The Traveller in the Evening

Andy Wilson
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  • PHILOSOPHY

Reflections on William Blake, Surrealism, ecology, radical theology and politics. www.travellerintheevening.com

  1. 11/01/2025

    Georges Bataille and the Surrealist Blake

    We have long argued that Blake was a proto-Surrealist, but critics are confused about how Blake fits into the story of Surrealism and how they received him. The ‘dissenting Surrealist’, critic, philosopher, pornographer, anthropologist and ‘metaphysician of evil’, Georges Bataille adopted Blake as the presiding spirit of his later work, which puts the sacred and religion at the heart of politics. Breaking with the rationalism of Breton and the Hegel-influenced Marxist left alike, on the eve of WWII, Bataille proposes a Surrealist anti-fascism based squarely on myth, fashioned in the image of Blake, which leads him to found the secret society, Acéphale. Stuart Kendall Stuart Kendall is a scholar specialising in Georges Bataille, late modernism, environmental humanities and contemporary culture. He is the author of the book Georges Bataille, in the Critical Lives series from Reaktion Books, as well as translating key works by Bataille. Topics discussed Blake and Surrealism | Bataille as librarian and libertine | Bataille’s collaborations | politics, religion, art and literature | a life filled with contradictions | Democratic Communist Circle, La Critique Sociale | Acéphale, College of Sociology | battles with André Breton and Jean-Paul Sartre | influence on Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Baudrillard, Julia Kristeva | psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature, anthropology | Breton and Bataille as the two halves of Surrealism | Cabaret Voltaire, Arthur Cravan and militant anti-clericalism: Surrealism’s problem with religion | Why didn’t André Breton love William Blake? | Soupault on Blake and Lautréamont | energy and evil | automatism and Bretonian Surrealism | Surrealism and Communism | Freud, the unconscious, the magical | on the surface of Story of the Eye | translating between Bataille, Breton, Surrealism, and Blake | Alexandre Kojève: for and against Hegel | Surrealism’s enemy within | ‘impossible Surrealism’ | Boris Souveraine, Colette Peignot and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | Marcel Mauss, potlatch economies | The Accursed Share: energy, exuberance, consumption and expenditure | Blake as a companion of thought for Bataille | mobilizing the masses through the use of myth | “Bataille never counted the pennies” | chaos, indeterminacy and over-determination in Blake | “don’t think I don’t know that you’re f*****g my wife”: obscentity and truth | contraries, negations and dialectics | Jean Wahl, Kierkegaard and the existential turn against Hegel | Corbynites and the Democratic Left | countercultural fascism and Bataille reception. Laure finds Bataille finds Blake Blake managed, in phrases of a peremptory simplicity, to reduce humanity to poetry and poetry to Evil.Georges Bataille Colette Peignot, known as Laure, had read William Blake in Madrid in April or May of 1936. She moves in with Bataille, and days later, he goes and checks out The Marriage of Heaven and Hell from the Bibliotheque Nationale. I mean, what an act of love that is to me. To me, it’s an utterly beautiful story. But that’s the moment when he is part of Acéphale. You know, it’s as the College of Sociology is being founded. It’s as Bataille is looking for myth and religion as ways to expand his political understanding of community and how it’s formed. And so William Blake and his appeal to the sacred, his appeal to the question of what is God and how does God work in the human imagination.Stuart Kendall If you read Job, there are these powerful subterranean currents of Canaanite mythology to do with the conquering of chaos and Yahweh’s defeat of chaos in order to make a world. And my argument is that Blake lets some of the chaos slip back in. When I was reading you on Bataille’s method, I got the similar sense that the reason he defers, the reason not everything adds up, the reason it isn’t a logical series is precisely in order to prevent the reader arriving at an idealist conclusion too early, or ever.There are elements to Blake’s method that directly mirror some aspects of Bataille’s, but this isn’t much commented on because people don’t see that aspect of Blake, and it hasn’t been a big feature of Blake commentary.Andy Wilson I think that William Blake became very important to a certain group of philosophers and critics in France in the 1940s. This is the group associated with Bataille, but also expanding beyond him. Blake offers a way of thinking about contraries and opposition that is non-synthetic, that is not purely Hegelian. And there are many other ways to sort of think about this problem, but that debate and that way of thinking about it had other implications important at that time. Bataille comes to Blake in 1937 at that same moment when he’s looking for alternatives to Marxism. And that’s to say he’s looking for alternatives to Hegelian dialectical thinking. And he’s not alone in that. Now, that problem is one kind of problem when it’s 1937, and your options are Stalin and Hitler. But it becomes a different kind of problem in 1943. And again, in 1946.When Bataille turns to Blake in the immediate post-war period, that same sort of debate is there. Now, the fascist threat is not there – though, of course, it has now returned. The communist problem is still there. So reading Blake and thinking about the problems of contraries is very important in the immediate post-war period because it’s a way of thinking about philosophy and the philosophies of life, existentialism. It offers a way of thinking about existence and the quest for meaning in human life that is outside the frame of existence.Stuart Kendall Anti-Clericalism Extremely virulent – and eternally vigilant – anticlericalism is therefore a salient characteristic of surrealist thought. It can be verified on countless occasions in the history of a group that would often be divided by ‘the religious question’. [p17]Patrick Lepetit, The Esoteric Secrets of Surrealism Acephale We are famously religiousGeorges Bataille One of the three epigrams to [‘The Sacred Conspiracy’ (1939)] was a passage from Kierkegaard’s notebooks reflecting on the political uprisings in Europe in 1848: “what looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmasked itself as a religious movement.”Stuart Kendall Masson’s drawing for the covers of the journal represents the emblematic figure of the Acéphale, the headless one, who has escaped reason. The figure holds the murderous, sacrificial knife in his left hand and a flaming heart, also symbolizing sacrifice - self-sacrifice - in his right. A skull takes the place of his g******s, identifying sexuality with both birth and death. In his abdomen, as Bataille wrote, “is the labyrinth in which he has lost himself, loses me with him, and in which I discover myself as him, in other words as a monster.” The labyrinth, identified by Masson as ‘our rallying sign’, places the Minotaur myth at the centre of the Acéphale image. Drawings in the third issue of the journal explicitly depict the bull-headed monster of the myth, as well as evoking the early Greek context that so interested Nietzsche and the contributors to Acéphale.With its clearly delineated muscles, its assertive vertical stance, and the rigidly horizontal alignment of its arms, the Acéphale figure is a Massonian sign of masculine strength, radically altered by the loss of its head and the exposure of its intestines. Reinforced by the placement of the skull at the groin, this threatened status suggests the Nietzschean concept of the unstable self.Clark Poling Appearing in the first issue, Bataille’s text, ‘The Sacred Conspiracy,’ declared the goal of the project: a religious society, in which reason and civilisation are abandoned, and the grandeur of life is sought in ecstasy, with its attendant loss of self. Irrationality, sexuality, and baseness, as aids in overcoming the limitations imposed by society, are central themes in the journal.Clark Poling Acéphale was a secret society that Bataille set up. He did so after he’d been trying to work in probably the most intense way he ever did with the other Surrealists, with Breton, in a group he founded called Counter Attack…I find it inspiring that the Surrealists took politics seriously, that Surrealism wasn’t just an art movement, but an attempt to change the world. They started by aligning themselves with Bolshevism, Lenin and the Russian Revolution. It is astounding how few of them didn’t get absorbed into that. Some did: Aragon and others became Stalinists; Tristan Tzara did. But I think it amazing that Breton and many of the others stood out against that, became Trotskyists and so on. Counter Attack was Bataille’s attempt to come up with a way of countering fascism without having any illusions in the Communist Party. It’s obviously a radical position, to the left of the Communist Party. What I mean is that it’s amazing that he could achieve that insight at that time, to see so clearly the limitations of the Communist Party. The key thing about that is that Bataille’s insight was that fascism was successfully mobilizing the masses through the use of myth. He wanted to counter a different myth. This is very unlike orthodox Marxism, which is rationalist from top to bottom. The idea that we would mobilize myth is something I’ve always believed as an anti-fascist. It’s what the left doesn’t do.Andy Wilson The figure of Acéphale… became their provocative idol, the emblem of their myth… Bataille explained: “originally the image of the Acéphale simply corresponded in my mind to a still ill-defined preoccupation with the ‘leaderless crowd’, and with an existence modelled on a universe that was obviously acephalic, the Universe where God is dead.” Acéphale, in short, represented an attempt to found a religion in a headless universe where God is dead. But thi

    1h 28m

  2. 08/23/2025

    Blake, Castoriadis and the Radical Imagination

    [Imagination is] that in virtue of which an image occurs in us.Aristotle, De Anima History is essentially poiesis, not imitative poetry, but creation and ontological genesis in and through individuals doing and representing / saying.Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society Back in August 2024, I interviewed Joe Ruffell about the revolutionary career of the Greek / French activist, Cornelius Castoriadis, founder of the workerist group, Socialisme ou Barbarie (1949-1965), who broke with Marxism in the mid-60s in order to develop a theory of political autonomy which increasingly drew on his insights into the central role of the creativity of the producers under capitalism. Castoriadis generalised this insight into arguably the most radical theory of the imagination known to either politics or philosophy, though there are traces of it in Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger and others. The radicalism and depth of Castoriadis’s idea of the imagination has long been of interest to us here at The Traveller in the Evening as an analogue of Blake’s similarly radical idea of the imagination, according to which “The eternal body of Man is The Imagination /God himself / that is [Yeshua] Jesus.” The overlap and connection between Blake and Castoriadis is suggestive at least, and hints at deeper symmetries. It is the long-term ambition of the Traveller in the Evening to explore these mirrorings and affinities, and to that end we thought it time to follow up on Joe’s podcast interview with a follow-up Q&A with Castoriadis scholar, Stephen Hastings-King, author of Looking for the Proletariat: Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Problem of Worker Writing. The ultimate aim of such an exploration is to find what support there is in Castoriadis for illuminating how Blake’s idea of the imagination is fuel for more than the plastic arts, but underlies the construction of social reality itself, so that a revolution in the imagination would revolutionise society. Topics discussed: introduction to Castoriadis | the Marxist imaginary | Pattern Recognition Research Collective | Castoriadis vs. fascists and communists in Athens | Zinovievites and syndicalists in the PCI | bureaucratic capitalism or degenerated workers state | Socialisme ou Barbarie formed 1949 | Maurice Brinton, Ken Weller and Solidarity | Castoriadis after Marx | the project of autonomy | wildcatting | 1956 Hungarian uprising | post-Marxism | on the content of socialism | direct democracy | psychoanalysis and the imaginary institution of society | Guy Debord and Jean-Francois Lyotard | democracy and philosophy born together in Greece | Billancourt | interlocked workers councils | auto-nomos | reason and energy, imagination and the instituted imaginary | imagination as the devil | heteronomy as determinism, as Urizen | visions eascape the instituted imaginary | no desire without imagination | magma | society unable to recognise its own auto-institution | the unspoken sets of preconditions that enable desire | hellenophilia, against hellenophilia | Athenian germs | Sparta and Cybele | on Heidegger’s Greek | the so-called Dark Ages | the voice of honest indignation | neither perception nor reason | Wordsworth’s fancy | the unspoken, unformalizable dimension on which those things that are formalized depend | Western philosophy lacks the imagination | relaunching philosophy | aggressively constructing dialogue | autonomy or original sin | human perfection and the Council of Nicaea | church against Galileo | Milton, the light and the dark | Communist Histurians Group, Blake and the Ranters | implosion of the Marxist imaginary | a huge humanizing factor for Western capitalism | diamat dy’in out | competitions for symbolic capital in various academic contexts | the cognitive geography of finance Man is all Imagination God is Man & exists in us & we in himWilliam Blake Energy is the only life and is from the Body and Reason is The bound or outward circumference of Energy. Energy is Eternal Delight.WIlliam Blake This is not the place to discuss Blake’s concept of imagination in detail, except to say that when he describes the imagination as “the body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity,” we are being invited to see the imagination as the primum mobile of mind, the unmoved mover, that which is not determined elsewhere within mind. In this conception, the imagination is at the basis of the totality of mind. This is a scandal to rationalising philosophy, which wants the seat of reason to be within reason itself, not in imagination. In Castoriadis, on the other hand, the imagination is at the root of the entire social imaginary. These two positions may amount in practice to the same thing, or something much the same as far as the implications for politics go. Final Thoughts Before Closing the Meetingfrom Comrade Cardan I think we are at a crossroads in history... One path… leads to the loss of meaning, the repetition of empty forms, conformism, apathy, irresponsibility, and cynicism, along with the growing takeover of the capitalist imaginary of unlimited expansion of ‘rational mastery’… and of technoscience racing ahead on its own, and obviously a party to domination by that capitalist imaginary. The other path would have to be opened up; it has not been marked out at all. Only a social and political awakening, a renaissance, a fresh upsurge of the project of individual and collective autonomy… can cut that path. This would require an awakening of imagination and of the creative imaginary.Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable What horrifies and irritates representatives of traditional philosophy… is the necessity of acknowledging the existence of a collective imaginary, and for that matter, of a radical imagination in singular human beings, as a creative force. Creation here means creation ex nihilo, bringing into being a form that was not there before, the creation of new forms of being. It is ontological creation: a form such as language, institution qua institution, music, and painting... Why is philosophy, in the forms we have inherited, unable to acknowledge the fact of creation? Because that philosophy is either theological, and therefore reserves creation for God… or it is rationalist or determinist, and therefore obliged either to infer everything that is from first principles… or else to produce it out of causes... But creation belongs to being in general… and creation belongs, densely and massively, to socio-historical being.Cornelius Castoriadis, Figures of the Thinkable Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    1h 9m

  3. 08/15/2025

    Timothy Morton: Black Opals of Gurgling Negation

    Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. They have collaborated with Björk, Laurie Anderson, Jennifer Walshe, Hrafnhildur Arnadottir, Sabrina Scott, Adam McKay, Jeff Bridges, Justin Guariglia, Olafur Eliasson, and Pharrell Williams. Morton co-wrote and appeared in Living in the Future’s Past, a 2018 film about global warming with Jeff Bridges, and is the author of a series of radical works on Ecology, culminating in last year’s Hell: Towards a Christian Ecology. Andy and Timothy Morton have been talking since Andy interviewed Tim for the Blake Society in March 2024. There was a second interview on the Traveller in the Evening (‘Throwing a Wrench of What the F**k Into the Machinery’), and a feature review of Tim’s book, Hell: Towards a Christian Ecology (‘Retipped Arrows of Desire: Timothy Morton's Hell: In Search of a Christian Ecology’). After that, the conversation really got going. The discussion took as points of departure, Tim’s ideas about with Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) and hyperobjects, and the Christian ecology he explored so thrillingly in Hell; and Andy’s reading of Blake, in particular Blake’s emphasis on the imagination, and the possible political uses of the imagination, as imagined by the radical post-Marxist, Cornelius Castoriadis. A significant influence arrived with David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies ("an unanswerable and frequently hilarious demolition of the shoddy thinking and historical illiteracy of the so-called New Atheists”), which they read in tandem, emerging on the other side with an expanded sense of how Christianity cuts through contemporary fascism and its war against empathy, which, with careless accuracy, it calls ‘woke’. Topics discussed: from Houston to Phoenicia and back | making it up as you go along | Vala, animism, OOO | spending time with the cat while throwing toys out of the pram | deleted every week | going blind vs allowing a structure you haven’t yet thought to endure | solid as a rock | saying lovely things | David Bentley Hart | atheist delusions | Gyrus’s drive North | galvanised by George Floyd | objects from the master-slave regime | the thing called a person starts to get deeper | making Christianity dangerous | the Emperor and the forces of nature | how to live the hyperobject | the kryptonite posture towards hierarchy | the war against empathy | the bomb that went off was Christianity | enthralled by the nation | tea and cake with King Charles and traditionalism | Steve Bannon, Jordan Petersen, Alexander Dugin, and the new pagans | KKK, SPQR, wink wink | reeling from my own torture | the lone and level sands | flies all green and buzzin’ | the bacteria that pooped out oxygen | the hierarchy itself is implacable | the mask comes off | working for the man in Buddhism | Stewart Home’s fascist yoga | falling in love with your guru | all the words are corrupted | the most subversive claim ever made | construct yourself | it’s always going to feel a bit ugly | Bullhead, Nipton and hi-tech nothingness | deliver some string beans | when you put the sugar in the tea | something more general than ideology | the primum mobile of thought | the shark social imaginary | Plato’s cave is what it feels like to be a Platonist | a structure of feeling that hadn't hardened into an ideology | wanting to be cute-sounding | a black opal fire. We decided it was time to throw some of the ideas we were developing before the public, not in a structured way, but by continuing the discussion in a podcast for the Traveller in the Evening, so we could see for ourselves where we were at. This is that podcast, hopefully the first of a series. Part two will drop when we think we’ve moved on. The fourth wall between the human subject and everything else evaporates. How to see global warming as part of the human drama, not as the end of it? How to rebuild the play when there is a fourth wall collapse, and when this collapse coincides with the actual theatre on fire? When being on fire is what causes this collapse, what happens? The play was s**t. We need another play.Timothy Morton, Hell The Christian view of human nature is wise precisely because it is so very extreme: it sees humanity, at once, as an image of the divine, fashioned for infinite love and imperishable glory, and as an almost inexhaustible wellspring of vindictiveness, cupidity, and brutality. Christians, indeed, have a special obligation not to forget how great and how inextinguishable the human proclivity for violence is, or how many victims it has claimed, for they worship a God who does not merely take the part of those victims, but who was himself one of them, murdered by the combined authority and moral prudence of the political, religious, and legal powers of human society.Which is, incidentally, the most subversive claim ever made in the history of the human race.David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    1h 44m

  4. 07/28/2025

    Awake! Mark Vernon's Imaginary in the Balance

    Mark Vernon, (2025), Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, London: C Hurst & Co., 368pp. The stolen and perverted writings of Homer and Ovid, of Plato and Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible... We do not want either Greek or Roman models if we are but just and true to our own Imaginations...William Blake The podcast discussion with Mark was hard to edit from almost two hours of recordings, as there were many spontaneous interruptions, often unfruitful, for reasons I try to address here. What remains is a podcast capturing a general introduction to the book from the author’s point of view and the gist of the argument between us, with digressions removed and gaps cauterised as best I could. It was not the discussion Mark had anticipated, though I had no way of knowing my approach would surprise him so (the orientation of this site being public, and since he and I had talked previously). I’d hoped to tease out some of the controversial aspects of his reading of Blake, but my questions were not allowed to land, being shrugged off as irrelevant, misinformed, or senseless to his way of thinking. As an old friend of mine used to say, it felt like throwing slices of hot toast into a cooling fridge. My normal practice when interviewing someone about their book is to keep it apart from the written review, if for no other reason than that they are created separately and make sense in their own right, so there’s no advantage in having to prepare both for publication before sharing them. In this case, I’m merging the two, hoping my review notes help people make sense of the difficulties in the interview. What follows tries to tie arguments in the podcast discussion to points I would have made in a review. Without this, the podcast would sound like two people talking past each other, without any explanation of why. But first of all, I had to work out this ‘why’ for myself.travellerintheevening.com Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    1h 14m

  5. 04/27/2025

    A Short History of The Traveller in the Evening

    Andy and Conor discussed how the focus of their attention has shifted in recent years from environmental crisis to the rise of fascism and illiberalism, particularly in the context of the Trump phenomenon. They also revisited the importance of William Blake for the blog, with Andy confirming that his appreciation for Blake has not changed. A Blake-Inspired Spiritual Journey Andy discussed his journey with William Blake, starting with his accidental discovery of Blake's work and his subsequent attraction to Blake. Andy shared how Blake's ideas influenced his understanding of the human imagination and its role in shaping our perception of reality. He also mentioned his relationship with Timothy Morton, who shares a similar perspective on Blake and the importance of the imagination. Andy's journey with Blake has led him to embrace Christianity, which he believes is a natural progression of his understanding of Blake's work. The Traveller in the Evening is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Christianity and Capitalism: A Philosophical Inquiry The discussion explores the resurgence of deeper societal critiques using Christian thought, with Andy and Conor reflecting on the role of empathy in capitalism and Christianity. Andy argues that Christianity offers a necessary response to capitalism, emphasising its communistic aspects and opposition to capitalism. The conversation then shifts to the popularity of various topics on Andy's blog and podcast, including the history of the British left, hauntology, and biblical analysis. They also discuss the importance of counterculture about Blake's influence and its potential for fostering alternatives to capitalism. The dialogue concludes with reflections on current countercultural movements and the overall project's focus on radical Christianity, counterculture, and philosophical inquiry into the nature of reality. Surrealism and Transpersonal Autonomism Andy and Conor discussed the relationship between Surrealism and magic, with Andy suggesting that Surrealism's automatism could be extended to include transpersonal elements. They explored the idea of the unconscious as a being rather than just a flip side to the conscious mind. Conor shared his own experiences with communicating with his unconscious through dreams and tarot cards, noting the importance of being in the right state of mind and using the right language for communication. The High and Low Art of Spectralism Andy and Conor discuss music and its perception, focusing on the importance of sound quality and timbre over traditional musical elements. They highlight an experience where Iancu Dumitrescu, a composer, performed at the Faust festival, bridging the gap between high art and industrial music audiences. The conversation then shifts to Andy's autism and how it has influenced his diverse interests and career paths. They conclude by discussing misconceptions about Christianity and the Catholic Church. Talking Bourgeois Politics Blues Finally, Andy shares his experiences of being moved by powerful speeches from a Baptist minister and Michelle Obama, noting how these experiences challenged his preconceptions about bourgeois politics and effective communication. The Traveller in the Evening is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    50 min

  6. 04/13/2025

    Whatever Happened to the Revolutionary Left #3: From Workerism to Broke, 1945-1985 (Part Three: Collapse of the SWP and Decline of the Far Left)

    The Bloom Had Gone #1 Our generation’s illusions are lived ones.John Game How the right appropriated what were once left wing causes – ‘no forever wars’ for ‘anti war’, ‘anti-globalism’ for opposition to neo-liberal globalisation and hostility to ‘elites’ for hostility to capitalism – is what led some on the left to believe that even in a period of unprecedented right wing reaction this was still their era. This ignores two things. Firstly, that the terminological shifts matter and have real content. ‘No Forever wars’ ‘globalism’ and ‘the elite’ stand for a conspiratorial worldviews as much as what they claim to stand against. Parochialism, ‘multi-cult’ and hatred of all liberal and progressive values at home and abroad are the real content of this stuff and they are at least as popular with the right’s base as the more left-wing concerns they appear to shadow. There is much that needs to be re-thought after a few decades where analysis was replaced with a strange doctrine of eternal return where every battle was treated as the occasion for the resurrection of old socialist slogans. A strange form of idealism where idealism was dressed up as materialism in an endless nostalgia for yesteryear’s battles, which eventually replaced the present in our own minds. Fans of the dialectic might enjoy the irony of a defeat for neo-liberal globalisation being the greatest defeat for the left and progressive values seen since the 1930s, where hope lies with the stock exchange putting some manners on right-wing politicians. But perhaps these dialectical paradoxes point to the completely false perspectives we’ve carried around for more than three decades. The power of the past hangs like a nightmare on the brain. And this was particularly true of older collectives of intellectuals on the left. The tragedy is that you need collectives and collaboration to work out new forms of politics. Today, there is almost nothing like that that doesn’t simply consist of repetition or self-affirmation. In some ways, this is the material basis for the revival of campism. All through the noughties as we built opposition to war and Islamophobia, UKIP was growing. The infiltration of the left by reactionary discourse was the blurring of distinctions between right-wing forms of isolationism and left internationalism, which happened because people overestimated their own influence and vastly underestimated the growth of KIPper discourse. This was seen clearly with the increasing difficulties in even being able to mobilise against the EDL effectively. By the next decade Stop the Wars’ talking points on Ukraine to Syria were almost indistinguishable from the right’s weird mix of conspiracy theory and parochialism. This is the real story. George Galloway was only the clearest example of this degeneration.John Game, 2025-04. Now what is happening around the Greenham Common women is tokenism. You can’t just say they are feminists, or separatists. That is not the real reason for their actions. We have to ask why tokens come to the front. Tokens come to the centre when there are not any real forces to solve the problem… Tokenism is at the centre of the downturn here. The trouble is it does a fantastic amount of damage.Tony Cliff, ‘Building in the Downturn’, speech to SWP National Committee, 1983. The Collapse of the SWP and Decline of the Far Left John and Andy discuss the growth of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1980s, the party's response to the miners' strike defeat, and the shift in international perspective from "Neither Washington nor Moscow" to a more anti-American stance. They also reflected on the history of the revolutionary left in Britain, the aftermath of 9/11, the formation of the Respect party, and the legacy of the Russian Revolution. They discuss the history and internal dynamics of the SWP, the economic and social transformations in India during the 1980s and 1990s, and the rise of right-wing populism in India. The discussion concludes with John and Andy reflecting on their past involvement with the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and their current views on Marxism and the legacy of the Russian Revolution. John expresses his belief that the Bolshevik revolution was disastrous for the left, as it severed the connection between communism and democracy. He argues that the repression began almost immediately after the revolution, contrary to common narratives. Both John and Andy acknowledge the need for a more nuanced and critical understanding of socialist history, particularly regarding the Soviet Union and its impact on Eastern Europe. They suggest that the traditional Marxist framework is no longer adequate for addressing contemporary issues like environmentalism. The End of the Miners’ Strike SWP's Growth and Political Shifts John and Andy discuss the growth of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1980s despite the grim political climate. They explore themes like the party's response to the miners' strike defeat, the shift from industrial militancy to a focus on building the party, and the transition in international perspective from ‘Neither Washington nor Moscow’ to a more anti-American stance. They analyse how the SWP adapted its strategy and rhetoric during this period of change in left-wing politics. The discussion will cover the party's growth, internal dynamics, and eventual decline, while also touching on broader trends affecting the revolutionary left. Andy and John discussed the history of the revolutionary left in Britain, focusing on the period after the defeat of the miners' strike in 1985. They highlighted the paradox of the 1980s, where, despite the grim situation, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) grew in membership. They attributed this growth to the general political polarisation created by Thatcher, the desire for ideological resistance, and the SWP's ability to relate to a highly political situation. They discussed the shift in the SWP's approach, from defending past positions and the centrality of the working class to addressing political questions and being tribunes of the oppressed. However, they note that this shift led to a culture of unanimity and voluntarism, which became problematic. They touch on the SWP's involvement in the Respect coalition, which they saw as a manifestation of the organisation's problems. 1983-85: Liverpool Council The Poll Tax The SWP were late to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, having started by insisting on the need for council workers to take action to defeat the tax, they took a while to join in with the Militant-led campaign on community non-payment. Stop the War Coalition (StWC) StWC was established on 21 September 2001 to campaign against the impending war in Afghanistan. It then campaigned against the impending invasion of Iraq. StWC never clarified the basis of the anti-war movement, which increasingly was explained in conspiratorial terms shared by the far right, with their talk of ‘forever wars’. Just a Little Respect In 2004 the SWP decided to gamble everything on an alliance with George Galloway, with whom they formed the Respect Party. Respect Party and Anti-War Sentiment The discussion covers the aftermath of 9/11 and the formation of the Respect party in the UK. John explains that Respect was presented as a way to capture anti-war sentiment, particularly among Muslim voters, but in reality was about avoiding allying with more militant anti-war activists. He notes that while some criticised Respect for making too many concessions to Muslims, he is proud they stood up to Islamophobia. John observes that during this period, many on the left had an overly charitable view of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) leadership and failed to recognise the rise of UKIP and the far right. The conversation touches on broader shifts in left-wing politics following the fall of the Soviet Union, with anti-Americanism becoming a dominant framework. John argues this led to conspiratorial thinking and a failure to properly analyse events like the Arab Spring. The Delta Rape Case and the Splits in the SWP In 2013 it emerged that the SWP Central Committee had buried accusations of rape against their National Secretary, Martin Smith. Huge numbers of members flooded out of the organisation to create the groups, the IS Network and RS21. Neither of these made a significant break with SWP politics: the ISN soon floundered, while RS21 maintains a ghost life not unlike that of its parent organisation.. The Bloom Had Gone #2 The bloom had gone off radical left politics long before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The crisis of Social Democracy was visible from the early 1970s. The developmentalist state of various nationalist socialisms was well in train even by the period of the late African decolonisations of the time. The revolutionary left survived mainly as the radical edge of (distinctly non-revolutionary) battles against the restructuring of capital as the old models began to disintegrate. These battles formed my own politics, so I’m far from condescending concerning them. But it was the f*g-end of a series of defeats and disorientations which had their roots a decade earlier. ‘Actually existing socialism’ had been dead as any source of real ideological inspiration to anyone other than its opponents since the tanks rolled into Prague in 1968, abolishing forever any illusions in the possibility of a rejuvenation of the Soviet system as a post-Stalinist ‘socialism with a human face’. In China, any illusions in ‘the Cultural Revolution’ were ditched even by the regime. The rise of illiberal democracy can be traced back to the period of Bush’s war on terror, one of whose features was politicians manipulating state institutions rather than the other way about. The disorientation of radical politics after a brief mini-boom led to a profound misunderstanding of the causes and the dynamics of these event

    1h 21m

  7. 03/30/2025

    Whatever Happened to the Revolutionary Left #2: From Workerism to Broke, 1945-1985 (Part Two: Ouverism and the Rise of the New Left)

    Revolutionary Left's Rise 1945-1985 Overview John and Andy discuss the rise of the revolutionary left from 1945 to 1985. They start by examining the situation at the end of World War II, including the positions of Social Democrats and the Communist Party. They cover the emergence of the New Left from its post-war origins through significant developments in the 1960s. The discussion will provide context on key groups and figures, touching on the influence of the Russian Revolution. They explain how leftist movements expanded beyond a small niche during this 40-year period. Russian Revolution's Impact on Leftist Groups The discussion focuses on the historical context and impact of the Russian Revolution, particularly its influence on the revolutionary left in the post-World War II era. John explains the appeal of Bolshevism and its role in shaping the political landscape of Europe, emphasizing how it became a powerful myth that attracted various political forces. Andy adds that this ‘structure of feeling’ around the Russian Revolution is crucial for understanding the collective career of the revolutionary left in the post-war years, as it became a central point of reference for different leftist groups, including Trotskyists and the Communist Party, even when they disagreed with each other. Trotsky's Post-War Predictions and Their Impact John and Andy discuss the aftermath of World War II and its impact on various political movements. They focus on how Trotsky's predictions about post-war events were largely incorrect, leading to a crisis among Trotskyists. The Labour Party in Britain implemented significant social reforms, which was unexpected and challenging for far-left groups to explain. The Communist Party, despite some growth, suffered ideological setbacks, while mainstream reformist forces gained strength. The discussion highlights the difficulties faced by Trotskyists in adapting their theories to the new realities of the post-war world, including the expansion of the Soviet Empire and the absence of a capitalist crisis or revolutionary wave. 1950s Leftist Thought and 1956 John and Andy discuss the development of leftist thought in the 1950s, highlighting three key factors: new forms of worker struggle, the impact of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and anti-colonial movements. They emphasize the significance of 1956 as a turning point for the revolutionary left, particularly in how it led to a reevaluation of Trotskyist perspectives on the Soviet Union. Andy introduces Tony Cliff's State Capitalist analysis of Russia as a fundamental break from Trotskyism, leading to new ways of understanding international relations. John adds context about the intellectual climate of the time, discussing the concept of ‘anti-anti-communism’ and how certain leftist positions, such as neutrality in the Korean War, were considered extremely controversial. Post-War Britain's Working-Class Militancy The discussion covers the social and economic changes in post-war Britain, focusing on the rise of working-class militancy and confidence from the 1950s to the 1970s. John and Andy highlight the impact of consumer society, technological advancements, and cultural shifts on working-class consciousness and activism. They note the paradoxical effect of these changes, which both diluted and strengthened working-class identity. The conversation then moves to the decline of this militancy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, culminating in the miners' strike of 1984-85. They describe this strike as a turning point and the last major struggle of the traditional workers' movement, marking the end of an era in British labor history. Far Left in Britain's Evolution The discussion covers the history and evolution of the far left in Britain from the 1950s through the 1980s. John provides a generational overview, highlighting key periods like the 1950s rebuilding of socialist traditions, the rise of CND in the early 1960s, the impact of 1968 and student movements, the workplace focus of the 1970s, and the miners' strike of the 1980s. He emphasizes how each period shaped leftist thought and activism, noting both achievements and challenges. The conversation touches on the transformative impact of events like the miners' strike on participants and the broader left, as well as the eventual decline and loss that followed. John and Andy reflect on the complexities of analyzing this history and the difficulties in reconciling past beliefs with current understanding. ––––– … the first and, up to now, the only total revolution against total bureaucratic capitalism, [a system that in] its purest, most extreme form has been realized in Russia, China, and the other countries presently masquerading as socialist.Cornelius Castoriadis, on the Hungarian uprising, 1956. Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 “Khrushchev’s secret speech, once it leaked out in the West, had marked the end of a certain Communist faith. But it also allowed for the possibility of post-Stalinist reform and renewal... But the desperate street fighting in Budapest dispelled any illusions about this new, ‘reformed’ Soviet model. Once again, Communist authority had been unambiguously revealed to rest on nothing more than the barrel of a tank. The rest was dialectics. Western Communist parties started to haemorrhage… In Italy, as in France, Britain and elsewhere, it was younger, educated Party members who left in droves. Like non-Communist intellectuals of the Left, they had been attracted both to the promise of post-Stalin reforms in the USSR and to the Hungarian revolution itself... For forty years the Western Left had looked to Russia, forgiving and even admiring Bolshevik violence as the price of revolutionary self-confidence and the march of History. Moscow was the flattering mirror of their political illusions. In November 1956, the mirror shattered... Shorn of the curious magnetism of Stalinist terror, and revealed in Budapest in all its armored mediocrity, Soviet Communism lost its charm for most Western sympathizers and admirers... The difference in Eastern Europe… was that the disillusioned subjects of a discredited regime could hardly turn their faces to distant lands, or rekindle their revolutionary faith in the glow of far-off peasant revolts. They were perforce obliged to live in and with the Communist regimes whose promises they no longer believed… Their expectations of Communism, briefly renewed with the promise of de-Stalinization, were extinguished; but so were their hopes of Western succour… For most people living under Communism, the ‘Socialist’ system had lost whatever radical, forward-looking, utopian promise once attached to it, and which had been part of its appeal... It was now just a way of life to be endured. That did not mean it could not last a very long time… in many ways, 1956 represented the defeat and collapse of the revolutionary myth so successfully cultivated by Lenin and his heirs.” Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    1h 2m

  8. 03/19/2025

    Whatever Happened to the Revolutionary Left #1: From Workerism to Broke, 1945-1985 (Part One: General Introduction)

    Trotsky once spoke of a raincoat that had holes in it. It was a perfect raincoat, he said - as long as it doesn’t rain. With the far left’s confused non-response to Trump’s fascism (when they aren’t simply congratulating him on pwning the liberals, and after spending a lot of energy denying he was a fascist to start with), hasn’t the revolutionary left as a whole turned out to be such a raincoat? Topics discussed: Introductions; The SWP (Socialist Workers Party) and SWSS (Socialist Workers Student Society) in 1984; the miners’ strike; the revolutionary left in the 70s and 80s; a busted flush; the end of ouverism / workerism after the miners’ strike; East London IS (International Socialists), stewards and activists; York University; the social basis of Libertarian Communism in the postwar militancy; Mark Fisher vs the last generation to get a whiff of workers organisation; anarchists against the miners; state capitalism and Polish builders; Solidarnosc; Leninism vs the counterculture; Castoriadis (Socialisme ou Barbarie), Mike Kidron, Nigel Harris and Alasdair Macintyre (Socialist Review Group and International Socialists), Italian Autonomism breaking out of the ideology of Trotskyism; social justice in sectarian Ireland, segregated US, the Vietnam war; the Communist Historians Group and the utopianism of the countercultural left; Trotskyist disappointment after 1989 and the Colour Revolutions; How the SWP decided to become Trotskyist; conspiratorial, underground Marxism vs. Marxist (and post-Marxist!) rethinking; ‘Shock Doctrine’ Marxism, ‘No Logo’ and the rise of ‘anti-imperialist’ campism; defending the center / in defense of liberal modernity. Get full access to The Traveller in the Evening at www.travellerintheevening.com/subscribe

    1h 21m
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Reflections on William Blake, Surrealism, ecology, radical theology and politics. www.travellerintheevening.com

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