Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Friday, October 08, 2021

Paul Foot Speaks

 On Orwell and 1984





















On Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution

Paul Foot once declared, that the Haitian Revolution which erupted in 1791, was 'perhaps the most glorious victory of the oppressed over the oppressors in all history'.

In two brilliant lectures, delivered in 1978 and 1991 and published here for the first time, Paul Foot makes a bid to bring home to his audience the richness of the Haitian Revolution.
There are few better possible introductions today than this powerful retelling of the story of the most successful slave revolt in history.

Listen to the 1978 lecture here: https://soundcloud.com/user-738785452/paul-foot-toussaint-louverture

Listen to the 1991 lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-jFTtS-6sw

Thursday, March 04, 2021

World Against Racism - March 20th - UN Anti-Racism Day of Action

 



Tuesday, February 16, 2021

Ed Rooksby (1975-2021) - socialist, blogger and political theorist




The tragic and shocking death of British socialist intellectual Ed Rooksby at the young age of 46 after suffering from Long Covid has prompted me to return to this blog after a hiatus. For I had the great privilege of first meeting Ed Rooksby in person probably around the time that I began this blog back in 2005 - and he had also launched his blog International Rooksbyism back in 2004. He later than me realised the potential risks and drawbacks for being too open about his politics online, and soon changed the name of his original blog from the strident sounding name it had originally to the rather more cryptic 'I.R'. to avoid it coming up in search engines too much when he was busy teaching students and trying to get a permanent academic job - which he eventually succeeded at with Ruskin until the managers there decided to 'restructure' and drive through redundancies which left him returning to York University where he was teaching when he died. His blog - both in its original form and then later from 2011 onwards in his own name give a good sense of his talents as a political writer and thinker - while he also made important interventions in various scholarly and the likes of the Guardian against things like Blue Labour (which still refuses to die).

In person, Ed was as witty, unsectarian, self-depreciating, kind, generous, principled and smart a socialist as those who only knew him online can imagine he would be, and it was always great whenever our paths occasionally met, often at some Marxist conference or other. We obviously had a long-running gentle disagreement between us about reform or revolution - both in person and online as bloggers - (and I remember I once wrote a tongue in cheek post critiquing his politics entitled ''International Rooksbyism at the Crossroads...Or, a case study in twenty-first century 'centrism'?'' but he was such a nice guy he always forgave me such slippages into sectarianism. I will treasure the memory in particular of our last meeting, a glorious evening spent in a pub in May 2019 in Oxford, which allowed me the privilege and opportunity to mull over the travails of Corbynism and the general state of the left with him.

Ed would have shaped the lives of hundreds of students through his teaching, and his passing - so sad and shocking - represents a huge loss to the entire British Left. Only a couple of weeks before he died we had corresponded by Whatsapp, and he described his condition - perhaps because it was me, and so knowing I would appreciated the reference to Lenin - as 'two steps forward and one back all the time'. Sadly Ed never made it to the Finland Station. My sincere condolences to all who knew him - and particularly to those friends, family and comrades who were much closer to him than me.

RIP Comrade Rooksby - Viva International Rooksbyism!

Edited to add: A Bibliography of Ed Rooksby's writings

https://rooksbyism.wordpress.com/bibliography/

Sunday, April 05, 2020

Arise, Sir Keir!

 
Leaving Coronavirus and its consequences to one side, let us register that in terms of official British politics once again there is stillness and calm after the recent disturbance of the force.  Order has been restored to the British political galaxy.  The Labour Party - an avowedly democratic socialist party - has ended its experiment with having a sincere democratic socialist for leader and moved on from 'Corbynism'.   Trying to change the system in piecemeal Fabian fashion, boring from within in the most boring fashion imaginable, can recommence with Sir Keir Starmer at the helm, picking up from where Ed Miliband left off.  The bosses of the CBI and media barons can relax and breathe easy, as Labour no longer offers the threat to profit margins they once feared it might.  

When Jeremy Corbyn was first elected Labour leader back in 2015, I wrote a piece, 'The Spectre of Corbynism'.  Sadly - tragically given the hopes, energy and time invested by so many in so few - it only remained a spectre - not a reality.  On the day of the 2019 general election itself - 12 December 2019 - before the result was known - I wrote the following notes to myself as part of a meeting I spoke at earlier that evening:

'A spectre is haunting British politics — the spectre of Corbynism.  All the powers of the old order have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre:  Republican American President Donald Trump and former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, from Rupert Murdoch to the BBC, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to serving generals who would consider mutiny if necessary to Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 who has declared Corbyn a threat to national security who is not suitable to be Prime Minister.

Two things result from these facts:

1 Corbyn is the most left-wing leader of the Labour Party ever – there are some parallels with George Lansbury in the 1930s but unlike even Lansbury Jeremy Corbyn has remained on the radical left of the party throughout his whole career and has not had previous experience of government office.  Corbyn unlike Lansbury has managed to survive the attempts by the Labour right to remove him before he has had the chance of fighting not one but now two general elections.

2 He has a chance of actually becoming Prime Minister – and the prospect of a socialist as prime minister terrifies the British and international ruling class – just as it gives hopes to millions suffering under austerity and wanting another more sustainable, just and humane world.  


He represents not the spectre of Communism as such – but merely of social democracy – which was supposed to have been killed off and left for dead amidst the triumph of Thatcherism ('There is no alternative') and then Thatcher's greatest achievement -  Blairism – now its suddenly back from the dead thanks Jeremy Corbyn MP and the movement around him.

I first saw Corbyn speak at a tuition fee demo organised by NUS in the late 1990s – warning that once fees were introduced by the Blair government they would go up as happened in Australia.  His record of anti-war activism, anti-imperialist activism and anti-racist activism speaks for itself.

But there is a problem of base and superstructure – politically and intellectually Corbynism was in many ways great and put the principles of working class struggle and the ideas of socialism out there into the mainsteam - but it lacked an 'economic base' underpinning things - there was just not a socialist movement (or wider mass movements on the streets fighting in defence of the NHS or housing, or mass movements against racism and war and for Palestine and so on)  – nor a sense of a working class confident of acting for itself – but instead just a sense that we could get change by passively voting for Corbyn - reflecting the decades of defeat the British working class have suffered since Thatcherism.

It took 17 general strikes in Greece to elect an anti-austerity government in Syriza – the recent UCU strikes in higher education for 8 days were something but not quite this.

The Labour right have repeatedly tried to grind him down and crush Corbyn - 'Project Anaconda' – it was dubbed – he fought this off to some extent but compromised with the right – eg over Trident nuclear submarines  / Brexit / Palestine / and so on - and so by 2019 he is a much weakened leader....'

That was some of what I felt back in December 2019 - but I felt Labour would do better than expected because of the working class anger that is out there and goes unrecognised by the middle class Guardian commentariat  -and so I thought perhaps Labour would get enought to ensure a hung parliament and form a coalition with the SNP or something - it was as we know not to be.  Charlie Kimber has written a long piece for International Socialism  on why Labour lost that terrible night in December 2019 - and how that working class anger managed to be tapped into by Boris Johnson's Tories as a result of Labour's liberal and elitist position on Brexit - so I am not going to repeat this general argument.

What it means now though is that the so called 'parliamentary road to socialism' is firmly closed.  Sir Keir Starmer - with the support of the Labour right and some useful liberal idiots on the Labour left - played his part in helping close that road above all by leading the charge for Labour to adopt a pro-EU position and disregard the referendum of 2016.  The Labour right and Starmer knew that Labour taking a remain position would either work electorally - in which case they have helped Labour once again become a party that loyally serves the interests of British big business by getting Britain back into the EU - or if it didn't work electorally - which anyone could have guessed would have been the more likely option - then Corbynism would be finished and the period where the hard Left were in control of the commanding heights of the Labour Party would be over.   The latter proved the case - and now the right will let the Starmerite soft left do their work disciplining the hard left, making Labour more 'electable and respectable' and making the party safe for Blairism and capital and empire once again - and then when Starmer fails in the next election - the Labour right will be in prime position to ensure a Blairite retakes the leadership.

That the revolutionary road to socialism still remains open for those willing to embark on it is no doubt small comfort right now for the tens of thousands of socialists in Britain who have seen their dreams and hopes of a Jeremy Corbyn government dashed and now smashed.  But we should take an international perspective at moments of defeat - and look at the recent revolutionary movements across the Middle East and elsewhere - as well as the mass strikes and protests that have rocked Macron's neo liberal government in France over the last couple of years - to see how hope lies not with trying to win internal battles inside the Labour Party anymore - real power lies outside parliament - and building the kind of social solidarity that we are seeing emerge amid the Coronavirus pandemic - and the wider fightback and working class resistance against Johnson's useless and disastrous Tory government.

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Saturday, March 14, 2020

Mike Davis on COVID-19

The only certainty is that rich countries and rich classes will focus on saving themselves to the exclusion of international solidarity and medical aid. Walls not vaccines: could there be a more evil template for the future? … Access to lifeline medicines, including vaccines, antibiotics, and antivirals, should be a human right, universally available at no cost. If markets can’t provide incentives to cheaply produce such drugs, then governments and non-profits should take responsibility for their manufacture and distribution. The survival of the poor must at all times be accounted a higher priority than the profits of Big Pharma.  The current pandemic expands the argument: capitalist globalization now appears to be biologically unsustainable in the absence of a truly international public health infrastructure. But such an infrastructure will never exist until peoples’ movements break the power of Big Pharma and for-profit healthcare.
Full article here

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Sunday, February 09, 2020

#WorldAgainstRacism demonstrations on Saturday 21 March









With Trump in the White House, Johnson in Downing Street and the racist and fascist right winning mass support internationally we need to build the resistance. The London and Glasgow demonstrations to mark UN Anti Racism Day are part of a co-ordinated wave of international demonstrations. From Washington to Warsaw we will be marching for a #WorldAgainstRacism

Fb event for the London march on Saturday 21 March https://www.facebook.com/events/518483265364312/

Edited to add - this march has now been postponed due to the Coronavirus outbreak - thanks http://www.standuptoracism.org.uk/covid-19-update-un-anti-racism-day-demo-postponed-but-the-fight-against-racism-must-continue/

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Monday, November 04, 2019

Tories out - Corbyn in

If I get more time to write something before the election I will do so - but in case I don't basically lets make history by electing a socialist prime minister and give hope to those around the world - kick the Tories out and get Corbyn in by Christmas!

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HM conference / Marxism in Scotland / Engels in Eastbourne

Some upcoming Marxist conferences in Britain that may be of interest... Historical Materialism - Sixteenth Annual Conference Claps of Thunder: Disaster Communism, Extinction Capitalism and How to Survive Tomorrow 7th to 10th NOVEMBER 2019 @SOAS, RUSSELL SQUARE, CENTRAL LONDON http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/index.php/articles/sixteenth-annual-conference Marxism in Scotland - Ideas to change the world - 9 November 2019 Renfield St Stephens, 260 Bath St, Glasgow, G2 4JP https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/marxism-in-scotland-2019-ideas-to-change-the-world-tickets-66900508221 Call for Papers - Engels in Eastbourne - 23-24 June, 2020, University of Brighton, Eastbourne campus

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