Well it was a call for people to join the IWCA. The IWCA has been an almost complete failure. It has had zero effect on the growth of the BNP and remains just another small left academic group with no significant political impact.
Filling the Vacuum 1995
- Thread starter durruti02
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Well it was a call for people to join the IWCA. The IWCA has been an almost complete failure. It has had zero effect on the growth of the BNP and remains just another small left academic group with no significant political impact.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes, it was call for people to set up/form IWCA grouops - i ask again:
Is the analysis of what would happen correct? That a large gap would open up to the left of labour that would be filled by people like the BNP if we didn't organise?
Is the analysis of what would happen correct? That a large gap would open up to the left of labour that would be filled by people like the BNP if we didn't organise?
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Is this only experienced and resisted in the work place or more specifically the factory? If not then what should a pro-working class response be?
Louis MacNeice
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I note he says 'system' but runs away from the full meaning of that specific term.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Was the analysis precient regarding the trajectory of mainstream politics and what a failure of the left would mean?
Louis MacNeice
At that time i remember lots of freaky lefties including the IWCA founders were saying that within 2 years of a Labour govt people would become disillusioned and that would mean more chances for them and also the far right.
None of them got it totally right.
The IWCA did try and get organised but what did they really have to offer anybody. Just another social club for lonely and confused people who needed a bit of a political fix....
What impact could they have had? What impact have they had?
The idea that the left has things to learn from the likes of how the BNP has operated is interesting. So why do you think in the North west (from what the article rightly says was a very low base) the BNP have been so much more succesful than the IWCA?
Why do you think that the IWCA have fewer members than they started with?
Is it all somebody elses fault? Or do you think the fault might actually have something to do with the IWCAs politics?
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Rather than your post-RA bile could you give some sources to back up your assertions, that is if it was meant to be an answer to my question.
Louis MacNeice
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
balders, you can try and make this about the IWCA if you like - fair enough, no problem with that - but at least answer what i've asked you twice now.
You're missing an important bit here - not the response to the changing situation but the changing situation itself.
And on that unsupported claim of yours - w/c support for labour did drop off within a few years of late 97. Have a look at the voting returns from 97 onwards.
You're missing an important bit here - not the response to the changing situation but the changing situation itself.
And on that unsupported claim of yours - w/c support for labour did drop off within a few years of late 97. Have a look at the voting returns from 97 onwards.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
I don't think this is too diificult to grasp: 'was the analysis precient regarding the trajectory of mainstream politics and what a failure of the left would mean?'
The other thing I'm asking for is that when you do reply it is with more than unsupported personal memory and opinion.
Louis MacNeice
1 I thought id answered that. Lots of freaky lefties were saying preety much the same thing at the time.
2 Why?
What do you want me to waste time trying to find something that i can link to? Why would would i bother? You probably remember just as clearly as i do.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
1. Much more of a quick opinion than answer.
2. Why? Because otherwise it's just you spouting off. As it's you making the particular assertion, it seems reasonable to expect you to back it up with som substance if you want it to be taken seriously.
If it helps just focus on whether or not the document's projection of the lefts' and the BNP's potential futures looks at all familiar.
Louis MacNeice
Das Uberdog
remembers the alamo
The workplace, obviously. And a pro-working class response is to engage with the organic and spontaneous outbursts of working-class anger and activity, and try to give them a direction and purpose (the role of the party). This is often difficult, especially in a period of low struggle (such as now) which is why the left needs to figure out how it can totally reinvent itself, culturally, in order to re-engage with broader society.
But that doesn't mean parochialising your politics.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
You clearly haven't understood the question; at least I'm hoping that's the case! Put it another way is class as a set of more or less determining relationships only experienced in the workplace? If the answer is no then how might we respond to those other experiences?
Louis MacNeice
Udo Erasmus
Well-Known Member
Working class resistance should take place in every sphere of life, but obviously because of the way capitalism is structured workplace organisation is very important to building a powerful resistance movement, as a place where workers (when organised) have immense power. But one of the things activists and socialists need to do, is make workplace struggle bigger than immediate bread and butter issues and give it a dose of 'social revolution' spirit that takes up the bigger picture whether it is globalisation, building links with groups who experience racism, imperialist war, and the wider and deeper social issues.
Cl@ss consciousness is created by struggle.
I think we could take our cue from EP Thomspon (adding 'and women' whever he says 'men' of course)
class happens when some men, as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel and articulate the identity of their interests as between themselves, and as against other men whose interests are different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class experience is largely determined by the productive relations into which men are born--or enter involuntarily. Class-consciousness is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value-systems, ideas, and institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined, class-consciousness does not. We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in just the same way.
The decline and defeat of traditional forms of working class struggle, workers organisations such as unions, social democracy, tenants groups etc and the break up of communities and increased atomisation means that a sense of collective identity is on the backfoot, but struggle can recreate and create new traditions.
PS. Das Uberdog, you should check out EP Thompson's book on William Morris as I feel you have misread him, or even a recent one by SWP member Hassan Mahamadalie called 'Crossing the River of Fire' (one of the themes of Thompson was that Morris 'crossed a river of fire' from romanticism into socialism via meeting mass working class movements)
Udo Erasmus
Well-Known Member
Just on an aside, I heard Paul Mason speak awhile back on the Paris Commune and he made an interesting (but not expanded upon) point that the Paris Commune in someways was a more relevant revolutionary model today than the subsequent marxist tradition, being a community movement. Not sure entirely what he was getting at, but it sounded like it could have been an interesting train of thought to explore more. There seemed to be an affinity between what he was alluding to and Murray Bookchin's meditations on the Commune as a urban movement.
To Louis MacNeice: It appears to me that movements like a growing trade union militancy, factory occupations linked to occupations of schools and other places that are being closed down will strengthen a wider community movement. That workplace organisation can give backbone to community organisation and make it stronger. Trade unions can support stuff like unemployed workers groups, and we could have a political trade unionism where trade unions begin to take a bigger role in community stuff and create some of the old self-help networks for working class people whether it is credit unions, co-ops etc.
To Das Uberdog: Traditionally, there was a certain area of politics that was filled by the Labour Party, the far left didn't bother trying to occupy that terrain and got on with organising in other areas. Some good Labour councillors were genuinely respected by working class people and were to borrow Michael Lavalette's phrase 'community shop stewards', it seems that the far left is not so rooted in local communities and quite often orientates towards a university group, a town meeting and stall in the city centre, visiting strikes to sell papers without becoming well known figures in local wards and communities.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
how on earth else do you make the primal, straight-to-the-heart connection with the ordinary, non-politicised working class people who have spent the last 50 years blowing a collective raspberry at your lot in the Socialist Burqas Party than by talking about the politics of Community, of the broken drain, and then helping them make the linkage themselves, and in their own way, to the wider class struggle.
To Udo re; last para, last post. I'd add 'and putting down roots'. after 'becoming well-known', fwiw.
Streathamite
ideological dogmatist
ermm, doesn't that leave us all buggered, seeing that class consciousness has never been m0ore fragile than today, and class boundaries never been more difficult to define?
except community spirit BREEDS class consciousness
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Has anyone unconnected with the debates around this doc and the initiatives that came from it read it? What do you think?
Das Uberdog
remembers the alamo
treelover said:
Exactly. I'd go as far as to say that by themselves they never will be.
Udo said:
Of course they were - the Labour Party used to be a genuine workers' party in many areas of the country, with real ambitions towards working-class democracy. But if we're taking Lavalette's tactics in Preston as an example, a community based Councillorship focussing on the dribs and drabs of day-to-day activity in Town Centre ward not only managed to lose sight of the broader political purpose of an electoral movement, but also leave a hollowed out husk of an SWP branch which was at various periods one of the largest and most active in the country outside London. In part that's because the party didn't have the resources to keep ploughing back into election campaigns, ward leafletting, canvassing and surgeries necessary to make it any better than Labour. Maybe that's precisely the point - the Old Left could afford to start moving on the day-to-day living issues of w/c people, in a political context where there was already a mass labour movement, they had mass popular support and a mass membership and activist base. None of these factors still exists in any real political sense today. What's more, the party hasn't retained a single-activist it gained through that activity, whilst spending several.
None of this left activity is explicitly bad in and of itself, but submerging yourself in community politics can't help but leave the bigger issues of exploitation, war, political corruption and the generalised brutality of capitalism overlooked.
Streathamite said:
Only insofar as workplace politics is brought back into the realm of the community - not the other way around (though this is far from some kind of 'absolute' scientific rule, it's because of mass workplaces rather than 'communities' that any modern semblence of 'class consciousness' developed. We've always had communities - class-politics is relatively new). Communities themselves breed all kinds of reactionary bile, and their fetishisation leads ultimately to all kinds of frankly unaspirational and narrow minded politics. In the presence of class-politics, communities are a useful mode through which political action can be developed and acted upon and w/c support networks created. In the absence of class-politics, they're more likely to be reactionary small-minded enclaves of curtain-twitching bigotry and unaccountable social tyranny. In the absence of both, the left shouldn't confound itself by reducing its overrall focus to the level of individuated interactions between people in small geographical areas.
It's not a satisfying or immediate response, but I do think that any left-wing movement needs a serious analysis of society writ-large before it stands any chance of engaging with its intended audience on any effective level; of tatically prioritising its campaigning effectively and of suggesting a plausable and realistic vision of a worker-lead society. Such an analysis - of modern class in Europe, of the global movement of capital, of the nature and structure of international movements - has yet to be seen in any generalised way. Nor is there anywhere near enough time being devoted to it's creation. Instead we fall back on the same old sloganeering from the days of yore and go 'round in circles again and again, Malthus styleee.
Working out how to re-engage with class may not be easy, it's just necessary.
It's not about merely 'responding' to your objective situation, it's about deciding upon your goal and figuring how to get to it. Reverting all political resources into 'community building' is such a massive reaction (in the purest sense of the word) to the broader decline of the left that there's no way it can ever be a tactic capable of retrieving us from the mire.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
alll that and still brought
Piss taking aside, thank you for engaging with the thread and the question.
Piss taking aside, thank you for engaging with the thread and the question.
tommy .. ok i understand your legitimate prejudice re the authors of this doc, and i see that their often arrogent bullshit shines thru this as much as most things they have done BUT .. tell me they were wrong re the move in british politics and tell me they were wrong to suggest what they did
( we do not need to know that yes IWCA has generally been a failure .. we KNOW that .. and you and me have suspicions why )
.. but honestly i think they were spot on with their analysis and solution
couple of key paras there
"Fascism is the vanguard of reaction. It is at once the manifestation, the contributory cause and principle beneficiary of society's decomposition. Unlike the rest of the anti-racist Left, AFA's emphasis has always been on the political danger represented by fascism, while others such as Searchlight and the ANL have laid the emphasis on their violent and criminal tendencies. In addition they refuse or are unwilling to recognise that anti-fascism is by definition a rearguard action and that fascism is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the Left's failure. Inevitably the strategies adopted to combat fascism carry with them the germs of the strategies that caused fascism, invariably leading to compound failure. So while it cannot be denied that the ANL's media campaign focused public attention on the problem, it also proved to be a distraction in regard to the solution.
AFA has long recognised that once the Far-Right is allowed to mobilise, is allowed to set the agenda, and has passed a certain point, they begin to control their own destinies - and their opponent's. Once that point is reached it would be useless and possibly counter-productive to rely upon a purely anti-fascist stance, primarily because people look to politics for solutions. It might be clear what you stand against, though their understanding of what you stand for will effectively determine their overall response.
As the activities of the ANL on the Isle of Dogs demonstrated (despite blanket canvassing the BNP vote actually rose by 30%), an anti-fascist message on its own would find little favour with working class people, even those repelled by the BNP, if they suspected that it was simply a spoiling tactic, carried out by allies of the local Labour establishment in an effort to maintain the status quo. AFA has never fought to maintain the status quo, but, even at their most effective, anti*fascist militants can never hope to achieve anything more than to maintain that vacuum. There is little doubt that the vacuum has been successfully maintained but now, in the absence of any other suitable candidates, it is incumbent on the anti-fascist militants to help fill the vacuum themselves."
"Fascism is the vanguard of reaction. It is at once the manifestation, the contributory cause and principle beneficiary of society's decomposition. Unlike the rest of the anti-racist Left, AFA's emphasis has always been on the political danger represented by fascism, while others such as Searchlight and the ANL have laid the emphasis on their violent and criminal tendencies. In addition they refuse or are unwilling to recognise that anti-fascism is by definition a rearguard action and that fascism is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the Left's failure. Inevitably the strategies adopted to combat fascism carry with them the germs of the strategies that caused fascism, invariably leading to compound failure. So while it cannot be denied that the ANL's media campaign focused public attention on the problem, it also proved to be a distraction in regard to the solution.
AFA has long recognised that once the Far-Right is allowed to mobilise, is allowed to set the agenda, and has passed a certain point, they begin to control their own destinies - and their opponent's. Once that point is reached it would be useless and possibly counter-productive to rely upon a purely anti-fascist stance, primarily because people look to politics for solutions. It might be clear what you stand against, though their understanding of what you stand for will effectively determine their overall response.
As the activities of the ANL on the Isle of Dogs demonstrated (despite blanket canvassing the BNP vote actually rose by 30%), an anti-fascist message on its own would find little favour with working class people, even those repelled by the BNP, if they suspected that it was simply a spoiling tactic, carried out by allies of the local Labour establishment in an effort to maintain the status quo. AFA has never fought to maintain the status quo, but, even at their most effective, anti*fascist militants can never hope to achieve anything more than to maintain that vacuum. There is little doubt that the vacuum has been successfully maintained but now, in the absence of any other suitable candidates, it is incumbent on the anti-fascist militants to help fill the vacuum themselves."
But if there solution was right, why were they so unsuccesful?
And as for their erm er wht passes as analysis what is so great about that...If i remember correctly at the last 3 elections i said if Labour dont win the Tories will....Am i a visionary genius? I mean i know that i have made that claim on a few occasions.
The usefulness of what the IWCA is limited not not non existent..You know G is no guru but hes no fool either. Butchers and Louis may assume i dislike him. But i never disliked him but neither did i put him on any kind of pedestal. Some of what he used to say was spot on some of it was really not....
He was always far too dogmatic for his own good.
Udo Erasmus
Well-Known Member
just on a tangent relating to Das U's post. One of the things many have noted was how the SWP initially missed the boat on the Poll Tax rebellion, they thought that trade union action would be decisive (ie a rebellion by council unions and those processing the system) and it was Militant who seized the initiative. One of the key things about the Poll Tax it seems to me was that it was opposed by a community movement that got more down into the class - this was partly because of the nature of the beast that was being fought, a tax introduced that effected all working class people. It's possible that CREDIT CRUNCH FIGHTBACK methods of resistance not based strictly in the workplace might emerge. Community resistance to evictions, for example, or action around supermarket prices etc., or the occupations of schools we have seen. One can imagine a return of squatting as a mass tactic etc,.
Interesting on Preston, how are things going with the collapse of Respect nationally? I wonder if this is partly a new line being put by the national leadership on the remaining enclaves with the change of tactic/strategy? I think generally stepping back from electioneering has enabled the organisation to respond better to the economic crisis than if they were submerged in the electoral game.
On the subject of community campaigns, there is the danger of lefty activists liquidating themselves into worthy local issues, but almost liquidating themselves into it & not building the left. I have seen the Socialist Party do stuff around a local hospital where they've got a lot of credibility, but it doesn't seem to have expanded them as an organisation & they almost seem to narrowly focus on the immediate issues with out creating more political generalisation. Of course, there are many local campaigns that are worthwhile in themselves, but small organisations can't cover everything and have to prioritise.
Interesting on Preston, how are things going with the collapse of Respect nationally? I wonder if this is partly a new line being put by the national leadership on the remaining enclaves with the change of tactic/strategy? I think generally stepping back from electioneering has enabled the organisation to respond better to the economic crisis than if they were submerged in the electoral game.
On the subject of community campaigns, there is the danger of lefty activists liquidating themselves into worthy local issues, but almost liquidating themselves into it & not building the left. I have seen the Socialist Party do stuff around a local hospital where they've got a lot of credibility, but it doesn't seem to have expanded them as an organisation & they almost seem to narrowly focus on the immediate issues with out creating more political generalisation. Of course, there are many local campaigns that are worthwhile in themselves, but small organisations can't cover everything and have to prioritise.
Das Uberdog
remembers the alamo
I'm well out of Preston now, but as far as I can tell there's been no expansion or movement at all since I left. There are some very good and slowly expanding branches in the NW (like Wigan), but almost everywhere put quite alot of emphasis upon electioneering since Respect and as a result lost most of the basis of their activity.
Interestingly, Wigan as a branch was pretty much built on the back of the JJB disputes a couple years back, and it's one of the former strikers who's now pretty much the most active and organised members. When I was last there, he was pretty much fulfilling the role of a full-timer, AND THEN SOME.
wrt the Socialist Party on hospital campaigns, I can safely say it's the same I've seen everywhere that the left has got too involved in local community politics. Anti-academy stuff has a similar effect. Exhausting, and in the long-run unprofitable.
Interestingly, Wigan as a branch was pretty much built on the back of the JJB disputes a couple years back, and it's one of the former strikers who's now pretty much the most active and organised members. When I was last there, he was pretty much fulfilling the role of a full-timer, AND THEN SOME.
wrt the Socialist Party on hospital campaigns, I can safely say it's the same I've seen everywhere that the left has got too involved in local community politics. Anti-academy stuff has a similar effect. Exhausting, and in the long-run unprofitable.
crucial question .."why were they so unsuccesful?" .. for me it is that our society and particulalry the left is dominated by a way of thinking that is deeply submissive and authoritarian. while many 'judeo-christian' ideas ( which are what dominate ours society still) are very progressive ( do unto others etc) there are also deeply ingrained subconcious 'need' to be told what to do, to follow, the need for a leader ('father' ) and for a faith that explains all. And in the terms of much of the the left the idea, ( compare the nutty left with palestinian cults of 2000 years ago .. ) that it is good to be a tiny minority, it is good to be rejected, to be exiled, to be seperate are identical etc
if you or anyone else has not read both Whilhelm Reichs The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Mauruice Brinton's The Irrational in Politics please do asap!
" .. an attempt to analyse the various mechanisms whereby modern society manipulates its slaves into accepting their slavery and - at least in the short term - seems to succeed. It does not deal with 'police' and 'jails' as ordinarily conceived but with those internalised patterns of repression and coercion, and with those intellectual prisons in which the 'mass individual' is today entrapped..." http://www.uncarved.org/pol/irat.html
So there is a deep seated inability of people to get involved in the political process, increased by what people see as the failure of the Left to engage with them and vitally to actually win anything.
So it seems entirely logical that we construct a politics that both engages with local people and can win things however small, and in any small way breaks down this subservient mindset.
BUT it is not working .. so yes a contradiction ..
so 1) do we blame those implementing the strategy? to an extent yes .. while i think IWCA is a massive theoretical political development for w/c british politics those in charge remained as authoritarian and centrist as those they had split from .. but did HI a 'libertarian' ( for want of a better description) split from IWCA do much better? no
2) we could blame ( from an @ perspective) an overemphaise on elections that creates a leader follower / tick a box every4 years mentality .. IWCA got amazing votes but failed to create a strong community organisation
3) so we can blame the mind set of society and those seeking to change it, for not getting involved .. but that tells us no answer
personally (with my Zealot hat on
) think that historically speaking this strategy is still young and still needs to be implemented properly .. it has only existed in reality in 4 areas, Oxford, Haggerston, Harold Hill and Islington. In each of these areas it has pulled votes on a revolutionary (yes it is ) platfrom of 'working class control in working class areas' at a level the left generally can only dream of. but maybe it needs something to shatter the mindset .. i have argued on these threads against what i call 'crisis politics' as i think ( and history generally shows) that change arising from crisis is not progressive .. so i do not have faith that the space crisis offers is in any way a guarantee we can suceed ..
and i accept some of what Uberdog says .. that radical localism' is very slow, very triring and does not always generalise ( though i utterly reject the idea that localism is reactionary)
so what i think is needed is a more generalised politics associated with radical community politics .. so one that states that we start at the base, one that states explicitly that all decisions should be made at the base, and one that is based utterly on honesty and empowerment
if we look at teh news day in day out, if we look at the issues the Daily Mail and the BNP raise, if we listen to Talksport and Gaunt and Ferrari, we hear the same refrain over and over .. a loss of power ... from w/c people who once had trade unions that had a standing invitation to No 10, from m/c people who once thought the had an influence and no realise that the market controls everything .. it is in this area around power that i think we can win .. the BNP is fascist .. and however much the left protest it, the leninists amongst them are hamstrung by the truth that their 'bolshevism' is little differrent in terms of power
IWCA deserve full marks for starting the path to a more 'democratic' politics based on giving power ( back) to people .. all of us need to take that on
btw tommy i though your thing was revolutionary reformism .. surely this is what IWCA is??
I think you put your finger on it durruti (as so to speak eeek)
The authoritarian nature of the IWCA leadeship really doomed it from the start. Its no co-incidence probably where a group fairly independent of the leadership emerged (Oxford) it became the only real succes of note.
The further away the Left gets from dogmatic leadership the better its prospects.
Hackney independents lack of success too is of interest. You would have thought given the nature of Hackney and how awful the local council is thatprospects would be good. But an isolated small local group can only have limited success. The BNP grew by targetting small local areas to start with but they had activists bussed in from much further afield campaigning. I know when the IWCA started they copied this tactic.
I do think there are prospects for a new left group now not too dissimilar to the IWCA but you need a much less stupid name and no dogmatic leaders.
The authoritarian nature of the IWCA leadeship really doomed it from the start. Its no co-incidence probably where a group fairly independent of the leadership emerged (Oxford) it became the only real succes of note.
The further away the Left gets from dogmatic leadership the better its prospects.
Hackney independents lack of success too is of interest. You would have thought given the nature of Hackney and how awful the local council is thatprospects would be good. But an isolated small local group can only have limited success. The BNP grew by targetting small local areas to start with but they had activists bussed in from much further afield campaigning. I know when the IWCA started they copied this tactic.
I do think there are prospects for a new left group now not too dissimilar to the IWCA but you need a much less stupid name and no dogmatic leaders.
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