JANUARY 13, 2013 – 1. Richard Seymour is author of the widely read blog, “Lenin’s Tomb,” and a prominent member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the largest group left of the Labour Party in Britain. In an article written in the days following the January 4-6 annual conference of the SWP, Seymour made public a controversy inside the party, a controversy so serious he says: “the future of the party is at stake”. Speaking of the party’s Central Committee he said: “they are on the wrong side of that fight”. Speaking to fellow members of the party, he wrote: “You, as members, have to fight for your political existence. Don't simply drift away, don't simply bury your face in your palms … You must fight now” (Seymour, 2013a).
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Reflections on the Crisis in the SWP
Friday, January 4, 2013
The Tar Sands: A made-in Canada problem
JANUARY 4, 2013 – The tar sands development in northern Alberta is an ecological nightmare, and an insult to indigenous land rights. This nightmare and this insult are profoundly Canadian – shaped by Canadian corporations and Canadian government policies. Unfortunately, there was a tendency by some in the movement in 2012, to try and “off-shore” the problem, shifting the blame, in particular to China. This has no basis in fact, and opens the door to a nasty politics of xenophobia.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
Notes on Greece 6: The Challenge of the United Front
NOVEMBER 15, 2012: Note 6 of 6 – SYRIZA, as its name “Coalition of the Radical Left” implies, is an expression of the coalescence of anti-capitalist forces in Greece, a coalescence produced through the struggles of the first years of the 21st century as well as the resistance to austerity and crisis from 2007 on. It is not the only such expression. Earlier notes have also mentioned another such coalescence with a very similar name – ANTARSYA, “Front of the Greek Anti-Capitalist Left”. The SYRIZA coalition has 12 components, ANTARSYA has nine.[1]
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Notes on Greece 5: Greece, France, and the limits of the Concept ‘Left Reformism’
NOVEMBER 13, 2012: Note 5 of 6 – There are, as Alex Callinicos outlines, New Lefts forming across Europe in countries other than Greece. How should we assess these New Lefts? Callinicos, in a short newspaper article attempted to survey the development of the left throughout Europe as a whole, putting the entire New Left of four countries – Germany, Greece, France and Holland – under one label. He asked: “What is the politics of this rising left? Over-simplifying a little, it is essentially some version or other of left reformism. It’s true that SYRIZA includes within its ranks an assortment of far-left groups, but the dominant force, SYNASPISMÓS, originates in the more accommodating and pro-European wing of the Greek Communist movement”. This left reformism, he argues, is “filling a space left by the rightward shift of mainstream social democracy.” Leaders of left reformism “are able to reach out to traditional social-democratic voters by articulating their anger in a familiar reformist language.” However, “ambiguity is inherent in any version of reformism, which seeks simultaneously to express workers’ resistance to capitalism and to contain it within the framework of the system” (Callinicos 2012a).
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Notes on Greece 4: SYNASPISMÓS and SYRIZA
NOVEMBER 7, 2012: Note 4 of 6 – The explosive changes in Greek economics and politics have introduced the entire world to SYNASPISMÓS and SYRIZA, the anti-capitalist coalition of which SYNASPISMÓS is the leading part. The roots of SYNASPISMÓS go back to the 1968 opposition to Russian imperialism in Czechoslovakia, the original dividing point in the old KKE.
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Notes on Greece 3: the KKE
NOVEMBER 6, 2012: Note 3 of 6 – Throughout the entire modern period in Greece, the principal party to the left of PASOK has been the KKE. There is a real loyalty to the KKE among many in the Greek working class, and this loyalty has legitimate political roots. Party members faced severe repression during the years of the dictatorship between 1967 and 1974. Before the dictatorship, its cadre were forged in the terrible years of World War II and the civil war which followed it. This very small country, between 1940 and 1949, saw some 650,000 people lose their lives in war, resistance to fascism, and civil war (Hitchens 1983, 177). The KKE was at the centre of anti-fascist resistance. This has not been forgotten, and explains in part the intense loyalty towards the KKE displayed by thousands of Greek workers.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Notes on Greece 2: Political Upheaval
NOVEMBER 5, 2012: Note 2 of 6 – Greece’s deep economic crisis has led to a revolution in the traditional structures of mass politics. New Democracy (Tories) won elections in 2004 and 2007, and were in office as the crisis struck its first blows. October 4, 2009, they were swept out by a newly resurgent PASOK (social-democrats), as voters turned to the traditional party of the workers’ movement and the left in the face of the clear failure of conservative politics. But PASOK’s social democracy proved equally bankrupt. The only “solution” PASOK (and New Democracy) could come up with, was to agree to two so-called “bailouts” supervised by the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), European Commission (EC) and International Monetary Fund (IMF – a €110 billion “bailout” in May 2010, and another €130 billion “bailout” agreed to in February 2012.
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