Life after the SWP?

[TremulousTetra]

Agreed, but given that workplace organising in the traditional sense is less possible now than previously, community organising of some sort needs to be a supplement to the workplace kind. Is not about one instead of the other, it's got to be about both in parallel.

I'm aware that UNITE are involved in setting up some sort of local community organisations, though I don't know much more about it than that. I seem to remember someone one one of the Urban threads I was reading saying they were involved in that?

Is organising in the community easier than it has previously been, or harder?
Workplace organising may be less easy than it previously was, but it is not impossible. There is more than enough organised workers for political activists to create a dialogue with. And be there long-term, rather than Johnny come lately when the class struggle comes along.
You have to have a political relationship with these people before they go into struggle. A relationship where you're calling on them for solidarity with other workers on a regular basis, so when they go into dispute they know you will be there to help them get support from other workers.
That's why I am glad the SWP has turned away from the diversion of electoral ism, and are now talking about focusing upon the workplace. They talk the talk, just wish they would walk the walk.

 

[xslavearcx]

As for community work, it would be good if more 'class consious' peeps got involved in it - as from my experience it tends to be occupied by 'well meaning' liberal types gravitating towards identity esque approaches to problems that can only really be resolved by going towards a more marxian frame of referance. The whole process from funding apps directed towards achieving whatever policy aims are in place, enacted by professionals educated in the field according to an inchoate splattering of frerie, gramsci, and alinksy seperated from the marxist base where they came from (well at least frierie and gramsci) is seriously depressing.

 

[chilango]

Is organising in the community easier than it has previously been, or harder?
Workplace organising may be less easy than it previously was, but it is not impossible. There is more than enough organised workers for political activists to create a dialogue with. And be there long-term, rather than Johnny come lately when the class struggle comes along.
You have to have a political relationship with these people before they go into struggle. A relationship where you're calling on them for solidarity with other workers on a regular basis, so when they go into dispute they know you will be there to help them get support from other workers.
That's why I am glad the SWP has turned away from the diversion of electoral ism, and are now talking about focusing upon the workplace. They talk the talk, just wish they would walk the walk.

I disagree with SO much of this!

 

[TremulousTetra]

The left here, the w/c there.

butchers nowhere.

 

[butchersapron]

I don't why this pathetic false opposition between community and workplace rather than the reality of a functional integration has been allowed on this thread for so long - is it a last attempt to engage with rmp3 or something? If so, remember the last time last time?

 

[TremulousTetra]

I disagree with SO much of this!

enlighten me.

 

[chilango]

Workplace organising may be less easy than it previously was, but it is not impossible. There is more than enough organised workers for political activists to create a dialogue with.

"Organised workers" must be, in the Uk, at their lowest level for generations. Yet this is where you think you should focus?

 

[chilango]

...and let's be clear I don't see community organising as an alternative to, or even successor of, workplace organising.

I simply think that the class struggle, the terrain it's fought and the areas where capital seeks to extract surplus value have gone far beyond the factory and now encompass most, if not all, of our daily lives.

butchersapron I thought I'd expanded upon this to make that very point...must have gotten distracted.

 

[chilango]

And be there long-term, rather than Johnny come lately when the class struggle comes along.

Whaddya mean "when the class struggle comes along" ?

Where do you think it is now?

 

[butchersapron]

Is organising in the community easier than it has previously been, or harder?
Workplace organising may be less easy than it previously was, but it is not impossible. There is more than enough organised workers for political activists to create a dialogue with. And be there long-term, rather than Johnny come lately when the class struggle comes along.
You have to have a political relationship with these people before they go into struggle. A relationship where you're calling on them for solidarity with other workers on a regular basis, so when they go into dispute they know you will be there to help them get support from other workers.
That's why I am glad the SWP has turned away from the diversion of electoral ism, and are now talking about focusing upon the workplace. They talk the talk, just wish they would walk the walk.

This is the confused rejection of class struggle. The insistence that class struggle takes place in one place alone - it's certainly not what a marxist should be arguing. The faction of the working class in classical production is still tactically central, but if you cannot recognise the growing importance of other sectors due to the growth of world market the you are effectively saying that only males from the 30s in cloth caps are the working class or have a role to play in overcoming capitalist relations. Crawl out of 1917 ffs.

 

[TremulousTetra]

I don't why this pathetic false opposition between community and workplace rather than the reality of a functional integration has been allowed on this thread for so long - is it a last attempt to engage with rmp3 or something?

because nobody has put a false opposition. There is no opposition. Just different emphasis.

I'm not asking nobody to not work in the community. I'm saying why I would definitely focus on organised workers. I've done both, and come to a conclusion from that experience. What's wrong with that?
Other people are saying we should focus on the community. I want to know why? Is it easier to organise in the community ? More productive? Why is it better? My experience says no to all these .so if you have a different experience, share it.

 

[butchersapron]

butchersapron I thought I'd expanded upon this to make that very point...must have gotten distracted.

It's an rmp3 dominated thread - by its essence it's a frigging inchoate mess and so easy to miss things out. Apols.

 

[chilango]

You have to have a political relationship with these people before they go into struggle.

No.

You have to be in a relationship, not a political one.

"These people"? You know how that sounds?

..and we're already in struggle. What are you waiting for?

 

[butchersapron]

Wow.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Whaddya mean "when the class struggle comes along" ?

Where do you think it is now?

sorry. Miss phrased. "The class struggle is always there, now seen, now hidden." As the person alluded to who said it was less possible to organise in the workplace than previously, class struggle in the workplace is more hidden than it was previously seen ATM.

I thought you would have recognised that, when contrasted to the post it was responding. Sorry.

 

[chilango]

sorry. Miss phrased. "The class struggle is always there, now seen, now hidden." As the person alluded to who said it was less possible to organise in the workplace than previously, class struggle in the workplace is more hidden than it was previously seen ATM.

I thought you would have recognised that, when contrasted to the post it was responding. Sorry.

I don't think that's what they meant.

 

[butchersapron]

No mention of what organise even means. Nothing. The continued conflation of mass membership bodies like the unions with little parties and both with the working class.

 

[chilango]

I like how two people have used the word "inchoate" in recent posts. I think I might have learnt something from this thread after all...

 

[TremulousTetra]

No mention of what organise even means. Nothing.

no explanation of why your experience dictates you would prefer to organise in the community with the IWCA.

 

[chilango]

It really isn't a matter of "preference".

It's not looking we're browsing through a catalogue of activism deciding which one to pick is it?

 

[butchersapron]

no explanation of why your experience dictates you would prefer to organise in the community with the IWCA.

Here's rmp3 not setting the community against the workplace - all the better to trot out the line that only the workplace has the power to halt surplus value production. Mate, you don't even know what the workplace is today.

 

[frogwoman]

oh god

 

[andysays]

Whaddya mean "when the class struggle comes along" ?

Where do you think it is now?

"The class struggle is everywhere!"

That means workplaces and communities, surely. I repeat what I've said above, and what a number of others seem to agree with:

It's not a choice between either organising workers on the one hand or organising communities on the other, it's about doing both.

So far so, bloody obvious. The question is how it may be possible to effectively bring the two together.

I'm interested in hearing more about the IWCA strategy, although I don't understand why an electoral strand was pursued as part of it, and I'd also like to hear from Spiny about what he's up to in Sheff.

 

[TremulousTetra]

This is the confused rejection of class struggle. The insistence that class struggle takes place in one place alone - it's certainly not what a marxist should be arguing. The faction of the working class in classical production is still tactically central, but if you cannot recognise the growing importance of other sectors due to the growth of world market the you are effectively saying that only males from the 30s in cloth caps are the working class or have a role to play in overcoming capitalist relations. Crawl out of 1917 ffs.

who has said that? I have merely said it is tactically central.

I explain why you want me to focus on the community instead ?

 

[chilango]

"The class struggle is everywhere!"

That means workplaces and communities, surely. I repeat what I've said above, and what a number of others seem to agree with:

It's not a choice between either organising workers on the one hand or organising communities on the other, it's about doing both.

So far so, bloody obvious. The question is how it may be possible to effectively bring the two together.

No, no, no.



There is no need to "bring to the two together".

They already are.

I kept asking people where they though the MOP today, and where capital extracts surplus values etc, for a reason.

Social factory innit?

Hopefully someone who can write more clearly than me can sum up the idea for the benefit of the thread?

 

[xslavearcx]

Not to mention that if one sticks exclusivly to what marx says about value production then we'd be left with a rather small section of what workplaces should be organised to stop value production (ie. service, mercantile, public sector, and third sector would be excluded)

 

[andysays]

No, no, no.



There is no need to "bring to the two together".

They already are.

Hopefully someone who can write more clearly than me can sum up the idea for the benefit of the thread?

OK, "bring the two together" is not the clearest way of putting it.

But for many people (even some on this thread, inexplicably) there appears to be an idea that to two are and must always be, totally separate.

How do we demonstrate that the two are already together and their togetherness must be enacted in a practical sense?

Is that any better...

I kept asking people where they though the MOP today, and where capital extracts surplus values etc, for a reason.

Social factory innit?

Please expand/explain

 

[butchersapron]

The expansion of capitalist relations across the whole territory of society leads to the factory being extended across society - that in conditions of the world market surplus value production takes place in circulation or reproduction - across the whole circuit of capital. It's a perspective that is based on the centrality and necessity of class struggle not its rejection - if anything it is more central than in these 30s/70s derived dreams. And it's what has left workerist clowns floundering, pretending this the idea means that there is no working class, or that everyone is working class or related nonsenses.

 

[TremulousTetra]

I don't why this pathetic false opposition between community and workplace rather than the reality of a functional integration has been allowed on this thread for so long - is it a last attempt to engage with rmp3 or something? If so, remember the last time last time?

why are you always telling people what to do?

 

[andysays]

The expansion of capitalist relations across the whole territory of society leads to the factory being extended across society - that in conditions of the world market surplus value production takes place in circulation or reproduction - across the whole circuit of capital. It's a perspective that is based on the centrality and necessity of class struggle not its rejection - if anything it is more central than in these 30s/70s derived dreams. And it's what has left workerist clowns floundering, pretending this the idea means that there is no working class, or that everyone is working class or related nonsenses.

OK, so where does this lead us in terms of the way or ways in which we carry out class struggle?