I know, it sounds like a radical cleanser. But today I'm writing about people who need to grow up politically. Yes, that's a Lenin reference.

Galloway gives 'em hell



I listened to Galloway's attack on the right and loved it. I'm glad he's on my side.

Read a critique of George Galloway's career from the left here. Honestly, I'm getting sick of this lefter-than-thou attitude. Yeah yeah, Galloway's an opportunist. He doesn't have a perfect voting record. So what? He's also coherent and unafraid to challenge the neo-cons in a way American liberals have forgotten how to do. Just because I don't agree with everything he's done or said, I can still gloat that some of these bloodthirsty hypocrites in Washington have gotten a taste of their own medicine.

The article also claims Galloway ignores concerns at homes for adventures abroad. This ignores a simple fact: he just won an election - among the poorest electorate of Britain, in east London. He did so on a solidly reformist platform, that included Keynesian social reform as well as anti-war principles. How is that ignoring western working classes?

The Right have been beating the hell out of us for 25 years because they've set aside their differences and worked together. The Republican Party contains evangelicals & secularists, libertarians and statists. But at the end of the day, they all get together to oppose gay marriage.

This is Trotsky's united front: work with parties you disagree with on particular issues, while maintaining your independence. March separately, strike together. Funny that the Right's learned that lesson, while the left is still obsessed with clarifying its differences in the hopes that the workers will be drawn to the correct banner.

Lenin & Trotsky railed against this approach, in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, and Trotsky's writings on the rise of German fascism. In each case, eager Communists denounced potential allies because they weren't radical enough. As L&T predicted, this lost them support among the unconvinced - and drew potential radicals to the very moderate figures they hated so much.

Galloway isn't perfect. I'm well to the left of him politically. However, he's all we've got at the moment. And what he's doing - tearing a strip off right-wing bastards - he's doing very well. Let's take pride in that, continue to build the anti-war movement and learn about capitalism, the better to combat it. In the meantime, let's not isolate ourselves further...

Violence is not (always) radical

... As these guys are doing (Kansas City: anarchist anti-war protest rocks plaza). Apparently 20 masked anarchists disrupted a peace rally at a major plaza and

created traffic interference and blocked intersections. Trashcans, newspaper stands, tables from yuppie establishments, and other items were flipped over and thrown into the streets. Minor property destruction occurred.

When asked why, exactly, they were doing this,

An anonymous protester explained to onlookers that the Plaza was disrupted because it is owned by the Rich, who are operating the Iraq War... The protesters stressed that the only way to stop the Iraq War is to overthrow the racist capitalist system behind it.

OK. In a country where 99% of people think anarchism is on par with eating babies, you're going to convince them otherwise by throwing rubbish bins through windows. And you're doing this because those windows are owned by rich people - unlike what? Everything's owned by rich people - that's why they're rich. They also own the media, which is happy to print pictures of violent, anonymous anarchists, because it makes radical politics the perview of a scary elite, rather than of the mass movement it should be.

I agree, let's overthrow the racist capitalist system (which, by the way, is not the only way to stop a war - look at Vietnam.) How? By convincing the mass of people that capitalism is barbaric, enriching a small minority while immiserating the vast majority. By connecting with their everyday struggles in the institutions working people create, like trade unions & community groups, no matter how reformist those groups are. By struggling with them, gaining their trust and showing that the only way to guarantee a safe & happy future for all is by revolution.

In other words, hating the system is the first step, not the last. You have to communicate that hatred. You, & 20 of your friends donning masks and breaking things is not communication - it scares off people who might otherwise be willing to listen.

I'm not against violence in principle. I support strikers humiliating & beating up scabs, communities of colour physically resisting racists, queers forming self-defence committees. The difference is, those are actions done by oppressed people, for oppressed people. They're an example of self-organization. They have immediate, tactical goals that the violence helps achieve. They're not chaos or (ahem) anarchy.

In fact, I think I hate the system more than the ultra-leftists, because unlike them, I don't have the luxury of rejecting it. I have to live in it.