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SWP expulsions and squabbles

butchersapron said:
Can i just say, that in this weeks Socialist Worker there is an article on Hitler. There is, underneath a picture, the caption:

I kid you not.
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Brilliant letters this week too.

Indispensible letter on Orwell from Mancunian James:


Orwell was a critic of Stalin
At the time when George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four many on the left were afraid to criticise Stalinist Russia. But he sought to attack the totalitarian regime because of its opposition to what he saw as socialism’s fundamental values. This doesn’t mark him out as a traitor to the Left, but a man of integrity. Orwell was willing to call out injustice at either side of the political spectrum.

James, Manchester
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A boss saying they like blacklisting:

I support blacklisting

I run a small construction company and there are many workers out there worthy of blacklisting, take my word for it. If someone came to work on your home pretending to be a skilled tradesmen, caused a whole lot of damage, stole from you, or was rude to you, then you’d probably want to make damned sure that they didn’t ever come back again. But in a commercial environment it’s probably a bit unfair to share that list with other corporations.
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A Brit expat in France is upset at leftwing Muslims being sexual chauvinists, wants us to stop insulting believers and warns of rising 'black nationalism'.

French left and Islamophobia
Tragically, there was a call by a very significant group of left wing Muslim activists and intellectuals to join the demo against gay marriage in Paris last month. It didn’t help that almost all the radical left has been so hopeless on opposing Islamophobia. The space left open by the radical left has been partly filled by other forces, such as black nationalism, which are not clear on gay rights. However, at least 40% percent of Muslims in France support equal rights to marriage. So there is no need for despair, but there is plenty of work to be done. This will be extremely difficult if the far left continues its habit of insulting believers, whether Muslims or Catholics.
John Mullen, Montreuil, France
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http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=30448

Absolutely crucial to have these voices heard in the "nerve centre" of the party at the expense of discussion from your own members who want to discuss the party's structural weaknesses.

Listen to a SWP guy - 42 minutes in - with brown T-shirt argue that the strike on 30 November 2011 was "the largest strike this country has ever seen since 1926" (ignoring the larger 1979 Day of Action) was as a result of good leadership by trade union leaders, then the December sell-out was bad leadership by the same leaders.

 
butchersapron said:
Wow, is there really no self-awareness amongst all those people they employ?
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They've forgotten to change the picture of Owen Jones endorsing their merchandising firm 'Red Stuff' (following from their fiction publication arm Red Words).

lenins%20header.jpg
 
What do we make of this use of Lenin-ism by Callinicos in his latest battle commands from the ISJ:


Chris Harman argued during the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-5 that a united front involves revolutionary socialists working both with and against those to their right. As so often with dialectical formulations such as this, there is a tendency to slide towards one or other of the two poles—in this case, just working with the left officials, or simply working against them. These are not just intellectual errors. There are objective pulls in both directions built into the situation. The relative weakness of the rank and file creates a temptation simply to tail the left bureaucracy, while the union leaders’ betrayals push activists in the direction of denunciations that aren’t backed by the muscle to call independent strikes and so lead all too often to passive demoralisation.

Revolutionaries have to grasp contradictions such as this in their totality, highlighting the aspect that brings them into focus. As Lenin put it, “The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain”. Here and now in Britain this means building UtR, both as a forum where activists who want to build mass strikes can get together to discuss and coordinate and as a means of putting pressure on the left officials.
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http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=863&issue=137

What exactly does Lenin's "The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain" mean?

'Do the thing that will have the most impact'
'Find the most sensible course of action, not the dumbest one'

Also whatever happened to Right to Work?
 
Nigel Irritable said:
That "rethinking the left" article by Kevin Crane made my teeth hurt. A really intense mixture of SWP buzzwords and arrogance.
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It's almost saying Livingstone should not have been challenged in 2008, when Boris won:

"A CC that had lost touch severely with the bulk of the membership felt unable, even unwilling, to go to them with difficulties they were having with other forces in Respect in 2006 before the crisis became unmanageable, then swung the other way and began mobilising members for a messy break with Galloway, culminating in a badly misjudged attempt at launch a breakaway party from Respect (the ‘Left List’) in the London elections. It bombed in the polls and damaged our relations not only with those who still followed Galloway, but also many socialists who had been desperate to fend off the defeat of Ken Livingstone in the mayoral election (the actual impact the Left List had on Ken's vote was not far off zero, it was the symbolic break that was the harm). Party members were rightly concerned and in many cases angry."
Easy prey for the CC.
 
sihhi said:
What exactly does Lenin's "The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain" mean?

'Do the thing that will have the most impact'
'Find the most sensible course of action, not the dumbest one'
Click to expand...

Yes, the quote is a statement of the bleedin' obvious. The purpose of digging it up is to add legitimacy to whatever Callinicos attaches it to.

sihhi said:
Also whatever happened to Right to Work?
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It went down the memory hole. It did so here in Ireland too. I think here in Ireland they may be on to anti-austerity united front number four at this point, but I've honestly lost count and can't even remember all of their names.
 
sihhi said:
Easy prey for the CC.
Click to expand...

Yes, but this guy is off message in opposition terms. He seems to be perched halfway between the mainstream opposition stance and the Counterfire/Donny Mayo stance, leaning towards the latter. It's the mixture of these two essentially incompatible positions that leads to its incoherence.
 
sihhi said:
What do we make of this use of Lenin-ism by Callinicos in his latest battle commands from the ISJ:




http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=863&issue=137

What exactly does Lenin's "The whole art of politics lies in finding and taking as firm a grip as we can of the link that is least likely to be struck from our hands, the one that is most important at the given moment, the one that most of all guarantees its possessor the possession of the whole chain" mean?

'Do the thing that will have the most impact'
'Find the most sensible course of action, not the dumbest one'

Also whatever happened to Right to Work?
Click to expand...

Ah! the theory of the weakest link. In the words of Foucault, a strategy so obvious even to the lowest sub lieutenant.
 
butchersapron said:
Of course it's idiocy as well, the true marxist position is that contradictions mass at the strongest point.
Click to expand...
Surely in that sense Capitalism's strongest point would be their weakest from the perspective of the revolutionary, hence the difference in class consciousness?
 
sihhi said:
Brilliant letters this week too.

Indispensible letter on Orwell from Mancunian James:




A boss saying they like blacklisting:




A Brit expat in France is upset at leftwing Muslims being sexual chauvinists, wants us to stop insulting believers and warns of rising 'black nationalism'.



http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=30448

Absolutely crucial to have these voices heard in the "nerve centre" of the party at the expense of discussion from your own members who want to discuss the party's structural weaknesses.

Listen to a SWP guy - 42 minutes in - with brown T-shirt argue that the strike on 30 November 2011 was "the largest strike this country has ever seen since 1926" (ignoring the larger 1979 Day of Action) was as a result of good leadership by trade union leaders, then the December sell-out was bad leadership by the same leaders.

Click to expand...


Would you believe me if I told you he was a fulltimer?
 
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