Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • Addiction and free will

    Some 10 years ago I witnessed a clash on BBC Newsnight between the British commentator Peter Hitchens and the American-Canadian actor Matthew Perry on the subject of addiction. Hitchens put forward the view that addiction does not really exist and is instead used as an excuse for hedonistic behaviour. Perry, who had claimed to have struggled from drug and alcohol addiction for many years, naturally disagreed. The sad death of Perry in 2023, later revealed to have occurred due to the effects of ketamine, once again put the issue of addiction at centre stage. It is tempting to dismiss Hitchens as a crank; but there are many who subscribe to his view on addiction. In this blog post I will attempt to debunk his arguments.

    Hitchens summarized his views on the subject in a 2017 article entitled ‘The Fantasy of Addiction.’ The crux of his argument is outlined in the following paragraph: “The chief difficulty with the word “addiction” is the idea that it describes a power greater than the will. If it exists in the way we use it and in the way our legal and medical systems assume it exists, then free will has been abolished. I know there are people who think and argue this is so. But this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment. In the end, the idea that humans do not really have free will is a contentious opinion, not an objective fact.” However this last sentence is demonstrably false. As I explained in a previous blog post, the idea that human beings have free will is an illusion.

    Hitchens would probably respond to my claim by asking me to back it up experimentally. Unfortunately for him, there is a lot of experimental evidence which reinforces the idea that free will does not exist. A pioneering experiment in this field was conducted by the American neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in the 1980s, in which he asked each subject to choose a random moment to flick their wrist while he measured the associated activity in their brain. Libet found that the unconscious brain activity leading up to the conscious decision by the subject to flick their wrist began approximately half a second before the subject consciously felt that they had decided to move. Libet’s findings suggest that decisions are first made on an unconscious level and only afterward are translated into a ‘conscious decision.’

    There are dozens of other studies with similar findings that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say that Hitchens’ second-to-last sentence above – “… this is not one of those things that can be demonstrated by falsifiable experiment” – is also false. However there is a better riposte that does require any experimental evidence at all, which involves pointing out that the concept of free will, as usually understood (and as understood by Hitchens), is incoherent. It implies that we can think a thought before we have thought it. In the memorable phrase of the Austrian-Swiss physicist Wolfgang Pauli, it’s “not even wrong.” There is no need to falsify the concept free will with experimental evidence as logic alone is enough to tell us that it cannot possibly exist.

    Hitchens goes on to argue that by using the word ‘addiction’ we are giving the addict “permission to carry on as before.” This is patently untrue. By using the word ‘addiction’ we are recognizing that the addict is suffering from an illness and needs to seek professional help. Hitchens laments the widespread use of the words ‘addiction’ and ‘addict’, arguing that addiction cannot be real because many ‘addicts’ cease to become ‘addicted’. I find it difficult to argue with this as I’m not really sure what point he’s trying to make. He seems to be getting bogged down in semantics here. Or perhaps he has difficulty understanding that someone can be addicted to something and some point in time, then not addicted to it at a later point in time.

    One (slightly) better argument Hitchens makes is that the burden of proof lies with those who posit that there is such a thing as addiction. This is quite correct; but what Hitchens hasn’t noticed is that the evidence that addiction is a real phenomenon is all around us. Millions of people around the world from all walks of life can be observed engaging in self-destructive, compulsive behaviour. There are two possible explanations: either these people are wilfully ruining their lives for the sake of a few minutes or hours of short-term pleasure, or they are suffering from an affliction which is making them act in ways in they wouldn’t dream of acting in otherwise. Hitchens apparently thinks the first explanation is more likely to be correct than the second. Most thinking people would disagree.

  • What is Palantir?

    The US tech giant Palantir Technologies recently won a contract with Coventry City Council to process data for its children’s services. This is one of many public contracts Palantir has secured in Britain recently, which include contracts with the NHS, Ministry of Defence, and police forces. Palantir also does work for the Israeli military, as well as with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US. Donald Trump is apparently a big fan, as he wrote on his social media site, Truth Social: “Palantir Technologies (PLTR) has proven to have great war-fighting capabilities and equipment. Just ask our enemies!.” Thanks to its contract with the NHS, Palantir now has access to personal data of millions of UK citizens. But what is exactly is this company that nobody had even heard of until a few years ago?

    Palantir Technologies is an American software company that specializes in big data analytics, intelligence gathering, and artificial intelligence integration. Founded in 2003 with early funding from the CIA, it provides operating systems for defence, healthcare, and commercial enterprises to consolidate fragmented datasets and uncover complex patterns. Palantir offers three flagship software products: Palantir Gotham was built for the military and allows users to connect disparate information to manage operations; Palantir Foundry functions as a central data operating system for large commercial and public enterprises; and Palantir AIP (Artificial Intelligence Platform) allows organizations to securely activate and control artificial intelligence algorithms on their own private networks.

    Palantir has expanded significantly beyond its initial counter-terrorism and intelligence roots into several other sectors, particularly defence and healthcare. This has raised concerns from many observers. Human rights organizations and privacy advocates have voiced concerns over the company’s work with immigration enforcement and its technology being used in foreign military conflicts. Palantir has been criticized for its role in expanding government surveillance using artificial intelligence and facial recognition software. Critics have also questioned the ethics of integrating private tech platforms into sensitive national infrastructure like healthcare and defence. According to a former employee, the government can use Gotham to “centralize everything an agency knows about a person in one place.”

    Concerns about Palantir can be broadly categorized into four types. First, there are concerns around data privacy, as both Gotham and Foundry are designed to ingest and synthesize massive, disparate databases, raising fears of ’Big Brother’ levels of surveillance. Second, there are concerns around the company’s involvement in controversial operations such as US ICE deportations, predictive policing initiatives, and targeted military operations. Third, there are concerns around state dependency, with the UK government’s heavy reliance on a US corporation to manage highly sensitive public sectors, such as the NHS and police forces. And fourth, there are concerns around the ideological stances of Palantir’s leadership, with co-founder Peter Thiel and CEO Alex Karp frequently promoting right-wing views.

    The Israeli government began using Palantir software in 2014 and significantly scaled up its partnership during its genocide on Gaza. CEO Alex Karp has said: “I am proud that we are supporting Israel in every way we can.” The Israeli military has also used Palantir to plan further attacks in Lebanon and Gaza. Taking all of this into account, it is no exaggeration to say that Palantir is the most dangerous company in the world right now. It uses artificial intelligence to weaponize our data against us and to facilitate genocide. Palantir is a weapons company disguised as a software start-up; and it is everywhere. It is used by militaries, police forces, banks, hospitals, and even your local pharmacy or favourite fast-food place. This is truly dystopian stuff.

    So how can Palantir be stopped? Trade unions have a crucial role to play here. By coming together and organizing, unions can force the NHS, councils, and other public bodies to scrap their contracts with Palantir. Pro-capitalist commentators argue that we need tech giants like Palantir to ‘modernize’ the state; but this is nonsense. There is nothing to stop the government from hiring teams of skilled tech workers to develop the technology in-house. The technology could then be publically owned and put under constant democratic scrutiny. Unfortunately, when it comes to private companies profiting from the NHS and other public services, Palantir is just the tip of the iceberg. That is why our public services must be nationalized and placed under democratic, public control.

  • Marxian value theory

    The so-called Fundamental Marxian Theorem (FMT) was first proven by the Japanese economist Nubuo Okishio in 1963 and was developed further by the Japanese economist Michio Morishima in 1973 and 1974. The theorem asserts that, in Miroshima’s words, “the exploitation of labourers by capitalists is necessary and sufficient for the existence of a price-wage set yielding positive profits or, in other words, for the possibility of conserving the capitalist economy.” On the other hand, the ‘New Interpretation’ of Marx, put forward by the French economist Gérard Duménil 1980 and developed further by the American economist Duncan Foley in 1982, approaches Marxian value theory from another perspective, emphasizing the direct link between labour time and price.

    More recently, the issue of Marxian value theory was raised again by the development of the so-called ‘Temporal Single-System Interpretation’, first put forward by the American economist Andrew Kliman in 1999. There appears to be some controversy around which interpretation is the ‘correct’ one. In this blog post I will investigate these different interpretations of Marx. I’ve already devoted two blog posts to the original formulation of the FMT so I won’t go over that again here (see those blog posts for more info). In contrast to the original formulation, both the New Interpretation and Temporal Single-System Interpreration aim to connect price and labour time directly through the concept of the ‘monetary expression of labour time’, or MELT.

    Let (A,L) be a Leontief economy, where A ≥ 0 is the nxn commodity input matrix, and L ≥ 0 is the 1xn row vector of labour inputs. Then the MELT associated with the 1xn price vector p and nx1 commodity output vector q is defined by m = p(I-A)q/Lq, where I is the nxn identity matrix. Further, the value of labour power is defined by v = w/m = wLq/p(I-A)q. The total surplus value is then given by the equation S = Lq(1-v) = p(I-A-L)q/m = P/m, where P is the total profit. The FMT says that S > 0 if and only if P > 0, so a necessary condition for the FMT hold is that m > 0. From the definition of m, this is equivalent to p(I-A)q > 0, as Lq > 0. This is a different condition than was used in the original formulation of the FMT.

    Under the Temporal Single-System Interpretation, the value of labour power at the next time step, v’, is determined by the 1xn price vector at the previous time step, p, by v’ = pA+L; and the 1xn price vector at the next time step, p’, is given by p’ = pA+L+g, where g a 1xn vector with the property that gq = 0, where q is the nx1 commodity output vector. The real profit associated with the 1xn price vector p is defined by by P = p’q/(1+i)-C-V, where i is the rate of inflation, C = pAq is constant capital, and V = wLq is variable capital. Further, the rate of inflation is defined by i = (m’-m)/m, where m and m’ are the MELT at the current and next time step respectively. These are different to the definition of the MELT used in the New Interpretation and are instead defined recursively by m’ = mp’q/(pA+mL)q.

    According to the Temporal Single-System Interpretation, the total value added by labour, Lq, must be equal to p’q/m’-C/m. Multiplying both quantities by m gives mLq = mp’q/m’-C, and substituting in the expression for i above and rearranging gives p’q/(1+i) = C+mLq. Substituting this into the formula for real profit above gives P = mLq-V, and therefore P = mS, where S = Lq(1-w/m) is surplus value. The possibility of a negative m disappears provided the initial value in the recursion m’ = mp’q/(pA+mL)q is positive, in which case the FMT holds automatically. However, this result is only possible due to the change in definition of the MELT, from a static definition to a recursive one. This redefinition is considered somewhat controversial and is not accepted by all Marxist economists.

    Each of the three interpretations of Marxian value theory outlined in this blog posts starts with some assumption then shows that the FMT holds under this assumption. In the conventional interpretation, the FMT is proved under an assumption of ‘reproducibility’; in the New Interpretation, the FMT proved under the assumption of a positive MELT; and in the Temporal Single-System Interpretation, the FMT is proved under the assumption that the MELT satisfies a recursive equation. Which interpretation is considered to be ‘correct’ boils down to which assumption is most defensible. This is a question that can only be answered empirically, by looking at which assumption holds in actual capitalist economies.

  • Old English orthography

    Old English is the earliest attested form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from a set of dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, with its closest relatives being Old Frisian and Old Saxon. It was first written in runes; but From around the 8th century, the runic system came to be supplanted by the Latin alphabet. At that time the Latin alphabet lacked distinct letters j, v, and w, and native Old English spellings did not use k, q or z. The remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by 4 more: æ and ð, which were modified Latin letters; and þ and ƿ, which were modified runes.

    In contrast with modern English orthography, Old English spelling was reasonably regular, with a mostly predictable correspondence between letters and phonemes. Modern editions of Old English manuscripts generally introduce some additional conventions. Accent marks are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction was made between long and short vowels and diphthongs originally. Under this convention, long a is spelled as á or ā, long e as é or ē, and so on. This applies to long diphthongs too, with long ea spelled as éa or ēa, and so on. The letters æ and þ are normally retained, but the letter ƿ is usually replaced with w and the letter ð by þ, as ð and þ were both used to represent the same sound.

    Short a, æ, and ea were in largely in complementary distribution, with short a occurring in open syllables when there was a low vowel in the following syllable, short ea before l, r, h plus consonant, and short æ elsewhere. Any exceptions can be explained by analogy; for example, Old English faren ‘gone’ may have been spelled with an a rather than an æ by analogy with the infinitive faran ‘to go’. Similarly, short e and eo were largely in complementary distribution, as were short i and ie, with short eo and ie occurring before l, r, h plus consonant, and short e and i elsewhere. In theory a, æ, and ea could be spelled using a single letter, short e and eo with a single letter, and short i and ie with a single letter; but they are usually spelled out explicitly.

    Before a consonant c is always velar, whereas word-finally after i it is always palatal; otherwise it is usually palatal before front vowels except y and velar elsewhere. Similarly, word-initially before a consonant g is always velar, whereas word-finally after i it is always palatal;  otherwise it is usually palatal before and after front vowels except y and velar elsewhere. Thus palatal and velar c were largely in complementary distribution, as were palatal and velar g. That means palatal and velar c can be spelled using a single letter with little ambiguity, as can palatal and velar g – and this is precisely what was done in Old English texts. Modern editions often distinguish between velar and palatal c and g by placing dots above the palatal variants.

    The correspondences between Old English and modern English spelling are remarkably regular. The default stressed vowel correspondences are: a, æ, ea, ā+CC, ǣ+CC, ēa+CC (where C is any consonant) > a; e, eo, ē+CC, ēo+CC > e; e+ld > ie; i, y, ī+CC, ȳ+CC > i; o, ō+CC, a+ld,mb > o; u, ū+CC > u; ā > oa, o_e, o#; ǣ, ēa > ea; ē, ēo > ee, e_e; ī, ȳ > i_e; ō > oo; ū, u+nd > ou. The default stressed diphthong correspondences are: æġ, ǣġ, eġ, ēġ# (where # is the end of a word) > aiC, ay; ēġV (where V is any vowel), iġ, īġ, yġ, ȳġ  > i_e, ie#, y#,ye#; æw, aw, agV > aw; ǣw, ēaw, ew, eow, ēw, ēow > ew; iw, īw, yw, ȳw > ue; āw, āgV, ow, ōw, ogV, ōgV, ugV, ūgV > ow; æh, ah, ag# > augh; ēh, ih, īh, yh, ȳh > igh; āh, āg#, oh, og#, āhC, ōh, ōg#, uh, ug#, ūh, ūg# > ough.

    The correspondences between Old English and modern English consonant spellings are even more regular. The default correspondences for single Old English consonants are: b > b; c > c, k; ċ > ch; d > d; f > f, v; g > g; ġ > y; h > h; l > l; m > m; n >n; p > p; r > r; s > s, z; t > t; þ > th; w > w; x > x. The default correspondences for combinations of Old English consonants are: ċċ > tch; ċġ, ġġ > dge; sċ > sh. The regularity of correspondences between Old English and modern English spelling is no surprise because modern English spelling to a large extent represents Middle English pronunciation, which was generally closer to Old English pronunciation than to that of modern English. This is the main reason why modern English spelling appears so irregular and illogical to us modern English speakers.

  • The collapse of Cuba

    Cuba is currently facing a severe oil shortage and a deep economic crisis. The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February this year, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening countries with tariffs should they attempt to break the blockade. In March, Miguel Díaz-Canel, the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, publicly confirmed for the first time that his government was engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States aimed at addressing the severe US imposed oil and energy blockade that has left Cuba facing crippling fuel shortages and widespread power outages. Nonetheless in May, Minister of Energy and Mines Vincent De La O’levy announced that Cuba had run out of oil and diesel.

    Although it is generally accepted that the crisis is being caused primarily by the US fuel blockade, many analysts and human rights observers also place blame on the Cuban government. According to these observers, decades of centralized economic policies, a lack of investment and maintenance in domestic energy infrastructure, and the collapse of key agricultural sectors like sugar have made the economy deeply vulnerable. The military-led conglomerate GAESA reportedly controls up to 70% of Cuba’s economy and is claimed to hold an estimated $18 billion in assets. Critics argue that GAESA’s absolute control over the most lucrative sectors of the Cuban economy—including tourism, retail, ports, and banking—has systematically hollowed out the state’s resources.

    These critics allege that instead of investing in public infrastructure, healthcare, or electrical grids, the conglomerate hoards immense profits offshore or funnels them into elite interests. For example, in the wake of the Obama-era normalization of relations between the US and Cuba, GAESA went on a massive hotel-building spree, adding thousands of rooms. When US restrictions tightened again, these hotels sat empty, resulting in wasted capital that could have been used to stabilize the country’s broader energy and food needs. Furthermore, analyses by geopolitical research institutes such as the Journal of Democracy indicate that funds from state enterprises have been diverted to tax havens or the military, leaving the general public to suffer extreme shortages of food, medicine, and power.

    The existence of GAESA demonstrates that Cuba is not a socialist country. The Cuban government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the population. This is state capitalism, not socialism – which raises the question of why the US is so keen to bring about regime change. The usual explanation that the US wants to prevent the spread of socialism does not hold water in light of the state capitalist nature of the Cuban regime. The same question arises when considering the US’s desperation to bring down the Soviet Union and its satellites. It should be noted that the Soviet Union is often argued to have been a ‘deformed workers state’ rather than state capitalist; but either way, it wasn’t socialist.

    In aiming to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US was motivated to bring down a rival geopolitical hegemon. That explanation does not apply to Cuba. Rather, I think that the US is motivated by wanting to take for itself the surplus value currently being extracted by GAESA. Regardless of the explanation, it is clear that the US blockage of Cuba is not being done for the benefit of the Cuban people. How can it be, when many have died as a result? A 2026 report by the Centre for Economic Policy and Research found that tightening of US sanctions contributed heavily to an increase in Cuba’s infant mortality rate between 2018 and 2025. If infant mortality rate had remained stable, roughly 1,800 fewer infants would have died.

    In assessing who is responsible for the Cuban crisis we must take into consideration the aims and motivations of the parties involved. Many of the mistakes made by the Cuban government – for example, building too many luxury hotels – can be attributed to a combination of incompetence and bad timing rather than malfeasance. The Cuban government may be corrupt, authoritarian, and indifferent to the suffering of the Cuban people; but it is not deliberately trying to bring about economic collapse. The US government, on the other hand, is trying to do exactly that. No modern nation would survive for long without a steady supply of oil, regardless of how advanced its infrastructure is. Cuba would probably still be a poor country without the US blockade; but it would not be on the brink of disaster.

  • Why do governments issue bonds?

    In the world of finance, a ‘bond’ is a legal contract whereby one party – the ‘issuer’ of the bond – is obliged to provide a cash flow to another party – the ‘holder’ of the bond. The holder will typically pay cash up front to the issuer in order to enter into this arrangement. A government bond is a bond issued by a government to an individual or organization in the sector. Governments issue bonds all the time. The usual explanation is that they do this in order to obtain money from the private sector: a government will agree to make interest payments to the holder of the bond in return for the holder providing cash up front to the government. However that explanation makes no sense for sovereign currency-issuing governments that can create money by fiat, such as the UK government.

    There was a time when the UK government did have to borrow money, because there was an artificial constraint placed upon the amount of money in the economy. That artificial constraint was imposed through the convertibility of money into gold. At that time, if the government wanted money and could not get its hands on any gold, it had no choice but to borrow the money from the private sector. It did that by issuing ‘gilts’ – that is, government bonds. These gilts essentially acted as a savings account for the holder. Somebody could buy a government bond and sometime in the future get their money back; in the meantime, they would get a steady stream of interest payments. These days, however, there is no such constraint and the UK can simply create money at will.

    In theory, the UK government could have stopped issuing bonds the moment the UK abandoned the gold standard in 1931. However, the City of London had become quite fond of having access to what were essentially risk-free savings accounts. Gilt issuance had become essential to the functioning of many financial institutions – and still is to this day. That is the real reason the UK government continues to issue bonds: to enable financial markets to function. These markets are completely dependent upon the government providing a risk-free saving mechanism. This demonstrates that power lies with the government, not with the markets. It is time that we recognise that and stop the nonsense that we are dependent upon these markets for money – because we aren’t.

    Why, then, does this myth persist? It is because the erroneous idea that the government is dependent on the financial markets to provide it with money is extraordinarily convenient for the people who run those markets – namely, the ruling class. There is an obvious incentive for the ruling class to keep up this pretence, and that’s precisely what it does, in a couple of different ways. One way is by imposing a rule that whenever there is a budget deficit – that is, a discrepancy between the level of government spending and the tax revenue collected – the government must issue bonds equal in value to the size of this deficit. This makes it looks like the government is forced to borrow money from the private sector in order to ‘fund’ the deficit, whereas in reality it doesn’t need to do this at all.

    If you don’t believe me, ask yourself the following question: Why would a currency-issuing government need to borrow money that it, and only it, can create at will? It doesn’t make any sense! So why don’t pundits in the media ever point this out? This brings us to the second way in which the ruling class maintains the illusion that the government is dependent on the private sector for money: through control of the narrative. The role of the media is not to dispassionately report on news and current affairs. Rather, it is a tool of propaganda for the ruling class. I am not suggesting that media pundits knowingly mislead their audiences; but any pundit who dared to question the prevailing narrative would probably find themselves out of a job pretty quickly.

    Whenever a government runs a budget deficit, the media will inevitably start bleating on about increased borrowing costs. As we have seen, however, these costs are entirely self-imposed. Not only that, they are a form of corporate welfare. This explains why interest rates on gilts go up during periods of price inflation. It is usually said that the Bank of England raises interest rates during times of inflation in order to try to bring inflation down; but this is a smokescreen. Nobody has ever provided evidence that increasing interest rates decreases inflation – at least, not that I am aware of. It certainly doesn’t make any sense to increase rates during times of inflation caused by supply shocks, as interest rates have nothing whatsoever to do with these.

    The real reason interest rates go up during times of inflation is that inflation erodes the real value of assets such as bonds, so rates are raised in order to compensate the owners of these assets – i.e. rich people – by providing them with higher interest payments. Although the Bank of England does not directly control the interest rate on government bonds, it does control the so-called ‘base rate’, the baseline for short-term borrowing, which heavily influences the yields demanded by the broader bond market. This arrangement is clearly very beneficial for the ruling class; but it is just an arrangement. There is no law of nature which says that governments must pay more money to rich people during times of inflation, or at any other time for that matter.

  • Reflections on the elections

    Last week saw local elections take place across the UK against a backdrop of a stagnating economy with youth unemployment at 900,000, soaring food prices, rising homelessness, and crumbling infrastructure. Little wonder then that the incumbent Labour party got an absolute kicking, losing 1,498 councillors in total. The Tories also tanked disastrously, losing 563 councillors. The main beneficiary of the collapse of what were until recently the two main parties in British politics was the far-right Reform party, who gained 1,451 councillors, almost as many as Labour lost. The left-of-centre Green party did quite well out of it too, gaining 441 councillors; and the Liberal Democrats also gained 155 councillors. It seems the era of two-party politics is well and truly over.

    Voters clearly used the elections to express anger at establishment politicians. The collapse of Labour and the Tories has created a political vacuum which has been filled on the right by Reform and on the left by the Greens, as well as by Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Scottish National Party in Scotland. 2026 will be remembered as the year that the old political order fell apart. The dramatic switch away from Labour can be partly explained by alienation in industrial areas that were once Labour strongholds.  Most people who live in these areas would never vote Tory, the party of the ruling class, and have instead been driven to Reform and its racist rhetoric, largely through despair. Labour was destroyed in Wales – its traditional heartland – and has been left with just 9 seats in a 96-member parliament.

    Farage and his coterie have cynically harnessed reactionary ideas, particularly around the vilification of immigrants, that have been whipped up by successive governments – not least Starmer’s Labour. In response, Labour attempted to shore up its vote by claiming that they are the only party who can stop Reform. This is literally the only argument they have left now. Unfortunately, many trade union leaders also use the threat of Reform to justify their continued affiliation with Labour. Why the unions continue to support Labour is a complete mystery to me. It’s not as if the money they give to Labour actually provides them with any power or influence over the party’s direction. Perhaps the union leaders are just slow learners.

    That said, there are reasons to believe that some unions might soon cut ties with Labour. Last month’s Unite Executive election saw a left-wing slate win a clear victory; and in the immediate aftermath of the elections, the Communication Workers’ Union discussed disaffiliation. It should also pointed out that for all Reform’s gains, the combined centre and left vote (Labour + Green + Lib Dem) was still higher than the combined right-wing vote (Reform + Tory). Many younger people who would have called themselves Corbynites a few years ago have shifted their allegiance to the Greens. This highlights once again how Your Party, Corbyn’s new political project, criminally missed an open goal by not putting up candidates in these elections (only 20 Your Party candidates stood in total).

    Labour is now going through a leadership crises similar to that which befell the Tories when then they were in power. The question now is when, not if, Keir Starmer will be replaced. The only person who doesn’t seem to realize this is Starmer himself, who appears to be hell-bent on clinging on to power at all costs. This should not surprise us as the only thing Starmer has any conviction about at all is the idea that he should be Prime Minister. One thing we can be sure of is that whoever replaces Starmer, they will not be a socialist, or even a social democrat, as there is no such candidate in contention for leadership. The new leader will just be another stooge of a capitalist class. In the short term, therefore, the problems facing our country will only continue to get worse.

  • The general strike of 1926

    A general strike occurs when workers from different unions and sectors of society take industrial action together, for a purpose, with a political motive. The only general strike in British history occurred a hundred years ago, in 1926. The conditions for a general strike had been building for years before it finally erupted. In 1912, a national miners strike comprising around a million workers secured a minimum wage after 37 days of action. In 1919, the miners went on strike again, putting state ownership at the top of their list of demands, which also called for a 6 hour working day and 30% pay rise. However in 1921 miners faced pay cuts of up to 50% as a result of rising unemployment, which had surged to around 25% (for reference, the current unemployment rate in the UK is around 5%).

    As a result of this rising unemployment, conditions for the working class in the early 1920s were dire. In response, the unions started coordinating strike activity. They achieved a success in 1925 when the government capitulated and offered an improved pay deal for miners after the unions triggered a national embargo on coal movements. The Labour party had been constantly trying to distance itself from communism and the far left, and the Labour party leader, Ramsay McDonald, accused Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minster, of “siding with the wildest of Bolsheviks.” Nonetheless, this success emboldened the unions and the following year they triggered a general strike, which effectively brought the country to a halt. Some 1.7 million workers joined the strike in total.

    Although there was some violence with the police, the strike itself was largely peaceful, and morale amongst the striking workers was strong. The leaders of the unions viewed things differently however. They thought the longer the strike went on, the more their leadership would be undermined, and the whole trade union movement in Britain along with it. The High Court had declared the strike illegal, and union leaders were worried about sanctions and the threat of arrest. Workers rejected options to end the strike, but the union leaders went behind their backs and gave in to the government, betraying everyone who had gone out on the picket line. As a result of this capitulation the strike only lasted for 9 days in total.

    The general strike demonstrated how workers across all unions and sectors of society can work together in solidarity, and that we can disable the country if we do. Could something similar happen today? Although we’ve only ever had one general strike in Britain, there are lots of other countries that have had them more often. One reason we haven’t had a general strike in this country since 1926 is that we have laws in place which limit the ways in which unions can organize strikes. Specifically, when organizing industrial action, a formal ballot must be conducted by post (not online), 50% of the membership balloted must vote, and the action must be limited to specific disputes. These rules effectively make organizing a general strike impossible without going outside the law.

    However, that is not to say we should operate within the law. It must be remembered that laws do not fall from the sky: they are put in place by the ruling class, usually to protect the ruling class. This means that some laws are meant to be broken. As the saying goes, you can’t make an omelette with out breaking a few eggs. The main impediment to organizing another a general strike in Britain is not the fact that such action would be illegal; it’s the fact that union leaders don’t want to do it. Most union leaders in this country are small-c conservative and view themselves as a mediator between workers and bosses rather than as an agent of revolution. They are generally quite happy to work within confines of the existing system and have no intention of trying to change it.

    This raises a question that I have grappling with recently, namely: whose side are the trade unions really on?! As the general strike demonstrated, when push comes to shove union leaders always seem to side with the ruling class over workers. We have seen this playing out again recently with unions refusing to disaffiliate from the Labour party, against the wishes of their members. But that doesn’t mean workers should abandon the trade union movement, which is the only mass workers’ movement we have. Rather, the working class needs to take control of the unions and ensure that they actually stand up for their members. That is the only realistic route to organizing another general strike and genuinely challenging the ruling class.

  • What is antisemitism?

    A brutal daylight knife attack on two Jewish men in north London last month has raised fears amongst British Jews. The attacker is reported to have a history of violence and also stabbed a Muslim man earlier that day. In response to these attacks – specifically the two on the Jewish men – the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has raised the terrorism threat level to ‘severe’. (Really?!) It goes without saying that we must oppose all violence against innocent civilians; but it is important to also consider the broader context within which these attacks occurred. Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has so far claimed the lives of over 75,000 innocent civilians. Against this backdrop an attack on three civilians, none whom died as a result of their injuries, seems somewhat pale in comparison.

    Nonetheless, capitalist politicians have been cynically attempting to use these attacks to undermine the anti-war movement. There has been a concerted attempt to lay the blame for these attacks on mass demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza, with many commentators from the capitalist establishment laughably labelling them as ‘hate marches’. The government’s ‘independent’ reviewer of terrorism legislation called this week for a moratorium on pro-Palestine marches, claiming that it was “impossible for them not to incubate antisemitism.” This has raised an angry response from the thousands, perhaps millions, of people who have been involved in these peaceful protests across the country since Israel unleashed its offensive in October 2023.

    The root of racist division in society is not anti-war demonstrations but the capitalist system those calling for an end to the demonstrations all defend. Capitalism involves exploitation of the majority by a tiny minority, and such an arrangement requires division of the majority by the minority in order to function effectively. This explains why capitalist politicians attempt to scapegoat migrants for the problems that exist in society. Even so, despite the constant propaganda, recent polling shows that only 36% of British people think that ‘being British’ means being born in Britain, down from 74% in 2013. This suggests that racist division is actually decreasing in this country. We can reduce this division even further by organizing effectively.

    On 16 May there will be a pro-Palestine march in London to commemorate the Nakba (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’): the violent displacement of Palestinians that occurred when the state of Israel was formed in 1948. A well-attended march will be a show of strength against the capitalist establishment both in Britain and internationally (particularly in Israel). Of course, marching alone is not enough; we also need a program for peace in the Middle East which protects the rights of Palestinians. Such a program will never exist under a system which seems to prioritize defending Israel above anything else. The lengths to which the British establishment goes to vilify and persecute those who criticize Israel seems to me to be indicative of state capture.

    A subtle way in which Israel is defended that doesn’t often go remarked upon is through the use of the word ‘antisemitism’ to refer to bigotry against Jews. We already have a perfectly good word for such bigotry, namely: ‘judaeophobia’. So why doesn’t that more accurate term get used instead? The reason, I think, is that referring to bigotry against Jews as ‘antisemitism’ is a way of subtly equating Jews with Semites. In reality, however, a Semite is anyone who speaks a language which belongs to the Semitic language family. That includes Hebrew, which is spoken by many Jews in Israel; but it also includes Arabic, spoken by Muslims and Christians in Palestine and across the Arab world, as well as other languages such as Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia.

    I think that the widespread use of the word ‘antisemitism’ to refer to bigotry against Jews is an attempt – conscious or otherwise – to establish Jews as the true Semites and in so doing effectively erase Palestinian and broader Arab identity. This obviously plays right into Israel’s hands. Nobody in the mainstream media ever refers to attacks against Arabic-speaking Muslims as antisemitism, when technically they should. In fact the mainstream media barely mentions attacks on Muslims at all. It is notable that in all the furore about the attacks on the two Jewish men in North London, the attack on Muslim man by the same attacker earlier the same day barely received a mention. Does this not also count as terrorism?

    The fact that those who accuse others of antisemitism often seem indifferent to the suffering of Muslims, particularly Arabic-speaking Muslims, makes me wonder whether there might also be something more to this. In accusing those who defend Palestinians of being antisemites, perhaps they are telling us that it is they themselves who are the real antisemites, as they do not care about the suffering of Semitic people such as Palestinians. It seems there may be some projection going on here. As the saying goes, every accusation is a confession. In my view, when referring to bigotry against Jews, it is high time we replaced the misleading, propaganda- and projection-laden term ‘antisemitism’ with the more accurate and neutral term ‘judaeophobia’.

  • A discrete uncertainty principle

    Consider a particle moving in discrete time in one dimension. Let X(t) denote the position of the particle at (discrete) time t; let dt denote the increment between time steps; let U(t) = [X(t+dt)-X(t)]/dt denote the discrete velocity of the particle at time t; and let [X,U](t) = E[X(t+dt)U(t)-X(t)U(t)] denote the discrete commutator between position and velocity at time t, where E is the expectation operator. Then it is straightforward to show that [X,U] = U2dt. Now suppose that at each time step the particle moves a distance dx or -dx each with probability 1/2. Then it is clear that [X,U] = dx2dt. In what follows we will set dx = ħ/mc, the particle’s ‘Compton wavelength’, where m is the mass of the particle; and dt = -iħ/mc2, the particle’s ‘Compton time’ multiplied by a factor of -i, where i is the imaginary constant.

    The particle’s Compton wavelength, ħ/mc, is the wavelength of a photon whose energy is the same as the rest energy of that particle; and the particle’s Compton time, ħ/mc2, is the time for the particle to travel the Compton wavelength when moving at the velocity of light. Given these definitions it is straightforward to show that [X,U] = iħ/m, or [X,P] = iħ where P = mU, which is a discrete version of the canonical commutation relation between position and momentum. Now let us denote by f(x,t) the probability that the particle will be in position x at time t, and define the partial derivatives of f() by ft(x,t) = [f(x,t+dt)-f(x,t)]/dt, fx(x,t) = [f(x+dx,t)-f(x,t)]/dx, and fxx(x,t) = [fx(x,t)-fx(x-dx,t)]/dx. Then it is straightforward to show that ift = -ħfxx/2m, which is a discrete version of the Schrödinger equation.

    The Compton wavelength and Compton time are considered to be fundamental quantum mechanical properties of a particle. Our choice of these units was therefore not arbitrary. What about the fact that we multiplied the Compton time by -i? This was not arbitrary either and relates to a concept in physics known as ‘imaginary time’, whereby time is represented using imaginary numbers. Mathematically, imaginary time is real time which has undergone a so-called Wick rotation so that its coordinates are multiplied by the imaginary unit i. The fact that we used -i and not +i in our definition need not concern us as +i and -i are algebraically indistinguishable, because both defined as roots of the same polynomial equation, x2+1 = 0.

    A standard mathematical result known as the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality says that for any complex-valued random variables Y and Z, E(|Y|2)E(|Z|2) ≥|E(YZ*)|2, where Z* denotes the complex conjugate of Z. If we set Y = X(t)-E[X(t)] and Z = P(t)-E[P(t)] we get S[X(t)]2S[P(t)]2 ≥|E[X(t)P(t)*]|2, where S[X(t)] and S[P(t)] are the standard deviations of X(t) and P(t) respectively. Taking the positive square root of both sides gives S[X(t)]S[P(t)]≥|E[X(t)P(t)*]|, and a similar argument gives S[X(t+1)]S[P(t)]≥|E[X(t+1)P(t)*]|. Another standard mathematical result known as the triangle inequality says that for any complex numbers y and z, |y|+|z| ≥  |y+z|. If we set y = E[X(t+1)P(t)*] and z = -E[X(t)P(t)*] we get |E[X(t+1)P(t)*]|+|E[X(t)P(t)*]| ≥ |E[X(t+1)P(t)*]-E[X(t)P(t)*]|.

    Combining the above inequalities and using the definition of the commutator [X,P*] (see above) gives S[X(t)]S[P(t)]+S[X(t+1)]S[P(t)] ≥ |[X,P*]|. Let us now set s[X](t) = S[X(t)]+S[X(t+1)] and s[P](t) = 2S[P(t)], so that s[X] and s[P] represent the sum of the standard deviations of X and P taken over the time points t and t+1. Then we have 2s[X]s[P] ≥ |[X,P*]|. By definition, P = -mc2[X(t+dt)-X(t)]/iħ, and as 1/i = -i, we have P = imc2[X(t+dt)-X(t)]/ħ, and therefore P* = -P. It follows from this and the definition of the commutator above that [X,P*] = -[X,P], and therefore |[X,P*]| = |[X,P]|. Combining this with the inequality above, we get 2s[X]s[P] ≥ |[X,P]|. This is a discrete version of the well-known Heisenberg uncertainty principle, named after the German physicist Werner Heisenberg.

    Thus, we have shown that in a discrete framework it is possible to derive an analogues of the three most well-known equations of quantum mechanics: the canonical commutation relation between position and momentum; the Schrödinger equation; and the  Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Moreover, we have done this without having to use the heavy-duty Hilbert space machinery that must be employed in the continuous case. However, we have only done this for the special case of a 1-dimensional particle undergoing a simple random walk. Whether our approach can be generalized to other cases is an interesting question that I will leave for a future blog post.

  • Lessons from the Paris Commune

    In the mid-1800s Paris was industrializing at a fantastic rate. However, over half the population of the city lived in poverty bordering on destitution. Meanwhile, French bosses had never had it so good. Profits at the Anzin collieries to the north of Paris had increased by 300% between 1852 and 1870, whilst the miners’ wages went up by a mere 30% during the same period. The rotten regime of Emperor Louis Napoleon, with his absurd pretensions of imperial grandeur, was exposed in the war with Prussia in 1870. When French troops suffered a major defeat at the battle of Sedan, the anger of the people of France boiled over. The next day the National Guard, a conscript defence force, marched on the French assembly, elected a new government of Paris, and forced Napoleon into exile.

    Leon Trotsky would later write that with a revolutionary leadership that had prepared itself for just such a crisis in society, and that had a clear grasp of the steps needed to seize victory, the French workers could have taken power in 1870. Instead, the new government immediately stepped up the war effort. In September that year, 150,000 Prussian laid siege to Paris. Living conditions became even worse than they had been under Napoleon: food supplies dried up and Parisians were forced to cats and dogs to survive. The government, fearing defeat, kept up the war effort for fear of the masses turning against them if they surrendered, and spread false rumours of imminent Prussian collapse. As each rumour proved untrue, workers became more and more disillusioned with their new government.

    The bosses and landlords wanted a swift end to the war. But to the workers, Paris was the city of revolution that had to be defended to the last drop of blood. After many futile attempts to break the siege, the National Guard and the workers realized it could not go on. In January 1871 they marched to the Hotel de Ville and instigated the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government. In response, Prussian occupying forces colluded with French capitalists and declared a ceasefire to try to isolate the revolution. A treaty was signed handing over the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the German emperor as a sign of good will, and the Prussian army marched triumphantly through Paris, further alienating the city’s population.

    In February the National Guard organised a march of 300,000 against government plans to disband and disarm them. They broke into artillery depots, taking 200 cannons which they felt were public property to be protected from Prussian hands. In response, the government ordered regular soldiers to retrieve them and around 18,000 troops arrived in the dead of night. The next morning immense crowds of National Guards and workers arrived to defend their cannons. Many regular soldiers mutinied and joined the revolt. The National Guards seized the Hotel de Ville and revolutionaries crowded in, forcing the government to desert the city. For the first time the revolutionaries were the undisputed masters of Paris.

    The task facing the revolutionaries now was to consolidate their rule in the capital, transform economic relations, and rouse the rest of the country. The revolutionary government demanded an elected municipal council, genuine municipal liberties, suppression of the police, the right of the National Guard to appoint its own leaders, and the postponement of all rent arrears. However by attempting to legalise the new workers’ government by holding elections, valuable time was lost and a call for a mass march to seize the retreating government was pushed to the background. This turned out to be a fatal mistake as a counter-revolution was brewing. The old government regrouped in Versailles and clearly stated that “after this atrocity, there can be no negotiations with Paris.”

    In March Paris went to the polls and the revolutionaries won by a landslide. They purged the state and schools of religion, abolished capital punishment, cancelled nine months’ rent arrears, set the salaries of all public representatives at the level of the workers, and started the nationalisation, under workers’ control, of all abandoned factories and mills. Paris was alive and jubilant. But the revolutionaries still did not launch the expected attack on the old government in Versailles, which was not about to let things continue like this. In April the old government launched an attack on Paris and the city once again found itself under siege. However this time the defending forces were proud, brave, willing revolutionaries with a belief that what they were doing was right.

    Throughout the siege the revolutionary government continued to make sweeping changes, such as banning gambling and prostitution and abolishing all fines on workers. These changed culminated with a bulletin, posted all over the city, which declared: “The communal revolution, begun by the popular initiative of 18 March, inaugurates a new political era, experimental, positive, scientific. It is the end of the old government and clerical world, of militarism, of monopolism, of privileges to which the proletariat owes its servitude, the nation, its servitude and disasters.” However in May the Versailles troops entered Paris and a bloody battle ensued. By the end of the fighting the Hotel de Ville was in flames and most of the revolutionaries were either dead or arrested.

    The Paris Commune is an object lesson in how, if only for a few weeks and only in one city, the working class can take control and exercise its power. It demonstrates that the working class cannot simply take  hold of the existing state machine and use it to transform society, but must instead destroy the capitalist state and build its own democratic structures. Unfortunately indecision, vacillation, and unclear direction led to the demise of the Commune and the deaths of thousands of revolutionary workers. Today we still have capitalism and rampant imperialism to defeat in the struggle for world socialism. But if we learn the lessons of history, ultimately we will be victorious and avenge the deaths of the heroic communards.

  • The problem(s) with lesser-evilism

    The lesser of two evils principle, also referred to as the lesser evil principle and lesser-evilism, is the ethical principle that, when faced with selecting from two immoral options, the less immoral one should be chosen. The maxim goes back centuries and existed already in Platonic philosophy. These days, the principle is most often invoked in reference to lesser evil voting, a binary political choice under systems that make it impossible to express a sincere preference for one’s favourite. The concept of lesser evil voting can be seen as a form of the minimax strategy – ‘minimize the maximum loss’ – where voters, when faced with two or more candidates, choose the one they perceive as the most likely to do harm and vote for the one most likely to defeat them, or the ‘lesser evil’.

    There are several problems with this strategy however. By settling for the lesser evil option, voters consistently reward a system that moves steadily to the right, which means the lesser evil of today may be as bad as, or even worse than, the greater evil of yesterday. It creates a Hobson’s choice which masks a lack of real alternatives, discouraging the development of radical movements that might represent public interests better. The strategy allows politicians to win without adopting progressive or popular platforms, relying on fear of the opponent rather than the merit of their own policies. It promotes a form of moral blackmail whereby citizens are pressurized to violate their own principles, which can lead to voter apathy and the erosion of political integrity.

    Furthermore, the supposed lesser evils (e.g. Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the UK) often work hand in glove with the greater evils (e.g. the Conservatives and Reform) to protect the same power structures and economic elites, serving as a good cop, bad cop act that keeps the public in the dark about what is really going on behind the scenes. Ultimately, the lesser of two evils is still an evil, and continuing to vote for it means actively enabling harmful outcomes. Instead, we should work for independent political action and creating genuinely representative alternatives, rather than constantly settling for the lesser option. We should also remind ourselves that there is always the option of not voting for anybody at all.

    It is not just in the political sphere where the lesser evilism principle is often invoked. It also gets trotted out whenever we try to highlight exploitation, injustice, or any other form of mistreatment we see going on in the world. ‘Well, that might be bad’, the response usually goes, ‘but at least it’s not as bad as X’, where X is some situation that either exists now, could potentially exist now, or has existed at some point in the past, that is deemed to be worse than the state of affairs we are highlighting. This is clearly a form of the lesser evil principle: the argument is that the situation we are complaining about is the lesser evil when compared to some other situation, and therefore we should just stop complaining about it.

    The problem with this argument is that no matter how bad a situation is, it is always possible to come up with a situation that seems worse. Don’t like being forced to work 40 hours per week just to survive? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not unemployed! Don’t like being unemployed? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not being forced to work as a slave! Don’t like being forced to work as a slave? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not starving to death! Don’t like starving to death? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not dead! And so on. This response might be referred to as ‘shifting counterfactuals’: whenever you complain about a situation, a new counterfactual situation is invoked to make the situation you are complaining about seem less bad by comparison.

    In a previous blog post I argued that we can only meaningfully evaluate a given state of affairs relative to another ‘reference’ state of affairs. This means that we need to first establish a counterfactual before we can make meaningful evaluations. What should this counterfactual be? I think the only logical option is to take as counterfactual the best possible state of affairs that could exist given the current state of technological development. Our existing economic system does not fare too well under this maxim. It is not difficult to conceive of socio-economic systems that would be vastly superior to modern-day capitalism in almost every respect. As the economic anthropologist Jason Hickel puts it: we live in a shadow of the world we could have.

  • Unite and fight for LGBTQ+ rights!

    In recent times, right-wing parties have attempted to whip up transphobia as a way to create division amongst ordinary people. However oppression, harassment, and bullying of LGBTQ+ people are nothing new. LGBTQ+ people have faced persecution for centuries; but they also have a proud history of standing up against such persecution. This has led to victories in this country such as the equalization of the age of consent and marriage, and the implementation of other laws that have improved LGBTQ+ rights. But no gain is permanent under a capitalist system that is perpetually in crisis. Right-wing parties inevitably resort to the politics of division as a way of deflecting from their inability to deal with issues such as low pay and crumbling public services.

    Life can still be extremely difficult for LGBTQ+ people in this country. Surveys show that two-thirds LGBTQ+ people are afraid of being open about their sexuality for fear of a negative reaction. LGBTQ+ people face harassment on a daily basis, the majority of which goes unreported due to the belief that nothing will happen as a result. Well-publicized findings of institutionalized homophobia in the police, such as the Casey Review into the Metropolitan Police, also deter LGBTQ+ people from reporting the harassment they face. And this is after all the gains that have been won in recent times. In Britain today, austerity is threatening to roll back these gains. LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately likely to experience mental ill-health or homelessness, issues that are exacerbated by cuts to public services.

    Sadly, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people – particularly trans people – appears to be on the rise again. This is largely as a result of right-wing propaganda which attempts to blame trans people for the oppression of women, rather than the lack of services, rights, and support being offered to them. It is important to understand that capitalism is a system that requires division amongst workers to function. In Britain and across the world, a tiny group of people own and controls the means of production – industry and technology – and uses this to amass great fortunes. It is in the interest of this group of people to keep us divided as that weakens our ability to fight back. All too often it is LGBTQ+ people who are at the sharp end of this divide-and-rule strategy.

    Many LGBTQ+ people face bullying and harassment at work and are often forced to put up with this because the alternative means poverty and eviction. We therefore need a trade union movement that fights against discrimination in the workplace, and which has oversight of the recruitment and promotion process. LGBTQ+ people are also forced to deal with the effect of the capitalist class’s divide-and-rule strategy in the education system, not only through bullying but also through an unrepresentative curriculum. Student and education unions must organize and campaign against bullying of LGBTQ+ people, and the curriculum should be updated to include more on LGBTQ+ history. We also need to increase funding in LGBTQ+ healthcare and ensure that this is accessible to all.

    Sixteen years of austerity has stripped LGBTQ+ services to the bone. This has been exacerbated by right-wing parties turning on LGBTQ+ (particularly trans) people to whip up hate and division as part of their ‘culture war’ agenda, which has led to funding being diverted away from LGBTQ+ services. Labour is proving to be no more of an ally to the LGBTQ+ community than the Tories were when they were in power. It is important therefore that we not only protect existing LGBTQ+ services but that we also provide additional services to meet the needs of the community. We must also build more shelters for LGBTQ+ people fleeing homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic families or partners, and other abusive living situations.

    The working class is the force that can get rid of capitalism. Strike waves and other collective action demonstrate how much power the working class has when it us united. To fully harness the power of the working class, however, it is necessary to build a worker’s party with a programme for fighting for jobs, homes, services, and rights for all. The LGBTQ+ community has a huge and vital role to play here. We must encourage LGBTQ+ campaigners to stand alongside workers in local and general elections on a common platform against cuts and for the public services we need. What is required is a movement with a democratic and accountable leadership that will fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Unfortunately, Pride events have become increasingly corporatized and have moved further and further away from their radical roots. It is time that Pride organizers reclaimed the movement for ordinary LGBTQ+ people.