious bigots is either a mistake or a deliberate attempt to muddy the water. Atheism should not be seen as a fundamentalist doctrine in the sense that Christianity or Islam might be. All atheism means is a denial of the existence of God; beyond that atheists have no agreed doctrine and are as varied as the stones on a beach. In a free society atheists have as much right to stridently put their case as religious believers do. And of course I and, I hope you, would support them.

Does God Exist? 2007.02.27

The point has been made that I can no more prove the non-existence of God than believers can prove His existence. It is implied from this statement that the case for and the case against the existence of God are somehow equally balanced. This, however is pure casuistry. Indeed, it is true that I can no more disprove the existence of God than I can disprove the existence of demons, fairies, goblins and ghosts. As the proposition, 'God exists' is neither necessary nor impossible, it has the capacity for either truth or falsehood (i.e. it is contingent). That tells us nothing, however, about whether the statement is actually true. As with any other proposition, its truth depends on the evidence for the statement. If someone posits that something exists, he is under an obligation to furnish evidence. I say, for instance, 'there is a coffee cup in front of me on the desk right now.' Well, what is the evidence? The evidence is my testimony based on my direct observation. It may not be conclusive (I could be lying or be having an optical illusion), but my statement about the coffee cup is as strong as the evidence that supports it. Now when we turn to the proposition 'God exists,' religious believers support the proposition by saying that its truth is based on faith. But why should we accept that faith proves the existence of God when this criterion of truth (i.e. faith) supports no other proposition. For example it would be absurd for me to support the proposition, 'A socialist revolution will occur in Britain' on the basis that I have faith that it will happen (though, of course 'religious-like' Marxist do just this). In fact, it is only by the removal of faith as a criterion of truth that truth can be established; e.g. proving that the Earth is spherical against faith which said it was not. As there is no credible evidence for the existence of God, so I tend to believe that He does not exist outside of man's imagination. God as the creation of man's social being certainly does exist but that is another matter.