Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.  -    V. I. Lenin 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 1170  February 04 2003                                                                                                       25p
NW Seminar Mar 29 or Apr 5. t.b.a: Rcpts.

This week's plan for ever-vaster and unrepayable new US budget deficits to "fight terror" only cements the financial crisis causes of Third world resentment at the grotesque and bullying inequalities of monopoly-capitalism's "over-production" greedy contempt for a sensible, planned, stable world economy, and can only increase inter-imperialist disagreements as America's intention to make everyone else pay for US imperialism's own catastrophic mess becomes more obvious. Piecemeal struggles against aspects of imperialism's warmongering crisis not only cannot build the workers party that will end capitalism's sick tyranny, but they guarantee that such a party will NOT be built, Leninist science makes clear. The necessary REVOLUTIONARY agenda to inspire international anti-imperialist triumph, is not someone's bright idea but inevitable because of the OBJECTIVE FACTORS of imperialist system crisis, - further proof of which is clear from the frantic efforts by fake-'left' Klein and others to try to halt the relentless surge back towards communist methods of struggle, perspectives, and philosophy, via World Social Forum DIY cooperative delusions, which consciously yield state power forever to imperialism. But continued museum-Revisionist sectarianism will only play into the hands of such anti-communist rearguard action. By misreading imperialist crisis warmongering and rejecting all polemics, the fake-'left' could follow CP Revisionism into oblivion.

The warmongering crisis inflicted by the collapsing imperialist economic system continues to leave everyone racking their brains about how things unfold, what might come of it all, and how best to do something about it.

The conundrum facing the 'left' is a practical philosophical problem, got wrong.

This Lalkar position sums it up as its supporters sit it out in the snow on endless peace vigils:

The most important problem facing proletarian parties in the centres of imperialism is to gain influence, and control over, the vast masses mobilised against the war and direct their anger along proper channels which lead to the frustration of the war effort. Apart from the general task of working for the overthrow of imperialism as the only sure precondition for guaranteeing peace and prosperity, there is the immediate task of persuading workers in their work places not to cooperate with the war efforts of their governments. In this context the train drivers from Scotland (see elsewhere in this issue) show the way and their lead must be followed. 

This task is particularly important in Britain, where the leadership of the anti-war movement is in the hands of people from the very party which is participating in this predatory imperialist war for the plunder and spoliation of the Middle East, namely, the 'left' wing of the Labour Party and its hangers-on, the counter-revolutionary Trotskyists, who are doing everything within their power to shield British social democracy against isolation from the masses. Unless the Labour Party is exposed as an imperialist party, unless its influence, through its 'left' wing and its Trotskyist and revisionist agents, is eradicated, the large anti-war mobilisations, of the type we have seen recently, will prove helpless in thwarting the war plans of Anglo-American imperialism. It is impossible for those, like our Troto-revisionist fraternity, who maintain that the Labour Party is the party of the British working class, to at the same time galvanise the working class against a war waged by the latter's allegedly own party.

The obvious giveaway phrase indicating the utter bogusness of this "revolutionary" stance are the words "Apart from the general task of working for the overthrow of imperialism there is the immediate task of..." etc, - etc, (and leaving aside the ludicrous hypocrisy of this museum-Stalinist mentality which makes this public "revolutionary" posture while in practice providing a fake-"left" cover-up for Scargill's ignorant and reactionary Little Englander 'import controls' chauvinism, and his even more appalling stunt of "condemning" North Korea for daring to challenge US imperialist nuclear tyranny, and "condemning" Sept 11 for daring to strike back at US imperialist domination of the Middle East in the only way some people know how, pretending on each occasion to a position of "moral principle" (useless petty-bourgeois self-righteous posturing) while in reality IN PRACTICE merely joining the scabby fake-'left' stampede to not be seen joining such a loud farting in church (that Sept 11 represented) when the authorities came thundering to find the culprits, and in the process spitting in the faces of the Third World billions who all rejoiced, properly so, at the discomfort of US imperialism, the quantitively greatest tyranny in world domination history by several thousand per cent).)

The science of Marxism-Leninism sees life entirely differently:

§ 12. We neither can nor will help "in every way" to improve the conditions of the workers under the present circumstances. For instance, we cannot help in the Zubatov fashion, and even if Zubatov corruption is involved we shall not do that. We fight only for such improvement of the workers' conditions as will raise their capacity to wage the class struggle, i.e., when the improvement of conditions is not bound up with corruption of political consciousness, with police tutelage, with being tied down to a given locality, with subjugation to a "benefactor", with a lowering of human dignity, etc. etc. Precisely in Russia, where the autocracy is so much inclined (and is becoming more and more inclined) to buy itself off from revolution with various hand-outs and sham reforms, it is our duty to draw a clear line of demarcation between ourselves and all sorts of  "reformers." We also fight for reforms, but by no means "in every way"; we fight for reforms only in Social-Democratic fashion, only in a revolutionary way.

§ 14 formulates the content and the tasks of economic agitation in too narrow a way. The latter is not confined to strikes alone. We need "better conditions," not only for the cultural development of the proletariat, but particularly for its revolutionary development. The "active role" of Social-Democrats in strikes does not end with encouraging the struggle for improvements in economic conditions. Strikes (like economic agitation in general) should always be used to encourage the revolutionary struggle for freedom and for socialism as well. Strikes should be used for political agitation also.

§ 15 is also most unsatisfactory. Strikes are not the "best" means of struggle, but only one of the means, and not always necessarily one of the best means. We must recognise the importance of strikes, make use of them and lead them at all times - but it would be all the more dangerous to exaggerate their importance, the more this has been done by the "economists."

What is said further about strikes is redundant: it has already been stated in § 14. A reference to leadership of the economic struggle in general would have been sufficient. This leadership may sometimes consist in deterring from strike action. The programme expresses itself in too absolute a fashion, and for this very reason too restrictedly. The programme should have spoken about the task in general, that of leading the economic struggle of the proletariat, of making it more organised and conscious, of organising workers' trade unions and endeavouring to develop them into all-Russian organisations, of utilising every strike, every manifestation of economic oppression, etc., for the most widespread socialist and revolutionary propaganda and agitation.

The end of § 15 limits the tasks of this agitation, making the use of political  agitation depend, as it were, on action by the police, etc. Actually, however, we must try to use political agitation (and this is quite possible if the leaders are at all capable) before action by these "archangels", and irrespective of that action. It should have been formulated more generally: "to take advantage of all and every opportunity for political agitation," etc.

The end of § 15 is also incorrect. It is the less fitting for us to speak of "general strikes," the less opportunity we in Russia have of preparing them. And, in general, there is no reason for speaking specially about "general" strikes in programmes (remember the absurd "general strike" in the pamphlet, Who Will Carry Out the Political Revolution?" After all, such misunderstandings are also possible). To declare that strikes are "the best means of developing class-consciousness" is also absolutely incorrect.

As a whole, a serious revision of the programme would be highly desirable. In general it would also be desirable for the Northern League to take an active part both in the unification of revolutionary Social-Democracy in a party and in the preparation of the, Party programme.
Apr. 1902  A letter to the Northern League

"We must choose" - this is the argument the opportunists have always used to justify themselves, and they are using it now. Big things cannot be achieved at one stroke. We must fight for small but achievable things. How do we know whether they are achievable? They are achievable if the majority of the political parties, or of the most "influential" politicians, agree with them. The larger the number of politicians who agree with some tiny improvement, the easier it is to achieve it. We must not be utopians and strive after big things. We must be practical politicians; we must join in the demand for small things, and these small things will facilitate the fight for the big ones. We regard the small things as the surest stage in the struggle for big things.

That is how all the opportunists, all the reformists, argue; unlike the revolutionaries. That is how the Rightwing Social-Democrats argue about a Duma Cabinet. The demand for a constituent assembly is a big demand. It cannot be achieved immediately. By no means everyone is consciously in favour of this demand.* But the whole State Duma, that is to say, the vast majority of politicians - that is to say "the whole people" - is in favour of a Duma Cabinet. We must choose - between the existing evil and a very small rectification of it, because the largest number of those who are in general dissatisfied with the existing evil are in favour of this "very small" rectification. And by achieving the small thing, we shall facilitate our struggle for the big one.

We repeat: this is the fundamental, the typical argument of all opportunists all over the world. To what conclusion does this argument inevitably lead? To the conclusion that we need no revolutionary programme, no revolutionary party, and no revolutionary tactics. What we need are reforms, nothing more. We do not need a revolutionary Social-Democratic Party. What we need is a party of democratic and socialist reforms. Indeed, is it not clear that there will always be people who admit that the existing state of affairs is unsatisfactory? Of course, always. Is it not also clear that the largest number of discontented people will always be in favour of the smallest rectification of this unsatisfactory situation? Of course, always. Consequently, it is our duty, the duty of advanced and "class conscious" people, always to support the smallest demands for the rectification of an evil. This is the surest and most practical  policy to pursue; and all talk about "fundamental" demands, and so forth, is  merely the talk of "utopians", merely "revolutionary phrasemongering". We must choose - and we must always choose between the existing evil and the most moderate of the schemes in vogue for its rectification.

That is exactly how the German opportunist Social-Democrats argued. They said, in effect: There is a social-liberal trend which demands the repeal of the anti-socialist laws, a reduction of the working day, insurance against illness, and so on. A fairly large section of the bourgeoisie supports these demands. Do not repel it by tactless conduct, offer it a friendly hand, support it, and then you will be practical politicians, you will achieve small, but real benefits for the working class, and the only thing that will suffer from your tactics will be the empty words about "revolution". You cannot make a revolution now, in any case. One must choose between reaction and reform.

The French ministerial socialists argued exactly like the Bernsteinians.30 They said in effect: We must choose between reaction and the bourgeois radicals, who promise a number of practical reforms. We must support these radicals, support their Cabinets; phrases about social revolution are merely the chatter of "Blanquists", "anarchists", "utopians", and so forth.

What is the main flaw in all these opportunist arguments? It is that in fact they substitute the bourgeois theory of "united", "social" progress for the socialist theory of the class struggle as the only real driving force of history. According to the theory of socialism, i.e., of Marxism (non-Marxist socialism is not worth serious discussion nowadays), the real driving force of history is the revolutionary class struggle; reforms are a subsidiary product of this struggle, subsidiary because they express unsuccessful attempts to weaken, to blunt this struggle, etc. According to the theory of bourgeois philosophers, the driving force of progress is the unity of all elements in society who realise the "imperfections" of certain of its institutions. The first theory is materialist; the second is idealist. The first is revolutionary; the second is reformist. The first serves as the basis for the tactics of the proletariat in modern, capitalist countries. The second serves as the basis of the tactics of the bourgeoisie.

A logical deduction from the second theory is the tactics of ordinary bourgeois progressives: always and everywhere support "what is better"; choose between reaction and the extreme Right of the forces that are opposed to reaction. A logical deduction from the first theory is that the advanced class must pursue independent revolutionary tactics. We shall never reduce our tasks to that of supporting the slogans of the reformist bourgeoisie that are most in vogue. We pursue an independent policy and put forward only such reforms as are undoubtedly favourable to the interests of the revolutionary struggle, that undoubtedly enhance the independence, class-consciousness and fighting efficiency of the proletariat. Only by such tactics can reforms from above, which are always halfhearted, always hypocritical, and always conceal some bourgeois or police snare, be made innocuous.

More than that. Only by such tactics can real progress be achieved in the matter of important reforms. This may sound paradoxical, but its truth is confirmed by the whole history of the international Social-Democratic movement. Reformist tactics are the least likely to secure real reforms. The most effective way to secure real reforms is to pursue the tactics of the revolutionary class struggle. Actually, reforms are won as a result of the revolutionary class struggle, as a result of its independence, mass force and steadfastness. Reforms are always false, ambiguous and permeated with the spirit of Zubatovism31; they are real only in proportion to the intensity of the  class struggle. By merging our slogans with those of the reformist bourgeoisie  we weaken the cause of revolution and, consequently, the cause of reform as well, because we thereby diminish the independence, fortitude and strength of the revolutionary classes.

To forget the real significance of such a reform, as an attempt on the part. of the Cadets to strike a bargain with the autocracy, means substituting the liberal-bourgeois philosophy of progress for Marxism. By supporting such a reform, by including it among our slogans, we dim the revolutionary consciousness of the proletariat and weaken its independence and fighting capacity. By upholding our old revolutionary slogans in their entirety, we strengthen the actual struggle, and thereby increase the probability of reforms and the possibility of turning them to the advantage of the revolution, and not of reaction.
June 1906:  ONCE AGAIN ABOUT THE DUMA CABINET

The aim of the proletarian party is not to do deals or haggle with the powers that be, not to engage in the hopeless patching-up of the regime of the feudalist-bourgeois dictatorship of counter-revolution, but to develop in every way the class-consciousness, the socialist clarity of thought, the revolutionary determination and all-round organisation of the mass of the workers. Every step in the activity of the Duma group must serve this fundamental aim. Therefore more attention must be paid to promoting the aims of socialist revolution from the Duma rostrum. Efforts must be made to ensure that speeches should more often be heard from the Duma rostrum propagandising the fundamental conceptions and aims of socialism, namely, of scientific socialism. 	
June 1909:  Conference of the extended editorial board of Proletary

We cannot know beforehand how soon we shall achieve success, how soon the objective conditions will make the rise of this revolution possible. We should support every improvement, every real economic and political improvement in the position of the masses. The difference between us and the reformists (i.e., the Grütlians in Switzerland) is not that we oppose reforms while they favour them. Nothing of the kind. They confine themselves to reforms and as a result stoop - in the apt expression of one (rare!) revolutionary writer in the Schweizerische Metallarbeiter-Zeitung (No. 40) - to the role of "hospital orderly for capitalism". We tell the workers: vote for proportional representation, etc., but don't stop at that. Make it your prime duty systematically to spread the idea of immediate socialist revolution, prepare for this revolution and radically reconstruct every aspect of party activity. The conditions of bourgeois democracy very often compel us to take a certain stand on a multitude of small and petty reforms, but we must be able, or learn, to take such a position on these reforms. (in such a manner) that - to oversimplify the matter for the sake of clarity - five minutes of every half-hour speech are devoted to reforms and twenty-five minutes to the coming revolution.
Dec 1916: Principles involved in war issue

 (e) Socialists must centre their activity on the struggle against reformism, which has always corrupted the revolutionary-labour movement by injecting bourgeois ideas, and has now assumed a somewhat special form, namely, "reliance" on the reforms the bourgeoisie is supposed to carry out after the war! Reformists argue that in urging, popularising and preparing the socialist revolution of the proletariat, we are "losing sight" of the "practical" aspect, "forfeiting" our chances to win reforms.

That argument, customary both to social-chauvinists and supporters of Kautsky, who has even denounced street demonstrations as "adventuristic", is thoroughly unscientific, fundamentally false, a bourgeois lie.

In the course of the war world capitalism has taken a forward step not only towards concentration in general, but also towards transition from monopoly in general to state capitalism on a much broader scale than before. Economic reforms in this direction are inevitable.

However, it does not follow from this that Social-Democrats can, without betraying their cause, "vote" for or support such imperialist "reforms".

Only bourgeois reformism, which in substance is the position of Kautsky, Turati and Merrheim, poses the question thus: either renunciation of revolution and that means reforms. or no reforms at all.

Yet all the experience of world history, like the experience of the 1905 Russian Revolution, teaches us the very opposite: either revolutionary class struggle, of which reforms are always a by-product (when the revolution is not completely successful), or no reforms at all.

For the only effective force that compels change is popular revolutionary energy, providing it does not remain on paper, as has been the case in the Second International, but finds expression in comprehensive mass revolutionary propaganda, agitation and organisation conducted by parties marching at the head of the revolution, not limping along in its tail.

Only by openly proclaiming revolution, by purging the workers' parties of all who oppose revolution or "sceptically" accept it - only by giving every aspect of party activity a revolutionary content, can Social-Democracy, in such "critical" eras of world history as the present one, guarantee the masses either complete success of their cause if the revolution is supported by very broad masses, or reforms, i.e., concessions by the bourgeoisie, if the revolution is only partially successful.
Jan 1917: Theses for an appeal to the I.S.C. 

All Lalkar's political-exposure and stop-the-war aims can be taken as 'worthy' or 'purposeful' for argument's sake, but HOW is it best to approach achieving them????

And obviously the answer is: By building and training a revolutionary cadre party (such as the Bolsheviks) which can carry out all these campaigns but ONLY in the FULL, OPEN, REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT as exhaustively described in the Lenin quotes above.

But then comes the Catch 22 question: How to get to such a party?????

Lalkar says by doing THE VERY OPPOSITE THINGS to how Lenin says revolutionaries should struggle.

And some of Lenin's quotes come from a period when the Bolsheviks numbered LESS than the Lalkarites number now.

So Lenin was precisely also talking about how to build such a Bolshevik Party in the first place.

The philosophy of class revolutionary education in this clearly stated Leninist science is that if thousands of cadres are needed to "persuade workers in their workplace to block war efforts"; "to stop the anti-communists from shielding Labourism's responsibility for the war"; "to make sure that large anti-war mobilisations are not frustrated by reformism"; "to stop Labour being any longer seen as the party of the working class"; etc, etc, etc, - then those cadres can ONLY be recruited, organised, and inspired by the NON-STOP propagation of REVOLUTION, and nothing else.

Lalkar is pure reform agitation, - 20 pages solid, every issue.

And if that scabby little gesture of throwing in a subordinate clause posture about "overthrow of imperialism" is interpreted as a sign of life in this Stalinist museum, then it could equally be a WORSE sign of some deliberate belated attempt to carry on fooling would-be "revolutionary" followers who are stifling under Lalkar SLP hypocrisy. 

Potential forces in the revolutionary workers movement cannot convincingly be assessed on the basis of individual worthwhileness. But a difference can be examined in how any perspective can demonstrably be shown to be endlessly openly inquiring and re-inquiring into every aspect of the historical class struggle, - past, present, and future, including its own mistakes, believing that polemicising on everything IN FRONT OF THE WORKING CLASS is the only way to a longterm reliable revolutionary party of leadership, - and how other perspectives or tendencies are ONLY motivated by sectarian self-justification and self-preservation.

Such SECTARIANISM is fundamentally a petty bourgeois CLASS outlook, and will basically remain that way, apart from isolated individuals rediscovering a proletarian class courage to get out the scientific truth, regardless of who gets hurt.

Protecting the unhealthy sycophantic circus around Scargill's backwardness and one trick "performance" value is an even more laughable retreat from scientific truth than the core museum-Stalinism in the Revisionist disaster for mankind.

Sitting it out on the High Street with a 'No to war' reformist placard is NOT the Marxist-Leninist science of revolutionary party-building BUT ITS EXACT OPPOSITE.

Let us ALL go down to the High Street to stop this imperialist warmongering, but the only way it will ever be done is as part of building THE REVOLUTIONARY PARTY.

By all means let that happen around a core started by SLP/Lalkar, but that practice was consciously put a stop to by Scargill's expulsion of the EPSR when it refused to accept the ban on all polemicising about political understanding inside the SLP, in particular the EPSR's challenge to Trot anti-communists in the SLP leadership, and to the reactionary single issue reformist limitations of gender politics.

But Lalkar's opportunism in sitting on the sidelines, "keeping out of trouble", has not ended in justification for such hypocrisy, but only in even worse contamination with even nastier Scargillite political backwardness and demagogic careerism subsequently, and still with the need to ultimately confront such sterile 'left Labour' continuation (in all but name).

The faint opportunity to move on from 'left' Labourism which the SLP originally held out, could soon be back on the agenda again in a new guise, oddly enough.

The Blairite 'New Labour' lunacy will shortly be breaking-up fast, and a major realignment on the 'left' of the Labour movement is almost inevitable. (Will the SLP squirmingly subsume itself (sensible); or stay out insisting "we were right all along" (sectarian pointless stupidity)??????).

If and when such realignment occurs, it is likely to be only as part of a huge worldwide debate about the future of the planet in the light of the insoluble economic and warmongering crisis which imperialism's "overproduction" breakdown has inflicted on civilisation.

Never has a deep total restudying of all Marxist-Leninist philosophy been more vitally necessary for the best possible revolutionary input into this realignment and worldwide debate.

Early discussions requiring decisive action are likely to be needed on the Chávez-Lula-Zapatista-Klein problem where Naomi's superbly-drilled and well-class-based anti-communism is bursting with slumming-it interventionism to make sure that Third World 'left' political revolt goes no further than World Social Forum reformism and stops well short of REVOLUTION. 

It is worth quoting Klein in full to note the totally-worked-out slyness with which the fake-'left' demagogy of a Lula is challenged FROM the 'left' by a 'rank-and-file democracy'-posturing which could end in a class content more fascist minded than anything imaginable:

The key word at this year's World Social Forum, held this week in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big": Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all. Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky. And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chávez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement as the forum itself.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Chávez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutiérrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: how on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?

Of course the forum, in all its dizzying, global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing in one direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists from opposite ends of the globe excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the "big" certainly put its mark on the event.

Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates agreed on (and there wasn't much) it was that the left's traditional methods had failed, either because they were wrong-headed or because they were simply ill-equipped to deal with the powerful forces of corporate globalisation. 

This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some parties of the left have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labour parties, only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty away to the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a loan.

Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of eastern Europe had turned into centralised, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians and were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.

When this global rabble came together under the slogan "another world is possible"; it was clear to all but the most rigidly nostalgic minority that getting to this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the past, but imagining new movements that drew on the best of these experiences while vowing never to repeat their mistakes. The original World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint - a good start - but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be less about trusting well-meaning leaders and more about empowering people to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory. The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and cooperative farming, a vision of politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. For a left that had tended to look to centralised state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on decentralisation and direct participation was a breakthrough.

At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered too: not as a heroic figure who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment were largely absent from his campaign to be president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty and knew their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community isn't about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that, as Lula is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

Right now, it looks as if Lula has only two choices: abandoning his election promises of wealth redistribution or trying to force them through and ending up in a Chávez-style civil war. But there is another option, one  his own Workers Party has tried before, one that made Porto Alegre itself a beacon of a new kind of politics: more democracy. He could simply refuse to play the messiah or the lone ranger, and instead hand power back to the citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of the foreign debt, to land reform, to membership of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. There are a host of mechanisms that he could use: referendums, constituents' assemblies, networks of empowered local councils and assemblies. Choosing an alternative economic path would still spark fierce resistance, but his opponents would not have the luxury of being against Lula, as they are against Chávez, and would instead be forced to oppose the repeated and stated will of the majority - to be against democracy itself.

Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by big men and swooning crowds is that there isn't much glory in it. To work, it requires genuine humility on the part of elected politicians. It means that a victory at the ballot box isn't a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

For some, the hijacking of the World Social Forum by political parties and powerful men is proof that the movements against corporate globalisation are finally maturing and "getting serious". But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious.

Careful, clever stuff. Chomsky, the pious little reformer, does not need including among the "big men" or the "men" category at all.

And without spelling it out, the unstated problem of demagogy is placed firmest on Castro's head, the name instantly universally associated with "a penchant for three hour speeches", no-one else.

Via the obliquest of innuendos, "smashing the oligarchy" is used to imply that they are all non-performing bullshitters, the "big men", Castro obviously included.

Thus, the correct aim of smashing the capitalist state structure is effortlessly done away with without argument; and the astonishing revolutionary reality that a workers state has seized full power and expropriated the capitalist ruling class and its international imperialist monopoly godfathers by introducing planned economic social justice in Cuba, - the very issue that has caused the American Empire to inflict 43 years of total boycott barbarism and military annihilation threats on tiny Cuba amidst the greatest humiliation for the USA imaginable at being unable to buy off, corrupt, subvert, or crush the little Gnat in the Caribbean, - is lost completely, without trace.

ALL the phenomenal anti-imperialist advances since 1917 are contemptuously dismissed with the vague abuse "the left's traditional methods had failed" and the notion that only "new ideas" and "new methods" could now get anywhere against "the powerful forces of corporate globalisation", - deliberately chosen words to identify the imperialist enemy we all know about but to obliterate the attributes of CLASS OWNERSHIP which make "smashing the oligarchy", - or taking state power and expropriating the capitalist ruling class and their monopoly imperialist multinational backers, such a precisely appropriate revolutionary goal to cheer the proletariat on towards. 

The good indicator from this foul, reactionary torrent of hatred and abuse, is why it was necessary at all.

The first WSF two years ago was lovely for Klein, - all small "new" gossip circles of self-help do-gooding; going nowhere but back to the even more ancient "failed methods" of "cooperative socialism", first sweeping in at New Lanark under Robert Owen in the 1830s.

Now, the superficial political signs (Lula and Gutiérrez elections; Chávez standing firm and mobilising proletarian street support; etc) indicate that the now unmistakable insoluble economic crisis of the imperialist system (Argentina's collapse, etc) is well on the way to producing a vast new communist revolutionary epoch to put the final nails into the coffin of the despicable and failed capitalist-colonialist warmongering exploitation system of utterly grotesque inequality and waste. 1917 and the post-1945 revolutionary upsurges (still partially continuing in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc) have been showing for nearly a century that quite colossal social, cultural, political, economic, and scientific achievements and transformations are achievable without the vicious rat-race of private capitalist ownership and the devil-take-the-hindmost exploitation, clearly proving that "another world is possible".

Only someone with the disgustingly reactionary viciousness of a flagwaving Sept 11 US patriot and Zionist-lover like Klein (the equivalent to Nazi-lover, ask the butchered Palestinian nation) could pour such a volume of ignorant, misdescriptive venom into grotesque historical lies that "the socialist 'utopias' of eastern Europe had turned into centralised, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares".

But what collapsed in the Soviet Union, for example, - for 70 years the central focus of socialist "utopia"-building in East Europe, - was not an 'authoritarian nightmare' in 1990 but a vast UNDER-paid and UNDER-privileged bureaucracy which had lost, through revisionist leadership confusion and diffidence, all will and understanding to continue allowing the dictatorship of the proletariat to maintain its defence of the Soviet workers state's quite staggering achievements against the relentless economic and propaganda hostility, plus crippling nuclear military encirclement subversion, by the entire combined might of Western imperialism.

It was the total COLLAPSE of any workers state discipline, the total ABSENCE of any "authoritarian nightmare", which saw the ultimate in Revisionist stupidity (anti-communist, anti-Marxist, anti-proletarian dictatorship) dismantle the planned socialist economy in 1990, leading to a Russia 13 years later which is wrecked with MURDEROUS civil wars unheard-of before; lethal crime and insecurity on the streets unheard-of before; a corrupt, incompetent, and collapsing state power that can no longer help other countries (Cuba aid-trade abandoned, for example) and without any influence, which no one listens to any more, unheard-of before; and a total cultural desert where only renowned world excellence in many arts and performance was known before; etc, etc, etc.

But it is against this astonishing flourishing, - which kept some aspects of Western imperialist warmongering-rampaging partly tamed for more than 70 years, - that this pampered US-imperialist know-nothing and fringe capitalist media-groupie, yet again emptily counterposes "another-world-is-possible" sloganising, insisting, in case the real message of all this had not yet got across, that "getting to this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the past but vowing never to repeat their mistakes", etc.

In other words, the only real problem in Latin America must be Cuba itself, for "sticking to the old ways", - which is exactly what US imperialism declares is the problem.

Now obviously, for the purposes of developing rational intelligent understanding of how Revisionism corrupted the workers states and the international communist movement, and where it came from, - endless mistakes, problems, crimes, and difficulties of a huge variety of workers-state-building experiences since 1917 have to be mercilessly gone into. And the EPSR has published vast books on the subject. But it is an insult to serious anti-imperialist struggle to foster a pretence that gutter anti-communists such as Klein are worth discussing with or are genuinely seeking such discussion. The Klein phenomenon is a piece of organised international anti-communism. It needs rubbishing.

A far more useful and rational picture of some of anti-imperialism's problems, as represented by the Chávez movement, for example, including whatever good or bad influences, past or present, from the communist Revisionist tradition, - can be gained from some of the more objective words in the bourgeois press itself, such as this scene painted a few weeks ago by Cambio magazine, in Colombia:

Although he has already lost the support of half the people who backed him three years ago, Chávez can still rely on the votes of the poorest sectors of the population. They are the marginalised souls, most of them kids and most unemployed or condemned to scratch a living as street hawkers. They have settled in the hills of Caracas - the Venezuelan equivalent of Rio's favelas or Medellin's slums - and form the backbone of the Circulos Bolivarianos, Chávism's stormtroopers.

Chávez won them over by speaking their language and trading on his own mestizo heritage. They are recruited to the cause, then trained and in some cases armed - rather like the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Cuba. The strongest tie between Chávez and these people is, naturally, an emotional one... "I've always been very poor and I still am," is the familiar cry of the slum women. "But at least now we've got a president who's one of us." 

None of this, however, has stopped the opposition developing into a force the like of which has never been seen in Venezuela.

"Quit now, Chávez." Day after day, thousands of motorists, flags fluttering from their cars, chant the same refrain to the accompaniment of their horns. The atmosphere may seem more festive than explosive, but that's a superficial impression.

For more than two weeks now, a crowd has been growing in the Plaza Altamira, singing, "He's on the way out, he's on the way out." They are lending their support to the 14 rebel officers who have spent the last fortnight in the plaza, dressed in their uniforms but without weapons, in a stand they hope will have some kind of reverberation in the barracks. To the dismay of the locals, the square, fringed by elegant residential buildings, has become a teeming bazaar, over which a giant banner hangs, reading: "Go to Cuba, Chávez."

The opposition - a tumultuous but toothless mass - is set on bringing about the "voluntary" resignation of the president. 

But its achilles heel is its lack of a leader. There isn't one, and those who aspire to take charge are nothing more than members of a confused catalogue of presidential wannabes, none of whom is capable of truly uniting or speaking for the civilian mass. Nor does it have a clear strategy.

Nothing is clear. The possibility of a military coup - which cannot be ruled out - poses a threat ignored by the opposition: that Chávez, backed by loyal soldiers, the nationwide network of Circulos Bolivarianos, and even Farc and the ELN, might decide to bring about a Colombian-style revolution ...

The armed forces certainly remain an enigma. How many of them are really loyal to Chávez? Ramon J Velasquez, the former president and the Venezuelan who best knows the history of his country, has a shrewd formula for evaluating these risks. "In Venezuela," he says, "soldiers are loyal to the government only until the day they rebel."

Chávez himself shows few signs of taking the opposition seriously. He seems unmoved by the street demonstrations, the signatures on petitions and even by the media's ceaseless and ferocious attacks. Every Sunday, he uses his presidential radio show (which has been known to last seven hours) to field questions from the public, satirise his opponents and extol the virtues of what he calls his "Bolivarian revolution" - a plan whose aims are vague even to his closest followers.

In truth, it's hard to know whether the president's calm attitude belies a deeper anxiety or whether he honestly believes his government is immune to any threat. A few factors, however, might reassure him that he really is master of all he surveys. The first is his messianic streak. A devourer of biographies and fervent admirer of figures such as Simon Bolivar the Liberator, the popular Colombian leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, Chávez is decidedly immodest about his place in history.

Whether or not it has any foundation in fact, the Chávez administration talks a lot about the help it has given to the leaders of the continent's leftwing and indigenous movements ... 

Marxism may be the common thread that binds Chávez to all these movements, but it is not classical Marxism. He favours instead a resolutely creole variant, one that exalts the peculiarly Latin American populist strongman and prefers to talk of "the people's struggle against the oligarchies"...

Chávez's best defence is his suit of constitutional armour. Taking full advantage of the electoral majority that swept him into office, he had the constitution tailored to flatter him like a bespoke suit. The Venezuelan president now has unconditional control over every branch of public power: executive, legislative, judicial, and even ethical, which is represented by the new position of public prosecutor and defender of the people.

Note the opportunity missed in Klein's WSF posturing to have championed some really worthwhile grass-roots democracy WITH TEETH in the form of Cuban-style Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.

Such a route is Chávez's only chance of survival too against the now-relentless counter-revolutionary pressure that Washington is building up against his ELECTED regime, another fascist coup in the making which the heroic democrat Klein curiously makes no mention of.

And far better than relying on soldier loyalty, such CDRs, if educated in as much "classical Marxism" as possible, and armed and trained as quickly as possible, could become a step towards the completed revolutionary re-education of the international working class (communism) that insoluble imperialist crisis tyranny is slithering into providing.

A Leninist masterclass in proletarian dictatorship is what ALL revolutionaries should be struggling to provide EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD at the current time for the most important philosophical-educational breakthrough in the whole of civilisation's history.

The latest EPSR seminar stressed the crucial element of a middle-class awakening to the potentially terrifying catastrophes within the insoluble imperialist economic crisis as playing a large part in the development of near universal hostility to NATO warmongering on Iraq, etc, being expressed throughout the West, and beyond.

Normally, Third World countries get zapped by casual imperialist domination with hardly a squeak out of public opinion. Equally, imperialist military terror usually goes about its murderous repression with very little political explanation, reference, or showmanship being required.

What is so different now? Why is world political public opinion being more saturated/ dominated with this epic Hollywood warmongering production than with anything ever before it?

And why are middle-class professionals leading a horrified anti-war revolt of an amazed disbelief and a sceptical distrust such as never seen before?

In both cases, because of economic collapse. The ruling class are desperate for a diversion. The middle class are beginning to feel NOTHING BUT hatred and fear of the monopoly imperialist economic system ON ANY SUBJECT.

NOTHING works any more, - so NOTHING at all can be trusted any more, - least of all such obviously insincere and lunatic garbage about "the sudden need to blitzkrieg Iraq".

By refusing to explain that this 'emergency' is all about ONGOING and INSOLUBLE imperialist economic crisis AND NOT ANYTHING ELSE, the fake-'left' protests of just a "stop the war" nature in fact are only helping the public fall for this DOUBLE DIVERSION by imperialist world rule. All the excuses and explanations in the West about the war being "for oil", or "to destroy oil", or "to halt Islamic nationalism", or "to avenge Sept 11", or "to destroy weapons of mass destruction", - or "to prevent terrorists linking-up with mass destruction weapons production", etc, etc, etc, ALL fall short of the even more foul and terrifying anti-imperialist understanding that US imperialism wants war 

a) to set a whole new climate in the world of arbitrary, brutal, bullying warmongering as the best circumstances in which American chronic international indebtedness can renege on its obligations, survive the propaganda humiliation of a capitalist collapse, get through the slump without domestic revolution, and still emerge as top imperialist dog at the end of it all, and with enough destruction of "surplus" capital having taken place so that the "overproduction" crisis that is driving the world into its greatest slump-crisis ever can be "solved";  and 

b) needs a specific "purposeful" war to start-with as a smokescreen for getting the whole new climate of non-stop warmongering-bullying going in the first place.

When the whole middle class world was getting steadily richer in the boom, then none of these issues could get much of an audience.

But now that imperialism cannot run NHS, or trains, or education, or snow-clearing, or pensions, or the Central Line, - yet wants to take over Iraq and run a worldwide warmongering offensive against all "evil", then ALL workers will be driven to start questioning EVERYTHING.

Other signs speculated upon as evidence of the terminal nature of this imperialist economic crisis were the enormous stress now theatrically placed by imperialist posturing on the "preserving world order" and "preventing world chaos" aspects of brutalising Iraq into subservience as a "lesson" to all the rest of the world.

By some reading of historical precedent, this exaggerated, militaristic, repressive posturing of "being in charge" becomes particularly hysterical precisely at the historical juncture when the entire old ruling-class control system IS IN TERMINAL CRISIS.

It was noted that it is the universally applicable economic side of this monopoly imperialist 'discipline' to make EVERYONE ELSE pay for the crisis of imperialist leadership's own making, that will initially have been distancing Germany and France from the warmongering perspectives of the West's American domineering.

Nothing in France and Germany's own long and brutal colonial imperialist record would suggest a moment's hesitation just over the fact that Iraq was getting it in the neck as such.

In turn, Rumsfeld's reciprocated sneer against "Old Europe" for this EU warmongering reluctance, is further evidence that this whole crisis is precisely about a fixed US world order and its preservation, and not about anything else. And in that context, there IS no diplomacy that can soothe French or German doubts or fears, or make them feel better about being imperialist also-rans, soon to be subject to any number of fresh US imperialist diktats. Hence Rumsfeld's open sneer.

But paradoxically, it was also noted that even imperialist score-settling and order-preserving VIOLENCE and DISCIPLINE just looks increasingly pathetic as the terminal character of monopoly capitalism's crisis becomes more obvious.

Some bits of blitzkrieging go well; but more and more of it gets cocked-up, and ALL of it never escapes the colossal shadow of DEFEAT IN VIETNAM which hangs over everything America touches.

And a growing theme is the unwillingness or inability for convincing RESPONSIBILITY or AUTHORITY to be exercised in anything the bourgeois ruling class does, - either here or in the USA (or even further afield).

And total, non-voting cynicism with all politics is the general result everywhere.

From smallish things like taking responsibility for the Climbie fiasco, to largish things like getting Western imperialism's act into gear for Middle East warmongering, the bourgeois authorities can produce either no leadership at all to convincingly reassert ruling-class ORDER; or else a farcical parody of leadership wisdom like George Bush.

And from one surreal ridiculousness to another, one of British imperialism's final shameful humiliations, - the defeat and disgrace of its colonialist attempt to hang onto bits of Ulster and prevent Ireland's total Republican reunification for a while longer, - is currently surpassing itself in viciousness, futility, and failure, - as reported shamefaced by the "stop Sinn Féin/IRA" British bourgeois lie-machine itself:

Feuding loyalist paramilitaries were poised for all-out war yesterday as furious Ulster Defence Association chiefs vowed vengeance against jailed Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, whose supporters last night admitted responsibility for killing their colleague, John "Grog" Gregg.

The row began when Adair was accused of siding with the Loyalist Volunteer Force in a feud last year. But sources said he had also been trying to muscle in on other UDA leaders' drug empires.

Gregg was married with a son and two stepdaughters.

In December a booby trap was placed under his car outside his home on the outskirts of north Belfast. Pipebombs were also placed outside his home.

Security sources said Gregg had not ventured out much in recent months.

But his fanatical support for Glasgow Rangers gave his enemies the chance they needed - he was returning from a Rangers game when he was killed. John "Grog" Gregg was a cult figure in Ulster loyalism, who achieved near heroic status after his role in the attempted murder of the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams.

Gregg, 45, and his men in the UDA's south-east Antrim brigade were believed to be responsible for a series of ruthless sectarian murders, including that of a Catholic postman, Danny McColgan, last year and of Gavin Brett, a Protestant schoolboy they mistook for a Catholic in 2001.   His brigade was also believed to be behind the pipebombing dozens of Catholic homes.

Gregg was an intimidating figure whose back was covered in a tattoo of a loyalist Grim Reaper. He had lost an eye in a fight with republicans during an Apprentice Boys parade in Derry.

A source close to the UDA leadership said they had offered a truce hours before Gregg's murder, but this had been vehemently rejected by Adair. In the next few hours three senior loyalists opposed to Adair were targeted. The north Belfast commander, Andre Shoukri, escaped unhurt when a pipebomb failed to explode in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim. A shot was fired at the Belfast home of the UDA political adviser Sammy Duddy, and gunmen raked a house in Tullycarnet, east Belfast, with bullets but no one was hurt.

Three men have been killed in loyalist feud-related attacks in the past two months.

Gunmen ambushed Gregg, 45, the UDA's south-east Antrim brigadier, in the backseat of a taxi stopped at traffic lights near Belfast docks on Saturday night. He had just disembarked from a ferry after attending a Rangers match in Glasgow.

Robert Carson, 33, a UDA member, died later in hospital. Gregg's 18 year-old son, Stuart, and another man escaped unhurt, but the taxi driver was seriously injured. One of two taxis hijacked on the Shankill Road half an hour before the attack was later abandoned near Adair's lower Shankill stronghold. Two men were arrested yesterday morning.

In a statement released last night, the UDA on the Shankill - members of Adair's rival faction, using the cover name the Red Hand Defenders said they had shot Gregg and Carson.

Councillor Tommy Kirkham, a spokesman for the Ulster Political Research Group which has links to the UDA, said everyone in the UDA and the UPRG was now a target.

"Those elements within [Adair's] C-company are hellbent on seeing this through, whoever they kill - so as far as we are concerned everyone is a target," he said.

Loyalists revered Gregg, one of the UDA's six-strong ruling inner council, as the man who shot and wounded the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, in 1984. Freed from jail in 1993 after serving half his 18-year sentence, he said his only regret was he had failed to kill him.

But the south-east Antrim boss and Adair were bitter foes, even before Gregg and four other brigadiers threw Adair out of the UDA last September, accusing him of trying to take over the organisation.

Although Adair was put back in jail last month, accused of violence, drug dealing and racketeering, Gregg's allies are convinced that Adair ordered the shooting. Gregg had survived several murder attempts in the past few months.

The UDA leadership source said: "It's unbelievable, a huge blow to the organisation. This is just playing straight into the hands of Hugh Orde [the chief constable]  and Sinn Féin.

"Somebody on that boat used a mobile phone to set John up ... This won't stop here, believe me. There's no point in holding back now."

Formed from Protestant vigilante groups in 1971, organised along military lines and dedicated to defending Ulster from republican terrorism, [the UDA] once boasted 40,000 members and the motto "Law Before Violence"

In 1994 it joined with the Ulster Volunteer Force to declare a ceasefire, and the former Northern Ireland secretary Mo Mowlam saw its support for the peace process as crucial when she visited Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair in the Maze prison.

Its political representatives, the Ulster Democratic party, were signatories to the April 1998 Good Friday accord. But two years later the UDA divorced the UDP, and the paramilitaries' ceasefire was declared over in October 2001.

Now, the UDA has imploded to such an extent that its west Belfast brigade, run by the re-imprisoned renegade Adair, is accused of murdering southeast Antrim brigadier, John "Grug" Gregg, while the government, police chiefs end even fellow loyalists say the UDA's raison d'être is drug-dealing, racketeering and machismo. 

"These are not the people's heroes," said one police source. "They are scum who sell drugs to kids, run brothels and blackmail businesses, at the expense of working class loyalists they purport to represent,"

Nationalists argue the UDA never had a valid path - their reactionary thinking against the tide of history was always going to lead to a dead end.

Republicans have always regarded the UDA, which was legal until 1991, and its more militant sister group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, as blatantly sectarian.

The UDA/UFF strategy was ostensibly to force republicans to abandon their campaign for a united Ireland by killing members of the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Féin.

But many of its 408 victims were murdered merely because they were Catholic and easy targets. Adair's notorious Shankill Road Company killed dozens of Catholics in the late 80s and early 90s. More recently, Gregg's south-east Antrim brigade murdered several Catholics and pipebombed dozens of Catholic families.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin president shot and wounded by Gregg in 1984, said the shift in focus from the IRA left the UDA's naked bigotry all the more exposed, and the nationalists' biggest fear was that when loyalists stopped killing each other they would start killing Catholics again.

Mr Adams claims that British military intelligence established the UDA and fed it information to act as a counter-insurgency force against nationalists. Others agree the state's dalliance with loyalism is a factor. "If you want to know the reasons why there is a loyalist feud, look to British intelligence," said Mr Ervine, the Progressive Unionist leader.

"Adair may be a Frankenstein's monster, but he's the state's monster, they created the conditions that let him flourish," a loyalist source said. 

Shooting itself in the foot is ALL that imperialism is now good for. Their shuttle is crap. Their warmongering will end in total disaster. Build Leninism.	EPSR

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

British colonial terrorism in Ireland ends its 800-year pattern setting tyranny still tied to its poisonous mentality.

IT has been difficult for Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair.

Shortly after 6:30am on the morning of Wednesday 8 January, the loyalist leader was on the receiving end of one of his own organisation's pipe bombs.

A device was thrown into the back of his home at Boundary Way in the Shankill, where it hit his garden shed and exploded against a rear wall.

The object did no discernable damage and unlike the victims of most UDA attacks, Adair and his family managed to sleep through the event. The PSNI sealed off the area and the British Army later removed the remains of a device for forensic examination.

Blame for the bomb immediately fell onto Adair's rival UDA members, with whom he is currently engaged in a vicious feud.

In one of his most surreal statements to date, Adair's shadow, loyalist John White, told the Irish Times what nationalists have known for years: "As far as I know it is typical of the UDA to attack a house when they know that there are young children asleep inside at the time."

For its part, the UDA leadership claims it had nothing to do with the attack.

"If the UDA got that close to Adair's home, they would not be throwing a simple blast bomb at the house" said a UDA source. "The UDA knows it would only have one chance at getting close to Adair's home and would want to make it count."

There are claims that Adair planted the bomb himself - to provide cover for his failure to attend the funeral of Roy Green (shot by the UDA outside a pub near the Ormeau Road on 2 January). Even a PSNI spokesperson wondered aloud if the bomb hadn't been planted by one of Adair's own men, asking sceptically, "Why penetrate the citadel and use such a minor weapon?"

But John White leaps to Adair's defence. "Johnny gets blamed for everything," he laments. He calls Adair "a peacemaker" and says: "It is against natural justice when those responsible for murder and mayhem are allowed to run free."

Oh, the irony runneth over...

Meanwhile, Adair's week wasn't getting any better.

On Friday, British Secretary of State, Paul Murphy, revoked the licence which had allowed Adair early release from prison after serving half of a 16-year sentence for directing terrorism. A mere 48 hours after the pipe bomb scratched his garden shed, the PSNI was back at Adair's home - to return him to jail for a second time.

An official explanation of this most recent arrest was read to Adair as he sat in Maghaberry jail.

Murphy, Adair was told, had evidence that since May 2002, Adair had been involved in directing terrorism, distributing guns and plotting acts of violence. He was also suspected of drug dealing, extortion, money-laundering and membership of an illegal organisation.

Adair can now be kept in jail until 2005 without further charge, but plans to launch a judicial review against the decision. John White said Adair intends to seek the help of the Human Rights Commission, and the Committee on the Administration of Justice - a civil liberties watchdog.

More irony.

For his part, Paul Murphy says, "1 am satisfied Adair is a danger to others and while he is at liberty, is likely to commit further offences".

As far as his physical wellbeing is concerned, the arrest could not have come at a better time for Adair.

Over the last few weeks, loyalist graffiti has appeared throughout Belfast pronouncing Adair and White "Dead men walking" and papers have quoted a UDA source who predicted that Adair and White would be killed "in weeks, not months".

In December, the UDA leadership reportedly offered £10,000 to anyone who would kill Adair and an additional £10,000 if he was dead by Christmas. Just last week, a "senior UDA member" told the Irish Times: "This feud won't end until there are two coffins going down the Shankill Road and those coffins will carry Adair and White. Nobody can behave like those two men have and get away with it."

PSNI chiefs hope Adair's arrest will take the heat out of the feud, which has killed nearly a dozen people over the last two years. Acting Deputy Chief Constable Alan McQuillan told the press: "We hope that the arrest of Mr Adair will have a significant impact on the current situation in Belfast."

It looks like McQuillan has good reason to be optimistic. After Adair's arrest a member of the UDA inner council stated, "Hopefully this is the chance that west Belfast needs to get themselves sorted out. This will be the end of the feud from our side unless "C' Company does something."

If the loyalist feud peters out as a result of Adair's arrest, the UDA is now free to go back to doing what it does with abandon - attacking nationalists.

PSNI statistics say loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for 114 shootings and 89 serious assaults in 2002, most of which were against the nationalist community.

Several of its victims have been Protestants who were killed in the mistaken belief that they were Catholics, including young Gavin Brett and David Cupples, who was beaten to death on his way to work at Girdwood Barracks at Christmas.

Just in case there is any doubt of unionist priorities, local Ulster Unionist Councillor Chris McGimpsey summed up the feelings of his community this way: "The working class Protestant community is sick of it (the feud)," he said.

"They already feel under immense pressure from the British Government, the Dublin Government, nationalists and republicans. Now the largest loyalist paramilitary groups are running around killing each other.

"Young people might say they joined the UDA to fight for their country and defend their community. Yet some have ended up killing other Protestants." No hint of irony here.

"They need to consider where their leadership is taking them and rethink their actions."