Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Idris2002]

She's hardly an example of a good class based strategist. Regardless of No Logo being quite a good book.

Weren't her parents in the CP of Canada?

 

[Firky]

Fucking hell.

The whole v mask thing is proper shit.[/quote]

The Jarrow March this year is mostly composed of posh kids in V masks. They're calling it the Anonymous Jarrow Crusade too

 

[DotCommunist]

The whole v mask thing is proper shit.

The Jarrow March this year is mostly composed of posh kids in V masks. They're calling it the Anonymous Jarrow Crusade too [/quote]

hope it goes better than the Childrens Crusade

 

[Delroy Booth]

How come the US Left(which is tiny) in its widest sense(eg occupy) but particularly the academics are beginning to influence left politics in this county and not just theory, its going to have an impact on new formations like LU.

This is a really interesting question. US cultural imperialism? I mean I started out reading Noam Chomsky before getting any sort of detailed knowledge of the british working class tradition, I think it's probably the same for a lot of people my age. It reflects how detached a lot of people involved in left politics are from that w/c tradition in their own country, how it's something far more alien to them than the radical american intelligensia.

Just generally I think the US far-left is the last place we need to be looking for guidance. Seriously.

 

[butchersapron]

How come the US Left(which is tiny) in its widest sense(eg occupy) but particularly the academics are beginning to influence left politics in this county and not just theory, its going to have an impact on new formations like LU.

Which left politics? What about class politics? Or to put it another way, the mass of working class people.

 

[treelover]

Cos the remnants of the UK Left are adrift. Bereft of ideas and direction as all their old sureties have disintegrated.

This turn to identity is reassuring and familiar and provides plenty of introversion to substitute for real life.

if you read some of the ideas people are posting on LU blogs, they do have imagination, etc, it is the (being ageist) the old lefties Burgin, etc who seem to be still in a bit of a time vortex.

but kudos to him for letting a thousands flowers bloom, anyone can say they are the organiser for a particular area..

 

[treelover]

She's hardly an example of a good class based strategist. Regardless of No Logo being quite a good book.

I meant she was part of that milieu in college days

 

[articul8]

She's hardly an example of a good class based strategist. Regardless of No Logo being quite a good book.

Her book Shock Doctrine was a more useful intervention than the kind of thing Jodi Dean tends to say

 

[butchersapron]

Cos the remnants of the UK Left are adrift. Bereft of ideas and direction as all their old sureties have disintegrated.

This turn to identity is reassuring and familiar and provides plenty of introversion to substitute for real life.

...but this time there is not going to be any jobs for its practioners post town hall and general election victories. What is the state and capital going to put in place to atomise communities and wider society now that the funding for top-down official multi-culturalism has dried up. The ideological construction of 'respectable culture' that i'm always on about is well in the lead at the minute - far ahead of all this "daycare for bourgeois adult babies" stuff damaging as the latter is in helping build a viable response to the former.

 

[Pickman's model]

The Jarrow March this year is mostly composed of posh kids in V masks. They're calling it the Anonymous Jarrow Crusade too

hope there's no pogroms in the rhineland this time round.

 

[killer b]

hope it goes better than the Childrens Crusade

dunno, the idea of a load of v-masked bellends being sold into slavery has a certain attraction to it...

 

[butchersapron]

Her book Shock Doctrine was a more useful intervention than the kind of thing Jodi Dean tends to say

Great, now what? Can we find someone better than both? Worse then both? What? Why?

 

[phildwyer]

really? She seems remarkably unlucky as far as these bag/phone/iPad stealing incidents go

It's pretty difficult to get robbed in NYC these days, unless one is up to no good.

 

[articul8]

Great, now what? Can we find someone better than both? Worse then both? What? Why?

I'm just saying that Klein is a fairly effective popularising analyst/critic of neoliberalism. Her contribution is useful, so far as it goes.

 

[articul8]

It's pretty difficult to get robbed in NYC these days, unless one is up to no good.

I know about Hackney and Harlesden but no idea about Harlem

 

[butchersapron]

Insurance fraud. Pretty clear pattern.

 

[DotCommunist]

claiming the insurance and crowdsourcing money for a replacement? is there no end to the evil

 

[phildwyer]

I know about Hackney and Harlesden but no idea about Harlem

Put it this way, one could walk safely alone down 125th St at 2am, but one might not get away with 116th.

 

[rekil]

occams says no. Yes it would make a few quid as a minor bit of con. Laura is on a fat cheque from the statesman. Why would she need to?

What sort of response do you think she thought she'd get by posting something like that up?

 

[J Ed]

this latest one was particularly shit as it wasn't even a fire. The building fucking fell down of its own accord. To make people work in those conditions is criminal.

Their fault for being in that situation in the first place, don't they know how to monetize their hotness? They must be ugly and lazy.

 

[rekil]

Elsewhere, it looks like Camila Vallejo has hijacked PD's Veg Wedge movement. I wonder does she charge a fiver per pic like molly does.

 

[Libertad]

Elsewhere, it looks like Camila Vallejo has hijacked PD's Veg Wedge movement. I wonder does she charge a fiver per pic like molly does.

View attachment 31848

See those chillies? That's monetizing your hotness.

 

[treelover]

Isn't she just doing what an electoral candidate always does, hover around markets, kiss babies, etc?

 

[Idris2002]

Just generally I think the US far-left is the last place we need to be looking for guidance. Seriously.

Most other countries have a left or even a far left that has something to show for their efforts over the years. What have the US far left got to show?

 

[frogwoman]

a widespread knowledge of the meat-packing industry

 

[Idris2002]

a widespread knowledge of the meat-packing industry

It's easy to mock.

a widespread knowledge of the meat-packing industry

And I'll do the jokes, btw.

 

[treelover]

a widespread knowledge of the meat-packing industry

in the past a heck of a lot more, wobblies, etc, now....

 

[agricola]

Elsewhere, it looks like Camila Vallejo has hijacked PD's Veg Wedge movement. I wonder does she charge a fiver per pic like molly does.

View attachment 31848

Is that the Occupy gesture for "Chillies, four for a pound"?

 

[el-ahrairah]

going back to occupy for a minute... i don't regret my short involvement in them at all as it was very educational, and perhaps a few of the kids learnt from me in the way that i learnt from some of the older, more experienced, more politically knowledgeable activists when i was a fey youth *apologies for ego*. but it was clearly a failure, for some very important reasons.

1. no decent politics. it was all things to all people and thus nothing to anyone.
2. too many egos, not enough people cleaning up.
3. a tolerance for stupid views - conspiracy loons etc.
4. not as good at self-policing as it thought it was.
5. whilst laden with an attempt to be inclusive still managed to alienate all the people usually alienated by white middle class movements.
6. paranoid as fuck.
7. which comes from 1-6 -> no clear direction, thus reactionary, thus fizzled out.


some good ideas i saw:

1. working groups -> a useful way of getting things done without the GA nonsense.
2. outreach groups -> building links with local communities to see what they wanted from Occupy, what Occupy could do for them. (but seen as unglamourous, therefore ignored by most occupiers, and media, and essentially couldn't survive once the camps went totally lord of the flies).
3. initially well-organised, able to feed and shelter people well in early days, until those people with organisational skills got fucked off with the whole thing and left.

none of these things are exclusive to occupy.

still, it was an interesting experiment and should provide some lessons for the next big idea!

 

[Red Cat]

I think one of the problems is that big ideas don't work. It's the gap between what is actually do-able and the fantasy of the big idea that gets filled with such things as checking one's privilege.