In 1979 I was> a Trotskyist living on lentils in a squat. Well, near enough. That wasn't a big year for defections, real or pretended. And if there were any ex-Trots among the British libertarians or young conservatives I think I might have spotted them. The Brit pro-war left are all journailsts, professors or blogging stock-brokers, not crafty political activists.

The US ex-Shachtmanite neocons started out as Cold Warriors of the Left, a very easy move from Shachtmanism in my opinion. The whole of international Social Democracy were Cold Warriors of the Left.

The no-longer-Living-Marxism lot are a bit hard to figure out. My current theory is that they are still Marxists but are trying to save capitalism for the revolution rather than fuck it up. Post-1989 people are wimps. They are neither capable of sustaining a dynamic economy (if they're capitalists) or taking it over (if they're proles). Instead they cower before imaginary terrors, whether WMD in Iraq or holes in the sky. Hence there is no class struggle and no progress until the Western bourgeoisie gets its act together, whereupon normal service will be resumed. Or not, in which case we're all fucked anyway and Green barbarians will caper on our ruins.

In case you're wondering, yes that was the story in my Fall Revo books.