05.12.1996

Enter the dragon

The longstanding publication of the Workers Revolutionary Party, Workers Press, no longer exists. Nor does the WRP. However, there is a new publication to fill the space, so to speak, where Workers Press used to be. Enter Reclaim the Future, publication of the Reclaim the Future Alliance.

This new publication marks the total departure of the WRP elements that helped to produce it from the realm of working class, Marxist politics altogether. Instead, we have a dull and, in places, downright embarrassing, eclectic hodge-podge of eco-mongering and ‘new age’ nonsense, which sometimes has you questioning the sanity of the author. That the once ‘mighty’ WRP, which under the authoritarian tutelage of Gerry Healy was ready to storm the capitalist citadel as soon as the order was given, has ended end up as part of a revamped Ecology Party is truly incredible.

The worst offender, ironically in some respects, is by the noted academic and anthropologist, Chris Knight. Entitled ‘Enter the dragon!’ (a picture of which, unfortunately, adorns the masthead), this piece plunges the depths of irrationality. Comrade Knight issues the revolutionary call for “dancers, drummers and musicians - especially bagpipe players”. Revolutionaries better look elsewhere, unless they happen to be musically talented ones, that is. Bafflingly, Knight writes, “Reclaim the Future’s dragon is blood-red angry - and hates robocops”; and plugs a meeting of the Radical Anthropology Group, which has “regular audiences with the dragon”, who is “angry at the mess patriarchy has made of things”. Is comrade Knight trying to be cool or what?

But there is a logic to all this mumbo-jumbo. This ‘new age’ turn did not come out of thin air, even if Reclaim the Future makes no explicit mention of its WRP/Workers Press antecedents. The seeds of this can be found quite clearly in its coverage of Bosnia, which saw the WRP overtly crossing class lines and forming cosy alliances with anyone who supported the reactionary muslim regime in Sarajevo.

This led to a situation where WRP members were perfectly happy to rub shoulders with fundamentalist muslim groups, in support of Bosnian ‘self-determination’. Workers Press even advertised the Alliance to Defend Bosnia-Herzegovina, a pro-imperialist grouplet which called upon Nato to bomb Serbian positions. But the WRP/Workers Press’ liberal love for the ‘underdog’ blinded it to reality, convinced it was fighting the Spanish Civil War all over again - with the ‘good guys’ winning this time.

Reclaim the Future, aka ‘Enter the dragon!’, should serve as a dire warning to the entire revolutionary movement of the dangers of liquidationism and opportunism. Any organisation which is not rooted in scientific Marxist theory and Partyism, and is afraid to be ‘unpopular’, always faces the prospect of being scattered to the four winds. Read Reclaim the Future and learn the sombre lessons.

Don Preston