SWP expulsions and squabbles

[The39thStep]

I will never again be able to listen to that depeche mode tune without replacing 'jesus' with 'goat'

 

[Pickman's model]

Auld swappie habits die hard: up archway this morning saw 50 abandond copies of "social worker" - no canals near archway of course

 

[DotCommunist]

Auld swappie habits die hard: up archway this morning saw 50 abandond copies of "social worker" - no canals near archway of course

No aspiring young statesman journos to use them a fuel?

 

[butchersapron]

His Russia: A Marxist Analysis (1964), where he sets out his theory of why Russia was state capitalist, is good. Reviewed here. He also wrote a book on Rosa Luxemburg. After these it was downhill all the way for him.

I note you link to your parties review but not the book itself! To be read alongside this is On The Class Nature of the "People's Democracies". The Luxemburg book is a bit rubbish frankly, it was later - notoriously - revised.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Auld swappie habits die hard: up archway this morning saw 50 abandond copies of "social worker" -

I saw them yesterday and took one for free. Probably abandoned after the march to "save the Whittington hospital" on Saturday as not enough takers.

no canals near archway of course

But suicide bridge is nearby.

 

[Pickman's model]

No aspiring young statesman journos to use them a fuel?

It seems not

 

[Pickman's model]

I saw them yesterday and took one for free. Probably abandoned after the march to "save the Whittington hospital" on Saturday as not enough takers.

But suicide bridge is nearby.

I don't know why anyone with computer access would want one anymore when it can be downloaded for free, unless it's to line a cat litter tray or some similar purpose.

 

[butchersapron]

I saw them yesterday and took one for free. Probably abandoned after the march to "save the Whittington hospital" on Saturday as not enough takers.

But suicide bridge is nearby.

What would you suggest the SPGB do if their recent burglary was found to be down to a member? Bearing in mind the personal is not political.

 

[DotCommunist]

I don't know why anyone with computer access would want one anymore when it can be downloaded for free, unless it's to line a cat litter tray or some similar purpose.

Was on a march wrt teachers getting pensions nicked with someone last year who was holding SP papers. Happy to swap with many groups, not buy. Except when it came to the SW. There was no swap or buy. I lolled.

 

[Jean-Luc]

I note you link to your parties review but not the book itself! To be read alongside this is On The Class Nature of the "People's Democracies". The Luxemburg book is a bit rubbish frankly, it was later - notoriously - revised.

I just wanted to make the point that Cliff wasn't all bad and that credit was being given where credit was due. Unlike the other Trotskyist gurus of the time like Ted Grant (who produced graphs showing how "nationalisation and planning" in Russia promoted growth quicker than in the West) and Ernst Mandel (who invented a non-Marxist theory that the Third World could develop on a non-capitalist basis), Cliff had a sense of humour. I remember one of his jokes was about waking up in the morning and looking at his watch to see if it was 19.17 only to find that it was 18.48, a shrewder point than perhaps he intended to make.

 

[Pickman's model]

What would you suggest the SPGB do if their recent burglary was found to be down to a member? Bearing in mind the personal is not political.

That's not what strelnikov says in dr zhivago.

 

[Random]

Cliff had a sense of humour. I remember one of his jokes was about waking up in the morning and looking at his watch to see if it was 19.17 only to find that it was 18.48, a shrewder point than perhaps he intended to make.

Waking up in the morning? At 6:48 PM? Sounds like he'd not grasped the 24 hour clock. I'd advise him to change the joke to being about taking an after dinner nap. But he's dead so I can't.

 

[imposs1904]

that's a llama joke.

 

[imposs1904]

What would you suggest the SPGB do if their recent burglary was found to be down to a member? Bearing in mind the personal is not political.

It couldn't have been a Party member. Only money and some Socialist Standards were taken.

 

[butchersapron]

It couldn't have been a Party member. Only money and some Socialist Standards were taken.

Clever move on their part - the latter will allow them to cop a lunacy plea.

 

[butchersapron]

This was posted late last night on sovietgoonboy (not read yet):

The bureaucratic imperative

The flow of disclosures about the SWP’s increasingly cultish internal life has not ceased, either. Phil BC has this genuinely revolting post [trigger warning: do not read while eating], which is all the more disturbing when you realise, given the occupational makeup of the SWP, that there were very likely teachers involved. Moreover, there are other disclosures still to come which will make this look mild. The SWP leadership don’t seem to realise that there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of stories, and who aren’t under party discipline any more. This may not make sense to the Charlie Kimbers of this world who reason like “She isn’t a party member any more; therefore she can’t make a complaint to the Disputes Committee; therefore the incident which may have been complained about never happened”, but that’s the way it is in the real world.

Not a qute that reflects the content of the piece from a quick skim, but i use it for the 'other disclosures' piece, which sounds pretty emphatic, as if this is already in motion.

 

[Random]

Trigger warning seems to mean anything nowadays. Trigger warning, this post contains the ending of Million Dollar Baby

 

[imposs1904]

Clever move on their part - the latter will allow them to cop a lunacy plea.

my splitting sides.

see what I did there? first the llama quip and then the swp quip . . . and it's not even 18:48. eddie grant, your spirit lives on!

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

my splitting sides.

see what I did there? first the llama quip and then the swp quip . . . and it's not even 18:48. eddie grant, your spirit lives on!

gonna rock down to electric.avenue

 

[frogwoman]

An energetic organiser without much real work to do can cause havoc by spending his time hatching grandiose schemes to impress the CC, conspiring against “problem members” (those whom the organiser has taken a dislike to for whatever reason) and generally swaggering about like a pound shop Lenin.

 

[imposs1904]

gonna rock down to electric.avenue

nah, the original eddie grant. a man who in all the years I knew him was never less than one line away from a groanworthy pun in conversation. lovely bloke.

 

[The39thStep]

my splitting sides.

see what I did there? first the llama quip and then the swp quip . . . and it's not even 18:48. eddie grant, your spirit lives on!

slamming them tonight

 

[imposs1904]

slamming them tonight

this morning you mean . . . and I'm quitting whilst I'm ahead. i have to shake the rugrats from their slumbers.

 

[Jean-Luc]

Clever move on their part - the latter will allow them to cop a lunacy plea.

Maybe they weren't so mad after all, but took this one

 

[SpineyNorman]

Waking up in the morning? At 6:48 PM? Sounds like he'd not grasped the 24 hour clock. I'd advise him to change the joke to being about taking an after dinner nap. But he's dead so I can't.

Not if you're using proletarian decimalised time.

 

[The39thStep]

this morning you mean . . . and I'm quitting whilst I'm ahead. i have to shake the rugrats from their slumbers.

It was a quote

 

[butchersapron]

Maybe they weren't so mad after all, but took this one

The one you ripped off Solidarity? (Who may in turn have ripped it off themselves).

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Maybe they weren't so mad after all, but took this one

October 1979, the SPGB recognise that there are lots of different Trotskyist groups, that none of them are very good and that this is front page news; no definitely not a bit mad at all. I'm sure no one wanted to read about threats to British Leyland and the promised public sector finance cuts.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[imposs1904]

It was a quote

it's early(ish).

 

[ViolentPanda]

I thought it was plain, I would be amazed if you did.

so they carried on with the same policies, more efficiently? Are you saying, even if they had been victorious in Vietnam, they would have gone to this more efficient methodology anyway?

You don't think there was a gradual process, of trying to rehabilitate Vietnam style outright invasions, à la Iraq?

So when you say "didn't receive enough tribute", financial? It wasn't about smashing a competing model of social development, (something along the lines what Chomsky was arguing?)