A Radical New View of the Left

As a Libertarian Socialist, I offer an alternative Left-wing view of news & politics in the 21st century. Also, why does the traditional Left seemingly have no real answers, just trite criticisms? I try to answer the questions of the age without simply repeating the platitudes of a centuries old ideology. We need to understand ourselves to defeat the right. Long Live Catalonia and Rojava!

[modernsocialist]

We are in a crisis that has led to massive unemployment and this is just a taste of what lufe will be like when artificial intelligence is fully utilised by the corporations and their billionaire bosses. In my video I talk about why we need a Universal Basic Income as soon as possible.

[modernsocialist]

Silver Linings - #ResistBoris No.1

It's time for us to be optimistic about the future. Johnson's victory shows that it's time we built a better lives for ourselves.

[modernsocialist]

I've decided to Vote Green in 2019. Here's why.

[modernsocialist]

Boris Johnson is a liar

My new video for Modern Socialist is out now!

It's Boris Johnson's Craziest Lies!

https://youtu.be/ZQFO7fDpv6E

[modernsocialist]

The ultimate peaceful expression of the working class is the general strike. We must now use it to take on the far-right.

General Strike Now!

[modernsocialist]

The global Climate Strike is coming this Friday, 20th September. We need a Green New Deal Now! To find out more see my video for Modern Socialist.

[modernsocialist]

There is a climate crisis. That is why there will be a Climate General Strike on September 20th. To mark this I argue why we need a Green New Deal Now!

[modernsocialist]

Bigly Thanks, Comrades!

Eternal gratitude goes out to all you anarchists and socialists who have followed the links to my first two videos for Modern Socialist on YouTube. I may be starting small but out of tiny acorns grow mighty oaks. As I get comfortable in front of the camera and get better apps for producing my videos they will become more enjoyable to watch. So, if you enjoy videos on politics, current affairs & culture from an original point of view, presented by a gender-fluid anarchist, then stay tuned in, comrades!

P.S. September 20th is Climate General Strike day. In recognition, and to raise awareness, of this I will soon be publishing a new video Green New Deal Now! Put the date in your diary and be ready, comrades!

My first two videos can be found at:

[modernsocialist]

What's Immigration Got To Do With It?

The populists and alt-right have been framing the debate on immigration to be about whether it is beneficial or not. That is irrelevant and we should ignore the trap they have laid. The extreme inequality and poorly-paid, low-quality employment are not the fault of immigrants. In my new video for Modern Socialist I look at how and why this debate is being framed in such a way.

[modernsocialist]

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDCfbzvC2O0)

When we argue about immigration, we are arguing about the wrong thing. The right has framed the argument so that people blame immigrants for social and economic problems, while ignoring the real cause - the greed of the wealthy elites. I explore this in my new video.

[modernsocialist]

Modern Socialist is now on YouTube!

I've been fairly quiet on social media lately as I've been going through a period of change in my life. Things aren't settled yet but I've gone through some of the most difficult parts for the time being. I waited to start my channel, Modern Socialist, until I could present it as the person I am. Now I've done my first video, in which I present the case for a Popular Front Now! It can be found on YouTube (link below). I have future videos planned on Green New Deal Now! the disinformation war, the revolution in Rojava, Ben Shapiro, how to argue and some book reviews, like of Bullshit Jobs. When things settle a bit I'm going to continue using this space for longer more thoughtful pieces plus extras linked to my videos? I hope you come by and watch!

[cornbread21actual]

Learn Socialism 9, 10, 11, 12 / 84

[la-laborista-republiko]

support our troops

[modernsocialist]

The Plague

I wouldn't normally inflict my fiction on you but friends have found this short satirical piece funny and clever. It's far from being polished but I thought I'd put it out while it's still topical.

Eve was walking down the bridle path through the overgrown and untended wild woods, tightly holding onto little Adam, his hand in hers. They had been walking for days now after the base they had been holed up in got attacked. It had been Preppers, distinguishable by their red baseball caps emblazoned with the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ which had been ridiculous in 2016 but was now ludicrously tragic a decade later, when most of the world’s population had died from a preventable disease which had only been able to reach the public due to a government shutdown in early 2019. It was deeply ironic that the US President had only shut the government down so that he could fund a wall that he said would prevent disease being brought into the country by filthy Hispanic immigrants.

The genetically modified virus, or Orange Fever as it became commonly known for the way victims turned bright orange and began to talk unintelligible gibberish, had quickly spread round the globe from Atlanta once it had breached the quarantine of the Centre for Disease Control. Many of those that didn’t die still suffered from milder symptoms. Then a couple of years after the initial breakout a crazy rumour began to circulate that drinking the blood of uninfected children was a cure for the Orange Fever. The Preppers were absolutely clear that it certainly wasn’t a vaccine, though, as it wasn’t worse than the disease itself. It was for this reason that the Preppers had attacked the fortified settlement where several uninfected children were living. In the chaos of the assault Eve had escaped, taking Adam with her, and after a few days without seemingly being followed she believed that she had made a clean escape.

Now though she thought she had heard some shouts and the barking of dogs. Were these sounds real or was Eve being paranoid? She kept from letting on her fears to Adam so as not to worry him. But there was the shouting and barking again. And it was definitely getting closer. Eve felt the panic start to rise within her. Adam was also now squeezing her hand so had heard them too.

As the path crossed over a stream Eve jumped down, beckoning Adam to follow. She was going to wade up it into the undergrowth and hopefully shake off the scent trail for the dogs. They ran through the numbingly cold water, splashing wildly as they went. After leaving and re-entering the stream several times, Eve led them both even deeper into the woods. They ducked and weaved through the undergrowth. Yet the noise of their pursuers refused to recede into the distance.

Then two figures in camouflage appeared right in front of Eve and Adam. Eve collapsed to her knees knowing that she was about to die and worse, she had let Adam down, failing to protect him from the crazed, bloodthirsty Preppers. His young blood would be drained until he withered and died, simply to keep these people and their way of life alive a few months longer.

“Come with us if you want to live,” pronounced the figure on the left, who turned out to be female. Eve was shocked. But then she realised that neither of her captors were wearing a red cap. They weren’t Preppers. Maybe they were her saviours. Maybe she and Adam would make it after all.

[millennial-review-deactivated20]

[unculturedandproud]

🤔🤔

[radicalgraff]

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains" 

Rosa Luxemburg 

100 years ago, following the Spartacist uprising, Rosa was murdered in Berlin on the 15th of January 1919 by paramilitary forces commanded by the German Social Democrats.

[modernsocialist]

The Freikorps that battered Rosa Luxembourg and Karl Liebknecht to death were the precursors of the Nazis, in the same way that the neon nazis and alt-right warriors like the Proud Boys are the possible precursors to something much worse.

[modernsocialist]

Libertarian Socialist Economics

I write this essay as my own vision of how an anarchistic post-capitalist economics may work. It is idealistic but not prescriptive. Unlike rigid Marxist ideologies I recognise that a libertarian socialism must form organically from the ground up. We cannot say how a future society may look, we can only use our basic belief in fairness to influence the shaping of our politics and economy in the post-revolutionary era. So I offer this piece as inspiration, just as Catalonia and Rojava will always be, to all you anarchists and libertarian socialists out there. ¡Viva la Revolucion!

Here I want to argue that socialism and markets are not mutually exclusive. Markets don’t have to be completely free – there can be limits on their actions placed by the democratic processes of society, and they don’t have to be part of a capitalistic mode of production. We can already envisage a politically devolved system, with local assemblies taking local decisions and passing up other decisions to higher assemblies, through regional, national, international and even global assemblies. These can take place too for macroeconomic decisions, those beyond the immediate concerns of directly-owned worker enterprises.

So, let’s look an anarchistic economy. What about the argument that there is no alternative to capitalism or that a socialised economy has a tendency to authoritarianism and even totalitarianism? Well if the economy is not controlled by a centralised state then the latter argument has no force. Friedrich Hayek's book-length protest against any state involvement in the markets, The Road to Serfdom, is completely bypassed as no centralised bureaucracy exists to gather ever more power to itself. The former argument is also shown to not be true either. Worker-owned concerns can buy and sell in a market without shares being traded in its value or a worker otherwise being stripped of the extra value s/he creates. Nor is this a third way of democratic socialism trying to mitigate the worst excesses of capitalism, such as with Keynesian tinkering.

A way, but only a way, of describing this new mode of production would be ‘market socialism’. The undeniable dynamism of the capitalist system, of which Karl Marx noted, would be captured in this economic evolution, but the benefits would be harnessed for the whole of the population and not simply for an oligarchic class. Anarchism is the public taking direct control of politics and the economy, and not putting a state in between them and their control of the means of production leads to an economy that is still able to keep its energy and creativity while putting people first.

It should be obvious, but to many it just isn’t, that when workers own the concerns where they work, they are more productive as they have a personal stake in its success. Centralised state planning of the economy is not the only way to socialism. It is not even the best. It can be fairer than unfettered free-market capitalism, though usually only in the sense of levelling people down. Also, the ends of equality tend to be just economic, even when the aims are proclaimed to be wider than just the material. Claims of political liberty, if even made, are nothing more than propaganda. In a libertarian socialist economy, only large-scale infrastructure and services could arguably be administered by a state but even this would be by a form of state that is under direct democratic control from the bottom up.

Small-scale planning, microeconomic management, has been shown over and over again to be a dismal failure, both in economic terms and in the huge democratic deficits that have resulted. Libertarian socialism knits together the strength and adaptability of the market structure with the egalitarianism of worker-owned/managed concerns. Unlike the Leninist/Trotskyist model the only form of revolutionary authority would be that which ensures each concern would have to have at least one union member of 'higher consciousness' on its board, but if need be enough members to have a controlling vote. This would be purely in an educational capacity to keep each workplace society not profit-centred, and any compulsion would be discontinued as soon as practicably possible with the rise of a more 'conscious' society. Any attempt to impose a ‘Cheka’ would be instantly recognised as counter-revolutionary and their influence resisted by an educated and revolutionary proletariat.

I believe that only on this anarchistic manifesto can a truly democratic socialism be built, and that this is the only economic model that can provide everybody’s physical and psychological needs, all while also being the only possible way of doing so in an environmentally conscientious way.