(1) I'm doing five countries in five days this week. Departing from Paris on Monday morning, the itinerary takes in Côte d'Ivoire, Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya. Press trip of the year, hands down.
Naturally, a schedule this tight is only possible thanks to the generosity of a French multinational in lending a bunch of hacks their corporate jet. Yes, I know. I know. I don't think I can credibly use the words 'carbon footprint' with reference to anybody else for at least two years.
I'll be in the company of specialist Africa correspondents from leading British and French print titles. To avoid embarrassment, I have been genning up; I'm about half way through Martin Meredith's epic The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence, which does what it says on the tin, and rather well at that.
It's a horrifying story, detailing one extended political car crash after another. This has prompted some reflections on how far a class-based paradigm applies in countries where politics are defined by ethnicity and religion. Expect some posts on the topic once I've had a look round a cross-section of the continent. However, blogging over the next week or so will be at best sparse, and more likely non-existent.
(2) The first big demonstrations I went on were the big Rock Against Racism marches in the seventies, which mobilised tens of thousands of young people against the National Front, even though that outfit had not a single elected representative anywhere in the country at the time.
The contrast with yesterday's anti-BNP march in London could not have been stronger. The far right now has dozens of councillors and a seat on the Greater London Assembly. Yet - whatever the Socialist Workers' Party, which organised the proceedings, would have you believe - the turnout was only 2,000 or so. I'm with Liam on this one; the far left needs to stop kidding itself and ask itself some searching questions instead.
Among the more enthusiastic participants were Daddy's Little Princesses (pictured), who have declared their implacable opposition to fascism now the know what it is. Indeed, the oldest thinks she might be a communist, because sharing toys is a good idea. DLP senior writes:
We went on a demo and my legs got tired. We bought two whistles and we got some flags to wave. We walked to Trafalgar Square and I dipped my feet in the water.
The BNP are not winning and I hope they won't. It doesn't matter what skin colour people are. The BNP aren't really good.
(3) New links include Aled Dilwyn Fisher, the leftwing Green activist who has just been elected president of London School of Economics Student Union.
Posted at 10:34, 22 June 2008
Comments (18)
be sure David to ask some Christian Nigerians how they like living under Sharia law in the slave-state in the North.
Hi David,
Thanks for the link!
On the subject of people standing against Davis, the local Green Party make their decision on Monday. If they stand, we'll be standing from the angle of confronting Davis's hyprocrisy (pro-death penalty, pro-war etc) and going further than he could in fighting ID cards and other aspects of the authoritarian agenda.
Could be interesting from the point of view of united left campaigning. Many people in the environmental direct action movement are keen to get involved, so it may pull in wider forces.
Aled
Well, I'd certainly support a Green candidate in the circumstances.
"We went on a demo and my legs got tired. We bought two whistles and we got some flags to wave. We walked to Trafalgar Square and I dipped my feet in the water."
yeah, that sounds like every London demo I've ever been on as well. ;-)
I smell a rat every time I hear 'left-wing' Green.They are not left-wing in any meaningful sense. Okay, maybe a few, but the most part they are the kind of harmless middle-class cranks that infest the Social Forum movement. Wall's book is stuffed full of complete rubbish about 'Italism' (some Rasta cult) and Zen. And he completely misunderstands autonimism and Toni Negri (who, btw, was a mate of mine).
Norwich, which has the largest Green Councillor represenation in the land, is a case to illustrate this. They are most famous for their success in getting foie gras banned from council premises. I don't know if you have been to council receptions but I fail to even conceive any of them serving up foie gras. A few cheese nibbles, prawns, plenty of granish, and maybe fish paste sarnies. The joke on these tossers is, we allege, that are now campainging to have foie gras banned from Norwich Chippies.
Many years ago a German mate came to visit me and my girlfriend in Paris. At that time (early eighties) the Parisian left were agog at the success of the German Greens. He rapidly told us what a bunch they were. I was unconvinced at the time.
How wrong I was.
He was right then, and anyone who imagines that the British Green Party is different is living in that special leftist territory described by Alexis Sayle: where those tired of the humdrum reality of cloud-cooko land get away to for a holiday.
Andrew,
I can assure you that, while you may not think I exist in a meaningful sense or any other, I do - I am a Green and an anti-capitalist, and there are many more people like me in the Green Party and wider movement.
Derek Wall's book is not just about italism and Zen, which he touches on briefly at the end. In actual fact, italism is key to the Rastafarian movement, not a bizarre cult, and there is a lot to learn from it, but it's not exactly the substance of the book. Maybe he does get some of the stuff wrong on autonomism, but that hardly discredits the entire green left project.
Saying that Norwich Greens are famous for banning foie gras is like saying that Peter Tatchell is famous for losing a by election in the 1980s - it hardly dimishes the rest of what they do just because it is more notable. The Norwich Greens have campaigned against nuclear weapons, tuition fees, post office closures, public service sell offs and much more. They have passed Council policy on everything from 20 mph speed limits to changes to developments policies.
The current policy of the German Green Party is not at all like the Green Party of England and Wales. The German Green Party used to be radical but have lost the plot, supporting the war in Afghanistan among other things. Again, just because another Green Party is bad, doesn't discredit other Green Parties. Any party can call itself a Green Party but it doesn't say anything about them.
Aled
Generally I have a lot of time for Andrew's comments and general political position on a range of matters, however I must say that my own feelings towards Green politics and their convergence with socialism has gone in the opposite direction.
Socialists used to say (and I heard this many times) that they were the best Greens by virtue of the mystical powers of the planned economy and too often spouted nonsense (with honerable exceptions) that came from preconceptions and aimed to fit in with their theories of the world and not examination fo the world as it is.
A large number of things that have come from the ecosocialist perspective and flows from Derek Wall is too lazily bracketed as cranky and deserves greater respect.
Whilst I am also sceptical about the potential for zen and ital in socialist transformation, the need to ditch notions of socialism as some turbo charged version of capitalism with a few red flags as well as consideration of finitie limits and the primacy of the climate question over all politics will be central in any process of socialist renewal.
Dave.
When you get to East Africa, ask them whether they want a ban on GM food.
Compare their answers with Derek Wall's.
more broadly speaking I think that the Left's attitude towards the Green's has changed over the years
if you had said to a three decades ago that the Greens would contain a sizeable left element (Green Left)which is probably larger than most of independent "Leninist"/leftie parties in Britain, you would have been laughed at
but the collapse of the Leninist Left (and various projects) in Britain meant that the Greens seemed to be a fairly pleasant political home for those exiled from other Left groupings
people who previously would have been very active in Socialist Alliance, assorted Trots, various groupings, etc are now found as individuals in Green Left, and furiously cling on to that identity in the wake of the gradual disintegration of the British Left
it is all very strange, who would have predicted it?
"anti-capitalist" - yes, "anti-capitalist" not necessarilly pro-socialist, and tehrein lies the rub, not many greens advocate anything that resembles a post-scarcity society, indeed, Green thinking tends to involve assumptions of hyper scarcity, and deep Malthusianism.
Tim, seeing as East African farmers have been among those lucky enough to be in receipt of so-called terminator seeds, I'd expect they've got v strong views about GM.
Lawrie, good to see you out and about in blogland!
Actually my views on the Greens are shapeed more fundamentlaly by the French Greens, les verts. I was the Parisian representtative for the Federation pour une Gauche Alternative on the orgnaising committee for the demo at the time of Chernoyl, and found them exactly the kind of crank I described. Left-wing Green Alain Lipietz - who is a very serious economist with a Marxist background, worked closely with the FGA. I note that when LIpietz was briefly leader of the Verts and potential presidential candidate. Since then they have mvoed into near-oblivian, with policies mid-way between the German Die Gruenen and the UK Greens.
The problem is not that the Greens have odd activists - hey that applies to all political parties but that they no serious political base outside a certain 'post-materialist' layer of liberal types, and no conception of how a political agency, such as the working class, will transform society.
A few months back the Ipswich Greens held a fair in the old Town Hall, and they had pulled in all the ecology-minded campaigns, and the much respected anti-nuclear, andti-war East Anglian activist Peter Langham. One even tried to recruit me. But I'm afraid if I take on board Green policies they would be from the French movement, Les Alternatifs (descendents of the FGA), who explicity are 'reds'.
Apologies for numerous typos.
Two things to add, when the French Green seemed to rising in the 80s and 90s some of the French left joined, from the dissolution of the PSU, the collapse of the project, Nouvelle Gauche (Pierre Jquin, ex-PCF leading figure and candidate for a bloc of the left, not too unlike the Socialist Alliance). At one point the Verts had so many local councillors nearly all their activists were them. Lipietz was briefly their potential presidential candidate, but was swiftly manouevered out. They participated in the 'anti-capitalist' movement, as its centre-left wing, but the problems outlined above is that being anti something and the lack of a coherent ideology told against them. A lot of Lipietz's work was at the time devoted to promoting the 35 hour week, which never proved quite the success they counted on. I suspect that the Green Party in England and Walkes lack a really unifying theme which is why you get such vaguely religious notions as Wall has or those who belive in a vesion of Lovelock's ideas, or those who think animal rights are a priority.
The French alternatives can be seen at:
http://www.alternatifs.org
They too have local councillors, but in France of course getting elected to a Commune is not too much difficult than a Parish council election here.
well I may be wrong Andrew about the autonomists but I need to know why you think I am wrong...perhaps you could fill me in, the book on anti-capitalism is aimed to provided some dogmatic closed account, do you mean autonomists in general or Negri/Hardt in particular.
Many European Green Parties have moved to the right which is fair point of criticism you might have developed?
Could Dr. Wall please attempt to write in sentences and use punctuation, as without this his mutterings are even more difficult to understand than would otherwise be the case. Thanks.
Mr English Teacher, you're going to find this even worse!
Derek, the reasons I feel you do not interpret Hardt and Negri rightly are (amongst many others) the following:
1) The economic analysis in Empire and latterly, in Multitude, stems from a conception of abstract labour transfomred into 'immaterial' labour. This has roots in the passages in the Grundrisse on machinery (a similar viewpoint is presented in Virno's writings). It is therefore not rooted in globalisation, or as you put in Babylon and Beyond, 'hyperglobalisation', but a stand on the nature of 'value' in the labour process. It does not mean that immaterial is without its material supports, indeed they explictly cite them, but that the nature of the 'information' production process has changed the relations between circuits of production. Right or wrong it has to be looked at in these terms, as has been done in some excellent essays in Historical Materialism over the last few years.
2) The other basis of Empire and Multitude is in political philosophy: a critique of Sovereinty (Hobbes and Bodin) and a celebration of the 'multitude' (a concept drawn from, one should note, some very sketchy ideas in Spinoza). Empire is a sort of political entity which cannot be 'taken over' by a sovereign people, or even fought by such a being. This leads them to a stance not too disimilar to that of Jon Holloway, how to change the world without taking power. You do not mention this, and for their politics merely cite their 'activism'. I would single that out as a major problem. That is, that they lack any strategic conception, or interest in intermediate reforms.
3) Finally there is plenty of material in Negri and Hardt's writings criticising what one would call imperialism. They stand for a kind of global non-sovereign republic associating the fluid and nomad masses (nomadism of course comes from Guattari's Mille Plateaux)against 'Empire'. This is associated with a near Bergsonian voluntarism. There is a definitely a romanticism about nomadism, but it is an important phenomenon. Their descriptiion is, nevertheless, hardly a celebration of globalisation as you suggest it might be regarded as.
Finally I would say that the central difficulty of Hardt and Negri's works is that they are based on an essentially philosopical anlaysis, very hetroclite (using Guattari's notion of theory as a 'tool box'),which is in uneasy tension with empirical stuff they import in on say, modern managerial practices (again something you do not mention).
For a review of Empire you can google my name, the word Empire, and that of the Weekly Worker and find it.
Their present opinions can be found at the site of the French Review, Multitudes. I have not read Negri's Goodbye Mister Socialism yet, only commentaries on it.
I await Mr English Teacher's comments.
Cheers,
I will chew on all this...looks a bit more interesting than a lot of the left stuff on them which is simply dismissive...
By imperialism I am obviously contrasting their conception of a global system with 'American imperialism'.
Point taken on their strategy or lack of it, which I think is pretty implicit in what I have written, I will take a look at the WW stuff, etc.
Fuck the punctuation...lets argue about political economy...thanks
Fuck the punctuation? Did you write your doctorate-dissertation in a similar style to here or your own blog - I doubt it.
School report:
"Derek has a lively mind and is more than willing to share his sometimes controversial opinions. Unfortunately he does not seem to care whether these are expressed in a way that enables others to understand them, therefore rendering his attempts to discuss with his fellow classmates little more than rather futile stream of consciousness. As for sport and art: he must try harder."
I understand Andrew without much difficulty, but that might have more to do with the fact that he doesn't write a load of old (sometimes zen-infulenced) bollocks.