The Traveller in the Evening (Andy Wilson)

Conor Kostick interviews Andy Wilson about his recent essay, From Hyperobjects to Re-Animism: Titans at the End of the World.

Podcast | Andy Wilson interviewed by Conor Kostick on William Blake, Surrealism, ecology, radical politics and theology, and how Blake's meaning has been distorted by contemporary Blakeans such as John Higgs.

An interview with Jason Wright, author of a new book, Blake's Job: Adventures in Becoming – taking in Blake's Leviathan, gender, Jung, addiction, the singer Jackie Leven, and more on the way.

The recent discussion of Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job led me to think about the role of chaos, first in the Book of Job itself, then in the Bible generally, and then across the Near and Middle East and beyond. On this podcast, I’m joined by Sam Hamad to talk about Baal and Leviathan, and how their struggles entered the Old Testament via the traditions of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles. Sam discusses similar ancient Egyptian traditions, in which Apophis / Apep and Set are cast in the role of chaos gods. Join us to hear about Isis’s plan to revive the dead Osiris while disguised as a cat with a knife for a tail, and Set’s creation of the Egyptian deserts through his ejaculation.

These are the Sons of Los, & these the Labourers of the VintageThou seest the gorgeous clothed Flies that dance & sport in summerUpon the sunny brooks & meadows: every one the danceKnows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave:Each one to sound his instruments of music in the dance,To touch each other & recede; to cross & change & returnThese are the Children of Los; thou seest the Trees on mountainsThe wind blows heavy, loud they thunder thro' the darksom skyUttering prophecies & speaking instructive words to the sonsOf men: These are the Sons of Los! These the Visions of EternityBut we see only as it were the hem of their garmentsWhen with our vegetable eyes we view these wond'rous VisionsWilliam Blake, Milton I 26:1-12, [E123]

Conor Kostick leads a discussion with Andy Wilson about panpsychism, a philosophy gaining popularity with its account of how awareness is baked into matter as a fundamental property from the outset. Conor and Andy discuss:

* the current popularity of panpsychism

* what its basic idea is

* the ‘composition problem’ in explaining consciousness

* Galileo’s idea of science

* hierarchies of consciousness

* animal consciousness

* the possibility of higher forms of consciousness

* cultural resistance to panpsychism

In 1786 the United States signed the Treaty of Marrakesh with Morocco, creating trade and diplomatic agreements but, crucially, also guaranteeing that no Moroccan would ever be taken as a slave in the US. In the following decades, several Black Muslim groups grew up in the US. Among these were the Moorish Science Temple and, later, the Moorish Orthodox Church (MOC), who seized on the treaty as a secular guarantee of their essential freedom, a freedom itself rooted metaphysically in Islam as the ancestral religion of the Moors, a tradition stolen from them through slavery and exile, which they now intend to recover.

In the 1960s the Moorish Orthodox Church developed into a free-thinking, avant-grade spiritual and artistic movement, with a Dadaistic, Prankster style of communication and a parallel commitment to spiritual insight. Church members were in contact at times with Timothy Leary, and included Hakim Bey (aka Peter Lamborn Wilson), author of works such as CHAOS: The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism (1984), TAZ / The Temporary Autonomous Zone: Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (1985) and a stream of other books exploring esoteric Islam, anarchism, ecology, alchemy, pirate utopias, and other matters of vital interest.

It is through Hakim Bey that I first heard of the Moorish Orthodox Church, but the church has moved beyond him of late. In this instalment of the Traveller in the Evening podcast, I interview comrade Theophrastus El about the origins, history and beliefs of this radical spiritual group, united around the ‘five pillars of Moorish Science’; love, truth, peace, freedom and justice (while some add: beauty.)

Contact Theophrastus El.

Theophrastus al-Razi El: The Straight Balance: Islamic Alchemy and Moorish Science

Download the pamphlet, The Straight Balance: Islamic Alchemy and Moorish Science, by Theophrastus al-Razi El, originally published by the Aurora Consergens Lodge of the Moorish Orthodox Church, Albion 2020.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank a number of people who have assisted in bringing this MOC pamphlet into being; Brother Ishraq El of Lodge Al Buraq, who provided important source material and, most importantly, feedback and encouragement, Brother El-Imran Arif of Lodge Aurora Consurgens, who read an earlier draft of this document and suggested a number of key improvements, and Brother Mustafa Al Laylah Bey, who deemed this worthy of publishing as a Moorish Orthodox Church pamphlet, and who worked on the layout and graphics. Brother Andy Wilson also stepped in for post-production  /  re-editing duties.

An earlier version of this paper was delivered as part of the MOC-UK online seminar series. I’d like to thank the attendees for their incisive questions and comments. Any errors and shortcomings in what follows are of course entirely my own.

Alchemy as Moorish Science

We are told that alchemy arrived in ‘Latin Europe’ on Friday, the 11th February 1144, when Robert of Chester completed his translation of De Compositione Alchemiae. This manuscript allegedly consists of the teachings of the monk ‘Morienus’, as given to the Umayyid Prince Khalid ibn Yazid. According to legend, this shadowy figure assists Khalid in deciphering a cryptic manuscript describing the making of the philosopher’s stone, and then disappears into the desert.

As the inhabitants of Western Christendom came into contact with Islamic civilisation from the C 10th CE, they found libraries full of works by Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle, as well as manuscripts describing entirely new sciences – including alchemy. Scholars travelled to Sicily and Jerusalem in search of new knowledge, and manuscripts to translate. But most of all, as in the case of Robert of Chester and his colleague Herman the Dalmatian, they travelled to the Moorish Kingdom of Al Andalus. According to Sharif Anaël-Bey, the Caliphate of Cordoba was established in the C 8th by Moors from Mauritania, who ‘were the recipients and custodians of the ancient… mysteries of Egypt.’

The Holy Moorish Koran, ‘divinely edited’ by Prophet Noble Drew Ali, declares that Moorish Americans were enslaved for forsaking their true nationality and must return to Islam, the religion of their forefathers. The text also contains a number of explicit alchemical references, to transmutation, sublimation and alchemical Sulphur (the ‘seed’ representing the human spirit). However, whilst the Caliphs of Cordoba may have been the inheritors of the mysteries of Egypt, Drew Ali derived most of the alchemical portions of the Holy Moorish Koran from the Aquarian Gospel, a New-Age Christian text from the turn of the C 20th. The Gospel’s author may have been inspired by Victorian occultist writers, themselves drawing on Paracelsus or Agrippa. By the late Renaissance, any influence on European alchemy from Islamic Spain had been thoroughly ‘occulted’. So there is no direct chain of transmission from Al-Andalus to Moorish Science, at least if we stick with the realm of historical evidence, rather than that of mythology and ‘poetic facts’.

What follows is therefore not an attempt to uncover non-existent historical evidence, but rather a search for resonances and parallels between Moorish Teaching and Islamic alchemy. This is a modest attempt at ‘returning’ Moorish Science to its original sources of inspiration, however broken and fragmented the actual lines of historical transmission. The Arabic root meaning ‘return’, gives us the terms for both ‘repentance’ (tawba) and ‘hermeneutics’ (ta’wil). Perhaps what follows is a very modest venture in hermeneutical interpretation in the guise of repentance for the appropriation of alchemical knowledge by the Fallen Europeans, from its original Moorish, Islamic, and ultimately Egyptian sources.

Theophrastus al-Razi El

The fourth wall between the human subject and everything else evaporates. How to see global warming as part of the human drama, not as the end of it? How to rebuild the play when there is a fourth wall collapse, and when this collapse coincides with the actual theatre on fire? When being on fire is what causes this collapse, what happens? The play was s**t. We need another play.Timothy Morton, Hell

Hell on earth is here. The toxic fusion of big oil, Evangelical Christianity and white supremacy has ignited a worldwide inferno, more phantasmagoric than anything William Blake could dream up and more cataclysmic than we can yet fathom. As Timothy Morton’s new book, Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology, shows, escaping global warming hell requires a radical mystical marriage of Christianity and biology to awaken a future beyond white male savagery.

On 17th April 2024, Timothy Morton was interviewed by Andy Wilson for The Blake Society and The Traveller in the Evening. This podcast captures the interview and resulting discussion.

Timothy Morton

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of Being Ecological (2018), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), The Ecological Thought (2010), Ecology without Nature (2007), ten other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.

Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology is published on Earth Day (22 April) 2024.

The Traveller in the Evening

Andy Wilson runs the blog The Traveller in the Evening: Reflections on William Blake, Radical Theology, Politics and Surrealism, founded Reservists Against War and co-founded the Association of Musical Marxists (AMM). He is the author of Faust: Stretch Out Time 1970-75 (2006), Cosmic Orgasm: The Music of Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana-Maria Avram (2013), and The Brilliant New Hercules: A Blake Reader (2015). With Michael Tencer he edited The Assassin (2014), and with Jules Alford, Khiyana: Daesh, the Left and the Unmaking of the Syrian Revolution (2015).

Join the Blake Society here.

The Traveller in the Evening talks to Timothy Morton about Tim's new book Hell, their personal journeys towards Christianity; the role of aesthetics in theory; the war against The Holy Spirit and Žižek's blindness to the latter; charisma; Speculative Realism as an attack on theory; ‘French feminism’; the impact of music on their lives; the trouble with Marxists pirouetting like Jerry Falwell… and Falwell’s demonic level of aggression toward Desmond Tutu; doing peyote with your mum; The Sex Pistols tearing a hole in the curtain of reality on the Bill Grundy Show; transpersonal boundary-violating sensations of extreme benevolence; Bjork as a 'soul-opener'; René Girard channelling Alice Through the Looking Glass; Marx's meanness, the role of wonderment in theory; Terry Eagleton giving Marx a leg up; being a happy scapegoat and cheerful assassin; Luce Irigaray and the Sokal hoax; and the influence of childhood trauma on their views.

“Aggressively expressed contempt is absolutely the wonderment killer.”

"I've been calling them Right Club recently, like Fight Club. The first rule of Right Club is you never mention Right Club... and the second rule of Right Club is that you never mention Right Club. And as soon as you call them out, like we actually were in a church, this is a church with some Hegel, with a sort of stained glass window of Marx, and you are all like crusading inquisition people. They get so mad, you know? And the first time I ever said I'm not quite sure anymore about the concept of critique, I got killed in public for three days by people who had to perform a ritual sacrifice on me. And incidentally, by the way, I love Theodore Adorno."

“The sense of beauty that even beetles and perhaps flowers… share has nothing to do with being a 'biologically female' body: this is a trans theory of beauty, as a matter of fact. I'm going to say that again: the default theory of sexual selection consists of a trans theory of beauty. Far from 'essentializing' or 'biologizing' art, what this means is that beetles and flowers also make art: 'art history' can't possibly stop at human beings or even primates. And that art is profoundly queer and indeed trans. Think about it. Those female ducks and butterflies simply can't be the only lifeforms with a sense of beauty. The non-cloning part of our biosphere, the way it appears, from flowers to wallpaper to disco balls to iridescent beetles, is a reflection of queer desire without a goal.

Thel created Earth.

So Thel is a figure for theory, throwing a wrench of 'what the f**k?' into the machinery. And therefore Thel is a figure for 'life,' but not the procreative, goal-directed life of parents and daughters. Wonderment is the 'feel' of theory, and wonderment is without a goal. The fact that consciousness can wonder is perhaps another flower, another 'meaningless' life, meaningless in the sense of not having a telos or point. And what is esoteric religion aside from asserting what Kant asserts about beauty, a meaningful lack of meaning?”

Timothy Morton

Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of Ecology without Nature (2007), The Ecological Thought (2010), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (2013), Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence (2016), Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People (2017), Being Ecological (2018), ten other books and 250 essays on philosophy, ecology, literature, music, art, architecture, design and food.

Watch now | An introduction to Blake given by Andy Wilson at St Luke’s Community Centre, Islington, London, on 24th Nov 2021, for the residents around Bunhill Fields, where Blake is buried.

Blake saw imagination as the ‘body of Christ’, as divine: imagination is what will build Golgonooza, his New Jerusalem. Some readers of Blake interpret this imagination as merely the power that drives the artist to make inspired art. It is far more than this in Blake. The imagination is tasked with building God’s Kingdom itself. But what can this mean?

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922-1997) was a child of the post-war revolutionary movement. He led the group Socialisme ou Barbarie (Socialism or Barbarism), which split to the left of French Trotskyism and was active from 1948-1966. Castoriadis eventually rejected Marxism, based on his belief in the power of the collective social imaginary to create social forms (languages, institutions, social relations), symbolic artefacts and entire societies. Could this social imaginary, able to create ex nihilo and overturn all categories, be the divine body of the imagination Blake envisioned?

In this podcast, Andy Wilson talks to Joe Ruffell about Castoriadis and the imagination, taking in topics including;

* Castoriadis’s political history and his development beyond Marxismthe role of imagination in Blake

* Castoriadis’s account of the history of the concept of the radical (esemplastic) imagination from Aristotle to Heidegger and beyond

* Castoriadis and Primary Narcissism

* State Capitalist groups to the left of Trotskyism in the New Left

* worker’s power against Lenin and Taylorism

* the later Castoriadis’s idea of the interregnum, and of the power of the imagination to entrap and beguile

* Castoriadis’s ecological and anti-oppression politics

* Castoriadis and imagination against Marxism

* the debate between Castoriadis and Alasdair MacIntyre (the latter speaking for the International Socialists before becoming a Catholic Aristotelian)

* democracy in the Greek polis and elsewhere

* the curse of the imagination

Does the radical duality of Castoriadis’s imagination – its power both to liberate and enslave, and the slippery dialectics between those states – resemble in any way the arrangements in Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell?

Planned as a long Q&A session between Andy and long-time Traveller podcast co-host, Conor Kostick, that discussion raised so many questions and went on for so long that it seemed best to postpone airing the issues on the podcast. For this episode we excerpted Andy’s intro to the discussion, touching on his own experience listening to and making electronic music.

Starting with Wendy Carlos and Popcorn, (yes, it’s Hot Butter by Popcorn, not Popcorn by Hot Butter… Andy got that wrong throughout) passing through Kraftwerk, David Bowie, Throbbing Gristle and Nurse With Wound, Andy argues that the technology is generally used lazily and to little effect, compared to the enormity of, eg., the work of Iancu Dumitrescu.

The gist of Andy’s argument is that all the things he found interesting in the distorted timbres and extremities of electronic rock and industrial music are used with overwhelming effect in the music of the Romanian Spectral composer, Iancu Dumitrescu, whose music runs throughout the show, along with samples from David Bowie, Throbbing Gristle, the Tim Hodgkinson / Ken Hyder collaboration, KSpace, and Andy Wilson’s own recorded archives.

Along the way, Andy discusses the combined and uneven development of electronic music, with huge increases in the expressive power of the tools available to musicians still lagrely unexplored by most musicians. Yes, Andy is complaining about the music young people make today. Conor thought so, and he might be right.

Andy also tells stories about visiting abandoned quarries on a military base to record foxes with Chris Watson of Cabaret Voltaire, Cod that burp (off the Galapagos Islands, not Japan) at hissing cockroaches, Chris Carter’s Gristleizer, Bourbonese Qualk’s Simon Crab buying Throbbing Gristle’s Korg MS20, comparisons between buying tickets for Oasis and dumping grain in the Pacific, seagull reverb, the Nagra tape recorder, BBC Radiophonics, ‘Dada, Futurism, Industrial Music’, Wendy Carlos, hand-cranked ring modulators, The Aphex Twin and the Supercollider user group, Steve Stapleton bunking off at Faust’s Wumme and Kurt Graupner’s Faust Machines, computerised shamanic improv, John Lennon’s tape experiments, SoundRaider, time division multiplexing, nature recording with David Attenborough, the pleasures of dentistry under general anaesthetics, and more besides.

Criminally, I didn’t get around to talking about how the sound of King Iwah and the Upsetters’ Give Me Power, produced by Lee Perry in 1972, set the scene for everything that followed. I can only apologise and drop this video here.

Traveller Music Tech

It is acceptable these days to describe Blake as a Taoist, a Pagan, a Buddhist or an atheist... anything but a Christian. The Traveller and his guest, Mark Vernon argue that this is a big mistake: "Blake... did not claim to be a mystic, and did not use the word. He claimed to be a visionary, an enthusiast, and a Christian, and defined the terms carefully. I have read, and now am reading in newspapers, statements of literary critics and those who call themselves "atheistic theologians" to the effect that Blake had no god but man. People who are not atheists are usually willing to leave to God such important judgments about others. On this subject, as on other statements about himself, Blake seems clear enough. He said always and passionately that he was a Christian, and I know only One who has a better right to an opinion on that subject." Bo Lindberg

A new book from Phil Smith offers a chance to consider Mark Fisher's hauntological legacy and the politics of life lived without a future, among the remains of the past.

Phil Smith, Albion’s Eco-Eerie: TV and Movies of the Haunted Generation, Shrewsbury: Temporal Boundary Press, 2024.

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) founded Zero Books, Repeater Books and the k-punk blog. He was the author of Capitalist Realism and Ghosts of My Life, and taught at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Culture has lost the ability to grasp the presentMark Fisher

If we gift them the past we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently, we can control them better.Eldon Tyrell, Blade Runner.

Perhaps a better hour may at some time strike even for the clever fellows: one in which they may demand, instead of prepared material ready to be switched on, the improvisatory displacement of things.Adorno

Podcast Discussion Summary »

TLDR: A discussion about the details of Phil’s book quickly turns into a reappraisal of the work of Mark Fisher and his kin (Zero Books, Repeater Books, Nina Power, Nick Land, Simon Reynolds, David Stubbs, et al.) and their ideas about hauntology and the Ghost of Marx.

Films reviewed in the book include: Night of the Demon, The Company of Wolves, Fireball XL5, Quatermass and the Pit, O Lucky Man!, Children of the Stones, Whistle and I'll Come to You, Hellraiser, Hellbound.

It is a bold book that takes the weaving path of blood, trauma and sensuality away from Folk Horror and fashionable 'hauntology' into new, enchanted spaces. Digging up and doubling down on messy ideas and demon lovers that exist not to elevate us to transcendence but to immerse us in the mud of grotty instinct.Stephen Volk, author of The Dark Masters Trilogy and Ghostwatch

Trotsky once spoke of a raincoat that had holes in it. It was a perfect raincoat, he said - as long as it doesn’t rain. With the far left’s confused non-response to Trump’s fascism (when they aren’t simply congratulating him on pwning the liberals, and after spending a lot of energy denying he was a fascist to start with), hasn’t the revolutionary left as a whole turned out to be such a raincoat?

Topics discussed: Introductions; The SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and SWSS (Socialist Workers Student Society) in 1984; the miners’ strike; the revolutionary left in the 70s and 80s; a busted flush; the end of ouverism / workerism after the miners’ strike; East London IS (International Socialists), stewards and activists; York University; the social basis of Libertarian Communism in the postwar militancy; Mark Fisher vs the last generation to get a whiff of workers organisation; anarchists against the miners; state capitalism and Polish builders; Solidarnosc; Leninism vs the counterculture; Castoriadis (Socialisme ou Barbarie), Mike Kidron, Nigel Harris and Alasdair Macintyre (Socialist Review Group and International Socialists), Italian Autonomism breaking out of the ideology of Trotskyism; social justice in sectarian Ireland, segregated US, the Vietnam war; the Communist Historians Group and the utopianism of the countercultural left; Trotskyist disappointment after 1989 and the Colour Revolutions; How the SWP decided to become Trotskyist; conspiratorial, underground Marxism vs. Marxist (and post-Marxist!) rethinking; ‘Shock Doctrine’ Marxism, ‘No Logo’ and the rise of ‘anti-imperialist’ campism; defending the center / in defense of liberal modernity.

Revolutionary Left's Rise 1945-1985 Overview

John and Andy discuss the rise of the revolutionary left from 1945 to 1985. They start by examining the situation at the end of World War II, including the positions of Social Democrats and the Communist Party. They cover the emergence of the New Left from its post-war origins through significant developments in the 1960s. The discussion will provide context on key groups and figures, touching on the influence of the Russian Revolution. They explain how leftist movements expanded beyond a small niche during this 40-year period.

Russian Revolution's Impact on Leftist Groups

The discussion focuses on the historical context and impact of the Russian Revolution, particularly its influence on the revolutionary left in the post-World War II era. John explains the appeal of Bolshevism and its role in shaping the political landscape of Europe, emphasizing how it became a powerful myth that attracted various political forces. Andy adds that this ‘structure of feeling’ around the Russian Revolution is crucial for understanding the collective career of the revolutionary left in the post-war years, as it became a central point of reference for different leftist groups, including Trotskyists and the Communist Party, even when they disagreed with each other.

Trotsky's Post-War Predictions and Their Impact

John and Andy discuss the aftermath of World War II and its impact on various political movements. They focus on how Trotsky's predictions about post-war events were largely incorrect, leading to a crisis among Trotskyists. The Labour Party in Britain implemented significant social reforms, which was unexpected and challenging for far-left groups to explain. The Communist Party, despite some growth, suffered ideological setbacks, while mainstream reformist forces gained strength. The discussion highlights the difficulties faced by Trotskyists in adapting their theories to the new realities of the post-war world, including the expansion of the Soviet Empire and the absence of a capitalist crisis or revolutionary wave.

1950s Leftist Thought and 1956

John and Andy discuss the development of leftist thought in the 1950s, highlighting three key factors: new forms of worker struggle, the impact of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and anti-colonial movements. They emphasize the significance of 1956 as a turning point for the revolutionary left, particularly in how it led to a reevaluation of Trotskyist perspectives on the Soviet Union. Andy introduces Tony Cliff's State Capitalist analysis of Russia as a fundamental break from Trotskyism, leading to new ways of understanding international relations. John adds context about the intellectual climate of the time, discussing the concept of ‘anti-anti-communism’ and how certain leftist positions, such as neutrality in the Korean War, were considered extremely controversial.

Post-War Britain's Working-Class Militancy

The discussion covers the social and economic changes in post-war Britain, focusing on the rise of working-class militancy and confidence from the 1950s to the 1970s. John and Andy highlight the impact of consumer society, technological advancements, and cultural shifts on working-class consciousness and activism. They note the paradoxical effect of these changes, which both diluted and strengthened working-class identity. The conversation then moves to the decline of this militancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in the miners' strike of 1984-85. They describe this strike as a turning point and the last major struggle of the traditional workers' movement, marking the end of an era in British labor history.

Far Left in Britain's Evolution

The discussion covers the history and evolution of the far left in Britain from the 1950s through the 1980s. John provides a generational overview, highlighting key periods like the 1950s rebuilding of socialist traditions, the rise of CND in the early 1960s, the impact of 1968 and student movements, the workplace focus of the 1970s, and the miners' strike of the 1980s. He emphasizes how each period shaped leftist thought and activism, noting both achievements and challenges. The conversation touches on the transformative impact of events like the miners' strike on participants and the broader left, as well as the eventual decline and loss that followed. John and Andy reflect on the complexities of analyzing this history and the difficulties in reconciling past beliefs with current understanding.

–––––

… the first and, up to now, the only total revolution against total bureaucratic capitalism, [a system that in] its purest, most extreme form has been realized in Russia, China, and the other countries presently masquerading as socialist.Cornelius Castoriadis, on the Hungarian uprising, 1956.

Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

“Khrushchev’s secret speech, once it leaked out in the West, had marked the end of a certain Communist faith. But it also allowed for the possibility of post-Stalinist reform and renewal...

But the desperate street fighting in Budapest dispelled any illusions about this new, ‘reformed’ Soviet model. Once again, Communist authority had been unambiguously revealed to rest on nothing more than the barrel of a tank. The rest was dialectics.

Western Communist parties started to haemorrhage… In Italy, as in France, Britain and elsewhere, it was younger, educated Party members who left in droves. Like non-Communist intellectuals of the Left, they had been attracted both to the promise of post-Stalin reforms in the USSR and to the Hungarian revolution itself...

For forty years the Western Left had looked to Russia, forgiving and even admiring Bolshevik violence as the price of revolutionary self-confidence and the march of History. Moscow was the flattering mirror of their political illusions. In November 1956, the mirror shattered...

Shorn of the curious magnetism of Stalinist terror, and revealed in Budapest in all its armored mediocrity, Soviet Communism lost its charm for most Western sympathizers and admirers...

The difference in Eastern Europe… was that the disillusioned subjects of a discredited regime could hardly turn their faces to distant lands, or rekindle their revolutionary faith in the glow of far-off peasant revolts. They were perforce obliged to live in and with the Communist regimes whose promises they no longer believed… Their expectations of Communism, briefly renewed with the promise of de-Stalinization, were extinguished; but so were their hopes of Western succour…

For most people living under Communism, the ‘Socialist’ system had lost whatever radical, forward-looking, utopian promise once attached to it, and which had been part of its appeal... It was now just a way of life to be endured. That did not mean it could not last a very long time… in many ways, 1956 represented the defeat and collapse of the revolutionary myth so successfully cultivated by Lenin and his heirs.”

Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945.

The Bloom had Gone

Our generation’s illusions are lived ones.John Game

How the right appropriated what were once left wing causes – ‘no forever wars’ for ‘anti war’, ‘anti-globalism’ for opposition to neo-liberal globalisation and hostility to ‘elites’ for hostility to capitalism – is what led some on the left to believe that even in a period of unprecedented right wing reaction this was still their era. This ignores two things. Firstly, that the terminological shifts matter and have real content. ‘No Forever wars’ ‘globalism’ and ‘the elite’ stand for a conspiratorial worldviews as much as what they claim to stand against. Parochialism, ‘multi-cult’ and hatred of all liberal and progressive values at home and abroad are the real content of this stuff and they are at least as popular with the right’s base as the more left-wing concerns they appear to shadow.

There is much that needs to be re-thought after a few decades where analysis was replaced with a strange doctrine of eternal return where every battle was treated as the occasion for the resurrection of old socialist slogans. A strange form of idealism where idealism was dressed up as materialism in an endless nostalgia for yesteryear’s battles, which eventually replaced the present in our own minds.

Fans of the dialectic might enjoy the irony of a defeat for neo-liberal globalisation being the greatest defeat for the left and progressive values seen since the 1930s, where hope lies with the stock exchange putting some manners on right-wing politicians. But perhaps these dialectical paradoxes point to the completely false perspectives we’ve carried around for more than three decades.

The power of the past hangs like a nightmare on the brain. And this was particularly true of older collectives of intellectuals on the left. The tragedy is that you need collectives and collaboration to work out new forms of politics. Today, there is almost nothing like that that doesn’t simply consist of repetition or self-affirmation.

In some ways, this is the material basis for the revival of campism. All through the noughties as we built opposition to war and Islamophobia, UKIP was growing. The infiltration of the left by reactionary discourse was the blurring of distinctions between right-wing forms of isolationism and left internationalism, which happened because people overestimated their own influence and vastly underestimated the growth of KIPper discourse. This was seen clearly with the increasing difficulties in even being able to mobilise against the EDL effectively. By the next decade Stop the Wars’ talking points on Ukraine to Syria were almost indistinguishable from the right’s weird mix of conspiracy theory and parochialism. This is the real story. George Galloway was only the clearest example of this degeneration.John Game, 2025-04.

Now what is happening around the Greenham Common women is tokenism. You can’t just say they are feminists, or separatists. That is not the real reason for their actions. We have to ask why tokens come to the front. Tokens come to the centre when there are not any real forces to solve the problem… Tokenism is at the centre of the downturn here. The trouble is it does a fantastic amount of damage.Tony Cliff, ‘Building in the Downturn’, speech to SWP National Committee, 1983.

The Collapse of the SWP and Decline of the Far Left

John and Andy discussed the growth of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1980s, the party's response to the miners' strike defeat, and the shift in international perspective from "neither Washington nor Moscow" to a more anti-American stance. They also reflected on the history of the revolutionary left in Britain, the aftermath of 9/11, the formation of the Respect party, and the legacy of the Russian Revolution. Lastly, they discussed the history and internal dynamics of the SWP, the economic and social transformations in India during the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of right-wing populism in India.

The discussion concludes with John and Andy reflecting on their past involvement with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and their current views on Marxism and the legacy of the Russian Revolution. John expresses his belief that the Bolshevik revolution was disastrous for the left, as it severed the connection between communism and democracy. He argues that the repression began almost immediately after the revolution, contrary to common narratives. Both John and Andy acknowledge the need for a more nuanced and critical understanding of socialist history, particularly regarding the Soviet Union and its impact on Eastern Europe. They suggest that the traditional Marxist framework is no longer adequate for addressing contemporary issues like environmentalism.

The End of the MIners’ Strike

SWP's Growth and Political Shifts

John and Andy discuss the growth of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1980s despite the grim political climate. They plan to explore themes like the party's response to the miners' strike defeat, the shift from industrial militancy to a focus on building the party, and the transition in international perspective from ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’ to a more anti-American stance. They aim to analyze how the SWP adapted its strategy and rhetoric during this period of change in left-wing politics. The discussion will cover the party's growth, internal dynamics, and eventual decline, while also touching on broader trends affecting the revolutionary left.

Andy and John discussed the history of the revolutionary left in Britain, focusing on the period after the defeat of the miners' strike in 1985. They highlighted the paradox of the 1980s, where despite the grim situation, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) grew in membership. They attributed this growth to the general political polarization created by Thatcher, the desire for ideological resistance, and the SWP's ability to relate to a highly political situation. They also discussed the shift in the SWP's approach, from defending past positions and the centrality of the working class to addressing political questions and being tribunes of the oppressed. However, they noted that this shift led to a culture of unanimity and voluntarism, which became problematic. They touched on the SWP's involvement in the Respect coalition, which they saw as a manifestation of the organization's problems.

1983-85: Liverpool Council

The Poll Tax

The SWP were late to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, having started by insisting on the need for council workers to take action to defeat the tax, they took a while to join in with the Militant-led campaign on community non-payment.

Stop the War Coalition (StWC)

StWC was established on 21 September 2001 to campaign against the impending war in Afghanistan. It then campaigned against the impending invasion of Iraq.

StWC never clarified the basis of the anti-war movement, which increasingly was explained in conspiratorial terms shared by the far right, with their talk of ‘forever wars’.

Just a Little Respect

In 2004 the SWP decided to gamble everything on an alliance with George Galloway, with whom they formed the Respect Party.

Respect Party and Anti-War Sentiment

The discussion covers the aftermath of 9/11 and the formation of the Respect party in the UK. John explains that Respect was presented as a way to capture anti-war sentiment, particularly among Muslim voters, but in reality was about avoiding allying with more militant anti-war activists. He notes that while some criticized Respect for making too many concessions to Muslims, he is proud they stood up to Islamophobia. John observes that during this period, many on the left had an overly charitable view of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leadership and failed to recognize the rise of UKIP and the far right. The conversation touches on broader shifts in left-wing politics following the fall of the Soviet Union, with anti-Americanism becoming a dominant framework. John argues this led to conspiratorial thinking and a failure to properly analyze events like the Arab Spring.

The Delta Rape Case and the Splits in the SWP

In 2013 it emerged that the SWP Central Committee had buried accusations of rape against their National Secretary, Martin Smith. Huge numbers of members flooded out of the organisation to create the groups, the IS Network and RS21. Neither of these made a significant break with SWP politics: the ISN soon floundered, while RS21 maintains a ghost life not unlike that of its parent organisation..

The Bloom Had Gone

The bloom had gone off radical left politics long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The crisis of Social Democracy was visible from the early 1970s. The developmentalist state of various nationalist socialisms was well in train even by the period of the late African decolonisations of the time. The revolutionary left survived mainly as the radical edge of (distinctly non-revolutionary) battles against the restructuring of capital as the old models began to disintegrate. These battles formed my own politics, so I’m far from condescending concerning them. But it was the fag-end of a series of defeats and disorientations which had their roots a decade earlier. ‘Actually existing socialism’ had been dead as any source of real ideological inspiration to anyone other than its opponents since the tanks rolled into Prague in 1968, abolishing forever any illusions in the possibility of a rejuvenation of the Soviet system as a post-Stalinist ‘socialism with a human face’. In China, any illusions in ‘the Cultural Revolution’ were ditched even by the regime.

The rise of illiberal democracy can be traced back to the period of Bush’s war on terror, one of whose features was politicians manipulating state institutions rather than the other way about. The disorientation of radical politics after a brief mini-boom led to a profound misunderstanding of the causes and the dynamics of these events. This is why the old left language about ‘the deep state’ has become the language of the radical right. It’s a complete misdirection. By ‘deep state’, they mean functioning liberal institutions, which of course are their main target. This is the problem with hanging onto older radical languages, both those that were once true and those which were not.John Game

Nigel Harris: Review of Ian Birchall’s Biography of Tony Cliff: A Marxist For His Time

Tony Cliff: A Marxist For His TimeIan Birchall

Cliff knew, better than anyone, that a revolutionary party without a revolution cannot fail to become a sect, driven first and foremost by faith and the need for self-perpetuation. The cadres cannot keep their consciousness on ice, waiting for the next bus of history to pass by (a dreadful mixed metaphor, worthy of Cliff himself, and rightly subject to a sharp Birchall rap of the knuckles).

What might have saved something was to turn back to the strategy of the 1950s, rewind the clock to the old political club and start to confront what was now revealed as a theoretical vacuum on the left, drawing the lessons of the failure of the upsurge – especially, as it seemed, the radical decline of the working class and the atrophy of its trade union and political institutions, economic globalisation and the redistribution of the world working class from Europe and North America to Asia.

Perhaps that is what Cliff thought he was doing in writing a four-volume biography of Trotsky, but it smacked of iconography more than ‘learning lessons’. Ian cannot avoid a sober comment: “As the 20th century approached its end, the Russian Revolution…remained the solitary success story for revolutionary socialism. That Cliff in his last years had to return to the inspiration of 1917 (rather than, say, examining the nature of the British working class) was a sign of the weakness of the movement”.

Worse than that, even where workers were involved – in Lech Walesa’s Poland or Lula’s Brazil – workers merely reinforced reformism. It might seem that it was only the voluntarism of the intelligentsia that made a revolution ‘proletarian’; was Marx himself coming apart?

But retreat was impossible (for example, ending the pretence of any longer being a party). It might have destroyed what was left, demoralising the members. They had been groomed for history and would not settle for mere faith. On the contrary, Cliff seemed not to embrace the emerging world but to retreat to the verities of his teenage years, symbolised in his preposterous description of the times as “the 1930s in slow motion”.

All Cliff’s savage mockery of the Fourth International’s efforts to pretend continuous slump and mass unemployment persisted through the boom of the 1950s (because Trotsky said this was the nature of the times in 1938) seemed to have faded. It was worse than that – as massive slump and dereliction supposedly racked the system, China and East Asia soared ahead with rates of annual growth of more than 10 percent per year – and an unprecedentedly resulting massive reduction in world poverty. India was not far behind.

If this was a capitalism in terminal decline, it might seem to the millions marvellous beyond words. Cliff could not avoid some of these issues even if he seemed theoretically on 1938 autopilot. Ian cites a Cliff riposte that shows he was aware of some of the problems of the new world: “the growing integration of the world economy meant that not only was it impossible to have socialism in one country, it is stupid to speak even about capitalism in one country.”

He was scornfully dismissive of those who talked of the decline of the old working class, saying triumphantly that the Korean working class was now bigger than the whole working class in Marx’s time, but with nimble sophistry avoiding the question of what should be the role of a Marxist in this little corner of the globe when the world working class had decamped to east Asia. And if there was to be no repetition of 1917, what was now to be the strategy to achieve collective universal self-liberation?

A continual contemplation of the heroic victories of the past strongly suggested there was no future: these were not lessons of history but epitaphs. In such circumstances, could Marxism avoid becoming a religious cult, false consciousness itself, faith defying all the evidence, will defying intellect? Had Cliff become a tragic prisoner of his own creation? That marvellous facility to reinvent himself – so vividly displayed during the years of upsurge – failed.

He was captive to his combat group, requiring continuous campaigns (some of them were excellent initiatives) to perpetuate its mere survival. There was no time to return to the tasks he did so well in the 1950s in reconstructing theory, much less gather around himself the thinkers required to contribute to this process as was briefly attempted with Mike Kidron in the early 1960s in the creation of the International Socialists. He had become a vested interest with its own dynamic.

Theory had become mantra, to be repeated in unison, not applied. Of course, it is quite unfair to reproach Cliff, after such a life, for not undertaking in his declining years such an immense task, the reconstruction of a critique of contemporary global capitalism, and defining the realistic means to overcome it. But he had built a structure and selected a cadre, defined an agenda and a culture which meant they too could not undertake these tasks.

Instead the criterion of success became survival (with some spectacular successes – the Anti Nazi League, the Stop the War movement, etc), self-perpetuation, and compared to the miserably low standard of other tiny revolutionary groups (a measure Cliff would have indignantly rejected in his heyday – it was not the task of a revolutionary just to survive). Meanwhile, the older cadre slipped away quietly – into having children, pursuing careers, golf or opera.Nigel Harris, review of Ian Birchall, Tony Cliff: A Marxist For His Time.

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