A Class Raffle

The Socialist Party (once the Militant Tendency of the Labour Party) dropped a leaflet into my mothers house in leafy Meadow Park,Churchtown, during August, advertising their fund-raising raffle after a bruising local election campaign. The leaflet assured us however that the raffle was confined to Carrickmount, Mountainview and Loreto estates. The implication is that these areas of public authority housing are the only true habitat of what Joe Higgins would call "ordinary working people". Meadow Park must have been a mistake, or else the burghers of the private houses were being asked to subsidise the prize for the proles. Class is a useful concept that still has sociological relevance. But this confusing public housing estates with working class is actually very unmarxist. For the proletariat Marx had in mind in anyone selling their labour. But I don't mind if the millies confine themselves to a tiny proportion of the electorate. The true program of the Socialist Party is anti-democratic and dangerous. While they have doctrinal issues with Stalin, they have none with Lenin, confirmed enemy of "bourgeois democracy".

posted by Daniel @ Sunday, September 12, 2004