Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Rumour has it WP's 'international' has expelled a few dozen people ... part/all of an international faction against their sectarian and ultra left positions ... anyone know the truth?
Workers Power Expulsions
- Thread starter Fisher_Gate
- Start date
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Just found something on their website ...
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,1098,0,0,1,0
it's claimed they were 'splitters and wreckers'...
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,1098,0,0,1,0
it's claimed they were 'splitters and wreckers'...
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
Fisher_Gate said:
What ultra-left positions? Workers Power are a rightist tendency.
Looks like they have purged their remaining disgruntled founding cadre and the Australian section which seems to consist of 4 members. All Kiwis i would guess.
All rather sad in its way really.
Divisive Cotton
Now I just have my toy soldiers
At a meeting of the Minority Faction at the Workers Power (Britain) pre-congress aggregate on the 10th June, they decided to split from the organisation, make preparations for a new organisation...
I wonder what the new organisation will be called?
Provisional League for a Fifth International?
Democratic Workers' Power?
Workers for a Powerful Democracy?
I wonder what the new organisation will be called?
Provisional League for a Fifth International?
Democratic Workers' Power?
Workers for a Powerful Democracy?
urbanrevolt
New Member
As one of the expelled comrades I can confirm there has indeed been a split in Workers Power. A statement will be sent out later tonight from our side outlining in succinct form the political differences: over characterisation of the period (disagreemnet about it being 'pre-revolutionary') and tasks flowing from it (such as the the application of the new workers party tactic).
In the meantime, I can say the statement from the Workers Power website contains a number of inaccuracies. We- the expelled faction- are confident in our political outward and looking forward.
In the meantime, I can say the statement from the Workers Power website contains a number of inaccuracies. We- the expelled faction- are confident in our political outward and looking forward.
The period we are living in is pre-revolutionary.
In a sense.
In a kind of pre-pre-revolutionary kind of round the corner if the corner is quite a way off straining to see if it is in view kind of way.
As for the application of the new workers party tactic - Is that light at the end of the tunnel or is it an oncoming privatised train?
Sorry, is it really the case that the official WP line is that we are in a pre-revolutionary situation? Is that why they demand the new workers party be set up on explicitely revolutionary basis - because they believe the workers are fast attaining a revolutionary consciousness? I ask cos I've not seen any WP members for well over a year and then it was briefly to pick up a leaflet calling for a ballot in the Civil Service for an all out indefinate strike. I asked the leafletter if he had won the position in his union branch but the position hadn't been put because he didn't have a seconder. The time before that would have been back in the 1980s when WP were 90 members - entrists in the LP.
In a sense.
In a kind of pre-pre-revolutionary kind of round the corner if the corner is quite a way off straining to see if it is in view kind of way.
As for the application of the new workers party tactic - Is that light at the end of the tunnel or is it an oncoming privatised train?
Sorry, is it really the case that the official WP line is that we are in a pre-revolutionary situation? Is that why they demand the new workers party be set up on explicitely revolutionary basis - because they believe the workers are fast attaining a revolutionary consciousness? I ask cos I've not seen any WP members for well over a year and then it was briefly to pick up a leaflet calling for a ballot in the Civil Service for an all out indefinate strike. I asked the leafletter if he had won the position in his union branch but the position hadn't been put because he didn't have a seconder. The time before that would have been back in the 1980s when WP were 90 members - entrists in the LP.
JHE
.
Yes, but it's a prolonged pre-revolutionary period.Groucho said:
See, for example: http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=47,1098,0,0,1,0
We have entered into a prolonged pre-revolutionary period, that is, one with real potential for the development of revolutionary situations. This will be no automatic or spontaneous process. It will require overcoming the present crisis of leadership. But it is a period in which the international working class needs to prepare for the final overthrow of the system on a global scale. It can do so only by rallying the forces necessary to lead the masses within a new world party with sections in every country – a new, Fifth International.
In other words, they've just re-heated the Trottery of the Transitional Programme.
urbanrevolt
New Member
They say we're in a pre-revolutionary period- and give various unclear and sometimes contradictory answers to what this actually means. But they use this as an excuse for the burning issues of the hour being to build a new international and workers' party.
Unfortunately got to go out now to collect partner from work but will post more tomorrow.
Unfortunately got to go out now to collect partner from work but will post more tomorrow.
urbanrevolt
New Member
JHE has succintly quoted one of their vague and evasive formulations. Really gotta go now.
mattkidd12 said:
Then, you're somewhat naive. Guessing that these toy town trots would remove last night's discussion on those boards of the split, I have saved them for posterity. They are only intersting for illustrating the venom of the two rival gangs towards each, demonstrating a nastiness which only shows the apolitical manner in which the far left specialises in when they fall out.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
JHE said:
Whatever the current situation, the 1938 Transitional Programme needs to be put in context. There had been a real pre-revolutionary crisis in France, in Germany the stalinists had caved in to the fascists, while the troskyist forces did have a significant following, not least in the Soviet Union itself. As a guide to the necessary response to the threat of world war at the time, it was highly appropriate. That events after the war didn't pan out the way it predicted should not obscure its importance (in fact the Chinese Revolution - which was a genuine revolution albeit through the prism of a seriously flawed leadership - was not an insignificant issue).
neprimerimye
Well-Known Member
Fisher_Gate said:
If we are placing the Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution in context then it needs to be pointed out that it was based on a perspective that was fundamentally wrong. In short Trotsky presumed that the course of WW2 would closely follow that of WW1 with war being followed by a wave of workers revolts which would enable the tiny forces of the Fourth International to lead revolutions just as the Bolsheviks had done in 1917.
Which was a workable thesis in 1938, even if it was even then wrong as pointed out by the Polish delegation to the founding confernce of the FI. But by 1942 it was becoming more and more clear that the masses were not turning away from the social democrats and Stalinists but were on the contrary turning to them. Something the newly installed leadership of the reconstituted FI failed to understand as late as 1945 as a consequence of which they engaged in damaging ultra-left posturing which contributed to the eventual destruction of the FI as a revolutionary movement by 1949 at the very latest.
It is madness for anybody who claims to stand on the revolutionary politics of Trotsky to claim that the Chinese revolution was in some sense a socialist or workers revolution and to use this to justify the false perspectives of the FI circa 1948. I can only attribute such a crazy attitude to a total ignorance of Trotskys argument that the Chinese Stalinist party was a counter-revolutionary peasant party. Surely if Trotskys views were not as i have represented them he would haave considered the so called Soviet areas in northern China to be some kind of deformed workers state?
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
neprimerimye said:
I don't think this is necessarily the thread to discuss the nature of the chinese revolution on ... let's just say I think that the fact that the Chinese revolution overthrew capitalism means that it can't have been a completely counter-revolutionary movement. Or do you believe China has been a normal capitalist state since 1949, like the SWP (and Workers Power in the first period of its incarnation)? In that sense, the prognosis in the TP that there would be a revolutionary upheaval that would not be led by stalinism after the inevitable imperialist war, was at least partially correct. Likewise Tito may have been of stalinist origin, but he certainly did not follow Stalin's line.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
The expelled members have published a statement though it is not on the internet yet. They appear to be using the name 'Permanent Revolution'. the website www.permanentrevolution.net is not active yet.
urbanrevolt
New Member
The transitional program though was based on the perspectives of a time when capitalism really was in crisis. Trotsky was of course wrong in that there was a whole new lease of life to capitalism after WWII but he never claimed to be a prophet. He was kind of right when he predicted socialism or brarbarism in the sense that WWII was barbarism on a mass scale.
On Junuis point as someone from the expelled side I don't think I was particularly nasty in my replies to JD. Of course, I would say that and it's always unpleasant/petty to see people fall out in public (though I suspect some people enjoy it!) I won't go on about it: but I at least tried to be civil in my responses. Anyway they seem to have taken it all down... bizarre
On Junuis point as someone from the expelled side I don't think I was particularly nasty in my replies to JD. Of course, I would say that and it's always unpleasant/petty to see people fall out in public (though I suspect some people enjoy it!) I won't go on about it: but I at least tried to be civil in my responses. Anyway they seem to have taken it all down... bizarre
urbanrevolt
New Member
The Split in the LFI: expelled members respond
On 1 July the leadership of the League for the Fifth International (LFI)
summarily expelled 33 members, mostly from the organisation¹s British
section, Workers Power but also comrades based in Australia and Ireland.
Those expelled included the majority of Workers Power¹s trade union
activists, and a substantial proportion of its leading members and regular
contributors to its paper.
The supposed pretext for the expulsions consisted of "leaked" emails that
discussed the possibility of leaving the organisation either prior to or
during the LFI¹s congress later this month. The LFI leadership issued a very
lengthy public statement branding the expelled members as "petit-bourgeois
dilettantes", who had succumbed to the "torpor of the labour aristocracy in
Britain" and were seduced by "Chinamania". Along with the ritualised abuse,
the statement contains a number of inaccuracies and falsehoods that cannot
be addressed here, but have already been answered in a statement from the
expelled members (and will shortly be available on www.permanentrevolution.net).
The real reason for the expulsions stems from substantial political
differences which had developed over two years and resulted in minority and
majority factions being formed. The expulsions marked the culmination of a
long-running battle within Workers Power and the LFI, which first saw the
emergence of an organised tendency in Workers Power (Britain) early last
year. In March 2006, came the formation of an international faction for the
first time in the history of the LFI and its forerunners.
An increasingly bitter dispute had developed over perspectives since the
LFI¹s last congress in 2003. That congress adopted what those of us now
expelled had characterised as a "catastrophist" outlook on the world
economy. This view provided a justification of sorts for the notion of a
global "pre-revolutionary period" characterized by capitalist stagnation and
crisis. It was accompanied by a "new turn" towards mass agitation that
seemed designed to feed younger members recruited through the youth group,Revolution, a diet of hyper-activism. Under pressure from the
tendency/faction the leadership retreated from some of the language of 2003,
but did not discard the substance.
Increasingly, schemas replaced concrete assessments of the balance of class
forces in particular countries and regions. The need for a serious analysis
of imperialist globalization, the impact on the world economy of the
collapse of the Stalinist states and the opening up of these regions to
capitalist exploitation, the rise of China as an economic and political
power, was dismissed. In the mindset of the LFI leadership the World Social
Forum/European Social Forum became the vehicle for the imminent creation of
a 5th International to be formed "in months or years". Every fightback,
large or small, was evidence of the new pre revolutionary period
internationally.
The call for a "new workers party" became a mantra in Britain and a slogan
applicable throughout Europe. Using the critical support tactic towards the
Labour Party in Britain was abandoned electoral abstention became the
order of the day, with the tactic of critical support categorically
rejected, even in circumstances where the BNP posed a significant electoral
threat.
Workers Power issued a blanket call on the unions to simply disaffiliate
from Labour despite the absence of a credible alternative. The leadership
directed the group to act as footsoldiers for the Socialist Party¹s Campaign
for a New Workers Party, a left reformist project that has had precious
little resonance to date.
As in most every faction fight, comradely relations broke down and with them
went the once healthy norms of the organisation¹s internal democracy. The
LFI leadership increasingly resorted to organisational measures to
marginalise the influence of the tendency/faction. The British organisation
on the eve of the expulsions was already effectively split into separate
youth/adult branches ones that represented different factions. This was
done against our will and against the group¹s constitution.
The majority refused representation on the Political Committee to faction
supporters, reducing Workers Power¹s executive body to a factional tool of
the majority disciplinary commissions were set up with ever wider remits
to hunt faction members on trumped up charges of indiscipline.
The expulsions have only brought forward the inevitable. It had become clear
to the minority that the LFI leadership had no intention of allowing the
fight to go beyond this month¹s planned congress, much less of attempting to
reach a higher synthesis through collective working.
For us this is not a time for despair but for purposeful reflection and
action. Our intention now is to launch a new organisation in the very near
future in Britain a new magazine Permanent Revolution will be on sale
shortly not least because we wish to defend and develop what was best in
the tradition of Workers Power (Britain) and its international tendency.
This includes a commitment to international regroupment of the revolutionary
Marxist left through a process of dialogue, debate, splits and fusions.
Permanent Revolution steering group 2nd July 2006.
On 1 July the leadership of the League for the Fifth International (LFI)
summarily expelled 33 members, mostly from the organisation¹s British
section, Workers Power but also comrades based in Australia and Ireland.
Those expelled included the majority of Workers Power¹s trade union
activists, and a substantial proportion of its leading members and regular
contributors to its paper.
The supposed pretext for the expulsions consisted of "leaked" emails that
discussed the possibility of leaving the organisation either prior to or
during the LFI¹s congress later this month. The LFI leadership issued a very
lengthy public statement branding the expelled members as "petit-bourgeois
dilettantes", who had succumbed to the "torpor of the labour aristocracy in
Britain" and were seduced by "Chinamania". Along with the ritualised abuse,
the statement contains a number of inaccuracies and falsehoods that cannot
be addressed here, but have already been answered in a statement from the
expelled members (and will shortly be available on www.permanentrevolution.net).
The real reason for the expulsions stems from substantial political
differences which had developed over two years and resulted in minority and
majority factions being formed. The expulsions marked the culmination of a
long-running battle within Workers Power and the LFI, which first saw the
emergence of an organised tendency in Workers Power (Britain) early last
year. In March 2006, came the formation of an international faction for the
first time in the history of the LFI and its forerunners.
An increasingly bitter dispute had developed over perspectives since the
LFI¹s last congress in 2003. That congress adopted what those of us now
expelled had characterised as a "catastrophist" outlook on the world
economy. This view provided a justification of sorts for the notion of a
global "pre-revolutionary period" characterized by capitalist stagnation and
crisis. It was accompanied by a "new turn" towards mass agitation that
seemed designed to feed younger members recruited through the youth group,Revolution, a diet of hyper-activism. Under pressure from the
tendency/faction the leadership retreated from some of the language of 2003,
but did not discard the substance.
Increasingly, schemas replaced concrete assessments of the balance of class
forces in particular countries and regions. The need for a serious analysis
of imperialist globalization, the impact on the world economy of the
collapse of the Stalinist states and the opening up of these regions to
capitalist exploitation, the rise of China as an economic and political
power, was dismissed. In the mindset of the LFI leadership the World Social
Forum/European Social Forum became the vehicle for the imminent creation of
a 5th International to be formed "in months or years". Every fightback,
large or small, was evidence of the new pre revolutionary period
internationally.
The call for a "new workers party" became a mantra in Britain and a slogan
applicable throughout Europe. Using the critical support tactic towards the
Labour Party in Britain was abandoned electoral abstention became the
order of the day, with the tactic of critical support categorically
rejected, even in circumstances where the BNP posed a significant electoral
threat.
Workers Power issued a blanket call on the unions to simply disaffiliate
from Labour despite the absence of a credible alternative. The leadership
directed the group to act as footsoldiers for the Socialist Party¹s Campaign
for a New Workers Party, a left reformist project that has had precious
little resonance to date.
As in most every faction fight, comradely relations broke down and with them
went the once healthy norms of the organisation¹s internal democracy. The
LFI leadership increasingly resorted to organisational measures to
marginalise the influence of the tendency/faction. The British organisation
on the eve of the expulsions was already effectively split into separate
youth/adult branches ones that represented different factions. This was
done against our will and against the group¹s constitution.
The majority refused representation on the Political Committee to faction
supporters, reducing Workers Power¹s executive body to a factional tool of
the majority disciplinary commissions were set up with ever wider remits
to hunt faction members on trumped up charges of indiscipline.
The expulsions have only brought forward the inevitable. It had become clear
to the minority that the LFI leadership had no intention of allowing the
fight to go beyond this month¹s planned congress, much less of attempting to
reach a higher synthesis through collective working.
For us this is not a time for despair but for purposeful reflection and
action. Our intention now is to launch a new organisation in the very near
future in Britain a new magazine Permanent Revolution will be on sale
shortly not least because we wish to defend and develop what was best in
the tradition of Workers Power (Britain) and its international tendency.
This includes a commitment to international regroupment of the revolutionary
Marxist left through a process of dialogue, debate, splits and fusions.
Permanent Revolution steering group 2nd July 2006.
urbanrevolt
New Member
Sorry to bombard people with messages. Hadn't seen Fishergate's post- in fact I think we overlapped! Anyway got to go to work
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
urbanrevolt said:
Both early risers obviously, but at least I took out the line feeds ...
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
belboid said:
Dave S?
Anyway, was there ever anyone much in Workers Power? We are talking about a group of about 60 people here.
cockneyrebel
New Member
There are about 30 members left in WP. Probably around half of them are students. But you're right belboid they are left with very few "theoreticians".
I have to say that the expulsion statement by WP read like a mad rant from a stalinist show trial.
As someone who was expelled it was all a bit sad, but the political differences were too much to stay in the same organisation and to be honest the poisoned atmosphere that has been in the group for the last couple of years is a relief to get away from.
Out of interest junius could you say what happened on the revo board, haven't been on it for ages.
I don't hold any bad will towards some of the people left in WP, it was about political differences after all. There were people I thought were wankers for being bullies and general patronising tossers but that would have been the case with or without the internal faction debate.
I have to say that the internal culture reminded me more and more of the SWP as the last two years went by.
I have to say that the expulsion statement by WP read like a mad rant from a stalinist show trial.
As someone who was expelled it was all a bit sad, but the political differences were too much to stay in the same organisation and to be honest the poisoned atmosphere that has been in the group for the last couple of years is a relief to get away from.
Out of interest junius could you say what happened on the revo board, haven't been on it for ages.
I don't hold any bad will towards some of the people left in WP, it was about political differences after all. There were people I thought were wankers for being bullies and general patronising tossers but that would have been the case with or without the internal faction debate.
I have to say that the internal culture reminded me more and more of the SWP as the last two years went by.
JHE
.
This little split has cleared up one minor puzzle. It struck me as odd that Cockney was a member of an organisation with an ultra-optimistic 'perspective' of a pre-revolutionary thingamajig while he seemed a bit downbeat and miserable about would-be revolutionary groups and their prospects. All is now clear. He does not believe the Second Coming is imminent.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
So if you add the expelled people that makes a total of 60. But CockneyRebel, you were always saying in these boards that WP membership was at least over 80. Can you explain the discrepancy?cockneyrebel said:
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