No sex please comrades, we’re British (original) (raw)

When Karl Marx dreamt of the socialist revolution, he failed to anticipate that it could be derailed by the political etiquette of the bedroom.

Two of Britain’s leading Marxist writers have resigned from the revolutionary group that they helped to create following a bitter ideological dispute over the acceptability of sexual “race play”.

China Miéville, one of Britain’s best known science-fiction authors, quit the International Socialist Network (ISN) along with Richard Seymour, a political writer and columnist for The Guardian newspaper, who was accused of defending the right to be racist in bed.

The controversy, which involves a bewildering array of acronyms, both for Britain’s disparate radical groups and for sexual practices, has bemused even veteran activists familiar with the internecine warfare of the left.

The ISN was founded last year by former members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), who resigned after claims that it had covered up allegations that its leader, named only as Comrade Delta, had raped a member.

The new group aimed to create an “independent revolutionary organisation” but its own future has been thrown into doubt after comments by a leading member who is also a professional bondage mistress. Margaret Corvid, an activist, writer and exponent of BDSM (bondage, domination and sadomasochism), was attacked by members of the group after praising a photograph of Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea Football Club owner, sitting on a chair designed to resemble a half-naked black woman.

Corvid was denounced by angry comrades who saw the chair as an extension of “race play”, which typically sees a white “master” dominate a black “slave” in the bedroom.

Several left-wing commentators argued that the practice was only acceptable “when it is people of colour dominating and subverting whiteness” while others insisted the entire concept was discriminatory.

Corvid’s insistence that “race play is not a fetish interest of mine, but human furniture and other humiliation and objectification is” failed to stem the growing controversy.

Seymour, 37, a PhD student at the London School of Economics, gallantly came to Ms Corvid’s defence, only to fuel the flames.

In one comment he wrote: “I think ‘race play’ is just inter-racial couples using real painful experiences and processing them in a particular erotic context, without straightforwardly reproducing them or seeking to perpetuate them. I don’t think — or am not yet convinced — that they are being racist in so doing.”

The ISN’s ruling steering committee, which included Corvid, responded by publishing a statement addressed to “Dear comrades”, denouncing those who supported “race play”, describing it as “deeply problematic with regards to racial and gender politics”.

The statement led to the resignation of Miéville, Seymour, and Corvid, along with five other comrades. In their resignation letter they complained that Corvid had been “browbeaten, patronised, marginalised and moralised against” and claimed that they had been accused of being “politically dishonest, and set out to split or destroy the network”. Miéville, who is best known for his award-winning novel The City & the City and describes his writing as “new weird”, has not obviously personally suffered under the boot of capitalism. He was a pupil at Oakham, a public school, before going to the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Harvard. In the 2001 general election he stood for the Socialist Alliance , a grouping of far-left and Trotskyist organisations, and he now teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

Seymour was involved in an argument with the Times columnist Oliver Kamm over alleged inaccuracies in Seymour’s best-known book, The Liberal Defence of Murder. His latest book, Against Austerity, criticises the left for its failure to prevent the government’s austerity measures.

The “splitters” remain involved in left-wing groups, including Left Unity, which was founded last year by Miéville, the film-maker Ken Loach, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen and the actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, who died in January.

Miéville, Seymour and the ISN could not be contacted for comment.