About Red Mole
Red Mole analyses contemporary left crises through Fourth Internationalist and ecosocialist perspectives. I’m a member of Anti-Capitalist Resistance and a supporter of the Fourth International. I write independently: no committees, no organisational filters, which means I follow arguments where they lead, even when that contradicts official positions.
What This Means in Practice
Fourth International Analysis: I use FI analytical frameworks because they illuminate contemporary organisational crises better than competing left traditions. When FI analysis works, I say so. When FI organisations fail to live up to their own theory, I say that too.
Ecosocialist Politics: The ecological and class crises cannot be addressed separately. Red Mole draws on the ecosocialist tradition, the work of Michael Löwy, Joel Kovel, and the Ecosocialist International Network, to connect the climate movement and the labour movement as components of a single political project rather than occasional allies.
Strategic Archaeology: I connect historical lessons to current left challenges, showing how past struggles illuminate today’s strategic questions. The point is not nostalgia; it is learning what works and why some things keep failing.
Contemporary Crisis Analysis: I provide timely strategic analysis of breaking developments in left organisations: splits, mergers, strategic failures, and what they reveal about revolutionary strategy today. Named protagonists, live organisational stakes, and the specific venues where things happen matter more to me than abstract theoretical frameworks without contemporary hooks. Current sustained coverage includes the Green Party of England and Wales: specifically, whether the ecosocialist left inside it can prevent the kind of electoralist sell-out that destroyed Podemos and Syriza, and what structural conditions would make a different outcome possible.
Archive Recovery: I translate and republish neglected texts from the Fourth International tradition, often making them available in English for the first time. The Red Mole Guides series extends this work into accessible analytical form.
Rigorous Characterisation: When I analyse another organisation’s position or theory, I verify against primary sources. I quote original materials rather than relying on secondary accounts. The test: would the organisation or theorist being described recognise themselves in the characterisation?
How I Work
I use AI tools (NotebookLM, Perplexity Pro, and large language models) to accelerate research, translation, and draft generation. Analysis, argument, and final editorial judgment are entirely mine. Every piece is verified against primary sources before publication. I am accountable for what I write.
Why Red Mole (new series)?
Red Mole was a Fourth Internationalist publication in Britain during the early 1970s. I use the name to signal my theoretical home, not to claim to speak for the FI or any of its sections. This Red Mole is a new series - one activist thinking independently within a tradition, from inside the movements rather than above them.
Why This Matters
The left keeps making the same organisational mistakes. Bureaucratic substitutionism, campist accommodation, sectarian abstention, the subordination of movements to electoral machines: these are not random failures. They have structural causes that the Fourth International tradition, at its best, has analysed more rigorously than most. Red Mole applies that analysis to live crises: the Green Party’s strategic choices, the British trade union movement’s relationship to a Labour government that is already disappointing it, the dispersed broad vanguard looking for organisational form after the collapse of Your Party.
My readers are international left activists trying to build effective revolutionary organisations. They want to understand contemporary left crises through frameworks that actually illuminate them. They value organisational intelligence that helps them avoid strategic mistakes. They deserve analysis that is rigorous, honest about its commitments, and willing to follow arguments where they lead.
That is what Red Mole does.
Publishing Schedule
Monday: Contemporary organisational crisis analysis
Wednesday: Historical analysis applied to current strategy
Friday: Archive recovery, translations, and strategic intelligence briefings
Use of AI
Red Mole uses artificial intelligence tools throughout its editorial process. This includes transcription and translation software, podcast production tools, and large language models for research assistance and first-draft generation.
No article is published without substantial human editorial work. AI-generated drafts are starting points, not finished products: they require rewriting, fact-checking against primary sources, and the application of political judgment that no model can provide. The distinctive voice and analytical perspective of Red Mole emerges from this human editorial process, not from algorithmic output.
This transparency matters. Much of what circulates on the contemporary left is AI-generated content presented as wholly human-authored. We consider that dishonest. Our approach is different: we acknowledge AI as a tool that extends editorial capacity while insisting that revolutionary analysis requires human intelligence, historical knowledge, and political commitment.
The question for socialists is not whether AI exists but who controls its deployment and to what ends. We use these tools to make ecosocialist analysis more accessible, not to replace the human labour of thinking through problems.
