En Passant

En Passant is the most left wing daily blog in Australia. Commenting intelligently on issues that arise in Australian and international politics from a revolutionary perspective, it aims to provoke debate and discussion among more left wing and socialist readers and activists. Its aim is to arm left wing readers with arguments against the latest capitalist atrocities and outrages.

I have been writing the blog, and railing against war, poverty, austerity, climate change injustice, Islamophobia, racism, sexism, and oppression (among other issues) since 2008. In short, I have railed against capitalism and all that is rotten flowing from it.

Not only that but I argue a way forward. We can make the world a better one through our own mass actions. Through our strikes, our demonstrations, our pickets, our boycotts, our sit-ins, we can change the world. These are examples of the fight for democratic socialism, of socialism from below.

We can and must fight in the here and now but ultimately to get rid of war, exploitation and oppression we need a world where production is organised democratically to satisfy human need, not to make a profit. That is socialism. All of us together can run our world.

If you want to keep a blog that makes the arguments every day against the ravages of capitalism going and keeps alive the flame of democracy and community, make a donation to help cover my costs. And of course keep reading the blog.

To donate click here. Keep socialist blog En Passant going

Tim asked about my costs. They are about $45 a week. Here is a list of approximate from memory outgoings.

$275 for my word press administrators – Domain group
$50 or so on average per year for refinements and repairs to the site by them (This financial year it was $250).
$30 to Facebook to boost a popular post. This was a one off but it produced excellent readership boost so I have plans to do this more regularly, say once a month, if I get monetary support.
$664 to mainstream media for subscriptions to stay abreast of events, issues and their commentary (a drop of about $750 over previous financial years because of lack of funds to support more mainstream media subscriptions)
$450 for subscriptions to left wing media (Green left, Red Flag, Solidarity and Crikey)
$79 business name registration for 3 years (Thanks to Tim in the comments for querying this.)
$139 for email address registration? (Added in after Tim’s query.)
$676 for MEAA (union) membership, including defamation insurance.

There are other ongoing costs I may well have forgotten.

$15,000 is my gross underestimate for unpaid labour for writing an article daily for the website, distributing each article daily on social media etc at $30 per hour for one hour each day.

So my costs (excluding labour) are around $2300 per annum or $45 a week.

I receive no income from the blog. Since I am not likely to make a profit any time soon – only an upsurge in militancy by unions and social movements might see that and more likely people will turn to the established left wing papers and some mainstream media might veer a little left – I do not claim my losses for business tax purposes.

So if you want to keep an old man’s blog going so he can continue to yell at clouds, donate now.