Month: January 2013

The phrase ‘evolution not revolution’ is an apt one for humanity’s progress I believe, but it should be understood that in this context ‘revolution’ refers to a violent one. It is also quite possible to have a non-violent revolution, and in fact, is quite often necessary.

This, of course, doesn’t just apply to political matters. A non-violent revolution is occurring in science and religion as more and more scientists, medical people and others reject orthodox religion and orthodox scientific theories and examine evidence about the nature of consciousness, reality/realities, the universe, etc.

However in politics violent revolution has rarely, if ever, achieved or sustained the objectives of the original revolutionaries, unless their motives were relatively mundane such as replacing one set of oppressors or exploiters with another.

Violent revolutions frequently lead to very repressive dictatorships, which continue to use violent methods to suppress all opposition. Once entrenched in power the violent methods used to overthrow the previous regime are used to crush all opposition to the new regime, so it becomes the opposite of revolution which is not ‘counter-revolution’ but oppression or dictatorship. ‘Counter-revolution’ is a nonsensical phrase used only by regimes in power, because any uprising against a regime must, by definition, be a revolution.

Violent revolutions are usually by a relatively small minority overthrowing the established order and imposing their own, often in the name of ‘the people’. The people, if consulted at all, are not usually involved en masse. The clique which gains power in this way then does everythng it can to hang on to it, while people with ideals are crushed, even if they were the proclaimed ideals of the original revolutionaries. The only people who are not affected are careerists and opportunists who change their allegiences according to how the wind is blowing. This fully explains why nearly all the Bolshevik idealists were killed in Stalin’s purges, and a new ruling class of bureaucrats, politicians, etc. who just paid lip-service to Socialism  were largely untouched.

However the phrase ‘evolution not revolution’, while describing a more gradual progress, does not mean that change will be handed on a plate by the current ruling classes to the oppressed. It doesn’t mean, for example, that all the masses have to do is vote in a particular political party in a bourgeois general election and the ruling class will just give up power voluntarily.

The power of the working-class and the broad masses lie in their numerical numbers, and in the fact that not a wheel of industry, even in this mechanical and computer age, can metaphorically turn without them. Those who design and build the machines and computers are workers, those who exploit them, the true ruling classes, rely on the labor power of the masses, even if this is stored up in the machines and computers they designed and created.

The key to imposing progressive change or non-violent revolution is solidarity and organization. There are many ways the masses can achieve this: by organizing themselves into trade unions, by strike action, by forming worker cooperatives so by-passing the capitalist class altogether. A combination of these methods and others, such as the mass protests which brought down regimes in Eastern and Central Europe, can bring about revolutionary change.

Taking just one scenario: if workers form cooperatives they can produce and sell their own products and by supporting these cooperatives, and boycotting capitalist multinationals exploiting their workers in sweatshops, the masses can bring about change. The multinationals go bankcrupt whilst the cooperatives flourish. Combined with strike action in work places where there is no worker ownership and control, change can be forced through by solidarity of the masses. The trouble is this solidarity is so hard to achieve, and the ruling classes are cunning and will use every method of ‘divide and rule’, such as waving juicy carrots in front of the noses of perceived ringleaders and troublemakers to try and win them over.  In Britain, the offer of a knighthood or peerage for a trade union leader who doesn’t bring workers out on strike, for instance.

However they can only employ these turncoat methods with a small minority or else there would be nobody left to exploit.

So solidarity and organization is the key to implementing non-violent revolution when the ballot box fails to bring about the required changes. It should also be remembered that the armies, police and security services of the ruling classes are dependent on the masses, so if these too show solidiarity with the oppressed, then the ruling classes are truly powerless. A ship without a rudder.

Never was Karl Marx’s maxim truer than today: Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains! Always remember, without the workers not a wheel can turn, no microchip can be designed or made, and without police and soldiers drawn from the working-classes no ruling class has any power or authority.

The sad truth is that too many of the toiling masses have always allowed themselves to be exploited, and to become willing tools of their own exploitation. This is clearly seen when working class people in the army or police obey orders of the ruling classes the objectives of which are to oppress the masses, halt revolutionary changes or to expand the territories one particular section of the ruling class wishes to exploit, such as the current wars for oil in the Middle East for example. The answer is so simple, working class people shouldn’t be joining the army to fight these wars for the ruling classes!

 

 

 

We are in a very dangerous situation in Britain. I am made aware of this every time I go out, read or hear the news, or speak to relatives and friends. A number of things have occurred which means an increasing number of people are rejecting the main political parties and swinging to the far right, namely the UK Independence Party, which has now overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third political party in Britain (this presumably excludes local variations, such as the Scottish Nationalist Party north of the border.)

While the UKIP may not be as extreme as, for example, the BNP (British National Party), it is attracting support from many people who would previously have been regarded as liberals (with a small ‘l’) or even progressive (code word for aligned to the Left in politics.)

One of the reasons for this is the shameful decision of the Liberal Democrats to first of all go into a coalition government with a right-wing Tory Party, and second to then go along with virtually all its policies just to keep Liberal Democrat politicians in privileged positions. It smacks of the kind of coalitions that existed in, for example, East Germany and Czechoslovakia in the Socialist era when leading members of other political parties got privileged positions as MPs provided the followed without any dissent the policies of the Marxist-Leninist party, which always dominated these coalitions.

All the Liberal Democrats got in return for this total subservience to a right-wing Tory Party was a referendum on our unfair voting system which was almost bound to fail to change the system since it only helped the top three political parties and discriminated against all others. Ironically, now the UKIP has overtaken the Liberal Democrats as the third main political party, the Alternative Transferable Vote electoral system, had it been adopted, would benefit the UKIP and consign the Liberal Democrats to political oblivion along with the Greens and all other minority political parties. This is because, under this system, seats are not allocated proportionally to the votes cast for each party, but secondary choices are taken into consideration eliminating the first choice of many voters. This favors the top three political parties, any one of which can win an election on the second or third choices of many of the electorate. Meanwhile many minor parties are denied the right to representation even though the number of votes they received across the country should entitle them to such representation.

What other causes are there for the rising popularity of the UKIP? Basically it is uncontrolled immigration, and the fact that the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour now seem to have achieved a consensus in many areas of policy, so that differences between them appear to be only minor.

I am all in favor of the EU, but I can also see that it cannot work as a halfway house between independent states and a full federal union. All the problems with the Euro are caused by the fact that it is impossible to stabilize a currency when there is no central control over financial policies and no level playing field such as uniform prices and salaries across the Eurozone. Similarly, without a level playing field, free movement of EU citizens within the Union inevitably means those from poorer states with a lower standard of living will gravitate towards the richer states.

The EU can only work properly if it becomes a full federal union with a Constitutuion along the lines of the United States of America, or indeed any other federal union that has existed in the past such as former Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union (though obviously with a democratic multi-party system and free elections.)

In the process of becoming a federal union, the various institutions of the EU would need to become fully democratic, and member states would need to be guaranteed a great deal of autonomy as in the case of the 50 states of the USA, all of which have their own laws and state capitols. However one area where the US differs from the EU is that in the former there is central control over the economy and financial matters, so that poorer states cannot run up huge debts and then have to be bailed out by the richer states in order to stabilize the US dollar.

As to immigration, this has become a very sensitive issue especially in certain areas of big cities where the indigenous white population has been swamped by people of ethnic origin, many of whom have not fully integrated into the British way of life. Some don’t even speak English (my own father’s family come from Cyprus, and many of these who came to the UK and lived here for years don’t speak English properly or even at all).

In many areas of our cities the schools are over 95% ethnic, local shops and take-aways are ethnically owned, many being Hal-al, and even doctors’ surgeries are sometimes fully staffed by members of the ethnic communities and most of the patients are also of ethnic origin, with indigenous white citizens made to feel they are second class citizens. In one incident I personally witnessed where I accompanied a friend to his GP’s surgery, after a wait of two hours in which all or most of the ethnic patients were seen before my friend, he entered the surgery to have an ethnic doctor fire insults at him, clearly not even having read up on his medical notes or ascertained the reason he had been requested to attend the surgery. Had the situation been reversed and the doctor been white and the patient of ethnic origin, the personal remarks made by the doctor would have been deemed racially abusive, and would no doubt have caused the GP to be disciplined.

This feeling, now widespread in certain areas where ethnic populations now dominate, that indigenous whites are now treated as second class citizens in our own country is also leading to more and more people to gravitate towards the extreme Right in politics. At the moment this favors the UKIP, but it could swing further to the Right and favor the BNP or even more extreme fascist political parties.

All countries need to control both immigration and emigration. In extreme examples this results in things like the fence between Mexico and the United States and the inner German border installations when that country was divided and, of course, the Berlin Wall.

It is economically and politically impossible to allow complete free movement of populations between countries with different political and economic systems, where either the standards of living are vastly different or some have high prices and high wages, while others have controlled prices and wages. Where some have inflation and unemployment, while others have no inflation and full employment.

Every country has the right to control both emigration and immigration, but the problem with the EU at the moment is that it is not a country, but has laws which normally apply to countries. Therefore member states of the EU find they have little or no control over certain areas, such as immigration from other member EU states where the standards of living are vastly different.

There are two solutions to the problems associated with the current European Union. One is UKIP’s policy of complete withdrawal from the Union and retreat into the mentality of Little Britain, which might find it difficult to survive economically. The other solution is to move forward rapidly to a fully federal Union with the Euro as the federal currency, a United States of Europe with central control over the economy and the Euro, and with a fully democratic federal political system along the lines of the USA backed up by a Constitution which guarantees the rights of all EU citizens.