SWP expulsions and squabbles

[discokermit]

If i was to write a letter into SW/SR I wonder what the odds are it would be published?

depends what you say.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I don't know what I am enjoying more. The Prof's article or the absolute fits it's producing in the Seymourites on fb and elsewhere. Finally, the empire strikes back.

Do you really think it's notably good?

It struck me as a bit rambling and all over the place, trying to deal with too many different opponent's positions and ending up dealing with them very superficially or by amalgam. That last part is obviously a tactical choice (to insinuate that the "errors" of one set of opponents can somehow be attached to others) but I don't think it's done particularly skillfully.

I mean, the framing of the argument as a battle between defenders of Leninism (the SWP Central Committee) and people he therefore he portrays as its opponents, whether they are or not, is clever enough. And he managed to throw the usual bone to the "soft" oppositionists by distinguishing their "thoughtful" but wrong views from the supposed irresponsibility of the "hard" oppositionists. But he never really engaged with the arguments of any of his internal opponents in any serious way. And he completely dodged the issue that has sparked the whole controversy.

 

[imposs1904]

No that's an emanymton original that is.

you only think it is. that joke's been told on many occasion within the SPGB and your name was never mentioned.

 

[frogwoman]

the fact he's going on about the internet etc reminds me a bit of gaddafi going on about protesters being on drugs and that's why they're protesting. shows how threatened he is doesn't it

 

[cesare]

If i was to write a letter into SW/SR I wonder what the odds are it would be published?

We could compose a letter from this thread

 

[SpineyNorman]

The most enjoyable thing about the article in itself is how he totally refuses to even name Seymour and explains why: "a few individuals, some well known, others not, have used blogs and social media to launch a campaign within the SWP. Yet they themselves, for all their hotly proclaimed love of democracy, are accountable to no one for these actions. They offer an unappetising lesson in what happens when power is exercised without responsibility." Nailed on.

There's quite a bit of irony in this statement, don't you think?

Wasn't it the prof's grandad who said power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?

 

[imposs1904]

It is.

(beat you darren!)

legacies and few flush living members. thanks for outing me you bastard.

 

[bolshiebhoy]

Yes, Seymour is running rampant, arrogating powers of the state to himself imagining that he is a workers tribunal fully and properly formed.

The point he's making is that no fucker elected Seymour. Hence he doesn't get a mention.

 

[butchersapron]

It's a sign of a wobble. He cannot do invective, he cannot do rhetoric, he can't half do old man brown leather jacket waffle though. He bottled it by throwing it onto for against leninsm.

 

[emanymton]

you only think it is. that joke's been told on many occasion within the SPGB and your name was never mentioned.

It's true then it is impossible to have a truly original thought these days.

 

[discokermit]

legacies and few flush living members. thanks for outing me you bastard.

i've gotta say, darren is the coolest name.

 

[SpineyNorman]

The point he's making is that no fucker elected Seymour. Hence he doesn't get a mention.

But what 'power' is Seymour wielding? Not much as far as I can see. The CC on the other hand...

 

[butchersapron]

The point he's making is that no fucker elected Seymour. Hence he doesn't get a mention.

Why would he mention such a rotten method of election, this surely only opens up his own path to the closed shop to enquiry.

 

[frogwoman]

It's a sign of a wobble. He cannot do invective, he cannot do rhetoric, he can't half do old man brown leather jacket waffle though. He bottled it by throwing it onto for against leninsm.

It's not his role in the party

 

[Random]

The thing is you still need to debate the other revolutionaries' ideas or else you're just storing up tears for later. Arguably the swp wouldn't be in this fight for existance now (if that's what it is) if they'd had more arguments with people they'd recruited about exactly what being a revolutionary means.

After arguing with Leninists for about 20 years now I still don't understand why the different versions disagree with each other so much. Why do you need to argue so much with other socialists, who also think that there's a need to work for a working class revolution through workplace activity and campaigning? Why do the small socialist groups all spend so much time saying that the others are wrong? I can understand the need to argue against people with politics that translates into very different activity - like arguing against anarchists who just want to build affinity groups, or against christian or Islamic campaigners who want to base activity in faith. But why so much effort in showing that people with near-identical politics are so very very poisonously wrong?

 

[butchersapron]

There's quite a bit of irony in this statement, don't you think?

Wasn't it the prof's grandad who said power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Wasn't it cliff who developed marxs ideas about different material interests and applied them to shop stewards?

 

[imposs1904]

i've gotta say, darren is the coolest name.

thirty years from now all those millions of old age pensioners named Darren.

apologies for derailing the thread.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Wasn't it cliff who developed marxs ideas about different material interests and applied them to shop stewards?

Yeah - and it was some of the better stuff produced by IS too if you ask me.

 

[butchersapron]

Yeah - and it was some of the better stuff produced by IS too if you ask me.

No relevance here of course.

 

[discokermit]

It's a sign of a wobble. He cannot do invective, he cannot do rhetoric, he can't half do old man brown leather jacket waffle though. He bottled it by throwing it onto for against leninsm.

i'm not sure he's bottling it. splitting the soft oppositionists from the hard, over the question of structure was always going to be his plan, surely?

 

[butchersapron]

i'm not sure he's bottling it. splitting the soft oppositionists from the hard, over the question of structure was always going to be his plan, surely?

I agree, but through the paper? This is surely for the people outside?

 

[frogwoman]

After arguing with Leninists for about 20 years now I still don't understand why the different versions disagree with each other so much. Why do you need to argue so much with other socialists, who also think that there's a need to work for a working class revolution through workplace activity and campaigning? Why do the small socialist groups all spend so much time saying that the others are wrong? I can understand the need to argue against people with politics that translates into very different activity - like arguing against anarchists who just want to build affinity groups, or against christian or Islamic campaigners who want to base activity in faith. But why so much effort in showing that people with near-identical politics are so very very poisonously wrong?

because the groups have so similar names that its easy to get confused so they have to distance themselves. i still think we should change our name back to militant. I think it is part of the old trot thing of having to link back to what they would have called themselves back in the 4th international or whatever so you get all these groups calling themselves things like socialist workers party, revolutionary socialist party, etc etc.

you have a point though i think it is because they're trying to be the largest group on the left and attract new recruits and corner the "market share". im sure you see this kind of sectarianism in anarchism tho.

i think SP do have quite different politics to SWP as it goes. Not just on the question of the USSR or whatever but in terms of the approach taken to things like Lindsey etc.

 

[emanymton]

It's a sign of a wobble. He cannot do invective, he cannot do rhetoric, he can't half do old man brown leather jacket waffle though. He bottled it by throwing it onto for against leninsm.

Not sure about the first bit, but I think the second bit is one of the problems the SWP is having, Callinicos has ended up in the position of de facto leader. But I don't think it is a role he is cut out for or one he especially wants.

eta, just seen your other post, the fact that he feels the need to do this publicly is a sign of weakness.

 

[Delroy Booth]

and yet leading SP(EW) member Steve Nally only got 40 plus votes more than the SPGB candidate in that recent local election. I wish I had that small boy's pocket money.

Never mind pocket-money, Steve Nally threatened to name names, the workers have long memories...

 

[butchersapron]

Not sure about the first bit, but I think the second bit is one of the problems the SWP is having, Callinicos has ended up in the position of de facto leader. But I don't think it is a role he is cut out for or one he especially wants.

He's happy being the brown eminence. But there's no one left.

 

[sihhi]

After arguing with Leninists for about 20 years now I still don't understand why the different versions disagree with each other so much. Why do you need to argue so much with other socialists, who also think that there's a need to work for a working class revolution through workplace activity and campaigning?

Because as you know there are massive differences as to what what working class revolution actually means and how it can be effected in nominally 'open' but thoroughly imperialist capitalist countries with very heavy trade union bureaucracies.

One way to unite the left or at least to stop inter-left attacks is a massive clampdown on bourgeois norms and a sudden onset of military repression. Unlikely to happen here, instead a slow slide to the grave for the majority alongside increasing freedom and liberation for the middle-class seems more likely.

 

[Random]

i think SP do have quite different politics to SWP as it goes. Not just on the question of the USSR or whatever but in terms of the approach taken to things like Lindsey etc.

I can see the point in taking up practical issues like that. What I'm on about is the hours and hours and hours spent by these top Marxist thinkers in proving that someone has got some interpretation of the dialectic wrong. Who cares?

And I'll say again for the umpteenth time, I'm not taking up this point in an attempt to say that anarchism is so much better. My experience of UK anarchism has been of very unorganised groups, which mostly operate in different tactical ways, rather than trying to convince everyone that they are the only ones on the right track.

 

[Random]

eta: I still don't see the massive difference between the SWP, the SP and the AWL, the WP, etc etc.

One way to unite the left or at least to stop inter-left attacks is a massive clampdown on bourgeois norms and a sudden onset of military repression. Unlikely to happen here, instead a slow slide to the grave for the majority alongside increasing freedom and liberation for the middle-class seems more likely.

I would not be so sure. There are many examples of Communist groups in a life-or-death struggle with the State still able to spare the energy to purge the "trotskyists" or "ultra-leftists" in their ranks.

 

[SpineyNorman]

I can see the point in taking up practical issues like that. What I'm on about is the hours and hours and hours spent by these top Marxist thinkers in proving that someone has got some interpretation of the dialectic wrong. Who cares?

I don't get that obsession either. I could understand it if the starting point was a tactical or strategic error and they could show that this had its roots in a theoretical error somewhere but it tends to be argued in a much more abstract way.

 

[sihhi]

He's happy being the brown eminence. But there's no one left.

Is it me or is this suggesting Seymour wants to drive people to something new but "less left-wing" (like Melenchon is/was with respect to the NPA)

The stakes in these debates are very high. The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France imploded in 2011-12, leading to a very serious breakaway to the Front de Gauche led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. This has weakened the far left in Europe, and indeed the rest of the world. The implosion was caused by political differences and setbacks, but it was exacerbated by an internal regime very similar to the one advocated by some SWP members. All the debates within the NPA went through the filter imposed by the struggle between four permanent factions. Members' loyalties focused on their factional alignments rather than the party itself.

Also how the frig has the NPA returning to a new version of what it was before it coalesced - weakened the far left in the Philippines?