Alex Callinicos/SWP vs Laurie Penny/New Statesman Facebook handbags

[Casually Red]

whoever thought you could solve this shit with jazz hands and "intersectional" jargon thats going to fuck everyone off

i suspect someone who doesnt want it solved, because its plainly a complete load of old bollocks. And while i dont consider myself any type of barometer of the working class Id be astounded if the average persons reaction to all of this wasnt look at that bunch of hippy wankers . It seems positively designed to garner that very response .
Either its propagators are so completely up their own arses they are incapable of any rational thought or they are a bunch of spooks puppets . Or a bit of both . This is so obviously embarassing as a spectacle it shouldnt even need pointing out .

 

[butchersapron]

I first encountered this stuff in the early-mid 90s. A number of people i talked to at that time said they had experienced it in feminist consciousness raising groups in the 70s and amongst the greenham common end of the 'peace movement' - in both the US and the UK, and that their experience of the former was that it allowed a false sense of formal equality that allowed middle class feminists to dominate via other methods and offered a helping hand to w/c feminists who did want to dominate and control the groups.

 

[DotCommunist]

The latter. The point is to equate privilege/intersectionality liberalism with opposition to racism, sexism and homophobia. If you don't accept their borrowed American analysis and structure, and you are a socialist, then by definition you think all that stuff is for "after the revolution".

Thats incredibly patronizing. What do they think people did before the great gift of intersectional theory.

 

[chilango]

thing is i think all of this stuff is incredibly important and does need to be dealt with, as the SWP case shows

i think there's also issues with racism in these organisations as well, there's bound to be, we're all products of capitalist society

but jazz hands is not the way to fucking do it. whoever thought you could solve this shit with jazz hands and "intersectional" jargon thats going to fuck everyone off

Yes.

It raises a lot of valid issues to do power relationships and structures, the assumption of roles as activists (soft vanguardism), the ossification of movements of struggle into bureaucracies, Partyism, separation, specialisation, the spectacle and voyeuristic approaches to protest, etc etc etc.

The whole bubble thing and the moribundity of Leninist organisational models and the problems they produce are kinda linked here by their alienation from the everyday life of the proletariat. No?

 

[butchersapron]

Although it then got exported to the Bookfair?

Maybe (didn't go last year, and hadn't seen it had been turned into one) but not in the sense of here is a pamphlet from the Af oputlining their understanding and critique of privilege theory, in the way that say, Against Parliament is.

 

[butchersapron]

What was the result of the internal debate in the end?

Nothing i think.

 

[sihhi]

The latter. The point is to equate privilege/intersectionality liberalism with opposition to racism, sexism and homophobia. If you don't accept their borrowed American analysis and structure, and you are a socialist, then by definition you think all that stuff is for "after the revolution".

I think the SWP sexual assault botch-and-hide (plus having the rump SWP still oppose privilege theory as in Marxism 2013) has been a gift for the privilege theory crowd.

 

[DrRingDing]

I'm mildly concerned that a pretty standard way of having meetings is being confused and intertwinned with this tumblr style of privilege checking.

 

[chilango]

Was it this?
http://radicalmanchester.wordpress.com/2009/10/16/challenge-anarchy

Something similar to London MayDay's Anarcho-Monopoly - a series of potential protest sites all over central London?

Yes. That was it.

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm mildly concerned that a pretty standard way of having meetings is being confused and intertwinned with this tumblr style of privilege checking.

they should work in a cheat code, so if you throw a YMCA you get the floor regardless

 

[chilango]

I'm mildly concerned that a pretty standard way of having meetings is being confused and intertwinned with this tumblr style of privilege checking.

They have a lot in common.

 

[DrRingDing]

they should throw in a cheat code, so if you throw a YMCA you get the floor regardless

This

 

[butchersapron]

I'm mildly concerned that a pretty standard way of having meetings is being confused and intertwinned with this tumblr style of privilege checking.

How about making some sort of post outlining how this is happening, why it's bad, and how this confusion has came about. Maybe pull out the positives from the 'pretty standard way of having meetings' (and it's not btw, it may be standard for a small section of a small sub-culture though) and what are it's limitations. That sort of thing.

 

[sihhi]

I first encountered this stuff in the early-mid 90s. A number of people i talked to at that time said they had experienced it in feminist consciousness raising groups in the 70s and amongst the greenham common end of the 'peace movement' - in both the US and the UK, and that their experience of the former was that it allowed a false sense of formal equality that allowed middle class feminists to dominate via other methods and offered a helping hand to w/c feminists who did want to dominate and control the groups.

Can you be more specific - do you mean hand signalling, progressive stacks or wider privilege theory analysis - I don't - personally at least - remember any of it from the mid-2000s.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I'm mildly concerned that a pretty standard way of having meetings is being confused and intertwinned with this tumblr style of privilege checking.

The same useless liberals, slightly different context.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Nothing i think.

So neither adopted nor rejected, leaving some members peddling it and others not?

 

[DrRingDing]

They have a lot in common.

Putting your hand up to speak instead of trying to barge your way into the conversation is pretty standard and sensible.

Temperature checks are handy. I don't think anyone is in love with it but it's practical and it can get us from A to B.....if slowly at times.

But there are ways of doing fast consensus.

 

[butchersapron]

Can you be more specific - do you mean hand signalling, progressive stacks or wider privilege theory analysis - I don't - personally at least - remember any of it from the mid-2000s.

Hand signals, a form of general privilege theory (that also assumed a wider equality among women as a whole) and a sort of informal unstated assumption that victims get to speak first (but not, of course, to actually be listened to, once they had finished talking the social relations carried on, the box had been ticked though).

 

[Casually Red]

I first encountered this stuff in the early-mid 90s. A number of people i talked to at that time said they had experienced it in feminist consciousness raising groups in the 70s and amongst the greenham common end of the 'peace movement' - in both the US and the UK, and that their experience of the former was that it allowed a false sense of formal equality that allowed middle class feminists to dominate via other methods and offered a helping hand to w/c feminists who did want to dominate and control the groups.

its a blindingly obvious way to completely subvert internal democracy as well as alienate movements from the broader mass of the population . A spooks wet dream .

 

[J Ed]

I think the SWP sexual assault botch-and-hide (plus having the rump SWP still oppose privilege theory as in Marxism 2013) has been a gift for the privilege theory crowd.

There seems to be a big amount of overlap of privilege theory types and people who were most vocal in speaking out. It's a bit worrying to think that if some of these people weren't in favour of privilege theory then they might have gone along with the CC.

 

[chilango]

Putting your hand up to speak instead of trying to barge your way into the conversation is pretty standard and sensible.

Temperature checks are handy. I don't think anyone is in love with it but it's practical and it can get us from A to B.....if slowly at times.

But there are ways of doing fast consensus.

We're not talking about "putting your hand up" we're talking about a codified set of rules and the creation of an insider language designed to engineer procedure.

 

[cesare]

Maybe (didn't go last year, and hadn't seen it had been turned into one) but not in the sense of here is a pamphlet from the Af oputlining their understanding and critique of privilege theory, in the way that say, Against Parliament is.

It was used at London and Bristol http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/state/3...rivilege-theory--from-the-womens-caucus-.html

I don't know why infantile-disorder called it an international pamphlet, but the caucus's work on class struggle and privilige theory is certainly being used as a referrent.

 

[butchersapron]

So neither adopted nor rejected, leaving some members peddling it and others not?

Seems to be the situation, nothing adopted nationally as far as i can tell. Locally, they don't seem to bothered about it (whilst not seeming to have as much emphasis on class as when i was a member, but i think that's because of their age, all very young). Its the students who were in the orbit of the swp who seem to be the only people going on about it. And boy, do they go on about it.

 

[butchersapron]

It was used at London and Bristol http://www.afed.org.uk/blog/state/3...rivilege-theory--from-the-womens-caucus-.html

I don't know why infantile-disorder called it an international pamphlet, but the caucus's work on class struggle and privilige theory is certainly being used as a referrent.

Not sure what you mean by used- do you mean on sale? If so, well someone's printed them, they have to go!

 

[cesare]

Not sure what you mean by used- do you mean on sale? If so, well someone's printed them, they have to go!

No, used as the basis for their workshops

 

[DrRingDing]

We're not talking about "putting your hand up" we're talking about a codified set of rules and the creation of an insider language designed to engineer procedure.

But hand signals are just really for the facilitator so they know where to lob them in the stack.

Like is someone has a direct point to what the current speaker is gabbling on about. Or a technical point. Or whatever. For the record I'm really not a massive fan but if you're trying to move towards consensus then I'm yet to see another technique working appropriately.

 

[cesare]

But hand signals are just really for the facilitator so they know where to lob them in the stack.

Like is someone has a direct point to what the current speaker is gabbling on about. Or a technical point. Or whatever. For the record I'm really not a massive fan but if you're trying to move towards consensus then I'm yet to see another technique working appropriately.

My main problem with it is that the stack is stacked according to appearance, which can be very misleading.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Sounds a bit like a sort of situation where something edges towards being a de facto position, as its critics dont want to tackle it head on.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

But hand signals are just really for the facilitator so they know where to lob them in the stack.

Like is someone has a direct point to what the current speaker is gabbling on about. Or a technical point. Or whatever. For the record I'm really not a massive fan but if you're trying to move towards consensus then I'm yet to see another technique working appropriately.

Take a vote. Problem solved. As an added bonus some hippies may sulk.

 

[butchersapron]

No, used as the basis for their workshops

What workshops?