Revolution Follow

ANYONE INVOLVED in the anti-capitalist movement can only welcome the call that George Monbiot makes in his interview in Socialist Worker last week and in his new book The Age of Consent for "a global democratic revolution". Monbiot unflinchingly targets what he calls "the global dictatorship of vested interests".

THERE HAS been an explosion of ideas and debate in the anti-capitalist and anti-war movements. People are hungry for answers, and words have been poured over the inequality, misery and war created by global capitalism and how to stop it. On the eve of a previous wave of protest, one which saw revolution spread across Europe, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote one of the most famous and influential political pamphlets of all time: The Communist Manifesto.

What's wrong with the current system?

To Kill a King is an interesting new film about the English Revolution in the mid 17th century. A revolt, led by parliament, broke out against the tyranny of Charles I's regime in 1642. After years of civil war and attempts to compromise broke down, revolt became a full-blooded revolution.

"THE internationalisation of economic life makes it necessary to settle controversies by fire and sword." That was how the revolutionary Nikolai Bukharin, writing in 1915, described the link between and the economic system and war. He was analysing imperialism, a word that has rightly been used to describe the US war against Iraq. Imperialism is not just a term of abuse or a description of empires.

MANY YEARS ago when the benefits of parliamentary democracy were shared by very few of the world's population, the Russian revolutionary Lenin pointed to a fundamental problem. He argued that "hidden beneath the polished exterior of modern democracy are deceit, violence, corruption, mendacity, hypocrisy and oppression of the poor". Tony Blair's New Labour has managed to illustrate each one of them in six short years. One measure of the outcome is the declining number of people who vote in elections.

ON SATURDAY 15 February democracy came onto the streets to demonstrate against war and barbarism. The demos are part of a process where politics has become so generalised that a casual conversation about the weather becomes a full blown discussion about the lies and deceits of George Bush. Old-timers start to look for comparable events, to explain, in the words of Marvin Gaye, "What's Going On".

FOR WE who live on this planet under capitalism, there is the daily drip, drip, drip of frustration and resentment. And then, with eerie regularity, there are the horrors of famine, plague and war. The horrors have their roots in the daily apparatus of pedestrian human suffering. Thirty years ago I became a socialist and a revolutionary. Two things drove me to it.

THERE WAS a small revolution in St Albans last week, one that should give Tony Blair pause for thought as he shackles Britain to the chariot wheels of US imperialism. A meeting called by the Stop the War Coalition turned out to be the biggest protest meeting the city has seen in living memory.

"What the fuck do you want?" Those were Joe Strummer's first words to me, backstage at London's ICA in the winter of 1976. I'd been photographing the gig for the New Musical Express, a revelation of the burgeoning punk scene. Born John Mellor in 1952, Joe Strummer, son of a British diplomat, boarding school, art college, cartoonist, artist, busker, musician, lived for a while in Newport.

IT IS with deep sadness that present and past members of Portsmouth SWP record the death of Jill Molyneux last week. Jill was a lifelong socialist whose first political involvement was in solidarity with the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. She joined the International Socialists in 1972.

THE PETER and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg was once a prison but is now a museum. You can wander round its cells and see grainy photographs of its former occupants, political prisoners under the old Russian Tsars 100 years ago. A large number are women-revolutionaries usually from middle class backgrounds who braved torture and exile for their cause.