Must be demoralising being sat with such a bunch of cunts.
IWCA exasperated with mainstream politics
- Thread starter sihhi
- Start date
Must be demoralising being sat with such a bunch of cunts.
I haven't 'assessed what went on.' I have little idea of 'what went on.' What I have done is described the reasons why I think many of those sympathetic to the IWCA's approach but were isolated have generally found it difficult to take it any further than cheerleading on the internet.
The way Belboid is creaming himself over what he for some reason sees as the demise of the IWCA is striking. He seems to think it's the revenge of the dinosaurs.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
One_Stop_Shop
Well-Known Member
The end of the IWCA is no surprise really, it's been on the wane for ages now.
Don't really get the whole thing about IWCA supporters not being able to do much. Most political movements have existed in far harsher conditions than current day UK and generally workers have been in far harsher conditions. That didn't stop working class people getting involved and getting active.
Whatever the reasons the IWCA has failed to go beyond a couple of areas and now seems to be failing entirely. People might not like that fact, but obviously something different is needed.
Don't really get the whole thing about IWCA supporters not being able to do much. Most political movements have existed in far harsher conditions than current day UK and generally workers have been in far harsher conditions. That didn't stop working class people getting involved and getting active.
Whatever the reasons the IWCA has failed to go beyond a couple of areas and now seems to be failing entirely. People might not like that fact, but obviously something different is needed.
Nobody has said they're 'not able to do much.' I, and maybe one other person, has said that it's difficult to build something alone from scatch, without putting in a vast amount of time and energy that's required in other areas of your life. It's obviously different from joining a pre-existing group and simply going along and joining in whatever it is they do.
As for the rest of what you say-don't waste your summer praying in vain for a saviour to rise from these streets...
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
The basic problem with this discussion is that most contributions from IWCA supporters have been defensive and seriously short on analysis of what went wrong.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
It's the end of their involvement with electoral politics. However, it represents a further stage in the decline of the IWCA as a whole, with only a couple of "pilot schemes" still operating at all and no updates to any of their websites in a couple of years.
i.e. they haven't just made some belated and idiotic theoretical switch to anarchism. They are burned out on electoral politics.
One_Stop_Shop
Well-Known Member
Agree.
I suspect both.
But again there have been lots of situations in history where people have faced far harder surroundings and they have still built up working class resistance, often with no pre-existing groups. If the IWCA can't get people to build things from scratch then the method is obviously fundamentally flawed.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
The jury is still out. The issue that the cllrs in Oxford felt that they had had enough was actually made known last year.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Are you for real? this is probably one of the most lite posts I have come across on here.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
You must be quite a way up there in space to have such an insight. Meanwhile I am waiting to see if TSCU ,or whatvere the latest combination of words is ,matches the performance of the IWCA's track record ( despite the glaring flaws, lack of ideology, localist sub reformist agenda etc)
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
That's not true; 31/03/2010 is the most recent update I came across in a very quick search.
Louis MacNeice
Why are you seemingly incapable of grasping that it isn't necessarily the case that a single individual couldn't build anything from scratch, but that some individuals who happen to have posted in this thread, for specific reasons they have explained, felt themselves unable to, despite sympathising with the approach?
You seem to have been praying for the demise of the IWCA for some time. I suspect that this 'demise' is actually no more than wishful thinking on the part of some people on here.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
This is precisely the sort of defensive response I was talking about.
If you really want to get into a dick measuring contest, I'm more than willing to compare the electoral record of the small leftist party I'm in to that of the IWCA. We weren't very much bigger than the IWCA when it started out either.
But really, your post here reminds me of the knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who keeps spitting insults and challenges even after he's had his limbs cut off and is dying.
Louis MacNeice said:
Yes, you are correct. As far as I can tell, all of the local sites have disappeared except for the Oxford site, the Blackbird Leys site and the Islington site. The first two of that remnant haven't been updated in two years and a month, while the Islington site was last updated a year and two months ago.
The national site still puts up an article about once or twice a month, mostly commentary on mainstream articles. The last reference I can find on it to the IWCA itself doing anything (organising a football tournament) was from June 2009.
I'm still waiting for people in or supportive of the IWCA to give their analyses of why it didn't work and what can be learnt from the experience. So far there have been some sort of contributions from Sihhi, Random and LLETSA, but I don't think that they really revealed much. From the rest there's been silence, or the usual cranky sneering. How about yourself, Louis? Any thoughts?
One_Stop_Shop
Well-Known Member
I'm not incapable of that at all. It just must be the case given that the IWCA never went beyond about three areas. So it was either the case that people who supported the IWCA wouldn't or couldn't build anything or there just wasn't anyone outside those three areas who supported the IWCA. Either way this is a pretty fundamental flaw for any pro-working class political method.
Why would you think I would pray for the demise of the IWCA
, seems a bizarre comment, personally I want attempts at building pro-working class organisations and methods to succeed, but that just hasn't been the case with the IWCA, as it becoming more and more clear.Also don't get the constant comparisons with the traditional far left. As we all know they are fundamentally flawed and going round and round in ever smaller circles it's hardly a great benchmark to use. It seems rather than look into why the IWCA has failed some people are more interested in going on and on about the traditional far left.
I'm not incapable of that at all. It just must be the case given that the IWCA never went beyond about three areas. So it was either the case that people who supported the IWCA wouldn't or couldn't build anything or there just wasn't anyone outside those three areas who supported the IWCA. Either way this is a pretty fundamental flaw for any pro-working class political method.
Why would you think I would pray for the demise of the IWCA
Also don't get the constant comparisons with the traditional far left. As we all know they are fundamentally flawed and going round and round in ever smaller circles it's hardly a great benchmark to use. It seems rather than look into why the IWCA has failed some people are more interested in going on and on about the traditional far left.
Again, you are overcomplicating the matter, when it's perfectly obvious that, although there were people sympathetic to the IWCA approach outside of those areas where it took off, few have felt able to put in the necessary time and labour, particularly when isolated. Far from the method being fundamentally flawed, if more people had felt able to create active branches from scratch, the method would have spread.
After months of hand-wringing about such matters as the failure of the IWCA to spread, your contributions to this thread seem to contain a barely disguised relish of the notion of that the IWCA is dead. I don't doubt that you wish to see a successful pro-working class organisation(s), but people are psychologically complex, and those who are happiest when everything they believe in is turning to shit are far from rare. Anybody who follows a football club, for instance, will have encountered the type of fellow supporter who is never more animated and gleeful than when the club is at its lowest ebb.
I suppose that one reeason why people are mentioning the far left is because those that have been most vociferous about the IWCA's supposed failure belong to it, and seem blind to the fact that if anything can be regarded as failure, it's nearly a century of trying to apply Leninism in places totally unsuited to it. The other reasons why the far left is dwindling are fundamentally the same as those affecting the failure to spread of the IWCA: social atomisation has taken its toll, deindusrialisation has decimated working class solidarities and no succesful models of post-capitalist society exist.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
come on, even you must be able to spot the glaring contradiction in there.
'It was great, except hardly anyone felt capable of replicating it.'
The point is that the reasons why few have replicated it appear to be personal rather than political.
Carry on going round in circles, shall we? Why not?
As already noted, it's one thing to join a pre-existing branch of, say, the SWP or the SP, and being assigned a particular area of work, and quite another to single-handedly try to set up a branch as something as obviously time-consuming and labour intensive as the IWCA.
The pro IWCA arguement now seems to be "it was too much hard work" the model was great but couldnt be replicated......What shite....It was still top down socialism from above. For all the wank about not being leninist etc how different was the IWCA? It was still trapped by leftist elitism. Still loved talking up minor differences with other leftists, still forced out people who didnt toe the party line.
15 years of hyped up nonsense that suprise suprise ended up down just another leftist dead end.
15 years of hyped up nonsense that suprise suprise ended up down just another leftist dead end.
Yes, yes, you've said. What's your concept of 'bottom up socialism from below', by the way? Other than voting New Labour?
You've never made it quite clear.
A tip: a shopping list of personal preferences posted on here isn't a political strategy.
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