Class Consciousness Project

Sick Chirpse recently reported that Ryan Ferguson, the racist little reactionary dwarf, was refused fuel at a petrol station in Liverpool. The staff member reportedly told him: "I know who you are and I know what you stand for." An act of defiance as simple as this demonstrates something far more powerful than two groups shouting at each other across the street. It demonstrates the power of class consciousness in practice. Reactionaries like Ferguson thrive on attention and division. Their purpose is to turn workers against one another, directing the anger of the working class towards immigrants and minorities rather than the capitalist class responsible for the destruction of their material conditions. They rely on publicity, intimidation and the illusion that they represent ordinary working people. But they are powerless without the very working class they seek to divide. We should refuse to normalise their politics, legitimise their propaganda or allow those reactionaries any oxygen within our communities. The strength of the working class lies not simply in its numbers, but in its organisation, solidarity and understanding of its own class interests. A conscious and organised working class has no need for these reactionaries, but the capitalist system has every reason to employ these hateful figures to sow division in our communities. When workers recognise their collective power and learn to use it, no amount of reactionary propaganda can substitute for the material strength of an organised class.

Actually, STFU! Is it just me or are people who say the word actually in every other sentence irritating pompous twats? They seem to think it adds force to their points “Actually” is one of those words people seem to think makes them sound more authoritative, as though sticking it in front of every other point somehow gives it extra weight. Usually, it just makes them sound like pompous know-alls. “Actually, I think you’re wrong.” “Actually, it’s quite simple.” “Actually, that’s not what happened.” You can take the word out and lose absolutely nothing. It doesn’t make an opinion any more intelligent, an argument any stronger, or the person speaking any more right. All it does is give an ordinary sentence a faintly smug, condescending edge, as if they’re constantly correcting the world and putting the rest of us straight. Occasionally “actually” is perfectly legitimate. But when it crops up in every other sentence, it starts to sound less like a useful word and more like an (ad)verbal tic belonging to someone who’s rather too impressed with their own opinions. Notice how many offenders are terribly well-spoken Guardian-reading liberals, many possessing Islington addresses, with an entitled sense of moral superiority. A high concentration of these arsewipes can be found wandering the corridors of the Palace of Westminster. By Ian Foster.

Capitalism needs hyper-individualism to survive. It thrives on division, breaking down communities, destroying class unity and convincing us that we are individuals constantly competing against each other rather than members of the same class with shared interests. But here's the contradiction. Everything is social. From the things we produce to the things we consume, nothing exists without collective labour and social activity. Every factory, every building, every product we purchase is the result of workers endeavours. Capitalism depends on social production while encouraging individualism. It relies on the collective labour of millions while allowing a tiny minority to privately appropriate the wealth they create. And this is why capitalism can never overcome its own contradictions. The ruling class needs its class enemy to survive, but here's the thing. The working class has no need for the ruling class. We produce everything. They merely leech off our labour like parasites.

Labour is a party of imperialism.

“The Bankruptcy of Social Fascism. By its daily role in the class struggle, social fascism shows itself to be the road, not to Socialism but to the still deeper enslavement of the workers. The Social Fascist method of obscuring the capitalist policy under the guise of Socialism is an insidious menace.” - William Z. Foster - Toward Soviet America (1932)

Joti makes some excellent points on this here. youtu.be/3ypMRaDRzdU?is=L54s…

Here's Liverpool reporter @davidlynchlfc talking honest and factually about the charges brought against Manchester City and their chances of appeal. youtu.be/HYXZ2kD_W4I?is=OMbk…

Manchester City's corruption is so blatant!

Manchester City’s 115 charges have loomed large over English football for years. Now, after a long and drawn-out process, the club has been found guilty of all charges relating to serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules, as well as the majority of charges relating to its failure to cooperate with the investigation. City of course maintain their innocence and intend to appeal. This corruption should absolutely be punished and dragged into the public eye, but let’s not pretend Manchester City are some unique rotten apple in an otherwise pure and fair game. Football has seen plenty of high-profile financial scandals. Juventus were punished over accounting irregularities surrounding player transfers, eventually receiving a ten-point deduction in Serie A and being excluded from European competition for the following season. In Scotland, Rangers’ use of EBTs became part of a much wider financial crisis that ended with the old company entering administration and liquidation. These are simply the cases that became too big to ignore. The problem runs much deeper than individual clubs. Modern football is an industry in which enormous amounts of money are concentrated in the hands of owners, investors, sponsors and broadcasters, while clubs are under constant pressure to increase revenue and remain competitive. In a capitalist system that puts profit first, there will always be companies (in this case football clubs) looking for loopholes and ways around regulations that stand between them and greater profits. Punish Manchester City where breaches have been proven. But don’t pretend that punishing one club cleans up the game. The problem isn’t just Manchester City. It is football becoming a global industry that is based around the desire for profit and finance capital has no limitations in its thirst for capital. @ManCity @FIFAcom @premierleague

Dickhead of the day award goes to......

A fantastic story about about an underrated club that fought and won against the biggest names in European Football. @dundeeunitedfc

A short but precise summarisation by Ranjeet Brar here youtu.be/EAuNR62r_iY?is=1T9g…

From the type of man who posts this. Essentially saying that the murder thousands of children is an annoyance to you. Also, a blue tick with a handful of followers 🥴

Zack Polanski, and the Green Party, offer nothing towards the emancipation of the working class. Leftist sloganeering without a class position is just noise. And NATO is not a minor disagreement. NATO is a significant military arm of imperialism. Accepting NATO means accepting the destruction of Yugoslavia: 78 days of bombing, depleted uranium and cluster munitions, with cancers and other illnesses reported in the decades that have followed. NATO itself acknowledges that more than 30,000 depleted-uranium rounds were fired with no consideration to the long term affects. Accepting NATO means Afghanistan: twenty years of occupation, bombs and bloodshed for imperialist pillaging. Accepting NATO means Libya: bombs dropped in the name of "humanitarianism", a state destroyed and workers left to live amongst the ruins. Reports of a resurgence of a slave trade in what was once a very rich and prosperous country. Need we go on? These aren't unfortunate mistakes. Imperialism is the higher stage of capitalism. There is no distinction between it's wars and finance capitals profit gouging. There has never been a single endeavour by NATO that has been defence or for the betterment of the workers.

There is something workers need to understand. We are constantly told that socialism goes against “human nature”, that people will never work collectively or put the needs of society before the individual. Which is absolute drivel. Human history, including very recent history, is full of cooperation and collective labour. Workers strength is dependence on the collective, not the individual and once upon a time more people understood this. The extreme individualism we experience today isn’t some timeless human instinct. Capitalism cultivates it because a working class divided into competing individuals is far easier to exploit them a united working class. While we say individualism isn't ingrained in people, it will not disappear the morning after a revolution. Socialism isn’t a switch that gets flicked. Capitalist habits, ideas and social relations will take years, even generations, to overcome. The working class will also have to suppress the resistance of the dispossessed capitalist class while reorganising society around production for social need rather than private profit. That is precisely why the proletarian state remains necessary during the transition. And, as Mao argues here, even the development of communism cannot simply abolish the state while imperialist powers surround and remain capable of attacking and destroying it. Mao explicitly writes that without your own state machinery while hostile states retain theirs, “is dangerous”. The revolution is the beginning of that transformation, not its completion. It changes which class holds power and creates the conditions in which society itself can begin to change.

After George Galloway announces that he will run against Zack Polanski in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election it's nice to see that they put their differences aside to make this campaign video. @ZackPolanski @TheGreenParty @georgegalloway @WorkersPartyGB @CrewkerneGaz

"Those who are against fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf." - Bertolt Brecht, Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth (1935)