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

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SpineyNorman said:
Yeah - and weepiper makes an important point in a post just above that - that when it comes to female suffrage and womens struggles generally we always hear about the suffragettes but very little is ever said about the working class women, who took great risks in far more difficult circumstances than the middle class women who always get all the credit.
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the category prisoners were placed in when they were imprisoned was class dependent. working class suffragettes had a much harder time than middle class women.

iirc, you mentioned the force feeding as well. Up until relatively recently, there has been a lot of shite written about this. comments included that women enjoyed the attention in some kind of masochistic fantasy and that the biggest problem was it risked a woman's looks. If you're really interested, a friend who is specializing in this area recommended June Purvis as a place to start reading on this.

but a lot of this is in the context of the middle class women who usually worked as campaigners being of the same social background as the charity do-gooders, and mainly because it was only them that had the time to become involved. a lot felt it would be necessary to improve the working classes before granting them the vote, some including beatrice webb, never thought the working classes would have the agency to speak for themselves. the examples of those who thought to communicate with the working classes rather than just claim to speak for them (while ignoring what they were saying) are noticeable, because they were different.
 
toggle said:
the category prisoners were placed in when they were imprisoned was class dependent. working class suffragettes had a much harder time than middle class women.

iirc, you mentioned the force feeding as well. Up until relatively recently, there has been a lot of shite written about this. comments included that women enjoyed the attention in some kind of masochistic fantasy and that the biggest problem was it risked a woman's looks. If you're really interested, a friend who is specializing in this area recommended June Purvis as a place to start reading on this.

but a lot of this is in the context of the middle class women who usually worked as campaigners being of the same social background as the charity do-gooders, and mainly because it was only them that had the time to become involved. a lot felt it would be necessary to improve the working classes before granting them the vote, some including beatrice webb, never thought the working classes would have the agency to speak for themselves. the examples of those who thought to communicate with the working classes rather than just claim to speak for them (while ignoring what they were saying) are noticeable, because they were different.
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probably a bit of a random question- but how much did these things tie into methodist led 'improvement' of the working class? All that muscular christianity stuff
 
butchersapron said:
That clegg is a fucking pervert. Supporting that shit.
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tumblr_m0h3pg3uwr1rnseozo1_500.jpg
 
DotCommunist said:
probably a bit of a random question- but how much did these things tie into methodist led 'improvement' of the working class? All that muscular christianity stuff
Click to expand...

I don't come across muscular Christianity here, but Methodism can't be treated as a single entity. At one point, there were over 30 sects, many of them splitting from the main Wesleyan connection because of their conservatism in either political or spiritual matters (or both). I do come across enough of the self improvement drive from within working class dominated sects to know it wasn't entirely middle class led.and Methodism tended to lead to a slightly higher level of egalitarianism than Anglicanism would have done. most wesleyans were liberal. there was a lot to do with liberalism supporting non conformist rights, but also a feedback in that nonconformist rights were politically radical and supporting them exposed the supporters to the promotion of other radical ideals.

and I know this better in Cornwall than elsewhere, and one factor is that Cornwall didn't really do socialism, and the working class sects here tended to be more radical spiritually, than politically, even compared to the same sect elsewhere in the country. and as far as mainstream Methodism was concerned, temperance was radicalism and that was a big issue here, but there's also a cycle of revival and backslide.

the main pattern I see published tends to be 'lead by example' rather than 'shame into compliance. there's a lot of the ethic of 'you can achieve if you work', but also within the sects and the communities, a strong sense of communities helping each other. a fair amount of the self improvement stuff seems to be an offshoot of that.

Round here, the old suffragism was Quaker dominated. the late Victorian, early Edwardian was linked to liberalism, the disciples of Mill or radical carpetbaggers. I have a few determined universal suffrage supporters as MPs, including one who trusted his electorate to believe in women well enough that his wife and Millicent Fawcett opened his campaigning for him in the contentious 1886 election.
 
I don't do likes toggle, so I shall just thank you for that

The schismatic nature of religion and society is always bewildering to me but the above does give me a bit. So cheers


As lost as I get in post-catholic sectarianism I can be sure that theres a jewish sect who out-weirded it. Frog will tell me of it.

Now I know that methodism made great gains in wales- no suprise that they had to fight for prominence in other regions. The society of friends are still hanging around looking like left wing versions of Christianity. Theres a meeting house down this way which doubles as a weslyan chapel. Strange state of affairs. They rent it out to the christadelpians on saturdays. Odd
 
DotCommunist said:
I don't do likes toggle, so I shall just thank you for that

The schismatic nature of religion and society is always bewildering to me but the above does give me a bit. So cheers


As lost as I get in post-catholic sectarianism I can be sure that theres a jewish sect who out-weirded it. Frog will tell me of it.

Now I know that methodism made great gains in wales- no suprise that they had to fight for prominence in other regions. The society of friends are still hanging around looking like left wing versions of Christianity. Theres a meeting house down this way which doubles as a weslyan chapel. Strange state of affairs. They rent it out to the christadelpians on saturdays. Odd
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nods.

one of the questions is whether the predominant non conformist sect of a region was a cause or a mirror of the predominant social attitudes in the area. there are some fairly strong arguments that the sect that made headway and retained followers was the one most suited to pre existing attitudes.

cornish and welsh history get compared a lot. one of the major questions is how the welsh nationalists were more successful in making headway into Methodist communities than in cornwall.
 
phildwyer said:
That's a great artıcle, good for her.
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Much better than LPs article on the same topic here:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/bradley-mannings-case-about-more-freedom-speech

...but I'm still not very keen on it. Focuses on how America has become 'morally lazy' (more so than during Vietnam or Nicaragua?) and the good individual v military machine angle, without really examining the underlying logic of imperialism that is driving this. And the expressions of surprise about Manning's treatment reveal Crabapple to have as much misplaced faith in the system as the soldier she dissapprovingly quotes. Am I being too harsh?
 
Delroy Booth said:
This is why we can't have nice things - like a revolution

http://www.liveleak.com/c/syria

^ That's what revolutions look like. Watch those videos. They're grim and violent, and unless you were desensitised by years of first person shooter games then too horrific to watch, let alone routinely watch a good few hours of them a day. Any revolution that's "nice" isn't a revolution. You think the British state would react any differently if we tried to seize power away from Crown and Parliament?
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Nah, an illustrative quote:

Power does not come from the barrel of a gun any more than it comes from a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but the military dimension is not the central one. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to break into the armories, but whether they unleash what they are: commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes the logic of capitalism. Barricades and machine guns flow from this "weapon". The more vital the social realm, the more the use of guns and the number of casualties will diminish. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any non-violent principle, but because it will be a revolution only by subverting more than by actually destroying the professional military. To imagine a proletarian front facing off against a bourgeois front is to conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms, on the model of a political revolution or a war (seizing someone's power, occupying their territory). In so doing, one reintroduces everything that the insurrectionary moment had overwhelmed: hierarchy, a respect for specialists, for knowledge that Knows, and for techniques to solve problems, in short for everything that diminishes the common man. In the service of the state, the working- class "militia man" invariably evolves into a "soldier". In Spain, from the fall of 1936 onward, the revolution dissolved into the war effort, and into a kind of combat typical of states: a war of fronts.
Click to expand...


http://www.prole.info/texts/insurrectionsdie.html

Any, the real issue is Laurie - and the wider student radical milieu on whose struggles she found fame - mostly don't believe in "revolution" anyway, regardless of the pose; chase those nasty companies who don't pay tax to pay for education? Sure. Insurrection? No.
 
Laurie's article on Bradley Manning is really shit. Windy generalities, a focus on sexuality and 'who is the real Bradley Manning?'.

"There are those to whom Manning represents everything loathsome about modernity. He is a queer, effeminate, angry nerd whose morality took precedence over his loyalty to the US military and who, perhaps worst of all, is frighteningly good at the internet. On the other hand, for every other nerd out there, for everyone who was ever bullied at school, for anyone who grew up different, as Manning did in small-town Oklahoma, his story provokes empathy."

"If there was a chance for us to understand the real Manning, that chance disappeared somewhere between Quantico and a hundred magazine features attempting to dissect the young, gay soldier’s mental state. He has become a symbol of the information war and its discontents. Yet, conveniently for their persecutors, symbols such as Manning have hearts that can be stressed and stilled and bodies that can be brutalised as a warning to others. Every institution faces the choice between appearing just and appearing powerful. The US military, in its treatment of Bradley Manning, has made its choice."

I mean, what is this word salad? How does this stuff get published?
 
The Pale King said:
Laurie's article on Bradley Manning is really shit. Windy generalities, a focus on sexuality and 'who is the real Bradley Manning?'.

"There are those to whom Manning represents everything loathsome about modernity. He is a queer, effeminate, angry nerd whose morality took precedence over his loyalty to the US military and who, perhaps worst of all, is frighteningly good at the internet. On the other hand, for every other nerd out there, for everyone who was ever bullied at school, for anyone who grew up different, as Manning did in small-town Oklahoma, his story provokes empathy."

"If there was a chance for us to understand the real Manning, that chance disappeared somewhere between Quantico and a hundred magazine features attempting to dissect the young, gay soldier’s mental state. He has become a symbol of the information war and its discontents. Yet, conveniently for their persecutors, symbols such as Manning have hearts that can be stressed and stilled and bodies that can be brutalised as a warning to others. Every institution faces the choice between appearing just and appearing powerful. The US military, in its treatment of Bradley Manning, has made its choice."

I mean, what is this word salad? How does this stuff get published?
Click to expand...

Good to see she's concentrating on what's really important about Manning's ordeal.
 
commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes the logic of capitalism.
Click to expand...

are. you. fucking. joking

why, why is she saying these things that bear zero relevance to reality. For fucks sake
 
toggle said:
I don't come across muscular Christianity here, but Methodism can't be treated as a single entity. At one point, there were over 30 sects, many of them splitting from the main Wesleyan connection because of their conservatism in either political or spiritual matters (or both). I do come across enough of the self improvement drive from within working class dominated sects to know it wasn't entirely middle class led.and Methodism tended to lead to a slightly higher level of egalitarianism than Anglicanism would have done. most wesleyans were liberal. there was a lot to do with liberalism supporting non conformist rights, but also a feedback in that nonconformist rights were politically radical and supporting them exposed the supporters to the promotion of other radical ideals.

and I know this better in Cornwall than elsewhere, and one factor is that Cornwall didn't really do socialism, and the working class sects here tended to be more radical spiritually, than politically, even compared to the same sect elsewhere in the country. and as far as mainstream Methodism was concerned, temperance was radicalism and that was a big issue here, but there's also a cycle of revival and backslide.

the main pattern I see published tends to be 'lead by example' rather than 'shame into compliance. there's a lot of the ethic of 'you can achieve if you work', but also within the sects and the communities, a strong sense of communities helping each other. a fair amount of the self improvement stuff seems to be an offshoot of that.

Round here, the old suffragism was Quaker dominated. the late Victorian, early Edwardian was linked to liberalism, the disciples of Mill or radical carpetbaggers. I have a few determined universal suffrage supporters as MPs, including one who trusted his electorate to believe in women well enough that his wife and Millicent Fawcett opened his campaigning for him in the contentious 1886 election.
Click to expand...

If you're interested in this (or if DotCommunist is) there's some really good stuff on the relationship between dissenting sects - methodism in particular - and the early English labour movement in Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (it's in the libcom online library). Stuff about how some of the vaguely democratic forms of organisation used by Wesleyan baptism were adapted and used for self-organisation and how the church often became a kind of hub for collective working class organisation. Also stuff about how religious discourses and idealised representations of feudalism were tapped into to critique early capitalism.

Ages since I've read it so I can't be that precise as to where in the book it is, but just looking at the contents chapter 2 and the first part of chapter 11 look like a good place to start (if you so wish).
 
caleb said:
Nah, an illustrative quote:

Power does not come from the barrel of a gun any more than it comes from a ballot box. No revolution is peaceful, but the military dimension is not the central one. The question is not whether the proles finally decide to break into the armories, but whether they unleash what they are: commodified beings who no longer can and no longer want to exist as commodities, and whose revolt explodes the logic of capitalism. Barricades and machine guns flow from this "weapon". The more vital the social realm, the more the use of guns and the number of casualties will diminish. A communist revolution will never resemble a slaughter: not from any non-violent principle, but because it will be a revolution only by subverting more than by actually destroying the professional military. To imagine a proletarian front facing off against a bourgeois front is to conceive the proletariat in bourgeois terms, on the model of a political revolution or a war (seizing someone's power, occupying their territory). In so doing, one reintroduces everything that the insurrectionary moment had overwhelmed: hierarchy, a respect for specialists, for knowledge that Knows, and for techniques to solve problems, in short for everything that diminishes the common man. In the service of the state, the working- class "militia man" invariably evolves into a "soldier". In Spain, from the fall of 1936 onward, the revolution dissolved into the war effort, and into a kind of combat typical of states: a war of fronts.
Click to expand...

http://www.prole.info/texts/insurrectionsdie.html

Any, the real issue is Laurie - and the wider student radical milieu on whose struggles she found fame - mostly don't believe in "revolution" anyway, regardless of the pose; chase those nasty companies who don't pay tax to pay for education? Sure. Insurrection? No.
Click to expand...

I disagree with much of that you just quoted. In fact I think that's a highly idealised concept of what the practicalities of overthrowing the state would entail. But that's another thread entirely, is it too much of a digression to get into it here?
 
DotCommunist said:
are. you. fucking. joking

why, why is she saying these things that bear zero relevance to reality. For fucks sake
Click to expand...

To be fair that's not her quote - it's from Gilles Dauvé (whoever that is - not someone I've come across before) Seems to completely miss the point if you ask me - assumes that the violence can only be initiated by the oppressed class in siezing power rather than coming from the old elites in defending their position or trying to win it back.
 
Delroy Booth said:
I disagree with much of that you just quoted. In fact I think that's a highly idealised concept of what the practicalities of overthrowing the state would entail. But that's another thread entirely, is it too much of a digression to get into it here?
Click to expand...

Are you seriously worried about derailing this of all threads? :D
 
Delroy Booth said:
I disagree with much of that you just quoted. In fact I think that's a highly idealised concept of what the practicalities of overthrowing the state would entail. But that's another thread entirely, is it too much of a digression to get into it here?
Click to expand...

It's poetic, sure, but the point is that revolution isn't simply a violent act or the seizure (or overthrow!) of the state, it's also a process whereby new social relations are created and new modes of living developed, it's both an act of creation and destruction. Sure it will be violent, but how violent depends on entirely on conditions which we can't currently predict, especially since "the revolution" ain't gonna happen any time in the near future. I just don't think it's correct to post links to videos of the barbarism in Syria and say that it's the face of modern social revolution, since it blatantly isn't.

If you want to start a thread about it I'll probably join in but I'm pretty lazy and dumb.
 
SpineyNorman said:
To be fair that's not her quote - it's from Gilles Dauvé (whoever that is - not someone I've come across before) Seems to completely miss the point if you ask me - assumes that the violence can only be initiated by the oppressed class in siezing power rather than coming from the old elites in defending their position or trying to win it back.
Click to expand...

I think it's more a response to those who see revolution as violent by principle, and who fetishise that violence. Because, sadly, there are plenty of people who do exactly that.
 
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