Tower Hamlets Council have announced that the church of St. John, Wapping, will finally receive a heritage plaque for the gravesite of Thomas Rainsborough (1610-1648).(1) As acknowledged leader of the Leveller cause within the Putney Debates, he became known as Colonel Rainsborough in Cromwell’s New Model Army, where he served with great courage and distinction, finally being killed in a commando raid to seize him at the siege of Pontefract (1648). At the Putney Debates, held in 1647, the constitutional structure of the England that was to come was decided – it represented the fighting out of the different ideological positions among the coalition that formed the rebel forces of what kind of cause they were truly fighting for. As has often been remarked in the historiography of the English Civil War, like with any revolutionary cause the rebels soon split between a radical and a more reformist wing. Unlike in the case of the later French or Russian Revolutions, it did not wholly come to force to decide the matter between them, but the Putney Debates foreshadowed the dominance of the reformist wing against the radical – perhaps inevitable given how much some of the radical demands were ahead of their time. Continue reading “A Plaque for Rainsborough”
Tag: Class Struggle
Excursus on Marxism and Religion II: On Liberation Theology
In my previous article on Marxism and religion, I argued the general theoretical case Marxism makes both for understanding religion as a social phenomenon and for arguing against it. In a sense, this could rightly be accused of ‘kicking in an open door’ (as we say in the Netherlands), as it expresses a view widely spread among the radical left today. As secularization has progressed, not even just in Western countries, left and liberal forces have by and large in their theoretical writings cut down reference to religion and spiritual revelation to negligible amounts, and practically it becomes a question of political mobilization more than one of the practice of belief. However, the counterexample often cited by those on the radical left inclined to a more sympathetic stance towards religion (organized or otherwise) is the case of ‘liberation theology’, the explicitly socio-economically radical, pro-poor interpretation of (Catholic) Christianity that established a strong ideological foothold in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s. The concerted efforts of the Vatican to stamp it out and the fall of the Soviet Union – threatening to relegate Central and South America once more to the United States’ unruly back garden – have seriously reduced its ideological and political power, but as a phenomenon it is worth exploring more systematically from the point of view of Marxism. After all, it is not often one finds pro-religious sentiment and radicalism combined in such a theoretically reflective manner, and it has done much to affect the traditionally strongly secularist tendencies among Marxists in both the First and Third Worlds. Continue reading “Excursus on Marxism and Religion II: On Liberation Theology”
Death Agony of Social-Democracy
Where can social-democracy go? In Greece, the parties of the center, once utterly dominant on the country’s political scene, can barely scrape together a majority combined even with the help of a mass of bonus seats for the plurality party. Their opposition is now formidable in the form of SYRIZA, a left social-democrat outfit with a programme of radical reform that would stretch liberal political economy to the breaking point, but staying well short of an explicit commitment to revolution. In France, the victory of the Parti Socialiste is complete with its clear majority in the Assemblée Nationale following François Hollande’s election to the Elysée. In the UK, the Conservative-LibDem coalition appears ever weaker and less able to enforce its majority, while the Labour Party has been leading it in the polls by large numbers for months on end. In Germany, the ruling rightist coalition has suffered painful defeats in the länder against the SPD. In short, it seems finally things are looking up for European social-democracy. Continue reading “Death Agony of Social-Democracy”
Unions and the West: The Scott Walker Affair
Following a headlong confrontation over the Governor of Wisconsin, the reactionary Scott Walker, and his direct assaults on the public sector unions and their legislative achievements, much of the US left is now abuzz with the resounding failure of the campaign to recall him. In what had been seen as one of the last great revivals of the labor movement in the United States, workers officially and unofficially organized against Walker, even going so far as to occupy the Capitol building and to make the functioning of the Wisconsin legislature impossible. There were massive campaigns for opposition against the anti-union onslaught, and it was seen by many in organized labor as a decisive battle on whether the fight for union rights could be won in America. Laws undermining the public sector unions had already passed without much difficulty in Indiana and Missouri, but were defeated in Ohio. In this way, Wisconsin became something of a battleground, befitting a state which has a reputation for supplying leading politicians of both the left wing and the right wing, relative to American standards. But the Democratic Party took the leadership of the campaign together with the unions, and supplied a weak centrist called Tom Barrett against Walker – a candidate who, as mayor of Milwaukee, failed to even endorse unequivocally the union position, and who had lost the election against Walker in the first place. In the end, Barrett added about 150.000 extra votes, but Walker added 200.000 extra votes, and therefore won by a larger margin than before. For all the union efforts, the Democratic Party nationally put in no real support for the campaign, and President Obama could not be bothered to do more than post a Tweet about it. This despite his pledge, during his own campaigning, that in case of an attack on union organizing he’d “put on a pair of comfortable shoes and join them on the picket line”. Continue reading “Unions and the West: The Scott Walker Affair”
Neoliberalism Closes the Nets Ever Further
Where there is capitalism, there will sooner or later be crisis. And where there is crisis, there will be resistance – and where there is socialism, there will be organized resistance. All the governments of West and East know this, and for this reason, everywhere the net is further closed, everywhere the political domain is restricted and the freedom of speech and of political expression further infringed. More and more the neoliberal era of capitalist rule shows its true face: in the name of liberating the citizen from the oppressive powers of the big state, it everywhere extends these powers and sharpens the knife it holds at the throat of anyone who might threaten to resist. In preparation for the 2012 Olympic Games in London, it has been announced that there will be “UK’s biggest mobilisation of military and security forces since the second world war”, and “during the Games an aircraft carrier will dock on the Thames. Surface-to-air missile systems will scan the skies. Unmanned drones, thankfully without lethal missiles, will loiter above the gleaming stadiums and opening and closing ceremonies. RAF Typhoon Eurofighters will fly from RAF Northolt. A thousand armed US diplomatic and FBI agents and 55 dog teams will patrol an Olympic zone partitioned off from the wider city by an 11-mile, £80m, 5,000-volt electric fence.”(1) So much for the spirit of peace and international sportsmanship the Games were to promote. The nakedness of the athletes has now been substituted with the nakedness of these displays of military power. The British state is imposing these on a city which only recently saw widespread rioting as a result of the exorbitant costs of living, the enormous rise in inequality, and the behavior of the state’s police force. It is for this reason that in Britain, comrade Seymour was quite right to oppose solidarity with the police forces in their campaign for the right to strike – at this particular juncture, such a right can only be used in order to give the police more resources with which to beat the working class into submission. Not coincidentally it is in the borough of Newham, where much of the Olympic activity will take place, that a great scandal has recently erupted over the aggressively racist behavior of the local police. Petty repression can only persist if backed up by displays of power, so as to say: “resistance is futile”. Continue reading “Neoliberalism Closes the Nets Ever Further”