The Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804, triggered by the Slave Rebellion of 1791, created the first free Black Republic.

The revolution was triggered by the French Revolution itself, whom the Haitian slaves were freeing themselves. It would have, no doubt, been encouraged by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. Even though this great document didn't explicitly denounce slavery, the term universal rights inspire all of us.

Haiti was declared a free republic in 1804.

In 1814 the French revolution faltered with the loss of the Battle of Waterloo, the fall of the emperor Napoléon and the restablishment of monarchy. The Bourbon Restoration lasted until 1830. The ascension of the ultra-royalist Charles X in 1824, eventually led to the July Revolution.

In 1825 the French Government under Charles X forced the Haitians to pay reparations to French slaveholders of 150 million francs, which crippled the Haitian economy. They were still paying this debt up till 1947.

The Haitian Government launched a lawsuit in 2004 to recoup the money but abandoned the lawsuit when the French Government illegally called for their overthrow.

Now in an open letter, linked below, leading academics and authors, including Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein, are calling for France to repay this illegal debt worth €17 billion ($22 billion) to the Haitian people so that they can rebuild their earthquake devastated nation.

http://ijdh.org/archives/14275

As welcome as my return to relative "normality" may be, after a disturbing mental episode yet to be properly diagnosed, the revolution marches on, because a dissident's work is never complete.

I apologise to my friends who quite understandably hoped that my return to "normality", partly due to their help for which I am eternally grateful, would signal the end of the revolution. It doesn't, it won't and it can't!

Oh yes, as I was confessing to my therapist yesterday in my last ever psychotherapy session, that to raise my head above the parapet is to put my health at risk! Dissent when successful, naturally attracts the wrath of very powerful people, especially as I am speaking from such a lowly position in the class structure, thus upsetting their subconscious demands for class deference.

But it is that very demand for class deference and their expectation for us to live as they do but not with their wealth and wellbeing, that leaves me no choice but to speak out!

There is no true voice of the underclass that I am aware of. There is no genuine dialog with us in the mainstream media. Are we considered so unworthy of contribution towards the "big society"? Surely, a genuinely functional society would include all voices, even revolutionary voices, so that society could develop on the merit of evidence and argument and not on economic status.

But why me? Why am I so special to think myself a dissident that needs to be heard? I don't! It is simply a question of necessity. There is necessity that the arguments that I am making are heard and published.

Whether the arguments that I make are similar to many others or that I am making a lone case doesn't negate the necessity. If many are making similar arguments then it reinforces the fact that a class bias exists in the media against the intelligent voices of the underclass. We therefore have to try even harder to be heard.

Alternatively, I may be a rare or lone voice. That is possible when education, skills and mobility are properly denied us. I therefore have a great burden of responsibility to speak for my class, since I am compelled to speak for those who can not do so with sufficient eloquence.

The banks are deleveraging to avoid risk of default. So banks are lending less. But businesses are also deleveraging anyway. So there is far less investment in the private sector.

European Governments are deleveraging from their public debt to stay credit worthy. So there are public sector job cuts and less money from the public sector going into the private sector. Most individuals with sense are battening down the hatches and not spending. So consumer spending is down. Yet energy resources are fast diminishing, so the risk of inflation is still high.

The battle is on to weaken sovereign currency to increase exported goods as the only way to grow the economy. So savings are diminished in devalued currencies and banks capital is devalued. And as unemployment rises, the economy contracts further. So the downward spiral continues.

And all the while the rich sit on their land and gold.

Do you really think the homeless and hungry will accept their lot?

The underclass exists as a distinct class, a distinct economic class.

The right-wing recognise the underclass but incorrectly equates economic class with cultural class. Therefore they consider wealthy people as the most cultured, the underclass the least. This is foolish! The intellectualism of The Guérilla Think Tank contradicts this belief. The underclass is an economic class but has no homogeneous culture. We are very different culturally in the underclass but we all share poverty.

By focusing on a manufactured perception of a cultural underclass, the entire economic underclass is attacked. When the media present the underclass as watching Jeremy Kyle, worshiping Raoul Moat and being violent hoodies, it is a form of class hatred. Yes some of the underclass are those people. But the economic underclass, a class that is ever more disenfranchised, are also dedicated mothers raising children single-handedly, carers of their elderly parents, talented artisans and brilliant students.

The left dreams, ever nostalgic of a past (perhaps 1950's) working class, but fail to realise the romance was never real. The trade unions protect the skilled working while the unskilled struggle on. By denying the existence of the underclass and romancing the working, the left denies opportunity for the underclass to assert itself. To consider people of the underclass as a dysfunctional element of the working-class is incorrect. People of the underclass have to live with a completely different philosophy. It disenfranchises the good that exists within us. Rather than dysfunction, the underclass function well given the environment for which we live.

Those on the left need to study history. All disempowered groups must raise consciousness to struggle and assert themselves within the wider society, whether it is feminism, gay-rights, black power or class consciousness old and new.

A successful revolution is a revolution that reflects and adapts. Similar to the toxic derivatives that sent the financial system crashing in 2007, I now accept my mind is currently a combination of AAA intellectual thoughts mixed with toxic psychotic thoughts. It is therefore important to reflect and then extract and extinguish the toxic thoughts from my head.

Our beliefs and my intentions will seem extreme to the majority. This is due to delusion. Our political beliefs will seem extreme, since there is mass delusion that we can continue to live in luxury, despite the coming energy crisis, the depletion of metals, the destruction of the environment, the food-chain and climate change.

Continued economic growth is impossible, therefore capitalism, or at least capitalism as we know it, is impossible. This isn't just the belief of one psychotic mind but the product of analysis of intellectual thought, from Marxists Slavoj Žižek and Noam Chomsky, to greens Johnathon Porritt and Tim Jackson and even to moral right-wing philosophers. By understanding traditional economists such as Keynes, Joseph Stitglitz, Amartyr Sen, Paul Krugman and the illusion of growth such as that described by Richard Douthwaite. By understanding the legacy of ideology, passing through the centuries as described by John Gray. Capitalism is dying! This isn't our delusion but your delusion to belief it is eternal and can survive.

In a world without growth and with depletion there are only two possible futures: The first is a future of continued competition and self-interest. This can only result in few masters and many slaves, with billions of the world's population starving and being slain by armies in an attempt to reach lands with food. This is a future without heart, in which the lucky few bury themselves in deep denial of their human ugliness. This is a future that will turn to cult religion to justify the genocidal murder and starvation of continents.

The alternative is a future of sharing and co-operation. This is a future of frugality and peace. This future requires an awakening of the soul and requires guides to flower the awakening. This is a future where we learn to reject the addiction of materialism and status. A future where kindness and honesty are paramount. This future is only possible with revolutionary change.

This revolutionary change can only happen when the voices of the underclass are heard. There has never been a civil rights movement by proxy. The liberal clique of the middle-class can never represent the underclass. As intellectual members of the underclass we have a legitimacy to speak.

On the other hand, my intention to martyr myself by starvation is the product of my own delusion, due to a psychotic episode. A psychotic episode triggered by the mass hatred of the vulnerable and poor. But I recognise that despite the justifiable sense of pain, my martyrdom would cause greatest pain amongst my friends and would be ineffective compared to carrying on the struggle by living. Hatred causes a sense of disempowerment and a narcissistic reaction is perhaps an understandable reaction to re-engage a sense of worth, however dysfunctional. But I acknowledge it is the wrong path to take.

From here on in, so long as we are free to struggle, we will choose life. We will only ever consider starvation, if and when the establishment uses the threat of starvation as a means to enslave us, in which case to starve will be a form of freedom.

Émile Durkheim used the term anomie in his book Suicide (1897) to describe the breakdown of social values. He describes in The Divisions of Labour in Society (1893) that with sufficient contact, anomie can not occur because the varying groups (classes) recognise a feeling of mutual dependence.

When the differences between rich and poor are so great, the disconnection leads to anomie. The Underclass rather than being deviant, simply have adjusted to a new set of values, thus ending anomie. This is why the underclass, rather than being a disenfranchised working-class are in fact a class of their own.

For those in the working class with secure skilled jobs it makes sense to associate and take pride in one's work. But on the creation of a society of individual greed, where worker is expected to compete against worker for morsels, and where work is in short supply or is non-existent, it makes sense for people to dis-identify from work and identify with something else.

If an unemployed man continues to strongly believe in hard work and to provide for oneself, while simultaneously finding that all efforts to find work are futile, then that man is very likely to suffer mental distress and will possibly become suicidal if a change leads to a loss of home or relationship. If an unemployed man can take or leave work, dependent on the availability of work, they are better adapted to the environment of an insecure, competitive jobs market.

Politicians will never bully the underclass into adopting values that will make us ill. If they wish people to value work they need to provide secure jobs that are valuable.

For too long, a section of the British public has become all too reliant on hand-outs of the top jobs in politics and finance, regardless of merit and are costing the economy as much as £1.5 trillion.

The problem isn't just a recent one but has been continuing for generations. Gideon Osborne is an 18th generation privilege dependent. Having made their family wealth through plunder, murder and enslavement, despite offering nothing positive to society, this family has continued to sponge off others by taking land-rent and forcing the poor to work as cheap labour or starve. Today Gideon Osborne has all the anti-social behavioural characteristics of his ancestors. He has conned his way into his top job from free hand-outs of ministerial posts by the anti-meritocratic brigade.

Until meritocracy is established with social-mobility, anti-social behaviour, such as slashing necessary housing benefit will be inflicted on honest decent people, whose only crime is to be victims of poor health (common in the underclass) or of the global recession.

The Guérilla Think Tank - defending the underclass by sticking the red-hot poker of truth up the ignorant arse of the middle and upper classes.

IDS is not our enemy. We fundamentally disagree with his ideas but recognise, given his foolish belief in capitalism, that the work he has done at the CSJ is well researched. He has made an effort to try to understand the underclass. The CSJ report Dynamic Benefits offers practical (rather than phony moral) solutions such as reducing marginal tax rates.

IDS is clearly passionate about his work and for that alone requires some admiration but unfortunately his policies will fail. If they had any chance of succeeding it would have been at a time of capitalist economic boom. Ian probably knows this but is putting on a brave face. If he is really honest he will recognise his policies are doomed to fail at this time.

Firstly, they will fail because it doesn't matter how much you do to encourage people to want work, the work simply isn't there and unemployment is about to rise due to the cuts in the public sector. Six million into 500,000 job vacancies don't go! The underclass do not have capital to invest in themselves. They do not even have capital to borrow against. Capital intervention is the only solution. Even if a man could afford a ladder and a bucket he won't make money if nobody can afford to pay him for washing windows.

Secondly, many in the underclass do not have basic reading and writing skills. These people need ongoing adult education. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Bullying them to learn doesn't work because learning requires genuine desire to learn. They will turn up at a college and be as disruptive as they were as kids unless there is a sense that learning to read and write will genuinely transform their lives. This takes huge time and resource. The private sector can't possibly profit from this without huge public sector funding behind it, which isn't going to happen.

Thirdly, all politicians are blind to the genuine mental health epidemic sweeping the UK and USA. Faith in CBT and SSRI's is just that, faith. What people really need is meaningful lives. The Work is Good for You brigade fail to understand they wish to bully people into alienating and exhausting work that they themselves would never dream of doing. The result will be a dramatic increase in suicides and further drink abuse, drug abuse and violence. It will push people with mental distress to hide their problems to gain employment, reducing overall productivity.

We recognise IDS means well. We recognise Ian believes in a "measured" conditionality to benefits. But if conditionality is the root to reducing unemployment, why did employment levels decrease under George W Bush's presidency in the USA? Conditionality is just another word for bullying. Bullying by people in the top 1% of earners who would never dream of doing the work they expect us to do.

Clearly the more of us contributing positively to society the better. But people need to feel they belong to a positive society before they will contribute to it. Work shouldn't just be about making money and providing for oneself. The product of the work should offer a sense of integration, the reward something that materially benefits the community around us. Ian, if you are worried by worklessness you should ask yourself:

What did we do wrong to make society so negative?
How can we change to make society positive?

Our enemy's enemy is not our friend. As much as we are repulsed by the Israeli regime's murderous hatred of the Palestinians, that does not legitimize the Iranian regime and we are saddened by those on the left who think it does.

That is not to say Ahmadinejad stole the election, there is evidence to suggest that the result is by and large accurate. However, a democratic elected government can still be a despotic regime. Nor is it to support the opponent Mousavi, who doesn't truly represent the movement.

Behind the Iranian Awakening is a revolution of mind and soul. It is a revolution that says let us be. To be able to let one's hair flow freely, to hold hands in the street or to love someone of your own sex.

Not all revolutions are economic revolutions they can be about the way we wish to live. The Iranian Awakening is the flowering of a global awakening. Neda you will never be forgotten!

There is always work that needs doing. We have food to grow, houses to build, students to educate, healing the sick. Necessary work is good work.

Hard work is blind to morality. It may be good or it may be ill work. Working hard for money doesn't inherently make someone better than someone who doesn't work for money. When hard work is damaging to society then it were far better the work hadn't been done at all. Be honest, wouldn't it have been better had Tony Blair been a lazy benefit claimant all his life than an ideological warmonger for profit?

There are people in the Underclass who are good people doing good work. Yes they receive state benefits but they are caring for others, doing necessary work. Surely each single mother should be judged on the wellbeing of her children rather than her taking of public money? Is money really that important to you all? Shame on you!

Reflection is vital for people to take the correct path before working. Ask yourself, will this work be for the greater good?

The obsession of hard work elevated as a virtue is both egalitarian and anti-intellectual. It is egalitarian because the belief is (incorrectly) all people are equally capable of hard work and therefore we can all equally prosper. This is a form of egalitarianism that is false and designed to comfort the wealthy and the middle-classes. This allows them to think they are better off due to meritocracy rather than the truth, their privilege and the enslavement of the poor.

The obsession with hard work is anti-intellectualism as it believes falsely that toil leads to success and riches. We are not all peasants, knowing the land and working the land! Most people need to make important decisions. Decision making requires the ability to see beyond one's own domain. It requires wisdom. To reflect and ask what prejudices am I bringing to this decision? To empathise and ask how will this effect others?

Most of our top decision makers: politicians, corporate executives and financiers lack wisdom. Oh they may be educated and they may be intelligent but they can't see beyond their own life experiences. This is because they have attained their positions due to a combination of privilege and hard work. But by not reflecting on their prejudices and by not empathising with others, the decisions that they make are incorrect, the outcomes are not what they expect and huge amounts of time, resource and money are wasted.

Only when reflection and empathy are equal virtues alongside good work will the world genuinely prosper, not with money but with happiness!

Edna and the kids and my pa's bakery will still be here when I return. I am off to fight the Hun, with a whimsical whistle and a cheery smile.

He was next to me, you ken? Next to me! Head blown off. The noise! When will the shelling ever end? The earth is over me now, thank heavens. But I can hear voices and digging and light.

When will the shelling ever end? But you are home now, there is no shelling. But the noise! Why don't you hear me? Why don't you hear me? I am so angry!

Who is my enemy really?

Why does pa have to go? But Ronnie he is ill, these men are taking him to help him. Then why are they hurting him?

A mother alone can't support three boys. Here's the train ticket. Off to military school for you my lucky boy. But ma, I don't want to go! A mother's love won't feed you, they will teach you discipline.

I am not suffering the fate of my pa. The navy is better. The Captain goes down with the ship!

The engine room is hit! The blinding light. Get out! Get out! Ignore the screams. I can climb this rope, I can, I can.

Why can't I stop the flashbacks? Relax, you're safe, take a walk with the nurse, or take a bus into Algiers? But I can't take no more. Don't worry we will instruct your superiors to send you home.

Who the hell do those yank doctors think they are! Young men don't grow on trees! It is off to Sicily for you, we need LST operators. Do you think the war will fight itself?

The shells are getting closer. God help us. The shells are getting closer. Just get through these days.

It is off afar with you! But why, Europe is won? The yanks need us against the Japs. My god what have they done here? There is nothing, just nothing? The peoples' eyes, the horror in their eyes.

Who is my enemy really?

I am home but it isn't the same. Don't you understand me? Don't you understand me?

Why does daddy shout at the telly? And why does daddy shout in his sleep? Dear Robbie, because he is a miserable so and so. But I can't sleep. I am frightened and I don't understand.

It is off to school with you! But sir? Robert, stop being a wimp and DO WHAT YOU ARE TOLD! BUT SIR, WHY DOES EVERYBODY HAVE TO SHOUT?

Stop whingeing and whining there is nothing wrong with you. Take these pills and get a job!

Who is my enemy really?

Dear friends do not despise me for what I am about to do.

I am fearless in the face of death, but disempowerment to fools gives me the willies. This rotten borough of a parliament is intolerable for us at the bottom. I am now left with no choice but to revolt.

Middle class friends, I enjoy your pleasant company but you are blind to our depth of pain. Your sorrow for the poor is kind but you do not weep.

I thank the Department of Work and Pensions for accepting my instruction to stop my benefits. I will now live and die as a peaceful revolutionary.

Life or death? My starvation and death will be the greater of the two choices. Yes you will ignore me. You will try hard to ignore me but your subconscious will trigger heartache in my absence. This will make you angry and you will blame me. You will hate me as I prick your conscience, a conscience that you so skilfully bury with self-satisfactory feelings of compassion for the disadvantaged, while engaging in an economic system that forces the poor of the world to slave or starve.

Upon my death and many months after, when the second financial crash occurs, which it will, almost certainly, and when the politicians bail out the banks again, which they must for the sake of capitalism, feelings of injustice will surge, uprisings, insecurity and violent struggle. For even if the economy were to survive the foolishness of short-sharp austerity, capitalism can not survive diminishing supplies of energy and raw materials.

You will miss me and you will want to embrace me but you won't be able to. You will search for memories and you will find that I live on through my words. My peaceful and loving words.

Please, wake up from your slumber and see there is no future for this planet without radical change, change far greater than the fools on the hill can imagine.

Peaceful revolution is the only way! Salut!

People of the underclass make exemplary atheist existentialists.
People of other classes could learn from our fine example!

Extracts from Existentialism is a Humanism by John-Paul Sartre, 1946

The Wealth of Nations, Book I: Chapter VIII On the Wages of Labour,
by Adam Smith, published 1776

As soon as your born they make you feel small,
By giving you no time instead of it all,
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all,
An underclass hero is something to be,

They hurt you at home and they hit you at school,
They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool,
Till you're so fucking crazy you can't follow their rules,
An underclass hero is something to be,

When they've tortured and scared you for twenty odd years,
Then they expect you to [wish for an aspired] career,
When you can't really function you're so full of fear,
An underclass hero is something to be,

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,
And you think you're so clever and classless and free,
But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see,
An underclass hero is something to be,

There's room at the top they are telling you still,
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill,
If you want to be like the folks on the hill,
An underclass hero is something to be,

If you want to be a hero well just follow me.

An extract from I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet
by non-leader Subcomandante Marcos

Down with the Ascendancy! Up with the Underclass!

On the 22nd day of June 2010, the evil Ascendancy, lead by Gideon George Oliver Osborne, son of the 17th baronet and heir of Ballentaylor, pronounced his hatred for the common people and seized control of the people's common assets.

Much suffering and despair has occurred in the following week. Our forces are dispersed but are regrouping.

The Guerilla Think Tank hereby announces itself to the world and openly declares class war on the rich! As members of and on behalf of the underclass, we vow to protect the poor, the dispossessed and the vulnerable.

But fear not my friends, this isn't a violent war, of hate and fear, to seize back control of the economic means of production. This isn't an insurrection to redistribute the wealth. We'll leave that to others.

This is a peaceful struggle to finally raise the consciousness of the people of the underclass. Too long have we been abused of our rights and our dignity by the working majority. Too long have we been made to feel small, simply for being unemployed or sick. Friends, cast away the projected shadow, the cloak of hatred that we are forced to parade ourselves in by the greedy and the stupid.

WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE!
WE ARE CARING PEOPLE!
WE ARE FREE PEOPLE!

We struggle to live, ever in fear of hatred from the rich, beaten and abused and forced to watch endless television. Our lives rendered meaningless and alienated and stripped of any chance to learn.

We know we are good people and it is time to assert ourselves and say so - WE ARE GOOD PEOPLE! UP WITH THE UNDERCLASS!

No my friends, this is not the class war of the past but of a new battle for new ground. This is a battle for the means of moral judgement.

We have virtues too but our virtues are so different to theirs they think us depraved. Too long have we been fated to lose the sanctity of our living moments of time, with the religious foolishness and imprisonment of the virtue of Lutherian toil, usurped by the rich and mutated into the virtue of monied hard work. They have money, so they must of worked harder?

Do you think we are stupid? No! We laugh at your virtues and present our own better virtues, rational virtues, happy and healthy virtues, that of empathy, reflection and good deed.

They say our virtues don't pay the bills. Simple, don't send us bills!
They say our virtues don't pay the rent. Simple, don't charge rent!

Yes work needs to be done, good work not hard work. Armed with our virtues we can revolt. The rich will no doubt, in fear and in need of our slavery, beat and kill many of us, but we will struggle and we will win because
WE ARE ON THE SIDE OF GOOD!

Glory to the struggle!
Glory to empathy!
Glory to reflection!
Glory to good deed!