Jeff Robinson
Marxist-Lentilist: Jackboots and Jackfruit
Permanent exile to Siberia.
Are you a marxist but not a member of a marxist organisation?
- Thread starter hitmouse
- Start date
Permanent exile to Siberia.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
To the Arctic death camps of Kolyma
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Just read the introduction. Very interesting. I don't disagree with the political analysis, putting Kronstadt in the context of the systematic suppression of independent workers and peasants organisations and the growth of a repressive state. I'm less sure about the insistence this was state capitalism. I have no training in economics but this seems to be a way of getting around the idea that "socialism" (in some form or other) can go badly wrong. The only state capitalist theory (in relation to the Soviet Union and later eastern Europe) I'm familiar with is Tony Cliff's and I think it's less than convincing.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Not long after the implosion I remember listening to Cliff Slaughter at a public meeting of one of the fragments. He gave an erudite talk on aspects of Marxist economic theory, as though oblivious to the decades of sexual abuse he'd ignored while being one of Healy's most loyal lieutenants. I was a Spart at the time, and a very senior "comrade" who accompanied me to the meeting remarked upon what a great experience it had been to listen to Slaughter, a legend of the Trotskyist movement. You really couldn't make this stuff up.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Christ, I knew the WRP had some grim history with middle eastern regimes, but don't think I'd known the bit about the WRP voting to approve of the execution of a guy who'd been a visitor to a conference they organised, that's pretty fucking horrific.As a wildly promiscuous user of forums, I have been putting it about on Libcom recently and have uploaded a few pieces on the remarkably wretched Workers Revolutionary Party and its implosion in the mid-80s:
57th Variety Act - Robin Blick
Few people have noted the spectacular split in the Workers' Revolutionary Party as more than a diverting entertainment. We invited two ex-members of the WRP's forerunner, the Socialist Labour League, to comment on the show. Below, Robin Blick casts an experienced eye backstage, while Ken Weller...libcom.org
WRP: The Party's Over – Ken Weller
Solidarity member Ken Weller reviews the new Workers Revoutionary Party chorus line and finds it parading the same feet of clay.
Revolution betrayed - the Workers Revolutionary Party and Iraq
Two articles from Solidarity on corruption in the Workers Revolutionary Party and its links with Saddam Hussein and other Middle Eastern governments.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
They approved of the execution of more than 20 people, including one who had attended their conference. It was public knowledge in the 80s.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Anarchists were long before referring to it as state capitalism, before Tony Cliff latched onto it.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I'm half expecting someone to join the thread and say, "I was a member of the WRP for 10 years and it was just fine. Maybe the vote endorsing the executions was a mistake but Gerry Healy was a good person really, the girls just loved him."
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
This is true, I just don't find the idea that the Soviet Union and eastern Europe were capitalist particularly plausible.
Dom Traynor
Tino Pai
Corin and Venessa?I'm half expecting someone to join the thread and say, "I was a member of the WRP for 10 years and it was just fine. Maybe the vote endorsing the executions was a mistake but Gerry Healy was a good person really, the girls just loved him."
Kevbad the Bad
Amiable Bowel Syndrome
Well I used to know a bus driver in Croydon who had been in the Socialist Labour League ( a fore-runner of the WRP), a whole bunch of people in Oxford who were in the libertarian socialist Solidarity (originally a spin-off from the SLL) and a couple of people in the Workers Socialist League (a split from the WRP). They were all nice people. Oh yes, and a bloke in the first shared-house I lived in who slept in the garage. He was in the WRP for a while too.I'm half expecting someone to join the thread and say, "I was a member of the WRP for 10 years and it was just fine. Maybe the vote endorsing the executions was a mistake but Gerry Healy was a good person really, the girls just loved him."
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Back in the 1970s a friend of mine was arrested on an antifascist demo. The case went to court and I was in the public gallery along with a few other friends. When the jury was selected I thought I recognised one of them, a dark haired young man. Well, the dark haired young man became the foremen of the jury and as the jury filed back in after its deliberations he looked over at us and winked. And then I realised he was Simon Pirani, the WRP youth organiser. The verdict was not guilty - very unusual and almost certainly down to Pirani.
The WRP was relatively big (about 3,000 members in the 70s and 80s) and internally (as far as I can gather) quite loose. I think their trade unionists were allowed to get on with their work without much interference from the organisation (in contrast to the IS/SWP). So you could be a member and quite distant from the atrocities - but that doesn't make the atrocities any less real. I only encountered Pirani once (apart from the trial) and he seemed nice enough, though as youth organiser he can't have been unaware of Healy's behaviour.
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I should just add, that in sects like the Sparts and the WRP you see how otherwise decent people will turn a blind eye to, go along with, or actively participate in cruel and abusive behaviour if they believe to do so somehow serves a higher cause, or if the cruelty seems merely incidental in the context of a struggle for something greater.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
I have met Simon Pirani a few times (and like and have plenty of time for him btw) and he is very critical of himself and the WRP and those years, and he's got some very interesting, self-critical, and reflective things to say about it. (He does lots of climate change stuff now, have posted an article by him recently on a thread about it on here.) I have met a few of the older WRP people that left, and they do liken it very much to a cult in how it operated with its members.
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The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Cliff had a theory ( wrote a book about it) , I'm aware that anarchists sometimes referred to the USSR as state capitalist but aside from a label was there a theoretical justification ever written?
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
The WRP had a number of decent trade unionists at one time who worked hard in the unions. You just had to avoid the more barmy side to them and keep off the the subject of Trotsky's death mask or the coming British military coup if you ended up in the pub with them.
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
The39thStep ...
If I'm not mistaken, it goes back to old Mickey Bakunin who predicted that some of Marx's ideas could well lead to a form of state capitalism. With the Soviet Union and bolshevism becoming the orthodoxy, this was pretty much the general understanding of the so called workers' state. I think Berkman talked about it, and Pestaña (who was CNT delegate to the Comintern) and many more.... charlie mowbray would probably know more.
If I'm not mistaken, it goes back to old Mickey Bakunin who predicted that some of Marx's ideas could well lead to a form of state capitalism. With the Soviet Union and bolshevism becoming the orthodoxy, this was pretty much the general understanding of the so called workers' state. I think Berkman talked about it, and Pestaña (who was CNT delegate to the Comintern) and many more.... charlie mowbray would probably know more.
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Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I only have two recollections of Pirani, both positive. One is the court case described above where he got a real result. My friend could have gone to prison if found guilty, he got off because of Pirani. I'd come across him a few weeks earlier at a WRP public meeting. I think he spoke (among others). At the end he ran up to me and a couple of friends, smiley and enthusiastic, with a few newspapers. Someone had a word in his ear and hauled him away. Somehow the WRP elders had figured out we were members of other left groups (I was in the IS, the others were in the IMG) and didn't want him to be contaminated. Kind of ridiculous because I would have talked to him. Not his fault at all though.
I hardly ever came across the WRP, they kept themselves away from the other Trot groups. My first real contact with Healyites was with the Workers Party, Royston Raging Bull's late seventies split, a Jehovah's Witness style group which went door to door with a poorly produced newsletter. They were deluded (as were we all) but not particularly unpleasant.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
This is Simon Pirani's account of the break up of the WRP - chilling stuff. Make of it what you will. The Break Up of the WRP
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The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Ah , Royston lived in Stockport but I never ever came across him in any campaign or dispute there
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Thanks, I'd not seen that. There's an interesting area for discussion where that attitude and cult-like behaviour bears resemblance to some of the anti-vax/covid conspiracy folks as well I think.
hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Yeah, Angry Workers have published a few things by ex-WRPers, like:
www.angryworkers.org
www.angryworkers.org
Some experiences of how not to organise and a more useful one - Angry Workers
Reflections on 50 years of political experience As AngryWorkers we are grappling with the question of how organisation relates to class struggle in a meaningful way. We line out some basic ideas in our new book ‘Class Power on Zero-Hours’. During a series of open discussion meetings in London we...
www.angryworkers.org
Wapping ’86 and beyond: How have class relations changed - Angry Workers
We hosted a discussion meeting with comrades who took part in the Wapping printer dispute. Below you can find the initial blurb, the recording of the meeting and a longer comment from a comrade about how class relations have changed since then.*** Blurb Wapping '86: 'Picket' Bulletin and the New...
www.angryworkers.org
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
Thanks for those articles. The problem is though, the more I read about the WRP and its collapse the more confused I get. As an example I've read the Aileen Jennings letter which purportedly broke the news of Healy's sexual abuse to the Political Committee. It's one of the most bizarre pieces of writing I've ever read:
-------------------------
June 30th 1985
To the Political Committee
During the course of action on the Manchester Area certain practices have come to light as to the running of Youth Training by a homosexual and the dangers this holds for the party in relation to police provocation. I believe the Political Committee was correct in stating that a cover-up of such practices endangered the Party from a serious provocation.
Having realised this I must therefore say to the Committee that I can no longer go on covering up a position at both the office and in the flats at 155 Clapham High Street which also opens the Party to police provocation; namely that whilst for 19 years I have been the close personal companion of Comrade Healy I have also covered up a problem which the Political Committee must now deal with because I cannot.
This is that the flats in particular are used in a completely opportunist way for sexual liaisons with female members employed by the Party on News Line, female members of the International Committee and others [26 individuals were then named].
On any security basis one of these or more has to be the basis of either blackmail by the police or an actual leak in security to a policewoman. I am asking the Political Committee to take steps to resolve the position for the Party in the present political situation.
In 1964, after the Control Commission of Investigation Comrade Healy gave an undertaking that he would cease these practices, this has not happened and I cannot sit on this volcano any longer.
Yours fraternally, Aileen Jennings
----------------------------------
Is this a coded message or did Aileen think Healy was just involved in opportunist sexual liaisons which may have posed a security threat? (And how about Youth Training being run by a homosexual??!!) Also note that Healy had been investigated for "these practices" in 1964, over 20 years earlier.
As far as I can tell this letter, rather than reveal anything new, gave Healy's enemies a rationale to launch an investigation into abusive practices they already knew about. It's hard to believe that Healy's abuse remained a deep, dark secret for over 20 years, at least at the level of the Political Committee - people like Mike Banda, Cliff Slaughter, Corin Redgrave etc. must surely have known what was going on in Healy's apartment.
Unlike you..
Carl Steele
Well-Known Member
I've spent some time looking at the WRP and Healy. Nobody is in any doubt that Healy was a thug, and worse. Here's what the Sparts said about him in Healyism Implodes:
"Healy is a thief and swindler, a totally shameless liar, a systematic and brutal bully, a drunkard, a braggart of founder-leader proportions. And he is a canting, puritanical, hypocritical bigot. Our own experiences with Healy were quite unsavory. We witnessed Healy extorting false confessions, glorying in slanders and lies, deliberately driving weak unfortunates into unprincipled positions ...
"... Over the years we have heard a good deal about the puritanical practices of the Healyites: Young Socialist summer camps patrolled by purity squads, for example. The whole bunch of them are manifestly virulent anti-homosexual bigots - witness the A. Jennings letter's hysteria over the idea that a homosexual had somehow slipped through and was carrying out party assignments among the youth. The Healyite organization has been a machine for degrading people ..."
But when it comes to the question of Healy's sexual abuse the tune changes:
"... For all the talk about sex, it is nevertheless not possible to determine if what was involved was brutal rape or consensual activity with young women or something in between."
And Sean Matgamna (ex SLL member now leader of the AWL) is much the same. The Sparts reprinted in full the response of Matgamna to the implosion of the WRP. He had the following to say:
"It is as certain as anything is that in that organisation sexual exploitation, and where necessary harassment, intimidation, or worse, would be part of the great leader's way of life. In one notorious case - I know the people involved - Healy beat up a woman comrade, a full-time organiser, because she wanted an abortion rather than to have his baby."
But then he says;
"... nevertheless it is also true that a considerable part of the ballyhoo against Healy's sexual antics is both frame-up and an appeal to backwardness. Insofar as anything was voluntary in the WRP, many of the 'harem 26' must have acted voluntarily."
Add into this the hardly credible insistence of those who eventually opposed Healy that nobody knew anything about Healy's sexual abuse until 1985 (an assertion challenged by the Thornett opposition expelled in 1974) and a pattern of denial is clear.
Very sad, disgusting actually, but inescapable.
"Healy is a thief and swindler, a totally shameless liar, a systematic and brutal bully, a drunkard, a braggart of founder-leader proportions. And he is a canting, puritanical, hypocritical bigot. Our own experiences with Healy were quite unsavory. We witnessed Healy extorting false confessions, glorying in slanders and lies, deliberately driving weak unfortunates into unprincipled positions ...
"... Over the years we have heard a good deal about the puritanical practices of the Healyites: Young Socialist summer camps patrolled by purity squads, for example. The whole bunch of them are manifestly virulent anti-homosexual bigots - witness the A. Jennings letter's hysteria over the idea that a homosexual had somehow slipped through and was carrying out party assignments among the youth. The Healyite organization has been a machine for degrading people ..."
But when it comes to the question of Healy's sexual abuse the tune changes:
"... For all the talk about sex, it is nevertheless not possible to determine if what was involved was brutal rape or consensual activity with young women or something in between."
And Sean Matgamna (ex SLL member now leader of the AWL) is much the same. The Sparts reprinted in full the response of Matgamna to the implosion of the WRP. He had the following to say:
"It is as certain as anything is that in that organisation sexual exploitation, and where necessary harassment, intimidation, or worse, would be part of the great leader's way of life. In one notorious case - I know the people involved - Healy beat up a woman comrade, a full-time organiser, because she wanted an abortion rather than to have his baby."
But then he says;
"... nevertheless it is also true that a considerable part of the ballyhoo against Healy's sexual antics is both frame-up and an appeal to backwardness. Insofar as anything was voluntary in the WRP, many of the 'harem 26' must have acted voluntarily."
Add into this the hardly credible insistence of those who eventually opposed Healy that nobody knew anything about Healy's sexual abuse until 1985 (an assertion challenged by the Thornett opposition expelled in 1974) and a pattern of denial is clear.
Very sad, disgusting actually, but inescapable.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
There were umpteen descriptions of 'state capitalism' before 1917 ever happened. Engels described a version back in Socialism, Scientific and Utopian, preceding Bakunin's notion that state socialism inevitably means state capitalism. The anarchist descriptions of the USSR mostly follow Bakunin, with some added specificity.
But that is quite distinct to what Cliff and indeed Lenin meant by State Capitalism. Lenin used the term before many of the anarchists did about the regime he led, specifically talking about the NEP and it's role in developing particular aspects of the economy (under the direction of the dictatorship of the proletariat) as an essential prelude to full workers control.
The anarchists (and to a large extent Raya Dunayeskaya, whose version of SC is also massively important and influential on the SWP's version) described SC overwhelmingly by means of the relations of production - crudely, the existence of bosses and workers - rather than the nature of, I'm really not sure how to put this, but of the laws of capital itself - the investment in capital itself, how the law of value operated. This may seem esoteric, or even pedantic, but it is central in what distinguishes capitalism from a similar but different oppressive society (as it is useful to distinguish between fascist regimes and reactionary ones, like Spain and Argentina).
Is it a massive distinction? Maybe not. The relations of production are the central aspect for working-class activists, but those more precise details guide us as to how we can oppose the existing order and just what it is that we need to change.
(I accidentally hit post too early on this and meant to make the second half of the second paragraph much clearer, I'll still try and do so if no one replies beforehand)
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hitmouse
so defeated, thinks it's funny
Is this related to the distinction between the Italian and the German-Dutch lot?
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