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Socialist Party: good attempts at bridge building...

So, this brave step forward essentially entails dropping a class analysis of society (not just a "19thC" class analysis, but any class analysis at all) and abandoning principles for "pragmatism". Taken together I think this explains fairly well the Greens willingness to enter local coalitions with the Lib Dems and the Tories. Or, over here in Ireland, their willingness to act as a mudguard for the Fianna Fail government.

The Greens are a very small party, with no immediate prospect of winning even a single seat in Westminster. They have a few thousand paper members and a much smaller number of activists. They also aren't all that left wing.

You would say that wouldn't you.

What is a "class analysis of society" and how does it help you formulate a plan to change it?

You are right sometimes the Greens are too pragmatic (hence the examples you cite) but rather that than endless repetitions of old failures.
 
The SLL/WRP in its heyday in the late 1960s/early 1970s was a much larger and more influential than the SWP is today. But it was still a sectarian obstacle to building an organisation that could unite the majority of the left and eventually collapsed. While there is still hope that they can change direction, the SWP are in danger of heading on the same path as the SLL/WRP.

And you are wrong to say "the bulk of the English Left" are in the SWP. The bulk of the English Left are not aligned with any left organisation. The SWP are probably not even the largest group - they are probably still to be found in the Labour Party, though as a cadre/vanguard party, the SWP is able to have more impact with lesser numbers.

If the English left are in the abortion that is New Labour it says something about the so called left that it clings on to an organisation that has overseen the widening of the gap between rich and poor and has completely erased the working class from its memory.
 
Which "perfectly legitimate question" would that be?

If you mean the one about the Socialist Party continuing to exist as an organisation within a new mass party, the answer is neither secret nor particularly controversial.

If a new workers party isn't Marxist in its programme and organisation, then Marxists will remain organised separately within it, working both to build the wider party and to win it over to our views. The Socialist Party is completely open about this and in fact specifically argues that a new party should be organised on federal lines, allowing political organisations to openly work within it without dissolving. That would apply to the SP, and of course to political groups which disagree with the SP.

In Britain, the Labour Party was formed as a federal organisation, consisting of its component parts. In fact for some years you couldn't even join the early LP as an individual member, you had to join one of the component groups. The SP doesn't advocate an organisation with the politics of even the early LP and it doesn't advocate a form of federalism so extreme that individual members are disbarred from joining, but the way in which the LP formed does, I think, provide some useful pointers to how a new mass party might be created.

that i guess is the answer to the question dennis refused to answer .. does it not reflect badly though that millies still react sooo badly to questions about where they really stand, after all these years? it is a shame because in their real work they appear to be the most grounded of all the left but some of the paranoia (of the entrist years) still seem to remain
 
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