International Socialism #149 out now

The latest issue of International Socialism is now online, and while there is a host of material relating to Marxist theory and history, from debates about the level of class struggle in Britain to the struggle for climate justice, and discussion of figures from Erich Fromm to Leon Trotsky and E.P. Thompson, it leads with Mark L Thomas on the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, while Jane Hardy looks at debates in radical and Marxist economics. Other key pieces include Anne Alexander writes on ISIS, imperialism and the war in Syria, and Alex Callinicos analyses the strategy and tactics for anti-imperialists in the West as they set about resisting the long war on 'terror' underway, in Britain through re-building the Stop the War Coalition. As he concludes:

One thing is clear, amid the chaos, confusion and bloodshed in the Middle East: imperialism is a key part of the problem there. The US, Britain, France, Russia and the rest, can do no good there. They should get out of the Middle East and leave its peoples to find their own way to the goals of democracy and social justice that inspired the revolutions of 2011. In the meantime, the task of the Western left is to rebuild the anti-war movement, and mobilise as many people as possible in a campaign to force our governments finally to end the long war.

Don't Bomb Syria

Take action now through the Stop the War Coalition to stop Cameron's drive to war

Refugees are welcome here day of action Saturday 12 September

Refugees are welcome here - National Day of Action Saturday 12 September 2015,

London details - assemble 12pm, Assembly point Marble Arch 2pm Rally,Downing Street

National day of action, Called by Stand up to Racism, BARAC, Stop the War Coalition, Migrant Rights Network  War on Want, Peoples Assembly Against Austerity, Unite Against Fascism, Movement Against Xenophobia, Love Music Hate Racism and Black Out London
 https://www.facebook.com/events/1629390697300657/

On the anniversary of 7/7

One of the strange things about having a blog - and keeping it going (well, just about...) for over a decade - is that when anniversaries come around, you think - 'hang on, I wrote something about that'. Anyway, for what it is worth - this is the piece I wrote in the aftermath of the 7/7 London bombings at the time: The roar of bombs and the deep sleep of England - for the record, my opinion about British foreign policy has not changed - and as the British ruling class prepare to contemplate a fresh imperialist slaughter in Syria, I guess it remains worth reposting.

How Blair can help the Labour Party win

The fact that Ed Miliband seems to think that Tony Blair might be an electoral asset tells you everything you need to know about the desperation, weakness and general uselessness of Miliband's leadership. But Tony Blair has offered to 'do whatever it takes' to ensure a Labour victory in May - given this, here are a few things any Labour leader who actually wanted to win should suggest Blair goes and does:

1) Resign from the Labour Party
2) Call for any remaining Blairites in the Labour Party to do the honourable thing and also resign
3) Resign as Middle East Peace Envoy, and from all his lucrative advisor posts to big business / banks / dictatorships internationally - and give his riches to charities such as the Red Cross and Medical Aid for Palestinians
4) Apologise for the Iraq War
5) Hand himself into the International Criminal Court and ask to be tried for war crimes

Remembering the Soldiers' Revolt at Christmas

Good pieces by Adam Hochschild and Chris Fuller on the 100th anniversary of the Christmas revolt in 1914, and how it has been commemorated and commodified.

How poppies and patriotism muffle the truth about the First World War

The only point which matters about the First World War and its sequels is that they must not be allowed to happen again. Honouring and worshipping those who died in them, praising them for their patriotic sacrifice and wearing poppies as symbols of their blood on the ground where they fell serves only to glamorise the atrocity and pave the way to the next one.
Paul Foot, Galmorising an atrocity, 1989.  

It does not matter now, a century after it started, how sad we are about those the first world war killed. Our soulfulness won’t bring back a single slaughtered soldier. What can make a difference is our historical understanding of the Great War, its causes and consequence. History is worth far more than the illusion of memory, when none of us today actually have a memory of being soldiers in 1914-18...

 Out of the millions who died, this installation is very specific about who it mourns. It does not include the French, who lost a tenth of their young men, or Russia, where the war precipitated revolution, civil war and famine. And of course it does not include a single German. Instead it is accumulating 888,246 ceramic poppies each of which – explains the Tower of London website – “represents a British military fatality during the war.”

If we can only picture the Great War as a British tragedy we have not learned very much about it. Yet some historians today glibly encourage that blinkered vision. It sells books. Popular history has been invaded by revisionists who tell us that far from being lions led by donkeys in a futile bloodbath, the British soldiers who fought from 1914-18 were fighting, as the propaganda at the time claimed, to defend democracy from militarist authoritarian Germany...In so explicitly recording only the British dead of world war one, this work of art in its tasteful way confirms the illusion that we are an island of heroes with no debt to anyone else, no fraternity for anyone else...

Jonathan Jones, History and all its grisly facts are worth more than the illusion of memory, 2014.

Why we need a socialist alternative to Labour

On 28 September 1864, 150 years ago, a mass meeting was held in St Martin’s Hall in central London to launch a new organisation, the “International Working Men’s Association” (IWMA) - the First International. In the IWMA's Inaugural Address, written by Karl Marx, the group stressed the importance of workers challenging the “criminal designs” of their own capitalist class, their “playing upon national prejudices, and squandering in piratical wars the people’s blood and treasure”.

 Sadly the IWMA fell apart in the 1870s, but the Socialist (Second) International which was formed in 1889 to replace it on paper at least continued something of this honourable anti-imperialist tradition. For example, in 1906 the Labour Party in Britain, an affiliate of the Second International in 1906 declared it was against 'wars fought to make the rich richer,' while 'underfed schoolchildren are still neglected'. Tragically, the Second International famously failed the test of the First World War, as the majority of its affiliate organisations voted to support this bloody inter-imperialist conflict. The leaders of the organisations which make up what is still nominally called the Socialist International - which include the Labour Party in Britain - have not learnt anything from its past mistakes with respect to history, at least not if the Iraq wars past and present are anything to go by. In 2003, a majority of Labour MPs voted to support Bush and Blair's criminal and disastrous Iraq War - with only 139 voted against. In 2006, only 12 Labour MPs voted for an inquiry into the Iraq War. Now with Cameron's current Iraq War, only 23 Labour MPs voted against - and the vast majority of Labour MPs who forgot the lessons of past imperialist interventions from 1914 onwards and voted for war are below:

 The Labour MPs who voted in favour were: Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East & Saddleworth), Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East), Douglas Alexander (Paisley & Renfrewshire South), Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East), Dave Anderson (Blaydon), Mr Jon Ashworth (Leicester South), Ian Austin (Dudley North), Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West), Willie Bain (Glasgow North East), Ed Balls (Morley & Outwood), Gordon Banks (Ochil & Perthshire South), Kevin Barron (Rother Valley), Hugh Bayley (York Central), Dame Margaret Beckett (Derby South), Hilary Benn (Leeds Central), Luciana Berger (Liverpool Wavertree), Clive Betts (Sheffield South East), Roberta Blackman-Woods (Durham, City of), Hazel Blears (Salford & Eccles), Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East), Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central), David Blunkett (Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough), Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West), Lyn Brown (West Ham), Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East), Russell Brown (Dumfries & Galloway), Karen Buck (Westminster North), Richard Burden (Birmingham Northfield), Andy Burnham (Leigh), Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill), Alan Campbell (Tynemouth), Sarah Champion (Rotherham), Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston & Bellshill), Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley), Vernon Coaker (Gedling), Ann Coffey (Stockport), Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract & Castleford), David Crausby (Bolton North East), Mary Creagh (Wakefield), Stella Creasy (Walthamstow), Jon Cruddas (Dagenham & Rainham), John Cryer (Leyton & Wanstead), Alex Cunningham (Stockton North), Jim Cunningham (Coventry South), Tony Cunningham (Workington), Simon Danczuk (Rochdale), Alistair Darling (Edinburgh South West), Wayne David (Caerphilly), Geraint Davies (Swansea West), Gloria De Piero (Ashfield), John Denham (Southampton Itchen), Frank Dobson (Holborn & St Pancras), Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline & Fife West), Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South & Penarth), Jim Dowd (Lewisham West & Penge), Gemma Doyle (Dunbartonshire West), Jack Dromey (Birmingham Erdington), Michael Dugher (Barnsley East), Angela Eagle (Wallasey), Maria Eagle (Garston & Halewood), Clive Efford (Eltham), Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central), Natascha Engel (Derbyshire North East), Bill Esterson (Sefton Central), Chris Evans (Islwyn), Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme), Frank Field (Birkenhead), Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South), Caroline Flint (Don Valley), Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield), Hywel Francis (Aberavon), Mike Gapes (Ilford South), Barry Gardiner (Brent North), Pat Glass (Durham North West), Mary Glindon (Tyneside North), Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland), Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen & Hamilton West), Kate Green (Stretford & Urmston), Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South), Nia Griffith (Llanelli), Andrew Gwynne (Denton & Reddish), Peter Hain (Neath), Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East), Harriet Harman (Camberwell & Peckham), Tom Harris (Glasgow South), Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney), John Healey (Wentworth & Dearne), Mark Hendrick (Preston), David Heyes (Ashton Under Lyne), Meg Hillier (Hackney South & Shoreditch), Julie Hilling (Bolton West), Margaret Hodge (Barking), Sharon Hodgson (Washington & Sunderland West), Jim Hood (Lanark & Hamilton East), George Howarth (Knowsley), Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central), Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore), Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Kilburn), Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock & Loudoun), Major Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central), Graham Jones (Hyndburn), Kevan Jones (Durham North), Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South), Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich & West Norwood), Mike Kane (Wythenshawe & Sale East), Elizabeth Kendall (Leicester West), Sadiq Khan (Tooting), David Lammy (Tottenham), Christopher Leslie (Nottingham East), Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields), Ivan Lewis (Bury South), Andy Love (Edmonton), Ian Lucas (Wrexham), Steve McCabe (Birmingham Selly Oak), Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow), Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East), Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham & Morden), Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough), Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), Jim McGovern (Dundee West), Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North), Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham Perry Barr), Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham Ladywood), Seema Malhotra (Feltham & Heston), John Mann (Bassetlaw), Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South), Michael Meacher (Oldham West & Royton), Alan Meale (Mansfield), Ian Mearns (Gateshead), Ed Miliband (Doncaster North), Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port & Neston), Madeleine Moon (Bridgend), Jessica Morden (Newport East), Meg Munn (Sheffield Heeley), Jim Murphy (Renfrewshire East), Paul Murphy (Torfaen), Lisa Nandy (Wigan), Pamela Nash (Airdrie & Shotts), Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central), Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick & Cumnock), Albert Owen (Ynys Mon), Toby Perkins (Chesterfield), Bridget Phillipson (Houghton & Sunderland South), Stephen Pound (Ealing North), Lucy Powell (Manchester Central), Nick Raynsford (Greenwich & Woolwich), Jamie Reed (Copeland), Steve Reed (Croydon North), Rachel Reeves (Leeds West), Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East), Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge & Hyde), John Robertson (Glasgow North West), Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West), Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes), Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd), Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central), Andy Sawford (Corby), Alison Seabeck (Plymouth Moor View), Virendra Sharma (Ealing Southall), Jim Sheridan (Paisley & Renfrewshire North), Gavin Shuker (Luton South), Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith), Angela Smith (Penistone & Stocksbridge), Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent), Owen Smith (Pontypridd), John Spellar (Warley), Gisela Stuart (Birmingham Edgbaston), Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South), Mark Tami (Alyn & Deeside), Gareth Thomas (Harrow West), Emily Thornberry (Islington South & Finsbury), Stephen Timms (East Ham), Jon Trickett (Hemsworth), Karl Turner (Hull East), Derek Twigg (Halton), Stephen Twigg (Liverpool West Derby), Chuka Umunna (Streatham), Keith Vaz (Leicester East), Valerie Vaz (Walsall South), Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North), Dave Watts (St Helens North), Alan Whitehead (Southampton Test), Chris Williamson (Derby North), Phil Wilson (Sedgefield), Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central), John Woodcock (Barrow & Furness), Shaun Woodward (St Helens South & Whiston), David Wright (Telford) and Iain Wright (Hartlepool).

 These pro-war Labour MPs have let down themselves and their voters very badly indeed - sanctioning a return of Western imperialism to the scene of its greatest crime in recent memory - and all of them deserve to face a left wing challenge to them in the general election. All socialists in Britain should surely now work together - whether in TUSC, Left Unity, Respect or whatever - to unite and rally around credible candidates in each area who can stand against as many of these people and raise the banner of 'Welfare not Warfare - Stop the Cuts - Stop the Bombing of Iraq'. Organising to stop the war in Iraq and organising for an anti-war left wing challenge in the 2015 general election is the best tribute we can pay to those pioneers - including Karl Marx himself - who formed the First International 150 years ago - and restore some honour to the words 'socialist internationalism'.

National Stop the War Demonstration on 4 October

From the Stop the War Coalition:

Stop the bombing of Iraq - don't attack Syria
National demonstration, Saturday 4 October

Assemble 1pm, 
Temple Place, 
London WC2R 3BD

Parliament has voted for the third Iraq War. The last two have brought almost unimaginable suffering to the people of Iraq and have helped to create the current chaos, driving the country to the brink of break up.

They claim this is a humanitarian operation to defeat Isis. In fact Isis is backed by various middle east powers and a new aerial bombardment will not defeat it. It will however kill innocents, further fragment the country and inflame violence. 

The record of the west's wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya show that as well as creating misery and mayhem, western military interventions make the world a more volatile, dangerous place.  

Cameron's new war has built-in mission creep. Discussions are already underway for Britain to join the bombing of Syria, and there are growing calls for boots on the ground.

The Stop the War Coalition is asking every one of its supporters to throw themselves in to the campaign against the insanity of another war on Iraq. Spread the word everywhere about next Saturday's demonstration.
http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

No More War

‘War is organised murder and nothing else....politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder’
Harry Patch, last surviving British soldier from the First World War (who passed away in 2009, aged 111)

Harry Patch (left) in 2004 shaking hand with Charles Kuentz (right), last remaining German soldier from the First World War at Ypres

‘It means an awful lot to me, these small gestures are the things that encourage friendship between peoples, so that we will never again fight wars against each other.’
Charles Kuentz, after meeting Patch, 2004

No Glory in War, 1914-2014
John Newsinger on the First World War - just war or imperial conflict?

David Rovics on tunnels, past and present

Over 1,100 Palestinians killed, overwhelmingly women, children and the elderly. Several dozen Israelis killed, almost all of them soldiers. Killed by people coming out of tunnels. Tunnels that the soldiers are bombing and blowing up…

In my mind I keep coming back to the tunnels. Tunnels are such a powerful image, with so much history. The Vietnamese won the war against the US invaders partially through the widespread use of tunnels. Of course Kissinger would complain incessantly of Soviet aid to the Vietnamese guerrillas being the problem. That sounds much better than admitting that you're facing a very poorly-armed enemy that's beating you through sheer determination, ingenuity and courage, despite all your weapons of mass destruction.

The public line was the Vietminh was a small part of the population that needed to be dealt with. That if they could just destroy their infrastructure, the invaders would win. Secretly the American leadership knew this wasn't true. They knew their enemy was the people of Vietnam, and they prosecuted their war with this in mind, targeting broadly all of the civilians of that poor country, and their neighbors as well.

But destroy the infrastructure – they did that, too. And what was that infrastructure? Planes, helicopters, tanks? No. Rocket launchers? A few. Antiquated rifles? A few more.

Tunnels. Mostly tunnels. And courageous, desperate refugees. Refugees living in a walled-off ghetto, subject to an almost complete embargo, with no electricity, overflowing sewers, very little food, who are being incessantly bombed.

When facing a determined opponent, “infrastructure” or the “infrastructure of terror” has a very different meaning than how the term is usually understood.

The infrastructure, the Israelis now admit, is not the ineffective, home-made rockets. Not the paltry collection of guns. The infrastructure are the homes that people live in. Especially the ones around Gaza's inland perimeter, which the IDF is now annexing with tanks and bulldozers. The infrastructure is the homes, and the tunnels beneath them.

The thing about fighting a determined enemy in an urban setting is you can only make the best use of your superior firepower if there aren't any buildings in the way. People can hide behind buildings. So you have to destroy them all, which is what the Israelis are doing. Which is what the US did in Fallujah, and in Hue, and is what the Nazis did in Warsaw.

I'm no military expert or anything, but I am a history buff, and I believe the main difference between Fallujah, Hue and the Warsaw Ghetto is in Fallujah the resistance didn't build tunnels prior to the battle. In all those cases, though, the only way to win the battle was to completely demolish the cities, one building at a time.

In Warsaw, after the buildings were all burned to the ground and the ghetto was nothing but rubble, the resistance continued, albeit on a small scale due in part to a complete lack of food or firearms. The reason any resistance was able to continue was down to the tunnels.

Tunnels are a bit like buildings that way. You can hide behind a building, and if you're really lucky, you can ambush soldiers when they come around the corner. If you're really, really lucky as well as very skillful, you might get close enough for hand-to-hand combat. Which is necessary when the other side has all the firepower.

You can also hide in tunnels, before you come out and engage in your mission to attack the enemy before the enemy inevitably kills you in return. It's almost always a suicide mission. You show yourself, you die, but maybe you kill first, if you're ready to die, and very lucky and very skilled.

In Warsaw, the tunnels were how some of the ancestors of some of those IDF soldiers survived the Nazi Holocaust. The tunnels were how they managed to get some food into the ghetto from outside the ghetto walls. And even a few guns, and very home-made bombs. Beneath any well-stocked kitchen sink are the explosives necessary to have your own little “infrastructure of terror,” after all. Even in Warsaw, 1943. If you went outside the ghetto, where such chemicals could be purchased.

So, destroy the buildings, destroy the tunnels, and face the conundrum that as long as people are able to buy food, fertilizer, gasoline, and Draino, they'll be able to make explosives. As long as there are people there will be terrorists.

So “gas the Arabs” becomes the natural conclusion. It's the only way to have security. If you don't want to give them sovereignty, you have to kill them all. How close to “kill them all” are the Israelis willing to go?

Full essay here, while for more analysis of Israel's barbarism and how to fight it, see here

Palestine Solidarity national demonstration

National Demonstration for Gaza: 
Stop the Bombing • Free Palestine!

Saturday 19 July 2014 • Assemble 12 Noon
Downing Street • London
March to Israeli Embassy

Demonstration called by: Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, CND, Friends of Al Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Muslim Association of Britain. Supported by War on Want, Islamic Forum of Europe and Palestinian Forum in Britain.

International Socialism # 143 out now

The latest issue of the Socialist Workers Party's quarterly journal International Socialism is now available.

 Issue 143 appears as the official celebrations of the outbreak of the First World War reach their peak. Megan Trudell traces the process through which, in both the academy and the larger political establishment, class antagonism has been written out of the history of this slaughter. Paul Blackledge shows how the differences over political strategy that had been developing in the international socialist movement before 1914 crystallised thanks to the war into the great division between revolutionaries and reformists.

Andy Jones analyses UKIP's breakthrough in the European elections against the background of an increasingly toxic mainstream debate on immigration. Alex Callinicos discusses the complexities of the radical left, Donny Gluckstein looks at classical Marxism's response to reformism and John Rose recalls the tangled political struggles in Ukraine in the aftermath of the October Revolution.

Analysis examines the situation in Iraq, the political upheaval in Scotland with the forthcoming independence referendum and the complexities of Venezuela a year after the death of Hugo Chávez.

Anne Alexander reviews two important Marxist studies of the Arab revolutions and Tomáš Tengely-Evans takes on Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Other books reviewed this quarter concern George Orwell, genocide, women and war, anti-fascism, early learning, education in China, social media and the redoubtable black activist Darcus Howe.

 If you don't subscribe to the journal and would like to you can do so at www.isj.org.uk or contact us at isj@swp.org.uk or 0207 819 1177. You can also get the latest issue plus various back issues at the Marxism 2014 festival www.marxismfestival.org.uk

Alex Callinicos on the Ukraine crisis

The reaction of the Western left to this enormous crisis has been, to put it mildly, confused. Far too many (including some who should know better) have been willing to cast a blind eye at or find excuses for Russia’s military intervention. The reasons for this attitude are, in ascending order of respectability, Stalinist nostalgia, exaggeration of the role of the extreme right in the anti-Yanukovych movement, and the search for some counterweight to American power. The net result is a revival of what used to be called campism in the days of the Cold War—seeing states in conflict with the US and its allies (then the USSR, now usually Russia and China) as in some sense progressive allies of the left.
      None of this has much to do with the revolutionary Marxist tradition. The fate of Ukraine preoccupied Trotsky during the last year of his life in 1939-40, as Europe rolled into the Second World War. Distilling the results of prolonged debates among Russian Marxists (which continued after October 1917) in which Lenin consistently insisted on the necessity of defending the right to self-determination of oppressed nations, Trotsky defended “the independence of a United Ukraine” (ie incorporating Polish Galicia and Volhynia) even if that meant “the separation of Soviet Ukraine from the USSR”—and this, remember, at a time when he was vehemently arguing that the Soviet Union was still a “degenerated workers’ state” that revolutionaries should defend against Western imperialism.
       Quoting Trotsky can be a religious exercise, but his views are worth bearing in mind when considering supposed Marxists who dismiss the idea of Russian imperialism as an “abstraction” or even advocate the partition of Ukraine. Putin’s apologists on the Western left must explain how their stance squares with the right to national self-determination. If they defend Crimea’s (extremely dubious) claim to separate from Ukraine, where do they stand on the long-standing Chechen struggle for independence from Russia, brutally crushed by Putin? And what will they say if Russian forces move into eastern Ukraine and become mired in crushing the nationalist insurgency that this would almost certainly provoke?
       Of course, the US remains the dominant imperialist power on a world scale. And of course, it is thoroughly hypocritical for Obama and his secretary of state John Kerry to denounce Putin’s seizure of Crimea, forgetting Washington’s interventions in its own backyard such as the October 1962 naval blockade of Cuba or the December 1989 invasion of Panama (a state, incidentally, carved out of Colombia at Teddy Roosevelt’s behest at the beginning of the 20th century).
But from a Marxist perspective, imperialism is about more than American power. The classical theory of imperialism is, more than anything else, a theory of intra-capitalist competition. Imperialism is a system, the form taken by capitalism when the concentration and centralisation of capital bring about the fusion of economic competition among capitals and geopolitical competition among states. Putin’s actions express exactly this imperialist logic, combining geopolitical preoccupations (above all, blocking NATO expansion) with economic motivations (fear that Russian firms will be squeezed out of the Ukrainian market by European rivals).
      The confused left response to the Ukrainian crisis is in part the result of an optical illusion created by the so called “unipolar moment” of apparent US global dominance after the end of the Cold War. Particularly in the light of Afghanistan and Iraq, American power has seemed so overwhelming and so malign that everything must be subordinated to resisting it. But this was always precisely an illusion. US hegemony has always been contested, reflecting the fact that imperialism involves a hierarchical distribution of power among competing capitalist states. This fact is becoming more important now.
       The relative decline of US power that has become evident since Iraq and the crash is opening up a period of more fluid competition, in which the weaker imperialist states begin to assert themselves. Putin’s strategy has reflected this for some time. Potentially a much more important conflict is developing in Asia, as China’s economic rise encourages its ruling class to flex their muscles geopolitically, in particular by building up the military capabilities to exclude the US Navy from the “Near Seas” along their coasts. The clashes between China and Japan over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands are harbingers of more to come.
     In this era of growing inter-imperialist rivalries political clarity among revolutionary Marxists is vital. In New York, London and Moscow the main enemy is at home (a slogan Karl Liebknecht coined in response to a great inter-imperialist war whose centenary we will soon be remembering). But acknowledging this is no reason to apologise for our own rulers’ rivals. Imperialism is a hydra-headed beast. It needs to be killed, not merely one of its manifestations.

Full article 'Imperial Delusions' (from the forthcoming International Socialism journal) online here, while Tariq Ali also has quite a good article on the Ukraine here, as does Mehdi Hasan here 

Edited to add: See also Rob Ferguson and Sabby Sagall in the new Socialist Review

Neither Washington nor Moscow

Socialists in the West must of course oppose any military intervention by the US or NATO in Ukraine. But the crisis reminds us that imperialism can’t be reduced to American domination. It is a system of economic and geopolitical competition among the leading capitalist powers.

        Rather than tail any of these powers, we must fight this entire system. This means opposing Russian intervention in Ukraine. Never has the slogan “Neither Washington nor Moscow but international socialism” been more relevant.

Alex Callinicos on the mounting crisis of inter-imperialist rivalry in the Ukraine

Edited to add: Ukraine in Crisis - say no to imperialist war games

International Socialism 141 now out

I don't know - you wait for what seems like ages over Christmas with only the crumbs of the New Statesman, the New Left Review and Private Eye for sustenance, and then three fine volumes of socialist writing come along together.  Not only does the new issue of Socialist Worker appear, with timely analysis of the Tories' racist scapegoating of migrants from Eastern Europe, the Mark Duggan murder by the Met police and John Newsinger writing on the First World War (a fine response to the current ahistorical propaganda of Michael Gove and the pathetically weak response from Labour's Tristram Hunt, who not only declared the Left 'supported' the war - er, Keir Hardie? the SLP? - but also that Kaiser Wilhelm II was a fascist (!)). The new Socialist Review is also now out as is the new volume of International Socialism, which among other delights including pieces on the left after Grangemouth, transgender oppression and resistance, the late Marxist historian Raymond Challinor also has a timely piece on the internet, social media and the workplace which is sure to stir up debate.  While I am here, on the subject of remembering the First World War, the London Socialist Historians Group has organised an important conference on the matter on Saturday 25 January - for details see here.

Norman Geras

As for ‘betrayal’: although it has been overused, I believe this notion is sometimes apt, in political as in personal affairs. People can betray comrades or supporters; or their own stated principles. I think an excellent example of the latter case to be, precisely, the conduct of many ‘anti-militarist’ social-democratic leaders at the outbreak of the First World War...
Norman Geras, 1988.

I am not going to pass any kind of extended comment on Norman Geras, who I never knew personally, and who passed away yesterday, other than to say that he was once a Marxist - indeed a Trotskyist - who wrote some important work on matters including Rosa Luxemburg and human nature before betraying his comrades and own stated principles by cheerleading Western imperialism in a vocal manner on the blogosphere for the last decade or so of his life while trying to keep up the pretence he was still somehow on the 'Left'.  One of his best and most important books was entitled Literature of Revolution - his blog in contrast might best be filed under 'Literature of Imperialism' - and so is destined to be ultimately confined (to borrow a phrase from Leon Trotsky) to the 'dustbin of history'.

Edited to add: Obituary in Socialist Review by Paul Blackledge

A quick salutation to Miliband

No, not Ed - but Ralph:

[The] ‘acceptance of the legitimacy of military intervention on the ground of the exceptionally tyrannical nature of a regime opens the way to even more military adventurism, predatoriness, conquest and subjugation than is already rife in the world today.The rejection of military intervention on this score is not meant to claim immunity and protection for tyrannical regimes... Tyrannical regimes make opposition extremely difficult: but they do not make it impossible. And the point is to help internal opposition rather than engage in military ‘substitutism’...

A blow to imperialism - and a victory for the anti-war movement!

It looks after Cameron's defeat in the parliamentary vote over Syria as if British troops may well - as when Harold Wilson was forced by the anti-Vietnam war movement to keep Britain out of Vietnam - have been kept out of the looming possible Western military intervention in Syria - what a blow to imperialism and what a victory for the anti-war movement!  As Philip Hammond, the Tory defence secretary, admitted on Newsnight, 'the result shows there is a "deep sense of unease" about involvement in the Middle East to do to with Iraq. It's a "legacy experience", he says. Just as the US took many years to get over Vietnam, Britain will take many years to get over Iraq. Iraq has "poisoned the well" of public opinion, he says (using the phrase Cameron used in the debate)'.

To all those who said the Stop the War movement in Britain achieved nothing - this vote is final vindication that it changed British politics fundamentally - never let it again be said that mass movements from below for change do not make a difference - the past (and present) actions of Stop the War activists were absolutely central to the historic and glorious vote in parliament tonight.  Cameron is now weaker than ever - this is the biggest and most serious defeat Cameron and the Coalition government has  received since coming to office.  Now is the time to go on the offensive and bring this government down - this Saturday's anti-war demonstrations should reinforce the message delivered tonight in Westminster - and everyone should then descend on the Tory party conference in Manchester to protest against the cuts and privatisation on September 29th - and to say 'Welfare not Warfare - it is time for the warmongering Tory scumbag Cameron to go'.

Edited to add: Stop the War Coalition statement
and see also Socialist Worker

Emergency protest / National Demonstration: No attack on Syria

From the Stop the War Coalition:

No attack on Syria

Protest 5pm, Wednesday 28 August, Downing Street, London

Britain, France and the US are committing to another disastrous military intervention. Apart from the inevitable casualties, any attack on Syria can only inflame an already disastrous civil war and would risk pulling in regional powers further.

Most people in this country have learnt from the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. According to a Telegraph/YouGov poll on Sunday only 9% of the British public would support troops being sent to Syria, and only 16% support sending more arms to the region. Our politicians however have learnt nothing.

 We need the maximum level of protest to stop them plunging us in to yet another catastrophic war.

 Edited to add:
 National Demonstration: Saturday 31 August, 12 noon, Embankment, London

Edited to also add, read Joseph Daher, Alex Callinicos, Judith Orr and see this statement from Syrian revolutionary socialists.