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SWP expulsions and squabbles

ibilly99 said:
His - David Icke's advantage is he is a one man band with no democratic centralism or sex abuse claims to account for as far as I know. It's this internet thingy that''s a game changer - everything is speeded up now - thoughts morph and evolve at the speed of broadband. I suspect the Deita affair would have been effectively covered up pre-internet - when I was in the SWP back in 70-81 our small group was pretty sexist when a few bevies had gone down. The Women's Voice group refused to meet with us.I remember a meeting at the Surrey University lecturers house when he was reading through the internal bulletin about drinking at meetings and the need for the cadre to remain sober being greeted by boozy jeers. Not sure how typical it was of the SWP at the time but we were very much a creature of the organiser in terms of approach and discipline. It was more of a left wing social club with paper selling and marches than building a sustainable left wing organisation - or that's how it seemd to me as an impressible 19 year old.
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IMO if British left-wing groups put half as much effort into social media and creating original content on, for example, youtube as they did into selling a minuscule amount of newspapers to people who are already convinced of the message of those newspapers, they would do a lot better.

Look at groups that are doing well right now, the entire libertarian movement in the US has had phenomenal success through savvy use of social media.

Stuff like this but tailored to Britain and linked to whatever group produced it would do very well I think
 
J Ed said:
IMO if British left-wing groups put half as much effort into social media and creating original content on, for example, youtube as they did into selling a minuscule amount of newspapers to people who are already convinced of the message of those newspapers, they would do a lot better.

Look at groups that are doing well right now, the entire libertarian movement in the US has had phenomenal success through savvy use of social media.

Stuff like this but tailored to Britain and linked to whatever group produced it would do very well I think
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Bang on the money there.
 
chilango said:
They've all put plenty of stuff on YouTube etc.

It's just rubbish though.
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The SWP sit on so much money, can't they pay a few people to come up with something decent? It's almost as if they don't actually care about growing the party and they use things like paper sales as a form of social control...
 
The SWP channel looks like death by Powerpoint - filmed lengthy lectures given at meetings - like JEd says preaching to the converted.

Such as ..

 
J Ed said:
The SWP sit on so much money, can't they pay a few people to come up with something decent? It's almost as if they don't actually care about growing the party and they use things like paper sales as a form of social control...
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What sort of social control does selling papers deliver?
 
It's not even the "professionalism" or otherwise of the stuff.

Look at Counterfire. They appear to be pretty "with it" with a nice looking website, cafe and social media videos etc. spewing everywhere. But it's just so...unappealing.

And that's as much down to the content as to the form.

...and that brings us back to the SWP's latest split. There are absolutely no grounds to suggest that they'll be doing anything differently (apart from maybe not covering for rapists) and thus, frankly, once the dust settles they'll be of precious little interest.

I mean how often do we discuss Bambery's ISG? Or Permanent Revolution?
 
chilango said:
It's not even the "professionalism" or otherwise of the stuff.

Look at Counterfire. They appear to be pretty "with it" with a nice looking website, cafe and social media videos etc. spewing everywhere. But it's just so...unappealing.

And that's as much down to the content as to the form.

...and that brings us back to the SWP's latest split. There are absolutely no grounds to suggest that they'll be doing anything differently (apart from maybe not covering for rapists) and thus, frankly, once the dust settles they'll be of precious little interest.

I mean how often do we discuss Bambery's ISG? Or Permanent Revolution?
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Where are cockers lot these days?
 
What they need is a bonfire of their delusions,,
0745648762.jpg
 
Sean Delaney said:
Party comrades in the 80s used to wipe the floor with everyone else from all the other marxist groups whenever there were discussions. I remember one organisation called 'Proletarian' turning up at Marxism in the late 1980s and they were just chewed up and spat out theoretically by my mates, who were just ordinary SWP members, but their theoretical range and knowledge was awesome. No disrespect to Militant/SP people, but it was the same with them too back in the day. They couldn't hold a candle to the rank and file SWP members in terms of theory (although respect where respect is due - Militant were always in the frontline at Wapping and at other hardcore events of the era. They had genuine roots and respect in the working class. They could genuinely relate to working class people.) This theoretical cutting edge lead to hubris in the SWP and developed a very suspect culture and attitude in the party in the longer run. Without the old guard to temper this crap, it all went Pete Tong by the 1990s. Before you knew it, a whole modus operandi, style of delivery, and outlook took over the party. It had to in a way, because it was a case of battening down the hatches and getting on with the grind. Then neo-liberalism literally ripped up and tore apart the traditional working class and the party didn't have a clue about how to cope with this. It still doesn't, so you get all this Third Worldism/Orientalist crap, which Seymour is going to take with him into whatever new organisation he and China brew up.
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not sure I agree with this .. I was around from 77 to 85 and yes education was strong but only in fairly narrow areas. Knowledge of working class politics outside of Trotskyist tradition was poor e.g. of Spanish anarchism, CNT etc they knew they prefered them to the CP but knew nothing of e.g Friends of Durruti and worse at the time the understanding of Italisn Autonomist Marxism, Negri, Della Costa, was abysmal. And knowledge of any non Trot Marxism tbh whether Bookchin, Castoriadis, Pannekoek, Sylvia Pankhurst, or the rest was piss poor. It was embaressing trying to discuss ideas outside of Trotskyism with SWP members back then so I dread to think what it is now ..
 
The39thStep said:
Is that what social control is ? Hardly 1984
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I'm not at all saying that paper sales exert a worrying level of social control, just that it seems like an arbitrary exercise and a waste of time that would have been gotten rid of if it weren't for the fact that it does give the high ups a means of exerting at least some social control over members.
 
belboid said:
when I had a mohican my branch was split between those who said i should get rid cos it put off ordinary workers, and those who pointed out that that would mean i'd have a skinhead so I better keep it as it was.
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Whereas anyone sensible would have told you to ditch it cos you looked like a twat.

And the leather strides.
 
J Ed said:
I'm not at all saying that paper sales exert a worrying level of social control, just that it seems like an arbitrary exercise and a waste of time that would have been gotten rid of if it weren't for the fact that it does give the high ups a means of exerting at least some social control over members.
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So if you were running a political organisation you would just dispense with them?
 
AWL have further analysis. Ending with some sort of 'come, update our socialist feminism with us' appeal:


The AWL is socialist feminist. We draw on Marxist socialism to understand oppressions and how they are interwoven with capitalist exploitation and continually reconfigured by historical development. We take inspiration from much of the work of the Second Wave socialist feminists. Unfortunately, for many reasons, socialist feminism was only able to take theoretical understanding so far.

The AWL will not have a monopoly on reviving socialist feminism. All we can do is be open minded about the “many feminisms” of today, and critical where necessary. We work with other feminists in concrete campaigns and try to learn from experience. We think we have a lot of work to do to “update” our socialist feminism. The SWP on the other hand does not even recognise what is at stake here, they think only about self-preservation. That is why they will play no part in reviving interest in or developing socialist understandings of oppression.
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