Plan Parker The 'Mad Pride' special issue of Asylum: Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry is now out (www.asylumonline.net) One popular discourse in the recent wave of protests against the education and welfare cutbacks launched by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government in the UK is that of 'madness'. This discourse is often mobilised by the left to mobilise against the cuts, as it was in the past to describe the irrationality of an economic system that is devoted to the extraction of surplus value. There are many layers of this "madness' and the left has too often unthinkingly played into some of the most reactionary ideological motifs to combat The market does operate as a bizarre combination of the most rigorous rationality and explosive irrationality. On the one hand there is rationality. Human values are subjected to economic calculation, something conjured up time and again during the recent election that brought the 'ConDems' to power when commentators would ask that we wait to see 'what the markets say'. This supposed rationality then spins into its reverse, and listening to what the markets say becomes rather like gazing into the entrails of a slaughtered animal to discover what they portend. On the other hand then there is irrationality as convulsions of the stock exchange spell the end of this or that state welfare service. The economic system is in this way modelled by way of metaphors of individual reason and unreason, and every time capitalism is described as being 'mad', it reinforces the idea that individuals, upon whom the model is based, really are either 'sane or 'crazy'. An economic description based on a dividing practice - the division of the mad from those who are supposed to be 'normal' strengthens the false divisive message that there some of us who are mad. Once we go down this route there is nothing to stop us from using the metaphor all the time, making it even stronger, applying it even to the left opposition to the crazy favourite phrase at the Coalition of Resistance conference, for example, was that the ConDem cuts were part of the economics of the madhouse', so still business as usual on the left it would seem. But one good sign among happening now is that the Coalition of Resistance rival campaigns (not a favour
even better sign is that Mad
Pride has been energised to
Pride was one of the more
radical of the 'antieconomic system and its crazy conservative government. One others of something different website has links to the other returned, it should be pointed out), a better sign is that there is a link to 'Mad Pride', and an mobilise against the cuts. Mad the magazine for democratic psychiatry PRID E psychiatry' movements in the last two decades (and you can choose which term to use, movement is as sectarian as anyone else around these Welfare benefits will be cut 'reassessed' for what is known as the Disability Living Allowance' (DLA), with open government plans to remove 360,000 people from DLA by 2013. This is in stark contrast to the recent comments in his visit to Europe by veteran critic of psychiatry Thomas Szasz, who argued, when I challenged him to support those on DLA fighting the cuts, that the state should not provide welfare support at all. Szasz made his libertarian rightist politics himself against 'politicians who want to change the world Obama'. Mad Pride protest meetings have been held already in London, and there are calls to 'stop the suicides' of those labelled 'mentally ill'. The loosely connected cells' in this movement are explicit
the government, and here is an opportunity psychiatry movement to anti-capitalist struggle. But part of the Mad Pride struggle when they link up with the left will also be to challenge the discourse of 'madness' that is a dead end for those building an authentic radical alternative to capitalism and the ideological agenda being forced through to protect it.
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These are just some of the titles we have published to date, and more are in the pipeline. They can be bought from Socialist Resistance, at the address below; or ordered online through Amazon.co.uk Books from Socialist Resistance Socialist Resistance PO Box 62732 London SW2 9GQ
Mexico's Zapatista rebels and the Seattle demonstrators were the tip of an iceberg of social and political revolt against the injustices of corporateled globalisation. In 2002 John Holloway, working in Puebla, Mexico, published Change the World without Taking Power. This book debates the implications of that slogan. £6 €7 $10
Documents of the differences which developed last year in how Respect should be organised and built, and which led to the split promoted by the SWP following criticism of its leadership role by almost everyone else, including Socialist Resistance. £3.50 €4 $6
Since World War Il the Middle East has suffered a seemingly unending period of war, foreign domination, environmental devastation and mass resistance to the region's ruling classes. In this book, that resistance speaks in its own words, in a collection of some of the most powerful articles written in the last sixty years by socialist, ecologist and anti-Zionist activists across the region. £10 €11 $17
A collection of important contributions to the debate on ecology and global warming, and the limits of capitalism's ability to control the resulting destruction of the environment. This reprinted second edition is essential reading for anyone getting to grips with ecosocialism. £6 €7 $10
elia Hart Celia Hart came from
La family of veteran Cuban revolutionaries who fought with Fidel ate against the Batista dictatorship. Celia was an outspoken defender of the political and revolutionary heritage of Leon Trotsky. Her recent articles on this subject provoked an intense debate on the question of Trotsky internationally. £6 €7 $10
Ron Ridenour's CUBA follow-up to his Cuba
BEYOND THE
at the Crossroads, written while he was livng and politically active in Cuba. £10 €11 $17 lan Angus, who wrote several of the articles in this book ESTIGENOT and selected the
others from a wide range of authors and movements, is one of the world's best-known ecosocialist activists. He is editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism, which has been described as 'the most reliable single source of information and strategic insights for climate justice! lan is also Associate Editor of Socialist Voice, an Advisory Editor of Socialist Resistance, and a founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network. He lives in Ontario, Canada. £10 €11 $17 Leon Trotske Trotsky's writing's
on the permanent revolution are the theoretical mainspring The of proletarian Permanent Revolution revolutionary strategy
and are an obligatory study for all who aspire to lead the working-class in the struggle for socialism, whether in the capitalist countries of the West or in the backward colonial countries. £9 €10 $15
The credit crunch of 2008 produced an international recession in 2009 In Socialists and the Capitalist Recession, Claudio Katz and Michel Husson, fellows of the International Institute for Research and Education, and SSP activist Raphie de Santos, describe the present crisis, construct a socialist analysis of its causes, and propose socialist solutions. £6 €7 $10
The account of his life and struggle by a black activist in South Africa. It records the founding and growth of the revolutionary left, and includes a stern, reasoned critique of the ANC and SACP. Nikani describes his exile, a clandestine mission back into South Africa, his escape to and imprisonment in Swaziland, and his final exile to Sweden, where he died in 1999 £10 €11 $17
Kautsky's 1908 Marxist classic is an account of how what began as a minor sect in Palestine became the state et religion of the Roman Empire. There was a time when Kautsky was in the true sense of the word the teacher who instructed the proletarian vanguard. - Leon Trotsky £12 €13 $20
Brazilian socialists André Passos Cordeiro, Ubiratan de Souza, Pepe Vargas, Raul Pont and João Machado describe in The Porto Alegre Alternative how Porto Alegre's participatory budget was born and developed with popular movements and local Workers' Party (PT) victories, and how it promises a radically democratic alternative in the interests of the poor to top-down political and economic decision-making. £12 €13 $20
39 Venezuela has THE REAL become a huge VENEZUELA
source of hope and inspiration for the Lett throughout the world. Some see it as a shining example of how to begin building a successful socialist state, but Western leaders see it as a dangerous enemy and accuse Chávez of being a dictator. This book reveals the truth by examining the country from the ground up. £12 €17 $25
The international movement of women fighting their IN **FEMMES oppression has IALISME reached a new level ATION *FEMN since the 1960s.
The resolutions collected here are a product of that movement. Women's oppression and exploitation of women must be understood in the context of class society will end only when we get of class society. Socialist organisations need to take positive actions used by socialist organizations to develop their feminist work and profile. £7.00 €8.00 $11.00
In 2007, French fascist Le Pen won almost four million votes. In 2009 the British National Party won almost a million votes while Germany's fascist NPD won over 750,000. In 2010, fascist-led organisations like the English Defence League and Italy's Future and Freedom party emerged. To help activists understand these developments, this book gathers together some of the most important analysis of fascism in the 20th century. Read Zetkin, Trotsky, Guerin and Gramsci and many others. £5.00 €6.00 $8.00
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Sign the petition for one million climate jobs At its 2010 conference, the TUC called for the creation of one million green jobs to tackle unemployment and the environmental crisis. This follows the publication of the "Million Climate Jobs" report by the Campaign Against Climate Change, with the We can build a mass movement that stops the cuts, forces them to create jobs and The first step in this campaign is signing the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group support of the PCS, UCU, TSSA & CWU unions. solve the environmental crisis. Group's petition for a million climate jobs. Carbon cuts not job cuts! Sign online www.climate-change-jobs.org
[email protected] Climate change