Author: Matthijs Krul

The British at the European elections

by Matthijs Krul

With elections being waged for the massive talking shop known as the European Parliament, more than in any other country the mood for revolt is rising in the United Kingdom. The petty, venial corruption shown by the Westminster MPs over the past years, recently revealed but by all and sundry plausibly considered part of a much larger pattern of self-enrichment, has greatly increased the skepticism and hostility of the British public towards the established three parties. Indeed, the corrupt reformist policies of Blair c.s. domestically and his petty vassalism towards the United States and its military adventures in the realm of foreign policy, combined with the continued production of futile nonentities on the part of the Tories and Liberal Democrats had already done much to encourage this, but the so-called ‘expenses scandal’ has been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back for many Britons.

The political implications remain to be seen. Many Britons will opt to not vote at all, as has been the norm for European Parliamentary elections, which is both a sign of the petty bourgeois apathy of the overly sheltered and uninformed British population as well as being a sign of the general lack of purpose in voting in elections where outcomes barely make a difference, as the spoils system of the perpetual centrist coalition in the European Parliament makes even voting under the superior system used for its elections exceedingly futile to the politically conscious. The risk is of course that the people who do show up, estimated to be no more than 30% of the electorate, are likely not so much to vote for the left as for the Little England reactionaries of Libertas and UKIP, not to mention the fascist BNP. In this way the elitism of the EU technocrat-parliamentarians will produce its own gravediggers in the form of a resurgence of reactionary populism, but unfortunately they are also likely to dig a mass grave for left-democratic forces along with it.

What then to make of this? Of course attempts by left coalitions such as the well-conceived but awfully named No2EUYes2Democracy to use the opportunity for a left organizational surge must be applauded, but their policy of abstentionism will effectively enhance the power of the right. Moreover, they appear to have little intention to move their organization beyond these elections. It is not necessarily a problem that they do not feel the need to form yet another sectarian party or to produce platforms without the pillars of support that any platform needs to rise above the level of a doormat, but to channel all the left potential that exists in the broader British public as well as with the RMT and then to squander it by closing shop after the elections is pure parliamentarianism, which makes their abstention policy all the more self-defeating. The SLP is also present, but their sectarian basis and the narrow Lassallean antics of their leader Scargill will render them mostly harmless to the establishment.

What is therefore to be agitated for above all is to use the opportunity of the election temperament and the ‘expenses scandal’ to frighten the battered established parties into granting electoral reform. Labour had promised this but, as to be expected, once in office reneged on it; however there has been increasing discussion of the topic in various newspapers, and the Electoral Reform Society has seen a flurry of new activity. Labour’s own government commission recommended keeping the district system, which British voters are very used to for Westminster and abolition of which may easily prove a bridge too far, but replacing the utterly retrograde ‘first-past-the-post’ voting system with a specific variant of Approval Voting, which although favorable to larger parties nonetheless greatly improves the manner of actually counting votes. Also a possibility is introducing STV, as is in use in Ireland, which also gives some benefit to larger parties but allows ranking. There are various good systems that can be compatible with maintaining constituencies, even ones little discussed such as Condorcet’s system, and which one is chosen is rather less important than that the occasion be used to make it finally happen; all the more since it has been an issue since the decline of the Liberal Party.

A referendum on this topic must be held and held soon, using the opportunity of widespread disaffection to force through reforms. In circumstances when progressive forces have little actual power, they can still use their moral force to frighten and cajole the ruling class into reforms, as was proven by the failure of the Chartists that was nonetheless followed by a Reform Bill, although it is to be hoped the distance in time between protest and reform will be less this time. An electoral reform would also enable the progressive forces remaining within New Labour to depart their dying host organism and set out on their own, which will strengthen the political visibility of the British left, necessarily weak as it is, and further enable the death of the right element. Therefore, delaying tactics such as Gordon Brown’s “National Democratic Renewal Council” must be rejected, and the occasion must be used by all left forces, union, MP or otherwise, to call for a swift electoral reform referendum, if necessary to coincide with the general elections in 2010.

Sectarianism and the Party

by Matthijs Krul

If one thing is certain, it is that the only thing Communist parties are more known for than splitting is accusing each other of sectarianism.1 In the ideological and petty rivalry laden environment of Communist politics, whether in the rich countries or in the poor, accusing each other of sectarianism is about as common a vehicle for settling old scores as accusations of embezzlement are for community groups and accusations of ‘ideology’ for centrist parties. Yet it would be a mistake to conclude from this that sectarianism does not exist, or is not legitimately a problem. The mere fact that a country like the United Kingdom, with a very small and weak left wing both politically and numerically, has easily 10-15 different Communist parties and groups should tell us all we need to know about the reality of sectarian divisions.

The easiest way to approach the issue of what sectarianism is and how Communist parties and groups can avoid it is simply by giving a few descriptions of sectarian practices and approaches. The most important and frequent one of these, which is essentially the general structure of all sectarianism, is making excessive ideological criteria for membership or participation in the Communist party involved. We know for a fact that Marx & Engels themselves never in the First International even required members to be ‘Marxists’, let alone to agree with them on every issue of analysis, but this lesson seems to have sadly been forgotten entirely. Members of the International in those days were not just those later described as Marxists, but also left-wing trade unionists, Lassalleans, Proudhonists, Bakuninists (despite Bakunin himself), and even followers of Auguste Comte! Its explicit purpose was to combat the division of the socialists into the many different sects and groupings, even if this meant that the ‘common denominator’ was a fairly thin one, limited to desiring the overthrow of capitalism. It is worth quoting Marx on this point:

“The International was founded in order to replace the socialist or semi-socialist sects by real organization of the working class for struggle… On the other hand, the International could not have maintained itself if the course of history had not already smashed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real labor movement always stand in reverse ratio to each other. So long as the sects are justified (historically), the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historical movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary. For all that, what history exhibits everywhere was repeated in the history of the International. What is antiquated tries to reconstitute and assert itself within the newly acquired form.

And the history of the International was a continual struggle of the General Council against the sects and against amateur experiments, which sought to assert themselves within the International against the real movement of the working class.”2

But what do we see in practice today? The exact opposite. Endless numbers of people have been expelled or worked out of Communist parties on the basis of sectarian ideological principles. The only thing a Communist party needs to require of its members is that they support the overthrow of capitalism in whatever way best effects this. All other requirements are necessarily sectarian. It does not matter for Communism, which is after all the “real movement of the working class”, what position a member has on the ‘nature’ of the Soviet Union, on the guilt or innocence of Bukharin, on whether modern art is good or bad, on whether the Asiatic Mode of Production really existed or not, on whether the law of value means this or that, and so forth. All ideological demands of this kind serve only to divide, never to achieve progress. This can be seen by simply asking the question: what if the party leadership, or whoever is pushing the ideological point, were to get its way? If nothing material is changed in the here and now in political terms by even unanimity on a topic, then the topic is a sectarian ideological point. If everyone agreed now that Bukharin was guilty or Bukharin was innocent, this would not change the political state of the world one iota. Therefore, making requirements of this kind is inherently sectarian, and to be rejected.

Also sectarian is an approach which seeks to get people to become socialists of a certain stripe or sect above all else – any approach that attempts to achieve that workers or other socialist-minded people, or people who are desiring a ‘socialist education’, agree with certain programmatic principles or ideological points. Aside from explaining the horror of capitalism, which should be obvious in any case, and from explaining how only socialist revolution can rid us of it, which is a simple point of political logic, the goal in political terms should be to achieve political movement, that is, to get people to act. This can be in terms of activism, voting, organization, military rebellion, resistance, whatever is appropriate and relevant under the circumstances. That is not to say that ideological analysis, essays, and so forth are not useful or important – but their purpose can only ever be to serve as a guide to action, they can never be the goal of the movement. Again, we can quote Karl Marx very fruitfully, when he responded to the Eisenach program of the SPD and its Lassallean influences:

Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes. If, therefore, it was not possible – and the conditions of the item did not permit it – to go beyond the Eisenach programme, one should simply have concluded an agreement for action against the common enemy. But by drawing up a programme of principles (instead of postponing this until it has been prepared for by a considerable period of common activity) one sets up before the whole world landmarks by which it measures the level of the Party movement.3

In other words, the goal is always to achieve political improvement, political progress. Recognition of this does not equal reformism, since there the matter is that the reformists do not understand what political progress is in the final instance, but it does mean that action is better than platforms. Nothing against having platforms, but they may not be an excuse to exclude and reject either political activity or support from outside groups when those are aimed at overthrow of capitalism or creation of socialist relations, in whatever doctrinally flawed form.

What then if there are disagreements over seemingly major topics of political import? The obvious answer to this is not to have the party leadership decide, as this simply means that the position of the leadership prevails over the members and supporters without further debate or ado, which fails our criteria against sectarianism outlined above. Many parties for this reason, calling this approach ‘democratic centralism’, have decided that any programmatic question whatever must be put to a vote of the party congress, and once this vote has been held, it is binding on all members to support and voice it. This, too, is irreparably sectarian, and for several reasons. The first is that empirical evidence shows it does not work: the losing side tends to simply leave the party when they can, and start a doctrinally perfect microparty of their own. The result is that instead of one big party capable of action, we now have two small parties, each with virtually identical political goals, but a different ideological platform. This achieves absolutely nothing and only weakens and divides the Communist movement. Nobody who was not privy to the clash of egos involved will understand why there are now two parties and what it matters, and this will disinvite them from participation in either; and those who have taken part in the split either way will be wrapped up in their damaged egos, and tend to focus more on agitating against the other group than on actually achieving anything. Another reason is that it is utterly unnecessary for all members of a party, let alone its sympathizers and activists, to wholly agree with it on every point, or even every major point. The only demands that can be made, again, are those that are strictly necessary for the purpose of helping overthrow capitalism by political action. Agreement on all topics or even all major topics is not one of these demands.

What can be demanded are those things that enable a party or group to come to an understanding of the political situation at a given moment, the meaning of this in political-economic terms if necessary, and the steps to be taken following from the situation. These demands are: first, that there be as much possibility of open debate of principles as well as pragmatics in how they relate to the issue at hand as can be permitted under the circumstances (that is, if there is a situation of repression of Communist activity by the government, it may be necessary to make this debate take place in a limited form, or in secret, or outside the country, while the activists focus on first achieving the necessary liberties – this was the case in Lenin’s days when he wrote What is to be Done?). This implies also that anyone arguing against a party leadership, member, or position is not penalized for doing so, since this serves only to satisfy the egos of the party leaders involved, and harms the party by depriving it of possibly useful advice. Secondly, it can be demanded that a vote takes place on the issue of what concrete political steps are taken on the basis of the discussion, and only on the concrete political steps taken. Again, nobody is served in any way by having majority votes on questions of history, geography, economics, or any doctrine or ideology whatever, including but not limited to eternal wrangling about ‘true Marxism’ or the nature of the Soviet Union. The only thing that matters is what political moves are undertaken. These are of course themselves based on a certain political and ideological analysis, but by voting only on the practical points rather than the analysis itself, one avoids massive waste of time, bruising of intellectual egos, and ideological dogmatism. And this relates in turn to the third demand that can be made: when a decision is made on the political move to be undertaken, it can be demanded that the members and supporters do not sabotage it. Note that this does not mean that it can be demanded they take part: forcing people to assist moves against their political viewpoint and analysis demoralizes them, it causes friction during and after the political move itself, and they will not perform well. Rather, let the principle be one where those in agreement or willing to suspend disagreement will take part, and the others are only asked to not hinder it, which is simply a principle of comradely comity and having the losers of the vote also set their egos aside. These three demands can be made, and these three only. Even after a vote, a losing side is free to continue in whatever way to promote their viewpoint, as long as they do not materially hinder the acting out of the decision; after all, it may turn out that the majority has reason to reconsider.

How then are disagreements on doctrinal questions to be resolved, since they do always seem so important, and they do shape and construct the ideas on political moves to be made? Here again the answer has all too often been to create splinter parties, to make groups under the banner of perfect party platforms, and so forth. This is not the correct way, as explained above. Also not the correct way is that of so-called ‘entryism’, where an existing movement or group is taken over by others in order to move it. This is the exact opposite of what is desirable, since the point is not to create perfect platforms or even as many groups with perfect platforms as possible, but the goal is to achieve political movement against capitalism. Entryist tactics only destroy and divide existing movements without creating even the slightest impulse for new activity, and for this reason are the other side of the coin of splitting, and equally bad.

Correct is the approach that seeks, as always, to stimulate movement by propounding a particular political point of view or program. This is done not by creating a sectarian party with this as its demand for membership, nor is it done by forcing others to submit their own party to this cause, but this is done by creating a paper, internet website, forum for discussion, journal, newspaper column, or whatever means of communication are appropriate, in which the group that agrees on the platform sets out their views and principles, with the aim of stimulating both existing movements and prior nonactive readers to act on their ideas. In this way of acting, the platform and political views, important as they are, serve the goal of recruiting new socialists and improving the activity of existing ones, rather than serving the goal of creating true believers – in other words, the program serves movement, not the other way round. A good example of this approach done rightly can be seen in Lenin’s journal Iskra, in Marx & Engels’ works in newspapers such as the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the Northern Star, and in our day for example in the work done by the ‘Maoist-Third Worldist’ internet collective “Monkey Smashes Heaven”4, or the attempts at creating an open platform for discussion in the United Kingdom by the Weekly Worker, although few of its contributors can get past sectarian infighting. Those who agree with the platform, or come to agree with its form of socialism after reading it, shall act on it in their own way, and those who disagree will either be able to respond with their own views, or even better, show the correctness of their cause by action. Political action serves as final arbiter of viewpoints, since it shows in practice which views, when acted upon, have which consequences. As mentioned, both within and without official parties it is therefore to be encouraged to hold political discussions through various appropriate fora, without there being any need to penalize disagreement, while all that can be demanded of party leadership and members alike are the three demands mentioned above. If egoism and pettiness, dogmatism and sectarianism are going to be problems, and the risk always exists in any political party (including those of the center and right), then that should be worked on by the members of the party among themselves, not just so an atmosphere of real comradeship may prevail, but also in the interests of the Communist movement itself. Remember: Communism is a movement, not a party. It works towards a political goal, not toward satisfying individual egos. It is the working class and its supporters recognizing their goals and acting towards it, it is not an infallible metaphysical system on all questions historical, philosophical, scientific and aesthetic.

1. This article is partially based on Hal Draper’s excellent article on the same topic. See: Hal Draper, “Toward a New Beginning – On Another Road” (1971). http://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1971/alt/index.htm . ->
2. Karl Marx, Letter to Friedrich Bolte (November 23, 1871). ->
3. Karl Marx, Letter to W. Bracke (May 5, 1875). ->
4. http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com .->

Christianity and ‘Paganism’

by Matthijs Krul

The conversion of the ‘pagan’ countries to Christianity is an interesting question in the context of the current conflicts with regard to religion and religious conversions and their political dimensions. Despite the way it is often portrayed by Christian apologetics, there was nothing inevitable about the conversion process, nor was it necessarily a popular one. Much has been said about the conversion of ancient Rome to Christianity as a state religion, from Gibbon onward often seen as a contributor to its decline. Although this is said with dubious justification, yet the conversions of the early Middle Ages are somewhat under-considered. It is these to which we now turn.

Indeed even the conversion to Christianity of the Romans began at the top, with the fable of Constantine’s conversion after his victory over his opponent on the Pons Milvius, and this pattern is seen everywhere in the early Middle Ages. Missionaries sent by the Church would convert some King of a ‘barbarian’ people, and from that point on they are counted in the ranks of the Christians. However, this is clearly a tale all too simple, and it does not explain the motives involved. From a political point of view, the main questions are:
– Why was the focus of conversion at the top, not at the bottom, as seems to be the norm today in terms of missionary activity?
– What could have been the motives of the rulers to adopt Christianity rather than the extant religions?
– What might the response of the subjects of these rulers have been?
We will try to answer all of these questions.

First it is necessary to get an idea of what ‘the Church’ as such was and how it developed by means of some examples and chronology. Christianity had been a state religion, and the only permitted religion, in the Roman Empire from the time of Theodosius on, and in its proto-orthodox form (which refers to the variety of Christianity that later developed into Roman Catholicism as well as its offshoots in Protestantism and the Eastern Orthodox church). When the Roman Empire collapsed, the Byzantine successor empire in the east maintained Christianity, but in their own form, which over time increasingly diverged from that which was dominant in Western Europe. It must be noted, as an aside, that for most of the early Middle Ages Western Europe must be seen as, globally speaking, a fairly backward and provincial area, and certainly compared to the Byzantines despite their setbacks.

The most powerful church that developed under the first converted peoples was that of the Merovingian and Carolingian Franks, whose King Clovis I (466-511) converted to ‘Catholic’ Christianity around 500. (Some peoples, such as the Vandals, had been Christian already, but in the form of Arianism, which the church that operated in Rome and which carried the authority of the Roman ideology in the West did not accept.) The Frankish Kings from then on made a purposeful policy to ‘inherit’ the prestige as well as the administration, mutatis mutandis, of the Roman Empire, and since their realm was very large and relatively organized in the early Middle Ages, their political influence was great. It is through this that the ‘orthodox’, non-Arian form of Christianity came to dominate the continent, especially as it seems to have been more popular among the non-elites than the Arian form, even though it is now suspected Clovis had considered the merits of Arianism also.1 Through the power of the Frankish realm, Christianity spread to Kent, to Ireland, to parts of Germany, Scandinavia, and Spain, all of whom had fairly regular trade relations with the Franks.

‘Paganism’ as such was not of course one religion, nor did it clearly have any identifiable center. It is more a name given by the later Christian writers of the early Middle Ages, who are often unfortunately our only source, to the many different forms of religion that they contrasted to Christianity itself and which they associated with backwardness and superstition.2 In fact, what the scant evidence can tell us about the different beliefs of the different regions, it seems to have been a popular animism related to the magical and holy powers of certain natural sites as well as spirits and the like, supplemented with a pantheon of deities representing, as with the Hellenic religion, certain realms of human life as well as certain natural phenomena. Many of the popular practices of religion in fact continued after supposed conversion, not just because Christianity once officially the religion of the people was often not more than skin-deep, but also because spiritual practices unrelated to any specific organized religion as such could well be continued or reinvented within Christianity. That it was necessary for the Christian church in its different forms and locales to cater to this may be attested by the many saints, relics, votives, amulets and whatnot of this period, as well as by the practice of building Christian temples on sites already considered holy.3 The pantheons of the ‘pagan’ religions in the North and East of Europe are unclear, and we often lack accurate information on the details, but generally they seem to have had the same structure as the Greco-Roman ones: a theogony, a polytheistic structure with an all-powerful leading God at the head, and chiefs and kings having powers to lead in the form of their worship and in the sacrificial (and other) rituals, often deriving their authority in this from a family connection to the Gods.4

Why then the conversion of these same ‘pagan’ Kings? Several reasons may be proposed that seem credible. The first is the already mentioned authority of the church, whether Roman-Frankish or Byzantine, and its prestige derived from the Roman Empire, either by inheritance (as in the West) or by descent (as in the East). Especially those kings whose realms were close to the major Christian powers must have felt strong pressure to adopt their religion. This would remove a cause for war against them, which they will have feared, as well as making trade and diplomacy easier and promoting integration into their political structures and alliances, desirable for kings who wished to ensure their own power at the expense of their relative independence. Yet of itself this cannot have been sufficient, since there are too many counter-examples that could be given, in particular since Christian powers have not waged war on each other less than realms with any other religion.

A stronger explanation can be sought in the class relations between the monarch and his subjects. One of the explanations for the seemingly superior powers of conversion on the part of monotheisms generally over polytheist and animist systems of religion can be sought in the fact that rulers wish to integrate the ideology of their realm with their own position in a top-down hierarchy, and if possible wish to reinforce this hierarchy. Even Christian kings in the early Middle Ages had a far from absolute power and were very reliant on their nobility,5 but Christianity’s monotheistic system with one supreme God ruling all subject to him equally, as well as the church’s interpretation of the same as legitimizing the king as steward of people on behalf of God, can easily be seen to reinforce the central power of the early monarch. In fact, there is some evidence that the ‘pagan’ religions themselves underwent a development from animism toward an increasingly strong structure of divine superiority, which we may surmise is a sign of the same process taking place before Christianity presented an ideal opportunity.6 In the case of the latest conversions, we can add to this a development in the theory of the Christian church in which the explicit division of medieval society into the classes of laborers, warriors (rulers) and clergy was defended, this being a product of the process from early feudalism to high feudalism. Such a viewpoint would have been even more convenient to monarchs for their conversion in terms of its explicit endorsement of the hierarchy.7

Then there is what one might call the political problem of the ‘pagan’ theology: namely, their acceptance of the multiplicity of religious forms, precisely because of its own decentralized and particular nature. Monotheist religions necessarily are universalizing and aggressive, because their God ‘is a jealous God’. Polytheist-animist religions however recognize in the world many different loci of holiness and divine or magical powers and many possible Gods, and as such it poses no problem to the belief of the polytheist that some groups worship Jesus when they worship, among others, Perun or Odin. Local Gods would have been difficult to control and the religion relatively hard to centrally dictate and shape by any king, making him prefer a more top-down monotheist approach where the religious rules and forms would be organized and taught by the church system of centrally regulated monasteries and churches. Indeed in practice this centralization had to be enforced by successive series of enforcements of uniformity by Rome (even onto the Counter-Reformation), and often this later also led to fights between the monarchs and the church authority over the right to rule local churches and their doctrine, but for a king seeking to centralize power and establish a regulated administration, polytheistic animism must have been a headache compared to Christianity. As mentioned, ‘pagan’ kings and nobility often supported their claims to power by reference to descent from Gods or giants (as the Ynglinga saga tells us), but the also referred to development of proto-monotheist forms in even these religions before Christianity shows that this must not have been a sufficient guard against the decentralizing egalitarianism of ‘pagan’ animism. This egalitarian animism itself was clearly difficult to wipe out, as shown by the persistence of countless forms of magic, of local saints, of old rites and habits re-interpreted in Christian forms, even to the extent of old imagery and sacrifices, at least among the masses of the people; but the tolerance of polytheism became its undoing, as those proposing a single jealous God would not allow any other, whereas the polytheists were often willing to admit theirs, which alone would ensure the eventual defeat by attrition of the polytheists.

As a final point the influence must be mentioned of the difference between revealed religion and natural religion. Christianity, as a religion ‘of the Book’, relied on writing for its spread, whereas in those days only the elite was capable of reading and writing at all. This control over the rites and the access to the religion on the part of the elite must have been highly tempting to kings even when they could not read and write either (such as Charlemagne), as they could entrust their bureaucracy with it in the form of the literate clergy. Moreover, it is a well-known phenomenon that oral traditions, once in competition with writing, do not survive well, even when it comes to religion. After all, the written form means an orthodoxy is established, there is a single Truth which can be appealed to and which can potentially govern all occasions, whereas the natural religions in their oral traditions rely on the integration of local customs with local circumstances, and are constantly subject to alteration as the circumstances change. It is in a sense too flexible for its own good when faced with written competition; lack of uniformity and localism allows a bureaucracy relying on uniform orthodoxy to impose its will against relatively weak resistance each time, simply by converting each place in turn or stamping out any resistance locally where it would not survive a challenge at hegemonic level. That the clergy involved were often the only form of ‘education’ available, not least in reading and writing, would have been just an added incentive.8 The resistance of people against the new religion of monotheism would have been mostly passive therefore, by maintaining animist beliefs, by lacking interest in the new religion (we know that Christianity in Britain almost died out after the Romans withdrew and a new mission had to be sent much later to rekindle it9), and perhaps by occasional violent revolt; but on the whole, despite the more egalitarian and decentralized nature of the animist-polytheist views, in their original form they were simply no match for the increasingly central bureaucratic powers in Northern and Eastern Europe as feudalism progressed, especially since they had little power to re-establish ‘paganism’ once conversion had officially taken place, even if this did not happen through violence. Indeed, Sir Jack Goody has even gone so far as to say that ‘paganism’ when reliant on oral traditions and local practices alone is incapable of converting anyone itself at all.10

Nowadays, there is something of a small revival of ‘paganism’ in various forms, most of them for want of sources reliant on 19th and 20th Century inventions of tradition and various syntheses of practices from widely differing places and periods. In terms of its appeal to the old paganism, it has little intellectual merit. But perhaps with the demise of the monotheist organized religions and their enforced hierarchy in the developed world, any remaining current of religious and spiritual feeling can be channeled into new forms of this kind, more egalitarian in nature and more permissive of power-subverting politics. If so, it must be careful to learn the lessons of the demise of the old ‘paganisms’ and strengthen itself accordingly.

1. Mayke de Jong, “Religion”, in: Rosamond McKitterick (ed.), The Early Middle Ages (Oxford 2001), p. 134. It must be noted Rome itself had been hostile to Arianism from the very start, as Theodosius I repressed it.->
2. Ibid., p. 146-147.->
3. Ibid., p. 148.->
4. E.g. Barbara Yorke, “The Adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon Royal Courts to Christianity”, in: Martin Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300 (York 2003), p. 255.->
5. Rosamond McKitterick, “Politics”, in: McKitterick (op. cit.), p. 33-34.->
6. Przemyslaw Urbanczyk, “Politics of Conversion in North Central Europe”, in: Carver (op. cit.), p. 21-22.->
7. Ibid., p. 24.->
8. Ibid. Sir Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge 1986), p. 4-18.->
9. Ibid. William Frend, “Roman Britain: A Failed Promise”, in: Carver (op. cit.), p. 79-91.->
10. Goody, p. 4-5.->

Commentaries on the News (May 21, 2009)

by Matthijs Krul

A Bomb Plot in New York

News of today indicates that the FBI has proceeded to arrest in New York City a number of conspirators, prisoner converts to islam, who are alleged to have attempted to buy heavy weaponry to undertake terrorist attacks on various targets in the city.

The FBI arrested four men Wednesday in what authorities called a plot to detonate a bomb outside a Jewish temple and to shoot military planes with guided missiles.
Officials told The Associated Press the arrests came after a long-running undercover operation that began in Newburgh, N.Y., about 70 miles north of New York City.
James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh, were charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The men had planned to detonate a car with plastic explosives outside a temple in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale and to shoot military planes at the New York Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, authorities said.
In their efforts to acquire weapons, the defendants dealt with an informant acting under law enforcement supervision, authorities said. The FBI and other agencies monitored the men and provided an inactive missile and inert explosives to the informant for the defendants, a federal complaint said.
The investigation had been under way for about a year.
In June 2008, the informant met Cromitie in Newburgh and Cromitie complained that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and he was upset about the war there and that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by U.S. military forces, officials said.
Cromitie also expressed an interest in doing “something to America,” they said in the complaint.
Rep. Peter King, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the case following the arrests.
“This was a long, well-planned investigation, and it shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists,” said King, of New York.
The defendants, all arrested in New York City, were expected to appear in federal court in suburban White Plains on Thursday. They were jailed Wednesday night and couldn’t be contacted for comment. The FBI didn’t immediately return a telephone message Wednesday night seeking information on whether the men had lawyers.
1

It may immediately be emphasized that regardless of our quarrel with American policy at home and abroad, and perhaps with the structure of American society as it is now, nobody can expect the American government or its people to let themselves be targeted by terrorist groups seeking to ‘make a point’. Indeed, such activities are under current circumstances useless, as they do nothing to seriously damage American imperialism, they are likely to provoke a reactionary shift in American politics as a response to a perceived level of threat from inside and outside, and they are additionally likely to increase the general hostility towards the followers of Islam within the United States. All of these results are undesirable.

What it however also proves is the inanity of the supposed policy of the United States and its allies in waging war in Afghanistan and elsewhere in an attempt to wage ‘war on terror’, or to ward off the threat of terror. As the quote from the arrested themselves shows, the war in Afghanistan has provoked many, even safely inside the United States itself, to see the United States as such a menace to world peace and the survival of numerous peoples in the wider world, that they are as a result concluding that it is a legitimate target for terrorist strategies. In this way, the terror of sudden death from the air in Afghanistan today is translated into terror of sudden death by explosion for the inhabitants of New York City. Those who would take the ‘war on terror’ to the wider world are warned that if you inflame popular resentment against the United States and its allies, those fires may come to burn you. Wiser was the author of the Gospel of Matthew when he wrote: Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.2

**************************************************

The Lament of the Dongria Kondh

In other news, the native rights organization Survival International reports that the government of India has given permission to the British mining company Vedanta International to expropriate a holy mountain of the small Dongria Kondh people.3 The Dongria Kondh, about 8000 strong, live of hunting and gathering in a remote region of India, in which Vedanta is planning to undertake mining for bauxite, the valuable ore that is used in the production of aluminium.

This case is representative for countless such cases all over the world. While it must be said that it is not likely that peoples such as the Dongria Kondh can maintain their lifestyle in isolation from the world market and capitalist modernity forever, there is little reason nonetheless to applaud this blatant case of ‘primitive accumulation’ on the part of British capital and Indian government alike. The Dongria Kondh will not benefit by the creation of a bauxite mine, as it is likely that the expropriation of their customary land will cast them into the ever-swelling ranks of the proletariat of the underdeveloped nations.

Possibly they shall be forced by sheer necessity of survival to work in the same factory which has is the cause of their expropriation; here as ever capital acts as a vampire, sucking the blood of the living and ever seeking fresh bodies to exsanguinate. The productive capacities of modern society appear to the Dongria Kondh as Faustian machinery, to which they are to be sacrificed as were they ever so many victims of the Aztec sun gods, sacrificed so the sun of capital may ever bestow its light upon the world. The alternative is the disappearance entirely of the Dongria Kondh as they are pulled from their ancient fixed ways and thrown onto the dustbin of history. Being suddenly thrown into circulation as yet a fresh source of ‘free’ labor will be no blessing to these people, as it has never been to natives so uprooted from their land. The loss of land and the cohesion of community offered by the ancient ways of living destroys the independence and dignity of the communities involved as well as their means of survival.4 Few will adapt in time to the relentless machinery of capitalism, and those are likely to become Indian proletarians indistinguishable from any other of that great mass in time; all others shall die out, lamented and remembered only by anthropologists. Capitalism, after all, leaves not even a permanent tombstone for those it crushes under its wheels, a stronger Juggernaut than any hitherto seen in India. Much may be said about the backwardness of the tribal peoples in this region of the world as well as others, and we must not idolize their ossified isolation and neglect the often brutal and immovable internal hierarchies within the tribe, but if they are to be taken up into the ‘competition of peoples’, it must be done upon terms that can achieve a true Aufhebung, not Enclosure or destruction.

Earlier, tribal peoples were succesful in resisting another plan in the state of Orissa to mine the Gandhamardan mountain range, thanks to the solidarity of the Dalits, who have no reason to be enthousiastic about the ‘progress’ brought by foreign investment.5 That their objections often wore the cloak of mysticism and spiritualist superstition is to be rejected, but he who cannot stand naked before his enemies must go in the most effective battle-dress, which in many parts of the world is still religion.

**************************************************

An End to the Civil War in Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan government has jubilantly announced to the world their victory over their long-standing enemies of the LTTE, the nationalist insurgency of the Tamils of the north of the island. Photographs have been shown of the dead body of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE (generally known as the Tamil Tigers).6 The Tamil Tigers had a poor reputation, based on their use of suicide bombing, assassinations as well as recruitment of young soldiers, but the successive Sri Lankan governments often responded with equal violence and terror, even during the last stages of their recent campaign indiscriminately bombing Tamil fugitives, killing hundreds.

The origins of the conflict lie as usual in the history of British colonialism in the area. The British took Ceylon in 1796 from the Dutch, and transformed it from merely a fortified trading post into a veritable plantation for tea and indigo. Since the indigenous Sinhalese were resistant and considered untrustworthy workers, the British imported scores of Tamil from the south of India as plantation workers, and educated a small number of them to fill lower administrative colonial posts. This served the double advantage of lowering the costs of administration (a British official in the colonies being endlessly more demanding than a local and therefore unsuited for rote clerical tasks) as well as dividing the population of the island into two camps, making one dependent on British protection against the indigenous majority. Divide et impera has ever been the motto of imperial rule, especially in the direct exercise of sovereignty over colonies. Much harm has come from it in postcolonial times, as the disappearance of the old colonial power has given governments and militants in many a newly independent nation free rein to settle old ethnic and economic scores. Much here is worsened by religious bigotry between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Tamil, who are majority Hindu with a Christian minority. Both sides have treated the Muslims on Ceylon with contempt.

After the independence of the country in 1948, the Sinhalese majority increasingly sought to supplant the Tamil minority as rulers over the island, jealous of their privileged position relative to their numbers. Anti-colonial nationalism went hand in hand here, as often, with repression of minorities in the process of forging a strong national unity by the dominant ethnicity. The name of Ceylon was changed to Sri Lanka in 1972 as part of this, although it must be noted the British have continued to use the island for military purposes, as was officially enshrining the dominance of the Sinhalese language. The Tamil resisted, initially politically, but voting along ethnic lines did nothing to diminish the potential for strife. The LTTE formed as a result of this repression of the Tamil and a subsequent search for a separate national state in the north, facing the Tamil region of India. The violence of the hammer of Sinhalese nationalism upon the anvil of Sri Lanka was countered by the LTTE with an equally fierce hammering of Tamil politicians and officials inclined to reconcile themselves to the situation, mostly in the form of assassinations. LTTE jealousy of any alternative Tamil organization and anti-Tamil pogroms in Colombo and elsewhere led to a cycle of civil war that has lasted 26 years.

The main victims of this civil war have been the Sinhalese and Tamil populations of Sri Lanka both, neither of whom have gained much and both of whom have lost much in the endless strife. The civil war in Sri Lanka is but one example of the ways in which anti-colonialism has of necessity generally taken on nationalist forms, since only in the form of the nation-state can a people in the current political framework of capital claim and enforce their independence. Few indeed are inclined to federalism or power-sharing with any other group after centuries of oppression by outsiders, lack of self-determination and the dignity of independence, and purposeful policies of division by the colonial powers besides. Almost every ethnic-religious group in the underdeveloped world has followed the historical path of nationalist formation, with the advantage that the strength of the peoples in this vast majority of the world to resist imperialism and exploitation has greatly increased. But the price has been a steep one, and has been paid in the blood of many, especially by minority ethnic and religious groups in the respective newly minted states. These wars constitute the painful birth of the postcolonial world, and although lamentable cannot entirely be avoided. However, if the cycle of civil war, ethnic strife and militarist corruption is to end, the people of Sri Lanka as well as elsewhere must organize themselves on the basis of an internationalism that shows that they are no longer too insecure about their status as an independent people to extend a hand to their fellow exploited humans. Only when this is done and the workers of the world truly unite against exploitation, and fight for their emancipation not against each other but against capital, can the real development of their societies begin.

1. Associated Press (May 20, 2009).->
2. Matthew 26:52.->
3. Survival International, “Government approves controversial mine” (18 May 2009). http://www.survival-international.org/news/4561.->
4. There is much evidence on the negative impact of loss of native land claims on the peoples involved, in terms of survival as well as perception of well-being. See e.g. Survival International, “Progress Can Kill: How Imposed Development Destroys the Health of Tribal Peoples”. http://www.survival-international.org/lib/downloads/source/progresscankill/full_report.pdf->
5. Peter Foster, “Mining in Orissa threatens Dongria Kondh tribe”, in: The Daily Telegraph (21 April 2008).->
6. “Sri Lanka’s 26-year war ends as LTTE leader Prabhakaran killed”. Indo Asian News Service (May 18, 2009).->

Barack Obama and Organizer Consciousness

by Matthijs Krul

By now it is a familiar trope that Lenin is to have stated that the workers do not on their own achieve a Communist class consciousness, but cannot without intellectual input from the outside achieve anything but ‘trade union consciousness’. As he put it in What Is To Be Done?:

The history of all countries testifies that workers left exclusively to their own strength can cultivate only a trade union consciousness– that is the belief in the need to unite into a union, struggle against the bosses, press the government to pass needed labor legislation, etc. The doctrine of Socialism grew out of philosophic, historical, and economic theories which were worked out by the educated representatives of the propertied class, the intelligentsia.1

If we accept the merits of this thesis, perhaps the same can be said of politicians. After all, in those countries that have the name of being democratic, politicians are generally accepted to represent their constituents, whoever those may be. Often those constituents are a great medley of different classes, sub-classes and interest groups, but that does not diminish the truth of this principle. This means in turn that the level at which their politicians operate depends also on the level of consciousness arrived at by their constituents; for example, in settler nations, white workers at a low level of consciousness vote for right-wing and racist politics, whereas at a high level of consciousness they vote for exclusivist social-democracy and reformism, the so-called ‘social fascism’. However, we may readily assume by analogy of the above thesis, which seems well-enough confirmed by historical experience, that the politicians operate at a higher level of consciousness in theoretical terms than their average constituency does (which is likely true even in tyrannies). After all, they are not only on the whole better educated and so forth, but also tend to be professionals with significant experience molding the stuff of politics – and politics itself is a great tester of theories and whittles many a blunt notion into a sharp understanding.

In countries like the United States, where politics is dominated by two great, if sometimes barely distinguishable, alliances of interest groups, lobbies and clientele, this principle is all the more relevant. With so many different groups being represented by the Mahayana of the Democratic Party, it is inevitable that those politicians which are not directly in the pockets of one or another interest or for parochial reasons (for example due to the district system) have one clear constituency, will have to juggle the different groups’ interests, play them against each other, and strive to obtain a certain ‘average’. In the cowardly American media, always ready to garner valuable attention by making great headlines out of minor political affairs but equally frightened of any challenge to the establishment upon which it is parasitic, the inherent ‘moderation’, ‘centrism’ and ‘stability’ of this function of the American system has been much praised. What has been less noticed however, besides the enormous resulting corruption and stock-jobbing, is the need for high-ranking American politicians and in particular the President to learn a strategy for managing politics beyond the actual interests of his constituents. This is in particular true for the Democratic Party politicians, since their party represents a much greater number of constituent groups and less defined ones at that, since more often than not the party functions as the party of non-reaction, much like the similarly named Democrats did on the continent in the days of 1848. The Republican Party is easily summed up by the interests of the military, industrial capital, the religious bigots, and certain threatened sections of the white petty bourgeoisie and white workers, but the Democratic Party represents ‘everyone else’, which makes great demands on the consciousness of the President and Congress in times when the pendulum swings in favor of the latter party.

Such a time is now, with the newly elected President Barack Obama having just finished his first 100 days in office, which in American political lore is considered an important milestone. Already he has earned the well-deserved ire of the progressive forces in the United States for his wavering, his reluctance to push through any of the greatly necessary social and economic reforms (from abolishing religious bigotry in the armed forces to uprooting the extortionist healthcare system), and his seeming lack of recognition of his strong historical position vis-à-vis the right. Yet it is too early to support declaring him the black incarnation of Andrew Johnson, since many of his critics do not yet seem to understand what his consciousness is and where it comes from, unlike in the case of the latter.

In Barack Obama’s case, much can be learned about his political consciousness from his background as a professional agitator in Chicago, which in the usual sugary euphemisms of American parlance is called a ‘community organizer’. In this work, Obama has been much influenced by the great paradigmatic figure of community organizing, Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s approach to political activism has been laid down in his standardwork Rules for Radicals, which he published in 1971, one year before his death.2 In this book, we find the prescriptions that Obama is still taking to heart and which infuriate the American left wing, especially its more impatient and skeptical segments. Obama, for example, always prefers using the rhetoric of ‘trusted American values’ rather than the rhetoric of challenge to establishment (other than the political core in Washington, which is a poorly disguised way of rejecting the other party only), as he describes in his political statement and autobiography, The Audacity of Hope.3 In this book, Obama describes how he tired of being on the left-wing, arguing against imperialism, and desired to reconnect to ‘the values of my grandparents’, and so on and so forth. Whereas this does no wonders for anyone’s impression of his political courage and constancy, his ardent desire to drape any real desire for political reform he may have in the colors of the American flag is quite like Alinsky’s commentary on a similar note:

Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates with the experience of his audience – and gives full respect to the other’s values – would rule out attacks on the American flag. The responsible organizer would have known that it is the establishment that has betrayed the flag while the flag, itself, remains the glorious symbol of America’s hopes and aspirations.4

It is not immediately clear whether we are to believe that Alinsky truly subscribed to this patriotic showmanship or merely had a cynical impression of his fellow citizens, but in any case this well describes the patriotic timidity of the Obama administration. Even when they have all the cards in their hand, as they do now, the Democratic Party is always deadly afraid of the patriotism trump being played against them, because they know that even the workers of an empire such as the American one are bound to see their own strength as being bound up with the strength of its patriotic institutions. Alinsky’s emphasis on “working within the system”, on the sequence of organization-reformation-revolution (which he understands in a very broad sense indeed) fits precisely the mold of the professional organizer of communities, one who is striving to build up power out of weakness and who has little political material to work with.5

That is not to say that this organizer’s consciousness is of itself problematic; on the contrary, it is of the greatest use for any political party or movement, especially the Communists, to have people capable of grasping a political situation, to work within that situation to organize power, and to not let themselves be baited either by authorities or by impatience into adventurism and posturing. Obama, however, shows that within the Democratic Party, especially the supposed ‘left wing’ to which he was said to belong (much was made of this during the campaign by his opponents, who thereby revealed their incompetence at measuring from which side the wind was blowing), is not capable of transcending this organizer consciousness. Even when in an exceedingly strong position, they are unable to make any decisive moves or reforms. They are essentially a political equivalent of the trade union consciousness: forever trying to make inroads against a system which by their very attempts at doing so they strengthen, because they play within their bounds and are not capable of challenging the rules of the game itself. Only when those rules themselves are fundamentally challenged does change, Obama’s campaign theme, truly become possible, but the Democratic Party cannot do this without destroying the system of spoil-sharing with the Republican Party. Therefore, if Obama is to become a transformer of American politics, he must first transform his party’s consciousness, and this he cannot do.

1. See: V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin), “What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement”, in: Collected Works (Moscow 1961), Vol. V, p. 347-530.->
2. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals (New York, NY 1971).->
3. Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (New York, NY 2006).->
4. Alinsky, p. xviii.->
5. Alinsky, p. xxi.->