Days Of No Hope? Or Days Of The No-Hopers?

Class War founder Ian Bone has caused a bit of a stir with his analysis of the current political situation - amply entitled "Days Of No Hope".

You can read Ian's comments here. I would argue we are not so much dealing with no hope, but a malaise that is dominant across the board. New Labour does not want power for the sake of radical change, or even to restore lost values, it seeks power for the sake of it, for the personal glory. Much of the left is a mirror image of this. Take a look at George Galloway to see exactly what I mean.

Secondly so much of the change that is coming under Brown, like that of Blair, arrives not from political hacks but from the security apparatus - police and spooks who see the best chance they will ever have to secure their dominance for good. We have to roll back the state, and in particular roll back the power of the police, security services and civil service apparatus before it either envelops us totally, or its mixture of incompetence and arrogance smothers the critical faculties we have left.

Without any real debate or even acknowledgement, the left has also given up on previous core positions. This has to end.

To take two examples:

1. The idea that capitalism holds back economic development. This was certainly in vogue up until the collapse of the Eastern bloc. Basically it was believed skilled tradesmen and workers held back on what they could really do, as they were separated from the fruits of their labour. "Imagine what we could achieve if we were not working for the bosses...... "
Exposure to the Trabant and Eastern European building projects led to this concept being quietly filed............... (which makes me wonder if those socialists who said they were opposed to the Eastern bloc ever really meant it)

2. We anarchists can't escape either. Re-reading a copy of "Floodgates of Anarchy" by Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer and they were not just starting from a different departure point, but were heading in another direction entirely. Anarchism to Meltzer and Christie seemed to include a core element of self-improvement, of the perfectibility of man. I find the same concepts when reading certain books on martial arts - you are actually changing yourself, as a first step to the world being changed.
I guess somewhere over the last 30 years (perhaps the nihilism of punk?) we left all that 1960s nonsense about "individual change" behind. Yet if we can't change ourselves, how the hell are we going to change something as complex as global capitalism?

Other political ideologies have undergone similar, drifting change. Compare the liberalism of the Lib Dems to the Liberal Party of Michael Meadowcroft and co. Even their logo looks like it has been kept as a deliberate V sign to the party of Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne. Over on the far-right reading Joe Owens memoirs was like meeting a Samurai walking around a Honda factory. Once fascists believed in strength through joy, youth and vigour, now they sit in beer tents at the Red, White and Blue festival, fantasising about fighting the Islamic hordes. If Saladin's descendants were to march through Europe, most BNP members would simply lock the pub door and call for a good old fashioned lock-in.

We must change ourselves, and we must resist. If not, the next 100 years is going to look very like the last 100 weeks......