Living Marxism

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For the council communist journal, see International Council Correspondence.

Living Marxism was originally launched in 1988 as the journal of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). It was later rebranded as LM Magazine and folded in March 2000 following an adverse ruling in a libel lawsuit brought by the British news corporation, Independent Television News ITN.^[1]^[2]

1 Living Marxism's Aims
2 Views
3 ITN vs. LM
4 George Monbiot and the 'LM Network'
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading

[edit] Living Marxism's Aims

Living Marxism's introduction summarised an adversarial outlook from the start:

We live in an age of caution and conformism, when critical opinions can be outlawed as 'extremism' and anything new can be rubbished as 'too risky'. Ours is an age of low expectations, when we are always being told what is bad for us, and life seems limited on all sides by restrictions, guidelines and regulations.

The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs. These are basic human values that cannot be compromised if we are ever going to create a world fit for people."^[3]^{[verification needed]}

[edit] Views

Views expounded with regularity in LM included 'Fear Culture', for example by questioning the then media coverage of AIDS as a predominantly heterosexual disease in the West. Their critique covered media coverage in Africa and the developing world in the context of Western intervention, under-development and poverty. They also debated environmentalist claims that limiting consumption was a progressive view. The magazine also raised concerns about the Left's rejection of scientific thought and critique, especially of medicine, biotechnology and nuclear physics. LM writers also engaged in a controversial critique of the media portrayal of the civil wars in Rwandan and Bosnia by questionning the use of the term "genocide" to describe the conflicts.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] ITN vs. LM

In the an issue where the journal was re-named LM, editor Mick Hume published an article by German journalist Thomas Deichmann which claimed that British Independent Television News (ITN) had misrepresented its coverage in 1992 of the Bosnian war. The case caused international condemnation of ITN as even one of their most trenchant critics George Monbiot notes:

Some of the world’s leading liberals leapt to the magazine’s defence: Harold Evans, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Fay Weldon and many others condemned ITN’s “deplorable attack on press freedom”. The Institute of Contemporary Arts, bulwark of progressive liberalism, enhanced LM’s heroic profile by co-hosting a three-day conference with the magazine, called “Free Speech Wars”. With the blessing of the liberal world, this puny iconoclastic David will go to war with the clanking orthodoxies of the multinational Goliath.

—George Monbiot^[4]

The article "The picture that fooled the world" argued that ITN's footage, in which an emaciated Bosnian Muslim man stood behing a barbed wire fence, was designed to portray a Nazi-style extermination camp. Whereas in fact:

It was not a prison, and certainly not a 'concentration camp', but a collection centre for refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished.

—^[5]^{[verification needed]}

The publishers of LM, Informinc (LM) ltd., were sued for libel by ITV and in March 2000 the magazine was forced to close. Reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams were each awarded £150,000 over the LM story and the magazine was also ordered to pay £75,000 for libelling ITN in a February 1997 article.^[1]

The result produced very mixed reactions as Alexander Cockburn comments:

...ITN put LM out of business by winning a libel suit against the magazine. But due to the quaint nature of British libel law, the decisive issue in court was NOT the truth about the wire fence. Rather, it was whether or not the ITN reporters had "deliberately" sought to deceive the public. The issue become one of intentions and emotions. The judge, in his summing up, acknowledged that the ITN team reporters were mistaken as to who was enclosed by the old barbed-wire fence, adding, "but does it matter?" The jury decided it did not.

—Alexander Cockburn^[6]

Looking back Hume comments:

Would I do it again? We could have got out of the case by apologising, which seems to be the fashionable thing to do. But I believe in the unfashionable freedom to state what you understand to be true, even if it causes offence. I would do almost anything to avoid ever again setting foot in Court 14. But some things really are more important than a mortgage.

—Mick Hume^[7]

Writers such as Hume continue to campaign for the repeal of the UK's libel laws arguing that they are archaic, unfair and stifle freedom of speech.

[edit] George Monbiot and the 'LM Network'

It has been claimed by environmentalists such as George Monbiot and Peter Melchett that there is an 'LM Network' pursuing an ideologically motivated 'anti-environmentalist' agenda under the guise of promoting Humanism.^[8]^[9] Writers who used to write for Living Marxism reject this as a 'McCarthyite' conspiracy:

From their craven search for hidden agendas to their spider-web linking of various individuals to their censorious and McCarthyite demands: they might be treehuggers by day, but these individuals share all the worst traits of the most hardened conspiracy theorists.

—Brendan O'Neill ^[10]