About (2007)

Who am I? 

My name is Jonathan Starling, and I was born in 1979 in Bermuda. I lived there until 1997 which is when I went to study at Trent University in Ontario, where I graduated in 2001 with a B.Sc (Honours) in Anthropology and Biology. I returned to Bermuda in 2003 whereupon I was drafted into the Bermuda Regiment and served my three years and two months, mostly as a Corporal and a Medic.

What is the purpose of this blog?

I have to give credit to ‘The Limey’ Phil for getting this site up and running. I had been wanting to get a website or blog going for some time, but really didn’t know how to do it. Phil was quite willing to assist, and he actually laid the groundwork of this blog, of which I really pretty much took over with a few superficial changes, and of course complete control over content.

The discussion on this site is totally unedited, other than for obvious personal attacks and threats, and I will discourage profanities, other than that I look forward to free flowing discussions.

The purpose of this site is primarily for me to clarify my thoughts on various issues; it is remarkable how actually putting something down concretely helps to crystallise ones thoughts and helps one think. Aside from that purpose, it is of course to share my ideas and thoughts with others, hopefully influencing people, or at least challenging conceptions. My best wish is to promote critical reasoning. The site will also serve as a platform for announcing various events or news which I feel is necessary.

The title for the blog is a combination of Bob Marley and the Wailers ‘Catch a Fire’ album which is one of my favorite albums, and more or less sought to convey a radical political message in a form that people were open to listening to; and the original sub-title of the British liberterian socialist group Solidarity – For Workers Power.

Growing up in Bermuda it was not easy coming across political literature of any kind that may have challenged the status quo; even today you will not find much in the library here. Much of my earlier political formation came in the form of Bob’s music, the Beatles and Lennon, the writings of George Orwell, and the Communist Manifesto. This was about the sum of the media available to me in Bermuda in the realm of political philosophy. I read them after begining to criticise the reality that I had grew up in and simply accepted. At a certain point I just begun to wonder about why the status quo was the status quo, and could it be changed. I think my studies in Biology, in particular evolutionary theory, in high school led me to question how things had come to be as I knew them today. Prior to that I had just simply accepted the reality as presented to me without critical thought.

It was when I went overseas for university that I really had access to different points of view, abundant literatures, and access (through my international student friends) to radically different cultural perspectives and histories to my own heretofore acceptance of Westen history and culture. It was there that I found the collected works of Marx and Engels, of Lenin, occasional works of Trotsky and Luxemburg. It was there that I could hear the perspectives of former Soviets, of PRC citizens, of Tanzanians, of Cubans, of Chileans. It was there that I came into contact with Hinduism, with Islam, with Buddhism. It was there that I met people who would not accept the status quo but would regularly criticise it with the hope of changing it for the better, people who would enter into rational but passionate debate, people who had the courage of their convictions and would stand up for their principles.

It was a good time. In my first year me and a handful of my dorm mates (socialist and social democratic Canadians), a Trotskyist Ukrainian, an Isreali-Canadian Kibbutz socialist, and a few others formed the Trent Socialist group. Our aim was pretty much to develop our own political ideologies through discussion, serve as an umbrella group for the Left at our university, produce pamphlets and engage in active support (direct action) in various workers/students initiatives, which basically involved assisting with picketing, providing coffee and snacks for strikers, creating picket signs, arranging collections for strikers or student protestors, and assisting with occupations. The group also arranged for guest speakers. In 1998 a delegation of about three or four of us, including myself, took part in the founding of the Canadian New Democratic Party Socialist Caucus in Toronto. By 1999 the Trent NDP had become established, which allowed the Trent Socialists, while working with the Trent NDP, to focus on more radical politics and ideologies. I was even elected to the Student Parliament on the Trent Socialist ticket as Special Needs Commissioner! However, by the time of my graduation, the Trent Socialists had effectively ceased as an organisation, and was replaced with the established Trent NDP, and the Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty (a local autonomous division of OCAP), as well as numerous groupsucles of various leftist ideologies (Greens, Anarchists, Trotskyists, Bohemians).

On returning to Bermuda, through the Regiment I experienced something of the militaristic mindset, and while I recognise the need for military training, I reject the proto-fascist authoritarianism inherent in the existing model of military organisations. However, through the Regiment I was able to visit Jamaica where I was able to study the works of Micheal Manley, and then later Greneda where I was able to study the works of Maurice Bishop, and hear the stories of the Revo from the villagers. The exposure to the potential but also the poverty of our Caribbean brothers and sisters, and the immensely obvious inequalities of wealth left a definite mark in my mind. It was in the post-Ivan clean up of the Caymans however that I was really struck by the wealth inequalities, the segregation of groups by wealth (which certainly correlated with melanin), and the interrelationship of US/Euro cultural and economic imperialism and local culture, and the combination of race and sex. It was on the basis of these visits and meditiations that I have come to a position of pro Pan-Caribbeanism and some aspects of the Martinican ideology of Creolism as an antithesis of Blackness (Negritude) (not really a rejection, but a surpassing).

I am a socialist, a communist, a Marxist. I came to this position through my critical reading of various political philosophies, as well as Marxism. I reject dogmatic Marxism, as it is known in the USSR or the PRC. In this respect I am a liberterian socialist, in that I reject the idea that a vanguard Party can lead the masses to socialism, at least in the form of an infallible Party Leadership that knows best and the rest must follow. At best a vanguard Party can help develop class consciousness and encourage the prerequisite development of those faculties necessary for the people to self-govern, these being total and free critical discussion, grassroots democracy, and the democratisation of politics and economics. I do not reject the need to run in parliamentary elections, as to not run in my opinion is foolish, both from a propaganda/educational point of view and to fight against capitalist excesses. I have no illussions as to how much can be achieved within parliament, but until the masses are ready to self-govern, one should participate in parliament, all the while working towards social revolution.

The primary inspirations for this blog are:

‘Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.‘ – Karl Marx

“Since it is not for us to create a plan for the future that will hold for all time, all the more surely, what we contemeporaries have to do is the uncompromising critcal evaluation of all that exists, uncompromising in the sense that our criticism fears neither its own results nor the conflict with the powers that be” – Karl Marx

‘Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations. Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.’ – Rosa Luxemburg