The New Good Intentions Manifesto
Written by Steve Wallis
Version 4, 27th February 2009
Purpose of the New Good Intentions Manifesto
This manifesto contains an overview of my analysis of society, particularly highlighting the roles played by those who have predominantly good intentions (and are caring towards others) and those who have predominantly bad intentions (and are selfish). People with good intentions tend to want a more harmonious world with the problems of capitalist society (such as war, poverty, discrimination and environmental destruction) solved, whether they think that the problems can be solved under capitalism, regard a socialist revolution as necessary, or are unsure about this; while those with bad intentions tend to prefer conflict and the continuation of such problems.
I have moved to a position of regarding Barack Obama as a well-intentioned capitalist, but some of his advisors undoubtedly have bad intentions; there is a paragraph about him in the final section.
The more foresighted of those with bad intentions want to avoid problems like global warming becoming so severe that they threaten the end of humanity, because it is selfish to want yourself and your descendents to live, unless they reckon the universe is doomed sooner or later and the end might as well occur sooner - perhaps due to scientific theories of a continuous expansion or a "big crunch" (I'd argue that the universe started off as a single living entity, which could be called "the creator" or God, and repeatedly expands and contracts like a human heart). Implications of this manifesto for the environment are so important that I have provided a section of the manifesto on that topic.
This manifesto presents an alternative worldview to Marxism with the aim of influencing political activists and politicians, and others yet to become politically active or influencing society outside politics. I regard genuine Marxists as allies in the struggle for socialism (most of the time anyway) even though their analysis is flawed as I will demonstrate. Apologies if I over-generalise; the analyses of Marxists vary and some now support proportional representation (PR), including the Socialist Party of England and Wales and the Socialist Workers Party's Alex Callinicos. Let me start by explaining what sort of world I am fighting for.
I have argued for some time for a form of socialism with a government elected by PR, and set up the Foundation for Proportional Representation-based Socialism (www.PRsocialism.org). I would support some degree of workers' control, plus representatives of local communities, in addition to PR - this is sometimes called "participatory democracy" - preferable to nationalised industries completely controlled by government appointees, or indeed bosses dating back from when they were private entities as with the newly nationalised banks in the UK (which should be mainly controlled by borrowers and savers). I would also welcome discussions and referenda taking part on-line, to encourage greater participation of ordinary people in the decision-making process (although I would be wary of such developments under capitalism with the possibility of fraud as happened in the US presidential election between George W Bush and John Kerry). To guard against politicians selling out (failing to honour manifesto commitments or defecting to other parties), I would also advocate annual elections and the ability for some proportion of the electorate to force a new general election via a petition.
More important to me than the issue of whether we have socialism or capitalism, or indeed anarchy or communism, is the ability to choose between different forms of society via elections. Undemocratic forces such as fascists should also be allowed to stand and put out their propaganda, although I would strongly oppose them coming to power and support the right of postal workers to refuse to distribute their leaflets. I would strongly advocate PR irrespective of the form of society.
Many Marxists, particularly Trotskyists, argue that world socialism is vital for it to work, because capitalist countries that remain in the world would otherwise invade socialist countries or perhaps drop nuclear bombs on them. I suggest that such nightmare scenarios could be avoided if most people in power have (mainly) good intentions, or if infiltrators within the military render bad leaders ineffective. However, I have fairly recently realised that when the choice between capitalism and a very democratic form of socialism is clearly on the agenda, most people with good intentions will be in favour of socialism, and similarly for bad intentions and capitalism, so my position is closer to Marxism than I previously thought.
Whereas I believe it is vital for some Western countries to become socialist in order to ease world poverty, and I think the United Kingdom could well be first in that regard, renamed of course to reflect the abolition of the monarchy, I would prefer a more varied interesting world to a communist utopia as envisaged by Marxists in which there is nothing left to struggle for. I am highly dubious about the possibility of eliminating all prejudices and crime (as Marx and Engels envisaged after years of socialism with the state "withering away") due to tensions over religion, love and homosexuality, plus environmental shortages. But I am prepared to be surprised, and if the world gets too boring, some could set up a different form of society elsewhere in the galaxy!
Scientific basis of free will and good or bad intentions
Marxist and other atheist theories don't explain free will, and I believe this is the main reason why physicists have still not devised a "theory of everything" unifying quantum mechanics (describing the very small) with general relativity (describing the very large). My short document "Towards a Theory of Everything" (which you can read at www.socialiststeve.me.uk/theory-of-everything.htm) suggests how this dilemma can be resolved by incorporating free will of humans and animals (somewhere between the very small and very large).
The field of quantum mechanics was actually devised after the time of Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels, the latter of whom was responsible for the theory of "dialectical materialism" (where "materialism" means everything is a result of material conditions), so Marxists' confidence that their theories are sound is misplaced. Indeed, Rosa Lichtenstein, who has perhaps studied it most, has used the term "alien-class" on her anti-dialectics website (with a hyphen to be less ambiguous than other Marxists who have used the same term including Engels himself) strongly implying that there is a class of aliens who do not adhere to materialism!
Marxists argue that class society, and the consequent struggle between classes, originated when there was a surplus due to the cultivation of crops and domestication of animals to struggle over. They suggest that life was harmonious before this surplus arose, and therefore use the term "primitive communism" to describe the earliest human societies (for which the term "hunter-gatherer" is often used). Those who have visited or studied primitive tribes that still exist today recognise that some are peaceful and some are violent towards members of other tribes. Animals exhibit such properties too. It is my contention, therefore, that the struggle between those with good and bad intentions originated before the class struggle.
Even if atheists are correct and there is nothing spiritual in being good or bad, such behaviour would arise naturally from human interactions. In chapter 12 of his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins considers life largely consisting of games of "Prisoner's Dilemma" where people can choose to cooperate or defect, doing best if they defect while the other cooperates, quite well if they both cooperate, badly if they both defect and very badly if they cooperate while the other defects. When "iterated", a participant can learn about the friendliness of the other in order to decide whether to be friendly back, and Dawkins recounts that those participants who adopt nice strategies, and are friendly towards others unless the others have been unfriendly towards them, tend to do better in computer trials (when the same two participants play with each other at least). This explains behaviour of those who think entirely individualistically quite well, but those with some sort of collective allegiance (to some subset of humans such as their class, gender, race, nationality or religion, or an organisation representing such a subset or with a particular agenda) can, by exhibiting loyalty to such a grouping, be recognised as friendly by others with a similar allegiance. Conversely, people can exhibit hatred towards a particular subset or organisation, and win friendship or hostility from others on that basis. It is my contention that the most important subgroups are those with good or bad intentions, and that people tend to form opinions of others as nice or nasty on the basis of good or bad behaviour exhibited towards themselves and other people (or animals), or on the basis of their professed views with regard to a cooperative or competitive society based on friendliness or hostility to each other. My contention that this is the most important categorisation is based on the argument that ultimately the world has to be organised on a cooperative or competitive basis, with divisions based on other categories overcome in the united cooperative world that will ultimately be created (assuming we succeed).
Problems and advantages of a class analysis
The role a particular person plays in political struggles within society is affected by many different factors, including his or her genes, upbringing, education and occupation, the other people he or she has known and interacted with and the organisations (including political parties, single issue campaigns, trade unions and conspiratorial organisations like MI5 and the CIA) he or she is a member of.
Marxists believe that the main determining factor about a person's role in such struggles is his or her class and that the most important struggles to win are those for the domination of one class over others. They believe that the current ruling class is big business (the bourgeoisie) and want to overthrow it so that the working class (proletariat) is in control of society via hierarchies of committees based on workplaces - sometimes called "the dictatorship of the proletariat" although they rarely use this term nowadays for obvious reasons (with "dictatorship" meaning "rule"), as a step towards the abolition of all classes and a classless stateless society they call "communism". Some Marxists keep quiet about this part of their programme, but the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) mentions their desire for such "councils of workers' delegates" in the "What the SWP stands for" column in every issue of their newspaper Socialist Worker.
Part of the problem of winning people to the ideas of socialism with a class-based analysis is one of perception, with fewer people regarding themselves as working class than in the past. This is a particularly big problem in the USA, undoubtedly deliberately fostered by the big business-controlled media, resulting in politicians concentrating their rhetoric on what they will do for the middle class. Marxists are not particularly consistent in their interpretation of the middle class; they often call it "the petty bourgeoisie" which literally means owners of small businesses, but the term was also used in the Socialist Party (SP) of England and Wales, when I was a member in the 1990s, for middle management, poor peasants and large landowners (in Russia in 1917 for example), and more privileged students. The above-mentioned Socialist Worker column bizarrely claims "The working class create all the wealth under capitalism", implying that even self-employed people and owners of small businesses are working class! My own class is a bit of an enigma, with both my parents having gone to Cambridge University and obtained PhDs (doctorates), and with me having lived in quite middle class areas and attended good comprehensive schools (state schools for children of all abilities), having made a fair amount of money from royalties through writing computer games, but with my parents being poor enough for me to get a full university grant. Working as a university researcher was not the most working class job in the world, and I got a PhD myself, but I regarded myself as identifying with the working class when I was in the SP.
Marxist arguments can weaken the struggle for socialism by perpetuating the selfish "I'm alright, Jack" attitude put forward by right-wing politicians. They argue for workers uniting together, going on strike, generating solidarity for each other on the basis that such acts are in their interests - that acting collectively benefits a working class person more than acting individualistically. This is true in some cases but in many it is not, except in the long term if their efforts uniting together help bring about a socialist revolution, and socialists should help the efforts of idealistic people who really care about others. It is no wonder that many former Marxists sell out, and act in their own selfish interests rather than those of other working class people or society as a whole, when they get into positions of power and/or acquire wealth.
A further problem with a class analysis is that fascists as well as socialists consist of both working and middle class people, yet fascists are bigger enemies than big business (in situations where they stand a chance of coming to power at least).
To balance the above problems of a class analysis, it should be noted that working class people tend to be less selfish than those in other classes, particularly if they have chosen to work in a profession that encourages helping others (such as nursing or teaching). Some choose to work in the public sector in their desire to help society rather than maximise the profit of a boss, but workers banding together to carry out a strike in the private sector too tends to help their camaraderie and therefore good intentions towards fellow workers. Conversely, owning a successful business often requires being ruthless towards your competitors and staff (although a good workplace atmosphere can help motivate workers be more effective). Middle managers tend to be careerists, primarily motivated by their wage packet and achieving promotion within the company. Therefore, Marxists' class-based analysis is correct to a large extent.
An additional advantage of a class analysis is the recognition that the working class has the power to change society by going on strike; this is vital for changing the world and is an important power to direct towards a cooperative democratic society.
The Good Intentions Hypothesis
I argue in this manifesto that whether somebody genuinely cares about other people and wants to help make the world a better place is a more important determining factor in what that person does than his or her class - which I call "The Good Intentions Hypothesis". Such people (with good intentions) tend to be better allies in the struggle for a better world than those (with bad intentions) who are predominantly selfish and want to make the world a worse place or deliberately hamper attempts to improve it.
There are, of course, a lot of grey areas between good and bad intentions. Some people only care about a subset of the world's population, such as their friends and family or people of the same race, nationality, religion, gender or sexuality - I would tend to regard such people as having bad intentions; even if they are allies for a while, the use of divide-and-rule by the powers that be would tend to make them enemies or at best unreliable allies, and people of various bigotries tend to align themselves with each other or pretend to hate each other while really being allies. Even if they really do hate each other, it suits their purposes to use other bad people as "bogeymen" (supposed opponents) in their struggle against well-intentioned people who are the real threat to the continued control of the world by bad people.
We have the free will to choose to be caring or selfish, and our brains can be wired to prioritise one or the other of these possibilities. Our mind can also change from being predominantly selfish to caring (having bad intentions to good ones) or vice versa, either by a variable that may take one of two values in the mind changing or by the mind reconfiguring itself. I think that such changes take place for most people as a result of significant events in their lives, although for some people they take place frequently. Minds can be configured in an infinite number of different ways and many people have a mixture of good and bad intentions. Although I think there are some entirely selfish people, who pretend to care about others (particularly friends and family) as a means to an end, I don't think that anybody is entirely well-intentioned, because it is necessary to care about yourself to a certain extent in order to play a good role. I tried to be as good as possible (but couldn't always succeed, sometimes exasperating me) until early in 2008 when I adopted the philosophy that it is good to be a bit bad, welcoming a varied interesting world and the dominance of individuals' free will together with the collective will of organisations.
Amongst people with both good and bad intentions, there are those who think entirely individualistically (having no concept of a future state of the world they are aiming for) and those who think entirely collectively (having a single-minded approach to achieving a certain kind of society). For the latter group of people, the effect on individuals is merely part of the means to a desired end; they may think they care about people but deep down in their minds they are driven solely by a desire to influence society in a particular way (and getting others to care about them may make that task easier). There are also people who think partly collectively and partly individually; such people may have some sort of preferred society but no clear idea of how to achieve it, but I am one such person who does have a clear idea but chooses to sometimes put individuals first (which I think is generally a female trait with women better at multi-tasking).
The fact that most people think individualistically (to some extent at least, particularly women) is an enormous complicating factor in the struggles between those with good and bad intentions. It is a particular problem when it appears that society will work out one way or another no matter what we do, because people's personal feelings towards me tend to get in the way of my attempts to change the world. When it seems that the struggle is becoming easier, it can suddenly get much harder, which in turn helps the problems ease again...
A point frequently made about people who have entered a life of crime is that they have "got in with the wrong crowd". Associating with people with bad intentions tends to make you bad as well. Conversely, associating with people with good intentions can make somebody who was previously bad into a good person. However, a big group of people with good intentions, particularly if they act together in a political way, could pose a significant threat to the powers that be, and bad conspirators deliberately infiltrate such groups to try to reduce their threat. Similarly, a strong union of two well-intentioned people who are having a relationship can be effective and bad people sometimes attach themselves to good people for such cynical reasons. Women can be particularly vulnerable to this because many regard being bad (or perhaps a bit bad) as an attractive quality in a man. If conspirators use evil people (which I define as people who cannot be converted no matter what), this strategy is particularly likely to be effective at undermining well-intentioned people. The best defence against this is to recognise bad behaviour and body language which suggests that someone is not genuine and ostracise such people.
An important caveat is that loyalty to a party or organisation the person is a member of often overrides the wishes of that individual, particularly if he or she sees it as the main instrument to changing the world. Those who are disloyal tend to be members of a faction or infiltrators from a secret conspiratorial organisation rather than acting alone. Some organisations, including mainstream political parties, have a leader with considerable power to influence policy and appoint members to important positions. Such leaders often affect its policies and strategy, partly according to their intentions. In more democratic organisations, other members, particularly but not just in their leadership bodies, often do likewise.
Recognising good and bad intentions
I find someone's demeanour a useful guide as to whether he or she has good or bad intentions. Somebody who comes across as pleasant is more likely to actually be good than somebody who comes across as unpleasant and unfriendly. This is self-reinforcing - if you come across as a pleasant person, you will be more likely to attract friends who are also pleasant and form genuine relationships in which both people really care about each other, which encourages you to be good. On the other hand, it is harder to genuinely care about people who come across as unpleasant and bad people tend to form false relationships where they have an ulterior selfish motive.
People sometimes comment that there are two types of men: "rough-and-ready" and "sensitive". Rough-and-ready men tend to look tough and actually be bad whereas sensitive men tend to look considerate and be good. Your choice of hairstyle can massively influence which of these two types you come across as - men with shaven heads or short cropped hair tend to look tougher than those with longer hair (unless they appear to be gay). A man with particularly long hair may look like a hippie and appear to be good. The impression you give off is influenced by the society in which you live - shaven heads are particularly common among black men, and in some countries (including Russia and the UK still to some extent), having one is associated with fascism, unless you are black but black men with shaven heads tend to be right-wing too. Certain kinds of moustache may make you appear like a dictator (Stalin, Hitler or Saddam Hussein) and I found when I had a big beard that I gave off a different impression to different people (I was compared with Jesus, Karl Marx and Osama bin Laden!)
Some women can come across as tough too, particularly those with short hair, but in Western society nowadays, women most frequently affect their appearance by dying their hair, putting on make-up or wearing particular kinds of clothes. All these factors can give off a certain impression that may make them appear genuine or false, depending on the person who sees them and the context. Wearing fancy clothes and make-up may be appropriate on a night out, but may have a negative effect at a political meeting. There is quite a big correlation between women who dye their hair and them thinking individualistically (and sometimes but not generally having bad intentions) - being more concerned about others finding them attractive than whether they come across as false. If they are false as far as their hair colour is concerned, people may suspect that they are false in other ways too. Some women have very badly dyed hair with roots that look terrible; this may be a temporary situation while letting the hair return to its natural colour, but not taking care of your appearance in this or other ways may indicate bad intentions.
Showing your real emotions (rather than making a conscious effort to act in a particular way which people may see through and may be difficult to keep up) is a good way of appearing genuine. In many situations, smiling can give off a good impression, and somebody who never smiles (or appears to be faking a smile when he or she attempts it) is very likely to be bad. This is because having a good conscience, about what you have done in the past and plan to do in the future, is one thing that makes you happy; other factors include confidence in what you are trying to do and optimism about the future. Perhaps the correspondence between being good and smiling is more pronounced around me than in other contexts, when things are going well in my struggle to make the world a better place, because people's confidence depends considerably on how effective my allies and I are at outwitting our enemies. Of course people can be happy or depressed for irrational reasons, based on the balance of chemicals in their brains, and this balance can be affected by legal and illegal drugs. In some contexts such as at funerals, or when being forced to testify at court against somebody who is supposed to be an ally, smiling can be a very bad idea. Also, smiling at someone tends to give off the impression that you get on with him or her, to that person and others, so it may be better to refrain from smiling if you think he or she is bad.
Implications for the environment
People generally assume that the weather is the one thing on earth that cannot be controlled. The TV programme The Science of Superstorms (reporting on seeding of clouds by the regime in the USSR to affect where radioactive rain from Chernobyl fell) and reports of the Chinese authorities taking measures to prevent rain during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics have countered this myth somewhat, but there is evidence of far more dramatic manipulation as I explain below.
I have a highly conspiratorial viewpoint in which various conspiratorial organisations build computer models of many aspects of the world, including people's minds, organisations and natural forces including the weather, in order to predict the future and interact in various ways (using mind control and/or infiltrators within other organisations in society). Such conspirators are competing with each other for control of the world with the free will of individual people (and animals) in the middle; some of them are temporary allies but they do use unethical methods (controlling the weather inevitably costs lives leaving aside the effects of mind control).
I strongly believe that the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean was planned, to try to engender moods of national unity in the two parts of the region with the greatest pro-independence movements, which suspiciously were those closest to the centre of the tsunami - Aceh in Indonesia and Sri Lanka (where the Tamil Tigers were waging a long guerilla war). An earthquake soon afterwards, also nearest Aceh, was suspicious too.
However, weather forecasts have tended to be much less reliable recently, and more recent cases of extreme weather have not been noticeably in the interest of big business, with the possible exception of snow on the final day of the 2009 climate change summit, suggesting that such forces no longer exert such a strong influence over the weather (and also that big business is losing control in the world generally with the credit crunch exposing weaknesses in the capitalist system that the left can take advantage of if we get our act together). There have been two incidents recently which strongly suggest that allies of mine are exerting some control over the weather to help my analysis. Firstly, on one occasion when I was discussing control of the weather, there was a clap of thunder (the only one I noticed that day). Secondly, on a day I was planning to finish writing version 3 of this manifesto and put it on the internet, accepting the consensus viewpoint on global warming and change my home page to reflect my abandonment of scepticism about it being primarily caused by mankind, there was a hailstorm - very unusual for the first of September! Control of the weather can literally cost lives, so it seems very unethical to me and those prompting me in that way can only be temporary allies.
Irrespective of who is correct about global warming, this issue is blatantly being used for the purpose of divide-and-rule - making ordinary people blame each other for the possible future catastrophe, in their own countries with many using aeroplanes and some being more wasteful than others at home (not switching TVs or lights off or not using low-energy lightbulbs for example), and in underdeveloped countries where the masses want to catch up with the West. Control of the weather can clearly be used to exacerbate such tensions - there has recently been the coldest winter for 50 years in China, which must be a big boost for scepticism there letting the regime off the hook for not taking the environment seriously.
World leaders met in Copenhagen in December 2009 for a summit on climate change, which came up with a very weak and inadequate solution for the scale of the problem (if the sceptics are wrong). Those environmentalists who said that this was the last chance to save the world (or the human race) were wrong, and are still wrong when contemplating follow-up summits in 2010, on two grounds. Firstly, whereas conspirators on the side of big business relish problems such as global warming as a means to staying in control, they do not want the problems to get out of hand and lead to the end of humanity, for selfish reasons - although the odd megalomaniac may relish this possibility, such people are not influential enough. Secondly, I confidently predict that there will be a worldwide revolution leading to a mainly or entirely socialist world based on cooperation in the fairly near future (I suggest within 10 years at most) and we can hold a new summit, this time with world leaders who really care, and good societies involving the participation of the masses ensuring that the environment is a big priority. By then, conflicting evidence for global warming or not can be assessed fairly without the big vested interests skewing the debate, and socialist carbon trading with the same allocation of carbon per person anywhere in the world can be implemented if necessary. In the meantime, I strongly encourage research, development and use on large scales of renewable sources of energy, particularly concentrating solar power (an ideal use of deserts) and tidal power, to weaken the divide-and-rule agenda, lessen the amount of pollution and ease global warming problems in case the sceptics are wrong.
Strategic implications
In earlier versions of the Good Intentions Manifesto, I tried to build a Good Intentions Network with a list of eight principles to guide other well-intentioned people in helping me change the world. I now think it is better for different strategies to be adopted by different people (and perhaps by the same people at different times as I have done); this makes us less predictable and therefore harder to outwit by bad individuals and organisations. Someone once commented to me that the Network could start off with good intentions but we would end up like all the others, which I now recognise to be the key reason why setting up a network to link well-intentioned people together would be a very bad idea. Additionally, setting up a network on the internet where we can't see what our collaborators look and sound like (unless webcams are used for our communications of course) makes it very difficult to detect whether people really have good intentions. I compromised by setting up a board on a different forum, but nobody expressed any interest in building a network on that board and it has been overrun by spam.
There are many different strategies good people can use to try to make the world a better place, one of which is loving our enemies, as encouraged by Jesus and followed by many religious people today. At times, I have adopted that approach, recognising that the views of an individual are a result of his or her experiences, as well as their free will decisions. At other times, I have been more choosy about who I am friendly towards, which tends to polarise the situation more - it may be worth alienating some people to help others recognise who is on their side. I generally find now that it is better to give people the benefit of the doubt until they do something to warrant exposing them. Most people can be won over to become good given a bit of encouragement, even if they are initially bad, and few people have good enough models of the world to know what to do to act effectively against me even if they want to.
On numerous occasions, I have tried to analyse politicians as to whether they are predominantly good or bad. This has sometimes been a useful strategy for analysing the world and deciding who to support but ultimately all politicians reflect compromises within their party, arising from their membership, and particularly their leadership. A party entirely composed of (or led by) well-intentioned people could ultimately be very powerful so hostile conspiratorial organisations would be particularly keen to infiltrate it, or interact with some of its key members, in order to try to lessen their effectiveness and possibly win them over to their side of the struggle whether or not they recruit them to a conspiratorial infiltrating organisation. Similarly, parties entirely composed of poorly-intentioned people could also be strong and a bit of deliberate sabotage or spying could be very useful, but infiltrating some parties (particularly fascist ones) may obviously be very dangerous.
I have supported one politician who is particularly important: Barack Obama. Supporting his election to the US presidency was definitely worthwhile in my opinion - ordinary people around the world are much happier about political developments than would have been in the case if he had lost, which would probably have led to a big upsurge in racism and terrorism. Additionally, Obama is taking the issue of the environment much more seriously than McCain would have done, including pledging $61.3 billion towards energy projects as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, largely towards renewable forms of energy and infrastructure to support such energy (see the Wikipedia page for that Act for details and the previous section of this manifesto for my analysis of the importance of action on global warming). The arguments some atheists use that God wouldn't let so many bad things happen can be countered by arguing that Obama's victory shows things are working out for mankind after all, which they may see as part of God's plan (but is really due to the efforts of mainly well-intentioned individuals, and organisations uniting such people, although I believe God has set up the conditions in which people can make such decisions). Sometimes Obama has let himself be influenced by ordinary people, helping him be a better person than would otherwise be the case - notably passing orders to close secret CIA prisons around the world (in which torture allegedly takes place) as well as Guantánamo Bay, straight after his inauguration which drew a massive crowd. He spoke to a huge crowd in Berlin before the election and to large numbers of people in France and Germany at the NATO anniversary too. However, he has appointed advisors wholly from the banking sector of US capitalism ("finance capital" as Marxists would say although the SP argued that finance capital already was in control of the world when previous presidents had a more varied set of advisors) who are largely members of three conspiratorial groups according to a video called The Obama Deception - the Bilderberg Group linking capitalist leaders around the world, Trilateral Commission and Council on Foreign Relations. That video points out numerous promises that Obama has made and gone back on (and the Guantánamo non-closure is a later one) and its claim they are plotting to create a world government with an alternative world currency to the dollar is quite convincing; I encourage readers to view it on YouTube and decide for yourselves. Overall, partly due to reading some of Obama's books, I'm inclined towards him being a well-intentioned capitalist, in a difficult situation where he is forced to make compromises, but socialists in the USA are more able to judge this than myself.
In recent times I have avoided commenting much on the intentions of British prime minister Gordon Brown or Tory leader David Cameron, largely because my arguments about good and bad intentions would tend to favour Cameron, who smiles much more than Brown and comes across to many as being a good person. In the run-up to the 2010 general election, it is important to correct that impression; despite Cameron lurching the Tories to the left somewhat, his party is ideologically wedded to "free-market" capitalism and competition, and they would massively attack the living standards of working class people more than Labour if they came to power (and if they could get away with it despite certain industrial action in opposition to such attacks). At Labour's conference in September 2009, Brown's wife Sarah said he thought about the problems of ordinary people last thing at night and first thing in the morning rather than herself, which suggests he thinks entirely collectively. On the other hand, the bullying row makes Brown come across as a less nice (poorly-intentioned) person. And it is worth noting that Cameron ordered his wife to kiss him at the Tory 2009 conference, an indication that he may not be as nice as he tries to come across as. Labour's planned manifesto includes a commitment to control of public services by staff (including middle class people like doctors as well as workers) and users - which would lead to a form of socialism, albeit without the redistribution of wealth the far left demands. However, there has been little promotion of that policy, with the connivance of the mass media not wanting to promote such a good popular idea (since it appeared in The Guardian). This outcome of Labour's policy forum reflects socialist ideas within the party, which are more important than the particular quirks of Brown and Cameron. A hung parliament, with minor parties exercising more power, and the Liberal Democrats perhaps pushing through PR, would be more welcome than a Labour or Tory victory, and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg could come across as nicer than Brown or Cameron in the leaders' debates.
Rather than worrying too much about the performance of the mainstream parties in the 2010 general election, it is more important to influence left-wing parties to be more effective and prepare the ground for attacks by the incoming government on the living standards of ordinary people, with a minority in parliament supporting protestors and strikers opposing such attacks. I am currently urging parties to advocate nationalising all the banks, only compensating pension schemes and running them democratically from below with most control in the hands of borrowers and savers - rather than "workers' control" as Marxists tend to argue for (surely those with money at stake should have more say than those who happen to work for a bank). This would enable what is left of the bailout money to be used towards balancing the books, and if this money isn't sufficient (as it probably wouldn't be) use this as an argument for a socialist transformation of society!
Some final advice: Think for yourselves and come to your own conclusions about what to do to help make the world a better place. I am very confident things will work out one way or another, but we can all help shape the interesting future for the human race with our free will. As mentioned in the previous section, I hold conspiratorial views about organisations like the CIA using supercomputers with artificial intelligence (AI) software modelling the world and humans on it, which can in my view effectively turn people into robots. After all, I developed and was the main designer of an AI/simulation language called SDML in which such modelling could have been possible (but some scaling up problems and a complex bug in a backtracking routine could have prevented this language from being too powerful). I also think some organisations with better intentions than the CIA have access to such software and computer models, but I wouldn't trust any organisation using unethical methods like mind control to hand over control of society to the masses if they do win the struggle for the world. Conspirators are sometimes worth cooperating with, and I recognise that existing organisations result from millennia of struggle and have a vital role to play in influencing what happens, but let our own free will decisions, in conjunction with collective action by such organisations, determine the future of the world!
You can download the manifesto as a ten-page document from my main website (www.socialiststeve.me.uk) or the Indian mirror (www.socialiststeve.in), in PDF format, suitable for printing out using Adobe Acrobat and distributing. Note that internet censorship may prevent you downloading the file from one of those sites; if so, please try the other.