Theorisr

是故勝兵先勝而後求戰 敗兵先戰而後求勝

Always ensure you know exactly what it is you are defending and how to defend it before you saunter on out into the political wild west and start gun slinging. More importantly than this, know what your opponent is trying to defend and make sure you know how to rip it to shreds and how to make the person defending it look stupid in front of all their little girlfriends.

It is not good enough that someone should win, victory is all the sweeter when someone loses.

Libertarianism is the half-baked political ideology of class warriors. It is the class politics of the rich in their class war against workers and the poor. This is the most important detail of the definition of libertarianism. It is not a single political philosophy, but an ad hoc answer to the questions posed by Marxism and the various socialist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. That would explain why the little shit deliberately confuses socialism and communism. He imagines - or wants you to image - communism as a bad thing, and so confusing it with socialism mere advances his agenda.

Libertarianism establishes itself on the notions of maximum freedom of the market and minimum interference from government. This, they say, makes all competition fair. This is a lie. It means that the poor begin poor and the rich begin rich - ensuring that the rich will always have a head start in the economy. Libertarianism is about justifying the injustice of wealth inequality and using political and social structures to inflict overwhelming damage on working class people.

The following video will help explain the point:

Socialism - on the other hand - is the class politics of those who do not have wealth and power, the majority. It is the idea of mutual help and combined effort to gain the most benefit for the most people. Communism is a state form of socialism where everything is owned in common (the ‘commune’ of the -ism) by the state in the name of the people. Stalinism in the USSR was of course the epitome of state totalitarianism, but we must remember that this was not the communism Marx preached. I do not accept that communism is inherently bad. Done well it certainly offers more to you and I than selfish libertarianism.

With Brexit, following the recent possibility of a Greek exit and various uncertainties across southern Europe, the pillars of the European Union look to be shaking. Mass migrations of refugees and various other migrants from Africa and the Middle East are heightening social and political tensions within the EU, leading to a sharp rise in racist sentiments.

In Russia we are seeing similar pressures having markedly different results. There President Putin is shoring up his power base, boosting exteme nationalist feeling. Violence against out groups including non Russian racial and ethnic minorities and homosexuals has skyrocketed. Around Putin himself a cult of personality has developed, with many seeing him as a quasi-divine saviour of Russia.

Donald Trump’s election in the United States has deeply divided the country and sparked an upsurge in racial tensions and violence. The “alt-right” - whatever that is - largely sees in him a license to act out. He has gathered to himself in the White House his own clan of close family and tycoon business associates - not to mention his reliance on generals. Since coming to the office of POTUS he has antagonised North Korea to the point of an open nuclear standoff between the two countries.

Leaving aside events in the rest of Africa, South America, and Asia - admittedly a very occidental overview - this is a limited synopsis of how things stand geopolitically at present. What we now must ask ourselves is how this all came about.

The economy, I believe, is the root of the problem. Or, more previously, the boom-bust economic cycle brought about by neoliberal capitalism is at the heart of what is happening. Of course we can reach back further - into the foundations of the western economic system, that this would be the work of a far greater investigation.

In the case of Common Space, a new/alternative media outfit broadly aligned with the Scottish independence movement, there are signs that it has become an agent on influence for the British state. Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the unionist Scottish Labour Party, accused Stuart Campbell of the pro-independence Wings Over Scotland blog of homophobia over a tweet in which he said:

Oliver Mundell is the sort of public speaker that makes you wish his dad had embraced his homosexuality sooner.

On the surface, while mentioning the fact that Scottish Conservative and Unionist MSP Oliver Mundell’s father - David Mundell, the Secretary of State for Scotland - came out as a homosexual, this is a comment suggesting it would have been better had Oliver Mundell never been born. Other pro-independence blogs including Wee Ginger Dug and Random Public Journal have roundly rejected the accusation that this was a homophobic sentiment, yet Common Space - in the face of widespread criticism within the movement - went ahead and published an opinion piece by Jordan Daly urging people in the movement to “back Kezia Dugdale and send Wings Over Scotland packing.”

The result of this was days of infighting across the movement with Common Space taking serious flack from thousands of independence supporters on social media. Common Space is closely aligned with the National, Scotland’s only openly pro-independence newspaper, which is a subsidiary of the Herald, a overtly unionist London-owned daily.

Education

Through the 1980s and 90s I grew up in a housing estate in the south west of Scotland where I was very much shaped by the work ethic of an industrial working class family and the left-leaning politics of trade unionism. At the young age of 16 I entered junior seminary with the hope of going on to study for the Catholic priesthood. On finishing school at 18 I was sent off to a Pontifical university in Europe to read philosophy and theology. It did not work out and so I returned to a community to which I had become a stranger.

This is a world in which names and reputations still mean a great deal.

In my early 20s I made the decision to leave home for Dublin at the time of Ireland’s economic boom. After a few years I returned to education, entering Ireland’s top university on the back of my perceived academic pedigree. This is a world in which names and reputations still mean a great deal. There I graduated with an bachelors degree and went on to complete a masters in conflict studies in the school of Sociology.

On paper I had become indistinguishable from the Irish middle class graduate. Few people from working class backgrounds in Ireland are afforded the opportunity - dues to various problematic social factors - to study at the country’s premier academic institutions. Those who do are always recognised by their working class voices, fashions, and attitudes and so - given the class prejudice still so alive in this country - are never fully welcomed into the bosom of the society of the privileged. After graduation they do not have the same network of contacts - not typically, but there are exceptions - and so lack the same avenues into what might best be described as elite professional employment.

Society

As a foreigner my accent - simply a Scottish accent to the Irish listener - did not betray my class origins, and as a near foreigner - English speaking and white - I was more easily welcomed into the company of middle class people who merely assumed my sameness with them. Before I had matured enough to reflect on the significance of any of this I was being taken for a member of a class I neither understood nor felt at ease within.

As a foreigner my accent did not betray my class origins, and as a near foreigner - English speaking and white - I was more easily welcomed into the company of middle class people who merely assumed my sameness with them.

So complete was this cloak that when I went to volunteer in an adult education initiative run by the Jesuits in a disadvantaged working class part of the city I was subjected to a lecture by the director on how poorer people did not always appreciate the presence of privileged little rich kids - like me - coming into their community and lording their fancy book learning over them.

Scotland

The use of lies to hold uncooperative segments of the state together is by no means limited to the United Kingdom, but given its current set of constitutional crises it serves as a good example. It is now obvious that the direction of travel in Scotland is towards separation from the UK, and in 2014 it was clear that the British state was on the back foot regards keeping Scotland in the 300 year old Union. When force was not a viable option the UK resorted to lying.

In the beginning these lies took the form of a series of threats relating to the future of Scotland had the electorate opted for independence. With absolute dominance over the media - the BBC and other establishment media outlets - the suggestion was made that Scotland was economically too small to survive as a state separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. Scotland was told that its North Sea oil and gas was running out, and that the price of oil on the international market was too volatile to be depended upon.

With absolute dominance over the media - the BBC and other establishment media outlets - the suggestion was made that Scotland was economically too small to survive as a state separate from the rest of the United Kingdom.

Scots were told they would not be allowed to use the British pound after independence, that inflation would drive up the cost of living, borrowing, and house prices. They were told that their UK pensions could not be guaranteed, that it would not have automatic membership of the European Union, and that continued access to the EU single market depended on remaining part of the UK. In Scotland this phase of the state’s strategy came to be known as “Project Fear,” a tactic that was later used unsuccessfully during the June 2016 EU referendum and against Sanders and Trump in the United States.

Threats inevitably catalyse a backlash and so at some point in the process the nature of the lies changes from threats to promises. Scotland was promised “Super Devo Max,” what was described as Home Rule. It was promised federalism, and extensive new powers for the devolved Edinburgh parliament. On 18 September 2014 the people of Scotland voted to remain within the United Kingdom and the threats and promises all soon transpired to be cynical and deeply manipulative lies.

Threats inevitably catalyse a backlash and so at some point in the process the nature of the lies changes from threats to promises.

The Orange Order is well known for its anti-Catholic sectarianism, going so far as to constitutionally ban its members from attending Catholic church services - including the weddings and funerals of friends in a regulation which states: “You should not countenance by your presence or otherwise any act or ceremony of Popish worship.” This ruling has been challenged in the past by high ranking members of the Order.  The Assistant Grand Master, the Reverend Mervyn Gibson, has said this rule “harked back to a different era,” and he is right. The rules and position of the Loyalist Orange Order towards Roman Catholicism are rooted in the earliest origins of the society.

Change may be in the air, but the fact remains that the Order is, and by its own regulations, an anti-Catholic sectarian institution. Yet while this is the official institution there has developed around it a culture which has and continues to inform an entire community. Good and sincere people enter the Order out of a sense of tradition and social belonging. It would be wrong entirely to suggest that only dyed in the wool bigots become members of the Orange institutions. Here the danger is that member ship of an openly sectarian organisation can shape the attitudes and behaviours of its members, and - having said this - its members can change the institution.

The delusion in this is that it is wrong to assume that anything is is good or wholesome by virtue of being a tradition or a culture. Some traditions and cultures are harmful and destructive. Orangeism is one of them. Aside from the anti-Catholicism the Orange Order makes certain ideological and political demands on its members which also hark back to a different era. It insists, for example, on a certain settlement of the British monarchy. While this too is sectarian in nature it stems from an time when monarchism was the norm. It no longer is, and thus the Order becomes a force not only resistant to change but to natural political development.

It uphold a political idea - the idea of Great Britain - to the point of its apotheosis, when in reality nation states themselves are subject to chance and decay. Orangeism therefore finds itself unable to defend itself and its own community against the changing winds of Britain. It would rather suffer harm at the hands of Westminster than defend itself if that defence meant undermining the idea of the union of the United Kingdom. In this regard “Loyalism” finds itself loyal to an idea and a set of institutions that are very different from those it declared its loyalty to in 1795. Here we can see the delusion.

At its core Capitalism is an economic philosophy of greed. It insists that a person has a right to accumulate wealth and so accrue privilege and status even when this leads to the suffering and death of others whose just share of the world’s wealth has been taken from them by the workings of the system. This effective robbery of the poor and powerless happens as much on the individual level of society as it does at the community and national levels.

The overwhelming majority of people all around the world are victims of this system, with only a minuscule fraction - no more than a single percentile - being the winners. Wealth accumulated by capitalism’s winners translates to power and access, in all forms of government, to the halls of power. In turn this creates a power deficit in which the poor and all the system’s victims have no power while all the power to defend and perpetuate the ststem is kept in the hands of the few.

Violence then is, at times, a legitimate form of anti-state and anti-capitalist resistance, and in fact this right to violent resistance is enshrined in international law. Regardless of the law, bearing in mind that the law is itself an instrument of the power of the state, the use of violence is not always a bad thing. What we have to consider then is the question not of violence’s legitimacy but of its usefulness in context. When protesters employ violent tactics against the police the police will respond with violence, and the question then is which side has the most resources and the better training.

Before we can entertain any condemnation of violent anti-state or anti-capitalist demonstrations we must first recognise that both the state and capitalism are inherently violent.

In almost every context the state will be better prepared and more powerful than the protesters, ensuring that the outcome of any clash is a foregone conclusion. Ultimately the police will always win, and when they are in danger of losing the state has the power to escalate the counter-revolutionary violence by calling in the army. Such a situation becomes infinitely more dangerous for those engaged in the struggle against the state.

There are, however, a number of scenarios where the use of violence will benefit the protest and damage the state. Here the most obvious is state failure, where the state itself - for whatever reason - is so damaged or weak so as to make effective defence impossible. This is rare, but is the most opportune moment for the revolutionary or protest movement to use violence. Another is strategically targeted violence in which well organised flash attacks are directed towards well defined objectives, striking and dispersing before the state can mount a response. Lastly there is desperation. This is the least desirable for any movement. It is when the protest, under violent and existential attack, has no option but to strike back.

What is clear is that violence cannot be used in every situation. Responding to the violence of the state and capitalism is necessary, but frequent and disorganised violence benefits no one. This is a question of picking our battles, and we can only afford to take on those battles we know we can win.

This was a method of protest that began in West German squatter movement in the late 1970s and developed through the 80s, but which has now become a common and recognisable feature in ant-capitalist demonstrations worldwide. While black bloc protests are known for their more militant and violent tactics, this is not the primary function of black bloc as a tactic.

Anonymity is the priority of the tactic, making it more difficult for police and other civil and state authorities to isolate and identify individuals within the protest. In an age of ubiquitous surveillance this strategy has proven to be effective in protecting people from arrest and police harassment. The idea is quite simple. Everyone wishing to be part of the black bloc, rather than sign up to an organisation or a set of shared values, dresses all in black and uses a face mask to protect his or her identity from the police.

Violence has been widespread and often intense, but has not been the tactic of the majority of those protesting. More, as the German Chancellor has said, have come to protest peacefully, but an “extreme” element of the left has become violent and has caused the police considerable heartache since the demonstrations began.