Marx and Soviet anti-fascism – a tenuous link

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The Soviet role in the war was unique and heroic, but the ‘socialism’ it built bares little relation to Marx’s revolutionary ideas, says Joe Gill 

On the 132nd anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, communists and marxists commemorated the great thinker's contribution to social ideas and for a new society in various ways.

Some gathered at his grave and drew a link between his life's works and the struggle against fascism that ended in a costly victory in 1945, led by the Soviet Union, which paid a terrible price in millions of lives to defeat nazism.

But in reading the Morning Star's editorial on the day, I had a terrible sinking feeling. The leader stated that only one of those states fighting the nazis was socialist: the USSR. It continued: “The Britain that fought the genocidal racist regime in Germany itself ruled a vast empire and treated many of the peoples it kept prisoner as subhumans."

While this was undoubtedly true, it can, in some ways, also be said of Stalin's Soviet Union - officially according to its 1936 constitution, the Soviet Union upheld the highest democratic ideals. In reality by the late 30s, it was a dictatorship in which neither the working class or any other class enjoyed full democratic and social rights.

This was discovered by visiting delegations of trade unionists, who were shocked at working conditions in factories, and was recognised by the writer of the introduction to the 1948 centenary edition of the Communist Manifesto published by the US communist party, which contrasted the ideals of Marx with the realities of the Soviet Union in which basic human rights were lacking.

 The editorial paints a picture of the battle against fascism that upholds the Soviet Union as a model of socialism that directly inherited the ideas of Karl Marx. This is profoundly misleading. Marx, as a synthesiser and revolutioniser of the ideas of English political economy, French socialism and German philosophy, did not envisage, nor would have uncritically approved of the USSR under Stalin (I suspect he would have hated it).

 It is true that the anti-fascist alliance was a triumph that also, via the victories of the Red Army, introduced millions of workers to the ideas of socialism. But the post-war division of Europe did not fulfil those dreams. The carve-up created a series of satellite states that built a deficient model of socialism.

That model lasted 40 years – and required the intervention of Soviet troops on two occasions to suppress rebellions in Hungary and Czechoslavakia - before collapsing under a weight of economic and political stagnation. It is difficult to argue that this version of the dictatorship of the proletariat was the one that Marx had in mind.

For the sake of left unity and progress in Britain we should not resurrect false utopias but stick to analysing the complex reality of 20th century history, in which the Soviet Union, especially under Stalin, represented an iron wall against nazism, but ultimately also a negative example (we can cite the prevalent use of terror, cult of personality, forced collectivisation, slave labour, national chauvinism) that held back socialist advance and distorted the states that were created in its mirror image.

We are still living out the legacy of that inheritance in terms of negative views of socialism, that are not simply the result of anti-communist propaganda. Of course, there are examples from the era that we can uphold as better versions of the model. Yugoslavia, Cuba and Vietnam, as independent revolutions with their own national and social base, were able to circumvent the worst excesses of bureaucratic dictatorship and imbue the construction of socialism with more humanity. The Chinese revolution, under Mao, exhibited examples of the best and worst.

 But it is in new thinking and participatory models of socialism and democracy along the lines attempted today in Latin America, that hope lies, and perhaps here in Europe too in the coming years.

Bring on the Green surge

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Despite the best efforts of Labour, Ukip and the Lib Dems to turn fire on Cameron over his election debate call to include the Greens, it is their own opportunism, as much as Cameron's, that has been exposed. Regardless of Cameron's reasons for demanding that the Greens get their seat in the debates, he is right and the other parties are wrong. In fact Ofcom and the broadcasters have done the Green Party a massive favour by trying to exclude them - even if they were a 'minor' party before, claiming that today after their membership eclipsed both LDs and Ukip, is untenable.< The massive Green membership surge is a direct response from ordinary people to the attempt by the broadcasters and mainstream parties to exclude the Greens. People can smell a rat - a poll showed 79 per cent wanted the Greens included in the debate. Rightly they want to hear all views including those that present a real alternative, rather than just various shades of neoliberalism (which under Balls and Miliband, is what we are being offered by Labour). This is the start of the English phase of the surge of anti-Westminster parties that began in Scotland. Until now voters have been told that Ukip is the only anti-Establishment party south of the border, but the very fact of exclusion from TV debates is backfiring spectacularly as people realise that the Up Theres don't want us Down Here to hear the alternatives. They are terrified that the debate could lead to a Green equivalent of Cleggmania, which followed the 2010 debates and catapulted the Lib Dems into government (where they sold us out). It's a nightmare for the quartet of neoliberal parties that the left-wing Greens could in anyway become kingmakers after the poll and, further ahead, become a new radical left of centre party in England. And it's fantastic that so many people are committed to real change! People on the left should support this progressive trend in our otherwise pretty dismal political scene. Truth is, Labour will only do anything radical if they are compelled to by other political forces, which could include the SNP and the Green Party. I look forward to some pretty tough negotiations after May 10 over the future of the Trident missile programme, which could help bury this massive white elephant. Bring it on.

Hope and change and all that

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I've been around long enough to see the miners strike, the 80s riots, Wapping, the poll tax, the post-communism lull of the mid-90s, the first Reclaim the Streets May Day protests of 99 and 2000, and then the dark days after 9/11. A decade later to feel the thrill of the student and march for alternative protests in 2010-11. Despite everything, I've never felt more optimistic. Its true the movement for change is stratified between educated, more middle class activists and those who are masked up or just surviving. The unions have never been more left, but their power is finite. And yet, there are grounds for unity across a broad range of movements in a way there hasn't been in the past. All the old schisms don't matter anymore.
The most important thing to recognise is that neoliberalism is crumbling, the ideological hegemony is breaking down. After that goes legitimacy. Once legitimacy begins to crack - see the US after Ferguson and Eric Garner, or the UK now with politics in the gutter - change becomes possible, as well as reaction. We must look for ruling class splits, the decline of hegemonic institutions like the Tories, and the fracturing of imedia's hold over people.
The problems are piling up. The danger is like 2008, when the world teetered, the absence of organised anti-capitalist movements meant nothing happened and the elite reorganised.
They've got no answers. The alternatives have already been proposed. All it takes is a Podemos type movement to begin to present an organised alternative. If anyone of these movements can get a taste of power, and then hold on to it, as has happened in Latin America, a new world will open up. Will it come to Britain? It could. There's more up for grabs than at any time since 1979 when neoliberalism triumphed. Some kind of socialism or revolutionary democracy needs to be rehabilitated so people can believe in an alternative. Out of that comes hope.
The Arab spring shows what can happen when a revolution fails to decide on - or achieve - its goals. Reaction. That is the warning. But revolutions are like earthquakes - first the main shock, then the after shock. The after shock of 2008-11 has yet to come.

Myleene and Angelina Jolie's 10 point plan to save Labour

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Mansion-class celebs are coming for Labour. First there was Myleene Klass’s ITV sofa assault on Ed Miliband’s property tax plans — “You can’t just point at things and tax them!” — to which a frozen Ed failed to answer “Yes you can if it’s a house!”
Then Hollywood royalty waded in on the row. Angelina Jolie (net worth with Brad £269m) told Channel 4’s Jon Snow that she may — shock, horror — decide not to move to a Marylebone mansion if Labour decides to tax it. “That might put me off.”
With Myles and Angie on his case, Miliband’s no-balls shadow chancellor is quaking. In an Evening Standard column Ed Balls admitted that plans to tax £2m-plus properties “are not popular with everyone but we but we are being clear about where the money is coming from for our health service.”
Let’s face it, if you put Myleene and “Tomb Raider” Angelina into a ring with the two Eds for gloves-off fisticuffs, there’s little doubt about who would end up face down on the mat. These high-net worth stars, known for their humanitarian leanings and constant use of the pages of Hello! to show off their fabulous lifestyle, have now jumped to the defence of the hard put-upon pluto-grannies from this tax thingummy.
And to save the Eds from a further pasting, Myles and Angie have got together to have a go at rewriting the Labour manifesto to make it more celeb-friendly. Truly, with Brangelina serious about getting a “foothold” in London — and she being “responsible about money” — who better to give advice on economy policy?

So here is their 10-point plan to remake Britain:

1. Poor people should stop complaining. It’s within their power to become who they want to be. All you need is hard work, expensive education and high-powered pushy parents. Go for it!

2. Celebrities pay a lot of tax already (well, the ones not smart enough to use tax-avoidance schemes). The least we could do is give them their own lane on the motorway to drive their hot wheels past adoring fans. If it’s good enough for Kim Jong Un...

3. Elections will be fought out in an X-Factor cum Bake Off — that’s right. Sing or bake, or both. The public decides. Digital democracy at work.

4. Politics is boring and turning people off. From now on, PMQs will be replaced with a Klaas and Jolie masterclass in economics, including priceless advice on how to disburse your millions across the world and stay ahead of the taxman.

5. The British royal family needs a makeover, so let’s have a TV vote for who should be the next Queen. (Hint: someone younger, beautiful with a string of hit songs and/or movies).

6. Most NHS costs can be reduced by healthier lifestyles — its strictly seaweed from now on. Jolie-Klass TV will offer tips to the nation on healthy eating and daily workouts. Get out the lycra and get with the programme.

7. All school uniforms will be from Littlewoods and M&S, with free Baby K Clothes for nursery age toddlers — royalties to Myleene. Kerrching!

8. Most life lessons can be gleaned from a careful viewing of Lara Croft, Mr and Mrs Smith, Maleficent and The Tourist. Compulsory movie classes in schools from age five and school assemblies will learn to sing the Hear’Say back catalogue.

9. Free acting and classical music lessons for offenders to encourage rehabilitation with inspiration from Myles and Angie. A lucky few will get places on the Ex-Con Factor, hosted by Andy Coulson.

10. No more politics of envy. You are beautiful and talented — not as beautiful or talented as us obviously, but everyone can aspire to be the best.

There you go, Ed. Alternatively you could just tell these millionaires that if they don’t want to pay their tax, they are welcome to leave. I hear Malibu is lovely this time of year — they can be happy knowing we’ll find a socially useful way to occupy those empty mansions.

Interstellar dreams, the Rosetta landing and where is Christopher Waltz?

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It's not every day that there is a story of human achievement that makes you proud to be a higher simian.
The Rosetta probe travelled 6 billion miles and landed on a comet that orbits the Sun at up to 135,000kmph. That's precision! It bounced, and its not getting enough sunlight to power its batteries, but hell, they did it - a decade after takeoff from earth.
And it's especially pleasing that the remarkable landing of a robotic probe on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko is a European Space Agency triumph.
Most of the time when I think about the human race its our pathological species-and-habitat-destroying rush to cataclysm that leaves Nature no choice but to declare, right, it's pestilence and flood for you lot. Rather like the scenario in Interstellar.
Rosetta's comet landing coincidentally happened in the same week that Christopher Nolan's galactic smash hits our screens – or was it a fiendish bit of scheduling by the distributors? The film is a return to the golden age of space fiction with a massive nod to the big daddy of space epics, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Nolan and his writer brother have said how important films like Space Odyssey and Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters were in their own love affair with the genre. As children they recreated Star Wars and filmed it with the basic equipment at their disposal.
No wonder that Spielberg was initially lined up to work on the movie, until he dropped out and Nolan took it on.
Interstellar combines the eco-apocalyptic with the soaring thrills of going where no Hollywood stars (Matthew McConnaughey and Anne Hathaway) have gone before. The comparison with Space Odyssey is revealing. In Arthur C Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's breakthrough epic, we are in the full flush of an optimistic space age – the movie was released a couple of years before Neil Armstrong strolled on the Moon.
By contrast, Nolan's crew head for a black hole to save the planet from ecological destruction - or rather, they've given up on Earth and are looking for a new home. McConnaughey is a farmer who was once a promising pilot but discovers a secret Nasa base where a save the world suicide mission through a black hole is being plotted.
The threat in Interstellar is extinction and human frailty. In Space Odyssey it is a homicidal computer - again, the twist in Nolan's film is that the intelligent robots are friendly and the only reliable partners for the astronauts when their fellow space explorers keep letting them down.
Some have criticised the film for reinforcing the idea that there is no solution to man's destruction of the environment - the answer is to leave this dustbowl planet behind and start again. It's a fair point but it certainly provides the dramatic impetus for the mission.
It's also noticeable how American this project it - the rest of the planet seems to have collapsed back to subsistence. Only a secret Nasa holdout is capable of launching a mission to find an exoplanet capable of supporting life.
When the astronauts do find a new planet, the Stars and Stripes are ubiquitous. It's as if Brit Nolan wants to make Americans feel great again in an age when most assume the US faces terminal decline as a global power (despite still having military bases in every continent).
Space Odyssey doesn't have this nationalistic overtone (both Clarke and Kubrick were wary of such sentiments), while Spielberg's Close Encounters features an overtly international project to welcome the ETs to Earth.
In a sense, Nolan takes us back to the frontier mythology of a few brave men - and one woman - who are prepared to go into the unknown and found a new colony. Yes, McConnaughey does keep saying he's doing it for the people back on Earth  - not just the Americans - but then what's with the 19th century flag in the dirt symbolism?
There's one (possibly two) miscasts in Interstellar - I just can't accept Matt Damon as a brainy scientist - surely he's the one who kicks ass in Bourne and such like? No, the part of Dr Mann was made for someone (a) not American (b) European and (c) Christopher Waltz.
And as for Michael Caine as a professorial English Einstein, well, okay, we can go with that. Fundamentally, it's all far too Anglo-Saxon. Yes, there is a black astronaut - the excellent David Gyasi - but ne'er a funny accent to be heard.
But that aside, I fell totally in love with the aesthetic 70s-ness of the film - a return to the golden age of sets and effects that you can almost touch and feel. Everything from the creaking farm, to the retro space suits and the fabulous blue-screen consols in the space ship, and all those Star Wars-style dirty white panelled ship interiors. Even space itself looked analogue.
The curse of CGI is banished, and as someone else may have said, Gravity may have been mind-blowing for pure adrenalin and 3-D effects, but it was weightless and insubstantial compared to the huge reach and scope of Interstellar's visual and spiritual-journey ambitions. Not since Carl Sagan's Contact has a space movie felt like it has the philosophical gravity to explore the ultimate questions of What's Out There and Are We Alone?
And then there's the climax, when we follow the hero over the event horizon into the fifth dimension - I think, if anything, it beats Space Odyssey in its leap into the utterly alien and yet familiar time-space multi-verse. It is something to behold.
Images and sensations from the movie have come back in flashes in the days since I saw it. Like, does love have an evolutionary purpose to preserving the species? What is the true role of gravity in the universe? And what happens to us when the food starts to run out? What are we prepared to do to save the species - or ourselves?
Interstellar asks these questions and imaginatively answers them while taking us on a jaw-dropping journey. That counts for something. It's Nolan's best film since Dark Knight and his most ambitious since Memento.
But back in 2014, the ESA takes the crown for Rosetta, and Nasa does best in Hollywood.

Let's crowdsource our democracy - a mass Parliament of the people

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Left of centre thinktanks have told Ed Miliband he should adopt radical devolution as the theme of his election campaign for 2015. I say let's go further, much further.

Democracy has been spreading round the planet for more than a century, but in recent decades the ability of the representative democratic system to govern for the people has been found wanting. Officially, the majority of countries are 'democratic,' but unofficially most of us feel like we are governed and controlled by an unaccountable elite.
That is because representative democracy is merely an outgrowth of the model of aristocratic rule brought in by Britain and the new American republic in the 18th century, a system designed to keep power out of the hands of the people. The rulers and thinkers of the 18th century said this explicitly.

As James Madison, one of the founding fathers of the United States constitution, explained: “Pure democracy is the most vile form of government...such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”

The system that is now universally described as democracy is misnamed. Representative democracy delegates power to elected officials and professional politicians who are not accountable to the people who elected them on a day to day basis. Other interest groups - including business, lobby groups, foreign governments, senior civil servants, military and political party elites have far more influence over our 'elected' leaders than we do. We only get to vote them in or out of office every four or five years. This is not democracy - and it was never supposed to be.

But if our politicians are too often unfit to govern, and come from a small class of privileged out of touch families, is it not time to put ordinary people right into the system of government and legislation? I propose a new People's Parliament be created to exist alongside the existing representative Parliament. It would be made of a large selection of ordinary members of the public. Members of the People's Parliament would not be elected. Instead, a random selection process, with some possible representative fixtures to reflect the broad population such as 50% women, would be instituted. Why random rather than elected? To prevent the same self selecting group of careerists and professional political types from running (and ruining) the country. It cuts out the need for expensive, time-consuming elections, which favours those of deep pocket, and instead uses the same principle as the jury system, which has served us moderately well for centuries.

I propose that across the country, 9000 people would be chosen, 300 from each constituency, to serve one year in this new assembly. Those selected would be given 10 days off work a year, and paid to attend local assembly meetings and hearings. Volunteers from the 300 would be able to take up co-ordinator roles, to call witnesses, civil servants and members of the public to meetings to discuss government policy and issues of the day. Members would serve for one year only, with a possible option to serve a second year for the sake of continuity in the work of the people's Parliament. This way its members, either remotely online or in person, could make their decisions based on being informed about the issues. However, even if they do not attend, they would vote on all legislation. The people could watch these assemblies online or on TV (well, some would chose to do so).

The People's Parliament would have equal powers to our elected politicians. There is the question - a critical one - of who brings forward legislation. Currently the government is responsible for most legislation, but if it was up to popular proposition and members of the People's Parliament to bring forward legislation, the old party system would lose its monopoly on power. As in Switzerland and in some US states, if enough people outside Parliament sign a petition for a proposition, it should be put before Parliament.

Big media outlets will, of course, influence the public and politicians and could likewise influence the new members of a People's Parliament, but at least they would be deliberating without being controlled by party leaders.

Both the existing (not very) Representative Parliament and the Direct Democracy Peoples Parliament would deliberate on laws and policy. When it came to the vote, they would both vote and the votes would be combined. If there was a split vote, the vote of the People's Parliament, as the more representative model, would hold the casting vote.

Members of the PP might have a say in electing the Prime Minister and cabinet from the current Parliament - although for practical reasons, this might be limited. It would be too easy for deadlock to take place if the PP voted against the formation of a government from the majority party in the elected Representative Parliament. Members of the PP would not be able to serve as a member of the Government executive while they were serving for the People's Parliament. Currently, by contrast, over 100 members of our elected Parliament are actually serving in the executive, or waiting for their chance to do so, so don't represent their constituencies at all.

The Lords would of course have to go. The PP would be the new Lords - of the people.

Because members of the People's Parliament serve only one year (or optionally two years), they would not be subject to corrupting influences - and there would be too many of them to corrupt anyhow. They could not be tempted by an offer to join the government.

There is of course, the possibility that the PP and the Commons could end up in loggerheads in the way that the Congress and Senate are often deadlocked in the US. In this case, perhaps a provision would be needed for the People's Parliament to call for a general election to break the gridlock. However, Switzerland manages to combine representative and direct democracy successfully, with the latter enhancing the former.

I would suggest that no one could serve in the PP more than twice in their lifetimes. There is, of course, nothing stopping them from turning 'professional' and standing in the representative Parliament. Ideally, resources allowing, this 9000 number would be increased over time, to perhaps 90,000 people (3000 in each constituency) so that the People's Parliament was even more representative of the population.

One could argue that rather than have this half way house of semi-direct democracy, we could move entirely to a digital direct democracy system where the people are able to vote on all legislation and by petition of a minimum number of signatures (50 or 100,000 as in Switzerland) bring forward laws, as happens in US states with the proposition system. Perhaps the PP could be combined with an element of direct democracy, such as in proposing legislation, or even referenda on big issues - again, something that happens in Switzerland.

The argument for the People's Assembly is that democracy is deliberative and the 9000 can look at the issues in depth. Also, by allowing it to sit alongside the existing system, it would be less revolutionary and threatening to the existing order (addressing the fears of modern-day Madisons). This is a practical proposal that the professional politicians would find hard to argue against. They should, truly, support it - unless they really favour the current system of disguised oligarchy.

However, if we could move toward direct democracy, I would favour it, but I don't think it's practical for everyone to vote on all legislation effectively, without a mediating group of ordinary people who can do this more deliberatively, hence the need for a popular parliament.

How do we get there? I don't actually know, since this needs to become a popular demand. Perhaps it is pie in the sky - paralysis, gridlock, the fear of ineffective government would mitigate this ever coming to pass. But my ideas are just a starting point and they draw on a wide range of direct democracy experiences around the world.

The foundational principle behind this idea is that the combined wisdom and good sense of many thousands of ordinary people is inherently superior to that of a few hundred professional politicians who each have a huge personal and political stake in the preservation of the existing order. With digital technology, we have the means to make this happen. In the long run, it is probably inevitable. We are no longer a society with a small politically literate middle class and a wider population dominated by deference, although each country is different in this respect. In some religion or tribe is still very important. I don't say every country is ready for this, but then again, the representative system is clearly not able to cope with the new demands of democracy either, as seen in Ukraine and Egypt.

People tend to focus on issues of policy, rather than on the system of government that rules us. But rather than keep on electing disappointing politicians who let us down, let's create a system of crowdsourced democracy (to use the digital jargon) that genuinely brings about 'rule of the people'. After feudalism, monarch, dictatorship and elected oligarchy - let's move to the system that actually gives power to the people. Are you ready for it?

Vodafone and the telecoms octopus - a monstrous, inhuman bureaucratic machine eating my mind

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I have been on the phone to Vodafone "customer services" and PremierPlan insurers all morning. I am three months into an insurance claim. It took a month and two hours today to get Vodafone to release the IMEI (ID) number for my old phone, which I lost in Oman. But that wasn't the end of it, oh no. The insurer also wanted proof of use or proof of banning. mmmmm.
This is my worst yet experience with modern corporate services and the nightmare of bouncing from one provider to another, with each one demanding yet more and more proof of security, proof of usage, proof of life etc. Each time I think I am getting somewhere they ask me for something else.
Sorry sir, we can't provide you proof of usage because you have not used the phone in the last three months.
Yes, that's because I lost the phone four months ago and have been trying to claim insurance on the phone for the last three months.
I hear what you're saying sir - thick Scottish policeman-type burr - but we do not keep records beyond three months sir, and you have not passed DP security. (That's data protection to you). DP demands they keep data for three years but not when it's you asking them for data, then they are buried in a silo as deep as hell.
The Vodafone button pushers would no doubt demand the ID of an old lady before agreeing to call an ambulance for her ongoing heart attack. Stalin's NKVD had nothing on these guys. These people are so versed in the practice of bureaucratic security that there is nothing you can do to reach the end of the endless tunnel of despair which they exist in. Not this way, no, not this way, that way, yes, no this way, that way, stop, go, backwards, no, you did not register, you do not pass Data Protection. How do we know you are who you say you are? Just ask me. I was a customer with you for 13 years. But we don't know that. Terry Gilliam, eat your heart out.
If you continue to talk over me sir I will terminate the call.
My crime is that I did not 'register' the phone that they sold me. This means that the phone does not exist on the Vodafone system, even though they provided this handset. I have been trying to register this handset with Vodafone and with the insurer for the last four hours. Once registered I can then blacklist it. Following? A nice Indian man at Vodafone contracts has just told me he will email me proof of usage for the phone. I hope this will satisfy the insurer. He will also blacklist the phone.

I am not there yet. There is more to be done for this insurance claim, which began in December. I will never, ever, ever take out an insurance policy on a phone again. If I lose this one, I will go back to using a string and a plastic cup with a hole in it.
I am not sure whether Vodafone or Phones4U Premier Plan are the worst culprit. I am not a little old lady but I don't spend my waking hours trying to remember exactly when I last topped up my phone a year ago, or remembering old security pins, oh I must register my phone with the evil corporation that sold it to me. This is my crime, for which I am now paying.
They don't seem to have any sense of duty to customers to do simple things like register a phone WHICH THEY SOLD. Nightmare.

Update 24 hours later...no email from Vodaphone, no proof of use. Back to square one.