The Word From Struggle Street

#oxi2015 – Greek Lessons

At this moment it certainly appears, it certainly feels, that everything hangs on what happens in Greece. But it is almost impossible to tell from this distance what is actually going on. Those of us who have never been to Greece, who can’t speak Greek don’t have a clue. Even those of us who are reading obsessively are seeing some things but we are missing most things. The fractured nature of the Left (for a lack of a better term) means that there is a tendency to try to seek out those in Greece who fit with our already existing ideological proclivities and amplify what they say. There is also the constant problem, one I don’t think I can escape, that our already existing biases means that we see what we want to see and learn lessons that we already know. And nothing is more foolish or full of hubris than those non-Greek Left organisations issuing statements, judgements and handing down the correct line from a distance – especially because these groups often have no to marginal influence in the places they actually exist.

But that all said something is happening and it behoves us to look at the struggle as it unfolds in all its complexity and see if there are lessons to be learnt.

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Hope is Our Resistance

Originally posted on revolts now:

Last month I posted The Ruling Class Tremble, an article about fear. In the introduction I said “I write this with some apprehension. In exploring things I dread, I’m nervous about adding to other people’s anxiety and distress.” For those who read that article – this is my attempt at an antidote – an exploration of hope.

In my writing I’ve often quoted the advice of Raymond Williams that a vital task is to make “hope practical, rather than despair convincing.” Yet, for a long time, I have struggled with both hope and despair. At this time of year I’m reminded of the people lost through suicide. July 2nd is the anniversary of the day my friend Belinda Deane took her own life. For the past 14 years this anniversary has been marked by the HOPE suicide prevention gig. HOPE brings together a mixture of local bands, Belinda’s…

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Storming Heaven or Blowing Hot Air? A critique of ‘The steam and the piston box: is autonomism an alternative?’

Over the last two hundred years a vast divergence of revolutionary ideas and theories have emerged as part of the struggle for emancipation. The relationships between different approaches have often been antagonistic and sometimes literally deadly. These days whilst the shooting has stopped it is not uncommon for a particular radical ‘tradition’ to caricature, mystify and turn into straw-men divergent ideas. A recent example of this practice is Sean Ledwith’s (2015) The steam and the piston box: is autonomism an alternative? Published by Counterfire, which is one of the many fragments and splits from the Socialist Workers Party – the centre of the International Socialist Tendency. Common to the genre Ledwith tries to critique a specific approach to anti-capitalism in the UK and locate this apparent error in the theory that stands behind it.

For Ledwith in the wake of the Tory election victory and the pathetic behaviour of the Labour Party and Trade Union leadership there is a danger that the new wave of struggles that have emerged may take the wrong course. There is a:

… danger that some involved in such events may believe that traditional organisations of the left such as the trade unions and the Labour Party are now obsolete and should be bypassed.

This notion may develop further into the view that any type of formal leadership is counter-productive and that the way forward for radical politics is total avoidance of anything resembling an organisation with a hierarchy.

The danger then is that people will act in a way different from the strategy of Counterfire and organise in ways different from how Counterfire organises. Behind this error lurks ‘autonomism’, which Ledwith defines as ‘hostility to formal organisation by sections of the left’.

Whilst this article is written in a UK context you can be sure that it will be used on a social media as an easy go to whenever this strange beast ‘autonomism’ needs to be addressed. Since it might be used as a blunt weapon to bash heads with it is worth showing just how bullshit it is.

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The Ruling Class Tremble: Global Civil War & the Strategy of Tension

Originally posted on revolts now:

There are two groups of people the ruling class fears the most – each other and us. Because of these fears, the different factions of capital both compete and cooperate with each other. Today, there is intensified struggle between different capitalist gangs who are putting neoliberalism, social democracy, state capitalism and fascism all on the table, to address multiple threats. As the current global order crumbles, ‘a many headed hydra’ of resistance, rebellion and revolt rises to challenge the system, compelling those who benefit most from capitalism to find some common ground. In this article I explore the ‘global civil war’ within capitalism and the ‘global strategy of tension’ deployed to maintain capitalism, highlighting the fear of ‘our rulers’, how they maintain their power, and how they try to subdue those who oppose them.

I write this article with some apprehension. In exploring things I dread, I’m nervous about…

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Not with a bang but a whimper: The End of the Mining Boom and the next Budget

Originally posted on With Sober Senses:

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion

-TS Elliot

On the 12^th May Treasurer Joe Hockey will present his second budget. The budget lies at the heart of the state’s efforts to reproduce capitalist society; thus understanding what is in the budget plays some role in interpreting the terrain in which we contest capitalism on. His previous budget was the centrepiece of a clear vision (a Plan A) to address the challenges facing capital accumulation in Australia and it lies pretty much in ruins. Facing the end of the mining boom and thus a drop in growth levels, profits, wages, rises in unemployment and Federal debt, the budget aimed to reduce spending on social reproduction and increase stimulative spending on infrastructure. The latter was to be financed in no small part through asset recycling (privatising state assets and reinvesting the funds). This…

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So you want to Reclaim Australia?

The text below has been developed to counter the arguments of Reclaim Australia. Please share as widely as possible and feel free to copy and modify the text for any or all kinds of publication. Unless you are a racist: then you should just read it and have a big long think.

So you want to Reclaim Australia?

The very fact that these protests are called ‘Reclaim Australia’ would seem to suggest that it has been lost, that someone or something else has the power and control in Australian society, not the population at large. And that would be right. When it gets down to it the vast majority of us have very little say in how this country functions and what direction it should take.

We get it. The world seems crazy. The so-called “War on Terror” has been going for about a decade and a half and violence is spreading to more and more places. More and more people face their lives being threatened either by suicide bombers or drones firing missiles. It’s insane.

We get it. Life in Australia is very prosperous (relatively) but it is also increasingly unequal and precarious. Much of our consumption is facilitated by debt, jobs are insecure, unemployment is rising and the mining boom is fizzling out. The future looks bleak.

Yet when we looked at Reclaim Australia’s 9 point demands they seemed pretty silly and ridiculous. They seemed to boil down to trying to get the government to try to make people more patriotic and also to restrict the freedom of people who are Muslims.

But can you make people love their country more by having the government tell them to do so? And do you want to live in a society where the government has more power to control what and how people believe in or have more power to determine what they wear?

We think the only answer, the only way to try to make life more liveable, is to try to make a society in Australia that is free, equal and just.

Blaming ‘Islam’ is just looking in the wrong direction…. And a bit racist…

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Living the Dream – Queensland: beautiful one day, workers’ paradise the next?

In this episode of Living the Dream we look at the recent Qld election and try to grapple with what it all means, what the new ALP government is planning to do, what the challenges facing capital accumulation are and where the lines of antagonism may be.

Listen here or

Music from The Saints and Tina Harris

Articles referred include:

Don’t Beware Greeks Bearing Gifts Of Lessons For The Left

Economic and Fiscal Challenges: Interim Results of Medium Term Modelling

From the Subprime to the Sovereign Crisis. Why Keynesianism does not work?

Statement on Monetary Policy February 2015

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