[I'm replying to a previous message of mine (please scroll down if you've not
read it) and a reply on a Manchester United forum. A minor correction: James not
Richard Lovelock was responsible for Gaia theory.]

My conclusion about fate and people with good intentions winning was backed up
on Thursday night in the final matches of the Scottish Premier League, with
Celtic clinching the title. Celtic fans (and perhaps players) tend to be more
left-wing and nicer people than Rangers fans (and perhaps players), due to the
fact that historically Celtic was a Catholic team and Rangers Protestant - and
there is still a large tendency for fans of those clubs to adhere to the
appropriate religion.
 
Catholicisim is a more collectivist religion than Protestantism (which is the
main religion of capitalism), and there has been a history of divide-and-rule by
the British state, with Catholics discriminated against, in Northern Ireland.
Indeed, some of the violent Rangers "fans" after their team's defeat to Zenit St
Petersburg in the UEFA Cup final chanted "UVF" (as I heard on a TV report). The
UVF, or Ulster Volunteer Force, are a loyalist (Protestant) paramilitary
organisation, which, like the IRA, were responsible for the murder of many
innocent people in "the troubles" in Northern Ireland.
 
I sent a message containing the following paragraph to various football-related
forums, with the subject "I've changed my mind - I'm supporting Celtic to win
the SPL tonight!",  just before the final SPL matches:
 
"I moved up to Glasgow from Manchester (where I supported FC United of
Manchester and Manchester United) two years ago. I have generally supported
Celtic rather than Rangers of the two main Glasgow clubs. However, I decided at
the start of this season to support Rangers rather than Celtic for a change, to
be anti-sectarian, except when they play Hibs (as the historically Catholic team
in Edinburgh), Aberdeen (as my long-term favourite Scottish club), Inverness
Caledonian Thistle (as a new club with a great name from a beautiful place) or a
lower-league club in one of the cups. I like Ally McCoist and thought that
Celtic continuing to win the SPL was getting a bit boring. Also, former fascist
home secretary John Reid becoming Celtic chairman put me off continuing to
support Celtic."
 
Somebody criticised me for saying that supporting a team because they are
Catholic was anti-sectarian, which was a valid point but I didn't just want to
support a historically Protestant team. It was a rather contradictory position
to take (Rangers actually played Aberdeen in the final match, which they lost
2-0, and I couldn't have supported Aberdeen in the match at the same time as
wanting Rangers to win the title), but it was a useful thing to say to those who
would have been alienated if I had said I supported Rangers full stop.
 
Ben McManus replied to my "Football, fate, Gaia theory and socialism" message on
a Manchester United discussion board, and gave me permission to post the
following message in the debate (my reply to him) elsewhere:
 
Ben wrote:
"the first point i'd like to take issue with is a class based society. While as
recently as the 1980's, there was a very obvious division between working class,
middle class and 'upper' class, today's Britain is much less class oriented. I
would go so far as to purport that we have an 'upper' class of super rich
untouchables; and in contrast, an underclass that is below the poverty line and
stuck in a vicious circle that keeps them stuck there. everyone else is, for
want of a better terminology, 'middle class'."
 
I'm no longer a Marxist, but the Marxist idea of the ability of the working
class to withdraw their labour and challenge big business for power still holds
today. If there is a general strike, you can still bring down a government (as
workers did in Bolivia in 2005, with union leader Evo Morales who led the strike
movement getting over 50% of the vote in the subsequent Presidential election).
Exactly where the boundary lies between working and middle class is highly
debatable, but people who have to work for an employer for a living with the
employer profitting from their work (except in the public sector although
PFI/PPP is another way for big business to profit) are working class in my
opinion.
 
I wrote:
"Man Utd defeating Chelsea in that match and the battle for the league title (on
the final day of the season) was an indication that the forces of big business
in the world weren't as strong as they could be, and they will get even weaker
as a consequence of the results."
 
Ben replied:
"i can't understand where you've made that connection. Chelsea were 2nd in the
league and runners-up in Europe, doesn't that indicate that their business model
is working? to demonstrate my point, look at where Chelsea were
pre-Abramovich... they were a cup team who would look for a top 6 finish in the
league, generally a finish between 4th and 6th and a good run in the FA or
League Cups would be an excellent season for the Blues. so on that alone, i
think we can safely say that Abramovich's 'big business' style is indeed
producing results, and Chelsea will again be a threat next season."
 
With the £500 million or so that Abramovich has forked out, coming second in
both the league and Champions League is a bad result. "Average Grant" ,as
Chelsea players have nicknamed him, may be for the chop, and whether he stays or
goes Chelsea will have to fork out even more mney to try to compete. Many of
Chelsea's better players will be highly tempted to leave. Whatever happens next
season, it looks dismal for Chelsea - and political movements with capitalism in
crisis internationally will add to their problems...
 
Ben said:
"You mention that Man Utd players have a better demeanour than their Chelsea
counterparts. That argument strikes me as thoroughly benign as there are no
controllable variables in the experiment. for instance, if you take the CL
final.. of course the United players look happy, they just won the cup! you
can't follow footballers around 24/7, so you can't provide any evidence that Man
Utd players smile more than Chelsea players. Again, this removes from the
equation any other extremely important variables such as love life, wages,
morale at the club, training regimes, inter-personal relationships between
players, even the players' personalities themselves."
 
I certainly saw Utd players smiling while practicing for the final, but perhaps
that was influenced by just having won the league! I think I've noticed it
generally, with Utd players enjoying football a lot more, reflected by scoring
as lot more goals and playing much more attractive football than Chelsea. Alex
seems to be smiling a lot more than Grant, and than he did a few years ago.
 
Ben wrote:
"the fact is, as Darwin proved, we are animals, just like well... the animals.
Morality is not a set of laws or principles, not a good versus bad issue as you
suggest; morality is a feeling. it is a feeling of compassion for the suffering
of others made possible by the fact that individuals are figments."
 
I'm not an expert on philosophy, but I cannot see how morality can be defined in
such a way that good versus bad is not involved. I have my own moral ideas, and
I know that many others do too. I reject George W Bush's ideas of "the axis of
evil", and recognise that in his government's support for dictators such as the
Saudi royal family he is a hypocrite (and Bush wasn't elected in 2000 or 2004 -
see my US Electoral Fraud group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/us-electoral-fraud for details - so him arguing
about bringing democracy around the world makes him hypocritical there too).
 
Ben wrote:
'I also think you've misinterpreted Gaia Theory in much the same light. you
write, and i quote: "Richard Lovelock's Gaia theory, which encompasses
everybody's free will and ensures that things work out". This is not the case.
Gaia Theory is the theory that the Earth is a self-regulating system which
behaves in some ways like an organism, he uses the example of Daisyland, which
you probably know, so i won't go into it. My point is that there is no human
element to it, the theory refers to the Earth as an organism, not to humanity.'
 
I've read some of Lovelock's first book on Gaia theory "Gaia: a new look at life
on Earth" and "Revenge of Gaia" (in which he seemed to reject the basis of idea
by saying that global warming could be disastrous) but I'm not an expert on his
ideas and I'm unsure to what extent I agree with him. Humans are part of the
"self-regulating system" or "super-organism" composed of all life on the Earth
and inanimate objects. My hypothesis is that our free will, and indeed the free
will of animals (if they have any which I think they do), is part of that
super-organism and our minds co-operate together to ensure that humanity and
other life on the Earth survives.
 
I'm more influenced by Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, in which I first came
across the term Gaia (as a planet with telepathic aliens who are both
individuals and part of the collective whole) in "Foundation's Edge" and
"Foundation and Earth", than Lovelock. That series ended (sorry for spoiling the
ending if you want to read them!) with that planet's system replicated
throughout the galaxy - called "Galaxia". I suspect that the universe (or
perhaps just the galaxy) in which we live actually operates like Galaxia! If it
was just the world rather than the universe that was self-regulating, then
things like comets, meteorites and eclipses (or even just stars in the sky)
could interact with us in such a way that things wouldn't work out.
 
Ben wrote:
"now i understand from your post that you are a socialist, and judging by the
implications made throughout, i would say you were influenced by Marx. (in fact
i've just read through again and you more or less mention this yourself). The
biggest problem i have with Marx is that his work is severely dated. Putting it
in context, Marx was writing when capitalism as we know it today wasn't even
conceived of. He was on the edge of the dawn of capitalism, we are in the midst
of it. I'm not saying based on that, that we should dismiss Marx's work, but
rather, we should be careful when we look to 'initiate the revoltion' based on
ideas that are null and void in a modern context. (mostly because, as i said
earlier, the class system that existed in Marx's day no longer exists now)"
 
Yes, I'm influenced by Marx and was a member of a Marxist (and Trotskyist)
organisation from 1990-98 - the Militant Tendency (becoming Militant Labour when
it left the Labour Party and now the Socialist Party of England and Wales). It
was Militant leading the mass non-payment campaign that defeated the poll tax
and brought down Margaret Thatcher, and proving itself serious by defending
people who refused to pay, which convinced me to join - if it can lead that, it
can lead a revolution, I thought. I left when it failed to support the setting
up of the Scottish Socialist Party, and I wanted to reveal infiltration by
hostile conspiratorial organisations like MI5 (which I did indeed do).
 
Incidentally, Andy Walsh, the founder of the Independent Manchester United
Supporters Association (IMUSA), who also played a leading role in the Not for
Sale Coalition against Glazer's takeover of the club (having helped the
successful campaign against Sky/Murdoch's earlier takeover attempt), was also a
member of Militant and went to jail for not paying his poll tax.
 
Marx got some things wrong, like the tendency for the rate of profit to fall,
which he thought would lead to the inevitable collapse of capitalism. The role
of advertising and loyalty to brand names, which weren't big factors in his day,
means that many big companies enjoy huge profits. I see things happening much
more through electoral politics, and splits in parties like Labour and the
Scottish National Party helping bring about socialism, although strikes still
have an important role. As I said in my previous message, I am in favour of a
socialist society with a government elected by proportional representation by
single transferable vote, with the middle class in power as well as the working
class, whereas Marxists want just the working class in power, so I am deviating
quite a lot from Marxism.
 
[rest of message snipped]
 
----- Original Message ----
From: Steve Wallis <revolutionarysocialiststeve@...>
Subject: Football, fate, Gaia theory and socialism


In ITV news coverage of the Champions League final last night, in which
Manchester United defeated Chelsea on penalties, suggested that it was fate that
Man Utd would win 50 years after the Munich air disaster which killed many of
the "Busby babes". It was also 40 years after first winning the trophy (then
called the European Cup).
 
Tiny differences, like Chelsea hitting the post and crossbar and John Terry
slipping as he hit the ball for a penalty that would have won them the match,
can have a big effect on the result of a match - and that can have a big effect
on the morale of many millions of football fans around the world, especially
when a prestigious trophy is at stake. The morale of the players and manager,
and the fans who are cheering the team on, can affect how well the team play.
 
There can be political influences and repercussions, since some teams (like Man
Utd) are mainly supported by working class fans and others (like Chelsea) by
more middle and ruling class fans. Man Utd fans and players also tend to be more
left-wing (partly because the team play in socialist red) than Chelsea fans
(whose team play in Tory blue). Chelsea owner and Russian billionaire Roman
Abramovich has forked out far more on players than any other team in the world,
so Chelsea are the main team of big business. Man Utd defeating Chelsea in that
match and the battle for the league title (on the final day of the season) was
an indication that the forces of big business in the world weren't as strong as
they could be, and they will get even weaker as a consequence of the results.
 
Of course, Man Utd are a rich team too - in terms of revenues and money
available to  buy players and pay their wages, although they are over £700
million in debt after US businessman Malcolm Glazer's takeover of the club. I
opposed the takeover at the time, and supported the efforts of other United fans
opposed to the takeover who set up a new club - FC United of Manchester.
However, the consequences for both clubs (until the debt has to be repaid of
course) has actually proved very good, in terms of money available in the short
term for Man Utd players and FC United winning promotion in amateur leagues in
each of the three seasons it has existed (clinching promotion on the final day
this season). I now regard FC United as my favourite team, but have continued to
support Man Utd as well.
 
Bearing in mind the money involved at Man Utd, describing that club as socialist
or left-wing is inaccurate to say the least! It is perhaps better to analyse it
in terms of a good versus bad struggle, as I outline in my Good Intentions
Manifesto (at www.goodintentionsnetwork.org/manifesto.html, although I am
currently rewriting it to reflect my realisation that the class struggle is
paramount).
 
Within every struggle in society, including that required to win a football
match in addition to the class struggle, debates within and between political
parties and campaigns on political issues, etc., there is a struggle between
those who primarily have good intentions (and care about others) and those with
primarily bad intentions (being selfish). I think everybody has a mixture of
good and bad intentions - if you don't take care of yourself to some extent, you
wouldn't be very effective at helping others, and if you don't care at all about
anybody else, you would find it very difficult to get by in the world.
 
How good or bad somebody is tends to be reflected in his or her demeanour; do
you smile (as Man Utd players tend to do more often than Chelsea ones) or are
you as dour and miserable as Chelsea manager Avram Grant - or British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown? Man Utd manager Sir Alex Ferguson went through a phase of
being miserable and arguably greedy/selfish (in relation to stud receipts from
the racehorse he was given by former club shareholders), but he has proved much
better at recruiting good players recently (particularly last summer where all
new additions have made positive contributions to this season's successes), and
he comes across as a much happier person. If you are good, and show it in your
demeanour and actions, you are more likely to associate with other good people
and/or help people you associate with nicer people.
 
There is a genetic basis for this good versus bad analysis of mine, with many
animal species being caring and cooperative as well as selfish. There is even
evidence of animal morality, as referred to in the current issue of New
Scientist (quoting an article from 13 July 2002 (p 34):
 
"A classic study in 1964 found that hungry rhesus monkeys would not take food
they had been offered if doing so meant that another monkey received an electric
shock. The same is true of rats. Does this indicate nascent morality? For
decades, we've preferred to find alternative explanations, but recently
ethologist Marc Bekoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder has championed
the view that humans are not the only moral species. He argues that morality is
common in social mammals, and that during play they learn the rights and wrongs
of social interaction, the 'moral norms that can then be extended to other
situations such as sharing food, defending resources, grooming and giving
care'."
 
Returning to the issue of fate, and the fact that a football result can have a
big impact: I have long realised that the world is largely planned rather than
random - there are big vested interests in some things happening, so if events
can be modelled (in human minds or on computers) they will be, and I have
noticed too many "coincidences" in things that have happened. I regard myself as
an agnostic - I've veered towards believing in God, but (perhaps largely due to
subscribing to New Scientist) now veer towards atheism. There does, however,
seem to be some sort of collective consciousness in the world (and perhaps the
universe) much as explained by Richard Lovelock's Gaia theory, which encompasses
everybody's free will and ensures that things work out, even with respect to
football matches!
 
I have often felt, rightly or wrongly, that it has been vital for me to do
certain things to prevent a dictatorial capitalist society like the one
predicted by George Orwell in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from coming about. Arguably
Russia already has that sort of society - Putin decided upon Medvedev as his
successor as President, the Russian media gave him far more coverage than any
other candidate, and (according to the BBC at least) there was no doubt that
Medvedev would be elected, which he was; if you don't produce a passport or ID
card when stopped by the police on the street, you can be arrested. If the
whole world was like Russia, and New Labour are trying to take the UK in that
direction, there would be no prospect of revolutionary change, but interactions
with ordinary people (including football fans) across the world can bring about
real democracy there and internationally.
 
I am now much more relaxed about prospects for the future, and the football
results mentioned above reinforce my view that others would do what is necessary
to yield a much more ethical world even if I dropped out of political activism
(which I don't intend to do). However, there is still a lot at stake - many more
people could suffer or die in the meantime (especially with rapidly increasing
food prices never mind the terrible situation in Burma), and the sort of ethical
societies that we will have in the world can be affected by everyone's free
will. I am in favour of a form of socialism where the government is elected
by proportional representation by single transferable vote, with the middle
class in power as well as the working class (whereas Marxists want just the
working class in power). [I do agree with Marxists on some degree of workers'
control of industry, if it's not too hierarchical.] I am also in favour of a
varied world, with
different forms of society in different countries (whereas Marxists believe the
whole world has to become socialist).
 
Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander's support for a referendum on
independence would seem to make a capitalist independent Scotland likely in
2010, especially if (as is very likely) the Tories win the next UK general
election earlier that year. The Scottish National Party (SNP) would surely
split (since it will have achieved its primary aim) with socialists and
capitalists going their separate ways, with socialists currently in the Labour
Party and socialist parties to the left of Labour joining socialists from the
SNP, in time for the next Scottish parliamentary elections in 2011. Of course,
big problems with the capitalist world economy could provoke massive
revolutionary movements before then, but a socialist Scotland in 2011 certainly
looks feasible.
 
--
Steve Wallis (Glasgow, Scotland)
For important/urgent communications, please email:
warcrysteve@...
Blogs: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steve-wallis-socialist-blog,
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My socialist website: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk
My socialist musical poetry: http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk/poetry.htm
(and at my MySpace and Multiply pages)
My pages at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/galaxiasteve, Facebook:
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Founder, Good Intentions Network: http://www.goodintentionsnetwork.org 
Founder, Ethical Capitalism Network: http://www.ethicalcapitalism.net
Founder, Foundation for PR-based Socialism: http://www.PRsocialism.org
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Author, "Revolution Destroyed? Have I ensured that a world socialist
revolution will never happen?": http://www.revolutiondestroyed.net
 
For discussion of the credit crunch, go to
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