31 August, 2017

New Special Issue: A Guided Walk Through Ideality



Orogenesis: Turner, 2003
From "Landscapes Without Memory" by Joan Fontcuberta


This latest edition of SHAPE takes a closer look at the notion of Ideality, and the idealism which lies at the heart of mathematics, and subsequently all of the sciences and technologies which depend on it. The work arose from a response by long time colleague and good friend of mine, Peter Mothersole, to a paper about mathematics I sent to him a short time ago.

His questions, as always, were particularly apt, and needed a better response than the dispersed papers of the past. So, several new papers were written, and bundled together with a small collection of older, yet appropriate ones from the past, to deal with the issue of Ideality in this discipline, and the sciences which rely on it.

So, this special issue is dedicated to Dr. Peter Mothersole, and shared here with any other interested parties.

Enjoy!


A Guided Walk Through Ideality 

Absolute Distillations 

Idealisitic Sciences 

Continuity, Descreteness and Movement 

Where is Nirvana?









30 August, 2017

Facebook censors leftwing content






After hearing about repression of progressive and radical content by Google, it now appears as if this journal has now also fallen victim to the so-called fight against "low-quality content".

We recently boosted a post about Socialism using Facebook's advert manager (you can see the 'inappropriate' content below). Initially the post was approved, then a couple of hours later we learnt that not only had they reversed this decision, but they had suspended our account! 

They have provided no information as to why the content was deemed unacceptable, and haven't responded to our appeals. How can this be anything but censorship?








29 August, 2017

Why Socialism Failed III


Park Hill, Sheffield, 2016 by Michael C Coldwell


Key Questions for Socialists: Part III
What is to be done?


Theory, policies and practice


In these criticisms of current supposedly Marxist political theory and activity, the prior instalments of this urgent contribution have indeed been primarily theoretical. NOT, I must insist, as merely a moral stand for Justice-for-All, but via the only current account based upon the most developed and revealing philosophical stance yet revealed by humankind.

The proof of this has been established in the prior contributions of this essay, concerning both successful and indeed revolutionary contributions by Modern Marxism to the Sciences - resolving the Major Crisis in Modern Sub Atomic Physics, but also across the board in questions such as the Origin of Life on Earth, and most important of all, in further developments to Marxist Philosophy itself.

Several crucial lessons must be concretized in our future practice:-

First - in the conscious use of the most advanced Philosophy ever achieved in our day-to-day Analysis & Praxis: Theory must be paramount.

Second - in our emphasis upon the Youth, for they have the energy and ability to change and fight for a different future.

Third - in the priority of building Trade Unions, and Working Class Organisations of all kinds to bring our Class together in both Action and Leisure.

Fourth - in the winning of intellectuals to our cause via the quality of our philosophical methods and arguments, across the board.

Let us deal with these in turn, while emphasizing that only-a-subset of these objectives will be certain to Fail. All have been tried separately at different times, always engendering a forward surge, but without the others also contributing, that surge will inevitably lose-way and fail. To have a Revolution, the Class itself must be moving forward on all fronts, to make the most of opportunities as they arise, and they most certainly will.





Theory

Let us address the first requirement - The Paramount Role of Theory!

It certainly wasn't such my experience as I sought for and joined what I considered to be the best Marxist organisations. Indeed, even Marxist Economics was not an ever-present factor in preparing us for our political interventions. An understanding of the history and role of Trade Unions was absent all too often. If anything they were seen as an alternative, even competing option, for our Class - stressing only Defence, but never the intended Socialist future. And, in addition, all Theory was handed down from the leaders, not as such, but instead as already-decided-policies. I cannot remember a single case of a thorough-going philosophical discussion, followed by a change in our practice. And as for a day-by-day update upon what was going on - absolutely nothing! I was, somehow, part of a new editorial board for a theoretical Journal, for which I suggested the name "Marxist", but I was immediately dropped from that role, and was never able to play any further part!

In spite of being won for Marxism by Lenin's Materialism and Empirio Criticism, I never had a single discussion with my comrades upon those topics. And, though the term Dialectics was occasionally mentioned, it certainly never was at the heart of any analyses presented to us. I had to find it for myself in solving problems in my profession as a physicist, and, crucially, via researches in the dynamics of movement.

Dialectical Materialism for Marx was the most penetrating and effective Method as well as a Philosophical Stance.


Youth

The proof of the earlier point about advancing on all fronts, is best exemplified by the regular and correct concentration upon enthusing and recruiting Youth.

More than once it was been realised and pursued with vigour, producing remarkable progress. The last 50 years has seen great strides made in this direction, but without any subsequjent genuine issue in the struggle. The youthful tide rose, seemingly inexorably, and then fell, leaving a generation having been returned to apathy by the inadequacies of the Movement!



Trade Unions & Single Issue Politics


I group these two together because they represent the most debilitating of the Movement's inadequacies in the turn to indigenous causes of the people and of our Class. I, along with most of my sometime colleagues in the Movement in the 1960s, came into politics via University. We were mostly ex-Grammar School Working Class students, who via that route had been wrenched from their Class Context at about 11 years old, and via academic success reached University, and come across many others like themselves, who were finding Revolutionary Politics and Grasping it with both hands.

There was absolutely no revolutionary politics, or politics of any kind, in the unskilled Working Class where I come from, so the version presented at University was very exotic, and included little or nothing about Trades Unions and their role in the Working Class. And, it didn't come up. Though at one stage I along with other comrades started to do "Factory Gate" interventions, the workers either entering or leaving weren't interested, and frankly we had little to say that would interest them.

Literally nothing was achieved by such interventions. Indeed, it was entirely by chance that I found out what to do. An Indian neighbour called Rajnikant had knocked on my door as he had seen some of my wood carvings through the window, and asked if I would teach him how to do it. So, he came around regularly and I showed him what to do. Then, one day he came round and asked for my help. He worked, along with many others from his community in a factory, where the white foreman was running a protection racket. All the workers had to pay him, or they would lose their jobs. 






Rajnikant and I wrote an article for the paper of the Party I belonged to, and we hit the factory gates in numbers throughout a particular day. By the end of the day the foreman had been sacked, and all the workers knew who and how it had been achieved.

Yet if I had approached Rajnikant in the town centre, chances are he wouldn't have been interested. Friendship first had opened the door. I should have known better, for earlier we had been providing Youth Clubs, and football teams for youth on local parks, and had begun to gather good numbers in our clubs. We even managed to develop a very competant Football team with both Indian and West Indian players, some of whom later became nationally famous.

But, as mentioned earlier, success upon a single front will not, by itself, be enough!

Now, with this in mind, how should we look upon what is usually called Single Issue Politics? I remember when the SWP in the United States embarked upon "Hands off Cuba" as their over-riding Single Issue Policy, the group I belonged to denounced it s chasing numbers for short term success, and so it turned out! Clearly the "evident-easy-way-out" of the problem of building the Movement guarantees ultimate failure.

Most such campaigns have merit, but you must join them with an evidently much wider stance and programme. If some campaigns seem counter-productive, don't abandon them. Keep a wide set of objectives and analyse all the difficulties you confront!



Winning Scientists to The Marxist Banner

Now, in addressing this requirement, we have to know both why it's important and how to do it!

It will only rarely be achieved by single issues, no matter how currently popular and important they seem. The only real way is to solve individual problems within specialist fields, when nobody else within the discipline is anywhere near doing so. And, thereafter, debate with any within the discipline who have been impressed, and thus reveal other aspects to be addressed. 


Science has retreated from materialism, into maths-led idealism


I'm afraid that by the time I was addressing the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, I had long retired from my University post, and inserted a whole new career in Multimedia Design and Production. I knew no professional physicists, anymore, so had no professional contacts to discuss with, so I had to do it all (à la Marx), from the bottom up!

It isn't easy, and Karl Marx, himself, decided he had to do precisely what I have outlined above with regard to Capitalist Economics, and being, effectively, the only one with that revolutionary standpoint and method, he spent the rest of his life doing precisely that.

Very, very few have done anything similar even when they professed a Marxist standpoint, or claimed to be a Marxist intellectual. Now, everyone cannot "Do a Marx", but every single valid contribution in a specialist field will impress someone, especially if such contacts are energetically sought, in that field, and at least begin that process.

But, I haven't yet said why such recruiting is necessary.

Without my long and varied carreer in several different disciplines, I would never have had a chance to even tackle such a task as I have now successfully undertaken. We need these intellectuals in our team, and we can get them because they also need our standpoint and methodology - they just don't know it yet!

21 August, 2017

Why Socialism Failed II


Park Hill, Sheffield

Key Questions for Socialists: Part II
Further Sciences and Dialectical Philosophy



Philosophical Devolopments:-
Their Effects & Recursional Consequences


The omissions outlined in Part I of this essay, are only a part of what is essential to be fully addressed in the philosophical, political and policy stance of a Marxist Revolutionary Party, right NOW! Our theory must evolve, and to do so it must take on the sciences.

In Part I, there was outlined the necessary extension of Marxism into a criticism of the current idealist domination within Physics, under the auspiices of The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, but that was only one of the Sciences, and certainly not the most conducive to a Dialectical Materialist approach.

Marx was a professional historian, so his first and most important applications were in the trajectory of the developments in Human Societies - his understanding of Revolutions! And, thereafter to his lifelong study of Capitalist Economics. But, at the heart of his stance and methods was the Dialectics of the idealist Hegel, re-applied with a Materialist stance, not just to Human Thought and Formal Logic, but to the concrete Real World too, and the Evolution of Reality.

Clearly, the most obvious Science to which this approach could be applied, after Darwin's Origin of Species, and The Ascent of Man, had to be in Biology. And it is there, in addition to History that the confirmation, elaboration and development of his approach could be achieved.

Whereas, though the same evidence is, indeed, embedded, almost irretrievably, in Geology and even in Cosmology, it is clearly accessible-in-detail in History and Biology, which have, and will still, enhance this powerful holistic approach, continuously, along with the developments in those studies. Accordingly, this teacher of Biology, as well as his primary profession in Physics, and his lifetime studies in Philosophy, has made significant contributions in those fields too.

In Marxist Philosophy he has produced two key theories:-

1. The Processes and Productions of Abstraction


 A new video from Shape Journal exploring the ideas behind my Processes and Productions of Abstraction diagram.




...and

2. The Trajectory of an Emergence




The first was based upon Physics and Mathematics, and the second upon Biology and History.

In addition, he has developed the theory of Truly Natural Selection, taking Darwin's gains backwards, into the development of pre-life, non-living processes, though of course with a very different, enabling set of mechanisms and influences. And, he has also re-designed Stanley Miller's Famous Experiment into the evolution of pre-life processes on Earth, into an analysable sequence of experiments using current technologies to reveal possible development paths - again wholly within non-living substances and their reactions.


Marxism I - Miller's Experiment


Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, it has to be mentioned that the turning point in all of his studies was in a remarkable period of research into producing Multimedia Aids to help in the Teaching of Dance Performance and Choreography for which he and his Dance expert colleague Dr. Jacqueline Smith-Autard won A British Interactive Video Autard

The problem was in the analysis of movement from recorded Footage both via Analogue and Digital means. For, though Analogue recordings gave excellent dynamics, they were both incredibly poor on giving precise positioning, and by no means either adequately or subtly controllable, while Digital recordings, being instead composed entirely of stills, killed all dynamics while giving precise positional information.

Going back through Hegel to Zeno's findings on the Paradoxes inherent in analysing Movement, thence to Dialectics, and finally to Marx's materialist transformation, he was able to use BOTH means plus animated & synchronised overlays to solve the problems for the first time, by delivering both past and even subsequent movements too!

It also transformed his take upon many other areas also.

For Movement is certainly the Key! Not only Movement-in-Space, but also all forms of real Qualitative Change, Development, and even dramatic Emergent Events, including Evolution of all kinds, and Revolutions too.

Now, the dominance of the Principle of Plurality in Formal Logic, Mathematics and, indeed, all of the Sciences, was not just a unifying trick, though crucially it was always that too. The main justification for its entrenchment in so many areas, and even disciplines, was that is seemed to be generally true literally everywhere, due to the natural preponderance of Stability to emerge-dynamically in all immediately-observed situations.

In other words, its presence was not only a frig, it also reflected the natural tendencies of complex situations with multiple varying and contrasting-or-competing, components, so arrive, all other things being equal, to a Stable State.

Now, none of these stabilities are ever permanent, but they are ubiquitous, so the natural tendency was to consider the Stable State as primary, and any following variability as due to an outside, imposed agencies.

And, such a stance, makes the detailed studies of Stable or even artificially stabilised situations, as studying the most important things, and explaining their properties. While the possibility of the given collection-of-components, within the stability, not only having been significant in its establishment, but are also invariably also the causes of its demise, is never even considered!

The holist, Dialectical Materialist stance takes that latter, usually ignored, possibility as the main-area-for-study.

So, in all things, the correct stance and investigations must be to grapple with the always even-if-long-lasting temporary stabilities, and the cross influences between components to either achieve a balance - as in a Stability, OR slip into one or another of the possible dissociations of that Stability into a general dramatic moment of multiple qualitative changes. In other words the most important periods to study are the Major Qualitative Events we call Emergences, or when applied to Society - Revolutions!

Now, readers of this tract, might well be wondering what all this has to do with everyday political activities and the problems they create. With some justice they might dismiss it all as unusable Theory.

But, they would be wrong!




As a political activist, myself, of very long standing, I too was frequently presented with what seemed to be unsolvable problems, and carried on doing the same things, regardless, hoping for some kind of break (and more often than not failing to get any).

But, do we think we are banging our head against a brick-wall, a natural stability that is more or less permanent? For, if we do, we are not treating such impasses dialectically at all!

What for example did the inventor of Dialectics, GWF Hegel, do when presented with a logical impasse, he addressed the contradictions which made a transcending of the impasse seemingly impossible, and unearthed the hidden premises that made that situation occur. And once they were in his hands he studied them to see if they were correct and fixed or variable, and in the latter cases tried alternative values for that premise.

This isn't yet Marxism, but it is its direct antecedent, and often it worked admirably. A change made to the flawed premise transformed the situation. And, what I have outlined above is just the very first step (200 years old and discovered by the idealist Hegel).

Marx, took both this and the rest of Hegel's Dialectics of Human Thinking and transferred it over to be applicable to the whole concrete World, and thus created Marxism!

So, is the above useless?

Why Socialism Failed III


03 August, 2017

Changes


Photograph by Michael C Coldwell


How does Reality develop? It’s certainly a fair question!

But, it will be answered very differently depending upon your accepted philosophic premises.

If you are a Materialist you will start with Matter!

If you are an Idealist you will start with Principles!

But, right away, you will have a problem - What is Energy? Clearly, Matter isn’t always totally static: it moves. But, what moves it? Does an impulse come from outside of Matter - from outside of Reality, from a supernatural source? And, exactly where does everything in Reality actually happen? Must we also have a Nothing (Totally Empty Space?) as well as Matter? And, is that Nothing merely a point, or is it infinite? Are questions of Origin and Development reasonable, or is what exists eternal, and has always been, basically, the same?

Now, certain ideas are quite obviously rubbish!

A moment’s consideration very quickly disposes of the more blatant suppositions.

Why?

It is because of CHANGE!

And, that is evident not only everywhere we look, but also in our thoughts!

And, it is in our thoughts that we find both Infinity, and even the impulse to act: so, this led to the idea of the Thinking of a Supreme Being, thinking up absolutely Everything!

That diametrically opposite idea to Materialism - Idealism, is centred upon Thought - as the Active Impulse, but exactly where is that happening? It isn’t in my head or yours, and also for it to manipulate Reality, it somehow has to be both outwith our Reality, but capable of changing anything in our Reality. 



You can certainly see where the idea of God came from! It is that Super Being, conceived in Man’s own image in his Thought. But, millennia of the experience of Mankind does not gel with such a concept, so something entirely within Our concrete Reality just had to be the active Impulse. 

So, it was next embodied in Pure disembodied Energy, which existed alongside a totally passive and inert Matter. Without this Energy, absolutely nothing would change in any way. So, it could only be in that situation. and only then, that anything could possibly be eternal.

Yet, the results of millennia of studies by Mankind, has “revealed” only a series of “discovered” eternal Natural Laws, which never vary, but somehow add together to produce real CHANGE

But, how does that work? How can fixed Laws produce some things that are wholly New? Something more complicated - Yes, that’s definitely possible! But, such a mechanistic view can never cope with the wholly NEW. Clearly, what is produced must not only deliver “the complex”, but also change-the-very-context that produced it: there must be Recursion!

You can never step into the same river twice!

Indeed, “Everything must be affected (changed) by everything else!” The earlier assumptions, outlined above, must have been wrong-from-the-start: instead of the pluralist idea of eternal Natural Laws, we must, instead, have the holist alternative of constant or incessant CHANGE

Now, what does that mean?

It can only be that Materialism must involve both Matter-and-Energy - present together always - from the outset. Indeed, Energy is the mode of existence of Matter: Energy is Matter in Motion!

Now, this seems just as counter-intuitive as there being no-change-at-all: for, quite evidently, we are surrounded by a multitude of things, which are, quite clearly, both Static-and-Unchanging. But, that is an illusion, as conversely is also the sudden inexplicable major transformations that seem to occur as well.

The problem is that Man lives for altogether too short a time to observe great changes, while also living too slowly to see others. Indeed, our world appears to be dominated by what we term Stability - things remaining exactly as they are - seemingly forever.

But, that is never the case, for though constant the changes occur to different things, and at different rates; and the summations of multiple affecting factors are changing all the time, it is usually insufficiently to undermine their Stability overall.

Yet, at some inevitable point the multiple factors can tip the balance and precipitate a major transformation, which crucially also changes the context too.

At our rate of living, we are seeing only Stills within a much longer Movie - only occasionally observing the big changeovers, which we then call Emergences or Revolutions.




Indeed, when Man had no means of extending his view beyond what he could immanently experience, his conclusions had to be totally and erroneously determined by that very selective experience. To conceive of things beyond that very limited “now”, required means of delivering sequential and indisputable records of past situations. And, the first of these was in Writing, when accounts of past experiences gradually accumulated as History - to be passed on to later generations.

And, even more profoundly, via a study of the rocks beneath our feet, in Geology - there was a realisation of significant changes, upon a mammoth scale, and taking, often, millions of years to both happen, and then be left as consequent records-in-the-rocks.

In addition, Man’s viewing of the extremely small was vastly extended by the Microscope. While, his grasp of the colossally-large was significantly improved by the Telescope.

Many intrinsic developments within Mankind itself, also enabled a vast number of such extensions - pragmatically via Technology, and conceptually by Reasoning, and in understanding via Science.

Of Course, in spite of such extensions in the ideas and thinking of Mankind, what was achieved could not but be compromised: there was not, never has been, and will never be a direct route to Absolute Truth, and all gains, though they appeared to be such - never ever were! But, nevertheless, each concrete gain possessed a “Measure of Truth”: it was best described as Objective Content, for in appropriately maintained circumstances, it could deliver what was intended.

Yet, each and every achievement always contained the seeds of its own inevitable failure as the Domain of its application was attempted to be significantly extended.

Indeed, right at the beginning of these developments in Ancient Greece, these flaws were already apparent. Zeno of Elea in his famous Paradoxes, demonstrated such failures via the alternative concepts of Continuity and Descreteness, when considering Movement.

Indeed, many more such Dichotomous Pairs were discovered all over the place, but never rationally transcended. Instead, Mankind fell back upon his earliest discovery - Pragmatism, so -”If it works, it is right”, was used to by-pass such impasses.

Indeed, no real rational resolution, to Zeno’s revelations, was achieved over the next 2,300 years, until Friedrich Hegel, sought-out and used such Dichotomous Pairs to reveal the underlying problem, which turned out to be in the premises used to logically arrive at such dead ends. Hegel realised, further, that the standard means of reasoning, namely Formal Logic, did not, and indeed could not, deal with Qualitative Change. He developed a means of dealing with changing situations via such Opposites, and transitions between them, which he termed Dialectics. But his objective of a Logic of Change wasn’t achieved, and to this day is still absent in most Reasoning.

Yet, the possibility of a path to a resolution had been exposed.

The possible solution surely resided in Science. But, Hegel was an Idealist, and he could never achieve such an integration. His best follower, Karl Marx, however, did glimpse that path. It would involve a major switch from Idealism to Materialism, but would, necessarily, involve a major revolution in both Philosophy and in Science, the way forward was indeed possible.

Clearly, the only receptacle of past changes, that was available for study, had to be History, so that is where he started. For, only in Social Development were the necessary trajectories of Qualitative Change, available for study - in Social Revolutions. And, just such a transformation had recently taken place in France, and had been intensively studied and recorded in great detail by the brilliant French Historian - Michelet.

Marx’s objective was Science, but, first, he had to be adequately equipped to do the job, so in History, his own expert field, he had to find the means. But, History’s lessons turned out to be endless: Reality was NOT a static, conquerable area, but a constantly developing headlong-rush. And, in addition, that study imposed unavoidable political imperatives upon Marx, and his new main emphasis became preparing for the next Revolution - the Overthrow of Capitalism. 




Science would have to wait!

A scientific study of Capitalist Economics had to be the paramount task, and it took him the rest of his life. Indeed, the Fourth volume of his Das Kapital, was only published after his death.

CHANGES were still unanswered in many areas: and the key area of Science was still relatively untouched.

And, in addition, though Marx had wrested Dialectics from Hegel’s idealistic grasp, he had still NOT formulated it comprehensively and overtly as a [philosophical method, nor had he addressed Abstraction in the new context, nor the actual Trajectory of what was now generally termed an Emergence (a Revolution). That would only be possible by a Marxist revolutionary living through, and acting in, such an event, and that would soon happen in the Russian Revolution.






New Special Issue: The Nanocosm!





My ongoing investigation into a material Universal Substrate which explains magnetism, gravity and the propagation of light, has lead to the realisation that the sub-atomic realm must be divided into various levels, at colossally different scales.

The time has come to address these Internal Worlds of The Universal Substrate - that is the inter-relationships of the suggested different Substrate Units both with-each-other, and also with any macrocosmic events happening within that sub-macrocosmic Substrate as Universal Ground.

Now, from the outset, it must be made clear that these Various Units, though of the same basic mutually-orbiting, bi-particle construction, are, nevertheless, related to others of the very same kind in very different ways, and via diverse properties. AND, crucially, they are also of vastly different sizes. The lowly Electron Neutrino is some 600,000,000 times smaller than the Magnetons at the other end of this colossal scale!

My contention is that these effectively constitute very different “Worlds of the Underlying Cosmos”, below the macrocosm of the everyday world.

Nested Substrate Levels


Emma McNally



How the Different Fields of the Universal Substrate co-exist




There are, as yet, unsolved problems with our suggestion of a "Multi-Level Substrate", for two very good reasons! 

First, we have to accommodate multiple kinds of fields, utilising different levels within the Substrate, yet occupying the very same volumes of "Space"! 

And second, the summation of multiple fields of the same type and occurring at the same level within the substrate, but involving different directions (due to different initiators). 

It is the former problem which is the easiest to solve, because as the simultaneous fields are of very different types, they will be utilising different units of the Substrate - involving very different Unit sizes, and hence occurring at very different levels. For, such sub-Substrate systems can interpenetrate one another - one existing within the interstices or gaps between those of the other, larger kind: in effect the two fields are occupying the very same space. 

But, such a handy separation will NOT be available when the two different fields are of exactly the same type, and are affecting a single unit of the substrate, for they will invariably involve different directions. 

So, as the shells are building outwards from two different initiators in re-orientating the affected substrate units, these "tides" extending outwards from different initiators will ultimately meet - and a unit common to two fields will be somehow be changed to include the joint effects of both. 

But, this could be solved by the Vector Addition of Amount (given by distance from the initiator) and Direction (given by the orientation of the internal orbit's axis) and these would merge to give a joint energy amount and resultant direction, within a single unit.




Special Issue 52 - The Nanocosm

02 August, 2017

Google attacks Leftwing websites


Google's monopoly can no longer be tolerated


According to the World Socialist Web Site, Google has recently been severely restricting access to the Left media and alternative news outlets, WSWS losing 70% of their traffic since April 2017.

“Google’s claim that it is protecting readers from ‘fake news’ is a politically motivated lie. Google, a massive monopoly, with the closest ties to the state and intelligence agencies, is blocking access to the WSWS and other left and progressive web sites through a system of rigged searches.”

David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS

01 August, 2017

Why Socialism Failed I


Park Hill, Sheffield by Michael C Coldwell, 2016 

Key Questions for Socialists: Part I
Beyond Within-Capitalism Activism

Historical Introduction 

As a socialist all my adult life, and a committed and a still-producing Marxist theorist, and finally someone who has been actively involved in the Revolutionary Left for most of that time, I have some important criticisms of what comrades concentrate upon, while often ignoring other absolutely essential areas without which the successful conclusion of our efforts will be impossible.

In truth, the state of socialist priorities is, indeed, a consequence of acting within Capitalism, to win hearts and minds of the Working Class, for many things are considered to be unaddressable in that context - they are questions about what will have to be done both establishing a nascent Socialist State, and thereafter implementng its required structure.

Nevertheless, such questions cannot be left unaddressed. Not even a Revolution can switch Capitalism off, and at a atroke, institute Socialism as-a-readymade, well-understood alternative.

Indeed, originating from a Victorian slum, in Gorton, Manchester almost 80 years ago, I knew that you voted Labour from infancy, but what it then meant was the achievements in Nationalisation of the post-war Atlee-led government. And, the gains made seemed prodigious, and even the basis for a possible Socialist Society: but as history has shown, that was far from the actual case! All the wealth remained in the hands of the Owning Class, as did the Media of all kinds, and every possible hostile activity and undermining was brought into play, both within the country and from outside (due to the debts incurred in fighting the then recent War).


Manchester in the 1950s, Shirley Baker


And, in spite of significant gains by the actions of that Labour Government, who was it that was then charged with implementing it for the benefit of the people? Literally all the doctors involved had been, and were still, opposed to the project, and continued to treat Working Class patients as they had done in the past.

How about this!

My father, an ex-wartime fireman, died, aged 59, of a treatable illness, which was never diagnosed.  My maternal grandad died of pneumonia ONE DAY after being sent packing by his GP "as a malingerer". My mother, after two detached retinas, two years apart, was first made totally blind in one eye due to the failure of a new technique, and then lost the sight in the other due to exactly the same reason.

Now, the Tories lyingly blamed the NHS, as it indirectly infers now, at every possibile opportunity, for such tragedies, but it wasn't, and still isn't, true: it was the doctors who treated them, and their low opinion of their patients from the poor!

Oh, and by the way, I too have had very similar inadequate diagnoses and treatment, and have been chronically ill for almost 40 years, having to retire early after working with that disability for 14 years due to the results of a damaging operation.

Perhaps I digress, but my point is surely clear - Social Democracy is not enough! We got a committed Social Democratic government in 1945, but the economic power remained with the rich.

So, what are the implications for what we should do now?

The economic slump of 2008 did not only expose the inadequacies of Capitalism, but unleashed an almighty assault upon the Working Class to pay-the-bill, while, at the same time, attempting to remove every single gain remaining from the nationalisations and social programmes of the 1940s, and the achievements in living standards by the Working Class. 




Today, I watched a "debate" between Peter Taafe of the Socialist Party and Michael Crick, a clear enemy of our class - proved throughout his contributions, which were a continuation of his attacks upon that organisation in three previous books, AND, in this "debate"the usual lies repeated heatedly and often, AND in spite of his anti-Labour stance, displaying a clear union with those still-present in the Labour Party of today, who had expelled them in the past.

NOTE: If you're wondering, the writer of this article was also expelled from the Labour Party too, but in 1964, having transformed the campaign in my city, in our electoral efforts to achieve a Labour Government, in which we succeeded! Peter Taafe's expulsion came 20 years later, after major successes for his grouping in Liverpool. By the way, Crick was also involved in "exposing" that "criminal insertion" into the Labour Party then too.

As an aside to this you don't invite agents of the enemy class to a debate, ever!

So, what has to be done? Finally, we get around to my main purpose in writing this essay, "What are the Key Questions now imperative for the Revolutionary Left to address?"

The first is obvious, but strangely absent.

Where are the necessarily constant Marxist Economic Updates, such as Professor Richard Wolff supplies both weekly and monthly on 80 radio stations across America and on YouTube?

Don't you think they are necessary?

Chunkymark isn't really a Marxist, but he finds it absolutely essential to deliver a daily YouTube rant against the Capitalist establishment. And, he is right! 





For he's genuinely angry, and so should we be! Politics isn't measured argument: it is heart, anger and commitment, that strikes at the arrogance, greed and hatred of the enemy class - especially NOW! It is a rallying call for recruiting allies that will trust you, and when the time comes will remember.

And, where is the rest of Marxist Theory?

When I was a young Physics student, I joined the Communist Party after reading Lenin's Materialism and Empirio Criticism, as it correctly destroyed, philosophically, the Positivist position of physicists Henri Poincaré and Ernst Mach. Here was the answer to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory I was being force-fed in my University course.

But, I was mistaken: it wasn't the place.

Indeed, the number-one-priority, intellectually, for Marxists to tackle in Science was this crucial philosophical question. And, in spite of seeking that theory wherever I thought it might be, I didn't succeed.

The switch by Marx from Idealism to Materialism was precisely to unify Philosophy with Science, and he demonstrated how to do it in the volumes of his work, Das Kapital. It took him the rest of his life to complete it, and he fully expected his followers to complete the same sort-of-undertaking on Science. The books on Science by his colleague Frederick Engels, along with his own Mathematical Manuscripts proved his intentions.

It is over a century since Lenin's book, where are the vital following works?

The question was rhetorical, for I know the answer: I have had to do it myself, and like Marx I had to work many decades part-time and the last 10 years full-time to complete it.

And, there are other important omissions,which I will outline in Part II...