belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
aye, nothing to do with certain other posters just being bored and fancying an argument...
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
likesfish
You can't park here sir
They might actually want to stop them imploding. Has anyone ever seen Pat Stack and Stella Rimmington together in the same room?
Remember somebody ranting the SWP were an invention of Mi5 explains why. They are so shit.
SpineyNorman
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Glad you've expressed in those terms. I agree, as it goes, just spiney choosing point 5 to pounce on started this thing.
I might try a thread about Romanians/Bulgarians and British multiple house-owners in Bulgaria, if I can think of a useful way in.
To be fair I also pounced on the seemingly arbitrary age limit of 27 - does anyone know any of them well enough to find out how they arrived at that one?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
One of them is probably 26.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
I think we need clarification on this - I'm a student but I'm err... a little bit older than 27. Can I join? If not I'm gonna find them on twitter and get all intersectional with them. I notice they don't mention ageism in their list of oppressions
i know bastards!!!!
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
Bringing it back on topic (SWP expulsion)
I didn't think it was fair to knock that part (point 6 as it happens) just about every left group has a list of demands of some shape or form.
Spiney said:
Like it or not foreign students on student visas and restrictions placed upon them and higher fees imposed upon them are an issue for the students that the SWP split comes from. It means universities are chasing the foreign student dollar and forming partnerships abroad, and foreign students are largely separated from student campaigns as working-class students are - because both have greater time pressures placed upon and more balls to juggle.
Should these students pretend they're not students and make a 10-point manifesto as if they are X or Y workers? I hope they don't turn into 'Upping the Anti'. But we can only really judge that after their conference they might decide let's try our manifesto out there beyond students, in fact let's listen to what people out there are saying and start again on that basis. I hope I'm not being over-naive.
I didn't think it was fair to knock that part (point 6 as it happens) just about every left group has a list of demands of some shape or form.
Spiney said:
Like it or not foreign students on student visas and restrictions placed upon them and higher fees imposed upon them are an issue for the students that the SWP split comes from. It means universities are chasing the foreign student dollar and forming partnerships abroad, and foreign students are largely separated from student campaigns as working-class students are - because both have greater time pressures placed upon and more balls to juggle.
Should these students pretend they're not students and make a 10-point manifesto as if they are X or Y workers? I hope they don't turn into 'Upping the Anti'. But we can only really judge that after their conference they might decide let's try our manifesto out there beyond students, in fact let's listen to what people out there are saying and start again on that basis. I hope I'm not being over-naive.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
one of the things i hate the most about going to uni at my age is feeling like an old duffer... but to have that put into a fucking constitution......spney, being denied from the luu revsoc
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
One possible explanation is that they want to avoid Deltas, John Reeses and Lindey Germans telling them what to.
W and her supporters are a core group within this split.
SpineyNorman
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Just intrigued as to how they arrived at 27 rather than 25 or 30 - not that it's really important.
Just seen your reply to Nigel's post by the way - I'll remember to preface any comments I make on immigration by pointing out that I'm in favour of open borders - I'd assumed that I'd been commenting on this kind of stuff on here for long enough for that not to be necessary but now I know otherwise.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
You're right it's not awful, it's calm and measured (doesn't really seek to stick the boot in to the middle-class academics who came up with the term and used in pro-capitalist methods and means), but still feels sort of professory English.
Its conclusion is smart and measured, though if it's just a term posing a problem then an "intersectional feminism" is a meaningless contradictory term there should only be intersectional examinations of sexism.
SpineyNorman
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Sorry for another derail, but it's sort of linked to what's being discussed - does anyone know whether/how intersectionality theory would deal with the fact that there are some people in certain groups in society who benefit from the oppression of others within those groups? For example, female capitalists benefit from a sexist society (unpaid women's labour going towards the reproduction of labour power and so on)?
My only real engagement with this has been through 1) advocates of intersectionality who I suspect don't know the theory all that well and 2) that wheel thing. In both cases the assumtion seemed to be that different groups are oppressed and that those who are not in those groups benefit from that oppression and so they couldn't give a satisfactory or even coherent answer.
Or is it the case that it simply cannot deal with that kind of thing?
My only real engagement with this has been through 1) advocates of intersectionality who I suspect don't know the theory all that well and 2) that wheel thing. In both cases the assumtion seemed to be that different groups are oppressed and that those who are not in those groups benefit from that oppression and so they couldn't give a satisfactory or even coherent answer.
Or is it the case that it simply cannot deal with that kind of thing?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
unlike workers militia's,, immigration controls are absolutely already on the agenda, so saying wht you believe openly and explicitly doesnt strike me as an unreasonable thing to do
I wonder if the youngest SWP member nearby is 28...
SpineyNorman
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My issue isn't with the call for open borders per se but an unqualified call for open borders, especially since it appears they're trying to appeal not just to students but to young workers too. But when I can lay it all out properly in a way that can't be (deliberately or not) misconstrued I'll start a thread with what I think about this so we can have a proper debate. I don't trust myself to do it properly right now cos I'm knackered and I've had a couple of shandies.
That's my suspicion too - that it's been done with specific people or a specific person in mind - either that their oldest member graduates when he/she is 27 or what you said.
sihhi
Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered
I haven't assumed that you were anti-immigration or anti-opening borders. It's just a question of how we make the case, what we're saying and doing - not an ideal topic for debate across two different parts of the country via the internet. It comes up in some fashion in other contexts often when we wouldn't like it to - in leafleting outside HPUs, attempted trade union recruitment of foreign EU workers who complain about the union not giving a damn about their being on emergency tax, disputes about noisy neighbours, anti-social behaviour, a resident's group opposing a batting shop application because it attracts foreign men who don't even place any bets but hang around outside
etc etc. Labour Left say they are in favour of open borders (ultimately, yes they are) then go on to sit on Immigration Select Committees that inevitably sustain immigration controls - hopeless and hypocritical. The pure anarchist position is sloganising and "activism" based around migrant camps and the suffering transit/limbo migrant population, good but not able to go anywhere wider provoking an 'idiots trying to help the foreigners get here illegally' line.
Miliband's line now is that Labour under Blair was open borders, and now he is correcting it and will clear the surplus of illegals - and that the working-class in Britain was specifically immiserated by this open border immigration. (Instead of the point that the working-class didn't gain the fruits of capitalist activity that involved migrant labour over 1997-2010, because it was capitalist not because migrants were part of it).
october_lost
It's not hip any more...
One friend of mine has a rule - 'half your age, plus seven' - someone should suggest that to them.
articul8
Dishonest sociopath
Well, it might have escaped your admittedly limited attention span but the Labour party (unlike the steel picket lines) happens to still exist, and therefore you can't avoid some form of relation to it.
Sean Delaney
Electric Prune
On the failure of revolution to spread internationally after 1917, an interview with Boris Groys at the Charnel House:
"On the other hand, I was and still am very interested in the institutional and official traditions of communism. As with the early Protestants who saw the Catholic Church as the church of Satan, communists today claim, “All these decades and centuries of communist movements — that was not real communism. Communism will begin with us.” It is a claim that one can understand, but it seems to me historically, ideologically, politically, and philosophically problematic. All of the theorists of communism today say: “We start anew. We reject everything that came before. We don’t interpret or correct it — we just reject it as a fundamental failure.”
"On the other hand, I was and still am very interested in the institutional and official traditions of communism. As with the early Protestants who saw the Catholic Church as the church of Satan, communists today claim, “All these decades and centuries of communist movements — that was not real communism. Communism will begin with us.” It is a claim that one can understand, but it seems to me historically, ideologically, politically, and philosophically problematic. All of the theorists of communism today say: “We start anew. We reject everything that came before. We don’t interpret or correct it — we just reject it as a fundamental failure.”
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Maybe there is 28 year old they really don't like?
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
Do we even know if W has even split from the SWP?
SpineyNorman
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I once read a book by Groys about the history of Soviet art - think it was called the total art of Stalinism or something. It was one of the strangest history books I've ever read.
barney_pig
Po-cha-na-quar-hip
Just tried reading the interview. They fucking love them longue words
SpineyNorman
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Well, it might have escaped your admittedly limited attention span but the Tory party (unlike steel picket lines) happens to still exist, and therefore you can't avoid some form of relation to it.
muscovyduck
Good IT skills and food hygiene competent
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
to be fair spiney, we could start the SWSCSS (Socialist Workers Senior Citizens Students Society) for the over 27s as a response...
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
Last of the Socialist Wine
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
bolshiebhoy
socialism leinster drink
It's a shame the open borders thing dominated this evening's discussion cause this notion of separate organisations within a revolutionary party for oppressed groups is the really interesting point about this Leeds manifesto. I'd be willing to bet a lot that it's repeated in some more or less open form in the future manifesto of the ISN. Self organising within capitalist society is one thing. Creating different sections within arevolutionary party is another. Whether people agree with it or not, and I know most on here will likely agree, it should be noted that its something which has been alien to the SWP since the early 80's. And the dominant thinking in the IS is that it's something alien to the Lenin/Kollontai tradition as well. The language about self identifying groups having their own space inside the party brought to mind for me the Cliff quip, when discussing Lenin's opposition to the Jewish Bund operating as a separate entity within Russian marxism, about needing a special group for say Jewish women as neither the Jewish nor women's caucus would be adequate. Depending on how many members, with how many oppressions, this Leeds group has they could end up needing an awful lot of extra rooms to meet in by the time all the possible intersecting oppression permutations are worked out.
SpineyNorman
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J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
On his website or elsewhere?
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