Richard Adams-Blackburn – Anarcho-communist

I’m very glad I stumbled across your site, and pleased to be on board.

My name’s Richard, 21 from Auckland, New Zealand.  I’ve been interested in politics and have been concerned with exploitation and injustice for a rather long time, but became convinced that anarchism was the solution only a couple of years ago. A political studies paper I did at stage one at university introduced me to the famous Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin, and his thinking really struck a chord with me. I did not immediately become an anarchist, but slowly came to it after considering all other options carefully.

Now I am writing this blog  to spread the message of anti-capitalism and anti-statism, and try to convince people that an anarchic society is the answer, and not merely a pipe dream. I hope to be able to bring a positive anarchist angle to this group.

More information about me is available on the ‘about’ page of my site.

Hello from the new guy…

I first came across the FLBU a week or so ago while browsing the internet. I’m usually read the blogs that focus more on the writing and less on shiny gizmos to distract me; the FLBU fit this profile. The site also caught my eye because of the words “far left” at the top, two words that are in the url for my own personal blog. I left a comment for Benjamin, he wrote a comment on my blog, we exchanged a few e-mails, and voila – here I am. It’s that easy, folks. So the real question is this – if you are a progressive and you enjoy writing and you’re reading this post right now – Why aren’t you writing for the FBLU as well?

My name is Shannon and I’m a public school teacher in Georgia. I’ve written on a blog called A la Gauche since 2004. Before that I created a website dedicated to exposing religious zealotry called BaptistWatch.org (although apart from the forum it is very rarely updated).

I’ve been interested in politics for as long as I remember. My first memories are actually of me being a Republican. I remember scrawling “Impeach Clinton” on one of my folders in Middle School back in 1992. Obviously I was a typical Republican – the man had only been in office for a few months. Gradually, and either despite or because of my rural surroundings, I became more and more liberal. And the shift hasn’t slowed since it started. I described myself as a Democrat for most of my college years, but began to grow disillusioned with the Democrats and with the two-party system shortly after I graduated from the University of Georgia.

Despite feeling left out, I was eager to work on a Senate campaign in 2004. I very much wanted to work in politics and what better way to get your foot in the door than by working on a Senate campaign. The problem was – we lost – miserably. I now call myself a socialist and feel even less represented than I did as a liberal Democrat.

The two-party system of government is one of the major problems in the United States, and arguably the world. To think that just two parties represent the beliefs and opinions of 300,000,000 people in the United States is ridiculous. How many Americans call themselves Republicans or Democrats because they don’t know of any other labels? After the Democrats and the Republicans, the next two most visible parties are the Libertarians and the Green Party. And what happens when they run a candidate? The MSM starts carrying stories about how they might spoil the election of one of the major party candidates. I could go on and on… And I will at some point, but not all in this one single post.

I hope to write about the failures of the two-party system, the love affair between the MSM and the government, how weak of a democracy we actually have in the United States, and the benefits of a socialist society. I’m glad to be a part of the FLBU and I hope that it continues to grow with both writers and readers. Cheers.

John Angliss, anti-oppression leftist*

My name is John Angliss and I’m here to alternately please and conscientize – if you can do it better, then join us! Unlike Dave and Benjamin, I’ve no Trotskyist leanings, just a conscience. And the means might be different, but the end is the same.

I have been stuck on the small island of Guernsey for the (first and) last eighteen years, but will be at SOAS in London from October. So watch out Blairites!

My blog has been through a number of different phases – it’s now mostly politics, which of course will be X-posted here, if relevant.

* As opposed to what? The pseudo-left

David Osler, libertarian Marxist

… and I’m Dave Osler from London, in my mid 40s and so probably old enough to be Benjamin’s dad. I first got involved in politics thanks to movements like Rock Against Racism and Youth CND that arose from the punk rock scene in Britain in the late 1970s.

By the early 1980s, I joined the Labour Party Young Socialists and then Labour itself. At that time Labour was a mass working class-based party with substantial socialist and revolutionary currents, and nothing like the neoliberal Blairite organisation it is today.

My best known book – Labour Party plc – documents the transformation. As a result of writing it, I occasionally appear on television and radio programmes, arguing the case that New Labour is institutionally corrupt.

I have also been a member of several Trotskyist groupings, but these days have departed from Trotskyist orthodoxy on several points, and my politics have evolved in a more libertarian direction.

When it comes to the Aussie far left, I like some of what I read and hear about Democratic Socialist Perspective, but I’m not entirely convinced by some of their theory.

I’m a newcoming to blogging, only starting two months ago, but my main blog Dave’s Part has generally been well received, even though it has criticised almost everybody on the UK left … and right, for that matter.

Benjamin Solah, Marxist-Trotskyist

Hi, my name’s Benjamin Solah. I’m a young Marxist revolutionary from Sydney, Australia. More accurately, I’m a Trotskyist without allusions in electoral socialism or socialism in one country.

I became involved in politics in 2004 when I became interested in Australia’s refugee movement (Australia mandatorily detains all asylum seekers while their cases in pending, which is in direct breach of international law and results in massive abuses of human rights.) I was also in my final year of school at the time and through Legal Studies and Modern History, I took a further interest in politics. It was when I became involved in Left-wing activism generally, that I became involved with Socialist Alternative. They’re a small Trotskyist group based mainly in Melbourne with branches all around Australia, including Sydney.

I became open to Marxist politics because it seems to me that the reason this world is so fucked up is because it’s driven by profits for a minority and everyone else gets pissed on. The US seems to have this fetishism over blowing up countries to help their own pockets, and that’s not helping the people in the States, but the government and the CEOs. I also got involved with Marxist politics because I don’t believe voting in a party with the right ideas will change anything because you don’t elect everyone. You don’t elect all the executives who decide what products to produce and at what cost, and how much you pay your workers and you’re electing someone to run a system that’s fucked up. And if you want to change the world, you have to change the system. You have to destroy capitalism.