Life after the SWP?

[Fisher_Gate]

the LCR haven't even done that particularly well. In electoral terms they are still nowhere, membership rose for a while but has now fallen back again (according to a couple of reports I've read), and, as you say, the situations in the two countries are very different indeed. And its 'non-sectarian attitude' is highly debated by many as well.

Er well if you see 1.5 million votes as being "nowhere" you would say that wouldn't you? The LCR defeated the PCF and Greens in 2007, both parties that have had representation in the Assembly and government in recent years.

The New Anticapitalist Party has got off to a good start:
http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1556

And amazingly 49% of people in polls say they see Besancenot as the main challenger to Sarkozy.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/12/europe/profile.php

 

[belboid]

4% isn't very good is it, unless you live in the world where anything over 1% is magnificent, but I thought you'd left that kind of mindless nonsense behind. Beating the french greens never meant much, and means even less now they split in two, and the PCF have been dying for decades, its finally gone and done it. 4% is a good vote in terms of the french far-left, but outside of that small coterie...

An article in IV is about as good a source for how the new ACP is doing as one in SW.

The last point would indeed be amazing, if it was genuinely believable. However, as the article lists 4 people as possible candidates for 'main challenger', and finds that 171% of people think one of them to be the actual challenger, well, there's clearly something wrong with that poll.

As top whether it would be actually possible for the Brit left to meaningfully adapt the LCR's strategies and tactics to local need, I see you are noticeably quiet.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

4% isn't very good is it, unless you live in the world where anything over 1% is magnificent, but I thought you'd left that kind of mindless nonsense behind. Beating the french greens never meant much, and means even less now they split in two, and the PCF have been dying for decades, its finally gone and done it. 4% is a good vote in terms of the french far-left, but outside of that small coterie...

An article in IV is about as good a source for how the new ACP is doing as one in SW.

The last point would indeed be amazing, if it was genuinely believable. However, as the article lists 4 people as possible candidates for 'main challenger', and finds that 171% of people think one of them to be the actual challenger, well, there's clearly something wrong with that poll.

As top whether it would be actually possible for the Brit left to meaningfully adapt the LCR's strategies and tactics to local need, I see you are noticeably quiet.

I think you are forgetting that in the French presidential election the winning candidate got only just over 30% with their main challenger on 25%. In that situation 4% for a non-sectarian revolutionary candidate is very good indeed, though of course LO and PCF have done better in the past they are now yesterday's people.

Obviously you have your own sources in France for rubbishing the ACP and say how useless it is - it might give more credibility to your argument if you could perhaps quote them sometimes and we can all test their validity?

The poll that was quoted is complicated as it allowed multiple responses, people were invited to indicate from a list who they saw as the main challenger to Sarkozy - nearly 50% of those polled said that they saw Besancenot as a main challenger. No-one saying it is a poll of voting opinion - even fascists could say that they saw Besancenot as a major challenger - what is significant is that Besancenot was second and that gives us a feel for how important his influence is. Some polls have given him second place among young voters in France however, and that is a real indication of support from a group that traditionally has not voted very much.

Certainly if you watch mainstream French TV current affairs/news or read major French newspapers, Besancenot is often interviewed or quoted, and the views of the LCR are reported, in a way that would be unthinkable in Britain (I mean imagine a major item on the BBC 1 6 O'clock news centred around an interview with Chris Harman ....).

The LCR's strategy is appropriate for France, Respect's strategy is appropriate for Britain. A member of the political bureau of the LCR attended the Respect conference and also attended the revolutionary regroupment discussion the following day to improve communication and links.

I am optimistic about developments in both countries.

 

[belboid]

I never said the ACP was useless, nor did I rubbish it. Stop adding to your squalid little lies FG.

Besancenot is clearly an impressive figure, but whether that translates into support for the party has yet to be seen. Many, including within your own fellow thinkers, were saying the LCR would get a much higher vote than transpired, based on similar support for Besancenot before. On its own it (one persons popularity) means nothing.

I am deeply impressed by your clear and detailed analysis of the similarities and differences between France and the UK.

 

[treelover]

Media savvy, he understands that the name of his party, affiliated with the Trotskyist Fourth International, is wrong for the modern world, having a stink of dead ideology and the last bloody century. "We asked ourselves about finding a name based on what unifies everyone," he said.

So he is attempting to gather other small, leftist parties into a new grouping: the New Anti-Capitalist Party, which is intended to provide an umbrella voting list for those unhappy with the impact of capitalism and globalization on the poor, the environment, the third and fourth worlds, and on the rights of women and gay people. The new party intends to run in the elections for the European Parliament next June.

not sure about a new A/C party, but I do agree with him here: dead ideologies are just that, dead, imo, no party with the word 'socialist' in it, will ever gain popular support again.

 

[liampreston]

not sure about a new A/C party, but I do agree with him here: dead ideologies are just that, dead, imo, no party with the word 'socialist' it, will ever gain popular support again.

I have to agree. To an extent, Respect tried this by using something without the word "Socialist", only in the backronym. I suggest that any further electoral group avoids "Socialist" as a word as best they can.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I never said the ACP was useless, nor did I rubbish it. Stop adding to your squalid little lies FG.

...

Well, forgive me for assuming that

"the LCR haven't even done that particularly well"

meant that you were a sceptic in relation to the LCR's electoral improvement and the launch of the ACP.

Anyway this is a thread about the SWP and its decline. Debating how much better the LCR are doing is just rubbing salt in the wounds.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I have to agree. To an extent, Respect tried this by using something without the word "Socialist", only in the backronym. I suggest that any further electoral group avoids "Socialist" as a word as best they can.

And your evidence ... ?

In your own ward a candidate described as "RESPECT" (complete with the "S" for Socialism) in 2007 got three times the vote of the same candidate described as "Left List" in 2008.

So much for avoiding the "S" word being automatically a good thing.

 

[Zachor]

On topic joke....

A couple of swappies go in to Pizza Hut and this is the conversation

“We’ll have a cappricioso, a venitiana, and the elimination of the kulaks as a social class for dessert, please. My deviationist colleague here would have been ordering an (spits) American Hot, but we have expelled him and he’ll be eating at another table”.


HP can be very funny sometimes.

 

[mutley]

Fucking weird thread.

The largest group on the Marxist left is having an (overdue) internal debate, and it is uncritically taken on here as a self-evident truth that said Marxist group is set on an inevitable downward spiral.

I can understand it from the anarcho's (who proably know a thing or too about decline, having been in decline since May 1937) but some people, you'd think, would have something at least aproaching constructive thoughts to offer to this debate.

Anyway we aim to disappoint those anticipating our collapse.

 

[passthesalt]

Oh yeah, I'm sorry you win.


I will never be able to comprehend how much pleasure you get from pedantically proving unimportant things I say wrong, Fishy, but from here I would be easy to imagine you furiously wanking into a sock right now.

Now that is an image that I am desperately trying to cleanse from my beer befuddled brain.

Brain Bleach please.

 

[Zachor]

Anyway we aim to disappoint those anticipating our collapse.

LOL!

I'm going to dance on the grave of the SWP right after I dance on thatchers grave.

 

[mutley]

LOL!

I'm going to dance on the grave of the SWP right after I dance on thatchers grave.

'some people, you'd think, would have something at least aproaching constructive thoughts to offer to this debate.'

tbh you weren't one of the people I had in mind.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Anyway we aim to disappoint those anticipating our collapse.

Think you're right mutley. The grand predictions of the death of the swp or of it's imminent slide into obscurity are wishful in the extreme.

Are you not worried though that the Davidson camp (which sounds to me like a pretty open rejection of the whole lenin/cliff tradition) is an open door likely to take a large number of people out of the swp? And there's always the fear that Rees and German if they wanted to could do a lot of damage. Hopefully they know better than to push the worng buttons but it's not exactly a great time for the party is it?

 

[Bakunin]

The sooner the SWP finally collapse the better, IMO.

Then it can, hopefully, be replaced by a grouping that's actually fit for the purpose of making radical and revolutionary change.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Then it can, hopefully, be replaced by a grouping that's actually fit for the purpose of making radical and revolutionary change.

The sect mind summed up in one sentence. Even when I thought the cp was incapable of changing the world I wouldn't have wished to see it smashed to make way for my smaller trot party. I'd have hoped my group could stand on it's own two feet and compete with the bigger existing one and maybe win people from it. But I wouldn't have wanted to see a major part of the left collapse. Sad sect outlook on life you have there fella.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

not sure about a new A/C party, but I do agree with him here: dead ideologies are just that, dead, imo, no party with the word 'socialist it, will ever gain popular support again.

I doubt that, what is interesting is unlike other attempts at broad parties, the New Anti-Capitalist Party explicitly declares itself a party of those who want a rupture with (rather than reform of) capitalism, and is opposed to any collaboration with dying social democracy, it seems to be predicated on the idea that several anti-capitalist and revolutionary traditions can co-exist in one organisation. Daniel Bensaid, another theorist, has spoken in the context of ecology, peace and feminist movements of in each case their being a revolutionary wing and a middle class wing & the aim to bring together the revolutionary oppositionist wing in each of the social movements.

I'm neither Trotskyist nor Guevarist or Luxemburgist, I'm a revolutionary. And revolution needs to be reinvented, for no revolutionary experiment has ever succeeded. Some of them ended up as bloody caricatures

 

[Bakunin]

The sect mind summed up in one sentence. Even when I thought the cp was incapable of changing the world I wouldn't have wished to see it smashed to make way for my smaller trot party. I'd have hoped my group could stand on it's own two feet and compete with the bigger existing one and maybe win people from it. But I wouldn't have wanted to see a major part of the left collapse. Sad sect outlook on life you have there fella.

That implies that I have any particular group or sect in mind, which I don't as it happens. If I did then I would have named that group or coalition or whatever.

As far as I'm concerned, I want to see radical and revolutionary social change. The SWP, and I was once a member thereof, is not AFAIC ready or even fit for that particular purpose, so I want to see the back of it and something that IS ready and fit for that purpose (or at least will be in the future).

The SWP can't do the job, so I want them replaced with a group that can.

Simple.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

The SWP can't do the job, so I want them replaced with a group that can.

Which is a worse position than I thought you were advocating. You want a huge bit of the left in this country to collapse but you haven't got the courage of your convictions to name a group that might replace it.

You want major revolutionary change but that change happens times when all sorts of parties of the left are growing and rubbing shoulders and fighting for influence with workers, not when big chunks of the working class movement are just disappearing to be replaced by nothing.

 

[liampreston]

Which is a worse position than I thought you were advocating. You want a huge bit of the left in this country to collapse but you haven't got the courage of your convictions to name a group that might replace it.

You want major revolutionary change but that change happens times when all sorts of parties of the left are growing and rubbing shoulders and fighting for influence with workers, not when big chunks of the working class movement are just disappearing to be replaced by nothing.

The BNP are sitting in the GLA.

The SWP/Respect/LL seem to be sitting in the railway station waiting room...

 

[belboid]

Well, forgive me for assuming that

"the LCR haven't even done that particularly well"

meant that you were a sceptic in relation to the LCR's electoral improvement and the launch of the ACP.

if you think that the two statements are equivalent, then i see why you dont normally bother with any kind of analysis, you're hopeless at it. and i note you can't actually counter my argument at all.

stick to posting up election results and the like, it's the only thing you really know how to do

 

[audiotech]

i see you've taken the john major route of covering up shocking truths with blandness

Ian Duncan Smith, aka, 'The Quiet Man', has more to say than you do.

 

[audiotech]

Getting defensive are we?

I don't want to rain on your parade at all, but I was on those useless A to B marches that had ever decreasing numbers as well as being involved in direct action against both Afghanistan and Iraq. I didn't find the marches, as repetitive and tedious as they were (schlepping up from Plymouth and back for marches with an ever smaller number of people wasn't a great strategy, from my point of view) nearly as empowering or as effective as the direct actions I was involved with.

And setting up (yet another) party to go down the failed electoral route, while simultaneously saying there's 'no Parliamentary road' is hardly a radical step forward by anyone's standards.

Compare the policing of the Climate Camp and other direct action camps and gatherings with that of your normal march. They did their best to give us as much trouble as possible and still do. Why do you think they do that while largely leaving the Swappies alone? It's because the Swappies are no real threat and they know it, while direct action groups present at the very least a potential threat when we aren't presenting an actual one. And the Climate Camp was hardly a 'camping holiday' as anyone who actually got up off their arse and went will tell you. And we didn't 'ruck with the police' either, we simply kept them off the site with the minimum of problems and still managed to enter Kingsnorth, despite their having over 1400 plod from 26 counties and a six million pound budget in place to stop us. And ask yourself why they expended that kind of cash and manpower in the first place if they didn't consider us a real problem for them.

It's more like stupidity and an over-reaction on the part of the authorities from what I've seen and heard.

I understand the attraction of single issue campaigns, but like all such campaigns they rise and then decline, along with the people who join them. It's the hard slog of building a political organisation for the long term that's less glamourous.

 

[tbaldwin]

not sure about a new A/C party, but I do agree with him here: dead ideologies are just that, dead, imo, no party with the word 'socialist' in it, will ever gain popular support again.

I think thats overly pessimistic.
I think that an openly democratic socialist party could win a lot of votes and perhaps power in the UK.
But it would have to be consistently democratic and socialist and non hysterical.
It would also have to dump all the Liberal nonsense that has infected much of the Left in the last 30 years.

The SWP is part of the dying undemocratic socialism from above left. Whats needed now is a Socialist opposition that believes in extending not limiting democracy.

 

[Udo Erasmus]

I was surprised to read that the LCR had a smaller membership than the SWP, I had kinda assumed given their media profile in France, the stronger social movements there that it was much, much bigger.

 

[Bakunin]

Which is a worse position than I thought you were advocating. You want a huge bit of the left in this country to collapse but you haven't got the courage of your convictions to name a group that might replace it.

You want major revolutionary change but that change happens times when all sorts of parties of the left are growing and rubbing shoulders and fighting for influence with workers, not when big chunks of the working class movement are just disappearing to be replaced by nothing.

Wrong about my convictions, actually. I'm an Anarchist and I see the Anarchist method as being far more likely to achieve positive, radical, revolutionary change than a few paper sales and endlessly sucking in recruits only to lose them almost immediately. If the SWP had ever held on to even half of its recruits then it might have once been a credible force, but the revolving door that seems to operate in that party suggests very strongly that folk simply aren't impressed with what the SWP has to offer which, having been a member myself, isn't very much.

I'm not naming any particular group because I'm not closely affiliated with any particular group these days and, not possessing a crystal ball, I'm somewhat unable to predict what group, if any, would rise from the dead ashes of the SWP. I want them out of the way because they are unfit for the job, not to promote some factional agenda.

It's more like stupidity and an over-reaction on the part of the authorities from what I've seen and heard.

I understand the attraction of single issue campaigns, but like all such campaigns they rise and then decline, along with the people who join them. It's the hard slog of building a political organisation for the long term that's less glamourous.

The environment is hardly a single issue campaign, and climate change is just one issue I work on and have worked on previously. I'm not interested in the glamourous side of things, I leave that to the glory hunters and wannabe celebrities. I'm interested in effective action and workable policies, and the SWP don't seem to offer either of those things to me.

 

[mutley]

Are you not worried though that the Davidson camp (which sounds to me like a pretty open rejection of the whole lenin/cliff tradition) is an open door likely to take a large number of people out of the swp? And there's always the fear that Rees and German if they wanted to could do a lot of damage. Hopefully they know better than to push the worng buttons but it's not exactly a great time for the party is it?

I don't get that from what Davidson is saying (have you read his stuff?) He wants a rethink of the whole consitution, but staying in a Leninist framework.

As for JR, I think that very few people are listening to him (except in the way that a doctor might listen carefully to a slightly delusional patient) and i think the conference will show that he's got sod all support. I'm not sure what damage he could really do.

Anyway this is an internal debate... It's just the utter lack of constructive input from other currents that baffles me. It shouldn't really..

 

[treelover]

Cumbria County Council
Whitehaven Kells & Sandwith Ward

Labour 434
BNP 418 ( 40.1%)
Conservative 190

North West Leicestershire
Ibstock & Heather Ward

Conservative 660
BNP 645 (30.9%)
Labour 614
Lib Dems 174

Both of these used to be solid Labour wards returning councillors with 60-70% votes

while you and the SWP and the rest of the hard left go around in ever decreasing circles,

 

[chilango]

Anyway this is a thread about the SWP and its decline. Debating how much better the LCR are doing is just rubbing salt in the wounds.

Well it wasn-t meant to be.
It was meant to be a thread looking at where we go from here...

 

[chilango]

Fucking weird thread.

The largest group on the Marxist left is having an (overdue) internal debate, and it is uncritically taken on here as a self-evident truth that said Marxist group is set on an inevitable downward spiral.

I can understand it from the anarcho's (who proably know a thing or too about decline, having been in decline since May 1937) but some people, you'd think, would have something at least aproaching constructive thoughts to offer to this debate.

Anyway we aim to disappoint those anticipating our collapse.

The SWP is finished.

Its down to somewhere between 1 to 3 thousand active members.

Tops.

The internal debate or lack of it is irrelevent to this.

No other group is blooming either. Nothing is stepping to fill the void in the fairly small world of the UK left.

Incidently, capitalism is going a through what can best be described as a rough patch.

Times are indeed a changing.

So, a response?