Syndicalists, Anarchists, Trotskyists, Maoists, Revolutionary Communist Leaguers, etc etc

(Bearing in mind that this is becoming somewhat urgent&key for me, as chances are good I'm already some way past halfway)

A lot of new age has a surprising lack of spiritualism, though. It's all "how to feel better about yourself using four thousand year old meditation techniques from the wilds of Burma" and such.

Sorry this is so slack, but I am writing from work. Hurry hurry.

(Oh - and could somebody PLEASE finally tell me what 'baby-boomers' means?
Does it just refer to people born between 19xx and 19yy - and if so what are the xx & yy?)

Anarchists worldwide are on a bit of rebound, there's a lot of that kind of stuff mixed into all that anti-globalisation shite.

a lot of the funnier parties of the past died out either out of post-cold war fallout or because their leadership fragmented. didn't one group have this weird Stalinist leader called Healy who used to have big posters of himself everywhere at their conferences? then he was accused of preying sexually on the party membership, and it split into a million tiny factions.

Gerry Healy was more a Trot than a Stalinist, if you mean that in the technical sense (his party was the WRP). He looked like one of Dr Who's enemies, which is a top look for a Revolutionary Leader imo.

New Age…I despair of it. When working in a second hand bookstore in Amsterdam we would flog endless amounts of flimsy mystical claptrap to alt-tourists and students whilst books on orthodox religions, politics and western philosophy gathered dust. Seems to fulfil some vague superficial spiritual longing I guess.

(Incidentally former Baader-Meinhof/RAF ideologue, radical lawyer, and convicted terrorist Horst Mahler has gone completely the other direction becoming a member of the neo-fascist NPD and publishing vile anti-Semitic ramblings. He was recently photographed with Nick Griffin.)

Then there's David Horowitz, apparently the American equivalent of Horst Mahler. As the French would say, "les extrèmes se touchent."

Maybe Eduard Bernstein was right all along.

that's hairsplitting. they do essentially follow Trotsky's line on most things. they maybe break with some other wing of Trotskyism when Tony Cliff comes on the scene and gives them an ideologue of their own.

Trotsky's three "contributions" to Marxist theory are his analysis of the soviet union (which the SWP disagrees with) his concept of permanent revolution (which the SWP disagrees with) and his analysis of the modern labor movement (in the form of the transitional program and "trade unions in the epoch of imperialist decay") which the SWP also disagrees with.

You might argue his anti-fascist program was a "contribution" but the SWP disagrees with that in practice too.

POWER TO THE PEOPLE.

Also, there seems to have been a rise of interest in spirituality/new ageism in last 10 years. at expense of more politically oriented stuff? how did the more individualistic ethos of spirituality replace the more societal focus of leftism?

To me at anarchism/anarcho-socialism was always the perfect middle ground between leftism and individualism; it lacks communism's authoritarianism and capitalism's egoism. That's why I still call myself an anarchist.

The collapse of the Soviet Union caused great damage to far-left. Even those many parties opposed to Moscow defined themselves against ‘really existing socialism’ and the wind fell out of their sails when it fell apart.

But this doesn't count the new anti-globalisation/environmentalist/anarchist movement, does it? It is exactly because the binary left/right-division is gone, that they can present a credible "third way", or "third ways" (anti-capitalism without the strictness of authoritarian communism).

some notes I've filtered about them today:

• They are inspired by basque Anarcho-Syndicalist school.
  
• Mondragon bootstrapped itself into being an $8billion business, with its own bank, its own schools and university, its own social security and health coverage, all paid for voluntarily by its
  worker/owners.
  
• Workers runing their own businesses, themselves
  
• They succeeded spectacularly as a profit-making business WITHOUT the top-down leadership of megabuck-salaried brave captains of industry leading the stupid workers.
  
• The WORKERS RUN MONDRAGON!
  
• they offer job security
  
• they offer high wages
  
• they made a $250Million net profit last year during a world-wide economic downturn while doing major worldwide community outreach, such as with the Doctors Without Borders.