Due to continuing technical problems with the Blogger platform that we use for this blog, we have migrated over to a new address here.
We hope you like the new look.
Please remember to redirect any links to the new address.
Showing newest posts with label blogging. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label blogging. Show older posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
We are back
.
Sorry for the interruption in posting recently.
The blog was temporarily blocked by Google because they decided it was a so-called "Spam blog".
It seems they have an automated tool that searches blogs and tries to identify automated blogs being used for nefarious purposes, and their algorithm is too aggressive, and there are loads of false positives.
It is illuminating to read the Google help group, which is a forum for people with blogger problems, as this issue affects loads of people using Google Blogger.
There was one poor guy blocked at the same time as us who makes his living out of his blog, and has 400000 hits per month (which is slightly more than we get) - he was blocked. And what is so frustrating is there is no way with Blogger to get to speak, or even e-mail a human being.
Anyway, we are back, and we have resolved to migrate to Wordpress soon.
Sorry for the interruption in posting recently.
The blog was temporarily blocked by Google because they decided it was a so-called "Spam blog".
It seems they have an automated tool that searches blogs and tries to identify automated blogs being used for nefarious purposes, and their algorithm is too aggressive, and there are loads of false positives.
It is illuminating to read the Google help group, which is a forum for people with blogger problems, as this issue affects loads of people using Google Blogger.
There was one poor guy blocked at the same time as us who makes his living out of his blog, and has 400000 hits per month (which is slightly more than we get) - he was blocked. And what is so frustrating is there is no way with Blogger to get to speak, or even e-mail a human being.
Anyway, we are back, and we have resolved to migrate to Wordpress soon.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Updating the blog roll....
Hello comrades,Spring is upon us so we decided to do some spring cleaning on the old blog roll. We removed a couple of blogs that have not been updated for some time and included a couple of blogs we find informative, interesting, good and sometimes makes us chuckle....
The blogs we decided to include are the Shiraz posse that is Voltaires_Priest, Jim D and Tami (good luck with exams btw), The Gaping Silence, Ken MacLeod's The Early Days of a Better Nation and last but certainly not least.. Belledame's Fetch Me MyAxe. Forgot to include the blog Feminists 4 John McDonnell. Very remiss of me.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Why we should defy the 2006 Terrorism Act
A while ago I posted about the Terrorism Act 2006 and advocated defiance of the law was necessary in order to defend basic democratic freedoms. This is the very poorly drafted legislation that criminalises the "glorification" of past, future or current terrorism. Perhaps the intention of the law was quite narrow, but in its broadest interpretation, the actual words of the statute are very wide reaching.
Unfortunately, my discussion of terrorism in that post was a bit injudicious, and caused offence to some comrades who I respect, and one of the other administrators of this blog got cold feet and deleted it!
The issue has arisen again in a debate over on Dave Osler’s blog. A pseudonymous “Trotskist” called SouthpawPunch decided to let the slogan of “military but not political support” out for a run, despite that fact that it was so old and tired it could hardly stand up.
This is the relevant part of the exchange:
SouthPaw: “Communists obviously never offer political support for the Taliban but offer military support in this period.”
Myself: “How exactly are you offering military support to the Taliban? This sounds very rrrr-revolutionary in words, but in practice, what do you do?”
Southpaw: “Military support would mean just that. If comrades were in Iraq or Afghanistan they would seek to attack coalition troops in as part of the 'Resistance'.”
Myself: “your position of military and not political support is just funny, if you mean that the content of it is that some non-existent Iraqi trots should be fighting the occupiers. Actually the British army is here in Britain, the troops are flown out from Brize Norton, and the logistics from RAF Lyneham. If you are offering military support couldn't you at least be sabotaging these bases?”
SouthPaw: “Brize Norton - that question is a provocation, although I sure that wasn't your intention.”
Myself: “what on earth do you mean by "Brize Norton - that question is a provocation, although I sure that wasn't your intention" If you support military support for the Iraqi resistance it is a simple question whether you advocate sabotage of military bases in the UK. Is it your position that you cannot answer that because it would be an offence under the new terrorism act? That would strike me as a bit wussy because simply advocating trots to attack UK troops in Iraq has already crossed that line.”
SouthPaw: “It can be hard to ignore provocations - intended or accidental, but sometimes it's necessary to do so. I don't think anyone is consciously acting for the state (and I'm not thinking of AN whatsoever) but some of their comments only play into the hands of the oppressors. So some things need remain unanswered.”
SouthPawPunch subsequently wrote to Dave Osler and myself. He has insisted that this is a prvate communication, so whereas I originally quoted from it, I have now deleted that reference: but the gist of it is that SouthPaw considers that I am aiding the state by expressing the opinion that what he said may be an offence under the Terrorism Act 2006: a rather po faced response to a flippant comment of mine.
Now let us make something absolutely clear. I think that given Britain is at war, then those fighting for the national independence of Iraq and Afghanistan would be entirely justified in sabotage against these bases, or other military action against the British armed forces, both in the UK and overseas. As defined by section 2, b(ii) of the Terrorism Act 2006, I am “reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by [this] statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.”
What is more, the military defeat of the US and UK is the better outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although I regret the tragic loss of life for our service men and women, I believe that the Iraqi insurgents fighting them are justified in fighting for their national independence. They draw on a long and “glorious” tradition of brave and heroic anti-colonial struggle, including the fight by the Vietnamese people, the Algerians, the Mau Mau in Kenya, and even George Washington! I use the word glorious advisedly, as it is the term used in sections 3 a, and 3 b of the Terrorism Act 2006. I do glorify (as prohibited by section 3 a of the act) those who have fought for the independence of their countries in the past, and I would argue (as prohibited by section 3 b of the act) that those whose homelands are occupied today are justified in emulating those freedom fighters of the past.
Of course the situation in Iraq is problematic, and alongside the insurgency against the occupation armies there is sectarian violence, and to a certain degree the Sunni militias are fighting as much against a Shia dominated Iraq as they are against the Americans. Similarly there clearly have been anti-Sunni pogroms by Shia militias, including the Badr brigade and Mehdi army. But the continued presence of unwelcome foreign troops is exacerbating not calming those tensions. We should also recognise that military action is not the only way, or necessarily always the best way of opposing the occupation.
I think Southpaw is engaged in futile verbal posturing. The task of the British left is not to offer “military support” to the Iraqis and Afghans, but to build the political pressure for the earliest possible withdrawal of British troops, and a decoupling of British and American foreign policy.
But with regard to the censorship enacted by the 2006 Act, we must resist its broadest interpretation and continue to freely discuss the rights and wrongs of national liberation struggles, this includes the argument that oppressed peoples have a right to fight back in which ever way they choose, although not everyone will acept that. We should not pander to the law and self-police ourselves and ask for people to read between the lines. There are times when armed struggle is morally and politically justifiable, and we should not accept a criminalisation of the discussion of what those moral and political limits are.
SouthPaw seems to be accepting the censorship, and modifying what he is prepared to say and thus diminishing the scope of debate upon the left. I utterly reject the idea that asking comrades to say what they actually mean is playing into the hands of the state! I am sure that MI5 and Special Branch have better things to do with their time.
All war is terror. It is the use of violence to impose a political outcome upon your opponents. What is more the morality of war is different from the morality of peacetime. Because normal people are justly horrified by the brutality of war we try to impose arbitrary limits upon the logic of war – for example fetishising the acceptability of “military” but not “civilian” targets. In reality of course our own British and NATO armies define as military targets such civilian institutions as telecommunications, electricity generation, bridges and even jouranlists, and accept "collatoral damage" -which is what the call the charnel house carnage that they unleash upon the innocents. The British government is contemplating renewing Trident, a weapon that could indiscriminalatly incinerate millions.
Civilians have been killed in their thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, either directly by British and American troops, or indirectly by the way our soldiers have smashed the infrastructure of that country.
War grows its own morality, and as the imperial power has wrecked carnage on the women, children and men of these occupied countries, then we should not be surprised when that same coin is paid back to us by bombs on trains and aircraft. The responsibility lies with those whose deceit and vanities forced us into these futile wars.
Unfortunately, my discussion of terrorism in that post was a bit injudicious, and caused offence to some comrades who I respect, and one of the other administrators of this blog got cold feet and deleted it!
The issue has arisen again in a debate over on Dave Osler’s blog. A pseudonymous “Trotskist” called SouthpawPunch decided to let the slogan of “military but not political support” out for a run, despite that fact that it was so old and tired it could hardly stand up.
This is the relevant part of the exchange:
SouthPaw: “Communists obviously never offer political support for the Taliban but offer military support in this period.”
Myself: “How exactly are you offering military support to the Taliban? This sounds very rrrr-revolutionary in words, but in practice, what do you do?”
Southpaw: “Military support would mean just that. If comrades were in Iraq or Afghanistan they would seek to attack coalition troops in as part of the 'Resistance'.”
Myself: “your position of military and not political support is just funny, if you mean that the content of it is that some non-existent Iraqi trots should be fighting the occupiers. Actually the British army is here in Britain, the troops are flown out from Brize Norton, and the logistics from RAF Lyneham. If you are offering military support couldn't you at least be sabotaging these bases?”
SouthPaw: “Brize Norton - that question is a provocation, although I sure that wasn't your intention.”
Myself: “what on earth do you mean by "Brize Norton - that question is a provocation, although I sure that wasn't your intention" If you support military support for the Iraqi resistance it is a simple question whether you advocate sabotage of military bases in the UK. Is it your position that you cannot answer that because it would be an offence under the new terrorism act? That would strike me as a bit wussy because simply advocating trots to attack UK troops in Iraq has already crossed that line.”
SouthPaw: “It can be hard to ignore provocations - intended or accidental, but sometimes it's necessary to do so. I don't think anyone is consciously acting for the state (and I'm not thinking of AN whatsoever) but some of their comments only play into the hands of the oppressors. So some things need remain unanswered.”
SouthPawPunch subsequently wrote to Dave Osler and myself. He has insisted that this is a prvate communication, so whereas I originally quoted from it, I have now deleted that reference: but the gist of it is that SouthPaw considers that I am aiding the state by expressing the opinion that what he said may be an offence under the Terrorism Act 2006: a rather po faced response to a flippant comment of mine.
Now let us make something absolutely clear. I think that given Britain is at war, then those fighting for the national independence of Iraq and Afghanistan would be entirely justified in sabotage against these bases, or other military action against the British armed forces, both in the UK and overseas. As defined by section 2, b(ii) of the Terrorism Act 2006, I am “reckless as to whether members of the public will be directly or indirectly encouraged or otherwise induced by [this] statement to commit, prepare or instigate such acts or offences.”
What is more, the military defeat of the US and UK is the better outcome in Iraq and Afghanistan, and although I regret the tragic loss of life for our service men and women, I believe that the Iraqi insurgents fighting them are justified in fighting for their national independence. They draw on a long and “glorious” tradition of brave and heroic anti-colonial struggle, including the fight by the Vietnamese people, the Algerians, the Mau Mau in Kenya, and even George Washington! I use the word glorious advisedly, as it is the term used in sections 3 a, and 3 b of the Terrorism Act 2006. I do glorify (as prohibited by section 3 a of the act) those who have fought for the independence of their countries in the past, and I would argue (as prohibited by section 3 b of the act) that those whose homelands are occupied today are justified in emulating those freedom fighters of the past.
Of course the situation in Iraq is problematic, and alongside the insurgency against the occupation armies there is sectarian violence, and to a certain degree the Sunni militias are fighting as much against a Shia dominated Iraq as they are against the Americans. Similarly there clearly have been anti-Sunni pogroms by Shia militias, including the Badr brigade and Mehdi army. But the continued presence of unwelcome foreign troops is exacerbating not calming those tensions. We should also recognise that military action is not the only way, or necessarily always the best way of opposing the occupation.
I think Southpaw is engaged in futile verbal posturing. The task of the British left is not to offer “military support” to the Iraqis and Afghans, but to build the political pressure for the earliest possible withdrawal of British troops, and a decoupling of British and American foreign policy.
But with regard to the censorship enacted by the 2006 Act, we must resist its broadest interpretation and continue to freely discuss the rights and wrongs of national liberation struggles, this includes the argument that oppressed peoples have a right to fight back in which ever way they choose, although not everyone will acept that. We should not pander to the law and self-police ourselves and ask for people to read between the lines. There are times when armed struggle is morally and politically justifiable, and we should not accept a criminalisation of the discussion of what those moral and political limits are.
SouthPaw seems to be accepting the censorship, and modifying what he is prepared to say and thus diminishing the scope of debate upon the left. I utterly reject the idea that asking comrades to say what they actually mean is playing into the hands of the state! I am sure that MI5 and Special Branch have better things to do with their time.
All war is terror. It is the use of violence to impose a political outcome upon your opponents. What is more the morality of war is different from the morality of peacetime. Because normal people are justly horrified by the brutality of war we try to impose arbitrary limits upon the logic of war – for example fetishising the acceptability of “military” but not “civilian” targets. In reality of course our own British and NATO armies define as military targets such civilian institutions as telecommunications, electricity generation, bridges and even jouranlists, and accept "collatoral damage" -which is what the call the charnel house carnage that they unleash upon the innocents. The British government is contemplating renewing Trident, a weapon that could indiscriminalatly incinerate millions.
Civilians have been killed in their thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, either directly by British and American troops, or indirectly by the way our soldiers have smashed the infrastructure of that country.
War grows its own morality, and as the imperial power has wrecked carnage on the women, children and men of these occupied countries, then we should not be surprised when that same coin is paid back to us by bombs on trains and aircraft. The responsibility lies with those whose deceit and vanities forced us into these futile wars.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Our anniversary
So we made a whole year of blogging, trying and not quite succeeding to post something new every day.
Generally the mix as not been as good as it could have been, with perhaps less variety of voices than we aspired to and too many posts from me, but the mix is getting better, with more regular posts from Reuben, Toff, and Louise who we secured from Stroppyblog, just before the transfer window closed.
We are now getting quite lively comment on some threads, and an average of 200 or so readers per day, and it can be twice that if we post something particularly interesting.
Here are some of the highlights over the last year (this is a personal selection, and you may disagree):
On Basque terrorism:
We kept returning to the World cup, again and again.
On Fox hunting.
On racism:
I have posted a number of reports about me trip to Palestine, the best of which are about children in Bethlehem, and the settlers in Hebron.
We have had some debate about the ban on Smoking, and again:
BadMatthew posted an interesting report about the SWP’s Marxism event and disussed it beforehand as well.
We covered some rarely reported topics, such as slavery in Britain, and there was a report of the excellent Tolpuddle rally.
The English left largely failed to grasp what was going on in Scotland with the Sheridan court case, so I posted several times to explain the significance the perjury by Sheridan’s supporters.
The advantage of a blog is that you can also use it to develop your own ideas, and I am still coming to terms with the legacy that the left groups have on the socialist movement.
Generally the mix as not been as good as it could have been, with perhaps less variety of voices than we aspired to and too many posts from me, but the mix is getting better, with more regular posts from Reuben, Toff, and Louise who we secured from Stroppyblog, just before the transfer window closed.We are now getting quite lively comment on some threads, and an average of 200 or so readers per day, and it can be twice that if we post something particularly interesting.
Here are some of the highlights over the last year (this is a personal selection, and you may disagree):
On Basque terrorism:
We kept returning to the World cup, again and again.
On Fox hunting.
On racism:
I have posted a number of reports about me trip to Palestine, the best of which are about children in Bethlehem, and the settlers in Hebron.
We have had some debate about the ban on Smoking, and again:
BadMatthew posted an interesting report about the SWP’s Marxism event and disussed it beforehand as well.
We covered some rarely reported topics, such as slavery in Britain, and there was a report of the excellent Tolpuddle rally.
The English left largely failed to grasp what was going on in Scotland with the Sheridan court case, so I posted several times to explain the significance the perjury by Sheridan’s supporters.
The advantage of a blog is that you can also use it to develop your own ideas, and I am still coming to terms with the legacy that the left groups have on the socialist movement.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sentinel and "censorship"
Readers may have noticed a number of postings from Sentinel complaining of censorship in some threads.
The background to this is that Sentinel has sought to post a number of comments that want to frame the debate about crime around the context of immigration. He has also posted comments that we feel inappropriate about Jews.
These comments have been deleted, as we do not want to provide a platform for these debates, and readers interested are referred to Sentinel’s own blog. Sentinel keeps re-posting them, and we keep deleting them.
We regard the accusation of censorship is inaccurate. We are not preventing Sentinel’s views being published elsewhere, but we do wish to exercise editorial control, to ensure that the SU blog remains a discussion forum for the left, and is not a space that colludes with the promotion in racist attitudes.
Sentinel may not personally be a racist, I don’t know, but to debate race and crime in the terms that he wishes to debate would provide a space for racists to join the discussion. There are plenty of other forums where that can take placed, and we do not wish to join them.
Currently, Sentinel is repeatedly posting nuisance comments to this blog, with the stated intention of forcing us to introduce comment moderation. We have no intention of introducing moderation, which would stifle debate, and instead we will delete inappropriate comments from Sentinel.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Where are the good left blogs?
Dave Osler’s blog seems to be going from strength to strength. Recently highlighted by Channel 4’s web-page as one of the 20 most influential political blogs in Britain, and selected as #8 of pro-Labour (in the wider sense?) by Top Tory Blogger, Iain Dale.
Naturally all of us who blog are secretly motivated – at least partially - by vanity, so Dave naturally posted a piece about this on his blog, where he makes the following point: “Not bad going for six months’ work. Readership figures are picking up, boosted by the brilliant redesign courtesy of Will. And a few of the more leftist national newspaper journos and Westminster researchers are starting to email goss in to blues.power@virgin.net.But wouldn’t it be good to have a far left website that has the same sort of clout as Guido and Dale do on the right? For that, I need more inside track stuff. My hero Paul Foot always used to include an appeal to readers for information in his classic Daily Mirror columns. I’d love to continue that tradition.”
So obviously it would be good if people took Dave up on this, and helped him develop his blog in that direction. But why is there no really good left blog? This seems to me partly a reflection of how marginal the left is on British politics. There is also the widespread use of printed media by the political left that make some blogging redundant, it has occurred to me for a while that you could produce a very good blog just by reading the Morning Star! But the left has also developed a culture of privacy, for example all sorts of interesting information comes our way in the Socialist Unity Network on the basis that it is kept confidential.
Dave is running a poll on his site on what is the “second best leftwing blog in Britain”. When you look down the list of Dave’s candidates, well you cannot help think, yeah, but is that the best we can do?
Stroppyblog has become popular very fast. Not surprising as it is updated regularly, is informal and occasionally very funny. There are also some serious well researched pieces.
The General Theory of Rubbish is a bit terse and cryptic. Although well designed and regularly updated, it is a bit too idiosyncratic for my liking.
Shiraz Socialist. Seems to be mainly reaction pieces, from an AWL type perspective, to stuff going on. Well, if you like that sort of thing. … …
JBlog is a rather more serious effort from Janine Booth, also of the AWL. Well worth a regular look.
Gauche There is a lot of chaff, but some good wheat amongst it. Particularly useful is the archive links, allowing you to jump directly to the best posts from the past, organised by subject.
Random Pottins really is a great blog. Informative, and covering a diverse range of subjects. Particularly astute when covering Israel, Palestine and Zionism.
Normblog. Many years ago Norman Geras wrote a well received book about Marx and human nature. I could never be bothered to read it. He has developed an immensely self-satisfied bloated ego. The main point of the blog seems to be to eruditely explain that we are all stupid for opposing US foreign policy. Oh, and to remind us how immensely clever Professor Geras is.
Harry’s Place. Ahh bless. Imagine Norman Geras bitten by a rabid Dog. Harry’s place is home of “decency”. In the old days decency used to mean, well, being decent. Nowadays it means support for neo-colonialism, islamaphobia, and vitriolic distain for the hard left. The most remarkable thing about Harry’s place is the comments, where racist comments are not criticised, but leftist comments critical of the Harry team are sometimes altered. A shrill, nasty experience, best avoided.
Lenin’s Tomb. The unofficial official SWP blog. Written by verbose twenty somethings full of outrage at the world, and an uncomplicated faith that there are goodies and baddies. Actually this is its strength, and the Tomb is guaranteed to be entertaining, informative and committed. “Lenin” himself rather remarkably rejects the Marxist method, arguing that there is no underlying objective reality, and all that really exists is language. (This presumably makes it easier for him to support Tommy Sheridan). Worth checking occasionally, but the comments can become depressingly sectarian.
Dead Men Left. Another good SWP blog, but updated less frequently than Lenin’s Tomb, and a little more measured. Worth looking at regularly.
Drink Soaked Trots. If you like the General Theory of Rubbish, you will like this collective blog. Much too much space spent slagging of the left for my liking.
Socialist Unity Blog. Sister to the Socialist Unity Network site. The origin of our main website was that we felt there was a gap in the market for a left wing publication that promoted a serious discussion about the way forward for the left, that was not banging the drum for any particular organisation, and was open to different voices. The Socialist Unity Blog was started as a way of being a bit more interactive, and also a place for some more quirky pieces. If you like the blog, you should regularly check the web-site as well.
It is worth saying there are some other good leftie blogs from this island, and had I been doing a poll instead of Osler these might have made the cut: International Rooksbyism, Daily (Maybe), The Point Is Liam Mac Uaid, Matthew Sellwood , Kevin Williamson
Oh yeah, and now go and vote for the Socialist Unity blog in the poll on Dave Osler’s blog!
Naturally all of us who blog are secretly motivated – at least partially - by vanity, so Dave naturally posted a piece about this on his blog, where he makes the following point: “Not bad going for six months’ work. Readership figures are picking up, boosted by the brilliant redesign courtesy of Will. And a few of the more leftist national newspaper journos and Westminster researchers are starting to email goss in to blues.power@virgin.net.But wouldn’t it be good to have a far left website that has the same sort of clout as Guido and Dale do on the right? For that, I need more inside track stuff. My hero Paul Foot always used to include an appeal to readers for information in his classic Daily Mirror columns. I’d love to continue that tradition.”
So obviously it would be good if people took Dave up on this, and helped him develop his blog in that direction. But why is there no really good left blog? This seems to me partly a reflection of how marginal the left is on British politics. There is also the widespread use of printed media by the political left that make some blogging redundant, it has occurred to me for a while that you could produce a very good blog just by reading the Morning Star! But the left has also developed a culture of privacy, for example all sorts of interesting information comes our way in the Socialist Unity Network on the basis that it is kept confidential.
Dave is running a poll on his site on what is the “second best leftwing blog in Britain”. When you look down the list of Dave’s candidates, well you cannot help think, yeah, but is that the best we can do?
Stroppyblog has become popular very fast. Not surprising as it is updated regularly, is informal and occasionally very funny. There are also some serious well researched pieces.
The General Theory of Rubbish is a bit terse and cryptic. Although well designed and regularly updated, it is a bit too idiosyncratic for my liking.
Shiraz Socialist. Seems to be mainly reaction pieces, from an AWL type perspective, to stuff going on. Well, if you like that sort of thing. … …
JBlog is a rather more serious effort from Janine Booth, also of the AWL. Well worth a regular look.
Gauche There is a lot of chaff, but some good wheat amongst it. Particularly useful is the archive links, allowing you to jump directly to the best posts from the past, organised by subject.
Random Pottins really is a great blog. Informative, and covering a diverse range of subjects. Particularly astute when covering Israel, Palestine and Zionism.
Normblog. Many years ago Norman Geras wrote a well received book about Marx and human nature. I could never be bothered to read it. He has developed an immensely self-satisfied bloated ego. The main point of the blog seems to be to eruditely explain that we are all stupid for opposing US foreign policy. Oh, and to remind us how immensely clever Professor Geras is.
Harry’s Place. Ahh bless. Imagine Norman Geras bitten by a rabid Dog. Harry’s place is home of “decency”. In the old days decency used to mean, well, being decent. Nowadays it means support for neo-colonialism, islamaphobia, and vitriolic distain for the hard left. The most remarkable thing about Harry’s place is the comments, where racist comments are not criticised, but leftist comments critical of the Harry team are sometimes altered. A shrill, nasty experience, best avoided.
Lenin’s Tomb. The unofficial official SWP blog. Written by verbose twenty somethings full of outrage at the world, and an uncomplicated faith that there are goodies and baddies. Actually this is its strength, and the Tomb is guaranteed to be entertaining, informative and committed. “Lenin” himself rather remarkably rejects the Marxist method, arguing that there is no underlying objective reality, and all that really exists is language. (This presumably makes it easier for him to support Tommy Sheridan). Worth checking occasionally, but the comments can become depressingly sectarian.
Dead Men Left. Another good SWP blog, but updated less frequently than Lenin’s Tomb, and a little more measured. Worth looking at regularly.
Drink Soaked Trots. If you like the General Theory of Rubbish, you will like this collective blog. Much too much space spent slagging of the left for my liking.
Socialist Unity Blog. Sister to the Socialist Unity Network site. The origin of our main website was that we felt there was a gap in the market for a left wing publication that promoted a serious discussion about the way forward for the left, that was not banging the drum for any particular organisation, and was open to different voices. The Socialist Unity Blog was started as a way of being a bit more interactive, and also a place for some more quirky pieces. If you like the blog, you should regularly check the web-site as well.
It is worth saying there are some other good leftie blogs from this island, and had I been doing a poll instead of Osler these might have made the cut: International Rooksbyism, Daily (Maybe), The Point Is Liam Mac Uaid, Matthew Sellwood , Kevin Williamson
Oh yeah, and now go and vote for the Socialist Unity blog in the poll on Dave Osler’s blog!
Thursday, July 06, 2006
The rise and rise of the SWP bloggers
Given the almost total absence of SWP members on e-mail discussion lists it is an interesting development that there are a few SWP blogs out there. For example; Lenin’s Tomb, Through the Scary Door, Respect blogspot, Dead Man Left and Adventures in Historical Materialism. (apologies to anyone who feels they have been wrongly included or omitted from the list). They are generally of high quality, Lenin’s Tomb is the best and even seems to have semi-official patronage but Through the Scary Door is …. … well, make your own mind up!
So why is there no SWP discussion list, like the successful ones run by Green Left Weekly or the Labor Party of Pakistan. Certainly the UK Left network can be a badger-pit, but even there sometimes useful discussion occurs – and the Australian and Pakistani comrades show that it is completely possible to run a civilised discussion list. The SWP doesn’t even run an internal list for debate among members.
Going back to 1995, there was once an IS list. But the central Committee of the SWP issued a prohibition of SWP members using the list after someone posted onto it a shallow critique of the SWP by disgruntled former members. The reasons given at the time were:
i) “Access to the internet, as to any technology, is highly unequal, and conditioned by the bosses' domination of the economy and the state. …. [Internet discussion is] irresponsible gossip by a self-selected and relatively privileged clique” Whether or not this had any substance in 1995, it is clearly less the case now. The pwer of the Internet as a progressive tool can be seen for example by the first class African web-site, Pambazuka, that has 60000 weekly subscribers.
ii) “Hostile left organisations can … easily penetrate the list and take part in discussions that do not concern them.” All organisations have a right to private debate, but this does not explain the reluctance of SWP members to participate in an open discussion list like that run by Green Left Weekly. The paradigm of the Healy/Grant/Cliff organisations was to provide a self referential closed world where the only information came from official party organs. The Internet has blown that apart, as shown by this weeks copy of Weekly Worker where some difficulties of Tower Hamlets’ Respect are reported.
iii) “Internet users are, in general, concentrated in universities and in upper-echelon white-collar jobs. Consequently discussions take place on the IS-List from which most comrades are excluded. Debate [should] take place through the party branches and at national meetings and conferences, where all comrades can participate directly or through their elected delegates.” The question of accountability is of course an interesting one, with many SWP members hiding behind ridiculous aliases on blogs, like Morbo, and Rooben. had this argument been valid in 1995, it would still be valid. Indeed the status of the blogs as publications is interesting, because in years gone by members of the SWP have been expelled for starting publications without the permission of the Central Committee (back in the days of ink and paper).
One of the often heard criticisms of the SWP is that there is no debate. I have argued before that this is a self-serving and generally inaccurate criticism. The emergence of highly successful SWP blogs is in sharp contrast to the fact that the British “kiss and tell sect” the CPGB, who publish the Weekly Worker, and who continually bang on about the SWP’s lack of democracy and debate, do not themselves go anywhere near the blogosphere, and seem to avoid forums for open debate where they lack editorial control.
And yes it does raise questions of accountability. Is “Lenin’s Tomb” an SWP publication? Do Lenin or Meaders speak for the SWP? For example this week “Lenin” renounced in the comments of Dave Osler’s blog the fundamental principles of the Marxist method, arguing that the dialectic only operates at the level of ideology:
“I'm not totally unsympathetic to the idea that a 'dialectical' method could be applied to political economy and that this is in fact what historical materialism involves, but if this is true it … is one in which history is understood as accessible only through language and the dialectical method is one in which a processual perspective is emphasised, and in which bourgeois categories are deconstructed.”
Now I don’t agree with “Lenin” because this seems to mean we would have to reject Marx’s capital. But it is excellent that SWP members are opening up and being prepared to debate. The next step is for the Party to open a discussion list, and for leading members of the SWP to be prepared to debate with others, and without comrades hiding behind silly aliases.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
