Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions - £20 p.a.  [P&P Bulletin Publications, PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]
No 1079 Mar 6 2001                                                                                                                                                25p

Fake-'lefts' swarming out of the woodwork as Blairism sinks into ridiculed farce because of its imperialist-system incompetence, greed, destructiveness, and depravity. But the next philosophical shift in history has to be towards revolutionary understanding. Arrogant monopoly-bourgeois hegemony can only end in warmongering crisis, not peaceful 'more generous democracy' gimmicks. Reaction always comes to power through parliament, or regardless of parliament, never in spite of parliament. Exploit electoralism to the full, but only to preach revolution. A serious socialist movement can only arise on the reinterpretation of all modern world history back to the Bolsheviks. Analysing Engels' "succession of events" correctly, in practice, is the key to defeating bourgeois ideological brainwashing. The entire fake-'left' in modern Britain has got everything wrong.

The turmoil caused for New Labour support by the increasingly blatant identification of Blairism with the most vicious monopoly-imperialist tyrannies (farming crisis; supporting Zionist blitzkrieg on Palestine; persecuting Iraq for daring to stand up to imperialism; new laws banning revolutionary political exiles getting asylum in Britain; total solidarity with the obscene crook Clinton's US imperialism; New Labour financial backing via corruption; relentless stooging for privatisation racketeering; etc, etc, etc (x 1,000);) is inevitably causing increased stirrings all round the fake-'left'. 

The wretched naïveness and appalling opportunism of much of these 'left' stirrings is predictably contemptible, but the opportunity to explain and expose such philistine rubbish is obviously useful for the workers movement. Out of all the turmoil,
a clearer grasp of Marxist scientific understanding is bound eventually to emerge, making a serious new communist movement possible.

The deluded methods of 'left reformism' remain the chief problem, still endemic despite it being conclusively proved more than 150 years ago that historical materialism provided the only serious guide for conscious socialist intervention into the class struggle in order to win it once and for all. In a later summary of his and Marx's pioneering scientific analysis of society's past, present, and future historic shifts, Engels explained that primarily:

"it was necessary to present the capitalistic method of production in its historical connection and its inevitableness during a particular historical period, and therefore, also, to present its inevitable downfall" (Socialism, Utopian and Scientific), 

adding that merely "criticising the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences" and "simply rejecting them as bad" meant that socialists "could not get the mastery of them".

Dismissing the 57 varieties of idealist 'socialists' all pontificating with rival priority 'reform' and 'human rights' programmes as the 'only true socialism', - Engels insisted that 

"its task was no longer to manufacture a system of society as perfect as possible, but to examine the historico-economic succession of events from which these classes and their antagonism had of necessity sprung, and to discover in the economic conditions thus created, the means of ending the conflict".

As the original very essence of socialist internationalism, it should hardly be necessary to add that in the globalised world-imperialist conditions of 2001, Engels would stress that it is crucially the international conditions of the fight against imperialism that would provide the best guide to "the means of ending the conflict" (by proletarian revolution, it equally goes without saying).

The dissident 'left' Labourites, the 'Socialist Alliance', the various Communist Party remnants, Scargill's one-man-band, - all these various 'socialist' opponents of Blairism never rise a centimetre out of the same idealist swamp that New Labour itself is mired in. An absolute blizzard of competing 'reform' promises, 'justice' demands, total 'socialist programmes', constitutional 'democracy guarantees', etc, etc, fills the hot air above the fake-'left'. The "historico-economic succession of events" which daily anew are creating the actual world conditions which alone will make possible any serious new anti-imperialist developments, - remain virtually ignored.

The 'performance' speeches by guru leaders always cover the same safe ground of some trusty historical anecdotes and some impassioned idealist rhetoric. Occasional newspaper publication pads out this demagogy with exaggerated or unrepresentative narratives of trade-union branch heroics, but even then rarely connected to or shedding light on current epoch-making world events.

The more regular or more 'scientific' newspapers may deal more with the real world, but invariably do so from a long tradition of defending some sectarian position or other, – Trotskyist anti-communist on one side, or Stalinist-Revisionist anti-communist on the other. The real scientific socialism of letting new international developments constantly put old-established theoretical positions (all of them) to the test of objectivity, has yet to spread beyond the efforts of the EPSR.

Some sects have walled themselves behind a 'Marxist theory' of refusing "to examine the historico-economic succession of events" at all (Open Polemic), while their former anti-Leninist stablemates around the 'Socialist Alliance' spend weeks ignoring the real world in order to print vast tracts of completely abstract academic 'theory' unrelated to modern class-war developments, or else vast gossip pieces about the mind-numbing petty bureaucratic failings of some rival back-stabbing sect or other supposedly united in completely fictional 'reconciliation' inside the entirely fraudulent 'Socialist Alliance'.

The 'Alliance' itself spent its election-challenge press conference revealing how its eclectic meaninglessness made it impossible to announce any agreed positions on the current burning "historico-economic succession of events", - the one thing, of course, which alone could bring any serious unity to these disparate academic sects; and the constitutional spirit of the 'SA', such as it is, actually advises against any 'Alliance' attempt to reach any agreement at all on any fundamental theoretical/historical controversies splitting the labour movement, - accepting that differences on such thorny subjects as the dictatorship of the proletariat; or the real meaning of the history of the USSR; or the role and perspectives for China's workers state now; etc; - will never be resolved in such an opportunist electoralist lash-up as the joke 'Socialist Alliance', - a pre-set admission of total uselessness.

Summarising the whole fraudulent 'left' swamp, Engels wrote:

"To all these, socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice, and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered.

With all this, - absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one's special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, - there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one of the other. Hence from this, nothing could come but a kind of eclectic, average Socialism, which, as a matter of fact, has up to the present time dominated the minds of most of the socialist workers in France and England.

Hence, a mish-mash allowing of the most manifold shades of opinion; a mish-mash of such critical statements economic theories, pictures of future society by the founders of different sects, as excite a minimum of opposition; a mish-mash which is the more easily brewed the more the definite sharp edges of the individual constituents are rubbed down in the stream of debate, like rounded pebbles in a brook."

In other words, a complete mish-mash.

Such is all that can be produced by the elimination of "internecine strife", also, in the moribund Stalinist-Revisionist tradition. The real debate certainly needs to be restricted to those genuinely dedicated to a Marxist-Leninist, workers-state, proletarian-dictatorship, revolutionary perspective. But within that framework (on the doubtful assumption than any membership would be left to the CP Revisionist groups, the SLP, or the 'Socialist Alliance' on such a basis), -- unrestrained polemics should roar forwards on every contested issue of anti-imperialist struggle since the Bolshevik Revolution.

Instead, 'debate' is turned into mutual back-scratching with the sects, and philistine thuggery ejects any serious source of objective scientific inquiry or contribution.

Scargillism has rediscovered the 'luvvie' factor in politics, recruiting the Royle Family head (Ricky Tomlinson) to campaign for the leader in Hartlepool against Mandelson, and to give thousands.

Such loyalty to the miners' NUM tradition is admirable, but show-business has done as much (and vastly more) for even overtly 'revolutionary' politics in Britain before. The WRP, for example, had literally scores of leading actors, film producers, television directors and writers, etc, backing a daily paper, and putting on huge revolutionary-dramatic productions of brilliant quality exclusively for the WRP. But despite running a lavish fulltime Marxist education college in the countryside for residential schools for all its supporters, the WRP's sectarian failure to objectively "examine the historico-economic succession of events" which were creating the real world in which the WRP had to function, meant that Healyism eventually crashed in ruins.

Scargillism already deserves to have done so for its ludicrous ignorance or reactionary interventions on dozens of issues, - Kosovo for example, where the Milosevic regime of corruption and humiliating failure was stooged for and sucked up to by Scargillism just like the worst days of CP subservience to Moscow throughout mistake after mistake and theoretical nonsense after theoretical nonsense during the 20th century. Without a complete analysis of the history and collapse of Stalinism-Revisionism, and of fake 'revolutionism' with which the Trotskyite anti-communists backed the reactionary separatism of the pro-imperialist Albanian mafiosi, the "historico-economic succession of events" dictating the world conditions within which the working class must fight for socialist revolution will remain an unsolved puzzle.

Another dozen examples could be given of Scargillism's ludicrous political limitations. No amount of 'luvvie' money or moral-support publicity will get round the problem.

The SLP might temporarily become sensationally electorally popular in view of widespread despair over Blairism. But as Tomlinson told the Sunday Times, explaining his 1960s membership of the National Front: "To be honest with you, I'm not that clever when it comes to politics". At times of great upheaval, any amount of confused political lurching is not necessarily a decisive condemnation, and in any case is not the issue. The issue is Scargillism's continued deliberate philistinism, now, on the whole history of scientific political education, without which no workers movement stands a chance of ever defeating modern imperialism. The SLP can boast as much growth as it likes. Let it swell to CPSU proportions, - 18 million members, leading a CP international of 100 million more members worldwide. But let the crap notion of 'left reformist pressure is enough' continue, as in the Moscow leadership days; and let the anti-theory philistinism continue in the same way; and let the 'luvvie' stuff continue where all that was ever asked of anyone was their vague support for 'progressive ideas' in general, as before; and total catastrophe is all that will be achieved, just as Moscow Stalinism-Revisionism, despite worldwide support from literally thousands of leading performers of all kinds, not to mention support from 25 other socialist states, or nearly so, - ended up wrecking everything because of political ignorance.

On the other wing of anti-communism and anti-Marxism, Healyism's collapse in ruins has strangely not deterred all would-be Trot fanatics. Something called 'Movement for a Socialist Future' has widened its agitation, claiming that Healy's ICFI 

"was the closest expression to the continuity of the Fourth International established by Trotsky.... In addition to this, Healy's work on the nature of subjective idealism took forward the understanding of this phenomenon, even if ironically Healy was unable to avoid subjective idealism in his own political life. At least Healy was worried by the problem.

"Those who have criticised Healy have done it in such a way as to dismiss the philosophical difficulties facing Marxism, so have ended up repeating the error of subjective idealism. Healy was a worker-Marxist who made strenuous efforts to educate himself in philosophy."

Yes, but many a road to hell is paved with good intentions and strenuous efforts. Such apologetics come close to being the philistine cliché of all time. Personally, Healy happened to be an extremely nasty egotistical little monster, but such compliments to his legendary 'roguish charm' aside, Healy simply got history wrong, time after time after time. His inability to provide a correct analysis of "the historico-economic succession of events" determining the actual world political scene to which leadership had to be given, led to his total failure.

It was precisely Healy's 'ICFI' clique statement on the Dec 1975 rightwing coup in Portugal (which ended the "elements of dual power" which had prevailed until then following the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship by the soldiers committees) which first dramatically showed the far-reaching dangers of sectarian subjectivism. The earlier expulsion, without any party discussion, of the Thornett group was a bigger issue of paranoid inadequacy on Healy's part, invalidating all claims of 'Marxist methods' of party-building at a stroke, teaching the working class nothing but crude bullying 'discipline' for its own idealist sake, but the leadership line was correct (putting an end to critical support for the new Labour government), and Thornett was wrong, (see ILWP Books vol 2). On Portugal, the line was lunacy, ignoring a CIA-backed right-wing coup completely in order to jeer at "the collapse of the revolt of leftwing military units", adding the WRP's praise that "the Portuguese working class showed its political maturity by not blindly following the palace revolutionists and risking a real defeat under unfavourable conditions".

But total defeat of the "elements of dual power" is what had in fact happened, with the working class completely disarmed by the rotten cowardly class-collaborating capitulation by the Socialist Party and Communist Party leadership of the workers committees which had refused to go to defence of the leftwing soldiers committees which were suffering a counter-revolutionary closure onslaught, and were ready to fight if they had won any workers committees support at all. The IC statement tore up a whole year's work by Workers Press giving on-the-spot reports of dual power's progress.

A small challenge to the IC's mistaken line was suppressed. Portugal was never mentioned by the WRP again. A year later, the CIA coup was briefly acknowledged, but without any reference to the mistaken line earlier, or discussion of the suppressed debate.

This was all symbolic of a relentlessly—emerging inability of Healyism to cope with the size and scope of the revolutionary leadership now demanded by the growing movement born of his sole early virtue. Unconditional solidarity with the Irish national-liberation struggle's right to fight imperialist colonisation by any means it chooses was reneged on publicly about this time when the Harrods bombing was denounced (after initially being correctly accepted as an inevitable consequence of colonial imperialism). The previously critically-regarded Saddam bonapartist nationalism in Iraq was suddenly reintroduced as conducting a 'socialist transformation' following some Baghdad backing for the IC. For similar reasons, Gaddafi and Arafat were suddenly presented uncritically as being no obstacle to socialism or consistent anti-imperialism.

This un-Marxist gibberish reached its peak with the Healy clique joining the fake-'left' groupie worship of Ayatollah Khomeini as an "intuitive revolutionary genius" who would lead the Iranian masses towards socialism.

On the domestic front, Healy's opportunistic retreat from his smaller-movement revolutionary spirit showed in his timid defeatist response to the 1978 Ford workers strike which marked the beginning of the end for Callaghan's 'winter of discontent' government but which the Healy clique initially dismissed as a setback for the working class. For a whole period, the significance of the defeat of Callaghan's social contract was missed, and its foreshadowing of Callaghan's eventual government defeat and resignation was denied completely.

It might be claimed that Healyism was at least getting the general historical picture right that in this period (just pre-Thatcherism), the longer-term balance of class forces could be said to be deserting the working class in favour of imperialism; but while 'true' with hindsight, it would be a ludicrously un-Marxist approach. Nothing is pre-ordained, and while world trade expansion did find some extra legs for a further 20 years or so, history could have always turned out differently if there had been different world proletarian leadership. Moscow Revisionist 'left reformist pressure' class-collaborating stupidity was the main obstacle, of course. But the general longterm crisis of the out-of-date imperialist system remained very much a live situation everywhere. The CIA had needed a fascist-military coup to hold things back in Chile. But revolution had jolted imperialism to the core in Grenada, Iran, and Nicaragua, not to mention Portugal and its colonies earlier, and huge unrest remained universal. Labour's humiliation by workers struggle following the Heath government's defeat by the miners, and with only barmy Thatcherism to come, gave unprecedented opportunities for the workers movement everywhere.

The Stalinist-Revisionist anti-revolutionary international class-collaborationism and capitulatory complacency was the overwhelming defeatist factor. But Healyism's small-minded sectarian cliquiness, completely out of its depth in trying to make sense of "the historico-economic succession of events", qualifies for equal contempt in the record books. It is absolutely appropriate that Healyism ended up being one of the most ludicrous apologists for Gorbachevism, revealing it to the world as the Soviet workers state's long-awaited (by Trot idealist lunacy) 'political revolution'.

What more suitably ridiculous epitaph could be wanted for such lifelong hokum as Healyism.

Healy's 'philosophy' was pure Marx Brothers. He once gave a whole seminar to a prominent TV director's crammed awe-struck Maida Vale apartment about the concept of 'casualty' or chance in the transition from Being into Semblance, expanding on Lenin's discussion of Hegel's 'Science of Logic' (vol 38, p 162), occasionally reading from the text (some copies were being reverentially passed round). Very late on, from one slightly less awe-struck corner, it was pointed out that the text was about "causality", not "casualty". The astonishing response to this farce was an instant grumpy-embarrassed scuttling out pleading illness from over-tiredness from 'overwork', followed by astonishing universal sympathy.

This is more than just a trivial incident. Generation after generation of new recruits entered the WRP to sit in gobsmacked paralysis in front of Healy's impenetrable blackboard lectures on cognition, flogging to death the most obscure nuances of logical abstractions, and the dialectical laws of motion of thought and matter. But when it came to the completely arbitrary decisions about the line for the WRP/ICFI to adopt over contentious world events, no discussion of anything was allowed, - not the reasons nor the consequences, let alone the process of cognition giving rise to such repeated stupidity and mistakes, and such lunatic censorship and tyrannical 'discipline', to cover them up.

The crucial point of Marxist philosophy is to be aware of the longterm material/class forces dictating all the potential patterns of historical development, including the material forces of changed collective consciousness, and of the possible dialectical sharp shifts in their transformation. All the rest is gathering information and observations so that the theoretical perspective can constantly interact with objective practical findings. For sly anti-Soviet reasons, Healy paid little emphasis to these actual processes of real-world historical materialism, especially the very contemporary world, but concentrated everything on abstract logic. In this way, vol 38's analysis of dialectical reasoning processes became the core of party education, but the contradiction that Cuba, for example, presented to Trotsky's anti-Marxist nonsense from the 1930s onwards, placing the USSR in the camp of counter-revolutionary imperialism ("The definite passing over of the Comintern to the side of the bourgeois order, its cynically counter-revolutionary role throughout the world..."- Transitional Programme) was 'dealt with' by simply ignoring it, and just never mentioning Cuba.

The dialectical role played by the Soviet workers state, albeit bureaucratically corrupted by Stalinist Revisionist theoretical nonsense, - which Trotsky recognised in In Defence of Marxism on the revolutionary impact the Red Army was having on formerly Polish and Finnish territories, - was often a touchy subject-matter which the great 'dialectician' Healy was either incapable or unwilling to deal with.

It was also because of a dialectical weakness in Trotskyism itself in really believing that the Stalinist bureaucracy was a new ruling class, (despite the play-acting about a new 'caste' to get round the obvious Marxist objection that there had been no counter-revolutionary dismantling of the workers state), - that only "an all-out class-war fight" could "resolve" the contradictory position of the bureaucracy, running a workers state of planned socialism but cynically committed to "the bourgeois order and worldwide counter-revolution", allegedly.

Because of the grain of truth in this of anti-revolutionary cowardice, complacency, and conservatism in the Stalinist bureaucracy, the bigger falsehood was missed that the CPSU hierarchy was still not remotely a 'new ruling class' or even a 'new ruling caste'. Too little attention was paid to the fact that it was a workers state governing party which was suffering damage from crass theoretical misunderstanding of the world much more than it was suffering from the terrible damage caused by arbitrary lawlessness and paranoid insecurity.

As a result, the real final outcome of the CPSU Revisionist sickness was peaceful self-liquidation by a demoralised bureaucracy which had ludicrously convinced itself that free-market forces really were a superior economic motive-force for civilisation than planned socialism. No 'ruling class' or 'ruling caste' really existed to 'fight all-out class war to retain its socially-privileged positions'. It was, by and large, an averagely-paid and averagely-perked mass party bureaucracy which simply gave up the ghost because its Stalinist-Revisionist theoretical lunacy told it that its workers-state bureaucratic dictatorship was now superfluous, and that market forces could best take the Soviet Union the rest of the way to glory.

Lifelong, Trotskyism was a non-comprehending disaster as far as hopes of restoring Marxist revolutionary understanding to the world proletarian movement were concerned. Healyism was permanently a vastly bigger disaster, laughably irrelevant to a proper Marxist understanding of the modern world.

Healy's single outstanding philosophical contribution was his early-on stubborn insistence that the essence of historical development must remain revolutionary, in spite of all the appearances, both from complacent Trot entryism capitulating to Labourism; and from universal Stalinist-Revisionist "peaceful coexistence" idiocy which inevitably opened the door to the "peaceful road to socialism" treachery. But beyond this healthy revolutionary spirit, Healy was atrociously personally vicious and an ignorant muddle-head, eaten up with subjective conceit.

The 'revolutionary continuity' stuff is sentimental mysticism. The idea that the struggle for revolutionary Marxist understanding is still alive in the world today thanks to G Healy is, frankly, nuts. Healy's contribution, such as it is, is the detailed record of his clique's political output and interventions, neither more nor less. It stinks. He got everything wrong. His brutal-terror methods around his clique guaranteed that his mistakes would only ever be compounded and covered up. The same happened in his personal rapacious viciousness and his financial crookedness, until the whole foul mess blew up in his face.

And nothing could be more ridiculous than the guru-struck remnant (Redgrave & Co) that lingered on after the sordid bust-up, still spouting 'continuity' and other mystical rubbish. Like most clique acolytes, they have now gone far to the right, unhindered by Healy's basic philosophy which was subjective-idealism.

It is undoubtedly the case that the greatest obstacle to a more successful international revolutionary struggle against the ever-deepening warmongering crisis of imperialist 'overproduction' and world-slump anarchy is the universal confusion over philosophical perspectives for taking civilisation forward within the mayhem, corruption, and philistinism of disintegrating capitalist society everywhere.

But to clarify an agreed Marxist revolutionary analysis of the likeliest best route to the eventual international overthrow of the imperialist system and to convince the workers movement to support it, the key lessons from the history of the workers states, proletarian dictatorship, and other modern revolutionary struggles against imperialism are going to have to be thrashed out and agreed by the revolutionary party. But the only place to start is with contemporary living issues, analysing, for example, NATO blitzkrieging of Serbia and Iraq as the best vantage point for revisiting, constantly, the understanding of the role played (or not played) by the Stalinist workers states in anti-imperialism, etc, etc. The entire "historico-economic succession of events" which make the modern world what it is provides the only possible material with which to start reconstructing the communist international, eventually working all the way back to total continuity with original Marxist-Leninist science. If the MSF is up for this, then let constructive polemics begin.

The EPSR has tried to persuade Open Polemic to begin discussing the real world as the only way forward, but to no avail so far.

It tried with Scargillism, but got booted out after becoming far too successful around the SLP. It tried with the CPGB/Weekly Worker but got fobbed off with personal abuse when the EPSR's polemics proved too hot to handle.

The 'Alliance' or SLP method of "build the party first, and then sort things out" is doomed. A serious cadre party can only be built on a daily practical revolutionary education which must be in place from the very beginning, and which will find its most crucial educational material in the constant contemporary struggle to interpret world developments correctly and act upon them, relearning all of Marxist history through what is being got wrong or right in the current living analysis, and building an immediate world party of Marxist revolutionaries in the process. Blanket daily TV, radio, and newspaper brainwashing on "the historico-economic succession of events" is how imperialism smartly keeps the world safe for counter-revolution. When the time is ripe, the far more powerful and convincing Marxist analysis of that same succession of events will be easily more persuasive, and will find the means to get itself across.

The great difficulty is in assembling enough Marxist agreement together to start with, to set the process off. The great difficulty is in getting things right in the first place, and convincing others that it is so. Which is why so much historical Marxist-Leninist polemics takes the form of flawed-guru slaying. Events alone proved Dühring, Bauer, Bernstein, Martynov, Kautsky, Trotsky, Plekhanov, etc, etc, all wrong. Events have proved Healy wrong.

Events will prove the 'Alliance' and the SLP wrong. Imperialist crisis can only end in revolutionary disaster. The urgent working-class need is to build revolutionary understanding of how history works. Electoralist 'left reformism' only plays into the hands of the reactionary crisis. The 'Alliance' has letters in the capitalist press pleading for fairer play for its utopian uselessness, turning the clock back to 1810 of Fourier, Owen, and Saint-Simon:

"If we cannot aim for a better society, - yes, to dream of a new sort of world....Politics becomes the vehicle of cynical manipulation, not of hope, justice, and freedom....Condemn Martin Luther King for having a dream?"

No, but praise his turn to practical anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle by denouncing US fascism in Vietnam (for which he got killed) much much more.

The 'Alliance' so-called 'revolutionary' wing is also quoting Trotsky this week as well as utopian dreaming, - a 1934 call to "prioritise democracy". 

"A more generous democracy would facilitate the struggle for workers power" 

appeals to French workers are seen as 'revolutionary' cover for CPGB 'Alliance' input demanding abolition of the monarchy as the transitional-programme cutting edge to build a mass movement in today's assumed electoral conditions, but to gently prepare it in this "abolish the monarchy" way for the 'revolutionary' transformation of the 'Alliance' that will be required tomorrow.

This is a ludicrous subterfuge. The monarchy is show-business, no more nor less offensive than any other idle over-wealthy and over-pampered celebrities. As well abolish Posh & Becks, the real monarchy, as victimise the Windsors. It is capitalism which is wrong and a great fraud, not its pathetic show-business celebrities and useless aristocrats, which are just part of the entertainment industry.

And capitalism is mostly wrong because it doesn't work in the long run, and will crash in warmongering ruins for everybody.

And the biggest crooked fraud of all is precisely capitalist 'democracy', - the very instrument for justifying the creeping spread of imperialist blitzkrieging around the world to hold back socialist revolution.

The 1934 quote has Trotsky ludicrously declaring:

As long as the majority of the working class continues on the basis of bourgeois democracy, we are ready to defend it with all our forces against violent attacks from the Bonapartist and fascist bourgeoisie.

But it was precisely via the fraud of bourgeois democracy that fascism had just won power in Germany next door!!! 

It is precisely stupidity like this, creating an insane diversion about one branch of show-business, and then quoting a really dumb piece of guru-worshipping from Trotsky to give the whole 'prioritise democracy' stunt some 'revolutionary' credibility, which shows the pointlessness of such arbitrary sectarianism as this 'Alliance' lash-up.

Build Leninism. EPSR

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Vengeful fascist terror oozes out of the confused splits in the dog-in-the-manger 'Loyalist' backlash against the normalisation and reunification reality of Ireland's new deal.

NATIONALISTS will be watching closely the effect of the UDP split, especially as the UDA have been involved in orchestrating and carrying out attacks on Catholics in recent months.

Ulster Democratic Party, the loyalist party closely associated with the UDA, announced that a quarter of its ruling body had quit over the Peace Process. The defections came from branches in areas where there has been an upsurge in a loyalist campaign of  sectarian violence, Larne, Coleraine, Ballymoney, Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus.

"For months now, the UDA have been orchestrating and carrying out attacks on Catholics," said Maskey. "Clearly, many elements of the UDA organisation are firmly in the 'No' camp and have rejected the Peace Process." The news that the UDP has split wide open over support for the Good Friday Agreement will cause concern for many, he said.

The UDP, under the leadership of Gary McMichael, was established in 1989. Recently, McMichael suggested that he may be forced to stand down if his party withdraws support for the Peace Process.

Maskey said that the split could not be divorced from the ongoing attacks in North and East Antrim and the involvement of the UDA in these.

"I would urge nationalists to remain vigilant," said Maskey, "if history tells us anything it is that internal loyalist disputes often result in attacks on Catholics".

Predictably, within hours of the UDP announcement, further sectarian attacks on the homes of Catholic families took place. In Ardoyne, North Belfast, the home of former republican POW Martin Og Meehan, was attacked in the early hours of Wednesday morning 24 January.

No one was injured when two shots from a powerful handgun were fired at the house. One bullet smashed through the living room window. Two children, a three-year-old boy and four-week-old infant girl, were in the house at the time.

The attack took place within hours of a warning to the family by the RUC of an imminent loyalist threat. The RUC arrived at the Meehan home around 8pm on the night of the attack. Martin Óg was told that there was a serious threat to his life but the RUC officer refused to disclose further details.

No getaway car was heard, indicating that the gunmen felt confident enough to walk into the cul de sac where the Meehan family live. Despite the RUC's knowledge of the loyalist threat to the family, the attack proceeded unhindered by the RUC.

This is the third time the family has been targeted by loyalists. The RUC arrived after the attack and informed them that it had been carried out by the Red Hand Defenders. "The RHD is a cover name used by the UDA," said Meehan. "For some reason the RUC persist in providing cover for the UDA."

In a second loyalist attack in North Belfast, a bomb was thrown at a house in Lothair Avenue, of the Limestone Road. The device exploded and there was blast damage to the house but no one was injured.

On the same night, in the County Derry village of Garvagh, pipe bombs were thrown at two houses. A third device was discovered some time later. There were no injuries. One of the houses to be targeted was the home of a 70-year-old pensioner.

Meanwhile, an upsurge in sectarian violence in the nearby town of Coleraine has led local people to claim that the County Derry town is a "second Larne". 

In the past few months, there have been over 100 sectarian attacks, 30 of which have been described as serious, including attacks on two Catholic-owned pubs.

And a Catholic mother of two living in Randalstown, County Antrim is living in fear after her Neilsbrook Estate home was visited by loyalists who threatened the family. Four men, some of who were masked but none armed, identified themselves as members of the UVF and told the terrified resident, "get out or you're dead".

Later, youths passing the threatened woman in a car shouted sectarian abuse. Commenting on the incident, Sinn Féin's Martin Meehan described the woman, who does not wish to be identified, as "absolutely terrified".

Meehan said there had been an undercurrent of sectarian intimidation for over two years against Catholics living in the mixed Neilsbrook Estate. He said he did not believe the men who issued the threat were from the UVF but were most likely dissident loyalists using the unstable peace process to intimidate Catholics from their homes.

In Larne, a Catholic pensioner narrowly escaped injury when bricks were hurled through the living room window of his home as he sat watching television. The attack took place shortly before 7pm on Monday night in Linn Road in the mixed Craigyhill Estate.

A few minutes later, the windows of the pensioner's daughter's home were smashed. This was the second time the home of the 27-year-old mother of two had been attacked by loyalists in two weeks. Earlier, loyalists had sprayed the family's home with gunfire. The family has subsequently left their home. Windows were also smashed in a third house in Lealies Drive, Antiville.

A three-year-old Catholic child became the latest target in the loyalist vendetta against the Shaw family in Larne. The mother of young Martina Shaw was forced to withdraw her daughter from playschool after they were targeted by loyalists while travelling to and from school.

The family has been repeatedly targeted by loyalists and may be forced into withdrawing their other children from attending school, following intimidation. Both of the family's eldest sons, aged eleven and 15, have been beaten by loyalist gangs.

The attack followed within days of the then Secretary of State Peter Mandelson's visit to the town, which he described as in danger of becoming a "sectarian ghetto".

Two public houses owned by a Catholic in Ballymena were targeted for attack earlier this week. A pipe bomb was thrown at the Slemish Bar on William Street at about 10.30pm last Wednesday.

A man wearing a green hood was seen attempting to thrown the device through a window. The bar was evacuated but the device failed to explode. The second attack took place in Ahoghill in the previous week. A device was left on the windowsill of the Diamond Bar but did not explode.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review 
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Loyalist killings

JAN 1, Denver Smith (33), a member of PUP, was clubbed to death in Stiles Estate in Antrim by a loyalist gang involved in drug dealing.

JAN 10, Richard Jameson (46), a UVF leader in Mid-Ulster murdered by rival loyalists in the LVF.

FEB 19, David Mcilwaine (19) and Andrew Robb (18) stabbed to death outside Tandragee, County Armagh as part of a loyalist feud.

MAY 25, Martin Taylor, a friend of PUP Assembly member Billy Hutchinson, shot dead in North Belfast by UDA.

JULY 11, Andrew Cairns (22) killed at an eleventh night bonfire in Lame after a row between UVF and UDA members.

AUG 21, Bobby Mahood (48) and Jackie Coulter (48) gunned down in a jeep on the Crumlin Road, North Belfast by the UVF.

AUG 23, Sam Rocket (22) linked to the UVF, was shot dead at his girlfriend's home in Summer Street, North Belfast by the UDA.

OCT 28, David Greer (21) linked to the UDA was shot dead in Mountcollyer Street, North Belfast by the UVF.

OCT 30, Bertie Rice (63) a PUP worker gunned down in Tiger's Bay, North Belfast by UDA.

OCT 30, Tommy English (40) a former member UDA shot dead at his home in Newtownabbey by the UVF.

NOV 2, Mark Quail (26), a member of the UVF, was shot dead at his Rathcoole flat by the UDA.

DEC 5, Trevor Kell (35) Protestant taxi driver shot dead answering a bogus call for a taxi in North Belfast.

DEC 6, Gary Moore (30) a Catholic building worker from Dungiven, shot dead by loyalists in Monkstown, Newtownabbey.

DEC 18, James Rockett (29). Had UDA connections and was killed in dispute over drugs. UDA are thought to have been behind the killing.

JAN 7, 2001. Geordie Legge (38) former top UDA member tortured and beaten to death by the UDA in a dispute over drug dealing debt.

THE year ended as it began with the Ulster Unionist Council precipitating further crisis within the Peace Process. In February, a suspension of the institutions at the behest of unionists dealt a near fatal blow to the Peace Process. As Christmas approached David Trimble plunged the process once again into deepening crisis by blocking Sinn Féin representation on cross-border Ministerial Councils.

In the intervening months the failure of political unionism to grasp the opportunity for change, the strategy of opposition to change pursued by unionist politicians, even those who signed up to the Good Friday Agreement, created the kind of political vacuum in which loyalist violence thrived.

And as the year 2000 drew to a close, it was clear that loyalist violence had significantly intensified.

In Belfast, vulnerable areas in the north of the city and on the outskirts of the west came under repeated sectarian attack. Outside of Belfast, Catholics living in predominantly loyalist towns in County Antrim, most notably Larne, Ballymena, Ballymoney also endured increasing levels of loyalist violence.

Catholics living in Coleraine bore the brunt of the upsurge in loyalist violence in County Derry, while the village of Ballynahinch was the focus of sectarian violence in County Down.

Intermittent attacks on Catholic-owned businesses, churches and schools, ongoing throughout the year, were accompanied by more systematic mob attacks on Catholic homes and families during the summer. Paintbomb, petrol-bomb and pipe-bomb attacks kept Catholic families in vulnerable areas living in a constant state of fear. By December, loyalist violence had returned to its traditional sectarian killing.

On 6 December, Gary Moore, a 30-year-old father of two from Dungiven, was singled out because he was a Catholic and shot dead as he worked on a building site in the loyalist Monkstown Estate near Newtownabbey In Belfast, just minutes after the Dungiven killing, a 22-year-old Catholic taxi driver was seriously wounded but survived another loyalist gun attack.

A few days later and loyalist gunmen struck again, this time in Derry. Their victim, shot in the chest as he attempted to flee, was targeted in the mistaken belief he was a Catholic. The killers had attempted to lure a taxi driver from a firm located in the Catholic Top of the Hill area of the Waterside. The company had passed the request onto another firm that employs mostly Protestants.

Northern nationalists often paid the price, but at the core of loyalist violence throughout the year 2000 lay rivalry between the different loyalist groupings. Internecine feuding at the beginning of the year briefly gave away to shows of strength only to plunge back into a bitter and bloody feud on the Shankill.

While open feuding laid bare the tensions within loyalism, the pecking order was also being played out by being seen to be 'tough on taigs'. In early summer, Johnny Adair's bid to be 'top' rather than 'Mad Dog' suffered a major blow with the screening of a documentary exposing drug dealing within the Shankill heartland of the UDA.

Within days, masked and armed members of the UDA renewed their threat against northern nationalists. Accusing nationalists of "ethnic cleansing", the UDA declared "the right to shoot any person seen to be attacking Protestants in North and West Belfast".

It was a spurious claim and it was exposed as such almost immediately. Disputing the claim that Protestant families had been intimidated out of their homes, the Housing Executive published its records. There was no record of any Protestant family being intimidated out of their home, All the families forced to flee had been Catholic.

Film footage of UDA leader Johnny Adair and his entourage of t-shirted men and clog marching in the grounds of Drumcree Church or cheering as masked LVF gunmen fired a volley of shots during a rally in Portadown were repeatedly shown on television and became the dominant image of loyalism this year.

In July, tensions between the UDA and UVF were being played out symbolically with flags and murals marking out each groups territorial claim. In Portadown, scenes of Johnny Adair cavorting with the UVF's bitter rival the LVF fanned the flames of tension between the UDA and UVF in Belfast.

Less frequently shown was the sectarian violence visited upon Catholic communities by loyalist groupings vying for supremacy within their own estates. In August, the UDA in Belfast launched a series of orchestrated attack on nationalist families living in the north of the city.

It was 7.30am on a Sunday morning when a minibus, carrying an armed and masked loyalist gang, drove into a nationalist enclave off the Limestone Road. In a frenzy of sectarian violence, the mob sledgehammered their way into a number of homes, lobbed bricks and paint bombs through front windows and smashed residents' cars.

For nationalists, the attack was not about broken glass and damaged property but of shattered nerves and damaged lives. Panic stricken families barricaded their doors and fled upstairs. One mother frantically hid her children in an upstairs cupboard, fearing for their lives if the mob broke through the table she'd thrown across the front doorway.

Speaking of her ordeal, another resident spoke of sleepless nights and endless worry. "When day breaks," she had said, "you think you're safe". 

For nationalists living in vulnerable areas, systematic persecution was still a way of life in the first year of the New Millennium.

On Saturday 19 August, in a carefully-orchestrated UDA paramilitary show of strength, Johnny Adair marched behind UDA and UFF banners within the ranks of several hundred masked and uniformed loyalists.

The event had euphemistically been billed as a celebration of loyalist culture, but violence and the threat of violence were never far from the surface. As part of the "celebration", several murals glorifying the sectarian murder of Catholics were unveiled.

Trouble flared shortly after 3pm when loyalist bandsmen carrying a LVF flag paraded past a pub frequented by the UVF. It began as a brawl outside a bar but quickly escalated into a bloody feud. In a three-month period seven loyalists were shot dead, mostly in North Belfast, and several hundred families with loyalist connections fled from their Shankill homes.

But while loyalist rivalry erupted on the Shankill, sectarian attacks on Catholics continued. In December the spotlight was on Larne. A dossier detailing over 160 sectarian attacks on Catholic families living in the predominantly loyalist seaside town was given the British and Dublin Governments.

Many of the families whose plight was highlighted in the dossier had been the target for repeated sectarian attacks. The Shaw family have lived in Larne for three generations. Just before Christmas they were informed that their names, together with other Catholic families living on the Seacourt Estate, were on a loyalist death list.

Two months earlier John Shaw had been targeted in a loyalist booby-trap bomb attack. John escaped with minor injuries but his companion was seriously injured. In an earlier attack John escaped serious injury when a grenade exploded under his van. John's home has been petrol bombed and his car set alight.

Other members of the Shaws' extended family have also been the target for repeated sectarian attack. An aunt's house has been petrol bombed twice and a cousin has been shot at and stabbed by loyalists. A blast bomb was also thrown at his home. An uncle, Bertie Shaw was shot dead by the UDA in 1993.

During the civil rights campaign of 30 years ago, Bernadette Devlin had famously said it was time for nationalists in the north to stop "keeping your head down like a Larne Catholic". The Good Friday Agreement enshrined the right to live free from sectarian harassment. In the year 2000 that right remained aspirational rather than realised for nationalists living in the North.