Strategy for Proportional Representation-based Socialism
by Steve Wallis
I wrote the following preamble, containing more recent ideas about strategy, on the 30th of October 2008. I have also put identical paragraphs on the home page of my socialist website; click here to skip the preamble.
Until recently, I have carried out the duel role of radicalising people and sabotaging Marxism, sometimes consciously (by putting out leaflets arguing against the Marxist idea of hierarchies of committees based on workplaces for example) and sometimes subconsciously. I have thus helped engineer a situation whereby there is a massive financial crisis which exposes the failings of the capitalist economic system but socialists are too weak (in the West at any rate) to take advantage of the crisis and overthrow this system in a socialist revolution. Due to the lack of a viable socialist alternative, British prime minister Gordon Brown is getting away with subsidising the banks with a massive £500 billion of borrowed money (equivalent to £16,500 for every taxpayer in the country) to try to buy capitalism out of the hole it has got itself into. Such measures are being replicated internationally, and he is being portrayed as the saviour of capitalism, ironically for a Labour prime minister!
I feel my influence on society has been overwhelmingly positive, despite my sabotage of Marxism. The forces of big business, including conspiratorial organisations like the CIA and those outside the realm of the state, had a great deal of control over society, using complex computer models to predict the future and determine what they needed to do to maintain their dominant position (and try to ensure that dominance continues forever with the US Republican Party enacting legislation such as the Patriot Act and New Labour in Britain planning ID cards with a centralised database containing a lot of information about us). [I was the main designer and sole implementer of an artificial intelligence/simulation language called SDML which could be used to do such modelling, so I know that it is possible.] A sign that this dominance has gone and that the free will of individuals is becoming more significant was the false reports in the early editions of British newspapers (including the Daily Mirror’s “Phew! US saves world economy” headline on the 26th of September, with similar ones in the Times and Independent, reported on in a BBC Northern Ireland review of the papers) that the $700 billion bailout of the US banks had been agreed, before the talks collapsed. [As most readers of this will be aware, a modified deal was later agreed which has indeed averted complete financial meltdown.] This strongly suggests that the computer models of big business, which were used for those premature news reports, are failing. If their predictions are wrong, then their ability to control society is also diminishing. Weather forecasts are now much less accurate than they have been in the past; if you can predict weather accurately you can also control it, to some extent, by adjusting factors that influence it, and the forces of big business are certainly less able to do that now.
I have now recognised that it is time to take sides in the class struggle and unite with Marxists, particularly those in the largest Marxist organisation in Britain, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). I had argued that it is generally only people on the same committees who know who the dodgy people (such as infiltrators on the side of big business) are and what they are up to, but the overthrow of John Rees as leader of the Left Alternative (the SWP-led splinter from Respect), via a resolution passed by the SWP’s central committee, has demonstrated that such people can be removed from positions of power (partly due to the role of people like Rees being publicised by other activists particularly in the Weekly Worker newspaper which specialises on debates within and between left-wing organisations).
Despite my decision to regard Marxists as allies in the struggle for a better world, I am not abandoning my call for socialist governments elected by proportional representation, as promoted by my Foundation for PR-based Socialism. I still do not want a socialist society in which middle class people are denied a say, as Marxists tend to argue for. However, control from below, in local communities as well as workplaces, sometimes known as “participatory democracy”, is essential for a genuine democratic socialist society as well as PR, and I am dropping my objection to such structures being hierarchical.
Perhaps the biggest mistake in my approach, as far as uniting revolutionary socialists is concerned, was my Good Intentions Manifesto which argued for unity between “good” people who want some sort of better world, irrespective of their politics, against “bad” people who want to preserve the status quo or want an even worse world (and may not even care if the human race is annihilated via a nuclear war). By adopting this analysis, I tried to identify well-intentioned people in right-wing organisations, and suggested that Condoleezza Rice, David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher and even Nick Griffin (leader of the fascist British National Party) might be well-intentioned and therefore sabotaging their own organisations. [I am still tempted to post the lyrics of my musical poem “The Master Race”, which makes some very important points against fascism as well as suggesting that Griffin may be “a nice bloke”, to fascist/racist discussion forums and help to destabilise such organisations!] I now realise that most members of right-wing parties are dedicated to such parties and tend to adopt their comrades’ points of view. Even if they are in a left-wing conspiratorial organisation that is deliberately trying to sabotage that party, they have to cooperate with fellow members of the party to a large extent to avoid being found out. Similar arguments apply to left-wing parties infiltrated by right-wing organisations. Whereas I think publicising my views on infiltration via my Good Intentions Manifesto played a positive role by helping left-wingers identify right-wingers in their midst, the idea of uniting well-intentioned individuals was massively flawed, largely because nobody is completely well-intentioned (or completely poorly-intentioned) – my realisation that even I am selfish to a certain extent helped me avoid making what could have been a very bad mistake of properly setting up a forum for the Good Intentions Network.
I did make some very good points in my Good Intentions Manifesto about recognising whether people are mainly good or mainly bad, largely based on their demeanour and appearance, and I am therefore keeping it on the web but with the text you are currently reading as a preamble. In particular, I pointed out that men who come across as hard/tough/rough-and-ready, particularly those with short-cropped hair or particularly shaven heads, often are right-wing. The exposure of the two neo-Nazis who planned to assassinate Barack Obama as “skinheads” (in all five British newspapers reporting on it that I read as well as almost exactly half the reports around the world according to Google News) was brilliant in helping the masses recognising fascists in their midst. If you look like a fascist, you either are one, are pretending to be one, or did not realise what effect your appearance has on others’ attitude towards you (perhaps because you are young or experimenting). The big exceptions to this rule about skinheads are black people (since fascists are almost always white) and those who look gay (and therefore do not come across as “hard”), but they may be inadvertently hindering the struggle for a better world by encouraging their straight white friends to adopt a similar hairstyle.
My new approach of recognising that most Marxists are allies is partly motivated by the fact that I am now in a position of greater influence within the socialist movement, particularly after moving to Manchester in September where the left is uniting to a greater extent than anywhere else in Britain. Left-wingers inside and outside the Labour Party united in the Convention of the Left at the time of Labour’s conference, and we are continuing to meet in Manchester – on the third Monday of every month at the Friends’ Meeting House (on Mount Street, off Albert Square, behind Manchester Central Library) at 7pm, probably booked under the name “Socialist Unity”. There is also a national recall conference in Manchester on Saturday the 29th of November. Visit the Convention of the Left website for more details.
I am arguing that the Convention should argue for a sudden thorough change of society (a “revolution” even if some don’t want to use that word) rather than adopt a charter of reformist demands, requiring even greater borrowing than that of the New Labour government with the Tories and Liberal Democrats proposing similar levels. The problems of capitalism are too great for reforms to be sufficient and we are never going to achieve a socialist revolution if we refuse to talk about it! If we do argue for reforms, as we should do while simultaneously arguing for socialism, then I am proposing we promote the idea of democratisation of the banks that have already been or are about to be nationalised, with the majority of the say in the hands of borrowers and savers in addition to representatives of the government and workers via the trade unions on their boards. As well as planning for the recall conference, we will discuss such proposals at the November meeting.
I am planning to submit a resolution to the recall conference proposing that the organisation coming out of the Convention of the Left calls itself the Anti-Capitalist Network, which clearly indicates the need for a change of society without being too narrow to put off genuine socialists who don’t necessarily regard themselves as revolutionaries. It could be similar to a revolutionary anti-capitalist party being launched in France, but should be a network/alliance rather than a party at present, since I think a break from Labour would be premature at present. Whereas there is a need to unite those opposed to capitalism but with a wide range of views at present, I think that the need to argue for a particular form of socialism can be carried out by organisations within the network, including the Foundation for PR-based Socialism (which will from now on advocate “participatory democracy” as well as proportional representation).
I reach a potential audience of hundreds of thousands of people on the internet with the fairly regular messages I post on hundreds of discussion forums and email to individual contacts (although an unknown fraction of these read a particular message). I have influenced many more by speaking at meetings, having one-to-one discussions and handing out leaflets.
I feel that I have had some very good ideas (as well as some bad ones) about the way forward for the left, some of which I have managed to devote more time to than others. I get feedback from time to time, but I can’t follow discussions on all the forums I send messages to, and it has reached the point where I need advice on strategy and to involve others in the struggle to a greater extent than I have thus far managed to achieve. I can’t lead a revolution on my own!
Since I particularly want advice from those struggling for the same sort of society as me – a form of socialism based on proportional representation – I am opening up discussions on my Foundation for PR-based Socialism forum at Yahoo! Groups (which has an archive of past messages that you can read without joining, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PRsocialism) and my Proportional Representation-based Socialism cause at Facebook (which you can access if you have a Facebook account by going to http://apps.facebook.com/causes/causes/show/92363?m=8905f). Go to one of those forums if you want to participate in the debate.
I am also putting this message on the Foundation’s website (http://www.PRsocialism.org) and my personal website (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk), and mentioning that this discussion is taking place in the latest message that I am distributing widely (containing the draft contents of Foundation newsletter 4).
Economic crisis will provide opportunities to put socialism on the agenda
As chancellor, current British prime minister Gordon Brown claimed to have ended the cycle of boom and bust, which has proved impossible under capitalism. The New Labour government borrowed heavily to prolong the boom and we are now entering a severe recession. Big business and its New Labour allies are trying to make working class people pay for their crisis – escalating food and fuel prices and a housing slump, with big cuts in living standards unless we go on strike.
The credit crunch is mainly blamed on “subprime” mortgages in the USA, sold to people with a poor credit history and with high interest rates starting low. This caught many ordinary people out, since most US mortgages are at a fixed rate for the entire term, which (due to high inflation) could lead to many banks around the world that have lent the money for such “prime conforming” mortgages facing bankruptcy. New Labour would probably bail other banks out like when it nationalised Northern Rock (and like the US government recently did with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac which guarantee only prime conforming mortgages) or lent £50 billion without revealing to whom, but other governments may adopt a different approach.
[On the day I finished writing this document, the US government indeed failed to step in to save Lehman Brothers, the fifth largest investment bank in the world, and it went bankrupt. This is having a big knock-on effect on shares in other banks around the world, with the shares of HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland), RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland) and Barclays particularly collapsing, despite the Bank of England pumping another £5 billion into the market today. Barclays reportedly tried to launch a takeover for Lehman before it collapsed; we can speculate whether its takeover attempt was an indication that Barclays has a lot of spare money to spend on the takeover, a bluff (to pretend it is not in financial difficulties), a panic measure (perhaps because it has lent Lehman a lot of money that it could now lose with the bankruptcy) or a desperate attempt to improve its balance sheet with public money (the denial of which caused the takeover attempt to collapse). Whatever the cause, the big fall in Barclays’ share price today will knock confidence in its solvency. If I had savings in HBOS, Barclays or RBS, I’d withdraw them ASAP! The adage that such institutions are “too big to fail” now seems out-of-date, and even if New Labour nationalises more UK banks (which the Tories say they wouldn’t do), shareholders can expect little or nothing for their shares. The collapse of a high-street bank would entail many waiting months for compensation for their savings (if indeed they don’t lose them); New Labour has promised an improved compensation scheme but legislation for it has yet to be passed and banks have refused to finance it in advance. Those with mortgages in a collapsed bank wouldn’t have to pay it back, so some working class people will gain from this financial chaos!]
The economic crisis will therefore be much more severe than most analysts are predicting. To avoid imposing massive tax rises or making massive cuts in public spending, most capitalist governments will probably try to borrow their way out of the crisis. New Labour’s net borrowing has rocketed to around £40 billion a year during the boom, and is on course to rise much higher still as we enter recession. This makes a mockery of Brown’s claims to have been a “prudent” chancellor and his allegations that there is “a black hole in the Tories’ spending plans” (with them promising tax cuts for the rich at their 2007 conference). The Tories and Liberal Democrats are hypocritical too in condemning Brown’s handling of the economy when they plan the same level of borrowing if they came to power.
So how should socialists respond to the economic crisis? Merely pledging a series of reforms that involve greater public spending (such as improving public services, increasing pensions and other benefits or increasing wages) is both an insufficient response to the scale of the problem and could easily be argued against (by pointing out that such reforms could not be afforded without much greater borrowing than already planned by mainstream parties). In my view, we need to point out the need for a sudden and thorough change of society – i.e. a socialist revolution (a term that many socialists are reluctant to use even if they agree with it, but I am less reluctant than most and even include “revolutionary socialist” in my main email address).
Struggles of political parties/organisations
There is a wide range of political organisations in society, each of which has a particular aim and strategy and tactics for achieving that aim (more vague for some than others).
For some organisations, the aim is to maintain the sort of capitalist society we already live in, perhaps entrenching this form of society to an even greater extent than it is already, which could even make future revolutionary change impossible. In my view, this is the primary aim of New Labour, and lies behind its many attacks on civil liberties (some of which, including ID cards and 42-day detention without charge, are even opposed by the Tories).
For other organisations, the aim is to change society in some way. Some such changes would of course be much more positive than others.
Organisations vary from political parties (that tend to be open about their views and what sort of society they want) to deeply secretive conspiratorial organisations (including those of the state such as the official secret services but others are even more secretive, some of which play an overall positive role) that infiltrate other organisations in society to try to achieve their aim. Since capitalism has existed for a long time, and left-wing activists have long recognised the problem of infiltration not just for spying purposes but to hinder (or help) organisations from within, with some setting up conspiratorial organisations of their own prompting right-wingers to take counter-measures, there is a massively complex web of conspiratorial organisations in society. Additionally, individual activists may have views opposed to those of organisations they are members of, that they may have deliberately entered in order to subvert from within or views (of themselves or the organisations as a whole) may have subsequently changed.
Sometimes conspirators come to the surface, acting together in a concerted way, which can provoke rival conspirators from alleging that they are carrying out a plot. As I write these words, allies of Gordon Brown are blaming “Blairite” MPs, some of whom are openly calling for a Labour leadership election, for plotting against him.
Socialist organisations tend to be even more prone to faction fighting. For example, Tommy Sheridan alleged that a clique within the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) were conspiring to undermine him by backing up the News of the World’s allegation that he had visited a “swingers’ club” in Manchester (which he allegedly admitted to at a leadership meeting). This faction later coalesced into the now defunct SSP United Left. Two open factions (platforms) – the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and CWI Scotland – left the SSP with Sheridan to set up a new party, Solidarity, after Sheridan won his defamation trial but realised that he had insufficient support within the SSP to make a leadership bid. I am of the opinion that the SWP, particularly their London-based leadership, is heavily infiltrated by conspiratorial organisations hostile to the struggle for socialism (i.e. on the side of big business in the struggles in society). This explains their high level of sectarianism towards other socialist organisations, emphasis on recruitment rather than winning struggles, and the twists and turns of their leadership that are slavishly followed by most of their rank and file.
Most members of a political party, or conspiratorial organisation infiltrating such a party and other organisations in society, are very loyal to at least one such organisation. Members will tend to back each other up, be particularly loyal to the organisation’s leaders, and speak and act in accordance with the organisation’s positions on particular issues even if they personally disagree with them. Not doing so would be likely to entail losing the trust of fellow members and being ostracised from the organisation, and (unless they are also members of a different organisation or know of one compatible with their views that they could defect to) giving up on the struggle to change society (or prevent change if that is their wish).
Informal groupings of people, including friends, relatives and colleagues at work, can be similar to political organisations in how they operate, except that they lack the democratic structures that form the basis of many organisations. People in such informal groupings may discuss amongst themselves and cooperate according to an agreed position.
Mind reading, mind control and AI
This section is much more speculative than the rest of the document and I considered removing it since I thought it might put some of you off. There are some important points in it that I want to share the world, however, so please bear with me or skip to the next section if you prefer!
There are definitely some particularly powerful organisations in society that use a form of mind control. To a certain extent, this happens naturally by consent as a result of normal interactions in society, with members of a formal or informal grouping acting collectively together. Religious cults particularly are alleged to use brainwashing, but even people participating in mainstream churches, political organisations or important organisations such as the police force, tend to adopt the viewpoints of those they interact with.
I think that everybody participates in mind reading and mind control, to a limited extent, in our everyday activities. We pick up non-verbal cues from other people, as well as what they say, do or type on a computer. I’m unsure as to whether we can read brainwaves although some people, including some who I have met, appear to have such a high psychic ability that this is likely – and I even once exhibited some ability in this department myself! If we can read someone’s mind, we can interpret that information and modify our interactions with that person to exert some degree of control over him or her. [I haven’t met Derren Brown, who seems to have a stronger ability to control minds than anyone else in the world, judging by his TV programmes (one of which involved selecting people in a large theatre with a few throws of a cuddly toy proving that he didn’t use stooges).] At one point in my life I (wrongly) thought I had betrayed humanity for all time by revealing a secret through someone reading my mind, and as a consequence I think my mind taught itself to transmit false brainwaves!
A particularly scary idea I have had, that could well be wrong but I am raising here to provoke debate, is that some (perhaps most) people in society are being completely controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) programs and are effectively robots! A program could do this by gradually building a better model of someone’s mind and predicting the possible choices of the person (outputs) as a result of interpreting his or her senses (inputs). By manipulating those inputs, which of course entails controlling enough other people who interact with him or her including the mass media, the program could eventually restrict the person to one possible decision at any particular time, thereby eliminating his or her free will! Once a person is being controlled in this way, he or she could only regain free will when the computer controlling that person is turned off. If society operates in this way, it is probably only those who are particularly rebellious and avoid doing the obvious (such as buying the products adverts encourage people to buy) who retain free will.
It is possible that free will is an illusion, and that people’s outputs are always determined by their inputs over time (including their memories of past events). This is an atheist explanation of society, utilised in the Marxist theories of dialectical and historical materialism (where “materialism” means that everything is a result of material conditions), which effectively means that we are living in a world of robots. I know I have free will (I cannot explain why but I know it is true) but it is possible that I am different from most (perhaps all) other people on the planet! If this is the case, computer modelling of the world would be much more practicable than otherwise. Some Marxists appear to believe that there is a class of aliens, with the term “alien class” used frequently in Marxist literature (apparently first used by Friedrich Engels), and I suspect they regard me as an alien as an explanation for my unpredictable behaviour! A Marxist called Rosa Lichtenstein refers to “alien-class” with a hyphen in several places on her website, devoted to opposing dialectical materialism, which I suspect is her way of clarifying that she really consider that there are aliens on the Earth. She insisted to me that she meant the same thing as “boss class” (i.e. big business or “the bourgeoisie” in the usual Marxist terminology), but if so, why be ambiguous? Incidentally, I have suspected that Rosa is actually a computer program/robot herself, based on her interactions with me over the internet and a huge number of facile points she has made on an internet forum, as explained on my page about her on my socialist website.
Another explanation for how society works that I have held in the past is that there is some sort of collective consciousness (called Gaia by James Lovelock) combining the free will of everybody in the world, which ensures (or will ensure) that things work out. I applied this (in my message “Football, fate, Gaia theory and socialism”) to the result of football matches, particularly the Champions League final between Manchester United and Chelsea. I now think that this argument is flawed, because often things don’t work out (temporarily at least). This suggests there could be two collective consciousnesses in the world, with good processes in people’s minds cooperating to try to ensure things work out and bad processes cooperating against them. This is an atheist scientific explanation of society, but from a religious point of view the two consciousnesses can be considered God and the Devil! However, it is probably too simplistic; with a football match there are only two sides, but there are many sides in society – there is a class struggle taking place between the working class and big business but I want a different outcome to the dominance of either class (a society in which everyone is in control).
I have sometimes thought that I should have been able to work out whether we all have free will or not. If it is an illusion for most people, then maybe it’s better to keep that illusion, at least until the struggle is over and the world is free. A lot of good people in the world have religious views to some extent, and want to believe that there is some sort of afterlife in which they can become reacquainted with friends and relatives that have died. I have held such views myself, and still think that there may be precisely three parallel universes – the one we are now living in, a heaven (where those who are overall good end up) and a hell (where those who are overall bad end up, but since they would be with likeminded people, they should actually enjoy being there unlike the eternal torture religious people usually threaten non-believers with and that an ethical god wouldn’t subject anyone to). I’ve become more sceptical about such religious ideas lately, largely as a result of subscribing to New Scientist, which is itself a further indication that I am not immune to mind control!
I have known for a number of years that the world is planned to a large degree (as I explained in my song/poem “The World Is Planned”). Too many events occur that would be coincidences if that was not the case, and since there are big vested interests in particular outcomes of the struggles for the future of the planet, it is only rational for such planning to take place – in human brains if not on computers. As an AI expert, I know that all the major problems in modelling human behaviour on computers have been solved, except perhaps for the problem of scaling up AI solutions to real people and the whole world – but organisations like the CIA probably have much more sophisticated hardware and software than you or I have access to.
I was the sole developer and main designer of an AI/simulation language called SDML (which stands for “Strictly Declarative Modelling Language”), which is capable of modelling human minds. Being based on logic, and with a lot of optimisations that enable it to operate quickly without breaking the logic (unlike with the main logic programming language Prolog), it could be a very useful tool for good conspirators to use. I need to do a bit more work on SDML, but intend to publish a new version soon as open source software on the website http://www.sdml.org.uk. I am mentioning it here partly because I want my main allies to know about it, so I can be more confident that it will be used more for good than bad purposes, and partly to invite feedback over whether publishing it is a good idea. I have sometimes been wary of providing bad conspiratorial organisations with better software, but I’m sure the CIA already has sophisticated software written in other languages that it would be pointless for them to rewrite in SDML, and I feel that such conspiratorial organisations are now in a weaker position relative to good conspirators than they have been in the past. It leaves the question, however, of whether I (and my allies who are reading this message) want to increase the likelihood of good conspiratorial organisations, that I agree with on some but not all issues, to become dominant, or whether it would be better for the sort of society we end up with to be mainly influenced by many people’s free will (if that is not indeed an illusion)…
What sort of political parties/networks do we advocate?
In a newsletter I distributed on May Day this year and on the Foundation website, I raised the question of what sort of political party (or “network” for those, particularly of an anarchist persuasion, who are put off by the term “party”) should call for. I pointed out that broad socialist parties uniting revolutionaries and reformists (and even broader parties that welcome non-socialists) were failing, and suggested the following alternatives:
Since raising this question, I have come down in favour of a revolutionary anti-capitalist party, recognising that non-violent anarchists are better allies of revolutionary socialists than reformists. My main criticism of anarchism, apart from the advocacy of violence or destruction of property by some among their ranks, both of which I would generally consider counter-productive, are their abstentionism from electoral politics (although many of them welcome success by socialists in this field while not wanting to participate in such activities themselves), their view that you can go immediately to a stateless moneyless society (which Marxists generally call “communism”) immediately after a revolution (whereas I think a state would be needed to deal with crime and the possibility of a capitalist counter-revolution) and their use of consensual decision making rather than voting (which sometimes works well but can allow minorities, who are sometimes hostile infiltrators, to exert too much power and veto radical proposals). Nevertheless, anarchists’ non-hierarchical ways of operating allows them to more easily identify hostile infiltrators and ostracise them. This means that anarchists mainly consist of well-intentioned individuals, compared to hierarchical parties and organisations, which have a mixture of members with good and bad intentions.
I have also recognised probably the most important lesson from the demise of the Scottish Socialist Party – that a credible electoral alternative to the mainstream parties will necessitate splits in those parties, particularly when faced with undemocratic electoral systems (particularly the misnamed first-past-the-post system, where the candidate with the highest number of votes in each constituency is elected, used for elections to the UK parliament). This does not mean that the establishment of the SSP was a waste of time; on the contrary, there would be a much lower prospect of a significant left-wing split from Labour now if the SSP hadn’t shown that far left parties can achieve electoral successes. I fully supported the “open turns” when I was a member of Militant, and was the only member of the Socialist Party (as it became known as in England and Wales) at the 1998 European School of the CWI (which linked us to organisation of like-minded people around the world) to speak in the debate in support of the Scots’ proposal to transform the Scottish Socialist Alliance into a party (that became the SSP). However, I recognise also that some of those who opposed the open turns and stayed in the Labour Party (publishing the journal Socialist Appeal) have played an important role too. Although I have recently resigned from the SSP and joined the Labour Party, judging that I can play more of a role in helping foment a Labour split than operating outside Labour at the moment, I recognise that those still involved in parties like the SSP can play an important role in keeping the far left together in preparation for a more serious project arising from a split.
Whereas I would argue for a revolutionary anti-capitalist party as I said above, it is perhaps more likely for a broad socialist party to arise out of a split in the Labour Party, due to the composition of members currently in that party. If such a broad party is formed, I would argue for revolutionary socialist politics within it, and unite with others who want to transform it into more of a revolutionary party. In the current economic climate, calls for a revolution could receive a wide echo within society as a whole, and be seen as more serious alternative to the mainstream parties than merely calling for reforms.
If revolutionary socialists fail to take advantage of the opportunities of the current economic crisis, then more right-wing forces will do so instead. In some places authoritarian right-wing forces including fascists could make big progress. Some people, particularly on the internet, promote a two-dimensional “political compass” to determine people’s political views, with a left/right (socialist/capitalist) axis plus a libertarian/authoritarian axis. I come down heavily as a left-wing libertarian, as do anarchists (some of whom call themselves “libertarian socialists” or “libertarian communists”). I recognise however that the more important of the two battles (libertarian and socialist) to win is the libertarian one, because we would still have the freedom to organise and try to launch a further revolution in a libertarian capitalist world. If their suggestion of charity proves an adequate safety net (as is very unlikely in my opinion), then our freedom to set up socialist mini-states would prove attractive, and if it doesn’t then socialist revolution would become eminently achievable.
I have argued, via my Ethical Capitalism Network and a “Close all tax loopholes – force the rich to pay their fair share of tax” group at Facebook, for an ethical capitalist revolution – with serious measures involving confiscation of the assets of companies that use remaining tax havens or relocate overseas to avoid tax or use sweatshops. The Liberal Democrats, at the conference that is taking place as I compose these words, seem to be taking up the idea of closing tax loopholes quite seriously. I want to use the Ethical Capitalism Network as part of the strategy to achieve socialism, but the left has to get its act together if we are to achieve such an outcome! The announcement by Micro$oft’s Bill Gates (until recently the richest person in the world) that he would give all his wealth to charity when he retires suggests, particularly if his lead is followed by other rich people, that a libertarian capitalist solution to the world’s problems may be viable…
How best can we unite left-wingers on the internet and within organisations in society?
In the above section of the document, I suggested various ideas for parties/networks that revolutionary socialists should advocate and/or get involved in if they are formed. Right-wingers are organised, in conspiratorial and open organisations, and we need to be organised too in order to combat them effectively.
In recent years, I have set up a number of virtual organisations, consisting of websites and discussion forums, to bring like-minded people together on the internet around a particular common position. This started with Manchester International Socialist Movement (ISM), which I initially tried to set up as a new revolutionary socialist organisation linked to the ISM in Scotland (a now defunct platform of the SSP known as Scottish Militant Labour before the SSP’s formation) for which I received little interest. When my politics diverged from that of the ISM, I rebranded it as the Manchester international socialist mailing list. I have subsequently set up the following:
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