• Respect Activist Dave Hill, touring the world, speaks at Burleigh Heads, Queensland

Yesterday at Fradgley Hall at Burleigh Heads, on Australia's Gold Coast, David Hill, a
visiting Respect activist from the UK, spoke about his vision of resistance to the
ruling class.

Hill mentioned his background, where people often became policemen or soldiers, and
crime could be common, and also talked about his luck in winning entry to a privileged
grammar school.

During an academic career, he also became leader of the Labour group on the East Sussex
County Council. This gave him the chance to be wooed by champagne-wielding,
Paris-jaunt-dispensing representatives of the rulers, but when he returned to childhood
communities, he was brought back to earth. He got rid of both his suits.

He said he was in some ways glad of Thatcher, because she made it very clear what the
ruling class were all about. She pushed him from being a social democrat to being a
Marxist. Since, he said, entryism was the dominant idea at the time, he remained in the
Labour Party until 2005, not aligned in the battles of the early 80s to Militant Tendency, but as a non-aligned Marxist hostile to the leadership of the time.

Why would he stay inside New Labour for so long, he asked? He wanted a disciplined exit from the Labour Party. He did not want to spend his career isolated from a party that had a fighting chance at winning some power - he wanted at least a largish group of people to break away at the same time and work together.

Hill described labour movement politics in the UK - in the last twelve months, There
has been a big battle for control of trade unions and two big unions have been expelled
from the Labour party.

He explained that the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is the largest conservative-left
group in the UK.['conservative-left' is my term, expanded below, not his, and he
would disagree, 100%, with my analysis]

Hill is not a member of the SWP, but of Respect, an umbrella group which contains the
SWP and other groups. Respect's best-known figure is George Galloway, MP.

He said his biggest influence was a paper formerly called Militant,
(now The Socialist), although he briefly touched on the exclusivity and over-physicality of the people invlved there. I think this meant they could be violent.

He said he was impressed with Green Left Weekly - he did not understand the extent of
the Work Choices proposals in Australia until he read it.

Hill changed gear, and described neo-liberal capitalism as the most naked form of class
war outside of fascism. The ruling class, he said, is neo-conservative as well as
neo-liberal - he described the use of police, the army and so on as the
neo-conservative wing.

But once you know that, what do you do from there, he asked?

He said his task at the moment was to spread class consciousness. It's common for
capitalist media to say that 'class is dead', that class war is 'outdated', and so on.

But the capitalists know they are a class. They know it for sure. They defend their
interests. But the working class has been demobilised, because its members are not even
sure the class exists.

Workers don't have leadership now who can look at the ruling class system and work out what to do about getting rid of it. Changing that, said Hill, is one of everyone's jobs.

He also clearly stated that class is the main issue in the world today. He spoke and he
witnessed to the vicious and brutal nature of racism, sexism and sexual violence, but
pointed out that the capitalists could change their sexist racist ways if they wanted
to- but they would still be the
bosses, we would still have to work for them.

He said he was critical of people who said that patriarchy, or imperialism as such, is
the problem, even though "I come from a colonial nation". He described a talk with a
Kenyan student of his. First of all this student discussed British crimes against the
Kikuyu people. But then the student pointed out that a white capitalist class had been
removed, only to be replaced by a black capitalist class.

Hurricane Katrina was another telling example. Hill spoke of talking to his stepson who
was watching the TV news reports of the[wildly exaggerated] aftermath of the hurricane
in New Orleans.

His stepson, not an activist at all, said of the TV images "Is this America? I never
knew.".

Hill replied that not all the people in the Superdome were black. His stepson's loosely
formed opinion had been that race was the main problem in the USA. But the ruling class
is now recruiting talented blacks like Secretaries Rice and Powell.

Despite the no-doubt vicious and persistent racism each must have faced, they are both
rulers now, and they run the system we work for.

Hill touched on Althusser's description of what the ruling class does to keep itself in power - ideological means like controlling the media are used when possible, in order to avoid outright force.

He also reminded people of how Sir Oswald Moseley tried to march Blackshirts through the streets of the East End in the 1930s, and was forced out by the people of the area.
Hill wanted it very clear that this resistance was organised, it did not just happen.

There were some important things Hill said that I disagreed with.

The first was his misuse of the phrase 'working class', to mean 'blue collar worker'.

I would not be this pedantic if I were talking politics to the average worker. But when we are discussing serious theory, we need to be ultra-clear that the working class is comprised of anyone who has to work for a living, or they will have no money and no way to survive.

You can be a well-paid, well-treated, office worker with convenient hours, who went to a good school and lives in a nice suburb - but you are still working class if you can't leave your job for fear of poverty.

Hill also discussed the issue of 'bosses wages'. I think this is a point that the Left should drop.

Even if the bosses were not greedy, never stole a cent from anyone, and voluntarily limited their personal incomes in the name of fairness - even if we had bosses like that, they would still be bosses, and we would still have to work for them, or be homeless.

But there is a broader strategic issue where I disagree with what Hill said yesterday. Hill gave examples of the Congress (I) Party in India, that 'regulated' capitalism, and the recent street protests in France, that forced the Government there to drop a plan to give employers more control over their employees.

My argument is that yes, it is a class issue. So why are we discussing 'regulating' capitalism? It is good for the French that they can stall government action by protest, but that is not revolution. Capitalism still rules in France, it just has to be a little more careful about how it extracts profit.

I don't want to write off the need to fight short-term battles. We need to win people over, and that means helping to solve their everyday problems, not trying to convert them to revolution - at least not at first.

But, long-term, if that is our only vision, then we are on the strategic defensive. Indeed, when people complain here in Australia about the Government's Work Choices plans (making it easier to sack people and cut wages), they talk about 'defending' worker's rights.

That is conservative. That is why I used the phrase 'conservative-left' above. It is conservative to be in the habit of assuming that you will always be on the strategic defensive.

This does not mean we should just try and lead an armed attack on the state power anytime soon. It would be a foolish, romantic gesture.

But we must start spreading the idea that workers can and should kick the bosses out and take over. I don't want to be a better-treated slave, I want to be free.

Re Arthur's comments:

1) Links. Still working out how much linking is necessary. Can see how the above could be a bit overhwelming.

I can see some that I could cut, but for people who do not know of the political background, links like the ones to Militant and the wiki article on entryism are vital.

People can probably look up Secretaries Rice and Powell for themselves, though.

In the long run (5-10 years) , I hope that people will get used to assuming that online documents are linked, and that links will no longer be visible - people will just get in the habit of rolling a mouse over any text, and expecting rich, in-context linking.

2) Conservative-Left.

I've deliberately avoided the term pseudo-left, because

a) not 100% sure of the exact meaning
b) Its used as a swear-word - it means the same as 'stopper' in many circles, without making a serious try at analysing the political views of the person being described.

I've used conservative-left to mean, roughly, "using militant rhetoric while merely reacting to events". It is usually tied up reflexive Anti-Americanism (although Hill did not go down this path on Saturday).

I started using it after a discussion here on the difference between pseudos and confused left.

I'm not using it as a synonym for 'social democrat'.

From what you are saying,

"Militant Reformism" describes non-revolutionaries who honestly fight and win a few battles to help further immediate material interests of groups of workers.

"Pseudo-left" describes non-revolutionaries who dishonestly fight and lose a few battles to tie the loalty of groups of workers to their 'only friends'.

I had not thought the class connection through any more, in fact thought I was being a bit pedantic bringing it up. Your comment makes me want to look deeper.

And yep, if I were a militant reformist who had, say, led a successful rent-strike, I would resent revolutionary-er-than-thou preaching, too.

The original speaker has replied, here

There is a version of the article here - the link colours are much more subtle and less obtrusive.

youngmarxist: My eyes had completely glazed over by the time I got to the sub-head "Weber: Class, the Cultural "Market," and False Consciousness" in Professor Hill's article and I simply cannot spend more time on scanning, let alone unravelling such deliberately foggy and obscurantist language.

However my impression is that he was waffling against the idea that culturally "blue collar" strata are the (only) working class and in support of your own view on that issue - so you may well have misunderstood/misrepresented him as he claims, if his article represents the same viewpoint as his speech (indeed it would be difficult to not misunderstand anyone who writes like that if he speaks in he same foggy way).

Perhaps I gave up too early but I would not characterize the views in the article as "conservative left" any more than "pseudo-left". Nor did it seem to be pushing "militant reformism". However I feel no need to try to adequately characterize views that were so written that I simply could not bear to keep ploughing on attempting to read them.

BTW link to Congress (I) looks like erroneous note on his reference to Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, mentioned in written response to your comments. That is an entirely different party

I am mentioning this to illustrate that unselective linking could be positively misleading - anybody reading your link to wikipedia and not reading his written comments would gain a similar (presumably wrong) impression of what he was saying to yours. Also his failure to pick up the (presumed) error when commenting tends to confirm my view that such extravagent linking simply won't be read at all since if anybody would be interested in links from your comments about his talk he would surely be the most likely to actually click on them and notice any serious misrepresentation of what he was saying. (I noticed this later only because I happen to have once had an interest in obscure "Maoist" sects in India such as the CPI(ML) that publishes "Liberation" so his mention of it jarred with a link to the very well known Indian Congress Party (Indira).

Your general criticism of the linking style is valid - see below.

However, I think I am correct in saying he referred to the Congress (I) Party, not the Marxist party. His point was that the restrictions and hedges on Indian capitalism in the days of the 'licence raj', when Congress (I) dominated, were something to be aspired to.

I've been thinking seriously about the linking style.

First of all, there are high-priority and low-priority links. All 'general reference' links are low priority.

Here on LS, I will only post high-priority links. That is, only links that go to new information or very useful arguments or background, carefully chosen, and not included when in doubt.

On my blog, where the same articles are published simultaneously, I will have high-priority links in much brighter colours (bright blue) than low-priority links (dull purple).

Low-priority links also need to be more than just a link to Wikipedia because they have something on the topic.

I'm already usng del.ici.ous a lot, and will start using it as the main site to store 'reference' lnks. That is, a useful collection of reference sites. This will probably include the Wiki and Google search links, but I will also look for good reference material for each topic and start building a useful, rich - but non-obtrusive - background to my background links.

This is a fair bit of work, but I think that learning how to build rich cross-referencing on the Net is going to be a valuable skill.

Ok, looks like I misunderstood his reference to the fraternity of Respect, Socialist Alliance and CPI(ML)Liberation as the source for your link to Congress(I).

BTW the links in comments to his longer article and to the United Casual Workers Alliance are what I take to be exactly the sort of links that are useful (did read both).

Had to laugh at th UCWA site.

What We Fight For

...

Restrictions on the ability of businesses to use casual labour

...

Seems to be a classic illustration of the sort of "mass organizations", "rank and file groups" etc that are setup from templates to provide the "militant reformist" camouflage for an essentially reactionary tendency.

In the sixties they were just an oddball fringe, widely despised among the left (though sucking some people in). Sadly after so many decades unchallenged people actually believe that such groups represent the "hard left".

I was fascinated by a recent article in the Australian right-wing journal Quadrant by Keith Windschuttle complaining about vicious attacks on him from "the left" as represented by Robert Manne. Windschuttle was involved in the periphery of the left in the sixties Vietnam movement and Robert Manne was and is a notorious right-wing anti-communist ideologue but I detected no signs of insincerity in Windschuttle's outrage at the "left" attacks on him.

This phenomena is why I think the most important contribution we can make is in really clarifying and widely propagating the concept of a "pseudo-left". Your decision to deliberately avoid that term as its meaning is still unclear and it is still more widely used as a form of abuse rather than analysis depresses me as I don't have the time or energy for patient explanations or elaborations, so I focussed on side issues instead of that central point which I still wish was the well understood common ground at this site but feel helpless to do more about getting that idea across if others still don't "get it" or see why its important.