In one of the funniest developments of world history, U.S. forces have successfully captured the socialist dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, and his wife, in an operation that lasted about three hours. Despite the best attempts of the impotent cult known as the Revolutionary Communist International, no one was able to ‘mobilise’ in the face … Read more
Socialism is when the entire population is the property of the state. Socialism is Venezuela. Socialism is when the entire population is starving for lack of access to basic necessities because of the government’s economic mismanagement. Socialism is when you are constantly reminded that the individual is worthless and that the collective is everything. Socialism … Read more
XIV.“Man seeks for gold in mines, that he may weaveA lasting chain for his own slavery;—In fear and restless care that he may liveHe toils for others, who must ever beThe joyless thralls of like captivity;He murders, for his chiefs delight in ruin;He builds the altar, that its idol’s feeMay be his very blood; he … Read more
We are five years on from my desertion of the International Marxist Tendency (now rechristened as the Revolutionary Communist International). Nonetheless, here I am to tell you why you should desert Trotskyism. If you are a doubting member of any one of the dozens of fissiparous, impotent, hermetic Trotskyist sects existing on the fringes of … Read more
“On my saying, ‘What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?’ my friend suggested ‘But these impulses may be from below, not from above.’ I replied, ‘They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from … Read more
And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from … Read more
A captive greets thee, coming from a house Of bondage, from yon City’s walls set free, A prison where he hath been long immured. Now I am free, enfranchised and at large, May fix my habitation where I will. … Trances of thought and mountings of the mind Come fast upon me: it is shaken … Read more
Raphael Samuel (1934-1996) was part of that extraordinary crop of British Marxist social historians that emerged out of the crumbling world of the Stalinist British Communist Party – among them, E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and Eric Hobsbawm. He wrote a series of essays on the ‘lost world’ of British Communism during the 1980s, which were … Read more