what is NATO doing in libya?

Joe Thorne looks at the evidence, and draws some conclusions

The calamity of a people is beneficial to others 

Libyan Proverb [1]

The NATO powers are not intervening in Syria or Bahrain, where pro-democracy movements are also subject to brutal suppression.  They did not intervene in Gaza during Cast Lead, or in Tamil Eelam during the offensive which wiped out thousands of Tamils.  While millions of dollars are spent on cruise missiles and aerial bombing, UNICEF, the same powers in their guise as protectors of children, say they are worried that because of insufficient resources to deal with famine “65,000 children in Kenya alone are at acute risk of dying.”  Indeed, “Britain trained and equipped some of the Libyan special forces who inflicted such horrors on cities like Misrata. Western states continue to train Saudi forces, and this may well have much the same effect.”

We don’t need to labour the point: the NATO powers are not ‘humanitarians’, their motives are not ‘humanitarian’, and what they do has nothing to do with the defence of human life.  Could it be the case that their malign motives are a given, but the objective outcome of their policy may nonetheless be welcome?  It was not the case in Kosovo or Iraq.  The point of reminding ourselves of NATO’s hypocrisy is not just that they are hypocrites: it is to understand how the specific, very much non-humanitarian, objectives of the NATO powers will play out in their actual policy in the coming weeks, months, and years.

cleaners strike 15th july at guildhall, city of london

Support the cleaners’ strike at the Guildhall, in the City of London! Picket outside from 5:30am ’til 10am on Friday 15th July: see here for map. Read below for details of the dispute.

The Guildhall, London according to its own website was designed to show the power of London’s ruling elite. This tradition is continued today by annual speeches by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England. The most recent event was a dinner in tribute to the new Ronald Reagan statue attended by the Foreign Secretary, Condoleezza Rice and other dignitaries.

the beautiful game in ireland: a story of neglect

Donal O’Falluin writes on Irish working-class football culture

On the northside of Dublin, there is a football stadium. Only a short walk from the 82,000 seater capacity Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, a small stadium with a capacity of about 8,000 sits. Pele, Zidane and many other greats have run out onto the pitch of Dalymount Park. It is considered by many ‘the home of Irish football’. It is symbolic of where the game is today that this historically important stadium, once home to the Irish international side, today crumbles. Like Dalymount Park herself, football in Ireland has endured a fall from grace.

On paper, the football experience in Ireland is something which greatly excites the English football faithful, from an outsiders perspective. With standing in stadiums commonplace, and terraces still the order of the day for many, not to mention a ticket cost averaging €15, it’s an almost romantic throwback to a time before the topflight game in the United Kingdom passed into the hands of speculators, becoming a sort of ’22 men on a pitch’ version of Monopoly among the world’s wealthy. On the ground though it’s evident the game in Ireland is in a seriously troubled state.

some notes on libya and imperialist intervention today

Joe Thorne spent a week in Western Libya during June.

The following is a series of disconnected notes responding to the questions which I am most often asked about my visit, which was an observer of, but not at all a participant in, events.  As a communist returning from a civil war – one which is, in some sense, a revolution, but ultimately no more than a bourgeois one – the most frequent question I’ve been asked is: is there any visible class or political division within the rebel camp?  The blunt answer to this, at least in the West, is: no.

A rebel flag is held aloft at a funeral in Nalut, Western Libya

The economic base

Within Western Libya, the every-day economy is not currently organised in a capitalist way (although by no means a communist one either).   Around 80% of the population have fled to refugee camps in Tunisia, and there are hardly any commercial businesses operating – perhaps a small shop selling cigarettes here and there.  All food is provided by international aid organisations or imported centrally by the rebels, and distributed for free.  Basics, such as petrol, are allocated centrally by the military council.  Hardly anyone works for money now: all those who have stayed are staying to fight, tend to the injured, do media or humanitarian work, or simply – as in the case of many older people – to stay in solidarity with those who are doing those things.

a weekend at marxism: how do we relate to the SWP?

David Broder reflects on this weekend’s Marxism festival, a thousands-strong conference organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party. He argues that the libertarian left should be doing more to engage with SWP comrades in order to provide a positive alternative for those put off by how it organises.

Marxism is the biggest event on the British left. Across five days several thousand people converge on London for the Socialist Workers’ Party summer school, including representatives of most other significant left groups. The conference itself is SWP self-promotion, so they do not invite groups they disagree with for debate: they prefer to give a platform to ‘big name’ trade union leaders, politicians like Tony Benn or Marxist academics, who may sermonise for socialism but won’t really question the SWP’s own modus operandi.

This is a great shame, since ‘Marxism’ has great unfulfilled potential. It could be a weekend for the left to debate strategy and ideas in a collective way. Instead, the meetings are heavy on top-table speakers, while SWP audience members tend simply to reaffirm what the speaker has already said. Often in an anti-cuts meeting or similar, The Commune members will question whether we should really be collaborating with Labour politicians, what kind of direct action is appropriate, or if we should be making more radical, positive proposals rather than purely defensive demands. The SWP stock reply is: this isn’t the time to debate among ourselves, we need to be ‘out there’ campaigning. OK, so when can we have these debates?

making a killing: suicide under capitalism

Tom Denning writes on the social meaning of suicide

Some years ago when the streets were filled with red flags, I saw two comrades die at home clutching a common gas tube.  Few of us cried then, and each of us knew that they were crying for themselves, for the irreducible substance of our imaginary fears, for all the questions the political struggle left unresolved . . . Nobody thinks of waving red flags round these silent deaths.  Why?  Because we can’t attribute any ideal meaning to them?  Because we can’t abstract from the complex and confused personal reasons which caused these deaths? [1]

                                                                                – Lea Melandri, 1977

Can we not?  After all, as Erwin Stengel put it,

Suicide appears to be the most personal action an individual can take, yet social relationships play an important part in its causation and it has a profound social impact.  While it seems to aim solely at destroying the self, it is also an act of aggression against others.  The study of suicide illustrates that human action, however personal, is also interaction with other people, and that the individual cannot be understood in isolation from his social matrix.[2]

national divisions and the eurozone in crisis

Oisín Mac Giollamóir explores the complexity of how the Eurozone crisis affects particular states

If the working class has no country it is for one reason: because capital has no country. But of course capital is often national. The emergence of the nation state and capitalism are contemporaneous. As capitalism emerged so did the nation state. As various historical class relations are dissolved into the capital/labour relation, the notion of the nation’s common interest emerges. But what happens when the nation becomes a constraint on capital accumulation? It expands.

Over the last 60ish years, through the emergence of the EU, Europe has seen the emergence of an integrated capitalist system. However, a major limit of this integration is that the national myth, the idea of a common interest between capital and labour, has not developed on a European level.

sheffield anti-cuts: a fairer capitalism?

Barry Biddulph found the Sheffield anti-cuts alliance heavier on top-table speakers than real politics or organisation

The second public meeting of the campaign against the cuts in Sheffield was was far smaller and less representative than the first founding meeting last year, despite the recent demos and strike votes. Less than one hundred people sat in a University lecture room with seats for five hundred, to listen to seven speakers. It was a trade union rally, not a meeting for activists to discuss the socialist alternative to the crisis of capitalism and how to organise to make the transition to  a real movement.

The character of the speeches was very defensive. It was all about keeping what we had. Defending our welfare state against the Nasty Tories as if the Labour Party was not making cuts in Manchester and elsewhere. There was no criticism of the Labour Party or those union leaders reluctant to fight the cuts. The political implication of the speeches was the Labour Party could somehow represent the fight back or to register that there was a trade union fightback. There was no analysis of the economic crisis and no speaker including a Permanent Revolution supporter, mentioned the S word. John McDonnell MP came closest with his call for a new society.  

another UN presidential (s)election in haiti

José Antonio Gutiérrez D. writes on the new order in UN-occupied Haiti

Seven years ago, a bloody coup sponsored by the CIA and elements nostalgic the monstrous Duvalier dictatorship, and fulfilled by paramilitary thugs linked to the old armed forces, toppled president Jean Bertrand Aristide. That moment started an ongoing military occupation in the country, first by French, Canadian, Chilean and (of course) US troops. The latter kidnapped Aristide, who was no revolutionary, but advocated a number of minimal reforms that were unbearable for both the US and the Haitian elite, and so they put him on a plane to the Central African Republic on 29th February 2004.

Then, in June, the military occupation was handed to a UN force, the MINUSTAH, which is led by Brazil and composed almost entirely by Latin American armed forces, as well as other “freedom-loving” armies such as that of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Angola, Morocco, etc. 10,000 died as a direct result of this act of international gangsterism.

on the march… at work

A London public sector worker striking on 30th June wrote to The Commune about an action which gave confidence to her and her workmates.

I work in a big public sector workplace, where redundancies have just been announced. Not only are people going to lose their jobs, but some of the services will just be scrapped and very poor and vulnerable people will lose the services that we provide.

People knew the redundancies were coming and there was a lot of anxiety, over who, how many… When we recieved the results there was outrage as it was felt to be decided very unfairly. My department sent a message to management that we were not going to accept these staff being treated so badly and we rejected this list. In the end the process was delayed and then the list was drawn up again to include basically pretty much everybody.

The day to day atmosphere was complicated. On the one hand people were tired and upset. The department has had a few redundancies year on year so people have watched again and again as their colleagues lose their jobs, the department gets smaller, people lose their right to the service, fees go up. Everybody knows if they don’t lose their job this year they might lose it next year. We are a relatively active and traditionally left wing workplace and people had been on a lot of demos this year, there have been some good campaigns around defending the service but there was a tiredness and a bleakness in people’s faces.

On the other hand people were going from angry to furious. The name of a place where recently people had taken very strong strike action suddenly began to be heard again and again in the corridors. The year on year attacks seemed to be making people feel simultaneously ground down and wound up. In a meeting with management a co-worker stormed out. More and more often little meetings broke out, voices were raised.

egypt: “democracy, social justice and human dignity” – but when, and how?

Tali Janner-Klausner reports from Cairo on the unfolding Egyptian revolution, including the recent international solidarity conference

Hosni Mubarak was a hated despot, and became a symbol of the many, varied and interlinked hardships that Egyptians face. At this month’s “First Forum of Solidarity with the Arab Revolutions” there were no doubts that though the symbol has come crashing down, the root causes of these hardships remain and must be confronted.

the establishment sacrificed Mubarak, but want to hold back further change

The intense popular anger that came into its own so spectacularly in Tahrir Square festered through decades of oppression under a corrupt and restrictive dictatorship. Economic and social issues cannot be separated from the political concerns that the ‘great and the good’, from Obama to the world’s media, choose to focus on. Egypt is a country of staggering exploitation and inequality. Half the population is struggling under the poverty line of $2 a day while Mubarak may have stolen up to $70 billion for himself and his family. Unemployment and food prices rose while lucrative industrial monopolies or powerful ministerial portfolios were given to loyal and often incompetent cronies who wrecked what they didn’t steal.  

first class solidarity

A letter to The Commune

A brief report: around one hundred postal workers walked out of the Almeida St (Islington N1) delivery office on Wednesday 8th June. The walkout was sparked by the suspension of a postal worker on a trumped-up charge. The background context was an increasing pressure on all workers over ‘absorption’: that is, taking on extra work over and above each worker’s own round, often to cover absences or staff shortages.

The worker in question was well known in the office to be of good character, and scrupulous in following procedures. Absorption often leads to work going over proper hours, and the main means management have to enforce this is bullying and disciplinary action.

Workers held a canteen meeting, and then walked out for three hours, waiting at the gates until CWU negotiators reported that management had climbed down. Workers seemed confident that management would have to cave, resisting a compromise proposal that the worker would not be suspended, but would have a manager follow them around on their walk.

Workers also held out for a guarantee that there would be no reprisals against individual workers. Perhaps this will give postal workers more confidence that they can resist bullying and threats related to absorption, not only in Islington but around the country. Immediate direct action, based on a mass meeting, meant that management couldn’t get around the action by hiring scab labour, or bringing in managers from elsewhere – a very different dynamic to the 2009 official action.

Tom, London

grayling’s atrocity: what it means and what we’re going to do about it.

Daniel Harvey looks at New College of the Humanities, AC Grayling’s private ‘university’

I remember a time, not very long ago, despite seeming it, when a young student stood up to give a speech at a debate on the necessity of the New Atheism at his college. The speech ranged through all the usual canards thrown at the religious, the cruelty of nature, the unnecessary suffering in the world, the emptiness of the universe.  Of course, this student devotee of Richard Dawkins, Grayling, PZ Myers, Christopher Hitchens (shoot me now), was myself, and in that vain, naïve enthusiasm even, remained until the day I discovered that this was about as intellectually fulfilling as squashing ants.

grayling: wipe the smile off his face

But this feature of the atheist calling has always been fascinating – why so much time and effort spent on continually stomping on the face of the religious phenomenon, when it is so easy to do? Of course, you ask any followers of Richard Dawkins who attended his ‘talk’ which I happily raided with some comrades the other day, and what will come back is a stream words about the threat of ‘accomodationism’, about the fact religion is so powerful, growing, spreading its tentacles into education, and practically undermining the entire Enlightenment.  But for one of the original founders of this movement H. L. Mencken, the great liberal journalist and commentator on the Scopes Trial, religion was more than this, it was the possession of the ‘immortal scum’ of human history, a whole layer of society that always threatened to overwhelm the elite, intelligent minority. In intellectual circles he said, all that “survives under the name of Christianity, above the stratum of that mob, is no more than a sort of Humanism, with a little more supernaturalism in it than you will find in mathematics or political economy.”

the commune issue 23 out now!

Issue 23 of The Commune is now available. It features articles on the ongoing struggles in Egypt, the build up to the 30th June strikes, AC Grayling’s private university, and much more.

Click the picture above to see PDF, or see below for list of articles as they are uploaded. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you are interested in purchasing a printed copy, or in distributing The Commune.

Organising

slutwalk: because we’ve had enough – Bahar Mustafa reports on London SlutWalk

grayling’s atrocity: and what to do about it – Daniel Harvey looks at New College of the Humanities, AC Grayling’s private ‘university’

dear comrades – letters on June 30th; community organising; post workers’ strike

International

the revolution in egypt – Tali Janner-Klausner writes from Cairo on the military provisional government and efforts to deepen the struggle

nobody expects the spanish revolution – Reports from the town-square occupations movement in Seville and Barcelona

another UN presidential (s)election in haiti – José Antonio Gutiérrez D. writes on the new order in UN-occupied Haiti

Society

the councils of despair – Sheila Cohen explores the significance of last month’s elections

why us? possilpark youth speak out against dispersal zone – Dawn Hunter introduces an interview she conducted with youth in the Possilpark area of Glasgow, subject to a trial ‘dispersal zone’ order

the beautiful game in ireland: a story of neglect – Donal O’Falluin writes on Irish working-class football culture

Theory and history

national divisions and the eurozone in crisis – Oisín Mac Giollamóir explores the complexity of how the Eurozone crisis affects particular states

making a killing: suicide under capitalism – Tom Denning writes on the social meaning of suicide

the first working-class revolution – 140 years after its defeat, the legacy of the Paris Commune is still hotly contested. Clifford Biddulph explains its meaning