Well you may be more advanced than i, and you may therefore look down upon me, but i am more advanced then he, and i can therefore look down upon him (or her?)..
It is always best when people know there position, don,t you think?
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
It is always best when people know there position, don,t you think?
In the SWP world the working class exists as a series of "layers" - check the paper to see this used quite a lot. In this onion-like visualisation of the class there are those who are more aware of Marxist ideas and so are "advanced". The advanced layers then form the "vanguard" leading the party which is itself the "vanguard" of the class. Democratic Centralism means that you are free to do as you are told by those more "advanced" than you.
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Well, they're like a scouting party, and they like to stay upwind.
Plastic Red
New Member
Surely if the leadership selects it's self it's still a popularity contest. Just much more likely to be clouded by personal feelings. It is also much more likely to perpetuate out moded ideas (like the internet is middle class and news papers are the best way to communicate) as people select like minded people?
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
If you don't think that the vanguard organisation contains the most advanced elements of the class, then how can it act as a vanguard? If it does contain those best elements, then its leadership, tested and proven in struggle, must be best placed to judge what its duty as a vanguard is.
I think you made the right decision to leave the party....before push came to shove.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
Plastic Red
New Member
If it doesn't then it can't. But if it contains only a few hundred issolated activists with very little influence over the rest of the movement because it can't tolerate even the most hair splitting of differences without expelling people then how canit act as the vanguard?
If I'm on the CC and I pick the best people for the job how can I be sure I'm making the right choice? That my judgement isn't clouded by my own predjudices?
Which member of the vanguard party invented workers councils by the way?
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
FW hand back your PD t-shirt, apron and mug and report immediately to Mainwaring Towers for re-education.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
I think you've answered your own questions and are well out of it.
I'll stop playing devils advocate.
The slate system is a recipe for self perpetuating rubbish. Even worse it is an organisational dog's breakfast which conceals an even worse political problem; a problem which I've been gently trying to point out.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Put her hoodie in your bag along with the rest of your gear; make sure you're at the Towers by 12.00...lateness will not be tolerated.
LM
Plastic Red
New Member
If we're both playing devil's advocate we'll be here a long time.
I find it incredibly depressing that the working class has been taking a sustaining kicking for thirty years and the SWP has been helpless to stop it, yet they still seem to believe they are infalliable. Surely they should be desperate for ideas and debate.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Have a look a Bolshie's posts on this thread to see how deep loyalty to vanguard is ingrained even for those who left the organisation years ago; and remember it's not just true of the SWP.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
No it isn't. "Advanced" is just an archaic term. You are correct on most political issues in a way that, say, a Tory is not. Therefore you are, from a socialist point of view, more "advanced". Should said Tory change her mind about politics it's entirely possible that she might at some stage be more "advanced" than you. It's not a permanent, inherent, trait.
People get all shifty and embarrassed about this because of a vague, incoherent, ill-thought through, assumption that it's arrogant to say that all ideas are not equally valid (you trying to imply you're better than other people? eh? eh?). Anarchoids and other radical liberals prefer to use that incoherence and embarrassment rather than make a case for their own strategies and assumptions.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Advanced by virtue of filling in a membership card, and a whole group of people who've filled in a membership card, well they must be collectively more advanced than those outside - that's the sort of circular self-supporting logic that's being attacked by anti-vanguardists.
The real incoherence here (tactical no doubt - or at least i would hope so, or it's even more pathetic) lies in confusing the idea that not all ideas are equally valid with the criticisms of the above self-appointed roles and positions.The criticisms are far more material then who has the right ideas, they are about the sort of organisation and society that flows from such a conception of self-appointed advanced leadership (esp when the ideas of the vanguard are wrong).
Why do vanguardists never really understand the real criticisms of vanguardism and instead prefer to use stuff like the above than get to grips with them (it just means that people believe different things - no it doesn't). Why are the vanguard so...backward?
The real incoherence here (tactical no doubt - or at least i would hope so, or it's even more pathetic) lies in confusing the idea that not all ideas are equally valid with the criticisms of the above self-appointed roles and positions.The criticisms are far more material then who has the right ideas, they are about the sort of organisation and society that flows from such a conception of self-appointed advanced leadership (esp when the ideas of the vanguard are wrong).
Why do vanguardists never really understand the real criticisms of vanguardism and instead prefer to use stuff like the above than get to grips with them (it just means that people believe different things - no it doesn't). Why are the vanguard so...backward?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
No, "advanced" by virtue of holding revolutionary socialist ideas.
butchersapron said:
What "above self-appointed roles and positions"?
butchersapron said:
What sort of society? Are you hinting towards prefigurative bollocks here?
butchersapron said:
Why do "anti-vanguardists" prefer to argue with straw men than to mount a coherent, positive, case for their own political assumptions? The answer is because anarchism and related forms of radical liberalism exist not as movements aimed at changing the world but as moralist's critiques of movements aimed at changing the world.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
But that's not what it actually means is it? We need only read the redundant archaicisms from both sides in this latest dispute to see what it means and what relations and conceptions it leads to, here are the leaders, those who must teach. the most advanced workers and so are placed in a position to do so by virtue of filling in that bloody format then being picked to do so by someone else who filled it in before you. And that's the roles I'm talking about.
It doesn't detract from butchersapron's point but the SWP don't have a membership card. That is probably because it enables them to have a flexible view of their membership numbers. The only signature they ask for is on a Direct Debit form.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Thank God Irish republicans never saw the SP in this way.
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
Now that's something we can all agree on.
in truth the most important signature of all.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
That depends on whose using the term and in what context.
That the SWP CC seem intent on actually adopting what should be straw man anarchoid arguments as actual theoretical positions is rather bizarre. But the SWP have their own rather unusual conception of leadership, which involves a constant war to win a supposedly conservative membership to their latest wheeze, which is really quite alien to people from other Marxist backgrounds. Including those who have absolutely no problem with "leadership" in general.
(In fact anyone who has a problem with leadership in general is a fucking moron, but I'm assuming that it's redundant to go into detail on that).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
They do
(or they did very very recently)
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I'm sure they did at times. So what?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Prefigurative bollocks? You mean the communist idea that the methods that you use to organise will inevitably effect the society that would appear as result of your success? Sounds pretty sensible to me - and that Marx feller i believe.
Nigel, you were the one whose opening gambit here was a strawman - you might as well just have said 'proudhon/anti-semitism/liberal vicars/etc' and get it over with. No substantive engagement with or understanding of anti-vanguardist critiques were actually on display in that post of yours, so i thought at the very least i could point out a few basic misunderstandings for those watching in the absence of anything more meatier.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I mean the anarchoid notion that revolutionary political organisations under capitalism should be little models of a future society, like tiny little islands of communism, a notion which (a) has more in common with the desire to live in a commune than a desire to change the world and (b) has consistently led to complete organisational and strategic incompetence.
butchersapron said:
I wasn't responding to a substantive "anti-vanguardist critique" in the first place, such things being few, far between, absent from this thread, and rarely significantly related to the kind of anarchoid bollocks assumptions I was arguing against in the first place.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Ok. And Workers' Power also saw Militant in the same way, didn't they?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
What? I very much doubt it. But to the very limited extent that Militant had any opinion had any opinion of Workers Power, it would have regarded them as irrelevant in a closely related, if not identical, way. And rightly so. Spartoids, like anarchoids, exist primarily as critiques of revolutionary movements and organisations, although they are at least less moralistic about it, which I suppose is to their credit.
Really? i'm sure i remember having a membership card with a fist on it. Maybe that was prior to the stickbending dishonesty and hyper optimism phase, to produce an exaggerated membership role.
i'm not sure where telling the truth to the working class fits into this though?
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