Metal Reviews

Well, that's the last time I vote Liberal Democrat. The bastards turn around and do a deal with the Tories to give them control of the local council.

Time to start a local branch of the SWP, methinks.

That's funny because here in Wales the Welsh Assembly has collapsed. This is because the Lib Dems pulled out of a deal with the tories for control of Wales. Coalition governments don't work dammit!

lol

The problem with socialist parties is that even though they have no fundamental difference in views, they still hate each other.

Sadly, too true. The history of the various Communist Parties in England over the years is quite a read...

Still, what with various alliances like the Stop The War coalition, there's hope.

Actually, if you go back a couple of decades the difference between different sects on the left is quite important. Whilst the Soviet Union was around the difference between the Communist (with a big C) Party and the other left wing groups like the SWP was pretty significant because the former was a Stalinist Party that was supporting the USSR, and most of the others were Trotskyist that viewed Russia as being "state capitalist" i.e. the workers are just as oppressed, but by the government rather than business. That's quite an advantage to the non-Communist parties because it doesn't align you politically with Stalin. Mark Steel writes quite a touching description of Communist Party members circa 1990, unable to quite comprehend that everything they'd believed in since 1917 turned out to be a bag of shit, whilst the Trotskyist parties were all like "lolz, pwned".

The present day SWP is Trotskyist, technically, but nowadays that is admittedly pretty irrelevant. I remember quite a funny argument at my university between the local SWP and some guys who'd turned up to a meeting from the Worker's Revolutionary Party. Basically there was a heated argument over whether you should have a rigid program that you persuade everyone to follow (said the WRP) or you are more fluid, playing it by ear and supporting individual workers groups in different situations (the SWP). I was thinking, gosh if we could just agree on this then the next stop could be Downing Street. Also there seems to be a difference between violence levels: the SWP is mainly hippies and students while the WRP seemed to be some nerds who'd spent ages down the gym and who seemed to want to smash some capitalist heads together.

Of course, RESPECT today is an attempt to unite all these factions, and scoop up the Muslim and anti-War vote as well. It would have my full support if:

a) It had a cooler name

and

b) George Galloway hadn't been on celebrity big brother.

As far as I understood it, Trotskyists were in favour of worldwide revolution, whilst Stalin took a more internal view. Of course, once he started industrialising, things went completely off-course. Then came the ice-pick...

Mark Steel is awesome, I read a book of his the other day about living as a socialist under Thatcher, and I've heard a few of his radio things.

And very much in agreement as far as GG goes. Pity that the more respected Trotskyists like Tariq Ali don't stand for Parliament; Galloway never had my respect (as you know).

Yeah, Stalin was all about keepin' it Russian. I don't think that was for ideological reasons, just because the momentum of communist revolution had ground to a halt after the rest of Europe had failed to follow suit. As you say, Trotsky was about "permanent revolution", whereby communism is completely unsustainable unless its a worldwide system, or at least continues to spread.

Was that Mark Steel book "Reasons to be Cheerful"? I read that quite recently, great book.

WEll, Germany had a good go. With a bit more help from Russia, they might very well have suceeded...

It was! Loved it.