Tag: Socialist

Split Peas & Split People

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This might end up being one of those pieces which becomes a few random thoughts that aren’t related but I feel are worth mentioning. To begin with I’m having a nightmare trying to cook split peas. I was hoping to make a nice soup with sweet potato and carrot but these bloody peas just won’t cook. I soaked them for over twenty-four hours and have now had them boiling away for at least an hour to no avail. I enjoy cooking. I also enjoy eating and this enjoyment of eating and of having no money over the years means I’m not a bad cook. I don’t make enough soups though. A split pea soup sounds just lovely.

I’m a total romantic. I’m listening to Spanish Civil War music and dreaming of what could have been. It was such a glorious and horrific time. We like to imagine antifa and the antifascist as some new phenomenon but it’s been going as long as the fascist gave themselves such a name. I have mentioned this particular war a few times but it really is another example of the people being screwed over by power. Not just power in Spain but through the neutrality of countries like the UK. Franco had Hitler’s Germans and Mussolini’s Italians, the Republic ended up having no choice but relying on the Soviets who took over as best they could and did more damage than help. France may have been a Republic but it was never built on the ideals of decentralisation and the anarcho-collectives. The European powers as ever showed their true colours, for old powers like the British, Fascism was infinitely more palatable than people having true power. These things are contagious, they must be quashed.

The Twentieth Century was just a long list of outside interference with vested interests. Allende, Chile and Pinochet is always an easy one to bring up but let’s not forget Cambodia and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to recognise the new communist government that replaced the genocidal maniac Pol Pot. She was also a bit of a fan of apartheid South Africa. Let’s not forget the British influence upon the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran that wanted to nationalise oil production, the dictatorship of the new Shah, a western puppet, more agreeable. General Suharto in Indonesia who killed a quarter of the population but who provided the Australians, as well as the US and Brits, with cheap access to natural minerals. Yugoslavia, the last Socialist country in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union was never allowed to exist. It is always easier to control smaller broken up and angry states than one larger one.

Talking of apartheid, Palestine is another obvious one. Obvious because it is still going on not because it is ever really talked about. You wouldn’t know it if you just watched western media but Israel have been bombing the shit out of the Gaza Strip for eight straight days now. Apparently Hamas fired two homemade rockets out and the Israeli’s felt the need to obliterate them in return. Eight days and not a peep.

Anyway my split peas have burnt. I got carried away and forgot to check on them. I give up.

BR#9 – Accidental Death Of An Anarchist

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Another new playwright has crossed my path. Dario Fo wrote Accidental Death Of An Anarchist in response to the 1969 death of an anarchist in police custody Milan. He had been accused of the bombing of the Agricultural Bank which had resulted in the deaths of sixteen people. While in custody he, according to the official account at the time, committed suicide by jumping out of the window on the fourth floor of the police headquarters. Ten years later three fascists were convicted of the crime, some of whom were agents of the secret police, and in court proceedings it was determined that the major actors behind the bombing had been senior ministers and Generals who were condemned before being acquitted. The state once more protected it’s own while allowing those at the bottom who actually committed the act itself to go down for it. The play was written prior to this final outcome and was partly in response to a dearth of reporting from both sides of the political spectrum, the right-wing for obvious reasons and the Communists because they’re little more than power hungry political stooges themselves.

The play is set one week after the event and Fo uses the character titled Maniac to highlight the ridiculous nature of the police account of events, their incompetence and as a vehicle to get his political message across. I’m sure there’s a name for this type of character in a play but I forget what I learnt in school. While serious and dry approaches to storytelling always have their place, there is a particular way satire manages to express an idea and create an understanding in the audience. It is more accessible, despite it being on a serious topic comedy allows people to take it in without feeling they need to immediately react in a serious manner. Fo does this expertly and through his use of the Maniac manages to create a situation in which the police expose their own corruption and the left wing reporter her own hypocrisy.

To quote the Maniac in one of his more lucid moments;

“Why not ask yourself, Miss Feletti, what sort of democracy requires the services of dogs such as these? I’ll tell you. Bourgeois democracy which wears a thin skin of human rights to keep out the cold, but when things hot up, when the rotten plots of the ruling class fail to silence ours demands, when they have put the population on the dole queue and squeezed the other half dry with wage cuts to keep themselves in profit, when they have run out of promises, and you reformists have failed to keep the masses in order for them; well then they shed their skins and dump you, as they did in Chile*, and set their wildest dogs loose on us all”

*While events in Chile happened after the original was written, the text I read from was translated and adapted in the 1980s hence the reference.

BR#6 – Red Rosa

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Dr Rosa Luxemburg, what a woman. She would have definitely put me in my place. I mentioned about a week ago about revolutionary left wing men in the first couple of decades of the twentieth century all looking like intellectual accountants, well this was her time, and these were her men. Rosa Luxemburg was of Jewish Polish decent but it was in Germany and the Revolutionary Socialist movement of the time in which she is most remembered. This was a remarkable time for change while also being a frustratingly impotent one too. It’s littered with the ‘what if’ moments that seem to be a constant in social movements, and which ultimately suggests they failed in their objective of removing the bourgeoisie from power and liberating the workers in the process. It is also important though to remember we’re not working fourteen hour days, for what it’s worth we have a vote and although it’s not perfect we do seem to have gained a certain degree of liberty and protection under the law. On the other hand that liberty and that protection can be taken away from us at any time, as the late great George Carlin said;

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges“

But enough of that this is about Rosa Luxemburg and the graphic novel on her life I have just finished called Red Rosa. She was a fighter, and she had a profound understanding on the nature of capitalism, imperialism and power. She was a revolutionary but had she lived long enough would likely have been horrified by what unfolded in Russia in the name of communism and the people. She also challenged the ideas of Marx which was for many a major taboo, although others saw her as adding to and evolving his ideas. She spent virtually the entirety of the First World War in prison because of her anti-imperial beliefs and was murdered shortly afterwards as the new faux-socialist SPD Party, of whom she had once been a leading member, cemented it’s position in the new republic by removing those who challenged it’s power and tried to bring about any real change.

The graphic novel itself is aesthetically impressive, the images expressive and the ideas put forth insightful. This is not just a picture book but one telling the life of someone justifiably revered. Her beliefs and ideals are explained in an easily understandable way, as is a general explanation of anti-capitalism and social movements generally as well as in relation to modern times. I imagine it would probably be a great book for a teenage girl as it has the potential to be incredibly inspiring. As I don’t know any I’ll put it in my book stack and give it away when the moment comes. The graphic novel is an incredibly enjoyable format and this a powerful and important story to tell. Neither are let down here.

Generic Male Intelligentsia

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I’m reading a graphic novel on Rosa Luxemburg at the moment. I won’t go into it too much because I’m not finished and will write a piece on it when I do. There is just something worth mentioning now and it is the way Socialist intellectuals of that time look and are portrayed. There is a recurring theme in images and film that they all look a little like Lenin and Trotsky combined. For context Rosa Luxemburg lived at the beginning of the twentieth century and was deeply involved in the left wing intelligentsia of Germany and Poland. Possibly more places but I haven’t got there yet and my knowledge of her is not detailed enough yet to go out on a limb and make too many statements. Mixing in this world when it was really beginning to come to life with genuine importance she must have mixed with many ‘Lenotskys’ as I shall call them.

The look then is Lenin’s slightly round face, balding hair and goaty mixed with a little hair to signify Trotsky, similar facial hair and his glasses. Perhaps more of a Lenin but with glasses and a Trotsky air to him. That feels closer. Regardless there always seems to be this same character, it’s like the stock image graphic artists go for when they want to represent the archetype left wing intellectual. Of course this just could be how people looked at the time, and Lenin and Trotsky were merely fashionistas of the age, early twentieth century revolutionary hipsters if you like. The glasses would probably have been a style, the hair can’t be help and the goaty like the glasses could be a fashion. The soft accountant like look because they weren’t working men toiling in the field and under the sun. Maybe it’s not as straight forward as I’m trying to portray it.

One of the reasons I enjoy this image is that I have met a few people who looked arguably similar in features and style who also happened to be left-wing and saw themselves as intellectuals. Probably less Lenin but Trotsky has certainly captured the attention of those trying to style themselves on someone but that could just be because nobody wants to style themselves on a bald middle aged man. There’s definitely something less romantic about that than a revolutionary hero who died with an ice pick through his skull. It was a remarkable time in history, makes life seem rather mundane by comparison. Even if it did look like there were accountants everywhere.

Wild Eyed Crazy Bernie

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It’s good to see Bernie is doing well in the Democratic primaries. He came second to Buttigeig in Iowa by less than a thousand votes but has won the next two in New Hampshire and Nevada. Today sees South Carolina before Super Tuesday on well Tuesday of next week. I don’t care what people people say, for anyone familiar with Sky Sports’ sensationalising of football, Super Tuesday sounds ridiculous and merely highlights through which prism we view the world now. I think I understand how their voting system works although I will admit there is probably bits I miss out on. They get votes in each state which leads to getting delegates and super delegates based on their share of the vote to represent them at the Democratic national convention or whatever it’s called, the one with the most wins will get the pleasure of going up against the big bad wolf Trump. I wonder how may Supers they can fit in that contest especially if it ends up being crazy Bernie the wild eyed Socialist running.

Having recent experience of elections and what turned out to be the inevitable disappointment of losing, Bernie going up against Trump makes me nervous. It is impossible to deny the parallels with British politics of recent times. The populist Socialist Corbyn against the populist right winger Johnson. Despite the fact anyone with any sense could see the folly of voting for Johnson and only three months down the line it’s already seemingly falling to pieces, although the same was said about Trump, the establishment and their media did anything and everything they could to keep Corbyn from coming to power. Better the devil you know who does your bidding than the devil you don’t who wants you to pay some tax. For this reason I am nervous then. Even publications like the Economist who I am finding myself starting to trust are focusing a little too much on unelectable Bernie. I have seen the power of the media in the UK and don’t doubt for a second that despite the partisan nature of American politics they would do anything in their power to prevent Bernie from coming to power, even if that means another four years of Trump and four years of him knowing he doesn’t need to worry about being re-elected. You can even see the parallels within the American Democratic and British Labour parties as those who hold the power try frantically to repeat their success of last time when they got Hillary Clinton in with the self-defeating behaviour of many within Labour who would rather their own party were not elected than one led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Politics and power is dirty. I am not American but their politics affects so much of the world and is covered so much in our own media that it is impossible not to take an interest. I hope I am proved wrong because I would love to see Bernie in The White House and Trump back in the penthouse of one of his failing towers, but we’ve already had a trial run for this exact situation and it didn’t end well. If you repeat enough times how unelectable someone is he may just end up being so. We had turkeys voting for Christmas, will they be voting for Thanksgiving this time around?