Arrest The Royal Tyrants!

Last week Paul Mason, on Newsnight, detailed some of those who next week have apparently been invited to attend the Royal Wedding. At a time when Britain is involved in yet another War to bring "Democracy" to other parts of the world, its Royal Family - itself the very antithesis of the principle of Democracy - are busy bringing their fellow Monarch's to Britain.

Whilst Britain is once again waging war against tyranny in far flung parts of the globe, Britain's Royal Family, whose ancestors made their mark by being the most vicious group of bastards amongst a generally vicious, murderous bunch of thievs and ne'er do wells that made up the Feudal Aristocracy, are busy bringing some of the world's worst tyrants to Britain.

Paul highlighted one of them. The King of Swaziland. He will be bringing around 50 of his entourage to stay at the Dorchester where a room will set you back £450 a night.

Meanwhile, back in his country, the average person has to survive on just $2 a day! The Government has just arrested trhe country's entire Trade Union leadership, and broken up a protest of 1,000 people with tear gas and water cannon.

One of the people commenting on Paul's blog wrote, "If, thirty years ago, Gaddafi had married into the Senussis and been proclaimed King of Libya, he might well have an invitation to the Royal Wedding too.".

And, of course, the King of Swazi will not be the only Absoluet Monarch and tyrant invited to or attending the wediing. The King of Bahrain is likely to be there, as is the King of Saudi who has just sent 1,000 troops to Bahrain to put down the democracy protests there.

In fact, many of the tyrants will be from countries that are still in the 21st Century, still essentially pre-capitalist societies, still mired in feudal medievalism. Every socialist should want to see them swept away, even if the only way that could happen was as a result of a modernising Imperialism moving in, and achieving that task. But, of course as pointed out before there is little chance that will happen. Unlike Colonialism, which had an incentive to spread itself around the globe, with feudal Landlords simply extending their landholdings and Rent collecting to foreign parts, and Merchant Capitalists making profits in the normal way by unequal exchange, modern Imperialism based on industrial, productive Capital has no incentive for that.

Colonialism could operate through a version of the feudal state simply transposed on to another country. But, efficient exploitation of a modern industrial working-class requires more than that over the longer-term. That is why modern Imperialism, whilst its prepared to leave the provision of its necessary raw materials to those previuous Mercantilist arrangements, and may station outposts in strategic positions, when it comes to actually investing any serious amounts of productive Capital requries at least some minimum level of development to already have occurred. It requires a certain degree of infrastructure to be in place, even if only in selected zones near to ports etc. It requires something approaching a modern Capitalist State prepared to uphold the Rule of Law. It needs a large enough working-class that is educated and trained to at least a minimum standard. That is why this modern Imperialism has focussed its attention on a relatively small group of economies, and has no interest in modernising large areas of the world. Only the working-class as part of developing a global socialist economy will be able to carry through that task.

So for the foreseeable future there will remain many of these countries suffering this backwardness, even whilst the absolute Monarchs and other tyrants that rule over them live a life of lavish luxury and excess. For now we can show our support for the poor inhabitants of those countries by doing what we can.

When their rulers come to Britain next week, we should have our own snatch squads ready to carry out citizens arrests upon the criminals amongst them. The bosses and the worthies of the British establishment are quick to want to bring Gaddafi to trial at the International Criminal Court - and socialists should want that too - but they seem rather more reticent about bringing some of these other criminals - friends of our Royals - to book, even though some of them are even worse criminals than Gaddafi. Even they will not implement the Rule of Law in bringing them to book, we should.

Of course, we shouldn't expect the ICC to be impartial either. Like all other parts of the international Capitalist State order, its there to serve the interests of the bosses. But, for now we cannot bring these tyrnats before a Workers Court for trial, and even bringing these tyrants before a bouregois court would send a strong message to the people they oppress. We could send them a furher reminder of how to deal with those tyrants by reminding them of how we did it in the past.

What better time than on the day of the wedding than to remember Guy Ffawkes, who is remembered for trying to blow up Parliament, but was trying to blow up the King. Or they could remember the contribution made by Oliver Cromwell in removing a King's Head, or the French bourgeois revolutinaries, who consistent with Capitalist methods, industrialised the process via the Guillotine.