London Marxism Reading Group

This is a the final chapter of our longform Tuesday-night reading group on China. If you didn't get to the first meetings, don't worry - come along anyway!
This time, we're finishing with chapter 4 , Ruination. Find the text here: https://chuangcn.org/journal/one/sorghum-and-steel/4-ruination/
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About the China Study Group:
What can we learn from the Chinese Revolution? That's the question we'll seek to answer as LMRG brings the heat to you once again, now on Tuesday nights, with our all-new China Study Group. In this long-form reading series, we'll meet monthly for in-depth discussion of a series of texts on China, its revolution, the socialist market economy, and more. As the New Cold War heats up, it's never been more important to learn what we can about the country which the US, UK and EU have all described - following the American phrasebook - as a "systemic rival".
For the first set of meetups within this series, we'll be tackling Sorghum and Steel: The Socialist Developmental Regime and the Forging of China by the Chuang collective. Chuang is an independent, autonomous collective of anti-authoritarian Chinese communists and labour activists whose work provides a rare opportunity for English readers to get vital detail on historical and contemporary dynamics within Chinese society from a materialist, communist, and crucially - balanced perspective. Sorghum and Steel will provide our Study Group with an essential foundation in Chinese history to equip us going forward.
Throughout this series, we'll give equal space to a wide variety of sources, from anti-authoritarian Chinese communists opposed to the contemporary Politburo to members of Xi Jinping's own ideological brain-trust. We'll dig deep into elements of the Chinese revolutionary experience such as the CPC's localist co-operative economics of the Civil War period, the forgotten grass roots of the Cultural Revolution, the Boulan Fazheng period and China's rejection of "shock therapy" as seen in the USSR, and the theory underpinning China's recent turn away from the liberal economics of the 2000s.
Take care everyone and happy reading!

This is the brutal present, a Second Gilded Age, but we could travel back a hundred years and describe more or less the exact same scene. In the century since Lenin lived and walked the earth, less has changed than the eternal optimists - Panglossian techno-liberals like Steven Pinker and the other intellectuals of the Epstein class - would like us to think. Really, we're back where it all began in the First Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century: on the outside looking in, asking the age-old question: what is to be done? Things are really getting quite bad. No, really - what is to be done!!?

In our gatherings of late, we've been tinkering around the edges of a few answers. Prior Lenin readings as well as our exploration of the Yan'an Forum and our whistle-stop tour through the last twenty years of street protests with Vincent Bevins have given us some things to chew on. Now there's been a clamour from plenty of regulars, as well as a few newcomers, that we continue to pull at the vital thread that seems to be running through all our discussions and see where it might lead us: namely, the revolutionary theories of Lenin.

This will be a series of readings running every other Thursday night in Whitechapel. We'll start with something a little unusual for us: Richard Appignanesi's Lenin for Beginners, an illustrated guide to Lenin's life and thought designed for newcomers to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Despite having lots of pictures and goofy cartoons, it's very much not dumbed down - it simply provides an accessible intro to concepts which can seem obscure in Lenin's own writing (given translation issues and the old-world style of a man from the 19th century).

Find the text here (uploaded by me personally to Riseup Share, an encrypted service): https://share.riseup.net/#sk4GQeoLBxlb5U-Dn9D19w

With No, Really: What is to be done?, we'll be taking a deep dive into revolutionary Marxism with a read-through of texts like Lars Lih's Lenin rediscovered: what is to be done? in Context, non-standard biographies like Carter Ellwood's Non-Geometric Lenin: Essays on the Development of the Bolshevik Party 1910-1914 as well as some articles, essays and discussion prompts which most readers likely won't have encountered before.

Take care and happy reading!

Welcome back, international readers! The subject of our next online discussion group really needs no introduction. In the past weeks, the United States and Israel finally made good on decades of drunken neocon boasting and launched an illegal all-out aerial attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran. All this so shortly after the ill-fated regime-change attempt in Venezuela, threats against Greenland, the ongoing economic strangulation of Cuba, and now, another imperial warfront in Ecuador.

No reading for this one - we'll be having an open discussion about the latest developments in geopolitics and their effects on all of us, particularly with regards to the economic meltdowns this latest eruption of imperial bloodlust has already created. Tom Stevenson's recent article in LRB is a good overview of the Iran situation.

We'll finally be using the encrypted Jitsi Meet service, courtesy of our friends at NerdVPN, an infosec/tech collective with no affiliation to the major VPN service of a similar name.

As of writing, the situation has escalated far beyond what US imperialist war planners seemed to be ready for, or at least what they tried to make the public ready for with their initial media spin. Say the line, Bart: what was supposed to be a two-week limited operation now, according to US war chief Pete Hegseth, looks set to last "eight weeks", which of course really means it can and will go on indefinitely.

And no wonder. Iranian retaliation has seen the entire Gulf region go into full-on panic mode as hypersonic missiles rain down on US bases across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, Qatar... Since this is a war for which the US-Zionist partnership had such a long time to prepare, let's consider the US military's own internal analysis of the situation. Former CENTCOM Commander Frank "Spuds" McKenzie wrote in 2024, “The United States will not be able to maintain these bases in a full-throated conflict, because they will be rendered unusable by sustained Iranian attack. It is the simple tyranny of geography.” Things do seem to be doing that way as admissions are finally made that all that billion-dollar hardware can't stop every Iranian missile or drone from landing. And supplies of interceptors are running out - not to be refilled. For the Gulf states, the imperialists' so-called friends, this is a death sentence, at least for their status as economic and trade hubs. As Middle East Eye reports, “The US is “stonewalling” requests by some Gulf states to replenish their air defence interceptors as pressure mounts on them to join the US and Israel in their war on Iran".

The death and destruction unleashed by the imperialists is breathtaking in its cruelty. Despite what Zionist trolls online have been saying for days, the US has now admitted it was "likely responsible" for the mass killing of 140 Iranian schoolgirls in an unprovoked, illegal strike in Minab, Hormozgan Province. This war crime was probably facilitated by Anthropic's Claude AI along with thousands of other "precision strikes" on the country.

But perhaps things don't seem so bad from where you're sitting. To be fair, after all, I've got it pretty good, things could be wors-- oh! There goes the global economy. All those missile strikes on the Gulf weren't going to leave markets and supply chains untouched. A few days ago, QatarEnergy declared "force majeure" - meaning that, due to circumstances beyond its control, it could no longer fulfil contracts. Energy exports from Qatar have completely halted, and Saudi production has fallen dramatically as operations halted at Ras Tanura, the world's largest oil refinery, after an Iranian drone strike. Already, Brent crude oil prices were up 10-133% as of the other day and liquified natural gas (LNG) up by even more. And it will get worse: as Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi told the Financial Times in an ​interview published on Friday, “Qatar expects all Gulf energy producers to shut ​down exports within weeks and drive ‌oil to $150 a barrel ... Everybody that has ​not called for force majeure we expect ⁠will do so in the next ​few days that this continues. All exporters in ​the Gulf region will have to call force majeure".

Meanwhile, the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil trade and 83% of LNG supplies pass, remains effectively closed. Major container shipping companies including MSC, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have all suspended transits. Shipping is now too risky to be insurable, and therefore coming to a stop. According to Insurance Journal, "Marine insurers are canceling war risk coverage for vessels and oil shipping rates are set to surge further after the widening Iran conflict left at least three tankers damaged, a seafarer killed and 150 ships stranded around the Strait of Hormuz." Can a $20 billion US-backed reinsurance fund turn the ships around? Time will tell.

On the US home front, economically speaking, things have gone from bad to worse in the blink of an eye. The economy of the imperial core shed 92,000 jobs in the month of February, "far below the expected gain of 55,000 jobs. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4%, rather than the expected 4.3%." Financial markets, unmoored as they always are from reality, have had a turbulent week, with many investors taking a "complacent" view of the Gulf conflict and its knock-on effects on energy, agricultural production (which relies on fossil fuels for fertiliser), and more. Many have wondered why all this geopolitical risk hasn't been "priced in" to stock prices, with the Dow up even as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 fall. Do investors really know something we don't? Or has investor sentiment simply not yet revealed itself in the fullness of its panic? It's hard to say, because BlackRock's $26 billion Private Credit Fund recently put a block on withdrawals as investors clamoured to get their money out. That can't be a good sign.

All told, we may - or may not - be teetering on the edge of the long-awaited economic "big one"; the financial crash to put 2008 to shame. We shall see.

Join us and give us your read on things as us situation-monitor-ers continue to monitor the situation!

Hello all! They're saying a "political earthquake" is coming to London this May 7th. Nationally, the latest polls have the Greens well ahead of Labour and only 2 points off Reform - more or less a rounding error for often-sloppy British pollsters.

Closer to home, according to some measures, here's how things are looking for the old ruling party in London, exposed on its left flank thanks to years of doubling-down on neoliberalism and genocide:

"A new technique, which builds on MRP modelling and correctly predicted the Gorton and Denton byelection result, forecasts that Labour, which holds 21 boroughs in London, could lose flagship authorities such as Hackney and Lambeth to the Greens. ... Labour could be left with an outright majority in just Newham and Redbridge councils, if forecasts are correct. The Greens, if they were to run candidates in every ward, could also take Lewisham, Waltham Forest and Greenwich, as well as Wandsworth, Hammersmith & Fulham, Hounslow and Brent ... Labour could lose more than half of its council seats across the capital – 741 – according to the model. The Greens would pick up 530, the Tories 77 and the Liberal Democrats 72, as Labour is squeezed on four fronts. The party could also face challenges from pro-Gaza independents."

In East London, Labour could indeed see some total wipeouts. Control of Hackney Council and even the Hackney Mayor's office is likely to fall to the Green insurgents.

And it's not just Labour voters turning Green. Some of the turquoise might be changing colour too:

"Last summer, if you polled non-voters who said they were certain to vote at the next election, almost half would plump for Reform. Now it’s more like one in three. According to the latest Find Out Now survey, 16 per cent would now vote Green, up 12 points on last year. Yet the number of previous non-voters who say they are sure to vote has not changed. This raises the question: might the Greens be taking Reform votes?"

Meanwhile, "Your Party" continues to piss away any promise of future success in the aftermath of its farcical "CEC" elections. Based on reports made available detailing the proceedings, your humble host can report that the first meeting of the newly-elected central executive of "Your Party" went off exactly as one might have expected: silencing of dissenting voices through 30- second limits to speaking time, utilisation of rules and procedures to keep debate off the agenda, and stringent bloc voting. Corbyn and Sultana's project is all but dead. We can expect a few Corbyn loyalists to make half-hearted appearances come election day, but there probably won't be very many of them, especially here in London where the pressure to step aside for the Green wave will be strong.

In a word, when it comes to left politics, it's the Greens by default. Groups like Greens Organise (GO) have been trying to put a more participatory, ecosocialist stamp on what would otherwise be fairly technocratic green politics of the kind seen elsewhere in Europe, notwithstanding Zack Polanski's clear shift of the party's rhetoric to the left and his wavering but not insubstantial commitment to taking Britain out of NATO. Is GO a go-er? What else can be done, or ought to be done, in the fight to push England's overton window back to the left, ecosocialism style?

Join us for this public meeting and discussion where we'll be talking about what's going on with the Greens, what the future may hold, and what role if any the grassroots left can play in the Greens' future.

Check back here shortly for our location - probably LARC or somewhere else East!