An open question to all SWP members on u75

[Red Cat]

Their politics are stuck in a rigid theoretical framework that any rational person would have abandoned a long time ago as it was proved wrong again and again. Their politics are simply crap and all their other problems flow from this.

I’m in agreement about this irrationality to a point, only I’m not sure how much of it is about Leninist politics. Certainly it was for Tony Cliff, but I get the impression that the SWP leadership actually hasn’t got a clue what its doing these days. It strikes me that they’re all over the place, theoretically, which was inevitable, I think, bearing in mind that Cliff so dominated intellectually and personally. If you’re going to have a fetish about ‘bending the stick’, moving from one position to another like a political bi-polar disorder, then you need a stable core, a strong ego, if you like. Otherwise what follows is madness and disintegration.

After Cliff died they actually attempted to create a more de-centralised organisation (a sort of top-down spontanaity ); getting rid of branch meetings, encouraging people to go off and do their own thing. All of a sudden all those arguments that had been made in support of the apparently essential and often painful weekly branch meeting were thrown out alongside all those other nasty old ‘backward’ ‘conservative’ habits picked up in the eighties ('baggage' was the mantra, if I remember correctly), when the organisation was trying to keep itself together in an ever hostile rightist world. From what I can gather, this simply resulted in a lot of people becoming inactive because they were released from the duty of having to go to the weekly branch meeting that was the extent of political activity outside of the workplace for many members who’d been around for eons and who actually held the whole damn thing together. A lot of members were lost during this period. The SWP try and recruit like mad because they are always trying to fill the holes made by members leaving and because they are an ageing organisation that has little possibility of regeneration if they don’t keep replacing the majority of students who leave once they’ve left college.

I don’t think we can understand what the SWP is up to if we don’t consider that the leadership has a fundamental fear of losing control and how that loss of control is equated with political death. It is fundamentally about fear and about loss of control because what is the point of THE revolutionary party if it loses control? The need to recruit at all costs is quite simply the need to survive. This fear of death is transmitted to the membership through their 'if you don’t do this we’re going to fuck up and die' crisis style of leadership i.e. projection of their own fucking anxiety onto the activist who then runs around like a lunatic desperately trying to contain it in the shape of names on lists, numbers talked to, fronts created, papers sold etc. Something visible, tangible, measurable; evidence that there is actually some point to that manic activity after all, that they do actually exist.

I think that fear and anxiety, conscious and unconscious, manifest themselves in the dynamics of all groups and organisations and that rules and hierarchies develop in part as attempts to control these feelings regardless of the official politics of the group. This is, however, exacerbated in the SWP due to its vanguardist politics according to which it simply must prevail; any threat to its success is experienced quite literally as life threatening. I think it needs to examine itself on many levels, not only a theoretical one, if it’s going to be an organisation that retains any integrity at all. In short, they need to get a grip. But I also think that goes for all of us…if we, the left, continue to refuse to look at group dynamics, and the relational and emotional aspects of our social, cultural and political life and instead continue to scapegoat the other(however annoying the SWP are), then I think we’re in for ever increasing dissapointment.

 

[butchersapron]

<snip>

I don’t think we can understand what the SWP is up to if we don’t consider that the leadership has a fundamental fear of losing control and how that loss of control is equated with political death. It is fundamentally about fear and about loss of control because what is the point of THE revolutionary party if it loses control? The need to recruit at all costs is quite simply the need to survive. This fear of death is transmitted to the membership through their 'if you don’t do this we’re going to fuck up and die' crisis style of leadership i.e. projection of their own fucking anxiety onto the activist who then runs around like a lunatic desperately trying to contain it in the shape of names on lists, numbers talked to, fronts created, papers sold etc. Something visible, tangible, measurable; evidence that there is actually some point to that manic activity after all, that they do actually exist.

I think that fear and anxiety, conscious and unconscious, manifest themselves in the dynamics of all groups and organisations and that rules and hierarchies develop in part as attempts to control these feelings regardless of the official politics of the group. This is, however, exacerbated in the SWP due to its vanguardist politics according to which it simply must prevail; any threat to its success is experienced quite literally as life threatening. I think it needs to examine itself on many levels, not only a theoretical one, if it’s going to be an organisation that retains any integrity at all. In short, they need to get a grip. But I also think that goes for all of us…if we, the left, continue to refuse to look at group dynamics, and the relational and emotional aspects of our social, cultural and political life and instead continue to scapegoat the other(however annoying the SWP are), then I think we’re in for ever increasing dissapointment.

When i was in the Labour party and we were running local elections campaigns, a trick we always used to use on newer/younger members was to tell them that we were facing the worst possible results, a result so dire that Labour would be wiped out in the town - the result being we had a new load of eager canvassers etc. We had lied though. This seems eerily similar to how you imagine the SWP CC (and by extension, the whole party and its culture) operates.

 

[Pickman's model]

Could you explain this please while reflecting on the causes of my rapidly plummeting interest in letting these boards be used for internal SWP bunfights.

infernal swp bunfights, perhaps: but not internal.

 

[gurrier]

Red Cat, that's an interesting analysis of the post-Cliff turn of the SWP and it does ring true. I remember a couple of years ago that they decided that much of their existing practice was infected with the baggage of the defeatism of the 80's or some such formulation. It's interesting that, in order to understand the internal perspectives of the SWP, you are much better off browsing through internet discussion forums or talking to disillusioned ex-members than reading any of their own stuff - even the stuff intended for internal communication. It's often easy to assume that there just isn't any politics, but when you start to ferret around you find some evidence of thought - albeit generally very misguided and misplaced.

Anyway, I also agree that internal dynamics and interpersonal stuff are a very important factor for all groups to look at. One of the worst examples of a political sect that I have ever come across is an anarchist group. Although, thankfully this is quite rare in the anarchist movement and by far the best examples of internal dynamics that I have ever come across in political groups are also anarchist.

However, I do think that, beyond the question of internal dynamics, Leninism is simply so flawed in its theoretical framework and so rigidly tied to this framework that we would all be better off if it simply died out. To explain with a little bit more detail from the point of view of a social scientist.

There are a few fundamental hypotheses which we can say are fundamental to leninist theory. Some of these are shared with other brands of socialism, but the hypotheses that differentiate leninism are the following:

1) The best (if not only) route to communism is for a vanguard party of the best and most conscious revolutionaries to sieze control of the state.
2) Centralised planning and control leads to greater efficiency.

The first hypothesis has been substantially disproven by the events of the 20th century. In fact there are very few hypotheses in the field of the social sciences which we can be quite so conclusive about. There is simply a vast array of experimental data which uniformly contradicts this hypothesis. The fact that each and every experiment has led to a similar outcome - the rapid creation of a totalitarian dictatorship and a new ruling class also allows us to put forward the alternative hypothesis that:

1.a) If a minority siezes control of the state with the intention of using it to usher in communism, no matter how revolutionary or pure they might be, we will end up with a monstrous tyranny.

This hypothesis is considerably strenghtened by the fact that it was put forward far in advance of all the experiments, as long ago as the 1870's by Bakunin among others.

The second hypothesis has similarly been conclusively disproven. The adoption of this theoretical position underlines one of the key weaknesses of the entirety of the Marxist movements - the tendency to adopt the theories of key thinkers as dogma, to be accepted in toto without any real attempts to sort the wheat from the chaff.

In the first 20 years or so of the 20th century, the ideas of Taylorism were very much in vogue. Taylorism held that the best way to manage production was to get a highly skilled and intelligent group of planners to micro-manage each and evey step of the production process and break it down into extremly simple tasks for the mass of workers to perform by rote. The partial application of this theory to the ford production line was crucial in it gaining credibility as the management science of the future. It was not surprising that Lenin adopted this outlook to his political theories as it was so in vogue at the time - he actually wrote several pieces in praise of Taylorism. Similarly Marx adopted the prevailing ideas of 'scientific' and deterministic social analysis to his political theories as they were very much in vogue in the later years of the 19th century.

The real problem with the Marxist current of thought is that these theories were really little more than fads. Certainly there were some insights to be gained from them, but the rest of the world adopted the useful ideas and discarded the rest as science moved on. Unfortunately these fads were written down in the works of the Marxist gurus and thus accepted wholescale by their followers. In most of the world, the concept of scientific determinism didn't last beyond the end of the 19th century and Taylorism was already being abandoned for the new theories of HR by the 1930's. Its last real bastion was the US military where it was finally discarded after the catastrophic showing of US military management in World War 2.

Yet we still have the absurd spectacle of many Marxists still being wedded to the stages theory of history and even the relatively sane leninists like the SP still call for 'defence of the planned nature of the North Korean economy' as if the last century or so of scientific enquiry had never happened!

Marxism, Leninism and all their cronies remain deeply wedded to antiquated scientific theories. The only real way to reform these theories is to abandon them and start from scratch again.

 

[Xerxes]

Marxism, Leninism and all their cronies remain deeply wedded to antiquated scientific theories. The only real way to reform these theories is to abandon them and start from scratch again.

Although I find myself in agreement with the majority of this post. I fundamentally disagree with the final paragraph. The only way forward is to review the theories in the light of their application, see which parts worked, where mistakes were made, whether one method was better than another.

Learn from the past, use that which is relavent in the present circumstances and remember the rest. Mistakes may be made, but at the very least they won't be the same mistakes.

 

[butchersapron]

Surely abandoning them is learning from them? There is such a thing as complete dead end - one that only furnishes us with negative lessons - How things 'should not be done'?

Are you suggesting that there are positive things from Leninism/vanguardism that we should keep and incorporate into our current approach? If so, what, and why?

[No lectures on the dialectical process of aufheben though please ]

 

[past caring]

Are you suggesting that there are positive things from Leninism/vanguardism that we should keep and incorporate into our current approach? If so, what, and why?

I wouldn't suggest that myself, as you know.

But I think gurrier's seeming equation of Leninism with Marxism is problematic - there's plenty in the latter which I would argue is of use to us.....

 

[Red Cat]

When i was in the Labour party and we were running local elections campaigns, a trick we always used to use on newer/younger members was to tell them that we were facing the worst possible results, a result so dire that Labour would be wiped out in the town - the result being we had a new load of eager canvassers etc. We had lied though. This seems eerily similar to how you imagine the SWP CC (and by extension, the whole party and its culture) operates.

No, I think that the SWP is so afraid of missing the boat that it truly believes that there is a crisis around every corner. In SWP education, every tale of the failure of revolution is a tale of the failure of the revolutionary party. So, no, I don't think it's as simple as that.

 

[gurrier]

I'm not equating marxism and leninism, just saying that the two share a common problem of accepting the writings of their guru as a whole without factoring out the useless or disproven stuff. You can sort of see it from the fact that both ideological strains are named after their founders!

I don't think that Bakuninism would be any less problematic. Although, thankfully I don't think that there are many of them around

I also think that there is much in Marxism that is useful - primarily the analysis of capitalism and class society. Unfortunately it is pretty useless when it comes to the question of what to do about it.

 

[Red Cat]

However, I do think that, beyond the question of internal dynamics, Leninism is simply so flawed in its theoretical framework and so rigidly tied to this framework that we would all be better off if it simply died out.

Perhaps. Although what I was trying to say was that hierarchy and central control are not simply the product of theory and if we continue to look at all problems that beset the SWP as the results of misguided theory then we're not going to get very far.

1) The best (if not only) route to communism is for a vanguard party of the best and most conscious revolutionaries to sieze control of the state.

Really? I don't think its that prescriptive. The SWP hopes that the working class will create alternative organisations such as those that are created in general strikes and is primarily concerned with workers taking over the means of production, considered the real site of power, and developing alternative democratic stuctures there and in our communities . Taking over the state by a minority was forcibly the situation in Russia but to equate the politics of the Bolsheviks in 1917 and those of the SWP in 2004 doesn't make much sense really.

The real problem with the Marxist current of thought is that these theories were really little more than fads. Certainly there were some insights to be gained from them, but the rest of the world adopted the useful ideas and discarded the rest as science moved on. Unfortunately these fads were written down in the works of the Marxist gurus and thus accepted wholescale by their followers.

Not sure where you get this from really.

 

[sihhi]

SWP hopes that the working class will create alternative organisations such as those that are created in general strikes and is primarily concerned with workers taking over the means of production, considered the real site of power, and developing alternative democratic stuctures there and in our communities.

All very well- so why do you need an SWP at all?

 

[fanciful]

well it's not surprising you've no idea what to do if you think leninism consists of

"1) The best (if not only) route to communism is for a vanguard party of the best and most conscious revolutionaries to sieze control of the state.
2) Centralised planning and control leads to greater efficiency."

baloney!
lenin wrote a book explaining how communists needed to smash the state not seize control of it. and what's more he did it! in october 1917 remember?! he was most definitely not a blanquist.
second the idea that centralised planning is out of date is a joke, corporations today control more of the world than they ever have done. they all have extremely sophisticated central planning mechanisms.
the mistake you make, just like the swp, is to believe leninism is an organisational form for party organisation which is absolutely not the case. leninism is above all else a political method, whereby the revolutionaries fight to raise spontaneous struggle against capitalism to consicous struggle for socialism. lenin was very fluid about the organisational form of the party, it depended on conditions.
so fine reject the swp's bullshit version of leninism but please don't confuse it with the real thing, they have nothing in common and even the swp concede they oppose lenin's version of the party in loads of writings, which are commonly available. so there's no reason to persist with this elementary and quite fundamental error.

 

[Idris2002]

One problem with Leninism that's overlooked here is its disregard for the rule of law.

This may be justifiable in the conditions of despotism the original Bolsheviks faced, but it's intimately connected to the Leninist creation of brutal tyrannies in post-revolutionary situations.

I know anarchists tend to see law as nothing more than authoritarianism (correct me if I've got that one wrong) but law may still be necessary in the kind of decentralised co-operative post-capitalist society anarchists aspire to.

I say this because IMO law is what is necessary to regulate the social use of power - and I'm sceptical about the possibility or necessity of the abolition of power. Edit to add and as power will not disappear in the post-capitalist society (IMO) there will need to be some mechanism for regulating power - i.e. some form of the rule of law.

 

[Idris2002]

s
second the idea that centralised planning is out of date is a joke, corporations today control more of the world than they ever have done. they all have extremely sophisticated central planning mechanisms.
.

Maybe, but I doubt if it's equivalent to the kind of central planning mechanisms the 'degenerated workers states' possessed.

Those states did have impressive gains in productivity, true - but that was only in their early phase (when they were more likely to use terror to motivate workers) and those productivity gains were consistently weighted to very heavy industry and military production.

That meant a neglect of consumption for masses, and was probably the achille's heel of the eastern bloc regimes.

 

[Red Cat]

All very well- so why do you need an SWP at all?

I don't think I said that I, or we, need an SWP at all. My point is that the theory of a vanguard party isn't restricted to the idea of a minority of revolutionaries taking over the state. It does involve encouraging the development of class consciousness primarily through promoting the self-activity of the working class; the working class will produce its own leaders most of whom it is considered will pull potential revolutionary movements towards reformism, compromise and defeat. The role of the vanguard party is to counter this.

 

[sihhi]

One problem with Leninism that's overlooked here is its disregard for the rule of law.

Leninism does have laws.
At least Soviet Russia 1917-24 did

I know anarchists tend to see law as nothing more than authoritarianism (correct me if I've got that one wrong)

Only a few primitivists + individulaists probably

but law may still be necessary in the kind of decentralised co-operative post-capitalist society anarchists aspire to.

For sure- but the kind of law will be different
ie one that doesn't protect private property
+ a legal system based on correction not retribution

I think Rudolph Rocker wrote quite a bit about anarchism + law but I had to sell back books cos I was hard up for a while.

 

[sihhi]

the working class will produce its own leaders most of whom it is considered will pull potential revolutionary movements towards reformism, compromise and defeat.

Sorry for misunderstanding.
This above is the step I don't get why are vanguards necessarily any better ?

 

[Idris2002]

Yes, but the power of Lenin was above the law, was it not?

As for anarchism and law, well I'm going by the remarks of anarchist historian of science I share an office with.

I think Rudolph Rocker wrote quite a bit about anarchism + law

Great, as if I didn't have enough to read already.


Thanks for the tip.







(as the prostitute said to the leper)

 

[butchersapron]

No, I think that the SWP is so afraid of missing the boat that it truly believes that there is a crisis around every corner. In SWP education, every tale of the failure of revolution is a tale of the failure of the revolutionary party. So, no, I don't think it's as simple as that.

That's a failure of trotskyism full stop - it's always 'the crisis of leadership' - never anything else - a reason for the general redundancy of trot historical analysis - you already know what conclusion they're going to draw, not matter what the objective conditions.

But i really do see the parallels between what i've outlined happened in the Labour Party and the behaviour of the directing bodies of the SWP towards younger and less experienced members. The core directing what others should do - vanguardists would argue that this is essential, i would argue it merely replicates capitalist forms of organisation.

 

[butchersapron]

I wouldn't suggest that myself, as you know.

But I think gurrier's seeming equation of Leninism with Marxism is problematic - there's plenty in the latter which I would argue is of use to us.....

Yep, that's fair enough - i had actually missed the 'marxism' bit - and just assumed it was referring to leninism and it paltry epigones...

edit:but as Gurriers points out, he wasn't, he makes the necessary distinction.

 

[gurrier]

lenin wrote a book explaining how communists needed to smash the state not seize control of it. and what's more he did it! in october 1917 remember?!

I don't see any point in debating with somebody who is so obviously cut off from reality, so I'll content myself with mocking you.

How would you describe the body that set up and ran the red army, the secret police, that dismantled the soviets and that imposed one man management? Would you call it:
a) A state
b) A tortoise
c) An elephant
d) A football team

You can phone a friend.

second the idea that centralised planning is out of date is a joke, corporations today control more of the world than they ever have done. they all have extremely sophisticated central planning mechanisms.

Your knowledge of management science is obviously not too hot. I was talking about Taylorism, not the concept of centralised planning per se.

Trends over the last 100 years in management science have all been about allowing centralised planning to dictate broad goals (eg. focus on industry x and spin off peripheral industries) while leaving the details of the implementation to lower and decentralised echelons. The other major plank is the psychological task of obscuring the fact that, although workers have some input into implementation, they have none into the definition of broad goals.

There is also the fact that corporations are unbelievably inefficient organisations and their lack of efficiency is strongly corelated with the level of centralisation.

leninism is above all else a political method, whereby the revolutionaries fight to raise spontaneous struggle against capitalism to consicous struggle for socialism. lenin was very fluid about the organisational form of the party, it depended on conditions.

Once again, I find it difficult to argue with people who ignore the wealth of real experimental evidence that history furnishes us with and argue on the basis of the opportunistic twists and turns of Lenin's rhetoric. In 20 years time, after they have been banished finally to the dustbin of history, there will probably be guillible fools who harp on about the SWP and insist that they were into socialism from below - 'look they actually wrote it in this pamphlet, it must be true'. Take your head out of your arse and have a look at the practice of pretty much every single Leninist organisation ever and don't quote me their bullshit rhetoric.

 

[Idris2002]

Thing is, Marx seems to have seen himself as a guru, alright, and consistently displayed an intolerant streak a mile wide.

Though he would no doubt have described it as 'not suffering fools gladly'.

 

[butchersapron]

One problem with Leninism that's overlooked here is its disregard for the rule of law.

This may be justifiable in the conditions of despotism the original Bolsheviks faced, but it's intimately connected to the Leninist creation of brutal tyrannies in post-revolutionary situations.

I know anarchists tend to see law as nothing more than authoritarianism (correct me if I've got that one wrong) but law may still be necessary in the kind of decentralised co-operative post-capitalist society anarchists aspire to.

I say this because IMO law is what is necessary to regulate the social use of power - and I'm sceptical about the possibility or necessity of the abolition of power. Edit to add and as power will not disappear in the post-capitalist society (IMO) there will need to be some mechanism for regulating power - i.e. some form of the rule of law.

I'd say a proper understanding of the marxist concept of 'production' of law (as we understand the latter term) has to start from the same positions as a materialist analysis of history/society - as subject to the same general trends as wider society and as a transistory phase based on a specific set of material conditions (capitalist society - the rule of abstract universal law). See Evgeny Pashukanis' The General Theory of Law and Marxism ( which essentialy argues that there would not and could not be law in a communist society. (A much neglected area other than specialists in soviet law)

 

[Idris2002]

And Marx, and Marxists after him saw a pattern in human history which they thought would ultimately culminate in the revival of the 'communism' of primitive society, except on the basis of far more advanced technology.

Thing is, I don't think that 'primitive communism' ever existed, and I think a communist future of that sort (without private property, political power, or law) is feasible.

 

[butchersapron]

Thing is, Marx seems to have seen himself as a guru, alright, and consistently displayed an intolerant streak a mile wide.

Though he would no doubt have described it as 'not suffering fools gladly'.

True. So did Bakunin. Beware leaders.

 

[butchersapron]

And Marx, and Marxists after him saw a pattern in human history which they thought would ultimately culminate in the revival of the 'communism' of primitive society, except on the basis of far more advanced technology.

Thing is, I don't think that 'primitive communism' ever existed, and I think a communist future of that sort (without private property, political power, or law) is feasible.

Don't think so, Marx saw the potential for communism to exist - only the vulgar orthodox marxists elevated this to the level of a teleology - helped, i must admit by some really crass stuff by Marx - esp the 'preface to'... but totally outwieghed by his other stuff.

 

[Red Cat]

That's a failure of trotskyism full stop - it's always 'the crisis of leadership' - never anything else - a reason for the general redundancy of trot historical analysis - you already know what conclusion they're going to draw, not matter what the objective conditions.

Yes.

But i really do see the parallels between what i've outlined happened in the Labour Party and the behaviour of the directing bodies of the SWP towards younger and less experienced members. The core directing what others should do - vanguardists would argue that this is essential, i would argue it merely replicates capitalist forms of organisation.

I think there are parallels in the behaviour, I'm just not sure to what extent this is deliberate, conscious. As for the vanguardists merely replicating capitalist organisation..they certainly replicate capitalist forms of organisation, that is their aim. Personally, I don't know what kind of organisation we need, or rather how we can organise without replicating those structures and methods.

 

[sihhi]

Basically Rocker is a strong believer in the idea of people are naturally good + that freedom will help reduce thuggery

Only in freedom does there arise in man the consciousness of responsibility for his acts and regard for the rights of others; only in freedom can there unfold in its full strength that most precious social instinct: man's sympathy for the joys and sorrows of his fellow men and the resultant impulse toward mutual aid in which are rooted all social ethics, all ideas of social justice

Rocker saw it as more and more people are directly involved in controlling their lives the desire for co-operation + benevolent vigilance will outweigh the desire for things that go against people's natural inclinations

 

[gurrier]

My point is that the theory of a vanguard party isn't restricted to the idea of a minority of revolutionaries taking over the state. It does involve encouraging the development of class consciousness primarily through promoting the self-activity of the working class; the working class will produce its own leaders most of whom it is considered will pull potential revolutionary movements towards reformism, compromise and defeat. The role of the vanguard party is to counter this.

You're either being dishonest here or you don't understand what Leninism is. This definition is not only common to all marxists, it is also equally applicable to virtually all anarchist organisations.

What makes Leninism distinct is how you "counter this". Anarchists hold that you do it through 'winning the battle of ideas'. Leninists hold that you also do it by winning the leadership positions. In practice, the fight for positions always wins out over the fight for ideas - it's easier.

 

[sihhi]

Don't think so, Marx saw the potential for communism to exist - only the vulgar orthodox marxists elevated this to the level of a teleology - helped, i must admit by some really crass stuff by Marx - esp the 'preface to'... but totally outwieghed by his other stuff.

the only thing that doesn't fit in is Marxist economic crisis theory
afai it seems to suggest capitalism with competing private firms will HAVE to be replaced with something