Author: freerein61

A People’s History of the Anti Nazi League: 1977-1981 by Geoff Brown Bookmarks Paperback – 25 Sept. 2025

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Fascism] affects white and black people alike … The fight against fascism is a common fight for both of us; we approach it from two different directions and perspectives. We are the immediate victims. If they come for us in the morning, they will go for you that night. So be with us that morning, and we will be with you that night.

James Baldwin

The progress of a class toward class consciousness, that is, the building of a revolutionary party which leads the proletariat, is a complex and contradictory process. The class itself is not homogeneous. Its different sections arrive at class consciousness by different paths and at other times. The bourgeoisie participates actively in this process. Within the working class, it creates its own institutions or utilises those already existing to oppose certain strata of workers to others. Within the proletariat, several parties are active at the same time. Therefore, for the greater part of its historical journey, it has remained politically divided. The problem of the united front, which arises during specific periods most sharply, originates therein. The historical interests of the proletariat find their expression in the Communist Party when its policies are correct. The task of the Communist Party consists of winning over the majority of the proletariat, and only thus is the socialist revolution made possible. The Communist Party cannot fulfil its mission except by preserving, entirely and unconditionally, its political and organisational independence apart from all other parties and organisations within and without the working class.

Leon Trotsky-Bureaucratic Ultimatism (1932)

Socialist Workers Party member Geoff Brown is the author of the new book A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League. The ANL was launched in November 1977 to counteract the growing threat from racists and fascists who were spurred on by sections of the ruling elite who saw the fascists as a battering ram against the increasing radicalisation of the working class.

As the 2010 statement by the Socialist Equality Party stated, “The global crisis plunged Britain into a period of intense class conflict, which brought it closer to revolution than at any time since the 1926 General Strike. As a major financial centre, it was especially vulnerable to the sweeping capital movements that occurred following the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system. The Wilson government was forced into a series of devaluations and major spending cuts. In 1969, it brought forward the White Paper, “In Place of Strife”, to enforce legal sanctions against strikes.

The orthodox Trotskyists in the Socialist Labour League (SLL) warned that the Labour left’s refusal to lead a struggle against Wilson was paving the way for the return of a Conservative government and the imposition of even more savage measures against the working class. In 1968, Conservative MP Enoch Powell was sacked from the shadow cabinet after delivering his notorious “Rivers of Blood” speech, which sought to whip up anti-immigrant sentiments. But Powell’s remarks were only the initial expression of a right-wing shift by the Tories, who, by 1970, had adopted a radical, free-market agenda. Based on the monetarist economic policies of Milton Friedman, they advocated an end to the “bailout” of inefficient companies, the curtailing of social provisions, and a legal offensive against wildcat strikes.[1]

It must be said from the outset that the formation of the ANL had nothing to do with Trotskyism or Leon Trotsky’s advocacy of the United Front. According to the SWP, the “ Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky conceived the idea of the united front, which unites groups that are very different, such as reformists and revolutionaries.”

What Trotsky wrote on the United Front is opposed to what the SWP did. He wrote, ‘In entering into agreements with other organisations, we naturally obligate ourselves to a certain discipline in action. But this discipline cannot be absolute in character. If the reformists begin to put the brakes on the struggle to the obvious detriment of the movement and act counter to the situation and the moods of the masses, we, as an independent organisation, always reserve the right to lead the struggle to its conclusion, and this without our temporary semi-allies. It is possible to see in this policy a rapprochement with the reformists only from the standpoint of a journalist who believes that he rids himself of reformism by ritualistically criticizing it without ever leaving his editorial office, but who is fearful of clashing with the reformists before the eyes of the working masses and allowing the latter to appraise the Communist and the reformist on the equal plane of the mass struggle. Behind this seemingly revolutionary fear of ‘rapprochement’ there really lurks a political passivity which seeks to perpetuate an order of things wherein the Communists and reformists each retain their own rigidly demarcated spheres of influence, their own audiences at meetings, their own press, and all this together creates an illusion of serious political struggle….

“On the question of the united front, we see the very same passive and irresolute tendency, but this time masked by verbal irreconcilability. At the very first glance, one is hit between the eyes by the following paradox: the rightist party elements with their centrist and pacifist tendencies, who … come simultaneously to the forefront as the most irreconcilable opponents of the united front. … In contrast, those elements who have … held in the most difficult hours the position of the Third International are today in favour of the tactic of the united front. As a matter of fact, the mask of pseudo-revolutionary intransigence is now being assumed by the partisans of the dilatory and passive tactic”[2]

The SWP said it had “no secret agendas. What we say is what we do. We were running it as a united front. We couldn’t do anything that would undermine the agreement; we had a basic agreement that we were focusing on the NF.” Alongside Stalinists and reformists, the SWP had the backing of other pseudo-left parties that broadly supported the ANL, with the political scoundrel Tariq Ali writing “Hats Off to the SWP”

However, the real purpose of the SWP’s ANL United Front was to develop a pseudo-reformist alliance, aimed at deflecting a revolutionary confrontation between the working class and the British ruling elite. While from the outside the ANL was seen as an adjunct to the SWP, it was, in reality, directed by the top leadership, with SWP’s party leader, Tony Cliff, pulling the strings. Cliff was the ideological founder of the SWP, and his organisation rejected every basic tenet of Trotskyism; however, this did not stop it from using elements of Trotsky’s perspective or analysis to suit its own political objectives. Throughout his life, Cliff sought to associate the SWP with Leon Trotsky as a historical figure. But in reality, it opposed Trotsky’s analysis of the Stalinist bureaucracy and denied the viability of the Fourth International that Trotsky founded in 1938. Trotskyism was “a cul-de-sac”, Cliff wrote, while “Trotskyists suffered from the psychological need to believe in miracles.”[3]

The SWP’s perversion of the United Front tactic was also reflected in its work within the trade unions. As Paul Holborow relates, “one of the most significant considerations regarding how the ANL was established so quickly and widely as a grassroots organisation is what the SWP or the International Socialists had done industrially, particularly since the first miners’ strike in 1972 and before. Crucially, we had 22 rank-and-file papers that were an essential part of our industrial strategy for developing a rank-and-file movement that could fight independently of the trade union bureaucracy.5 This enabled us to very quickly establish sizeable groups of manual and white collar workers in their places of work—firefighters, car workers, civil servants, bus workers, dockers, teachers, engineers, council workers and many others. Perhaps the most impressive example of this was when miners’ leader Arthur Scargill and I spoke at a 200-strong delegate conference, and the following Monday, 60,000 Yorkshire miners went to work with the yellow ANL sticker on their helmets.”[4]

The purpose of the Socialist Workers Party’s rank-and-file committees, then as now, while providing tame “left-wing” criticisms of the labour and trade union bureaucracy, was to work might and main to politically block any independent movement of the working class. One problem for the pseudo-left groups is that they themselves now make up a significant faction of the trade union leadership at national, regional, and branch levels. They have been responsible for numerous betrayals and are now calling on rank-and-file members to rebel against the same bureaucracy to which they belong.

The publication of Brown’s book this year coincides with the SWP’s resurrection of the United Front campaign. According to Holborow, “When John McDonnell said last summer that we need to build an ANL-type movement, I think he was entirely right in spirit, but the context today is so different from what it was 40 years ago. Then, there was a militant rank-and-file movement. Britain was in turmoil, and the opposition to the ruling class was much more extensive and articulate. We are building in a completely different time, in the era of neoliberalism and all the ravages that this has produced for the labour movement. This makes it in many ways more necessary than ever to have an ANL-type organisation, but also more complicated.”[5]  In August, McDonnell had declared, “It’s time for an Anti-Nazi League-type cultural and political campaign to resist” because “we can no longer ignore the rise of far-right politics in our society.”

This is the same McDonnell who, despite being expelled from the Labour Party by its right wing, grovelled before Starmer and begged for re-admittance to this right-wing party of big business. He wrote 11 op-eds in The Guardian, capitulating to Starmer and his right-wing allies. The SWP and its pseudo-left allies have offered him a means to resurrect his “left” reputation.

As Tony Robson and Chris Marsden point out, “There is, however, a significant difference between the 1970s and the present day. Whereas in 1977, the SWP acted with the benediction of the Labour and trade union lefts, today it speaks as the officially designated representative of the Trades Union Congress. The SWP has, over the decades, integrated itself into the highest echelons of the trade union bureaucracy, assuming leading positions in several unions to complement the niche it has established within academia. It speaks today not merely as the bureaucracy’s apologist, but as its officially recognised spokesman on the left.”[6]

[1] The mass movement against the Heath government-https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-uk/32.html

[2] Trotsky, The First Five Years of the Communist International, vol. 2, New York and London, 1953, pp. 91–96, 127–128].

[3] Tony Cliff-Trotskyism after Trotsky-www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1999/trotism/ch03.htm

[4] The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/

[5] The Anti Nazi League and its lessons for today-https://isj.org.uk/the-anti-nazi-league/

[6] The significance of the British Socialist Workers Party’s call for a new “left alternative”

Diary of a Nobody

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Perhaps the most significant development in the life of both my websites has been the exponential rise in hits. For the first time in its seventeen-year history, the original blog, which began in 2008, reached fifty thousand hits in September.

Two interrelated developments account for the rise. Firstly and most significantly, the huge radicalisation taking place has produced an interest in Marxism. Secondly, the move to publicise the websites on Bluesky has not only led to a significant rise in hits but has also attracted a new audience for the websites. In the past, a slight rise in hits would have presented no problem, but this month’s increase is substantial, and if it continues, it would mean I need more writers than just myself. So this is an appeal for guest articles. The website needs to expand into other areas beyond my personal interests.

Perhaps the most important book I have read and reviewed over the last month was John Rees’s Fiery Spirits. The book is superbly written and well researched. The book breaks new ground, and already, Rees is working on what will probably be the third book in the trilogy. Like his book, The Leveller Revolution, it needs a second and possibly a third read. It is safe to say that Rees and I do not share the same political outlook, but his work as a historian should be respected, and he is taking the study of the English bourgeois revolution to a new level. I am at a loss to explain, however, why the main bourgeois media outlets virtually boycotted the book. I look forward to his latest book.

Meetings

A People’s History of the Anti-Nazi League Date: 06/10/2025 to 06/10/2025 Time: 17:30 to 19:00 Venue: Online- via Zoom –  Institute of Historical Research

Roundtable with editors and authors of In Solidarity, Under Suspicion: The British Far Left from 1956 Date 3 Dec 2025, 17:30 to 3 Dec 2025, 19:00 Venue Online- via Zoom. IHR

Podcasts

Rodney Hilton interviewed by John Hatcher, part of the Interviews with Historians collection. John Hatcher Series: Interviews with Historians Run 12 May 2025 https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/videos-podcasts/interviews-historians-rodney-hilton

Interviews with Historians – Christopher Hill-https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/videos-podcasts/interviews-historians-christopher-hill

Interviews with Historians – Eric Hobsbawm-https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/videos-podcasts/interviews-historians-eric-hobsbawm

Interviews with Historians – Lawrence Stone-https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/videos-podcasts/interviews-historians-lawrence-stone

Interviews with Historians – Hugh Trevor-Roper-https://www.history.ac.uk/news-events/videos-podcasts/interviews-historians-hugh-trevor-roper

Recent Book Purchases

Taylor Swift Culture Capital and Critique-Routledge

The Haunted Wood Sam Leith

Eviction Jessica Field, Verso

Martin Keown- On the Edge

Dancing through the Fire-Paul Weller

Black Arsenal, co-edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka and Matthew Harle, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 29 August 2024 (£35).

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“When it comes to thinking about politics and race, we cannot always rely on culture as a way to remedy deeper structural questions. Having particular players or particular footballing cultural moments as a point of identification is immense. However, it cannot be a deliberate or a forced thing.”

Clive Chijioke Nwonka

“The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas. In order to create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to borrow at second hand the ideas of racism from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4], a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had borrowed largely from the Marxist theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of the union among German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of racism standing.”

Leon Trotsky: What Is National Socialism? (June 1933)

Black Arsenal was published to coincide with the start of the 2024/25 season. It is co-edited by Clive Chijioke Nwonka, Associate Professor of Film, Culture, and Society at University College London (UCL), and writer Matthew Harle. It is the first of its kind. The book was remarkably 10 years in the making, with a stunning amount of research undertaken.

Asked about the origins of the book, Nwonka said, “Well, it was me thinking a lot about my own background as a person and things that had inspired me. I had started working at the London School of Economics, and I was thinking about the role of race in culture and the ways of thinking associated with it. I was being introspective with myself and realising that John Barnes was important to me in terms of being my first source of inspiration and recognition.

Then that led to the inspiration for Black Arsenal. I was at university, trying to make sense of what this concept meant and what other factors might be involved. The chapter ‘Defining Black Arsenal’ is all about the genesis of that idea. Then you start looking at history and why Black people in London gravitate mostly towards Arsenal.

Whether you are from south London or wherever, and then you realise there is a history that goes beyond Ian Wright, back to the 60s and 70s, to Brendon Batson, Paul Davis. It goes back to what Islington was in the 70s. It goes back to the JVC centre and the community work the club were doing in the 80s. All these factors were already in place before Ian Wright arrived in 1991.”[1]

The book examines the black history of Arsenal football club from a broadly academic standpoint. It also features contributions from former players such as Ian Wright and Paul Davis, as well as contributions from Paul Gilroy, Gail Lewis, and personal responses from Clive Palmer, Ezra Collective, and writer Amy Lawrence.[2].

The timing of the book could not be more prescient. Since its publication in 2024, there has been a significant and distinct growth in racist and fascist forces. Recently, as Chris Marsden writes, “Unite the Kingdom demonstration in August this year was the largest far-right mobilisation in British history. Estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000, participation in London exceeded the numbers usually mobilised by anti-Muslim demagogue Tommy Robinson and extended beyond his usual support base of football hooligans and fascist thugs. This core periphery was boosted by the presence of workers and their families, including from among the most deprived layers, who have swallowed the far-right’s message blaming social distress and the collapse of essential services on migration.[3]

It should be noted from the start that Arsenal have not always had a spotless anti-racism stance. Like most businesses, it has made its fair share of mistakes regarding its stance on racism. During the refurbishment of the old Highbury North Bank in 1992, Nwonka recalls, “I remember as a kid, the first week of the Premier League season, there were all these half-rebuilt stadiums because of the Taylor report [into ground safety after the Hillsborough disaster]. Of course, no one wants to watch a building site on Sky Sports – so the idea came up that you cover it up with these illustrations of your imagined fanbase.” The original North Bank mural was an artist’s impression of a sea of white faces, with red and white scarves, which had to be replaced with a more inclusive mural.

The contributions from Paul Davis and Ian Wright are important, as they were key figures in the development of a more integrated Arsenal team. Davis paved the way for Ian Wright and later generations of players. Ian Wright was a game-changing signing from Crystal Palace. Always the rebel, he appealed to both black and white younger working-class fans. He, in turn, set the stage for Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, and Bukayo Saka.

Despite being seen as a bit of a rebel, Wright and Arsenal, for that matter, have not been shy in exploiting the commercial possibilities of such a global and multi-racial fan base. Nike and now Adidas have moved quickly in exploiting Arsenal’s multicultural teams for profit; Nwonka thinks there is a danger of such exploitation.

“With things like the Arsenal Africa shirt or the Jamaica shirt,” he says, “they have been quite open about the fact that they recognise that there was a consumer base that will find the resonance in something that pays homage to Afro-Caribbean culture. However, I have been attending the Notting Hill Carnival since I was four years old. Moreover, you would always see Arsenal shirts there all the time, rather than those of QPR, Brentford, Fulham, or Chelsea. However, what some brands often do is invest in what they imagine to be Black culture, whereas Black Arsenal, I believe, begins with Black people.”

Football has been a global game since its inception, played worldwide. However, with the advent of satellite television from companies such as Sky, the game has reached a far greater level of global integration.

As David Storey relates, “ Football has always had essential linkages connecting places. Some clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British migrants, and in some instances, this is still reflected in contemporary football. Football has always had essential linkages connecting places. Some clubs were formed by, or as a result of, British migrants, and in some instances, this is still reflected in contemporary club names or colours. Athletic Bilbao’s origins and English name are attributed to English migrant workers in the Basque Country (Ball, 2003). A similar explanation accounts for Young Boys in Switzerland, Go Ahead Eagles in the Netherlands, and The Strongest in Bolivia, among others (Goldblatt, 2007). The shirt colours worn by Juventus were reputedly borrowed from Notts County (the world’s oldest professional club) shortly after the Italian club’s formation (Lanfranchi club names or colours.

Despite this early evidence of international linkages, English football remained somewhat insular for many years (2001). Despite this early evidence of international linkages, English football remained somewhat insular for many years, with restrictions on the importation of foreign players. While the migration of professional footballers is a long-standing phenomenon, and relatively pronounced in countries such as Spain, France, and Italy, the migration of players into or out of Britain was much less apparent (Taylor, 2006). However, recent years have seen substantial numbers of footballers from other parts of the world arriving in the Premier League (and into the lower tiers in the English league system). This internationalisation has occurred alongside the increasing commercialisation of the game.”[4]

While I wholeheartedly recommend this book, it should be of interest not only to Arsenal fans but also to the broader reading public. The historical study of black footballers who played for Arsenal is a legitimate pursuit. However, much of the content of the book is dominated not by a class attitude towards racism, but by too many contributions, including Nwano’s, that see the rise of racism through racially tinted glasses.

Nwonka addressed this, saying, “Of course, I have got a small quantity of criticism from some quarters. One person, when I first posted about the Black Arsenal idea, wrote to me to say: ‘I have been going to Arsenal since the 1970s. I do not see race; I watch football.’ I thought to myself: ‘Well, I am not going to sit here and tell someone whether they should or should not see. However, have you stopped and thought that maybe the reason that you do not see race when you go to Arsenal is that Arsenal has normalised racial difference in a way that some other clubs have not? Moreover, that may be an important thing to recognise?”Nwonka’s original idea for the book was for it to be dominated by appropriate references to French poststructuralists and the postmodernist and pseudo-revolutionary Frantz Fanon, who was and is a darling of the Pseudo-Left groups. Fanon and Poststructuralists were among other pioneers of the anti-Marxist Critical race theories, which is a “body of academic writing that emerged in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which combines postmodernism and subjective idealist philosophy with historical revisionism and racial sectarianism. Although written in a different form, the book remains dominated by these anti-working-class theories that prioritise race over class

[1] www.arsenal.com/news/dr-clive-nwonka-talks-new-black-arsenal-book

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athletic

[3] Britain’s largest far-right protest capitalises on Starmer’s xenophobic, anti-working-class agenda

[4] Football, place and migration: foreign footballers in the FA Premier League

 David Storey- Geography, Summer 2011, Vol. 96, No. 2 (Summer 2011), pp. 86-94

 Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd

Postal Workers and the Question of Leadership

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Given that the average age for a United Kingdom postal worker is around fifty-five, it is a fair bet that the majority of postal workers have witnessed over four decades of betrayals by the Communication Workers Union(CWU).

A small number of postal workers in their late sixties or seventies, believe it or not, are still working. They would remember the first national postal strike in 1971[1]. I raise this matter because the most pressing question facing postal workers at the moment is the issue of leadership.

Over the last five decades, postal workers have witnessed betrayal after betrayal and have seen their pay and working conditions decimated. It is time to face the facts: the CWU is nothing more than a company union that is doing the current owner, Daniel Kretinsky’s, dirty work. There is no line it will not cross to impose Amazon-style working conditions that will turn Royal Mail into an Amazon-style company with all the implications that entails.[2]

Postal workers have not been taking these attacks by the company and the union lying down. They have met these attacks head-on with every weapon at their disposal. However, it is time to face the facts: the old way of struggle has not worked. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying not to strike, but what is the new perspective that postal workers must fight for?

Leadership is an art. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky said, “There is an ancient, evolutionary-liberal epigram: Every people gets the government it deserves. History, however, shows that the same people may in the course of a comparatively brief epoch get very different governments (Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.) and that the order of these governments doesn’t at all proceed in the same direction: from despotism to freedom as was imagined by the evolutionist liberals. The secret is this, that a people is comprised of hostile classes, and the classes themselves are comprised of different and in part antagonistic layers which fall under different leadership; furthermore, every people falls under the influence of other peoples who are likewise comprised of classes. Governments do not express the systematically growing “maturity” of a “people”. Still, they are the product of the struggle between different classes and the different layers within the same class, and, finally, the action of external forces – alliances, conflicts, wars and so on. To this should be added that a government, once it has established itself, may endure much longer than the relationship of forces which produced it. It is precisely out of this historical contradiction that revolutions, coup d’etats, counterrevolutions, etc., arise.

The very same dialectic approach is necessary in dealing with the question of the leadership of a class. Imitating the liberals, our sages tacitly accept the axiom that every class gets the leadership it deserves. In reality, leadership is not at all a mere “reflection” of a class or the product of its own unrestrained creativeness. Leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the various layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership invariably arises above its class and thereby becomes predisposed to the pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid significant events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions; precisely for this reason, the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution.[3]

It is pretty clear that postal workers have been caught unawares by the unprecedented nature of the attacks on their pay and conditions. They have, in Trotsky’s words, witnessed a great historical shock. It is time to face reality square on and realise that the CWU is dead and is just waiting to be buried.

Postal workers have tolerated the CWU for a long time because they did not really have an alternative, but now they do. Firstly, they have the World Socialist Website (wsws.org). Its analysis has been second to none in terms of accuracy and perspective. It offers a new way forward for postal workers. The CWU bureaucracy knows it is in a fight to the finish, so much so that it has lashed out at the WSWS on several occasions.[4]

Postal workers need a new organisation. The way forward is the struggle to build the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC). Although it is small at the moment, it has the only socialist perspective to take on both the CWU bureaucracy and Royal Mail. While it must join and build this new organisation, the task facing postal workers is a political one. The philosopher Hegel was fond of saying, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk”, and this is true for postal workers today. To be blunt, postal workers do not have much time to build this leadership. Any delay in building the PWRFC will mean that, soon, there will be nothing left to defend.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_United_Kingdom_postal_workers_strike

[2] UK postal workers discuss fightback against gutting of Royal Mail and Kretinsky takeover-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/29/zmzb-a29.html

[3] The Class, the Party and the Leadership-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm

[4] Communication Workers Union’s Martin Walsh attacks WSWS over opposition to “USO reform” pilots- http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/01/nxgz-a01.html

Postal Workers and the Question of Leadership

~ freerein61 ~ Leave a comment

Given that the average age for a United Kingdom postal worker is around fifty-five, it is a fair bet that the majority of postal workers have witnessed over four decades of betrayals by the Communication Workers Union(CWU).

A small number of postal workers in their late sixties or seventies, believe it or not, are still working. They would remember the first national postal strike in 1971[1]. I raise this matter because the most pressing question facing postal workers at the moment is the issue of leadership.

Over the last five decades, postal workers have witnessed betrayal after betrayal and have seen their pay and working conditions decimated. It is time to face the facts: the CWU is nothing more than a company union that is doing the current owner, Daniel Kretinsky’s, dirty work. There is no line it will not cross to impose Amazon-style working conditions that will turn Royal Mail into an Amazon-style company with all the implications that entails.[2]

Postal workers have not been taking these attacks by the company and the union lying down. They have met these attacks head-on with every weapon at their disposal. However, it is time to face the facts: the old way of struggle has not worked. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying not to strike, but what is the new perspective that postal workers must fight for?

Leadership is an art. As the Russian Marxist Leon Trotsky said, “There is an ancient, evolutionary-liberal epigram: Every people gets the government it deserves. History, however, shows that the same people may in the course of a comparatively brief epoch get very different governments (Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain, etc.) and that the order of these governments doesn’t at all proceed in the same direction: from despotism to freedom as was imagined by the evolutionist liberals. The secret is this, that a people is comprised of hostile classes, and the classes themselves are comprised of different and in part antagonistic layers which fall under different leadership; furthermore, every people falls under the influence of other peoples who are likewise comprised of classes. Governments do not express the systematically growing “maturity” of a “people”. Still, they are the product of the struggle between different classes and the different layers within the same class, and, finally, the action of external forces – alliances, conflicts, wars and so on. To this should be added that a government, once it has established itself, may endure much longer than the relationship of forces which produced it. It is precisely out of this historical contradiction that revolutions, coup d’etats, counterrevolutions, etc., arise.

The very same dialectic approach is necessary in dealing with the question of the leadership of a class. Imitating the liberals, our sages tacitly accept the axiom that every class gets the leadership it deserves. In reality, leadership is not at all a mere “reflection” of a class or the product of its own unrestrained creativeness. Leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the various layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership invariably arises above its class and thereby becomes predisposed to the pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid significant events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions; precisely for this reason, the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution.[3]

It is pretty clear that postal workers have been caught unawares by the unprecedented nature of the attacks on their pay and conditions. They have, in Trotsky’s words, witnessed a great historical shock. It is time to face reality square on and realise that the CWU is dead and is just waiting to be buried.

Postal workers have tolerated the CWU for a long time because they did not really have an alternative, but now they do. Firstly, they have the World Socialist Website (wsws.org). Its analysis has been second to none in terms of accuracy and perspective. It offers a new way forward for postal workers. The CWU bureaucracy knows it is in a fight to the finish, so much so that it has lashed out at the WSWS on several occasions.[4]

Postal workers need a new organisation. The way forward is the struggle to build the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC). Although it is small at the moment, it has the only socialist perspective to take on both the CWU bureaucracy and Royal Mail. While it must join and build this new organisation, the task facing postal workers is a political one. The philosopher Hegel was fond of saying, “The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the coming of the dusk”, and this is true for postal workers today. To be blunt, postal workers do not have much time to build this leadership. Any delay in building the PWRFC will mean that, soon, there will be nothing left to defend.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_United_Kingdom_postal_workers_strike

[2] UK postal workers discuss fightback against gutting of Royal Mail and Kretinsky takeover-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/29/zmzb-a29.html

[3] The Class, the Party and the Leadership-https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm

[4] Communication Workers Union’s Martin Walsh attacks WSWS over opposition to “USO reform” pilots- http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/04/01/nxgz-a01.html

The Carnival of Vanities 2025

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The two million-strong Carnival Occupation Army has just departed the scene of its last battle. I am happy to report that no fatalities occurred; however, one has to report that so far there have been 32 assaults on police, 46 possessions of an offensive weapon,70 arrests for Possession of cannabis and 18 sexual offences. Carnival organisers of this significant cultural event have deemed this year’s carnival a success.[1]

The price paid by the residents of RBKC has been high. Three hundred tons of rubbish have been left in the street. It should be noted that normally, the dropping of rubbish in the street carries a £200 fine. The smell of urine and poo still permeated the air because the Carnival army of freeloaders decided to use the area as one gigantic toilet. It is not all bad news for the residents who had to stay behind while others paid a lot of money in hotels to get out. Some sold beer and food from their properties, which is illegal. Others sold high-priced tickets for the use of their toilet. Other, more sophisticated residents actually rented their flats and houses out as two-day brothels. Who says sex and crime do not pay?

The Carnival itself is what it is. It has been producing the same stuff for decades. You basically have a nice few floats and have over forty sound systems that blast out mind-numbing music, if you can call it music, during Monday’s extravaganza, the volume managed to loosen the hinges of nearby windows and made it impossible to sit in the front living room or bedroom. At one stage, my TV started to vibrate in tune with the base speaker less than 30 metres away.

Not that worried, the crowd who were so high on drugs, such as the so-called “Hippy Crack”, did not know what day it was. Having experienced being close to a fifty-foot sound system, one is completely numb and deaf after only a few seconds. It is also very difficult to appreciate the musical vibes when you are sky-high after breathing in gallons of nitrous oxide. Thousands of large gas canisters weighing in total of 4 tonnes have been collected from the streets. Hospitals expect to have to treat a large number of young people for nerve damage.

The so-called Hippy Crack, according to Gladstones, “When inhaled, nitrous oxide produces a short-lived (typically 1 to 5 minutes) feeling of euphoria and relaxation. The feeling has been described as being ‘happy drunk’. N2O works by interacting with the central nervous system. It inhibits the action of the NMDA receptors, which produces an analgesic effect by preventing the transmission of pain signals. It simultaneously stimulates the release of endogenous opioids (naturally occurring painkillers in the brain and CNS) and dopamine (the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure, satisfaction, and motivation), further enhancing the drug’s analgesic and euphoric effects. Finally, nitrous oxide also inhibits the brainstem’s respiratory centre, which increases CO2 blood levels (Gillman and Lichtigfeld) and contributes to the overall ‘high’.[2]

With thousands of people zonked out on this Hippy Crack, it was staggering that people were not injured or killed when the crowds congregated in small areas. The DJ on Monday at one sound system on the corner of Portobello Rd and Oxford Gardens started to panic because the crowd was surging towards the front of the speaker system, causing dangerous crushing. In the end, he told the crowd to go away for their own safety. For an event of such magnitude, there were little to no safety procedures in place other than people to bolt and look after themselves. It is only a matter of time before people are crushed to death at this event. It does not take a genius to figure out that nearly two million people in such a confined space is wantonly dangerous.

The irony of this year’s carnival was that it was saved when the most Conservative council in the United Kingdom spent a million pounds of local taxpayers’ money to make sure it went ahead. So why is this Carnival of Vanities allowed to take place?

From a social standpoint, Carnival is useful as a safety valve for the ruling elite.  It is a useful diversion from the problems of poverty, social inequality and the growth of fascism. Carnival is also big business. It generates over £100m in revenue and has cultivated a layer of the black middle class that has done very well out of Carnival.

Secondly, the police use it as a training ground for the implementation of crowd control measures such as Facial Recognition, which will be trialled at this year’s Carnival to be used on future social and political movements.

Like other previous Carnivals, this year’s event was non-political. Carnival organisers and the media routinely issue platitudes and portray the Carnival as a means to end racial divisions. The BBC ran its usual lip service to the radical origins of the Carnival.

However, today’s Carnival has nothing to do with its origins. How many of the people who danced knew that the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane in 1959, which started the carnival, is still unsolved 66 years or that one of the founders of the Carnival was a communist? Claudia Jones, whatever her political limitations, deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of the struggle against racism and capitalism.[3]

 It is hoped that next year’s event is not so generously sponsored by the RBKC, which does not have money to keep open libraries or youth centres but does for an event that has become too big for its floats and sound systems..

[1] /www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2023/november-2023/notting-hill-carnival-data/

[2] gladstonesclinic.com/blog/addiction-news/hippy-crack-nitrous-oxide-addiction/

[3] Harlem To Notting Hill-Claudia Jones by Sue Dockett

A Brief letter to Hall Greenland.

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I have just read and reviewed your new book, The Well-Dressed Revolutionary: The Odyssey of Michel Pablo in an Age of Uprisings. The most notable aspect of this book, which is supposed to be a critical look at Michel Pablo, is the fact that you book contains nothing from the orthodox Trotskyists who are members of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

From even a cursory look at your endnotes, it is clear that you have done considerable research on your subject matter. Yet you have ignored not only David North’s The Heritage We Defend and the journals produced by the ICFI during the 1985 split with the Workers Revolutionary Party, but also none of the members of the Socialist Labour League, such as Gerry Healy, are mentioned in the book.

You have also chosen to ignore the substantial writings on Pablo and the 1953 split in the Fourth International contained in the pages of the wsws.org

I will list a few

1.   The Origins of Pabloite Revisionism, the Split Within the Fourth International and the Founding of the International Committee-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/08/19/fvfj-a19.html

2.   The continuing struggle against Pabloism, the centrism of the OCI and the emerging crisis within the ICFI-.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/06/ohpu-s06.html

3.   Wohlforth’s renegacy, the renewal of the struggle against Pabloism in the Workers League, and the turn to the working class-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/13/wohl-s13.html 

I found these three articles after three minutes of searching the wsws.org. I doubt you are a lazy person, so I will attribute your lack of interest to a political blindness you have when it comes to studying orthodox Trotskyism.

Dear John (if I may),

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 Last evening I read your work on Marxism and the English Revolution for the second time. I should like to make some points about its arguments very briefly indeed.

1. If one looks at the late Conrad Russell’s corpus of works post-1975, it is possible to see that, deeply embedded within it, there is a degree of subscription to a teleological explanation of the English Civil War, e.g. about incipient support for royalism. pre-1642. I noticed this some time ago and found myself asked not to write about it.

2. One of the key economic and social changes in Anglo-Welsh society before 1640 is the strengthened position of landowners, whether peers or gentry. This goes back to the work of W.R.Emerson and helps to account for the failure of the post-1646 regimes to consolidate themselves in power. The ‘revolution’ took place against one of the key economic developments of the period.

3. As a corollary to point 2, there is good evidence to show that the tenantry of landowners out in the counties were linked not just to their landlords but also amongst and between themselves, hence the coherence of the landed interests before, during and after the 1640-1660 period.

4. One of the important themes in the Stuart realms and in continental states is the retreat from traditional bargaining methods due in measure to the fiscal and military demands of post-1618 wars. In the Stuarts’ kingdoms, these forms of consensus and complaint, bargaining and negotiation declined after 1603 and atrophied post-1625, even when the wars against France and Spain ended by 1630. Their Parliaments were only one means by which negotiations took place in these societies, pace Russell, but one can see how at county and borough levels, with corporate organisations, etc., this retreat took place and accelerated under Charles I.

I am not a Marxist, as you must know, but I enjoy debating the issues of the seventeenth century,

Christopher Thompson

The Well-Dressed Revolutionary: The Odyssey of Michel Pablo in an Age of Uprisings By Hall Greenland-London, Amsterdam: Resistance Books and International Institute for Research and Education, 2023, 376 pp

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Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Matthew 7:16-20 King James Version

“By your friends shall ye be known”

Proverb

“That, in a Europe blood-stained by more than four years of total war, crushed under the most hideous yoke of the imperialisms, whose prisons and concentration camps are gorged with the victims of the most savage and most systematic repression, our organization has been able to hold its European assembly, to work out and define its political line of struggle, of itself constitutes the most eloquent manifestation of its vitality, its internationalist spirit, and the revolutionary ardour by which it is animated.

Fourth International statement

“The objective prerequisites for the proletarian revolution have not only ‘ripened,’ they have begun to get somewhat rotten.”

Leon Trotsky

Michel Pablo, a renegade from Trotskyism, died at the age of eighty-four in 1996. Pablo’s betrayal of his former political principles was aptly celebrated by the Greek ruling elite at the time. When he died, the PASOK (Panhellenic Socialist Movement) government gave him a state funeral. As the proverb says, “By your friends shall ye be known”

Hall Greenland’s biography of Pablo is the first of its kind. Alex de Jong, writing for the Pabloite International Viewpoint, believes “He’s (Pablo) finally gotten the biography he deserves.”[1]De Jong is correct because this is a politically naive account and largely absolves Pablo of his treachery. Anyone expecting anything different from a member of the Green Party is going to be sadly disappointed.

However, Greenland’s book is not without some merit, tracing Pablo’s early political life. Pablo attended the founding conference of Leon Trotsky’s Fourth International and took part alongside fellow Trotskyists in the anti-Nazi resistance in wartime France. The book describes how many Trotskyists during the war years were living on borrowed time; not only were they hunted by the Gestapo, but they were murdered in droves by the Stalinists.

Many writers, including Greenland, imply that despite some heroics, Trotskyists played “little or no part in the struggle to project a revolutionary defeatist line,”

But as the Marxist David North points out, “ outside the Fourth International, there was no other tendency in the workers’ movement that opposed the imperialist war! The Trotskyists were hounded and persecuted by a “popular front” of fascists, “democratic” imperialists and Stalinists precisely because they upheld the banner of revolutionary defeatism and proletarian internationalism.

He continues, “The French Trotskyists Marc Bourhis and Pierre Gueguen were executed by the Nazis on October 22, 1941. Their comrade Jules Joffre was shot in 1942. In October 1943, the secretary of the French section, Marcel Hic, was arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Buchenwald and then to Dora, where he was murdered. Dozens of other French Trotskyists were arrested and also perished in the Nazi death camps. Despite the repression, the Trotskyist PCI published, starting in August 1940, seventy-three clandestine issues of its newspaper, La Verité, whose circulation was 15,000 copies.”[2]

Despite describing how the Stalinists murdered Trotskyists at will Greenland follows in the footsteps of every Stalinist, Pabloite and related middle-class radical organizations, and the intellectually corrupt academic milieu of pseudo-leftists who in the words of North “continue to ignore, deprecate and deny the overwhelming evidence that the penetration of the US Socialist Workers Party SWP by GPU agents played a critical role in the assassination of Trotsky. The role of Sylvia Callen (a.k.a. Sylvia Franklin, Sylvia Caldwell, Sylvia Doxsee), the personal secretary of James P. Cannon, as a GPU spy has been conclusively established. The same is true for Robert Sheldon Harte.”[3]

There are many problems with this book. The main one being is Greenland’s complete lack of understanding of the origins and nature of Pablo’s opportunism and subsequent betrayals caused by this opportunism. It is impossible to go into any great detail of Pabloite opportunism. For anyone interested, David North’s The Heritage We Defend is the best starting point.

As North points out in his book, the origins of Pablo’s opportunism began over the debate over the class nature of Yugoslavia and the Eastern European buffer states had become transformed, under the pressure of alien class forces, into a political platform for sweeping opportunist revisions of the basic Trotskyist program and its historical perspective. Pablo was the living embodiment of Trotsky’s sayings, “Without correct theory, there cannot be correct politics or more precisely, ‘every sociological definition is at the bottom a historical prognosis.”

North writes, “ The theories advanced by Pablo of ‘generations of deformed workers’ states” and “war-revolution” articulated the pessimism and demoralisation of broad layers of the Fourth International beneath the impact of unfavourable objective conditions. The political conceptions which were to become known as Pabloism emerged as an adaptation to the restabilization of capitalism, on the one hand, and to the apparent strengthening of the Stalinist bureaucracy, on the other.

Refracted through the political prism of the Cold War, the objective situation appeared to be dominated by the global conflict between the imperialist forces, spearheaded by the United States, and the Soviet Union and those labour and national revolutionary movements dominated by Stalinism. The real underlying conflict between the world bourgeoisie and the international proletariat—of which the Cold War was only a partial and distorted manifestation—receded from the political consciousness of those within the Fourth International who were reacting impressionistically to world events.[4]

Pablo’s capitulation to hostile class forces was not a pretty one to watch and had disastrous consequences for the working class. After he rejected revolutionary politics, Pablo, up to his death, was a supporter of ecology movements and women’s liberation. Along with his other renegades from Trotskyism, Ernest Mandel Pablo, he advocated not the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism but that workers should undertake a form of Self-Management to counteract capitalism’s attacks on them.

Pablo advocated ‘generalised self-management or direct democracy’. He utilised his friendship with the Algerian bourgeois nationalists to put this experiment into practice. As Peter Schwarz writes, “Pablo himself and other leading French Pabloites placed themselves unconditionally at the service of the Algerian Liberation Front (FLN), and took over organisational responsibilities, such as the printing of illegal newspapers, fake banknotes and counterfeit passports. They even set up a weapons factory in Morocco. After the victory of the FLN over the French colonial regime, Pablo entered into the service of the Algerian government. As special advisor to the head of state, Ben Bella, Pablo was responsible for the introduction in Algerian factories of the forms of “workers’ self-management” first initiated in post-war Yugoslavia.”[5]

In his book Self-management in the struggle for socialism, Pablo explains, “In the economic sphere, the purpose of the plan is to determine the general conditions under which the self-managed enterprises can act and coordinate their efforts for the ultimate interests of society as a whole. We use the term social rather than economic plan to stress the fact that the plan seeks the balanced overall evolution of the society towards socialism, and that this affects the determination of so-called economic aims; the real aim of the plan is to satisfy the real social needs of the working people and citizens, with decisions made democratically from the bottom up and vice-versa, in a process of interaction which is constantly readjusting the objectives sought, even while the plan is being executed.[6]

As the above quote shows, Pablo’s self-management plan would be introduced peacefully and with the full cooperation of the capitalists; at no stage did Pablo advocate, let alone attempt, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Although Greenland’s book is the first and only biography of Pablo, it should not be the last. It is incumbent on the Trotskyist movement to write its biography of this renegade from Trotskyism to train and arm future revolutionaries as to the nature of Pablo’s opportunism and betrayals.

[1] The Revolutionary Life and Times of Michel Pablo-internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article8471

[2] The Fourth International in World War II-The Heritage we Defend-www.wsws.org/en/special/library/heritage/07.html

[3] The place of Security and the Fourth International in the history of the Trotskyist movement-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/14/dujg-a14.html

[4] The Nature of Pabloite Opportunism-The Heritage We Defend

[5] The politics of opportunism: the “radical left” in France-www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/05/lft4-m22.html

[6] Self-management in the struggle for socialism-https://www.marxists.org/archive/pablo/1972/selfman/main.htm

The Library of Augusto Monterroso

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Posted bydantelianocuenta9 July, 2025Posted inArticles Tags:Dante Liano, Monterroso

Entering a writer’s library is like rummaging through the toolbox of a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a sculptor. Screwdrivers, hammers, saws, garlopa, chisel, drill, sandpaper, square and tape measure to work wood (oak, pine, walnut) with nails, screws, glue, varnish and lacquer, that concentrated universe where all the possibilities of manufacture and artefact reside. Only that in the extended world of bookcases, leaning against the wall as if they were going to fall, or as if they were going to tear down that wall, those other tools of the trade are lined up, nails and paper screws enclosed between the cardboard or leather spines. It would be an unbearable banality to say: “Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are”, because you read everything, regardless of interests and hobbies, obsessions and manias, obligations and duties. Despite everything, going through the books a writer has collected throughout their life can provide clues or coincidences, perhaps clarifications that help better enjoy their books.

Unless he is a travelling writer, one of those that Dr. Arévalo portrayed in his time: “Each country, a library.” All this comes to mind by reading Fragments of the Treasure Map, a beautiful title for a very special book. It was written by Leticia Sánchez Ruiz, a writer from Oviedo, after touring the library that Augusto Monterroso donated to the University of Oviedo. We are before a journey full of devotion and reverence, or, as the epigraph best recites: “with love, admiration and deep gratitude”. A curiosity: the author never met this admired author in person. He was about to meet him, he confesses, at the presentation of a volume in Salamanca. Only that he arrived late, when the event was over: it was the occasion when he was closest to Monterroso. In a way, the book is a way of establishing an implied, tacit, virtual relationship.

It all likely began with the awarding of the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature to Augusto Monterroso in the year 2000. That award was the most important one received by the Guatemalan author. His stay in Oviedo will have been very pleasant, and Monterroso will have been very well impressed. When he died in 2003, he left a legacy of volumes and manuscripts of great value. His wife, the writer Bárbara Jacobs, decided, in 2008, to donate most of these books to the University of Oviedo. These works travelled from the Chimalistac neighbourhood in Mexico City to Madrid by air. From Madrid, several trucks loaded the five tons of the legacy, and they were deposited in the Library of the El Milán Campus. There, in a vast wing of the enclosure, various shelves treasure years and years of shopping, reading, searching, entertainment, reflection, everything that an author’s library implies.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz leads us through a singular reading, the reading of several readings, especially those that Monterroso made, and only the title of a work would serve to make inferences. There are also annotated books that indicate Monterroso’s preferences, and there are manuscripts, letters, and photographs. Not for nothing, Sánchez Ruiz calls his adventure “fragments of the treasure map”, a quote that implies an evaluation. At the beginning, he relates that, once, that treasure ran the risk of dissolving into nothingness, as Tito relates in the story How I managed to get rid of five hundred books. That narrative contains a kind of joke, because the author says that one day, he decided to dismantle his collection of books. However, shortly after starting, he regretted it. The anecdote is invented, but it serves to exercise the sarcasm of the Guatemalan author. As far as is known, he never got rid of any book, but rather accumulated copies throughout his life.

Fragments tiptoe through the orderly shelves, which, despite this concert, form a labyrinth of symbols and signs, ready to be interpreted. The path between the volumes serves the author to weave a portrait of Tito Monterroso, which mixes biography, literary anecdotes and textual quotations, and tries to make that painting as faithful as possible to the original. One of the most interesting parts is found in the notes that Titus wrote on the pages of his favourite readings. It begins with a quote from Steiner: There are two types of people, those who read with a pencil in their hand and those who do not. “There’s nothing quite as fascinating as the marginal notes of great writers,” he says. Tito Monterroso was reading with a pencil in his hand. His stroke is shy, not very emphatic. Sánchez points out that the characteristic of Tito’s annotations is that, rather than commenting, he corrects. Who knows if that is the result of his first job in Mexico, proofreader at the Séneca publishing house. In any case, create a personal code: an X for translation errors; a question mark, like a raised eyebrow, in the face of the wrong or the incomprehensible; a bracket for what pleases him; a six-pointed star for the exceptional, and for phrases that mention flies, one of the Guatemalan author’s strange obsessions.

Monterroso points out, in Henry  James’s Notebook, the paragraphs in which the American complains about the excessive social life, which leaves him no time for writing, as it reflects, says Sánchez, something that Tito himself reflected on in the text Agenda de un escritor. In another book, Flaubert’s Parrot, by Julian Barnes, Monterroso underlines the statement: “Flaubert did not have a very exact idea of what Emma Bovary’s eyes were like.” This leads him to seek, in the text, the verification of such an observation, and underlines the parts in which the protagonist’s eyes appear: “her black eyes seemed blacker”; “black in the shadow and from a dark blue to full light”; “although they were brown, they looked black.” This ambiguity would seem strange in an author who spent a week in search of the mot juste, but the doubt dissolves when one thinks that indeterminacy is one of the keys to literature. Monterroso also underlines the books of Borges and Cortázar, and one might think that the underlines, then, are exclamation marks, in the best sense of the term.

Leticia Sánchez Ruiz points out, as an almost metaliterary curiosity, that in Tito’s library are the works of Arturo Monterroso and Porfirio Barba Jacob. He declares, with a certain astonishment, that Arturo Monterroso exists and that he is a Guatemalan writer. I can confirm that intuition: Arturo not only exists in reality, but he is an excellent writer, greatly admired by the countless students of his captivating literary workshops. His works are nothing like Tito’s, and that is very good, because it removes suspicions and exploitation of literary coincidences. De Barba Jacob indicates the almost coincidence with the name of Bárbara Jacobs, Monterroso’s wife. He completes the information by saying that Titus knew Barba Jacob, because he frequented his parents’ house, and that Titus admired him very much. There is much more. Porfirio Barba Jacob was a Colombian modernist who settled in Guatemala, was schooled there, was a friend and enemy of Rafael Arévalo Martínez, and deserved a biography written by Fernando Vallejo. Titus was right when he kept his books. Fragments of a Treasure Map contains much more information, and reading it reveals to us the world of Monterrosian and incites us to what would be the main activity: reading Tito’s work, or, what is almost the same, rereading it, because it is prose to be enjoyed over and over again.