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SWP expulsions and squabbles

belboid said:
only if you ignore the class part! By simply recognising the dominance of class as the key factor in society, it does straightforwardly support that materialist analysis. Everything flows from it. Of course, it could flow in a variety of ways, but the centrality of class is always the starting point.
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Well no at best you'd arrive at the socialist feminist argument that working class women need to emancipate themselves from working class men. As only women are oppressed, not men (although they are exploited) then only women can self emancipate from oppression while all workers can self emancipate from exploitation. The socialist feminists will apply class to the point of saying ruling class women aren't part of the solution but they can't easily, just from the logic of self emancipation argue for working class men being part of the solution either. Only a deeper argument about the role ofthe family within the capitalist division of labour gets you to that point. And that's where the IS parted company with the left feminists and where Seymour with his concessions to patriarchy theory sides with them. And that debate can't be decided by just referring to the party's tradition of working class self emancipation. You need a more thorough going materialist analysis to get to that. There are plenty of left traditions which value the self activity of the working class but don't share a Marxist analysis of oppression. This really deserves a separate discussion but as we're talking tradition I don't feel too bad for waffling.

Sheila McGregor put it much better than I am 28 years ago: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1985/no2-030/mcgregor.html
 
SpineyNorman said:
There was also the thing about big bang theory being wrong cos it was undialectical :D
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This idea comes from Engels, who on a priori grounds argued that the universe could not have had a beginning. Is he obviously wrong? Doesn't Hawkings make a case for saying that because time changes towards a singularity it is no more valid to treat the Big Bang as the start of everything than to treat the North Pole as different to any other point on the Earth's surface?
 
There is no distinct IS tradition of any substance. It's Trotskyism with three ideas (of dubious original merit and almost no current application) tacked on and the idea of a programme abandoned in favour of party-building oriented "flexibility". The rest is just so much self-regard.
 
Oisin123 said:
This idea comes from Engels, who on a priori grounds argued that the universe could not have had a beginning. Is he obviously wrong?
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The issue isn't that the Big Bang Theory is unassailable, nor that the various other scientific ideas Woods and Grant argued against should be treated as holy writ. The issue is that attempting to disprove significant elements of modern science on the grounds that they don't agree with our metaphysics rather than on scientific grounds is madness. It is religious thinking plain and simple.

It's worth noting, by the way, that Militant never actually adopted Grant's ideas on science, although he did present them at educational meetings, summer camps etc from time to time. Where they tended to get a rather mixed reception.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
There is no distinct IS tradition of any substance. It's Trotskyism with three ideas (of dubious original merit and almost no current application) tacked on and the idea of a programme abandoned in favour of party-building oriented "flexibility". The rest is just so much self-regard.
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Which of the socialist groups would you say had the most coherent set of ideas?;)
 
By the way, I saw a reference on facebook to an apparently rather hair raising 1950s article on homosexuality by Chanie Rosenberg. Has anyone seen or read this?
 
Nigel Irritable said:
The issue is that attempting to disprove significant elements of modern science on the grounds that they don't agree with our metaphysics rather than on scientific grounds is madness.
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Well, yes except that I wouldn't detach science completely from politics. And Lenin, Trotsky, etc certainly took an interest in the subject and offered opinions on certain debates (e.g. the turgid Monism and Empirico-Criticism). This isn't entirely off topic since an early sign of the rot at the top of the SWP was the expulsion of Andy Wilson in part for pointing out that John Rees's supposed expertise in the dialectic did not extend beyond a reading of Lukacs.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
The issue is that attempting to disprove significant elements of modern science on the grounds that they don't agree with our metaphysics rather than on scientific grounds is madness. It is religious thinking plain and simple.
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I've just remembered an RCP meeting from the eighties, insisting chaos theory was wrong, because it would mean we couldn't have a planned economy.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Well no at best you'd arrive at the socialist feminist argument that working class women need to emancipate themselves from working class men. As only women are oppressed, not men (although they are exploited) then only women can self emancipate from oppression while all workers can self emancipate from exploitation. The socialist feminists will apply class to the point of saying ruling class women aren't part of the solution but they can't easily, just from the logic of self emancipation argue for working class men being part of the solution either. Only a deeper argument about the role of the family within the capitalist division of labour gets you to that point. And that's where the IS parted company with the left feminists and where Seymour with his concessions to patriarchy theory sides with them. And that debate can't be decided by just referring to the party's tradition of working class self emancipation. You need a more thorough going materialist analysis to get to that. There are plenty of left traditions which value the self activity of the working class but don't share a Marxist analysis of oppression. This really deserves a separate discussion but as we're talking tradition I don't feel too bad for waffling.
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I don't have a position either way on your waffle.

But we shouldn't forget the real reason Women's Voice was closed down. As Lindsey German put it in the main SWP text on women's issues for years Sex, Class and Socialism:

"Women’s Voice, far from winning a layer of women ‘put off’ by male-dominated organisation towards a revolutionary party, was itself becoming a bridge out of the party.” (p224)

ie we had to destroy the actual women's organisation to save the women's organisation.

Others might also argue. On matters of internal democracy, the score was: women's liberation groups 1 - 0 SWP. Women started seeing this (via more interaction due to Women's Voice) and began leaving crucially they still retained their socialist principles and a socialist worldview.
 
sihhi said:
I don't have a position either way on your waffle.

But we shouldn't forget the real reason Women's Voice was closed down. As Lindsey German put it in the main SWP text on women's issues for years Sex, Class and Socialism:

"Women’s Voice, far from winning a layer of women ‘put off’ by male-dominated organisation towards a revolutionary party, was itself becoming a bridge out of the party.” (p224)Aha talked you into silence almost!

But come on. You're surprised that a revolutionary would say it was a bad thing for separate women's orgs to take people away from revolutionary

ie we had to destroy the actual women's organisation to save the women's organisation.

Others might also argue. On matters of internal democracy, the score was: women's liberation groups 1 - 0 SWP. Women started seeing this (via more interaction due to Women's Voice) and began leaving crucially although they retained their socialist principles and a socialist worldview.
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Aha silenced you almost!

But come on. You're saying it's wrong for a revolutionary to argue its a bad thing for separate women's org to take women out of revolutionary politics? what else would she have said?!
 
bolshiebhoy said:
But come on. You're surprised that a revolutionary would say it was a bad thing for separate women's orgs to take people away from revolutionary
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1. Women's Voice was a women's section. It still did everything that other parts of the SWP did, but also tackled some specific problems exactly how its Bengali and black British sections/papers did.

2. Many would see women's liberation groups as revolutionary. Women's Voice didn't take people away from revolutionary politics. The SWP simply mobilised against the kernel of members having a different understanding of internal democracy (not for the first time, see the Red Action expulisons). Nothing wrong with that but let's simply be more honest about it.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Was it originally from Socialist Review?
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Yes it was! December 1957. The book was rather easier to find when I remembered that it wasn't a hardback, or edited by Peter Tatchell. Sewers dont get a mention, the only bit reprinted goes:

"It is only when there is complete equality between the sexes in all respects, beginning with economic equality between the sexes and extending through al aspects of life ... that homosexuality would disapear naturally. If nature then produced an abnormality, which it might do in a number of cases, medical treatment would take good care of it"

(C. Dallas, Equality)
 
Bloody hell belboid, that is indeed some rum stuff.

On another note, Nick Cohen has been announcing on twitter that there's a new SWP story in the papers tomorrow. Almost as if they timed it for maximum impact, assuming he's telling the truth.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
On another note, Nick Cohen has been announcing on twitter that there's a new SWP story in the papers tomorrow. Almost as if they timed it for maximum impact, assuming he's telling the truth.
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a few people getting very excited about it...

new sovietgoonboy post too. tho that one is less interesting
 
Apparently the faction have 535 or so members, only a little short of the CC non-faction, but they got walloped at the majority of aggregates and will have 120 or so delegates.
 
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