The Famous Five and the overthrow of capitalism.

I seldom give advice to young people. What do I know? It was a different matter when I was working on sail training ships and was responsible for the safety and well being of thirty odd teenagers. My stock advice and the themes that I would come back to time and again were "look after each other" and  "have an adventure". In that kind of situation you tend to develop a series of set pieces that you can trot out to each successive group that you deal with. One of my openers was, "I am sometimes asked what my definition of a good seaman is and I have no hesitation about this. It's got nothing to do with wire splicing or astro-navigation. A good seaman is someone who looks after their shipmates."  Very rarely did the kids fail to respond. Kropotkin got some of it wrong, but on the subject of mutual aid he was right on the money. We have an innate tendency to look after each other and this tendency is at the very heart of socialism.

So far so obvious, but what has having an adventure got to do with anything? Well to my mind revolutionary politics is, or should be, an adventure above all else. Not in the sense of living out Che fantasies but of living the adventure of breaking free from the constraints that capitalism places on us; and changing life.  The revolution of everyday life, as Vaneigem put it.

Look after each other and have an adventure. I'm still trying to live up to my own rhetoric.