Hello Leftists!

[LancashireLenin]

Hi, I'm Mike, 21 (but I won't be for long, as comrade Bragg sang) from Wigan in the UK, studying at a university in Wales. At university the political scene is quite weak, a few Marxists and Anarchists here and there, more so in the faculty that the students (especially in the social sciences department).

I'm personally some kind of Marxist, read all his major works from being an angry young Trotskyist in high school. I take from all strands without tending to one Marxist dogma or another. I'd say my background heavily influenced my politics, being the first to go to university (which I'd never even considered until it came to actually going, no one in my family had done college- hell, my dad never finished school). The only reason really I went to university was because the apprenticeship I was going to do fell through in the recession and it was take the chance on it or stay in the depressing, alienating cycle of unemployment and the kind of employment you can get when you're 18 and wearing your dad's old shirt and tie.

I must have been very young when I started being a socialist, can't remember a time when I wasn't.

Half because of and half despite of my socialism I'm an active member of the Labour Party, figuring that even if Britain doesn't have enough of a class basis for a party offering genuine social revolution, we can at least bloody the noses of the Tories and see some small victories, but don't worry I'm not some kind of shrinking reformist. That kind of 'Leftist' is just another mechanism for preventing genuine working class self-emancipation.

My great personal hero and idol is a local man called Gerrard Winstanley, who led the Diggers during the English Civil War.

Anyway, that's a bit about me, I imagine I'll lurk more than post for a while but will enjoy joining the discussion once I'm settled. Thanks for reading comrades!

[ellipsis]

Welcome! the labour party, eh? I would recommend rethinking working for them.

[Comrade_Oscar]

Greetings from America comrade, I started getting into socialism and communism because my mother is an immigrant from Mexico and she used to tell us how America ruined Mexico. I am in Texas and it sucks, everyone here is so incredibly ignorant. There are no leftist party here in America that have any substantial political sway and I do hope to move out of America but I don't know where. You got any suggestions?

[LancashireLenin]

Thanks for the replies guys :D I think the reason I'm in the Labour Party is because the situation in the UK is very much the same as Comrade Oscar finds it in America- there isn't that one leftist party that the undogmatic Marxist can join. We have many piddling little specialized sects, but no go-to left-wing party, which is a shame.

I really don't think Leftists like us would see substantial gains through parliament and the ballot box, so I don't really see helping Labour as hurting socialism particularly. I was in the count at the Welsh Assembly elections and saw my regional vote for the Welsh Communists joined by a mere 72 others in the constituency. Labour's excuse for collectivist politics is, I think, the furthest to the Left Britain's 'aristocracy of labour' white-collar electorate would stomach.

So while I have no illusions about Labour's effectiveness as a vehicle for the Left, from knocking on doors the most marginalised people's immediate concerns (the closure of a nursing home was a big example last election) are best served with a Labour council/MP/AM rather than a Tory or Liberal one. And I've met a good few comrades through Labour, lots of the grassroots are proper Lefts. I think the ones that aren't are only that way because defeats are dispiriting and eventually it's less about the policies and more about winning against the Tories to be honest, it's interesting to see the dynamics of the Labour Party and more than anything I think I'm learning a lot by being active in it :)

[heyjoe]

there was a group called the Diggers in the San Francisco area in the late 60's who were inspired by Gerrard Winstanley.

[Mr. Natural]

Welcome, Mike,

In the US, an anarchist group, Food Not Bombs, has made a practice of serving homeless people meals in parks. This has outraged authorities from San Francisco to Florida, and the repression of this group has been amazing.

Check out Wavvy Gravy, who has headed a Digger-like group for decades

We all really, really, really need a real political party to work with, don't we? We'll have to create it, and revleft seems to be the place where such things can be done.

Welcome!

[RedAnarchist]

Welcome to the forum. Kind of an unfortunate choice of a username, isn't it?

[LancashireLenin]

If I was born a year earlier it would be very unfortunate indeed!

Unless '89' stands for something Nazi-related too? In which case, oh bugger.

[ellipsis]

Welcome, Mike,

In the US, an anarchist group, Food Not Bombs, has made a practice of serving homeless people meals in parks. This has outraged authorities from San Francisco to Florida, and the repression of this group has been amazing.

Check out Wavvy Gravy, who has headed a Digger-like group for decades

We all really, really, really need a real political party to work with, don't we? We'll have to create it, and revleft seems to be the place where such things can be done.

Welcome!

To call FnB an anarchist group is inaccurate. Many anarchists are in the various chapters but as a banner/network is not Anarchist.

[ellipsis]

Welcome! the labour party, eh? I would recommend rethinking working for them.

Also I would recommend not using your name, location and age as a username on this site.

BTW "88" is Nazi numerology, it stands for HH or heil hitler. FYI

[Dogs On Acid]

Welcome to RevLeft.

As said before, I would seriously re-think about being in Labour if I were you, they are a Capitalist party and you will hurt Socialism in the UK indirectly by not acting as an example for other like-minded revolutionaries.

Have you considered joining the Socialist Workers Party?

[Sasha]

If I was born a year earlier it would be very unfortunate indeed!

Unless '89' stands for something Nazi-related too? In which case, oh bugger.

it was not the 89 bit it was the wiganmike, it is the name of an infamous nazi actvist

[Impulse97]

We all really, really, really need a real political party to work with, don't we? We'll have to create it, and revleft seems to be the place where such things can be done.


Yea, not really. Hell will freeze over before RL does anything positive for the Revolution or Party.

Welcome WM89!

[LancashireLenin]

I would possibly join either the Socialist Party (I imagine I would have been Militant back in the day), SWP or the Communist Party of Britain, but the way I see it is this: we're aiming to infuse the labour movement with socialism and Marxism. My judgment at the minute is that I can do that better, in the circumstances I'm in, within the Labour Party. I quite like the LRC and I quite like Socialist Appeal (one of the successors to the Militant tendency that remains within the Labour Party).

And hell, there are still pockets of hard-leftism among the grassroots of Labour. The group I'm a member of has at least one openly Stalinist member for instance, even if we don't always see eye to eye on everything...

[Garret]

Also from Wigan, welcome!