SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
Tell me about it, I'm still trying to work out whether I exist and what game I'm playing. It's all very confusing.
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
Tell me about it, I'm still trying to work out whether I exist and what game I'm playing. It's all very confusing.
discokermit
Well-Known Member
chess. can you guess which piece you are?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
discokermit
Well-Known Member
of course you'd like to play connect four, the pieces are all equal. but you can't. you can't choose what you are unless you make it to the other side of the board.The horsey? I hope so. Rather play connect 4 though
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Go the extra mile and all that. Well yes unless you've already decided the other guy isn't acting in good faith. The cc seems pretty convinced that elements of the opposition have a larger agenda than this one incident (and in fairness many of the leading voices aren't hiding the fact very well!) and from that perspective having a recall is already a concession too far to the Seymourites.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
What about if the cc themselves have a larger agenda?
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
You make a convincing case true enough. But surely we can't say that delegates can only vote on issues that the people who elected them have already debated and expressed an opinion on. Delegates are chosen to reflect the balance of feeling in their district about the politics and perspectives and they're trusted to apply the politics to whatever comes up. They go to conference and have prolonged discussions where they hear the experience and views of members from all parts of the organisation and then use their judgement to apply the politics correctly as best they see fit. Some issues don't lend themselves to extended discussion by the whole party during the pre conference period. Arguably disputes about the DC are among those because otherwise you'd have to have every branch debate the fine points of very confdiential matters. Now I know that argument could well be used as a way of covering up abuse by the people in power but that's why the issue needed a full and proper treatment at conference. It reads like it did have that. I really find it hard to believe people came away from the debate we all read and didn't understand what they were voting on but you're probably closer to the people concerned than me so fair enough.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Well yes of course they are a state capitalist ruling class in waiting and the first thing they think of every day is how they can get an inch closer to the day they can line us all up against a wall and start living in their dachas.
Yes they do have an agenda. And if they didn't they'd deserve the sack.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
You're not that good at humour
kavenism
Progressive misanthrope
They're offering it for free
YES! Finally I can chuck away those four unsold copies I have without feeling guilty. To think I was planning of slipping unseen into (((FireBox))) to leave them conveniently besides a half finished Zapatista mochachino. Cash back!discokermit
Well-Known Member
too easy.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Where's the attempt at humour? I'm sure you believe just that.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Wrong again.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
I bow to your superior knowledge of your own mind.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
A larger agenda to what, engineer a split? They possibly do but I don't think they had that agenda before the conference. Rather in all honestly they know they are very unlikely to win and remaining within the SWP will be all but impossible if they lose. Therefore, the only other real other option is to split. I think this is a consequence of being a democratic cent party that does not allow permanent factions, it makes for a very fragile organization as the only outcome of any serious divisions is mass expulsions or a split.
The goal of the CC then is to try an limit the size of any possible split by denny a recall conference, but could it really be more damaging than the current situation?
Also without brining the discussion into the open they are denying themselves the best option they have for splitting the opposition, which is to offer some concessions on the Delta case. There are a lot of members who are angry about this who would support the CC otherwise. Of the people who spoke against the DC report I know that Viv, Rita and X would all be backing the CC to the hilt if it was not for the Delta case. I know that Viv did vote for the expulsions. I am not much good at political maneuvering but I really think the best way for the CC to 'win' is to call a conference themselves as being forced into it would be a massive blow, and then splitting the opposition by offering some concessions around Delta. The only problems is exactly what concessions could be offered.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That Walker piece is a but uneven, but surprisingly thoughtful. His summary of Counterfire was both amusingly cutting and at the same time actually very fair to them for the most part.
This whole situation must be driving Counterfire nuts. Like kids who've patiently queued up outside the cinema only to be told they can't come in.
This whole situation must be driving Counterfire nuts. Like kids who've patiently queued up outside the cinema only to be told they can't come in.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
You also make a good point, and I think you would be right if the case did not involve a CC member. Even if a full discussion was not held at the very lest the membership should have been informed that a rape allegation had been made, and Delta should have stood down from all party work pending the result of the investigation. That the first time many members knew their was an allegation was at conference is outrageous.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
This is a bit disingenuous isn't it?
There have been three complaints about the SWSS statements that I've seen on facebook.
One was that the "FE statement" wrongly gave the impression that it was a statement by an FE SWSS group (which does not exist) rather than by a number of SWSS members in FE. That's been corrected. The second was that one loyalist Birkbeck member hadn't been consulted. The third was that the LSE group hadn't bothered to invite their one loyalist when they met to draw up their statement.
Even if we take all of those complaints at face value, and even if we agree to tut disapprovingly about sharp practice at Birkbeck or wherever, it hardly makes a blind bit of difference does it? Seymour isn't inventing a SWSS rebellion, there plainly is one and it just as plainly includes almost all of the substantial SWSS groups.
I mean, a bunch of SWP branches have passed oppositional motions. Are you suggesting that they are all figments of Seymour's imagination? Sort of like the 85 members per branch the CC tells you about each year?
Quite apart from anything else, if the whole opposition amounted to Seymour, Mieville and a few of their mates, they'd have been summarily expelled weeks ago. You know it, we know it and you know that we know that you know it, so please don't treat us all like fools.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Further on the Walker piece and Counterfire, I like the almost off hand way that he actually agrees with Counterfire about certain, obvious things that are rarely admitted in SWP circles: For instance that Rees was scapegoated by a CC which had been in it with him from the start, or that the response of the post-Rees leadership to the Respect debacle was indeed, as Rees claimed, to batten down the hatches and return to a semi-isolated party building routine. By not seeking to defend positions that can't be reasonably maintained, he actually robs Counterfire of most of their rhetorical weapons, and frees himself to go after them on more important issues.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
And you know what I can't really disagree with that. Truth be told I suspect most of the 'loyalist' camp couldn't either,in private anyway. I think there is an overwhelming feeling that this is something they don't want to have to defend, in fact wish had been avoided by simple and obvious steps, but will defend because they don't like where the other side are going with it all.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Pardon a brief philosophical aside. I wonder if in his quieter moments the Prof wonders at the irony of facing off against a fellow, Seymour, who in his love of all things Poulantzas (and by extension) Althusser is effectively a younger version of himself. I remember a meeting at Marxism decades ago where Rees was lambasting Callinicos for his Althusserian disregard for the totality and Harman chided Rees for not ackowledging how far Alex had already come in breaking with the 'lonely moment of the last instance' structuralist crowd. And now today Harman is dead, Rees has been cast to the wolves and Alex, cast as the defender of the dialectical faith, is up against his younger Althusserian self. I wonder if he's conscious of it in those terms, probably not and there's clearly a lot more at stake here but it is interesting to me anyway. Do they even have meetings on the dialectic at Marxism any more?
Oisin123
So Much for Subtlety
Discokermit will probably know more about this, but from my time in the SWP I think that the subject was not discussed much at Marxism. This was not because of philistinism, the SWP are formally quite keen on dialectics. The problem was Rees, aka Grandmaster of Strategy and Tactics, was a rising star, yet he had picked up Lukacs' idealistic version of the subject rather than Marx's. While Rees was keen to show off what he thought was his expertise in dialectics, it seems that Harman and Cliff were able to discourage him for a while. Eventually, after Andy Wilson delivered some cracking blows (at a Marxism meeting on Lukacs, I think it was, I was there but don't recall the original title of the talk) that really caught Rees out - think Ali vs Liston - the SWP arranged for a meeting at Marxism by Harman on the dialectic. I reckon this was 1989 or 90. Harman's meeting was packed and as gently as he could, with lots of flagging of potential lines of retreat for Rees, Harman explained the materialist version. 'Ahhh,' sighed everyone, 'that's what we were saying all along'. And the 'subject-object of history' phrase, the one dialectical idea that Rees thought he had mastered, quietly receded from SWP phraseology.
Oisin123
So Much for Subtlety
From the Grandmaster: Many years ago, the labour historian Ralph Samuel wrote that one of the things he disliked about the Communist Party was that there was always a tone of emergency in the organisation. Something or other always had to be ‘done now’, ‘could not wait’, and so on. This criticism is misplaced. If a revolutionary organisation is to play its role in the chain of events, whatever that role might be at any given time, it must act with dispatch. There is always something to be done, and, if it is to be done to maximum effect, it needs to be done in a timely manner.
Which I read to mean the Grandmaster's policy of hyperbolic exhortions to turn to the next big thing (and leave the last in the dust, without any proper accounting of events) was masterful strategy and not a moralistic battering ram to get the breathless pawns out flyposting new posters and holding new placards.
liquorice1956
New Member
delegates were not told not to discuss this - just to avoid the confidential details - this was blown out of the water by someone who disgracefully released the transcript - and a comment made by a comrade at conference in the transcript has been taken as fact. I don't see how there can be replies from people to don't agree without entering into the same breach of confidentiality and that I think is a problem for many comrades who don't agree with the 'opposition'
liquorice1956
New Member
not disingenuous at all - you appear to be assuming that all of this is happening on facebook or the internet - there are other complaints in the real world. Also I didn't say that all of the opposition consisted of the people you mention but that it's divided - and one reason for this is that seymour and his lot are trying very hard to pull people on the basis of quite spurious statements which I guess are an attempt to muddy the waters - their agenda doesn't seem to have much to do with the disputes committee but replacing the cc (presumably with one of their own)
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Because it wasn't recorded in the released transcript it doesn't mean that pressures of various hue were not brought to bear, the CC itself in it's statement attempted to suggest that the matter was not up for further discussion (another tactically inept move). We've seen and read numerous reports of members coming under pressure not to talk about it post-conference. To turn a blind eye to the informal way the CC imposes itself is to turn a blind eye to how you ever reached this situation and to ensure that it will happen again, but next time at a more advanced level (little bit of Reesian dialetics there).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You didn't manage to come up with the gossip and innuendo that Seymour is spreading when asked yesterday, can you have a go at it today? Have you heard any comments or anything from the non-oppositionists of a similar tone or style? Have you ever experienced the CC and their apparatus do something similar to people they oppose?
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
in what sense?
Similar threads
