discokermit
Well-Known Member
the jazz-rape axis.
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
- Start date
Sean Delaney
Electric Prune
What a fan club. John Coltrane must be spinning in his grave.
emanymton
A cat politely sat on the flaming gardener.
I have already explained on this thread how the whole thing is about jazz, does no one listen?According to his FB he's also a fan of John ColtraneAre all these fucking Smiths the same? Permanent Jazzz
Oisin123
So Much for Subtlety
Well put. Or look at it the other way. Raising exactly the same slogan under all circumstances is not a sign of stern rigorous thinking, but sterility.
october_lost
It's not hip any more...
I order you to step away from the keyboard. You have to give other people a turn.
Louis MacNeice
Autumn Journalist
Thanks Belboid - can you point me to where the IS/SWP put their hands up to getting it wrong or forgetting? My experience of the Leninist left is that rather than make such admissions/acknowledge such short comings, they (and that includes me in the past) prefer to rewrite their histories to present a narrative of ongoing success.
This seems to show that the an actual key enduring characteristic of the Leninist tradition (rather than the claimed specifics of a particular organisation) is the need for the vanguard to present itself as having always been right.
Cheers - Louis MacNeice
eoin_k
Lawyer's fees, beetroot and music
Is that not a bit harsh? I'm sure that the SWP leadership would acknowledge having been too open in the past to incorrect tendencies including workerism, autonomism, feminism and squadism. Rest assured that the lessons of history have been learned and such errors will not be repeated.
Never been much of a lefty trainspotter so I don't have too much to add to this discussion, but I did used to be a member of the SWP so thought I'd just share my two cents about my experience with that.
I was a member for a little bit over a year I guess, and it was quite a year - 2010/11, when all the student protests were kicking off and so on. I was aware of the criticisms of the SWP, (which is why I hadn't joined earlier) but eventually decided that they were somewhat hypocritical - it seemed to me like smaller but equally sectarian lefty groups criticising a larger and more competent organisation for behaviour which they were just as guilty of. I still think there's a lot of truth in that observation.
So, the Tories had just come to power, and I wanted to do something, but I didn't want to part of a tiny insignificant sect who couldn't get anything done. If I was to make a difference, I would be better off giving my time to the largest and apparently most effective lefty organisation, warts and all. I suppose that's a fairly common motivation for getting involved with the SWP.
But it wasn't what I had hoped for, which I'm sure won't come as a surprise to anybody here. Now that the Tories were in power and the welfare state was under threat, neoliberal ideas had been discredited, and the Labour Party commanded only very limited and half-hearted support, I envisaged the disparate and fragmented left coalescing around a united struggle against cutbacks and becoming a radical political force capable of replacing the Labour Party as the main left party. I assumed that the SWP, despite being infected with self-important sectarianism, was still fundamentally led by sincere revolutionaries who would be willing to put the cause ahead of the party. So I joined the SWP, went to all the meetings, helped out on stalls, and so on. The other members seemed like good people and the whole thing felt very exciting, and I had a feeling of belonging. Nevertheless, I was a bit disorientated and didn't really understand what was going on, what the strategy was, or on what basis decisions were made. I had hoped - perhaps arrogantly? - to have some sort of influence on the direction of the organisation, and I had hoped to be working towards building a united front. But unfortunately, debate in meetings never had anything to do with overall strategy (which is what I had initially imagined) and had a very narrow focus around who was leafleting, who was manning stalls, paper sales, and so on. At first I thought I must just not understand the logic behind this, and I hadn't been a member long enough to understand how these decisions were made. It wasn't till much later that I realised it wasn't that I didn't understand after all - it was just that the CC basically dictated our activities with very little input from ourselves.
First started to feel disillusioned when we travelled to some conference in London about building the student movement with some other activists not from the SWP. Some guy from the National Coalition Against Fees and Cuts made an impassioned speech about merging NCAFC and the SWP's Education Activist Network into one organisation. Seemed a no-brainer. So we had a vote on it, and I was shocked to see all my comrades in the SWP voting against. I asked one of the more senior members of our branch about what was the logic behind this and I just got some bullshit dismissive answer about how there's a lot of background politics that are quite complicated and would take a long time to explain. Well, great.
Nevertheless, I stuck it out in the organisation. I think I just reluctantly accepted that they weren't going to cooperate with the rest of the left, and maybe the best I could hope for was for one lefty organisation to eventually absorb all others so I may as well just resign myself to trying to build the party. Nevertheless, I felt like I was quite ineffective at this, as I couldn't really think of any good reasons to encourage others to join given that my own reasons were so half-hearted.
I never formally left the party I think, but I cancelled my direct debit when I was low on cash and never bothered renewing it. I graduated from uni, got a shitty job in a call centre and I was too busy working overtime to save up money to get out of there so I pretty much gave up on activism. Still felt some vague sympathy for the SWP, but nevertheless whenever I talked to people about them I found that I had nothing but bad words to say.
Hearing about this rape thing though, has confirmed all my worst suspicions about the SWP and makes me feel pretty depressed about the whole thing, and I feel stupid for not trusting my own intuition when it was trying to set off alarm bells and assuming that the party must surely know better. (I was also suffering from depression during my year of membership, which might explain a lot of my decisions during that time - I also remember being a little concerned that people who were emotionally weak or unhappy in some way seemed to be over-represented in the organisation, but just looked at the members who appeared to be strong individuals to assauge my worries) I think my personal experience of it - a transient and ultimately dispiriting experience, marked by disorientation and blindly following orders - is fairly representative of the typical "joined briefly as a student" ex-member. It seemed to me like the CC was pretty unaccountable and idealist grunts like myself were mainly being used as a source of income to keep the organisation going at any costs.
It does all stem from Leninism as an organisational model I think. There were a lot of good people in the party, but it did seem like there was no time for any ideas that hadn't come from the CC and a lot of the younger members, who weren't necessarilly willing to make SWP their life rather than just a part of their life, seemed to be pretty clueless and uninformed about what was going on and just followed orders to try and make themselves fit in. As a result, only the members who were willing to follow the party line resolutely and dedicate a large part of their lives to the SWP could have any hope of shaping the organisation while the majority of members only stayed for as long as it took them to realise they weren't achieving anything but perpetuating the SWP for its own sake. The result is a rather cultish core grouping with heavy emotional investment in maintaining the organisation at all costs. Well - I don't think my analysis on it is going to tell you anything you don't already know. Suffice to say, I now realise that the failure of the USSR cannot be blamed exclusively on its backwardness but also on Leninism as an organisational model - however, it could be said that it is the backwardness of Tsarist Russia which gave rise to Leninism as a political form. Replicating it in developed western nations, where some democratic rights (however imperfect) have already been won, makes absolutely no sense and a Leninist Party does not stand any chance of attracting a significant following.
Leninism aside, there is a place for building a party, although it must be pluralist and open rather than "democratic-centralist." The problem I find with the left at the moment is that it is so scared of taking power in case it ends up creating another USSR. I think the left-communist idea of a revolution coming from occupied workplaces is unrealistic - you do need to take state control as well, and you simply must stand in elections. There is no hope of ever, ever having credibility in the eyes of the general public if you do not take part in elections. I know there is TUSC, but I don't think they are really serious about getting elected - what policies do they have exactly? I don't know, and I haven't see anything to suggest that they do either. All the crap in the left over the last decade or so, from ethical consumerism to identity politics, seems like a way to avoid serious political engagement and coming up with a workable program to bring about a socialist society. You can't win people over on vague principles and the general idea of a socialist society - you can only win people over if you're fighting for identifiable goals and can explain exactly how you'd do things differently if you were in government. Until the radical left can unite as part of a pluralist political party and develop a political programme with positive content, absolutely nothing will change. Here's hoping that this crisis in the SWP really is the death of leninism on the left and will create the conditions for this to happen.
I was a member for a little bit over a year I guess, and it was quite a year - 2010/11, when all the student protests were kicking off and so on. I was aware of the criticisms of the SWP, (which is why I hadn't joined earlier) but eventually decided that they were somewhat hypocritical - it seemed to me like smaller but equally sectarian lefty groups criticising a larger and more competent organisation for behaviour which they were just as guilty of. I still think there's a lot of truth in that observation.
So, the Tories had just come to power, and I wanted to do something, but I didn't want to part of a tiny insignificant sect who couldn't get anything done. If I was to make a difference, I would be better off giving my time to the largest and apparently most effective lefty organisation, warts and all. I suppose that's a fairly common motivation for getting involved with the SWP.
But it wasn't what I had hoped for, which I'm sure won't come as a surprise to anybody here. Now that the Tories were in power and the welfare state was under threat, neoliberal ideas had been discredited, and the Labour Party commanded only very limited and half-hearted support, I envisaged the disparate and fragmented left coalescing around a united struggle against cutbacks and becoming a radical political force capable of replacing the Labour Party as the main left party. I assumed that the SWP, despite being infected with self-important sectarianism, was still fundamentally led by sincere revolutionaries who would be willing to put the cause ahead of the party. So I joined the SWP, went to all the meetings, helped out on stalls, and so on. The other members seemed like good people and the whole thing felt very exciting, and I had a feeling of belonging. Nevertheless, I was a bit disorientated and didn't really understand what was going on, what the strategy was, or on what basis decisions were made. I had hoped - perhaps arrogantly? - to have some sort of influence on the direction of the organisation, and I had hoped to be working towards building a united front. But unfortunately, debate in meetings never had anything to do with overall strategy (which is what I had initially imagined) and had a very narrow focus around who was leafleting, who was manning stalls, paper sales, and so on. At first I thought I must just not understand the logic behind this, and I hadn't been a member long enough to understand how these decisions were made. It wasn't till much later that I realised it wasn't that I didn't understand after all - it was just that the CC basically dictated our activities with very little input from ourselves.
First started to feel disillusioned when we travelled to some conference in London about building the student movement with some other activists not from the SWP. Some guy from the National Coalition Against Fees and Cuts made an impassioned speech about merging NCAFC and the SWP's Education Activist Network into one organisation. Seemed a no-brainer. So we had a vote on it, and I was shocked to see all my comrades in the SWP voting against. I asked one of the more senior members of our branch about what was the logic behind this and I just got some bullshit dismissive answer about how there's a lot of background politics that are quite complicated and would take a long time to explain. Well, great.
Nevertheless, I stuck it out in the organisation. I think I just reluctantly accepted that they weren't going to cooperate with the rest of the left, and maybe the best I could hope for was for one lefty organisation to eventually absorb all others so I may as well just resign myself to trying to build the party. Nevertheless, I felt like I was quite ineffective at this, as I couldn't really think of any good reasons to encourage others to join given that my own reasons were so half-hearted.
I never formally left the party I think, but I cancelled my direct debit when I was low on cash and never bothered renewing it. I graduated from uni, got a shitty job in a call centre and I was too busy working overtime to save up money to get out of there so I pretty much gave up on activism. Still felt some vague sympathy for the SWP, but nevertheless whenever I talked to people about them I found that I had nothing but bad words to say.
Hearing about this rape thing though, has confirmed all my worst suspicions about the SWP and makes me feel pretty depressed about the whole thing, and I feel stupid for not trusting my own intuition when it was trying to set off alarm bells and assuming that the party must surely know better. (I was also suffering from depression during my year of membership, which might explain a lot of my decisions during that time - I also remember being a little concerned that people who were emotionally weak or unhappy in some way seemed to be over-represented in the organisation, but just looked at the members who appeared to be strong individuals to assauge my worries) I think my personal experience of it - a transient and ultimately dispiriting experience, marked by disorientation and blindly following orders - is fairly representative of the typical "joined briefly as a student" ex-member. It seemed to me like the CC was pretty unaccountable and idealist grunts like myself were mainly being used as a source of income to keep the organisation going at any costs.
It does all stem from Leninism as an organisational model I think. There were a lot of good people in the party, but it did seem like there was no time for any ideas that hadn't come from the CC and a lot of the younger members, who weren't necessarilly willing to make SWP their life rather than just a part of their life, seemed to be pretty clueless and uninformed about what was going on and just followed orders to try and make themselves fit in. As a result, only the members who were willing to follow the party line resolutely and dedicate a large part of their lives to the SWP could have any hope of shaping the organisation while the majority of members only stayed for as long as it took them to realise they weren't achieving anything but perpetuating the SWP for its own sake. The result is a rather cultish core grouping with heavy emotional investment in maintaining the organisation at all costs. Well - I don't think my analysis on it is going to tell you anything you don't already know. Suffice to say, I now realise that the failure of the USSR cannot be blamed exclusively on its backwardness but also on Leninism as an organisational model - however, it could be said that it is the backwardness of Tsarist Russia which gave rise to Leninism as a political form. Replicating it in developed western nations, where some democratic rights (however imperfect) have already been won, makes absolutely no sense and a Leninist Party does not stand any chance of attracting a significant following.
Leninism aside, there is a place for building a party, although it must be pluralist and open rather than "democratic-centralist." The problem I find with the left at the moment is that it is so scared of taking power in case it ends up creating another USSR. I think the left-communist idea of a revolution coming from occupied workplaces is unrealistic - you do need to take state control as well, and you simply must stand in elections. There is no hope of ever, ever having credibility in the eyes of the general public if you do not take part in elections. I know there is TUSC, but I don't think they are really serious about getting elected - what policies do they have exactly? I don't know, and I haven't see anything to suggest that they do either. All the crap in the left over the last decade or so, from ethical consumerism to identity politics, seems like a way to avoid serious political engagement and coming up with a workable program to bring about a socialist society. You can't win people over on vague principles and the general idea of a socialist society - you can only win people over if you're fighting for identifiable goals and can explain exactly how you'd do things differently if you were in government. Until the radical left can unite as part of a pluralist political party and develop a political programme with positive content, absolutely nothing will change. Here's hoping that this crisis in the SWP really is the death of leninism on the left and will create the conditions for this to happen.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Talking to an ex SWP member last night now in the Labour Party who told me that in his opinion the Labour Party was more democratic, transparent and more women friendly than the SWP and that this sort of thing couldn't be covered up in the Labour Party. I did point out that he had never had any experience of Salford or any other Labour Party fiefdoms.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
(Just dropping this in here as can't think where else to put it and it does sort of touch on a few issues raised on the thread - extraordinary article on the WSWS on the Steubenville case).
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
therein lie another thread! Fuck ups the left have admitted to.....
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Wake up sheeple! Stuff the WSWS disagrees with: media-manufactured and toxic. When CNN does things WSWS agrees with: it's "elementary compassion." Does the WSWS have a record of simple contrarianism? Or is this some kind of holding the line against left-feminism?
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I suspect that the "strange power" is actually just the usual power-dynamic between parties playing out. It's fairly commonplace, especially in academic and political circles where, by default, the "in-group" tends to be small. This in turn makes the whole power/knowledge balance even more asymmetric in favour of the (usually male) dominant/senior person. If that person decides to abuse their power/dominance over another person, then you'll often get the sort of cleavages of opinion that the SWP revelations have produced - people siding with the abuser for various reasons (internal politics; ontological security; intellectual investment, for example), and others siding with the victims for various reasons. Those that fall in behind the abuser do tend to look like some strange power is being weilded over them, but generally the reasons for doing so are many and varied.
Hi Rimbaud, welcome to P/P, I think your post sums up the path to disillusionment many young people go through with the SWP and its consequences, this is why i have no compulsion in saying I hope this is the end for them.....
bte, lots of new people on here now...
oh, and I hope you stay on the boards...
bte, lots of new people on here now...
oh, and I hope you stay on the boards...
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
you seriously believe there was no difference in American military policy after the Vietnam debacle? You don't think the defeat had any effect whatsoever on the consciousness, mindset, of America?
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Yes of course there was a difference. People like Colon Powell developed theories that the US should only ever use overwhelming force. And others worked well to control the media ever more tightly. And regarding the political elite's ambitions, I think it's Howard Zinn's history book which shows that the Carter era involved a lot of foreign interventions.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
I remember being pleased about the end of the CP on the grounds it was our turn next. I don't agree with the politics of the SWP anymore but I don't see anyone on the left's turn next.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
I brought this up with an SWP fulltimer (well, he just quit to join the faction) the other day and he thinks they posed British troops as a good thing in 1969. Also, they did, we all know they did.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
The WSWS are basically a sham outfit run by a union busting cunt, if ever the title "left of capital" was appropriate it is them, i wouldn't trust anything they say.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
I like this post, because it is quite typical of the analysis of the SWP on here.
SpackleFrog
Smash showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts
Just as an aside...
I think Lenin (and Trotsky) had some genuinely brilliant things to say about political economy, class formations and how a revolutionary organisation can challenge them. They took Marxist analysis, developed it, and generated ideas about changing capitalism which are still incredibly relevant today. I've never called myself a Leninist (or a Trotskyist - though I'm a member of a 'Trotskyist' party).
The point being, if people wanna critique/slag off 'Lenism' or 'Democratic Centralism', then fine, go ahead.
But a lot of people seem to be voicing this idea that: "The SWP is in a right mess and that just goes to show that Leninism and Democratic Centralism don't work."
That's total fucking bullshit - they share no method with Lenin or anyone else, and they certainly don't practice the 'democratic' part of democratic centralism. The IS tradition, if it means anything, means "GET EXCITED! RECRUIT! DO AS CLIFF SAYS!" That's why they're fucked - stop blaming dead russians!
I think Lenin (and Trotsky) had some genuinely brilliant things to say about political economy, class formations and how a revolutionary organisation can challenge them. They took Marxist analysis, developed it, and generated ideas about changing capitalism which are still incredibly relevant today. I've never called myself a Leninist (or a Trotskyist - though I'm a member of a 'Trotskyist' party).
The point being, if people wanna critique/slag off 'Lenism' or 'Democratic Centralism', then fine, go ahead.
But a lot of people seem to be voicing this idea that: "The SWP is in a right mess and that just goes to show that Leninism and Democratic Centralism don't work."
That's total fucking bullshit - they share no method with Lenin or anyone else, and they certainly don't practice the 'democratic' part of democratic centralism. The IS tradition, if it means anything, means "GET EXCITED! RECRUIT! DO AS CLIFF SAYS!" That's why they're fucked - stop blaming dead russians!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Anything which produces an ossified leadership doesn't work. DC does. So it's fair enough comment.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
The main problem with thinking "it's our turn next" about the disappearance of the CP, is that even if you were right, it wouldn't be much to aspire to.
The SWP's downward spiral will open up some minor opportunities for other groups. A few people recruited at some university stall who might otherwise have joined SWSS. The opportunity to run some single issue campaign that the SWP might have got their mitts on first. But it's not going to change anything significant for anybody else. In fact, the ability of opponents of the left to use the SWP's disaster to attack the left more generally will more than outweigh whatever benefits accrue to any other organisation.
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
and he thinks?
This is some German website. Not sure who they are, whether they have affiliated to the SWP are not. It was the first link on a Google search I did. They say;
The attitude of the International Socialists to the introduction of British troops in August 1969 has been a subject of much controversy on some parts of the left. The usual allegation is along the lines that Socialist Worker either called for the introduction of troops or welcomed them. The articles below are from the first issue of the paper after the deployment of troops. Whether the line adopted was correct or not, it should be clear from the articles that the allegations described above are false and that the IS didn’t regard the troops as the solution of the crisis.
In the appendix are the articles on Ireland from the Socialist Worker, No.137, published on 11 September. These show how the position developed in the weeks after the introduction of British troops.
But it should not be thought that the presence of British troops can begin to solve their problems.
I don't mean any disrespect, but why should I believe you when I can see in black-and-white in the paper in the first issue after the deployment of troops?
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
phew - some actual SWP news!
Various leading members of the Canadian IS have resigned.
http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/statement-of-resignation-is-canada.html
Various leading members of the Canadian IS have resigned.
http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/statement-of-resignation-is-canada.html
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Why not D macanlly?
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
the SWP though celebrating and welcoming the end of their politics, did create a meaningful caveat saying that the end of the CP was a great loss in terms of activists who could be relied upon to act in the workers movement. A similar situation will occur with the end of the SWP, in my opinion. The left will get smaller.
What good do people think will come from the end of the SWP? How will other groups on the left benefit? How will the working class benefit?
I have my doubts there will be any benefits, to anyone.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
cos he left several years ago
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