discokermit
Well-Known Member
even less so.
14th November Movement for Left Unity
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
Article in the Guardian, never a better time for left unity?
btw, the big meeting here, wasn't, only about 30 people all day, they had a mike but had to be pressured to use it, downstairs was locked so couldn't use lift...
btw, its not a good article, bigging up UKIP
It's a fucking terrible article. What is Bob Crow's Socialist Party when it's at home? It doesn't go anywhere near the details of the Unite/Progress in-fighting either.
Unite aren't leaving the Labour party. It's not gonna happen.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Unite are fighting today in falkirk - that's the limit of their plans and their fight, getting tame union tied labour MPs elected. Nothing else.
Len will be happy with that article but what loads of bollocks - and don't be fooled by the Unite - Progress fight that is not a real fight, Progress are more close to Unite than any of the other big unions and there are full time officers who are close to McClusky and are Progress supporters.
It's there if you look for it - look at all the recent Progress candidates adopted or nominated recently for selection - either backed by Unite, Community, or Usdaw...
I'm not saying Unite's leadership is in bed with them or owt but there are a lot of Progress types who realise that the most effective union at getting candidates selected is Unite so they tend to join it and seek it's backing.
Close is the wrong word, more like organised in or with.
http://leftunity.org/where-is-the-radical-left-in-britain-heading-and-where-should-it-go/
Interesting essay here by Sophie Katz, formatting is rubbish though
Interesting essay here by Sophie Katz, formatting is rubbish though
There's loads who join a union of some kind, no matter how right wing they are or how much they hate union influence in the Labour party (or want it to be reduced to a nominal role) it's useful to join one, if only just so they can deflect accusations of being anti-union. Luke Akehurst is a Unite member. Dan Hodges is GMB. None of these people give a fuck about unions in the Labour party. There's a long history of right-wing scum in the union movement anyway, even people like John Golding was a leader member of the Post Office Engineering Union, the forerunner to the CWU, (as was arch blairite Alan Johnson as it goes) and they weren't just doing it to deflect criticism they represent a genuine right-wing tendency in the trade union movement.
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I know, well done for knowing that though, pat on the head for you
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
It seemed very narrow in its focus. Ignored the Socialist Alliance and pretty much every extra parliamentary movement. Didn't seem to say anything new or even restate old points with any clarity.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Obviously has too much time on her hands
My comment on Katz's completely incomprehensible article:
This long article seems to me to take a long time to say very little, and then repeats it – but still remains opaque !
If I’ve understood it correctly though Sophie is recognising that the era of Labour Party-type “social democratic” politics is historically over, and the fight against Austerity and capitalism will have to be carried on by new radical political and social campaigning formations. I think Sophie is therefore generally in favour of the Left Unity project to build a new political Party, but I have to admit that I’m not sure even about that critical point – even after rereading the article three times ! .
One things for certain, trying to establish “anti-Austerity blocs” around individual MPs expressing general “opposition to Austerity” around the next 2015 General election , will achieve little but give a bit of “radical gloss” to a few of the “usual suspects” in Westminster – from Caroline Lucas, to the odd Labour Leftie, to George Galloway. In reality any serious political regroupment now is too late to have any impact on the 2015 General Election. Any significant national political restructuring on the radical Left – hopefully around Left Unity, will happen during what will undoubtedly be a deeply depressingly right wing new Labour government after 2015. To build a serious electoral and socially much wider campaigning radical Party and movement of mass opposition to Austerity will require the focus and discipline of a proper, membership-based, political party. “Electoral blocs” just won’t do it – or loose , unstructured, roaming anti Austerity “roadshow” initiatives to promote a few “leftie stars” ,like the Peoples Assemblies.
Lastly , as an anti-stalinist radical socialist I have to say that unlike Sophie who , in a number of posts, has referred to the supposed:
“terrible ideological hangover produced by the collapse of the USSR ”
I would strongly suggest that the huge ,persisting, damage that was done to the cause and reputation of socialism as a political philosophy of human liberation in the eyes of the mass of working class people worldwide, was not the consequence of the COLLAPSE of the Soviet Union – but in the actual historical record/experience of the murderous tyranny of Stalinism in the Soviet Union ( plus China, N. Korea, Eastern Europe) ! The population of the Soviet Union itself was only too happy to see that baleful corrupt system of oppression collapse – not lifting a finger as the Russian mafioso oligarchs, often sourced from the very ranks of the old “communist” elite, stole all the state’s assets to create their new conventional bourgeois capitalist state.
One of the key things a new party of the Radical Left will need to do, is not assume that the crimes of the old Stalinist regimes are now conveniently slipping from popular memory – they haven’t. Instead the radical Left has to robustly denounce the travesty of socialism that the stalinist “state capitalist” tyrannies represented. We must make it clear that the democratic socialist society we see as holding out the promise of a better, fairer, more prosperous future for the majority, will be a fundamentally democratic one with more civil liberties for the majority, not less.
JHE
.
You are half-right.
Yes, the grim putatively socialist tyrannies discredited socialism.
It is also true that the collapse of those regimes discredited socialism. There were people - I was one and perhaps you were another - who hoped and to some extent expected the collapse of the eastern European regimes to lead to some sort of democratic socialism. How naive we were!
While those grim dictatorships and their actually existing socialism existed, many people, including critics of the undemocratic and illiberal nature of those regimes, could believe that there was a feasible alternative to capitalism. The critics thought it would work so much better with a bit more democracy or a bit more freedom, or less 'bureaucracy' or a different bunch of politicians in charge or if the leaders were Trots or whatever.
If fact, as it became increasingly clear that (i) the failures that led to the collapse - I mean the most important of the failures - were economic failures, (ii) the peoples who had lived actually existing socialism tended to vote for anti-socialist parties, either blood-and-soil or all-hail-private-property-and-markets and (iii) most of the other people in the ex-USSR, the people who wanted something more socialist, wanted to return to the old tyranny and in fact in many cases thought Joe Stalin was the dog's bollocks, it became harder and harder to believe there was or is a credible socialist alternative to capitalism.
Until the remnants of the left acknowledge that... um... we really don't know... we thought we knew, but we don't know... it is unlikely that the left will produce a credible model of a desirable and feasible socialist future.
Instead the remnants will just busy themselves with nostalgia, PC arsery and, worst of all, sucking up to resurgent bloody Islam.
To be fair, they can also join others in protesting against austerity, but without an alternative, the protests will just be protests.
Hence Left Unity trying to build around the popular myth of 1945 rather than the unpopular myth of 1917 beloved of the sects. (And no, I don't think the myth of 1945 is sufficient, but at least it nods to a political movement that might be slightly more attuned to things that might seem relevant/positive to its' intended audience, regardless of the fact that it might also have to confront harsh realities about the current balance of forces in comparison to those that allowed the concessions of 1945)
Joe Reilly
Well-Known Member
Denouncing Stalinism dosen't quite cut it does it? Especially when 'Stalinism' is identified with the 'old regimes' and only the old regimes.
Because what is 'conveniently omitted from memory' is that it wasn't Stalin that gutted Bolshevism of all forms of working class democracy.
It wasn't him that did the heavy lifting theory wise.
It wasn't him that assumed that the Marx phrase 'dictatorship of the proleteriat' allowed for, or insisted on a dictatorship in the traditional sense; transforming working class rule into it's opposite.
All of this was beyond was way beyond above his pay grade and capability.
Instead he was merely the beneficiary of the bastardisation.
So to condemn Stalinism is extremely convenient, because it implies the finger-pointer is denouncing not just the 'old regimes' but the methods of old regimes as well.
But a lot of the time reality is opposite.
For example the character assasination of Trotsky preceded his actual assasination, but weren't the SWP avowedly anti-Stalinist when they denounced the squadists as 'racists' prior to expulsion and AFA as 'anti-working class' with aim of silencing the militant message?
And how is any of that different from someone who can denounce Stalinism and in one breath and screech 'Strasserite!' at any passing supporter of the iWCa strategy with the next?
In simple terms any 'new Radical party of the left' that carries over that anti-democratic germ, no matter how promising the external conditions might appear to be, is going no where.
Outlawing stalinite methods is the first critical hurdle, which by the sounds of it, LU is yet to pass.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Left Unity are the bunch of impotent and incompetent cunts at the head of my union. They are an absolute waste of space.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No they are not, as you have been told at least once before. They have nothing whatsoever to do with PCS Left Unity.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
possibly something to do with how they let absolutely anyone vote on the name of the LU publication. Which ended up with it being called 'Cactus'
Once bitten...
nino_savatte
No pasaran!
That's probably because there is no content. Policy is still at the discussion stage but I guess you were hoping that all of this would be in place within 5 minutes of Ken Loach's appeal.
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