To Each According To Their Contribution Of Guitar Parts

I was planning to write a post about the new Guns ‘n’ Roses album, the band holding a place in my heart roughly equivalent to other things I heard for the first time in the playground in the mid-80s. You know, like the Justified Ancient of Mu-Mu. Or Laura Brannigan. Or one of about eight million novelty records.

I was pondering if the title, Chinese Democracy, meant that Axl Rose was a revionist or an anti-revisionist, as I’d failed to determine which was which. So I thought I’d look it up on wikipedia.

As is so often the case, I got caught up reading page after page on the subject on communism of which there is a surprisingly large amount on wikipedia.

Now I know there is a popular image of left-wing activists forming party after party and spending more time in-fighting than organising a revolution, but I never realised how far it went.

For example in this country, not generally a county known for revolutionary socialism, in 1920 there was:

• The British Socialist Party. Wiki warns us that they are not to be confused with the Socialist Party of Great Britain or the Socialist Party (England and Wales).
• The Communist Unity Group. They were part of the Socialist Labour Party.
• The South Wales Socialist Society. Formerly known as the Rhondda Socialist Society. They often sided with the Workers Socialist Federation.

A year later there were some more:

• Communist Party (British Section of the Third International). They featured, amongst others: the Gorton Socialist Society, the Manchester Soviet, Stepney Communist League and the Labour Abstentionist Party.
• The Communist Labour Party. From Scotland.

I should mention at this point that Lenin hasn’t even died yet. Later on of course we get social-fascists, “cunning enemies… they are called Trotskyists” and the Committee to Defeat Revisionism.

The Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) makes an appearance in 1968, with wiki helpfully reminding us not to confuse it with the Communist Party of Britain, the Revolutionary Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) or with the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist).

My head now hurts.

Do you get the feeling every possible permutation of “Britain”, “Great Britain”, “Socialist”, “Communist”, “Marxist-Leninist” and “Revolutionary” must have been at some point an actual communist party?

One can only imagine what it must have been like in France or Italy where they actually had quite a lot of communists.

Of course, no discussion of such things is complete without the obligatory link: