SPGB

[dannysp]

A question that has been asked before but I don't think you've really answered. Assuming that you get the socialist majority that you're after, do you really feel that the rich are going to say "ok fair do's you win here's all our wealth and power"? They're going to make a last stand, aren't they.

So on the one side we're going to have the socialist majority with right on their side and on the other we're going to have the army, navy, airforce, fighter bombers, helicopter gunships, tanks, missiles, teargas, drones and all the exotic weapons our governments have been working on for just such a contingency. Good fucking luck on the barricades.

So we have a state that would unleash terror on its'own' people if its power over them was challenged. I would have thought that woud be a prime motivation to eliminate this institution. Or are we better off meekly submitting saying "sorry the world and all of us on it are yours guvner, what must we have been thinking".

What the capitalist know and in the main workers don't is where all the power lies in society, it is embodied, all of it in us the working class, because we do all the work in reproducing society day to day, and we have to be kept on-side, we have to see capitalism as being legitamate. We are told that we live in a democtatic society and we've used the democratic process and have voted for capitalism therefore giving it its precious legitamacy.

What if in the future an organisation of workers commited to peaceful democratic revolution gathered enough mass, enough momentum to trouble the ruling class, and of course this idea would naturaly be known by the working class by this time, it would have its social currency. What could the ruling class do? If it was an organisation like the WSM it couldn't corrupt or imprison its leaders because there wouldn't be any. If it took out prominant members of the organisation, suspended democracy or any other steps to deny it its voice, the state would be seen by workers clearly as the ruling class's intsrument of oppression, see it for exactly what it is. And so the state, and the class it serves would loose this essential legitamacy. Buggerd if they do and buggerd if they don't.

What of these humans who you reckon will be ready to impose this terror upon us? The armed forces, the police etc, are workers in uniform, wage slaves like the rest of us. I just can't imagine these workers in uniform obeying any order that has them brutalising a peaceful democratic organisation made up of people they might know or people like those they know and identify with.

It's worth considering that at the time of the Tianmen Square confrontation the local troops were not used, soldiers from a rural province the other side of China who spoke a completely different language were brought in to do the states dirty work.

I thank you for your wishes of good luck on the barricades but why have barricades in the first place? If you have an opponent and we do, the best place to attack is where they are weakest. If we try to overpower with force of arms we attak where they strongest, which exactly where they want us to strike. Democracy is their soft underbelly exposed at times of elections, we figure we should strike there.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Butchers I can assure you I'm not unthinking and I am aware how being in denial works on the psyche at an individual level and at a social level. Indeed, your proposition of the SPGB being a vanguardist party intrigues me and if you can convince me that your hypothesis is true I can assure you I would leave the SPGB tomorrow. No qualms whatsoever. And I doubt very much if I would be on my own for socialists have no intention of staying with a vanguardist party.

No doubt you are aware that such a crucial hypothesis must be put to an examination and to this end I requested from you a criteria and a definition so we - and others - can jointly put them to the test on whether or not they do actually apply to the SPGB. I see no sign of a coherent criteria being developed just a hotch pot of disjointed assertions. And has for a definition of vanguardism you agreed on the Leninist description posted by Jean-Luc but dismissed it as being inaccurate. Nevertheless, despite this dismissal I persisted in questioning your hypothesis but all to no avail.

Until you come forward with a coherent criteria and an agreeable definition I see no way on this discussion moving forward, or even going any further and me staying with the SPGB. The proof is in the eating of the pudding.

You see there is a way out even in the darkest hour; even in the depths of denial there can be a glimmer of self awareness. Grasp the moment.

Louis MacNeice

 

[Proper Tidy]

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Socialists should do this, socialists should not do that, socialists welcome this, socialists support that.

Speak for yourself or speak for your party. You clearly believe you are the one true socialists, so I suppose at least GD is being unintentionally frank.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I have no idea what you are trying to say.

Funny, as I'd have thought it was very straight forward.

Louis MacNeice

 

[butchersapron]

Note well how this society of awakened men will only talk about the future awakened society.

 

[Jean-Luc]

In their terms (i think, I know not of these transitional demands) there have been no transitional demands and no concessions so you're taking on capitalism as strong as it can be.

Fair enough. I can see where you are coming from now. What you are not taking into account is that the growth of a mass movement for a democratic classless society employing open, democratic and non-violent tactics will of itself both extract concessions from the ruling class you seem to want and lessen the chances of a violent confrontation you are (rightly) afraid of. In fact the more people that come to want want a democratic classless society the weaker (not the stronger) become the ruling class and its state.

William Morris put the situation rather well in 1890:

My readers will understand that in saying this I am speaking for those who are complete Socialists - or let us call them Communists. I say for us to make Socialists is the business at present, and at present I do not think we can have any other useful business. Those who are not really Socialists - who are Trades' Unionists, disturbance-breeders, or what not - will do what they are impelled to do, and we cannot help it. At the worst there will be some good in what they do; but we need not and cannot heartily work with them, when we know that their methods are beside the right way.

Our business, I repeat, is the making of Socialists, i.e., convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible. Have we that body of opinion of any thing like it? Surely not. If we look outside that glamour, that charmed atmosphere of party warfare in which we necessarily move, we shall see this clearly: that though there are a great many who believe it possible to compel their masters by some means or another to behave better to them, and though they are prepared to compel them (by so-called peaceful means, strikes and the like), all but a very small minority are not prepared to do without masters. They do not believe in their own capacity to undertake the management of affairs, and to be responsible for their life in this world. When they are so prepared, then Socialism will be realised; but nothing can push it on a day in advance of that time.

Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful, and preaching and teaching is not out of date for that purpose; but rather for those who, like myself, do not believe in State Socialism, it is the only rational means of attaining to the New Order of Things.

 

[two sheds]

No he or she was trying to take the piss - and failed -

Made me laugh

by using the assertion of "advanced workers" has bait to serve the impression (if it was unanswered) that we agreed with the implication contained in such a phrase/term e.g. we are a vanguard party. Louis is well known for serving his/her agenda in this way, its called black propaganda and used by MI5/MI6 very effectively to uphold the status quo. It knows one to tell one shall we say?

So butchers and louis you'd say would be first up against the wall come the revolution as agent provocateurs and MI5/MI6 black propagandists?

 

[Louis MacNeice]

No he or she was trying to take the piss - and failed - by using the assertion of "advanced workers" has bait to serve the impression (if it was unanswered) that we agreed with the implication contained in such a phrase/term e.g. we are a vanguard party. Louis is well known for serving his/her agenda in this way, its called black propaganda and used by MI5/MI6 very effectively to uphold the status quo.

Just because it didn't make you smile, doesn't mean it wasn't funny. Or are you now the arbiter of humour as well as socialism?

Louis Macneice

 

[scrappy1]

The original Plaid Cymru thread had a list of policies that were eminently sensible but would be seen as transitional demands by the SPG. I'd be a lot happier with something like that, getting to a society that is fairer. It would then be a shorter step towards the 'ideal' society whatever that turned out to be.

I'd be interested in hearing how you would reach the "fairer" society, which is short of socialism. We hear a lot from supporters of capitalism that it should be made fairer but never any explanation of how to bring it about.

 

[TremulousTetra]

If only the so easily duped working class would listen to your words of wisdom; set us free GD, set us free!

Louis MacNeice

p.s. While the glaring contradiction between your last two paragraphs, might be needed to hold together the impossibilist day dream, it doesn't cut it as a coherent argument.

[/QUOTE]So what does Louis. What is your coherent analysis as to "why the workers persistently support a system which is designed to exploit their labour power "? For example, why do something like a third of working class people people who vote, vote Tory?

 

[Louis MacNeice]

So what does Louis. What is your coherent analysis as to "why the workers persistently support a system which is designed to exploit their labour power "? For example, why do something like a third of working class people people who vote, vote Tory?

Have you read GD's paragraph that preceded the one in the quote? That is where the contradiction is.

Louis MacNeice

 

[TremulousTetra]

Have you read GD's paragraph that preceded the one in the quote? That is where the contradiction is.

Louis MacNeice

I'm more interested in yours, as I understand his position.

So, what is your coherent analysis as to "why the workers persistently support a system which is designed to exploit their labour power "? For example, why do something like a third of working class people people who vote, vote Tory?

If only the so easily duped working class would listen to your words of wisdom; set us free GD, set us free!

Louis MacNeice

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I'm more interested in yours, as I understand his position.

So, what is your coherent analysis as to "why the workers persistently support a system which is designed to exploit their labour power "? For example, why do something like a third of working class people people who vote, vote Tory?

RMP3 it would help if you read what I was actually responding to; which you obviously haven't done, or you would see that the point you're labouring isn't the one I was making

To make things clear for you: the preceding paragraph states that:

...the assertion that they [the working class] are stupid fails to stand up to examination for the workers operate the system from top to bottom, so collectively they are well aware of how the system operates to a 'T'.
​

and yet this self same working class, only moments later is quite stupid enough to be:

believing every word of the empty promises dished out by the apologists of capitalism - the politicians​

So GD has at one and the same time a working class sharp enough to understand the operation of capitalism, and dumb enough to to completely fall for the actions of one of it component parts. GD is dealing in old, dusty, and thoroughly abstracted categorizations, not with real people; in doing so he is tying himself in knots and I find that amusing (especially given his arrogant certainty)

And just to keep you happy; why do some working class people vote Tory? Because in my estimation they have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests. This can raise some very real problems of a pretty fundamental character for vanguardists from the SWP and SPGB traditions (and obviously not just them).

Fortunately I don't want to re-enact either 1904 or 1917.

Louis MacNeice

 

[Gravediggers]

You are exactly the sort of advanced workers that Leninists posit as the necessary material of the vanguard party; as you have been telling us all, you're the most class conscious section of the class.

Louis you do suprise me, for after 1600 combined posts (on this thread and the previous one), at long last you come forward with a decent response. I sincerely hope you continue in this vein, but only time will tell. In the meantime let me deal with your attempt above to equate the SPGB with Leninism.

I agree that the SPGB membership consists of the most class conscious section of the working class. And also I agree that of course such a claim could in many respects be perceived as elitists and vanguardist if such a claim were to be taken at face value. Nevertheless, our aim includes a very important caveat: We have no intention of remaining a small organisation and to this end are committed and determined to instill a majority of the working class with the level of political class consciousness we have attained.

In effect this means we are serious and determined into sharing our knowledge of how capitalism works to the benefit of a wealthy minority, and an understanding of how we can attain socialism through the majority using the ballot box. Our prime aim is to make socialists not party members as such, and if these socialists decide to join the party that to us is a bonus.

Indeed your constitution makes it clear that anybody else claiming to be such advanced workers (grouped together in any organised way), by the mere fact of their absence from the mass ranks of the SPGB, is an enemy of socialism, an enemy of the working class.

The hostility clause in our Declaration of Principles specifically mentions "political parties" which means those who use the political system to retain the status quo of capitalism. On the other hand we might have disagreements with other "organisations" who have similar aims as ourselves but are totally at odds in harmonizing the means with the ends. We can live with that and accept it as a point for further discussion.

No our enemy are those who profess to be socialists but in actual fact are state capitalists and those apologists for capitalism who insist that capitalism can be made to work in the interest of all - rich and poor alike. They are the real enemy of socialism and of the working class

You are superb vanguardists, demanding that all submit to the tyranny of the party line (ineffectual and cobwebbed as it is), or face being cast for ever into the darkness of capitalism's left wing.

We are not "demanding" anything from the working class by placing a set of proposals, options or choices they can accept or reject. To date they have rejected them but that is no reason why we should stop offering them. And to be fair very few of the working class have come across our case. But going by the viewing figures on this thread some of them are finding it very interesting in what we have to say.

Such is your uber-vanguardism, that even an organisation with the self same constitution is dismissed in a few terse lines (and the odd appeal to the capitalist legal system).

This is a level chutzpah that even most Leninists draw the line at; at least they have the decency to tweak their rules to at least give the appearance of not being faith based groups.

But not you. Hallelujah GD. Preach the word (sorry the 'case') and take us to the promised land, one tract at a time.

Louis MacNeice

I take it you are referring to the Socialist Studies Group who have held secret meetings to which members of the SPGB were barred. Despite the fact they are welcome like any member of the public to attend all of our meetings. Plainly, whilst we are democratic in respect of all our activity is open to public scrutiny they have been found to be wanting. Socialists have nothing to hide, so ask yourself what have they to hide?

The implication that we treat socialism as a religious objective or a faith does not hold water, for we also accept that socialism is not inevitable. And if it was we could all sit down in front of the TV and wait for it to happen, no sweat. There are no ten commandments in socialism just dogged determination and commitment to pursue the class struggle.

 

[two sheds]

I'd be interested in hearing how you would reach the "fairer" society, which is short of socialism. We hear a lot from supporters of capitalism that it should be made fairer but never any explanation of how to bring it about.

Ooo supporter of capitalism now am I? You can be cutting. Well, to find out how you could reach the "fairer" society you need look no further than the Plaid Cymru thread which I actually referred to in my post. I don't think you actually *are* interested in hearing about it, though, because then you might have looked at the first post on that thread which included:

It was Plaid Cymru that led the attempt to impeach Tony Blair over the invasion of Iraq. It opposed the conflict in Afghanistan from the outset. It wants to scrap Trident and cancel the aircraft carrier and Eurofighter contracts. It would break up the banks, ban short selling, tax foreign exchange transactions, raise capital gains tax, raise income tax for the rich while reducing it for the poor. It would set a maximum wage and give workers seats on corporate boards.

It seeks to renationalise the railways and curb the power of the supermarkets. It wants a living pension for everyone over 80, to raise benefits in line with average earnings and to scrap tuition fees. It would abandon ID cards, stop detaining asylum seekers and shift sentencing away from prison and towards restorative justice.

Such policies are widely held to make parties in England unelectable. But in Wales they are considered mainstream, and not just among Plaid supporters.

Throw in the green party's Community Ground Rent, where people would pay to the government instead of paying to private landlords, and I think those would be a start.

 

[butchersapron]

Game over:

Nevertheless, our aim includes a very important caveat: We have no intention of remaining a small organisation and to this end are committed and determined to instill a majority of the working class with the level of political class consciousness we have attained.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Of course you're not like all the others GD; even though all of them claim to be not like all the others too. So the glimmer fades and the moment is lost.

Louis MacNeice

 

[two sheds]

So we have a state that would unleash terror on its'own' people if its power over them was challenged. I would have thought that woud be a prime motivation to eliminate this institution. Or are we better off meekly submitting saying "sorry the world and all of us on it are yours guvner, what must we have been thinking".

Well they wouldn't be unleashing terror, they'd be putting down a nasty communist plot to take power and steal everybody's wealth from them. No right thinking person would oppose them and the media would unite in praising the government.

What the capitalist know and in the main workers don't is where all the power lies in society, it is embodied, all of it in us the working class, because we do all the work in reproducing society day to day, and we have to be kept on-side, we have to see capitalism as being legitamate. We are told that we live in a democtatic society and we've used the democratic process and have voted for capitalism therefore giving it its precious legitamacy.

What if in the future an organisation of workers commited to peaceful democratic revolution gathered enough mass, enough momentum to trouble the ruling class, and of course this idea would naturaly be known by the working class by this time, it would have its social currency. What could the ruling class do? If it was an organisation like the WSM it couldn't corrupt or imprison its leaders because there wouldn't be any. If it took out prominant members of the organisation, suspended democracy or any other steps to deny it its voice, the state would be seen by workers clearly as the ruling class's intsrument of oppression, see it for exactly what it is. And so the state, and the class it serves would loose this essential legitamacy. Buggerd if they do and buggerd if they don't.

Again, you're assuming that you reach a perfect society - so "the state would be seen by workers clearly as the ruling class's intsrument of oppression, see it for exactly what it is. " before you actually get to your perfect society. It's faith, like Christians have faith in the Kindom of Heaven.

What of these humans who you reckon will be ready to impose this terror upon us? The armed forces, the police etc, are workers in uniform, wage slaves like the rest of us. I just can't imagine these workers in uniform obeying any order that has them brutalising a peaceful democratic organisation made up of people they might know or people like those they know and identify with.

If you had your perfect society of workers then yes, but see above. And I can quite see workers in uniform brutalising peaceful democratic organisations. You may not have noticed but they've done it before in a few places.

I thank you for your wishes of good luck on the barricades but why have barricades in the first place? If you have an opponent and we do, the best place to attack is where they are weakest. If we try to overpower with force of arms we attak where they strongest, which exactly where they want us to strike. Democracy is their soft underbelly exposed at times of elections, we figure we should strike there.

Yes, but then we're back to three months before the election and it becomes clear the true socialists are going to get in. The ringleaders and opinion formers will be shot/locked up and any dissent will be stamped on. You can argue the toss with the tank drivers about transitional demands but i know where my money will be.

I'm not trying to be a supporter of capitalism here, I'm just saying this is what I think the reality will be.

 

[Gravediggers]

So butchers and louis you'd say would be first up against the wall come the revolution as agent provocateurs and MI5/MI6 black propagandists?

Naw, why bother it would serve no useful purpose whatsoever. More than prob we would just put them in the same room together where they can snarl at each other, 'It should never have happened, bloody SPGB how dare they interfere with my cozy view of the world'. 'We've got fuck all to criticise and moan about now'!

 

[Proper Tidy]

Socialists have nothing to hide.

The Gospel of True Socialism.

Thankfully we have the shamans of socialism here on earth to tell us what we should or should not be doing and thinking, bless you oh wise ones.

 

[Proper Tidy]

'It should never have happened, bloody SPGB how dare they interfere with my cozy view of the world'. 'We've got fuck all to criticise and moan about now'!

So you will be leading the revolution then, comrades?

 

[TremulousTetra]

And just to keep you happy; why do some working class people vote Tory? Because in my estimation they have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests.
Louis MacNeice

your analysis of the problem, "They have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests, but Louis MacNeice has", doesn't seem any different from the 'van guardist' GD. You may have different 'solutions' to GD, BUT you're still basically saying "If only the so easily duped working class would listen" are you not?

I am trying to understand how your analysis of the problem, is any different to GD's.


ETA
"They have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests, but Louis MacNeice has". So Louis you are an advanced workers?

 

[robbo203]

RMP3 it would help if you read what I was actually responding to; which you obviously haven't done, or you would see that the point you're labouring isn't the one I was making

To make things clear for you: the preceding paragraph states that:

...the assertion that they [the working class] are stupid fails to stand up to examination for the workers operate the system from top to bottom, so collectively they are well aware of how the system operates to a 'T'.
​

and yet this self same working class, only moments later is quite stupid enough to be:

believing every word of the empty promises dished out by the apologists of capitalism - the politicians​

So GD has at one and the same time a working class sharp enough to understand the operation of capitalism, and dumb enough to to completely fall for the actions of one of it component parts. GD is dealing in old, dusty, and thoroughly abstracted categorizations, not with real people; in doing so he is tying himself in knots and I find that amusing (especially given his arrogant certainty)

And just to keep you happy; why do some working class people vote Tory? Because in my estimation they have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests. This can raise some very real problems of a pretty fundamental character for vanguardists from the SWP and SPGB traditions (and obviously not just them).

On this question of the alleged stupidity of the working class in supporting capitalism I think you are missing the point. Stupidity is an attribute of intellectual capacity or potential or rather the relative lack of it. I dont think GD is contradicting himself in the way you suggest by saying that workers run society from top to bottom and yet fall for the glib promises of politicians. The fallacy in your argument lies in the way you interpret GDs as meaning that workers are stupid because they fall for the promises of the politicians.

But this doesnt follow at all. The fact that workers support capitalism by putting their trust in capitalist politicians does not make them stupid. Some of the most intelligent and articulate workers support capitalism. Its not a question of intellectual capacity at all. Its is a question of ideology, habitus (to use Bourdieu's term) and cooption. Intellectual capacity doesnt come into the picture at all. Even the most fervant supporters of capitalism are fully capable of understanding the case for socialism. They dont try to or reject that case if they do - for reasons quite other than intellectual capacity or "stupidity"

You seem to have a tendency to run together two quite different things. This shows also in your claim that the SPGB is vanguardist. It is absolutely not because the SPGB vehemently does not propose to do anything for or on behalf of the working class. It is the most systematically anti vanguardist political organisation I know of - even to the point of saying to voters "if you dont understand or want socialism please dont vote for us". Your problem is you dont really understand what is meant by vanguardism

You cannot even call the SPGB elitist depsite the fact that it will only admit convinced socialists into its ranks (and as you know I think its membership requirements are a bit too strict at least as far as its policy on religious ideas is concerned) . But the SPGB emphatically does not want to be socially exclusive in the sense of a self perpetuating small elite. It clearly wants to become a mass party, to be socially inclusive rather than exclusive but only on terms that do not compromise the socialist nature of the organisation. Thus, admitting non socialists into the organisation would, it argues, soon enough turn the organisation into a non socialist organisation. I think the SPGB is correct in thinking this despite my criticism of its entry requirements being overstrict.

You and other critics or the SPGB need to take a more sophisticated nuanced approach when criticising the organisation. It is not at all the kind of organisation you are naively painting it to be.

 

[butchersapron]

Or rather, you have an impoverished understanding of what constitutes vanguardism, being only able to recognise it in it's full Leninist flowering.

 

[butchersapron]

Lenin quoting Kautsky approvingly in that dread document What is to be Done

...the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its task. There would be no need for this if consciousness arose of itself from the class struggle.

We have no intention of remaining a small organisation and to this end are committed and determined to instill a majority of the working class with the level of political class consciousness we have attained.

 

[TremulousTetra]

Or rather, you have an impoverished understanding of what constitutes vanguardism, being only able to recognise it in it's full Leninist flowering.

So give us your less impoverished understanding of what constitutes vanguardism!

 

[TremulousTetra]

Lenin quoting Kautsky approvingly in that dread document What is to be Done

So do you accept

Originally Posted by Louis MacNeice
And just to keep you happy; why do some working class people vote Tory? Because in my estimation they have, for a whole variety of reasons, not recognised their best long term class interests.
Louis MacNeice

Do you know the working classes best long term class interests? If yes, wanting to promote your understanding makes you van guardist??????????

 

[Proper Tidy]

van guardist

Dutch or Afrikans?

 

[two sheds]

Dutch or Afrikans?

Volkswagen wheel clamp.

 

[Proper Tidy]

Armand Van Guardist