SWP expulsions and squabbles

[chilango]

do we need a new lenin?

Nah. The old one is still lying around in pretty good nick if anyone wants him.

 

[Idris2002]

do we need a new lenin?

We still have the original one, don't forget. (feck, Chilango beat me to it)

Oh and it looks like Mad Vlad may not have died of syphilis after all:

http://io9.com/5987331/new-theory-suggests-lenin-died-from-a-rare-genetic-brain-disorder

 

[marty21]

Halfway there marty, there is now two cases (or, two that are formally talked about, there is at least one other rape allegation) - the second where the reported rapist was given two years exile.

definitely a clusterfuck then - sounds like the Catholic Church in their approach - just move them away - people will forget about the 'problem'

 

[treelover]

''And it matters to me, because I can’t claim to be entirely innocent. I was in this party for 28 years. I must have accepted claims that didn’t make sense, and ignored accounts of appalling behaviour, or sighed and hoped the tricky issue I heard about would go away of its own accord. Somehow the critical faculties that led me to join a socialist group deserted me with regard to the group itself'


FROM MARK'S BLOG:

One for Bolshie and perhaps some other ex members...

 

[Pickman's model]

Nah. The old one is still lying around in pretty good nick if anyone wants him.

needs a new carbueretteur mind, and the exhaust could do with some work.

 

[chilango]

Might be alright for spares and parts though?

 

[Idris2002]

 

[frogwoman]

The yellower and more leathery the skin of the mummified Lenin grows, and the higher the statistically determined number of visitors to the Lenin Mausoleum climbs, the less are people concerned about the real Lenin and his historical significance. More and more monuments are erected to his memory, more and more motion pictures turned out in which he is the central figure more and more books written about him, and the Russian confectioners mould sweetmeats in forms which bear his features. And yet the fadedness of the faces on the chocolate Lenin’s is matched by the unclarity and the improbability of the stories which are told about him. Though the Lenin Institute in Moscow may publish his collected works, they no longer have any meaning beside the fantastic legends which have formed around his name. As soon as people began to concern themselves with Lenin’s collar-buttons, they also ceased to bother about his ideas. Everyone then fashions his own Lenin, and if not after his own image, at any rate after his own desires.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1935/lenin-legend.htm

 

[sihhi]

The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) have released a statement:

Many SWP and ex-SWP dissidents say they don’t want “another left group”. But a network is a group. Organising it very loosely may diminish its ability to formulate sharp ideas, to learn from criticism of the past, to mobilise compactly and with energy, or to have political control over its members who get trade union or student union positions. It won’t stop it being a group.

And what would we say to a doctor who, when many medical treatments have failed to fix a disease, and some have made it worse, responded: we don’t want yet another medicine?

What proportion of the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts NCAFC is AWL? Does anyone know?

In any case, for the ISN, and for all the activists now being shaken loose from the SWP, there should be two main priorities now.

First, join in united action with other socialists. You are no longer bound by the comminations of the SWP. Student ex-SWPers, for example, are now free to unite in action with the major force of the radical left in the student world, the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts.

Second, discuss. Where you have differences with other socialists, like Workers’ Liberty, deal with them by dialogue and debate

 

[DotCommunist]

Chocolate Lenins all round

 

[belboid]

Not quite as eloquent as Hitchins description of his own resignation. So he says he has much, much more to say about all this. That'll be fun and will serve to set the outward looking tone of the ISN from day one.

"I also want to register my gratitude to those in the International Socialist tendency who supported the fight" Ah. London branch of the ISO anyone?

more clearly the Candians, if the support of Abbie Bakan & P Kellog is anything to go by.

 

[mk12]

I enjoyed Mark Steel's piece and it chimes with my thoughts on it all, especially as we're both ex-members. Apart from the People's Assembly bit!

 

[mk12]

Surely no need.

He doesn't believe in bourgeois justice.

We could just get a group of us lot together and decide that he's not being libelled.

That's how it works, right?

He believes in bourgeois justice if it is directed at the BNP.

 

[treelover]

genuine question, why do posters( many I respect) see the P/A's as a negative thing?, very little else is happening, ´(the bt protests being non left led)

 

[DotCommunist]

did you see the list of names? it'll end up in jazz hands, mark my words

 

[Nigel Irritable]

The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) have released a statement:

There's something rather unseemly about the inevitable long winded statements from every little group offering "advice" to the new split. The Workers Power one was particularly desperate. At least the AWL are sharp enough to realise that they have zero chance of recruiting the dissidents and so instead they concentrate on trying to lure them into its NCAFC front. That really would put the NCAFC into a dominant position on the NUS left, for the little that's worth.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

genuine question, why do posters( many I respect) see the P/A's as a negative thing?, very little else is happening, ´(the bt protests being non left led)

Because they will just be vacuous rallies for the usual suspects

 

[chilango]

genuine question, why do posters( many I respect) see the P/A's as a negative thing?, very little else is happening, ´(the bt protests being non left led)

As I said in the original thread:

Thing is with all of these initiatives it's the same ever decreasing circle of people whose entire lives revolve around being a Left activist.

Putting it harshly, the main objective of stuff like this is to give 'em all something to do for the next few months.

If we were looking at big gatherings called from below, from street level assemblies, from neighbours, workmates and friends getting together and deciding they need to link up on a city- wide or national scale it'd be a whole different kettle of fish.

But it ain't. It's a pastime. And a conscience salve.

If anybody, and I mean anybody, I come across in my daily life even mentions one of these assemblies I'll come on here and perform a forfeit of the thread's choice. Hell, I'll even buy, and read, a Laurie Penny book. they won't though.

Nowr's happened to change my mind on this yet.

 

[belboid]

The Workers Power one was particularly desperate.

are thry the first to get in with the need for the new organisation to have a programme immediately? Even if only a programme referring to the next few months. That'd be a really good way to start a new org

 

[sihhi]

The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB)/ World Socialist Movement have released a statement.

It notes how they are real "socialists in a socialist party where genuine internal democracy is valued and does not have a leaders [sic] to betray its principles"

 

[treelover]

did you see the list of names? it'll end up in jazz hands, mark my wordsn see

I can see that, but if we are to have such mass events, where would alternative rosters come from?, we don't have high profile non face speakers, no Negri for instance, maybe its time for some of the libertarians to come out of the shadows, can't see why Paul Stott for example can't be on the platform..

 

[butchersapron]

What on earth makes you think paul would go near this?

 

[killer b]

why do we need these 'high profile' speakers? half of them are journalists ffs.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

are thry the first to get in with the need for the new organisation to have a programme immediately?

Yes, I think so. That particular hoary old reliable has generally been replaced by mewling about the need for new "broad" parties as the preferred cliche.

 

[treelover]

What on earth makes you think paul would go near this?

So, cmon BA, how would you build a new mass movement rather than staying on the sidelines?, the IWCA model hasn't worked...

 

[butchersapron]

So, cmon BA, how would you build a new mass movement rather than staying on the sidelines?, the IWCA model hasn't worked...

Well clearly, paul stott needs to talk to loads of left-liberals from a stage. That should be our start point. Might not be paul's though.

The IWCA model has barely been tried btw - or do you in your miserablism now reject the ideas of it? The flip-side of such a rejection, of course, is running after shite like this with your tongue hanging out.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

So, cmon BA, how would you build a new mass movement rather than staying on the sidelines?, the IWCA model hasn't worked...

Well if you want to play that game, the going to see speeches by Tony Benn and other apologists for the Labour Party model hasn't worked either.

 

[treelover]

I'm not completely endorsing it, but people are desperate, they will accept 'short cuts' if they think they can be supported/defended..

 

[chilango]

So, cmon BA, how would you build a new mass movement rather than staying on the sidelines?, the IWCA model hasn't worked...

Again, as I said before, meetings like this are the sidelines. Not those criticising hem from the POV of daily life.

 

[butchersapron]

I'm not completely endorsing it, but people are desperate, they will accept 'short cuts' if they think they can be supported/defended..

Hence the massive public interest in this peoples assembly.

If you want to discuss this i suggest its done on the thread about it.