I've included below two chapters of a book I am writing, entitled
"Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist revolution
will never happen?" I will hopefully soon put it on the website
www.revolutiondestroyed.net, but I am currently having problems
transferring files to my websites (due to my phone line not working and
not being able to find an internet cafe or library where I can do it).
If you want to be informed when I publish more of the book or discuss
issues I have raised, I suggest you go to the discussion group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolution-destroyed
(which you can
access via email or on the web) or access one of my blogs (see the
signature of this message).
Chapter 1
Introduction
We are living at a crucial time in world history. The capitalist
economic system under which virtually all of us live is failing to
solve the world's problems, such as poverty, unemployment,
homelessness, discrimination, famines, deaths from preventable
diseases, terrorism, war and environmental destruction. Some of these
problems, specifically nuclear war and global warming, could
potentially spell the end for the human race.
It is nearly 90 years since the working class first seized power in any
country - the Russian Revolution in October 1917. Marxism, the
theoretical basis for that revolution, was discredited by the Stalinist
dictator****ps that arose in the USSR and elsewhere, and seems to have
been thoroughly defeated after the collapse of most of those
dictator****ps. Trotskyist organisations, which claim to be the real
inheritors of that revolution's legacy and Marxism generally while
rejecting Stalinism, seem as weak, ineffectual and far from power as
ever.
However, there has been a recent spate of election victories for the
left in Latin America, with the coming to power of people like Hugo
Ch=E1vez in Venezuela, Luiz da Silva (Lula) in Brazil, Evo Morales in
Bolivia, Michelle Bachelet in Chile and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. The
record of these leaders in power has been variable, with Lula (probably
fairly) accused by many of selling out but remaining popular amongst
many other working class people. Capitalism has not been abolished in
any of these countries, but there have been big reforms in favour of
the poor in Venezuela and Bolivia in particular.
I have been active in left-wing politics since the anti-poll tax
movement was launched in Manchester in 1989, and a member of the
Trotskyist organisation that led that movement from 1990-98 - the
Militant Tendency, renamed in that time to Militant Labour and then the
Socialist Party. From 1998 onwards, I have been developing alternative
highly conspiratorial views of how the world works and how to change
it, which I considered to be extensions to Marxist theory,
incor****ating elements of anarchism, for most of that time. However, my
current views differ so much from Marxism that I think it is now more
accurate to no longer consider myself a Marxist.
But have I really been and am I still a revolutionary socialist? I have
certainly considered myself to be one. Indeed, I have often felt that I
am the last serious hope for a world socialist revolution to take
place! This book is in part a justification of this argument, explored
particularly in chapter 3 and describing the role that I have played so
far attempting to bring such a revolution about in later chapters. If
anybody else was capable of leading a revolution on a world scale, then
surely I would have come across that person by now both on the internet
and in real life. Due to the increasing powers of the state, including
one closed circuit television (CCTV) camera for every 14 people in the
UK and New Labour's ID cards proposal, it simply would not be
possible for somebody new to come to the fore in ten or twenty years
time and lead a revolution then.
However, I came up with an outlandish hypothesis in a Bristol police
station cell in the autumn of 2005 - that I had fouled things up in
various ways (a particular habit in recent years, some examples of
which will be described in this book) due to subconsciously not really
being in favour of a socialist revolution. Has my subconscious only
really been in favour of gradual reforms to capitalism and therefore
sabotaged some of the attempts by my conscious mind to encourage a
revolution to take place? Or has my subconscious carried out such acts
of sabotage from time to time merely to pretend to people on the side
of big business that I am really on their side so that they cooperate
with me to a greater extent than would otherwise be the case? Or,
thirdly, have I been manipulated by more powerful conspiratorial forces
into acting against my true wishes?
Answering those questions is the main topic of this book. In short, all
three of those hypotheses are true to a certain extent.
I am a different sort of revolutionary socialist than most other active
revolutionaries due to my rejection of many elements of Marxism,
particularly its advocacy of hierarchies of committees based on
workplaces (called 'soviets' in the USSR, which stood for the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics) as the dominant form of government. It
has therefore been necessary for me to betray Marxist conspirators at
times, putting forward alternative theories and proposals; this book is
intended as a sort of post-Marxist socialist manifesto that could
reorientate existing revolutionary socialists around more democratic
and practical positions as well as educating a new layer of activists
who do not already consider themselves revolutionaries.
However, there is a certain element of subterfuge in my behaviour. As
I'll explain in chapters 2 and YYY, other overwhelmingly genuine
revolutionary socialists including Karl Marx and Tommy Sheridan have
gone to fairly extreme lengths to pretend that they were or still are
on the side of big business. For Marx, I believe that this was
necessary for him to avoid assassination, whereas for Sheridan ,
getting the big business-controlled mass media to re****t his and his
organisations' activities was more of a factor. My life is not in
danger either; my role is to choose the future form of society for the
human race (and animals) on this planet and collaborate with other
like-minded people to ensure that it comes about. Conspirators on the
side of big business are desperately trying to influence me so that I
choose a form of society that maintains their wealth and/or power, or
that I inadvertently allow world capitalism to continue by making
mistakes.
I originally intended to title this book Revolution Destroyed: How I
ensured that a world socialist revolution will never happen! At first,
for a fairly brief period of time, I actually believed this - that
reforms under capitalism were the best that working class people could
look forward to. Despite my usual reluctance to tell lies, I thought
that that could still be a good title despite getting more and more
sceptical of the argument, because people reading the book would become
radicalised by the experience with some becoming inspired to take up
revolutionary socialist politics. However, maintaining such a deception
even fairly consistently, on the internet and in discussions with
people in real life, would have been well nigh impossible. Furthermore,
it would have had a negative effect on people reading only part of the
book and not sufficiently browsing my websites, and even if socialism
was achieved in this manner that would not be good for the history of
the world. Fortunately, I had the brainwave on the 1st of December 2006
of rephrasing the title as a question, which as well as allowing me to
be honest would probably encourage more people to read the book in
order to find out the answer to the question as well as its
justification - both amongst those who, before reading it, wanted a
revolution to occur and those who didn't.
Although often I think about im****tant decisions with my conscious mind
before making them, that is not always feasible or desirable. It is
sometimes im****tant to act on the spur of the moment in order to be
effective. In those cir***stances, I have often thought that I was
trusting my subconscious to ensure that I wasn't making serious
mistakes. But were such decisions well worked out by my subconscious or
was I being manipulated as a result of interactions by other people
and/or conspiratorial organisations?
I strongly believe that my subconscious mind contains a fairly
sophisticated model of the world and has powerful reasoning capacities
making it often capable of steering my conscious thoughts in positive
directions. However, it is im****tant to recognise that there are limits
to my mind's capacity (in terms of the number of brain cells),
ability to locate information (because much knowledge is hidden deep in
my mind and cannot always be found when it is needed) and speed.
Additionally, there are a huge number of facts about the world that I
have no way of knowing, as well as some false information that I
thought was true when I added it to my memory (but may never have been
true or may now be out-of-date). Obviously, correct decisions cannot
always be made in the presence of incomplete or false information.
Therefore, I have to rely on others, both individuals and those
involved in organisations (some more conspiratorial than others), to
guide me. I have found that it is not just people, or even just living
creatures, that can help in this way, but I am able to cooperate with
technology. Conspirators write computer programs, some involving
artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as natural language
recognition (to understand human text and speech), in order to help
them achieve their aims. Errors with CD players, such as tracks
refusing to play, jamming or with pauses in them when they are played,
generally indicate that the song is in some sense dodgy, in terms of
the messages that it gives off (usually due to lyrics that aid big
business, sometimes deliberate propaganda but probably more often due
to the songwriters failing to have sufficient grasp of the issues that
they are commenting on). When this happens, I can usually work out what
is wrong with the song. It is a more reliable guide for CDs that only I
have played; scratches and smudges on CDs (which most people think are
always responsible for tracks misplaying) are sometimes factors, but
they may have arisen due to flaws being detected in tracks when I
previously played them. Occasionally there has been a lot of
interference on telephone lines at im****tant times or I have been
disconnected, sometimes helpfully and sometimes as a hindrance. I have
often found when errors have occurred as I have been trying to do
something on the internet, that they have been beneficial (for example
stopping me from uploading a web page that I have subsequently realised
contains serious errors to one of my websites) - this has proved very
useful since I would be very hesitant in my use of the internet if I
was continually worried about making a mistake.
Of course, sometimes conspiratorial software hinders rather than helps
me, because some computer programmers are on the side of big business.
On some occasions, I have attempted to do something that would have
caused a world socialist revolution to take place very quickly indeed
if it wasn't for internet censor****p. I'll give two examples of
this now.
I have sent many messages to discussion groups (mailing lists that can
optionally be browsed or searched using the web) at Yahoo! Groups
(groups.yahoo.com) over the years, and set up a fair number of my own
groups. I have generally found that facility extremely useful for
publicising and debating my ideas and finding out what other people and
organisations are up to. You can write a description of up to 2,000
characters for each group you create, as well as a short title, and a
search engine at the website enables others to find your groups when
they specify appropriate keywords. I also publicise some of my groups
on emails I send out, messages I send to other forums such as Google
Groups (go to Google and click on "Groups") and on leaflets and
do***ents I produce printed copies of. Two of the groups I set up were
called 'us-electoral-fraud' (about how George W Bush did not really
win the US presidential election in 2000 or 2004, which I believed was
particularly im****tant in 2004 due to Democrat challenger John Kerry
revealing himself as a revolutionary socialist in disguise by pledging
to tax the rich and close all tax loopholes in a live TV debate with
Bush) and 'uk-electoral-fraud' (about how European elections in the
North West of England in 2004 were conducted entirely by post and
ballot papers were sent out before Respect's party political
broadcast, urging voters to return them immediately). I tried to set up
a similar group called 'ukraine-electoral-fraud' entitled
"Victory to the Orange Revolution!" at the time of that revolution,
pointing out in the description that Colin Powell was a hypocrite in
condemning the electoral fraud that occurred in that country due to
Bush's fraudulent election victories (providing links to the
'us-electoral-fraud' and 'uk-electoral-fraud' groups). When I
pressed the button to create the group, there was a big delay that I
reckoned would have gone on indefinitely due to the impact creating the
group would have had (but I couldn't wait for too long due to having
a train to catch). That experience of mine shouldn't put readers of
this book off using Yahoo! Groups, because there is a relatively small
amount of censor****p there.
Much more recently, I created pages at MySpace for my band Galaxia
(myspace.com/galaxiamusic) and myself (myspace.com/galaxiasteve). If
you sign up as an artist, which I did for the band, you can put your
own songs on the page, get one of them to play automatically when
somebody accesses your page, and allow other people to put them on
their own pages or download the MP3 files containing the songs. I
attempted to upload the version of my Galaxia song The Revolution
Starts Now!, as recorded just before the G8 summit in Gleneagles ,
Scotland , in 2005, to the band's MySpace page. [I will describe the
development of that song in chapter YYY.] I also uploaded improved
lyrics, since there were some (relatively minor) political mistakes in
the recording. I made so many im****tant political points in that song,
about world history, conspiracies and what to do to create a better
world, that MySpace software had to censor it! If it hadn't, the song
could have spread around the world like wildfire, with many people
adding it to their own pages, encouraging many more to do likewise, and
so on like a chain letter. The censor****p took many different forms -
two different computers at an internet caf=E9 rebooted themselves when
trying to upload the file, trying to play the song yielded a 'stream
error', a new copy failed to be displayed on the page after uploading
again, the exclamation mark at the end of the song title was sometimes
deleted automatically, the song title was abbreviated to "The
Revolution Star..." despite plenty of space in the window to display
it in full, and a window that could be opened to display the lyrics
would not allow the end of those lyrics to be displayed. I've found
that some of this censor****p is intermittent, and that the area of the
page containing the songs more often than not fails to be displayed,
but sometimes it is displayed and the song does play - I think that
MySpace programmers have implemented censor****p this way so that they
can disclaim responsibility and say that it is an internet connection
problem. Somebody had told me that MySpace has been taken over by Fox,
which is owned by the infamous union-busting boss Rupert Murdoch, so I
wasn't particularly surprised by the censor****p, but my experience
with Yahoo! Groups indicates that censor****p would still be a factor
with a more benign boss. [I've found alternative software on the
internet, which seems to be reliable, and used it to put music on my
MySpace pages; I've provided some advice for others who want to put
my song on their pages, but there is no automatic facility for others
to do that so the song will not propagate across the internet to
anything like the same extent.]
I strongly believe that mind control techniques are utilised to
influence me (and other people), either by technology (perhaps using
genetically modified food or mobile phone masts) or by people. I think
that everybody has such abilities to some extent even if they are not
aware of it, and that it is an extreme case of non-verbal communication
where somebody's subconscious (if not conscious) mind is aware of how
they are trying to influence someone. I was hypnotised by a stage
hypnotist as a student (remembering the whole experience unlike some
other subjects of this art) so I know that hypnotism is not a hoax.
Hypnotists often comment that somebody has got to want to be hypnotised
for it to work, and I think that when my subconscious is influenced by
a form of mind control or interactions of a more orthodox kind, it is
allowing itself to be influenced. After all, some conspiratorial
organisations with more knowledge about the world than myself are
acting for the benefit of ordinary people, and I want to cooperate with
them (so that I help them and they help me).
As you will have already gathered from reading up to this point, I
have a deeply conspiratorial view of the capitalist world in which we
live. I have reached such conclusions partly as a result of observation
- although there is always a non-conspiratorial explanation for each
of my experiences, the sheer weight of cir***stantial evidence means
that the chances of such conspiracies not existing are not just beyond
reasonable doubt but infinitesimal.
I have also reached conspiratorial conclusions by thinking rationally
about what people would do in particular cir***stances. For example,
some socialists would have noticed a long time ago that the secret
services of capitalist states (such as MI5, MI6, the FBI, the CIA and
Mossad) were infiltrating their political parties, not just to gather
information but to try to wreck them from within. Obviously some of
them would have come to the only rational conclusion apart from giving
up trying to achieve socialism - setting up their own conspiratorial
organisations that also infiltrate both left and right wing parties,
and indeed all other im****tant organisations in society including the
secret services themselves. The only rational response of the forces of
big business to this is for them to create even more sophisticated and
secretive conspiratorial organisations infiltrating and recruiting from
the infiltrators on both sides. Capitalism has been established so long
that it is only rational for a massively complex web of infiltrating
organisations to have been set up, operating below the surface of
society, based on such reasoning.
There is a danger of simplifying the situation too much and considering
all capitalist or socialist conspiratorial organisations as on the same
side. I think the main reason why I have been sometimes been guilty of
this has been my previous adoption of a Marxist analysis -
considering two sides of the class struggle (the working class and big
business). Because different people have different ideas of the kind of
world they want and/or how to achieve it, conspiratorial organisations
have undoubtedly been created around many different sets of ideas. The
class struggle is a useful guide - socialists of different varieties
often unite together as do capitalists - but there are other
cir***stances under which groups of socialists oppose each other. I am
in favour of a world in which everybody is in control, via governments
elected by pro****tional representation (PR) using Single Transferable
Vote (STV), rather than just the working class (or the working class
and the peasantry with working class people having more power) as
Marxists typically advocate, dubbed 'the dictator****p of the
proletariat' by Karl Marx with 'dictator****p' meaning 'rule'
and 'proletariat' meaning 'working class'. I have therefore
sometimes found myself acting in opposition to Marxist conspirators,
particularly in recent years.
Marxists generally argue for a form of indirect democracy, based on the
hierarchy of committees that took power in the Russian Revolution of
October 1917 (where they were called 'soviets') - criticised as
being "eminently open to bureaucratisation" by Nick Rogers in a
Weekly Worker article (in the 23rd of November 2006 issue) whereby
"workers elect their local factory committee, which then elects a
district committee, which in turn elects a city-wide committee, all the
way up to a supreme soviet". The arguments presented on this subject
here are based on two follow-up letters I wrote for that newspaper.
A hierarchy of soviets is what the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) says
it stands for in every issue of their paper Socialist Worker: "a
workers' state based upon councils of workers' delegates and a
workers' militia". [Incidentally, proposing a 'workers'
militia' in a country where guns are hated so much after atrocities
such as in Dunblane is a policy hardly likely to win mass sup****t;
instead, it suggests that a minority would have to use force to stop a
majority from overthrowing the 'workers' state'.] It is also what
the Socialist Party means by 'workers' democracy' - a term it
uses fairly often but hardly ever elaborates in its publications.
I agree with Nick Rogers' point that a hierarchy of workers'
committees is very open to bureaucratisation, in both allowing
bureaucrats to rise up such a hierarchy and enabling them to stay in
positions of power once they are there. Those bureaucrats may
constitute a ruling class like in the USSR and Eastern Europe before
the collapse of Stalinism (of whom the worst example was the ruthless
dictator Joseph Stalin himself) or they may be infiltrators from
conspiratorial organisations on the side of big business such as the
majority of the leader****p of the SWP. Incidentally, I disagree with
both the SWP's characterisation of Stalinist states (of which the
only remaining examples are the horrendous North Korean regime and the
relatively popular Cuban one that is acting as a beacon of hope for
other left-wing governments in Latin America) as 'state capitalist'
and the Socialist Party's term 'deformed workers' states' where
a caste within the working class is in power; in my opinion the
'bureaucratic collectivist' analysis of such states whereby the
bureaucracy is a separate class describes them better. The main flaw
with such hierarchies is that it is mainly only people on the same
committees as the bureaucrats who know that they are not genuine and
what they are up to, making those bureaucrats much more powerful than
in less hierarchical organisations or societies.
I used to describe myself as "a revolutionary socialist (a Marxist
heavily influenced by anarchism)" and one of the attractions of
anarchism was their dislike of hierarchies. Their less hierarchical
organisations are often healthier politically than Marxist ones,
generally with a lower pro****tion of members (particularly those in
prominent positions) on the side of big business. My views on the
problems of hierarchies largely stem from my experience, some of which
is detailed in this book.
Most people recognise that an electoral system is fairest if the
pro****tion of the vote a party gets is roughly reflected in the number
of representatives in government (or in a local council). Most
socialists argue for PR under capitalism because they recognise that it
makes it easier for their parties to gain a foothold as well as it
being fairer than the current system for the UK parliament,
misleadingly called 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP), where the
candidate with the highest number of votes in his or her constituency
gets elected. Therefore, it seems absurd to argue that after a
socialist revolution the electoral system would be changed to one where
ordinary voters have less of a say on who governs them and that is less
pro****tional. Advocating that is a recipe for putting people off
socialism or for the creation of a Stalinist dictator****p should one
take place. One reason for me thinking that I wasn't really a
revolutionary socialist and had therefore destroyed the possibility of
a world socialist revolution happening was the thought (bearing in mind
the dominance of Marxists among active revolutionary socialists) that
such hierarchical structures of government would result in some
countries leading to Stalinist dictator****ps with those in turn leading
to counter-revolutions and maybe even nuclear war. One motivation for
this book is to popularise my alternative views of revolutionary
socialism, and therefore avert such a catastrophe by reorientating
revolutionary socialists around more democratic ideas.
I advocate STV as generally the fairest form of PR, because it avoids
the need for tactical voting - you can specify candidates who your
vote would be transferred to if your first choice does not get elected
or gets more votes than necessary. However, to be fair it is necessary
to have a reasonably large number of candidates elected per
constituency or council ward. The local elections in Scotland are being
conducted using PR for the first time in May 2007, and STV is being
used, but there will only be three or four candidates elected per ward,
favouring the mainstream political parties.
Another flaw with elections in the UK, in common with every other
capitalist country to the best of my knowledge, is that people have to
put up with unpopular governments or councils for years before they get
an op****tunity to vote them out of office (unless the government loses
a vote of 'no confidence'). Infrequent elections are a deliberate
policy to limit the pace of change, making the maintenance of the
status quo much more likely. Socialists should demand (and implement
when we come to power) annual elections at all levels of government.
Furthermore, all representatives should be up for election each year,
unlike how most councils in England (including in Manchester where I
lived from 1984-2006) operate with just a third of councillors
replaceable at each election (that take place three out of every four
years). Under this arrangement, a party with less than a sixth of
existing councillors has no chance of taking control, and even with
more than this taking control may be very unlikely. This reinforces the
apathy of many voters, encouraging them to think that voting won't
achieve anything.
One demand often made by Marxists is that representatives should be
"subject to recall", so that there is some mechanism to enable them
to be replaced if they sell out. However, I don't know how this could
work under PR and annual elections would render the recall of the odd
MP in the meantime pointless. Of course, even with annual elections, a
mass movement could force an entire government (that breaks an
im****tant manifesto pledge for example) to resign, and it would be
desirable to have some mechanism for the recall of the entire
government and fresh elections without waiting for the year to be up,
probably triggered by a petition signed by a fairly large pro****tion of
the population.
Having more than one governing body or individual (usually called
'president' or 'mayor') is another method utilised by the
forces of big business to stay in power, since this tends to enforce
compromises and gives parties an excuse for going back on their
manifesto commitments. Therefore, the two main remaining relics of
feudalism, the monarchy and House of Lords, should be abolished rather
than replaced by an elected president and elected second chamber.
Some argue that PR always results in coalitions, necessitating
compromises and thereby allowing parties to ignore manifesto
commitments. However, it is defeatist to assume that left-wing parties
cannot achieve a majority, contradicted by many victories for such
parties in Latin America in recent years. Candidates and parties can do
particularly well if they have a reputation for leading struggles, as
shown by Evo Morales getting over 50% of the vote to become Bolivian
president in December 2005 - the first time that has happened in that
country's history. Besides, if you cannot achieve a majority of the
vote in parliamentary elections but gain a majority of seats due to a
quirk of the electoral system, is there any reason to suppose that the
minority imposing its will on the majority is a positive thing?
Additionally, there is no middle road between socialism and capitalism,
or the only middle road between a Marxist kind of socialism (with the
working class in control) and capitalism (with big business in control)
is the kind of socialism I advocate (with everybody in control). If
socialist parties between them cannot achieve a majority of the vote,
then there is no mandate for socialism and attempting to impose it
would probably be disastrous.
One arena in which the STV form of PR is already used is the trade
unions - elections to many if not most of their National Executive
Committees (NECs) take place using STV. This has enabled some
left-wingers to get on most union NECs and some NECs are dominated by
the left (specifically the RMT, FBU and PCS). The fact that workers
have chosen this form of PR for their own organisations is an
indication that they consider it democratic and it obviously increases
the likelihood that they would choose it for a future socialist
society.
Some Marxists make the argument that soviets would work better if there
was meticulous re****ting of discussions that take place in them, and
that would certainly help people identify who the dodgy delegates are
and what they are up to. However, it is not particularly feasible to
construct detailed re****ts of discussions in the huge number of
intermediate-level soviets (and even if they were constructed few
people would bother reading them). It is therefore more useful as a
suggestion for less hierarchical structures that I would still advocate
within industries or services, providing a limited amount of workers'
control - but not overriding the views of the government and users
combined (I think the Socialist Party model of a third of
representatives from workers, a third government representatives and
the final third representatives of users is a good guide).
There is a parallel between today's Marxists arguing for pro****tional
representation under capitalism but advocating soviets under socialism,
and the Bolsheviks in Russia calling for a Constituent Assembly when
the capitalist Provisional Government that came to power after the
February revolution in 1917 failed to hold such elections, but some
Bolsheviks led by Lenin arguing for "all power to the soviets".
The Constituent Assembly was more pro****tional than the soviets, since
the latter were deliberately set up to give the working class more
power than a much more numerous peasantry, and the abolition of that
Assembly when the Bolsheviks lost the election has caused socialists
and particularly those calling themselves "communists" to be widely
regarded as undemocratic ever since. The result has been nearly 90 more
years of world capitalism. I don't regard that as a mistake, but a
deliberate ploy by infiltrators within the Bolshevik Party on the side
of big business such as Lenin and Trotsky. [At other points in their
lives, one or both of them could have been overwhelmingly genuine, but
at that point, and for Trotsky when he brutally led the Red Army, I am
convinced that they were not.]
Right-wing members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party won the
Constituent Assembly election due to large landowners being better
organised in the countryside. I have long argued that the Bolsheviks
should have let them show themselves up in practice, and that the
excuse that the Bolsheviks would suffer massive repression doesn't
stand up bearing in mind that the working class led two revolutions in
one year and would surely defend them if repression was attempted. Even
better, after the October revolution but before holding a Constituent
Assembly election, the Bolsheviks should have gone into the countryside
and formed a unified socialist party involving both workers and
peasants who sup****ted the October revolution, which could then have
won that election. The very fact that the right-wingers elected to the
Constituent Assembly called themselves 'socialist revolutionaries'
is an indication that the idea of revolutionary socialism was very
popular among the peasantry, so a realignment of the left could well
have brought about a party with overwhelming sup****t among both workers
and peasants, and encouraged poor left-wing peasants to come to the
fore instead of the rich right-wing landowners.
Marxists often talk about the working class taking power, but in my
view it is the entire population that should really take power. It is
clearly massively undemocratic to deny middle class people a say in how
society is run, or give them less of a say like the peasantry in Russia
.. In a pre-revolutionary situation (when a socialist revolution is
possible) in Scotland for example, there would in my view be far more
people who sup****t the idea of socialism but agree with PR than those
(mainly of a Marxist persuasion) who would advocate all power to the
soviets. Marxists would then have a choice of trying to force, using
"workers' militias", the will of a minority on the majority, or
implementing a PR-based form of socialism.
Conspiratorial infiltrating organisations on any side in society need
to make plans, building models of the world and individuals in it to
some degree of complexity and using them to determine what they need to
do to try to achieve their desired outcomes. That is something we all
do with our brains for day-to-day problems or for trying to affect the
future of the world, but is applied by those organisations to achieving
their vision of world socialism or maintaining the capitalist world in
which we live. In the past, they had to rely on the combined effect of
the minds of people within those organisations, but nowadays a lot of
this modelling can be done on computers utilising AI techniques. This
is not just a hypothesis; I have developed an AI/simulation language
called SDML (which stands for "Strictly Declarative Modelling
Language") that is capable of carrying out such modelling, but it
needs some improvements to make it applicable to large-scale problems.
I intend to get a job at the Artificial Intelligence Applications
Institute in Edinburgh to further develop SDML so that it could be used
more effectively by conspiratorial organisations.
There is a Marxist theory of how the world works called 'dialectical
materialism' (and one called 'historical materialism' when that
theory is applied to history). It claims that everything is a result of
material conditions, rather than influenced by things outside matter
like people's souls or a god. In other words, the outputs of an
individual person (what he or she says or does) are solely dependent on
his or her current and past inputs (the results of the person's
senses). If the theory is correct, which I think it is, all im****tant
factors in society can be modelled completely on computers, including
the precise behaviour of m***** of people (by considering cl***** and
im****tant organisations) and im****tant individuals. I believe that my
mind is being modelled completely by at least one conspiratorial
organisation, but that people who influence me are being modelled to a
lesser extent.
I have sometimes felt that a relatively small number of individuals in
the world (including myself) are different kinds of human beings with
more advanced minds and some sort of external souls, with real (rather
than apparent or simulated) free will. I have sometimes considered
myself a human in a world of robots or an angel in a world of humans.
I'll explain the basis for these beliefs, which I have now rejected,
in chapter YYY. The largest amount of evidence that I am just an
ordinary human being, with my outputs being completely determined by my
inputs, came through the experience of a game of Scrabble with myself
several years ago! I pulled out small groups of letters from the bag
and always managed to put a word down on the board with some sort of
relevance to conspiracies that I was thinking about at the time; this
worked for the entire Scrabble set! I had thought that subconsciously I
could have been feeling indentations on the tiles, but I wasn't
moving my hand around a lot in the bag, and it certainly couldn't
have been coincidence, so the only rational conclusion is that it had
all been programmed by a conspiratorial organisation - for the
purpose of proving to me that my mind is completely predictable. I
couldn't have been exercising genuine free will, during that Scrabble
experience or even for quite a long time beforehand, because they
wouldn't have been able to predict that I would have pulled out
precisely the tiles I did. And if I am completely predictable, it makes
sense that the entire world is, given enough computing power! I had
believed that the world was being modelled to sufficient complexity to
know that a world socialist revolution was bound to happen (sooner or
later), but had thought that this was being done through modelling all
possibilities (using logical AND/OR situations). I've now realised
that that is not feasible; even if only I could make free will
decisions that couldn't be modelled, the number of possibilities
would rapidly make predictions impossible - but there only being one
possible outcome to any set of conditions means that a sufficiently
detailed model of the world can predict anything!
I already knew that decision-making in people's conscious minds was
an illusion anyway, because it has been determined experimentally that
people actually make decisions a fraction of a second (something like
0=2E2s or 0.4s) before we think we are making them in our conscious
thoughts, as explained in a TV programme about how the brain works
presented by Susan Greenfield. It is rational to make decisions in the
subconscious, because it would take too long to consider all the
factors involved in making decisions in our conscious minds; a
successful species needs to be able to think more quickly and
accurately than that. If conscious decision-making is an illusion, it
is easy to dismiss the idea that genuine and unpredictable free will
using some sort of soul outside matter is involved.
A complete model whereby precise events can be modelled a long time in
advance, leading to a revolution, is not a new idea. It was called
'psychohistory' by Isaac Asimov, when applied to a revolution in a
galaxy that was similarly being modelled, in his epic Foundation series
(the first three books of which were written in the 1940s). Asimov
based his psychohistory concept, which he developed in discussion with
John Campbell, on the kinetic theory of gases considering huge numbers
of people together acting in a predictable way. Two 'Foundations'
at opposite ends of the galaxy conspired to bring the revolution about
- the first was relatively open (after pretending to be working on an
encyclopaedia) but the second, composed of people with mind-reading and
mind-controlling powers, was very secretive, influencing people to
ensure that the computer-based model (called 'the Seldon plan') was
adhered to and making small adjustments to it when necessary.
The original trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second
Foundation) had quite right-wing plots, perhaps to get round the
censors, and ended with a form of fascism, but he later added
Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth to give the series a
left-wing ending. In the last two books, somebody called Golan Trevize,
who had a habit of always making correct decisions, had the role of
choosing the future state of the galaxy - capitalism (a new empire
like the crumbling old one that had been overthrown, fascism (with the
mind-manipulators in the Second Foundation in control) or communism
(involving a high degree of harmony with nature, based on a planet
called Gaia, and called Galaxia when applied to the entire galaxy).
Trevize chose Galaxia in Foundation's Edge without knowing why, and
discovered that it was the only way the galaxy would be strong enough
to withstand a potential invasion from hostile aliens in another galaxy
in Foundation and Earth. I don't advocate anything as extreme as
Galaxia, but there is no mistaking the left-wing nature of the
solution, and I chose Galaxia as the name of my band due to use of it
by Asimov.
My role is similar to Trevize's, but it is not just my responsibility
to choose the form of future society on the Earth but to take action in
order to ensure that such a society is built. In chapter 3, I will
justify myself being the person with such responsibility, and the
remaining chapters will include details of my life so far as well as
lessons for the future.
It is now a particularly im****tant period of time for the future of the
world. On the 3rd of May 2007 various elections will take place in the
UK , with those to the Scottish Parliament being particularly
im****tant.
The SSP suffered a big setback in 2006 with the establishment of a
split-off party known as 'Solidarity: Scotland's Socialist
Movement', launched by Tommy Sheridan (the former convenor of the
SSP) in conjunction with other people formerly in the SSP (particularly
those also in the SWP) in the wake of his successful defamation trial
against the News of the World (a rag owned by Rupert Murdoch). Two of
the SSP's six current Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs),
Sheridan and Rosemary Byrne, are in Solidarity and that party is
planning to stand against the SSP in every region of Scotland in the
May elections. This is a particular problem because it is only possible
to vote for one party in a regional list (which augments constituencies
in which MSPs are elected by FPTP making representation roughly
pro****tional) and it is necessary to get several percent of the vote in
a particular region in order to get anyone elected. I am confident that
the SSP can save some of their MSPs, and perhaps even get a higher
representation than the last elections in 2003. It is im****tant that
the SSP and Solidarity do well between them, and one of my motivations
with this book is to encourage Scottish readers to vote SSP in those
elections. The formation of Solidarity is based on a falsehood - it
is clear that Sheridan did some of the things he was accused of doing
by the News of the World, which has launched an appeal. That won't
take place until the summer of 2007, but, in the meantime, the police
are conducting a perjury investigation that may bring Sheridan back to
court before the elections and thereby dent Solidarity's hopes (which
do not seem particularly strong anyway with only 1% sup****t in an
opinion poll). I'll talk about the defamation trial and subsequent
split in the SSP in chapter YYY.
The Scottish parliamentary elections are also im****tant because the
pro-independence parties - the Scottish National Party (SNP), the
SSP, Solidarity and the Greens - are fairly likely to achieve a
majority between them, leading to a referendum which would almost
certainly result in an independent Scotland . Although a capitalist
independent Scotland would have some benefits in its own right (such as
enabling Scotland to become nuclear-free and avoid sending troops to
Iraq or Afghanistan ), the most im****tant advantage of independence
would be it being a step towards achieving socialism. Due to people
being generally more left-wing in Scotland than the rest of the UK,
socialist parties being much stronger and a fairer electoral system
(with a form of PR, albeit not being ideal, in the Scottish Parliament
compared to FPTP at Westminster), socialism in Scotland is much more
likely than in the UK as a whole, which could then rapidly spread
across Europe and the rest of the world. In my opinion, socialism is
more likely in Scotland than in any other Western country. If the
op****tunity for independence is not grasped at the 2007 Scottish
parliamentary elections, independence and progress towards socialism
could be delayed another four years since further Scottish
parliamentary elections are not due until 2011.
Solidarity also intends to stand in every council ward in Glasgow on
the same day as the Scottish parliamentary elections, which is less of
a problem because STV is being used for council elections and voters
can specify alternative candidates to whom their votes will be
transferred if their preferred candidate fails to get elected (or their
votes will be partially transferred if their preferred candidate gets
more votes than necessary). Not everyone will transfer their votes
between the socialist parties, partly because some voters will not
understand the electoral system since it is being used for the first
time in 2007, so it would still be desirable for the SSP and Solidarity
to reach agreement not to stand against each other. This is perhaps
feasible because the council elections are much less im****tant, but
unlikely due to the hostility between the parties.
Despite my advocacy of democratic means for achieving socialism and a
democratic electoral system once socialism is established, I certainly
do not rule out extra-parliamentary activity in order to achieve
change. On the contrary, one of my big initiatives is to call for
worldwide general strikes at the time of G8 summits. I have done this
for previous summits (Gleneagles in Scotland in 2005 and St Petersburg
in Russia in 2006) through leaflets, use of the internet including a
website (www.g8summitworldwidegeneralstrike.org) and through music. The
first incarnation of my band Galaxia, composed of a guitarist who does
not want to be involved any more and myself on vocals, did some
recordings in Manchester just before the 2005 summit, and I moved up to
Glasgow in April 2006 with the intention of creating the band proper in
this city. Unfortunately, I have suffered repression from the state (as
I'll explain in chapter YYY) and development of the band and the call
for a general strike was aborted. Hopefully there will be serious
action at the time of the summit in Germany in June 2007 - it may
even be possible for a general strike to lead to a socialist revolution
somewhere in the world at that time, and for the revolution to spread
across the world!
Chapter 2
A short socialist history of the world
I have not yet written this chapter...
Chapter 3
Why me?
This book is partly an autobiography, and later chapters will provide a
lot of information about my life so far. This chapter briefly justifies
my argument that I am the only person capable of leading a world
socialist revolution, so that if I fail to lead such a revolution one
will not happen.
So what makes me unique? I am by no means the only person with any of
these attributes, but nobody else has all of them:
1=2E Certainly not unique but a vital prerequisite to be taken
seriously as a socialist leader - I have a record of struggle. I made
my first serious foray into politics when I saw the potential of a
campaign making a real difference, and it certainly had a big impact
- that campaign, which I joined when it started in Manchester in
early 1989, was the mass non-payment campaign that defeated the poll
tax (a flat rate charge for local services) and brought down British
prime minister Margaret Thatcher. I have been involved in many other
campaigns including ones against wars and sanctions (particularly on
Iraq), de****tations, police violence, racism and fascism, the Criminal
Justice Act, ID fraud, the oppression of Palestinians and the closure
of the hospital I was born in (Withington Hospital in Manchester). I
have taken a particular interest in anti-capitalist protesting - I
have taken part in such protests in Genoa , Barcelona and Edinburgh ,
and launched the initiative of a worldwide general strike at the time
of a G8 summit (a call that could finally lead to revolutionary
movements at the 2007 summit in Germany in June).
2=2E I have a record of involvement in a serious revolutionary
socialist organisation - the Militant Tendency that led the anti-poll
tax campaign, which I joined during it (in June 1990) and stayed in for
eight and a half years, as it became Militant Labour and then the
Socialist Party. I was the only person from England or Wales to speak
during the debate at the 1998 European School of the Committee for a
Workers' International (CWI, which linked that organisation to
similar ones around the world) in sup****t of the formation of the
Scottish Socialist Party.
3=2E I have a record of involvement in broad socialist organisations
that have attempted to unite socialists of different hues together. The
most significant of these organisations is the Scottish Socialist Party
(SSP) and I have encouraged moves towards a similar party in Manchester
via the Socialist Alliance, Respect and the Democratic Socialist
Alliance (which I helped launch out of the old Socialist Alliance
Democracy Platform).
4=2E I have an analysis of capitalist society that expands on
Marxist theory, by considering the presence of many conspiratorial
organisations that infiltrate the left and other organisations in
society.
5=2E I have a set of post-Marxist ideas of how to change the world
and what sort of socialist society we should set up if we come to
power.
6=2E I have musical talent at both singing and songwriting, which I
intend to put to good use in a band called Galaxia that I'm setting
up in Glasgow . An early incarnation of the band performed a version of
a song of mine called "The Revolution Starts Now!" in 2005, which
contains so many im****tant political points that I've written a
chapter of this book on it (chapter YYY).
7=2E I am the main designer and only implementer of a computer
simulation language, incor****ating artificial intelligence (AI)
techniques, called SDML. This is useful partly because I suspect my
language has been used (and may still be being used) for im****tant
modelling of the world by conspiratorial organisations and also because
it gives me more insight into how such modelling can be done that my
mind uses in order to think rationally. I believe that my mind has
rewired itself on several occasions to incor****ate a better model of
the world and more logical thinking processes, partly based on my
knowledge of SDML.
8=2E I have a large internet presence. In order to influence current
and potential future activists nowadays, it is necessary to utilise the
World Wide Web and discussion forums (some of which are web-based, some
which use email, and some such as Yahoo! Groups that can be used either
way). As well as having several websites, I have created dozens of
forums myself, mainly at Yahoo! Groups so that anybody searching for
sets of im****tant political keywords at that website (groups.yahoo.com)
has a good chance of coming across one of mine. Most other activists
limit themselves to posting to a small number of forums, but I have
regularly sent messages to hundreds. I have a long record of activity
going back to the early days of the internet, pioneering the CWI's
use of that medium, running its internal mailing list for several years
and providing it with an unofficial website for two or three years
before an official one was set up.
9=2E I have been persecuted by the state.
--
Steve Wallis (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk,
http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve).
Im****tant emails: revolutionarysocialiststeve@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
since January 2007 (http://blog.myspace.com/galaxiasteve),
since
March 2003 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manchesterism).
My revolutionary socialist band Galaxia (http://www.galaxiamusic.org).
Launch a general strike at the time of the next G8 summit
(http://www.g8summitworldwidegeneralstrike.org).
Member of Glasgow Govan branch of the Scottish Socialist Party
(http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org).
Initiator of the Revolutionary Platforms of the SSP
(http://www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org),
Respect
(http://www.revolutionaryplatformofrespect.org),
the Democratic
Socialist Alliance
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-sociali=
st-alliance)
and Solidarity
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-solidarity)
-
these are linked together by the Revolutionary Platform Network
(http://www.revolutionaryplatform.net).
Initiator of the Campaign for Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk)
and Campaign for Sanity in the
NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org).
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