Communist Conspiracy

A slightly embarrassing aspect of going to demonstrations against the war in Britain is the masses of communist banners and placards festooning them. This is especially true of demonstrations like that on Sunday which are merely large as opposed to huge: the number of demonstrators identifying themselves as communists seems to be fairly constant, so they're swamped out in large crowds. (And never present as speakers.)

The local communist parties are bizarrely fascinating. There are so many of them, and I have the impression that their main form of activity is aimless posturing and fierce rivalry with each other. There's a report on the various factions in the Weekly Worker, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain (I was given a copy at the demonstration). The article claims that while the parties achieve little, people from them do have influence in the Stop the War Coalition, CND and other groups which are actually relevant, and even in the Greater London Authority.

What I find striking about the communist publications, Marxist forums and so on is that while there may be speakers or writers from France or Italy, they do not seem to bother with people from countries that would actually have some experience of socialism or communism, whether this would be from communist dictatorships like East Germany or social democracies like Finland. "Socialism" and "communism" -there seems to be little distinction between the two here- are ideological vessels into which fantasies about the coming paradise may be poured, not realities to learn from.

If this dead-end line of thought is seen as an alternative to the corporate servitude offered by New Labour and the Tories, I can see why the British political system is troubled.