Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
	Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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No 1085 Apr 17 2001                                                                                                                             25p

Racist backwardness is the result of capitalist society rottenness, not its cause. The 'anti-racist' reform industry has sound sentiments but seriously reactionary politics, consciously class-collaborative and anti-revolutionary. Reformist pressure, however 'left' has never solved any of the fundamental injustices and nastiness of corrupt, cut-throat, competitive capitalism yet, - or cured the culturally-backward mentalities bred by such a ruthlessly individualist and bent system, and never will. Racist officialdom needs exposing. But racist diversions will be a key element in the state's counter-revolutionary ideological campaigns. Organised international fascist violence is already everywhere; it never went away. Bolshevism is the only route out of it. The class-philosophical mentality of 'race-relations reform'  will never embrace Bolshevism.

The racism endemic throughout British society has to be deplored, but are anti-racist campaigns the answer to capitalist society's backwardness???

Are the bourgeois courts the place to smoke out fascist violence or establishment hidden agendas; and even though the strange scuppering of the Leeds footballers trial might lend itself to a propaganda point or two against all the bourgeois influences involved for making such a mess of things, is not the furore itself just a massive diversion from far more serious things threatening the working class from out of the capitalist system than the unsurprisingness of inter-racial fisticuffs when a boozy row has got out of hand after a nightclub???

The Cincinnati riots against black deaths in police custody are what should be expected; but when class-collaborating reformists attack cop’s racist bias as the problem, the ludicrous propositions follow that the Western imperialist states of 'bourgeois dictatorship' (as Marx termed monopoly-capitalism's unreformable domination) have only known the problem of deaths in police custody when a black minority has come under the cosh; and that if this racism would stop (as per the Macpherson recommendations), then this problem would stop; and, even more stupid, that the class bias in all capitalist democracy policing (pro property, and against anti-authority and anti-property agitators) would not be a concern if there was no racist bias involved in cracking down on dissidence of every kind.

Clearly, more than a few anti-racist campaigners would be even happier if the exposures of officialdom's race prejudice in all its workings were also accompanied by an even more important analysis of the relentless and vicious class-war bias in everything that the state authorities do.

But the question is what to make of public campaigns which do not hammer out that important additional class-war message??

Capitalist exploitation's racist bias always needs identifying as such, obviously. But much more importantly, all such incidents needs identifying first and foremost as class domination.

The Cincinnati rebellion is essentially about a proletarian revolt against the rule of the American monopoly-bourgeois class which creates a society where all authority will always be vested in a system which protects property and property rights above all else, and which will keep control permanently, by any means possible, over all potential threats to that property system.

Obviously, large black proletarian ghettoes in America's major cities are exactly such a threat, but the constant harassment and repression of them, such as has led to the current Cincinnati rebellion, is an anti-capitalist propaganda point LOST when presented as a racist issue by the petty-bourgeois class-collaborating race-relations industry inspired by 'moral' idealism.

It is legitimate to fear open fascism taking over Western governments again as in the 1920s and 1930s, and anti-fascist propaganda and agitation is obviously a necessary part of the labour movement's activities; but nothing except complete historical nonsense has followed when it starts to be proclaimed that "at least fascism has been defeated" or "at least racism has been driven back". The 'victors' over the Axis (fascist) powers then gave the world the genocidal slaughter of Indo-China, Algeria, Kenya, Palestine, Rhodesia, etc; and more fascist tyrannies than can be counted, with millions of butchered or tortured victims, in Indonesia, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, half of Africa, etc, with regime after regime financed and armed by the West under the slogan: "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard", notoriously applied to the murderous Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua for nearly 50 years of bloody tyranny.

How was any of all this long reign of terror and 'fascism' throughout the Western world any different from the tyranny that German, Italian, and Japanese imperialism used to keep control and dominate with????

Nearer home, do deaths in police and prison custody end if the racist bias could be taken out of the work of the Met and the jail warders?

Does the 'legal' maintenance of the property system in Britain become any less authoritarian (against those who would baulk the system in any way) even if not just one judge with a 'hidden racist agenda' could be exposed to ridicule, but all such judges could be driven from office by anti-racist campaigners??

Not at all; and the idea that such a 'moral' campaign would at least "be a good start" is true, but surely opens the door wide to the greatest threat of all facing the working class which is to believe that 'reformist democracy' can save it from fascism or anything else.

The historical record is absolutely clear that all of the most notorious 'fascist' regimes in the record books came about either directly via parliaments or parliamentary illusions, or else very crudely in spite of parliament's "best" efforts, which amounted to nothing more than lulling people with a false sense of security.

What it shows is that the amount of open 'fascism' conducting world imperialist tyranny at any one time is little more than a reflection of how the international class war to overthrow capitalism, - the real issue, is going in that period.

Clearly, all the rallying of 'democratic' forces that can be achieved is a proper effect on the outcome of that historic class war for socialism; but does not the record of modern times also clearly demonstrate that making such a rallying of 'democratic' forces the main issue is the worst possible mistake that could befall the workers movement?? Is that not what the great crime of Revisionism is all about?? A crucial part of the long total triumph of Revisionist (reformist) stupidity in Britain, which finally virtually destroyed the communist movement, (as happened internationally too nearly everywhere), was the corrupted-thinking consequence of the myth of the 'Cable Street defeat of fascism', a genuine feat of working-class heroism (and CP-led), but an impossible-to-dislodge prop forever after of the core Revisionist international theoretical nonsense that unrelenting 'left-reformist' 'democratic' pressure internationally, supporting Moscow's 'peaceful coexistence' determination to allegedly 'make it hard for imperialism to start new world wars', would eventually see socialism dropping into the lap of the working class in country after country.

It was crap then, and it would be even worse crap now. The entire Marxist understanding of the essential revolutionary driving force of all historical change got lost in this whole swamp of 'left reformist pressure' illusions. With it was lost all grasp of the crucial counter-revolutionary obstacle to the successful building of socialism that continuing imperialist world-domination represented. Bit by bit, the whole idea of more 1917s and more proletarian dictatorships was lost or abandoned and eventually the very effort of building planned publicly-owned economies in hostility to world monopoly-imperialist domination was itself abandoned in East Europe, with catastrophic consequences.

Imperialism's own development, riddled with insoluble contradictions, has now once more inevitably brought the world back towards communist revolution as the only possible way forward again.

And all the illusions of 'left reformist pressure' are once more undoubtedly by far the greatest obstacle to workers everywhere grasping in time these vital revolutionary lessons.

With such crucial lessons facing workers everywhere, does it not make all the striving around the Leeds footballers’ case to shout 'racist twats' rather than 'drunken twats' or 'thuggish twats' or 'authoritarian class-biased judge twat' seem just a bit of a diversion???

There are arguments to believe that such politically-correct-tinged striving might be counter-productive, even. If it is only the National Front that is ever prepared to argue out loud that waves of economic-opportunist migrants coming into the country and taking up scarce welfare resources, housing, good jobs and good education opportunities, etc, is not necessarily to the immediate practical advantage of already-resident proletarians struggling to get the same scarce things for themselves, and that the unfair 'foreign monopolist' system was to blame for all this enforced (and condoned) migratory nonsense, – then would not such ludicrous diversions be as likely to attract proletarian support as the PC anti-racist 'left reformists' with their "end all immigration controls" and "welcome to all asylum-seekers, the more the better" slogans, which take politically-correct subjective-idealist philosophy to new heights of absurdity???

Hammer people too ridiculously and too relentlessly for being 'politically incorrect' and it is as likely to create a nationalist backlash as anything else.

And is telling people to 'stop being racist' a realistic way towards improving race-relations anyway???? In a similar area of backwardness, prejudice, and superstition which undermined workers and put them in thrall to a huge diversion, namely a faith in God, -  Lenin concluded that urging workers to 'stop being believers' was completely counter-productive, and in fact played right into the hands of clerical fascism.

Lenin noted how petty-bourgeois do-gooders urged workers to shun clerical fascism by recommending a more universally altruistic religion instead, the 'brotherhood of man' stuff, but entirely for reactionary purposes, really, of still getting capitalism accepted, but minus the stain of fascism.

Is this not what the entire race-relations industry is really about, asking workers to shun the fascist trimmings of racist exploitation, but to still class-collaborate with capitalism nevertheless and its incurable system of universal exploitation?

Although obviously not on the same question, the logic of Lenin's arguments is worth listening to.

Adapting Lenin, it could be explained that racism has deep social roots arising out of the frustrations and injustices of the capitalist system which manages to repress, exploit, and antagonise workers without them fully realising how it happens or who is responsible. A despairing faith in a better afterlife could be one response to this mysterious misery. A hate-filled fear or prejudice against other strange or unknown phenomena could be a different response.

Neither backwardness lends itself to being harangued or knocked out of people. Progress lies through a revolutionary education in the need to overthrow the capitalist social causes of people suffering every kind of backwardness and insecurity.

To adapt Lenin further, bend his example of Bolshevism divided from workers both by their reluctance to join a strike call and also by their being under the influence of,- not religion, but nationalism;- not Church propaganda, but NF propaganda. Should the Bolsheviks tackle just the workers’ reluctance to join the strike, or their doubts about the strike plus at the same time the influence on them of religion/nationalism?

It is a slightly strained analogy, but Lenin's arguments are interesting:

Engels blamed the Blanquists for being unable to understand that only the class struggle of the working masses could, by comprehensively drawing the widest strata of the proletariat into conscious and revolutionary social practice, really free the oppressed masses from the yoke of religion, whereas to proclaim that war on religion was a political task of the workers' party was just anarchistic phrase-mongering..

Engels no less resolutely condemns Dühring's pseudo-revolutionary idea that religion should be prohibited in socialist society. To declare such a war on religion, Engels says, is to "out-Bismarck Bismarck".

By this struggle Bismarck only stimulated the militant clericalism of the Catholics, and only injured the work of real culture, because he gave prominence to religious divisions rather than political divisions, and diverted the attention of some sections of the working class and of the other democratic elements away from the urgent tasks of the class and revolutionary struggle to the most superficial and false bourgeois anti-clericalism. Accusing the would-be ultra-revolutionary Dühring of wanting to repeat Bismarck's folly in another form, Engels insisted that the workers' party should have the ability to work patiently at the task of organising and educating the proletariat, which would lead to the dying out of religion, and not throw itself into the gamble of a political war on religion.

We must know how to combat religion, and in order to do so we must explain the source of faith and religion among the masses in a materialist way. The combating of religion cannot be confined to abstract ideological preaching, and it must not be reduced to such preaching. It must be linked up with the concrete practice of the class movement, which aims at eliminating the social roots of religion. Why does religion retain its hold on the backward sections of the town proletariat, on broad sections of the semi-proletariat, and on the mass of the peasantry? Because of the ignorance of the people, replies the bourgeois progressist, the radical or the bourgeois materialist. And so: "Down with religion and long live atheism; the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task!" The Marxist says that this is not true, that it is a superficial view, the view of narrow bourgeois uplifters. It does not explain the roots of religion profoundly enough; it explains them, not in a materialist but in an idealist way. In modern capitalist countries these roots are mainly social. The deepest root of religion today is the socially downtrodden condition of the working masses and their apparently complete helplessness in face of the blind forces of capitalism, which every day and every hour inflicts upon ordinary working people the most horrible suffering and the most savage torment, a thousand times more severe than those inflicted by extraordinary events, such as wars, earthquakes, etc. "Fear made the gods." Fear of the blind force of capital - blind because it cannot be foreseen by the masses of the people - a force which at every step in the life of the proletarian and small proprietor threatens to inflict, and does inflict "sudden", "unexpected", "accidental" ruin, destruction, pauperism, prostitution, death from starvation - such is the root of modern religion which the materialist must bear in mind first and foremost, if he does not want to remain an infant school materialist. No educational book can eradicate religion from the minds of masses who are crushed by capitalist hard labour, and who are at the mercy of the blind destructive forces of capitalism, until those masses themselves learn to fight this root of religion, fight the rule of capital in all its forms, in a united, organised, planned and conscious way.

Does this mean that educational books against religion are harmful or unnecessary? No; nothing of the kind. It means that Social-Democracy's atheist propaganda must be subordinated to its basic task - the development of the class struggle of the exploited masses against the exploiters. 

Let us take an example. The proletariat in a particular region and in a particular industry is divided, let us assume, into an advanced section of fairly class-conscious Social-Democrats, who are of course atheists, and rather backward workers who are still connected with the countryside and with the peasantry, and who believe in God, go to church, or are even under the direct influence of the local priest - who, let us suppose, is organising a Christian labour union. Let us assume furthermore that the economic struggle in this locality has resulted in a strike. It is the duty of a Marxist to place the success of the strike movement above everything else, vigorously to counteract the division of the workers in this struggle into atheists and Christians, vigorously to oppose any such division. Atheist propaganda in such circumstances may be both unnecessary and harmful - not from the philistine fear of scaring away the backward sections, of losing a seat in the elections, and so on, but out of consideration for the real progress of the class struggle, which in the conditions of modern capitalist society will convert Christian workers to Social-Democracy and to atheism a hundred times better than bald atheist propaganda. To preach atheism at such a moment and in such circumstances would only be playing into the hands of the priest and the priests, who desire nothing better than that the division of the workers according to their participation in the strike movement should be replaced by their division according to their belief in God. An anarchist who preached war against God at all costs would in effect be helping the priests and the bourgeoisie (as the anarchists always do help the bourgeoisie in practice). A Marxist must be a materialist, i.e. an enemy of religion, but a dialectical materialist, i.e. one who treats the struggle against religion not in an abstract way, not on the basis of remote, purely theoretical, never varying preaching, but in a concrete way, on the basis of the class struggle.

THE ATTITUDE OF THE WORKERS PARTY TO RELIGION 13/05/1909

Directly on the national question, Lenin was even more at odds with the mentality of the petty-bourgeois fake-'left' which, today in Britain, supports more and more 'politically correct' cultural-national autonomy. The Trots, Revisionists, and bogus 'anti-Stalin communists' have all abandoned Marxism to go tail-ending the reactionary separatist delusions of Scottish and Welsh middle-class nationalism, and other such 'cultural-national autonomy' throwbacks. The swamp's capitulation to black nationalist 'political correctness' of various kinds has included the particularly reactionary 'separate schools' lobbying, denounced with special vehemence by Lenin in his opposition to bourgeois nationalism. Nothing could be more backward than these artificial retreats from the natural progress of assimilation by the politically-progressive world market, back into 'self-determination' narrowness (where no plainly blunt conditions of obviously nationality-determined force, repression, or privilege have demanded it).

Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the "most just", "purest", most refined and civilised brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism, the amalgamation of all nations in the higher unity, a unity that is growing before our eyes with every mile of railway line that is built, with every international trust, and every workers' association that is formed (an association that is international in its economic activities as well as in its ideas and aims). 

The principle of nationality is historically inevitable in bourgeois society and, taking this society into due account, the Marxist fully recognises the historical legitimacy of national movements. But to prevent this recognition from becoming an apologia of nationalism, it must be strictly limited to what is progressive in such movements, in order that this recognition may not lead to bourgeois ideology obscuring proletarian consciousness.

The awakening of the masses from feudal lethargy, and their struggle against all national oppression, for the sovereignty of the people, of the nation, are progressive. Hence, it is .the Marxist's bounden duty to stand for the most resolute and consistent democratism on all aspects of the national question. This task is largely a negative one. But this is the limit the proletariat can go to in supporting nationalism, for beyond that begins the "positive" activity of the bourgeoisie striving to fortify nationalism. 

To throw off the feudal yoke, all national oppression, and all privileges enjoyed by any particular nation or language, is the imperative duty of the proletariat as a democratic force, and is certainly in the interests of the proletarian class struggle, which is obscured and retarded by bickering on the national question. But to go beyond these strictly limited and definite historical limits in helping bourgeois nationalism means betraying the proletariat and siding with the bourgeoisie. There is a border-line here, which is often very slight and which the Bundists and Ukrainian nationalist-socialists completely lose sight of. 

Combat all national oppression? Yes, of course! Fight for any kind of national development, for "national culture" in general? - Of course not. The economic development of capitalist society presents us with examples of immature national movements all over the world, examples of the formation of big nations out of a number of small ones, or to the detriment of some of the small ones, and also examples of the assimilation of nations. The development of nationality in general is the principle of bourgeois nationalism; hence the exclusiveness of bourgeois nationalism, hence the endless national bickering. The proletariat, however, far from undertaking to uphold the national development of every nation, on the contrary, warns the masses against such illusions, stands for the fullest freedom of capitalist intercourse and welcomes every kind of assimilation of nations, except that which is founded on force or privilege.

Consolidating nationalism within a certain "justly" delimited sphere, "constitutionalising" nationalism, and securing the separation of all nations from one another by means of a special state institution - such is the ideological foundation and content of cultural-national autonomy. This idea is thoroughly bourgeois and thoroughly false. The proletariat cannot support any consecration of nationalism; on the contrary, it supports everything that helps to obliterate national distinctions and remove national barriers; it supports everything that makes the ties between nationalities closer and closer, or tends to merge nations. To act differently means siding with reactionary nationalist philistinism.

When, at their Congress in Brünn (in 1899), the Austrian Social-Democrats discussed the plan for cultural-national autonomy, practically no attention was paid to a theoretical appraisal of that plan. It is, however, noteworthy that the following two arguments were levelled against this programme: (1) it would tend to strengthen clericalism; (2) "its result would be the perpetuation of chauvinism, its introduction. into every small community, into every small group" (p92 of the official report of the Brünn Congress, in German. A Russian translation was published by the Jewish nationalist party, the J.S.L.P. ").

There can be no doubt that "national culture", in the ordinary sense of the term, i.e. schools, etc., is at present under the predominant influence of the clergy and the bourgeois chauvinists in all countries in the world. When the Bundists, in advocating "cultural-national" autonomy, say that the constituting of nations will keep the class struggle within them clean of all extraneous considerations, then that is manifest and ridiculous sophistry. It is primarily in the economic and political sphere that a serious class struggle is waged in any capitalist society. To separate the sphere of education from this is, firstly, absurdly utopian, because schools (like "national culture" in general) cannot be separated from economics and politics; secondly, it is the economic and political life of a capitalist country that necessitates at every step the smashing of the absurd and outmoded national barriers and prejudices, whereas separation of the school system and the like, would only perpetuate, intensify and strengthen "pure" clericalism and "pure" bourgeois chauvinism.

On the boards of joint-stock companies we find capitalists of different nations sitting together in complete harmony. At the factories workers of different nations work side by side. In any really serious and profound political issue sides are taken according to classes, not nations. Withdrawing school education and the like from state control and placing it under the control of the nations is in effect an attempt to separate from economics, which unites the nations, the most highly, so to speak, ideological sphere of social life, the sphere in which "pure" national culture or the national cultivation of clericalism and chauvinism bas the freest play.

In practice, the plan for "extra-territorial" or "cultural-national" autonomy could mean only one thing: the division of educational affairs according to nationality, i.e., the introduction of national curias in school affairs. Sufficient thought to the real significance of the famous Bund plan will enable one to realise how utterly reactionary it is even from the standpoint of democracy, let alone from that of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.
1913  CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE NATIONAL QUESTION

The media's favouring of the more celebrity-centred 'racist' issues like the Leeds footballers’ fracas, as well as feeding further 'safe' nationalist diversions and controversy, also takes minds off far more serious questions of criminality in society and colonial-imperialist domination internationally.

A bloody and unpleasant punch-up in Leeds 18 months ago is still 'news', but the rate of street murders is now up to one per week in the main cities, and even more in the giant conurbations in Britain. The claim that much of this killing is white-on-white, black-on-black, and Asian-on-Asian in gangland warfare over drugs, protection rackets, and prostitution, hardly alters the point. Bystanders and innocents get slaughtered, whole inner-city areas get terrorised, and millions of ordinary proletarian people get caught up in this wretched existence one way or another. Where is the huge media furore and the outraged race-relations industry concern? With no public images involved like football stars, it doesn't register.

But no threat of fascism from such criminal low-life, unlike from prominent white football stars getting away with alleged 'racist' aggression???

History suggests a different conclusion. Hitler's movement grew out of the Munich beer cellars in the early 1920s; where lumpen derelicts from the endless uniformed killing of the First World War, who had either never had a 'normal' working life or who could not settle back into it, were first recruited for the Freikorps counter-revolutionary specials against German socialism, and then became the Nazis. The Black & Tan racist butchery against the Irish War of Independence were recruited from the same lumpen background in the same period, and were prominent around Mosley later on.

Last week's Review told the story of the 'Billy Boys', whose song is still sung by Glasgow Rangers wretched anti-Catholic/Orange-fascist traditional culture. The Billy Boys were a notorious lumpen razor gang which terrorised Glasgow in the early 1920s but then most notoriously in 1926 joined the government side in the General Strike to act as most effective and organised strike-breakers.

And is it just an accident that the most notorious area for lowlife-criminality in London has always been the East End, and that the most notorious, area of London for Black Shirt activity has always been the East End as well???

Gang warfare is an economic activity. It would be a very surprising fact if there were not already plenty of nasty interracial conflicts at that lumpen end of society; but it can be absolutely guaranteed that once boom turns to slump and the pickings get leaner, there will be masses of such racist war, breaking out from such sources.

By all means let any prominent racist footballers be named and shamed, (if such they are and it was not just a routine tribal punch-up outside the Majesty).

But beware kidding society that 'racism' can be contained and even eliminated by such campaigns,(and thereby letting the really foul, cruel, and dangerous rottenness fester at the bottom of society because "it is only blacks killing blacks". That would be cultural-national autonomy of the silliest kind, and racist too.

Nor is it necessary to wait in fear of seeing organised fascism start to have an influence on the class-war balance in Britain. It is here already, and has never left the Occupied Zone of Ireland (so-called 'Northern Ireland') since the 'Orange card' first began to be routinely played more than 100 years ago to legitimise the straightforward racist killing of Irish people. It is still going on to this very day, with the official British police establishment (the RUC, the judiciary, and the NIO) still turning a blind eye. And not a black face in sight. Why does 'fascism' only become a danger, supposedly, when class-biased and authoritarian racist violence begins hurting black minority subjects of British imperialism??? Could one of the biggest reformist diversions of all, the race-relations industry, have something to do with it???

Having a prejudice about what colour the perpetrators or the victims of fascist tyranny are likely to be is anti-historical nonsense of the most misleading kind, and completely useless for building a revolutionary communist movement. Africa has had as many savage capitalist dictatorships as any continent in recent years. The millions of victims of Nazi imperialist rule were as white as their butchers. The cruellest fascist-genocidal tyranny raging on earth right now is between people of the same colour and the identical semitic racial stock going back thousands of years, the Zionist imperialists wiping out the Palestinian nation, or trying to.

Are there really not far more crucial matters on earth, poisoning the whole world's atmosphere and requiring immediate anti-imperialist battle stations now, - than that Leeds night-club brawl where any excessive brutality; or violence with an edge to it, - has been already reasonably well exposed anyway, and might yet get further punishment??

And why did the British establishment set up Macpherson and accept its recommendation, in the first place?? Did they really want it to ready the inevitable provincial 'racist' judge for exposure??? Has capitalist democracy really suddenly become so nice??

It is much more likely to be part of the biggest diversionary 'reformist' stunt the imperialist system has ever tried, aware of the terrifying world-slump economic difficulties to come. Note the vicious disinformation campaign being run by press and police to demonise the May 1 anti-capitalist protests in London threatening such 'zero tolerance' to the slightest show of anarchist disorder as enables predictions that hardly anyone will turn up for fear of being caught up in the inevitable massive violence which the police themselves are threatening.

Are authoritarian racist provocations possibly being suggested as something to be kept in reserve for later in the crisis when things might start going really badly for the capitalist establishment??

Lenin took this view of the establishment's inevitable ability to encourage fascism at some stage; and the history of the 1930s seems to back this up. Fascist regimes were not needed absolutely everywhere in order to get the vitally necessary World War II going (to create sufficient destruction of competing 'surplus' investment capital in order to get a truly massive international boom going again), - and so a few 'anti-fascist' victories for 'democracy' could be allowed to take place as well.

The Russian Narodniks and liberals have long been comforting themselves, or rather deceiving themselves, with the "theory" that in Russia there is no basis for militant clericalism, for a struggle of "the princes of the Church" with the temporal power, and so forth. Our revolution has dispelled this illusion, as it did a number of other Narodnik and liberal illusions. Clericalism existed in a hidden, form, so long as autocracy existed intact and inviolate. The all-powerful police and bureaucracy concealed from the gaze of "society" and the people the class struggle in general, and the struggle waged by the "feudalists in cassocks" against the "base rabble" in particular. But the first breach which the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry made in the feudalist autocratic regime laid bare what had been hidden. As soon as the proletariat and the advanced elements of the democratic bourgeoisie began to make use of the political liberty, the freedom to organise the masses, which they had won at the end of 1905, the reactionary classes; too, reached out for independent and open organisations. Under absolute autocracy they did not organise, and did not come out too much in the open, not because they were weak, but because they were strong; not because they were incapable of organisation and political struggle, but because at that time they did not yet feel any real need for independent class organisation. They did not believe in the possibility of a mass movement against the autocracy and the feudalists in Russia. They fully relied on the knout being sufficient to keep the rabble down. But the first wounds inflicted on autocracy compelled the social elements which supported it and needed it to come out into the open. It was no longer possible to use only the old knout in fighting masses that had been capable of causing the events of January 9, the strike movement in 1905, and the October-December revolution. It became necessary to build up independent political organisations; it .became necessary for the Council of the United Nobility to organise Black Hundreds and engage in the most irresponsible demagogy; it became necessary for "the princes of the Church", the bishops, to organise the reactionary clergy into an independent force.

A typical feature of the Third Duma, and of the Third Duma period of the Russian counter-revolution is, indeed, that this organisation of the reactionary forces has come out into the open, has begun to develop on a nation-wide scale, and has demanded a special Black-Hundred bourgeois "parliament". Militant clericalism has shown its true colours;  

17/6/09 CLASSES AND PARTIES IN THEIR ATTITUDE TO RELIGION

Of course the rallying of all democratic forces possible to try to prevent the return of fascist regimes as the next world slump deepens, will be crucial agitation; but a million times more important will it be to explain that nothing but the most widespread proletarian revolutions possible can guarantee any halt to imperialism's inevitable recourse to warmongering nazi violence and aggression as its only crisis 'solution'.

As if the wretchedness of racial divisions were not diversionary burden enough for all workers to have to bear while trying to keep together to fight the ruling capitalist class over the increasing nastiness of the rapidly deepening economic crisis, there is now the added problem of European public condemnation of Britain's "xenophobia".

Europe has plenty of rancid racism of its own, of course; but all the various UK responses to this attempted moral posturing by the Council of Europe, - either violently agreeing with it or disagreeing with it, are only likely to add further to the diversionary confusion, obviously.

Racist and ethnic differentiation - (and potential conflict, too, therefore) are in modern times a problem specifically of the capitalist system, and the capitalist system only. They obviously existed in all forms of society before capitalism (which were also marked by class distinctions, exploitation, unequal rewards, and periodic absolute want), and will naturally take some time to disappear completely even in a planned socialist world of genuine communist philosophy and cooperation.

But the social conflicts inevitable over housing inadequacies, shortage of good jobs, fear of crime and street violence, and all the other frustrations born of economic insecurity or need, can only be analysed in terms of the failings of the current capitalist system and all its values and stimuluses which are the guidelines for everyone's struggle for survival.

Ruthless individualism, envy, cut-throat competitiveness, and cheating, are what has helped the more notorious 'celebrities' to success in the 'free-market' rat-race, as most people see it. And with such 'values' distinguishing most of the 'examples' which celebrity journalism sets before people to gawp at, no surprise that in the masses' ratrace for better housing, better jobs, better social welfare, better hospital treatment, better school-places for the kids, etc, etc, - the class and regional rivalry should take on a racial overtone wherever that is applicable when these benefits are in short supply, scarce, or rationed in some way.

With never less than 20% of the working class properly complaining about inadequate housing at any one time in every part of the country, for example, what resentful or envious notions can be expected to surface if a mass of economic-opportunist 'asylum seekers' suddenly get billetted in any town, in almost any kind of accommodation, but particularly if billeted in recently-improved accommodation??????

And once unemployment starts to rise and there are not enough jobs to go round of any description, how are longer-established residents expected to react when hard-to-come-by jobs start going to 'economic migrant' newcomer 'foreigners'???? How are longer-established residents likely to respond to the 'explanation' that "these poor people have only come here to better themselves", especially in an 'advanced' and 'sophisticated' a country of extravagant consumerism such as Britain where mindless unserious smut, advertising gimmicks, and trashy pop music are relentlessly heaped on people's heads as 'culture' to try to guarantee that there is no room for the tiniest scrap of political philosophy in anyone's brain???? 

The backward basis for racist responses and disastrous divisions in the working class is there as the crisis deepens towards serious social conflict. Capitalism's degenerate cultural trap for a massive diversion to split the working class (so that the chances of a united revolutionary reply to deepening slump and poverty should be as close to zero as possible), has been well laid.

The worst way to fight this diversion is to denounce workers for racism. All that this does is take everyone's eye off the main issue more than ever. Reactionary 'political correctness' is the Council of Europe's sinister game. The hypocritical 'moral' pressure on ordinary people to feel guiltily 'xenophobic' because they react enviously and politically backwardly to what they see as 'foreigners' taking their jobs is almost certain to drive more and more of the poor, lumpen, and petty-bourgeois minded into the arms of the nationalists like the BNP.

The only hope of a solution to this threat is a massive education-drive to explain the degenerate rottenness of the whole capitalist system and society, - for all countries in the world whether they have immigrant-population minorities or not, - a decay that is menacing everyone on earth with horrors far worse than mere job losses; and which warmongering tyranny can only be halted and reversed by communist revolutionary action by the whole proletariat of the planet.

But this is the one thing that the 'politically correct' hordes, wagging a finger at racist backwardness, will make certain is not said and never explained.

The 'politically correct' will carry on trying to fight racist backwardness by telling people not to be racist. It is worse than useless. It will only antagonise the badly off who are denied any understanding as to why they should have to suffer (seeing what little they have placed under threat of losing even that) because of even more competition arriving on the housing market or the jobs market from foreign countries.

The violently-conflicting 'racial' mobs in Bradford on Sunday are incurably inevitable for as long as social 'causes' persist. A tiny incident starts; people feeling aggressively about life in general start to join in; sides are quickly taken along predictable lines; and in no time at all, rumours are flying about a 'race war' breaking out; and soon whole neighbourhoods are taking part passionately. Condemning 'racism' in such circumstances gets nowhere. Condemning the way of life of capitalist society as nothing but a breeding ground for more and more frustrations and feelings of injustice, and for an increasingly degenerate, consumerist, lowest-common-denominator culture, is the story. Build Leninism.   EPSR supporters.

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

Zionism requires that any criticism of what Israel does is simply intolerable and the rankest anti-Semitism.

In an article abridged from AI-Ahram Weekly, noted Palestinian academic, author and human rights campaigner DR EDWARD SAID discusses the biased coverage of the US media towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That coverage, he says, amounts to a victory for Zionism, a travesty of justice given the reality of ongoing Israeli repression and the denial of rights to the Palestinian people:

There is now a small litany of phrases that every editorial commentator either repeats verbatim or relies on as an unspoken assumption: these have been engraved in ears, minds, and memories as a guide for the perplexed, a manual or machine for turning out phrases that have clogged the air for at least a month. I can recite most of them by heart:

● [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak offered more concessions at Camp- David than any Israeli prime minister before him (90% of the territories and partial sovereignty over East Jerusalem);

● [Yasser] Arafat was cowardly and lacked the necessary courage to accept Israeli offers to end the conflict;

● Palestinian violence, directed by Arafat, has threatened Israel (all sorts of variations on this, including the wish to eliminate Israel, anti-Semitism, suicidal rage in order to get on television, putting children in the front lines so that they would become martyrs) and proved that an ancient "hatred" of the Jews motivates Palestinians;

● Arafat is a weak leader who allows his people to attack Jews and incite against them by releasing terrorists and producing schoolbooks that deny Israel's existence.

There are probably one or two more formulae that I have not cited, but the general picture is that Israel is so surrounded by rockthrowing barbarians that even the missiles, tanks and helicopter gunships that have been used to "defend" Israelis from the violence are simply warding off a terrible force.

Injunctions for Palestinians to "pull back" go a long way to suggest that it is Palestinians who are encroaching on Israeli territory, not the other way round.

HISTORY  FORGOTTEN

It is also worth mentioning that so successful has this Zionisation of the media been that not a single map has been published or shown on television to remind American viewers and readers - notoriously ignorant of both geography and history - that Israeli encampments, settlements, roads and barricades crisscross Palestinian land in Gaza and the West Bank. Moreover, as happened in Beirut in 1982, there is a veritable Israeli siege of Palestinians, including of Arafat.

Completely forgotten, if it was ever at all understood, is the system of Areas A, B, and C by which the military occupation of 40% of Gaza and 60% of the West Bank continues, and which the Oslo Peace Process was never really designed to end, much less totally modify.

As suggested by the absence of geography in this most geographical of conflicts, the resulting void is a vitally important point since the pictures that are either shown or described are without context at all.

I think the omission by the Zionised media was a deliberate one at the outset and has now become automatic. It has allowed phoney commentators like Thomas Friedman to peddle his wares shamelessly, droning on about American even-handedness, Israeli flexibility and generosity and his own perspicacious pragmatism with which he berates Arab leaders and stuns his bored readers. It has the result not only of permitting the completely preposterous notion of a Palestinian attack on Israel to prevail, but it also further dehumanises Palestinians as being beasts without sentience or motive.

When the figures of the dead and wounded are recited, no nationalities are given: this lets Americans assume that the suffering is equally divided between the "warring parties", and in fact elevates Jewish suffering and reduces or eliminates Arab feelings entirely, except of course for rage.

Rage and its cognates remain as the only and certainly the defining Palestinian emotion. It explains the violence, and indeed, it reifies it so that Israel has come to represent a decency and democracy that is forever surrounded by rage and violence. No other process can logically explain the stone throwers and the stalwart Israeli "defence".

Nothing is said of house demolitions, land 	expropriations, illegal arrests, torture and the like. Nothing is cited about what is (except for the Japanese occupation of Korea) the longest military occupation in modern times; nothing about UN resolutions; nothing about Israeli contraventions of all the Geneva Conventions;  nothing about the sufferings of one entire people and the obduracy of another.

Forgotten are the catastrophe of 1948, ethnic cleansing and massacres, the devastation of Qibya, Kafr Qassem, Sabra and Shatila, the long years of military government for non-Jewish Israeli citizens, to say nothing of their continued oppression as a persecuted 20% minority within the Jewish state.

Ariel Sharon at best is a provocation, never a war criminal, Ehud Barak a. statesman, never  the assassin of Beirut. Terrorism is always on the Palestinian side of the ledger, defence on the Israeli.

	What Friedman and pro-Israeli "peaceniks" fail to mention when they extol Barak's unprecedented generosity is the real substance of it. We are not reminded that his 	commitment to a third withdrawal (of about 12%) made at Wye 18 months ago 	has never occurred. Of what value then are more such "concessions"?

We are told that Barak was willing to give back 90% of the territory. What gets left out is what Israel has no intention of giving back. Greater Jerusalem is well over 30% of the West Bank; large settlements to be annexed are another 15%; military roads of areas have yet to be determined. So after all this is deducted, 90% of the balance isn't so much after all.

As for Jerusalem: the Israeli "concession" was principally in being willing to discuss and maybe, just maybe, to offer shared authority over the Haram Al-Sharif. The breathtaking dishonesty of the matter is that all of west Jerusalem (principally Arab in 1948) was already conceded by Arafat, plus most of a vastly expanded east Jerusalem.

The mind-set I have described is truly staggering in its recklessness and, were it not very much a practical as well as actual distortion of reality, one could quite easily be talking about a form of private mental derangement. But it corresponds very closely to the official Israeli policy of dealing with Palestinians not as a people with a history of dispossession, for which in large measure Israel is directly responsible, but as a periodic nuisance for whom force, and neither understanding nor full accommodation, is the only possible response. Everything else is literally unthinkable.

	Zionism requires that any - and I mean literally any - criticism of what Israel does is simply intolerable and the rankest anti-Semitism. And this despite the fact that 	(again literally) the entire world has criticised Israel's policies of military occupation, disproportionate 	violence, and the siege of the Palestinians. 

	The further peculiarity of American Zionism, which is a system of antithetical thought and Orwellian distortion, is that it is impermissible to speak of Jewish violence, or Jewish actions when it comes to Israel, even though everything done by Israel is done in the name of the Jewish people, for and by a Jewish state. That such a state is a misnomer, since almost 20% of the population is not Jewish, is never mentioned and this too accounts for the amazing, entirely deliberate 	discrepancy between what the media calls "Israeli Arabs" and "the Palestinians": no reader or viewer could possibly know that they are the same people divided by Zionist policy, or that both communities represent the result of Israeli policy - apartheid in one case, military occupation and ethnic cleansing in the other.

DEHUMANISATION
This consensus might be somehow tolerable were it not for the fact that it makes the continuing punishment and dehumanisation of the Palestinian people an actual virtue. There are simply no other people in the world today whose killing on television screens seems to be considered by most American viewers to be acceptable as well-deserved punishment. This is the case with Palestinians whose daily loss of life in the past month is herded under the rubric "the violence on both sides", as if the stones and slings of young men thoroughly tired of injustice and repression were a major offence rather than the courageous resistance to a demeaning fate meted out to them not just by Israeli soldiers armed by America, but by a peace process designed to coop them up in Bantustans and reservations fit for animals.

That the US supporters of Israel could have plotted for seven years to, produce a document designed essentially to cage people like inmates in an asylum or prison - that is the real crime. And that this could be passed off as peace instead of the desolation that it really has been all along, that surpasses my powers to understand or adequately describe as anything less than untrammelled immorality.

The worst thing of all is that so iron-like is the wall protecting American discourse about Israel that no questions can be put to the minds that produced Oslo and that for seven years have been passing off their scheme to the world as peace. One scarcely knows which is more pernicious, the mentality that thinks of Palestinians as not entitled even to express a sense of injustice (they are too low a form for that) or the one that continues to plot their  further enslavement.