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SWP expulsions and squabbles

I can see that this development must be worrying, deeply worrying, for the SWP, but is it the sort of thing we should welcome from the point of view of free and open debate? I don't know what the real reason behind the organisers' decision is but, by mentioning threats of disruption, it smacks of the cowardice of the organisers of literary events in India who have disinvited Salman Rushdie on the same grounds.

It would be ironic in view of the prominence of the SWP in the "No Platform for the BNP" campaign if they were to fall victims to a "No Platform for the SWP" campaign, but this (both in fact) would still be wrong. I don't see this as a welcome development.

Given on-going events in India you can see why they'd be hyper sensitive about it, since they are trying so hard to battle against very casual attitudes towards rape there you can see why they wouldn't want to import foreigners with those views too.
 
Why would you "have to take everything [we] say with a pinch of salt?" I try pretty damned hard to be straight down the line with people on there, and I think my record's pretty solid. So why are you assuming that we're almost always dishonest?

What Nigel said.

It's not so much you Tony as the company you keep.

For very different reasons SU is almost as divisive on the left as the SWP. A lot of people aren't going to take some one quoting from SU seriously unless certain caveats are made.
 
A second article from the IS blog on women's oppression. It's again interesting and useful most of the way through and it again then proceeds to adopt a bit of terminology from the feminist movement without adequately defining it.
T
his time it's "privilege" that's taken on board in a "common sense" way that doesn't examine the theoretical assumptions it imports. Or more precisely, it does tenuously start to look at some of the issues surrounding the term, but it gets them all garbled up with the SWP's "do men benefit" argument which is related but in very important aspects distinct.

http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/violence-against-women.html

Still, at least Bolshiebhoy will be overjoyed at this evidence of studenty creeping feminist autonomism.
 
Overjoyed bb

Felix_Dzerzhinsky_1919.jpg
 
A second article from the IS blog on women's oppression. It's again interesting and useful most of the way through and it again then proceeds to adopt a bit of terminology from the feminist movement without adequately defining it.
T
his time it's "privilege" that's taken on board in a "common sense" way that doesn't examine the theoretical assumptions it imports. Or more precisely, it does tenuously start to look at some of the issues surrounding the term, but it gets them all garbled up with the SWP's "do men benefit" argument which is related but in very important aspects distinct.

http://internationalsocialismuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/violence-against-women.html

Still, at least Bolshiebhoy will be overjoyed at this evidence of studenty creeping feminist autonomism.
God it is awful. Trace that straight line from not picking the kids up from school to domestic violence and rape.
 
Given on-going events in India you can see why they'd be hyper sensitive about it, since they are trying so hard to battle against very casual attitudes towards rape there you can see why they wouldn't want to import foreigners with those views too.
Let's not exaggerate. I don't think the SWP have a casual attitude to gang rape, do they?
 
Let's not exaggerate. I don't think the SWP have a casual attitude to gang rape, do they?

Well, the issue isn't just about gang rape in India, it's about casual attitudes. Then again, I'm not entirely convinced that, given what we know about Martin Smith and the full-timer in Sheffield, that the CC is above covering up a gang rape or bullying the victim of a gang rape into shutting up. They intentionally moved a full timer who was known to be abusive to another district where he had the power to prey upon young people and when he abused and raped the young people he had power over he was suspended for a couple of years and given a reading list.

BTW, I think it's really dangerous and morally suspect to suggest that certain kinds of rape are worse than others. You might want to reword questions like that in future.
 
Here's Callinicos's response to getting the boot from the Indian academics. It's from his facebook page but is doing the rounds now on social media. If (unlike me of course) you are a particularly cruel and heartless bastard who enjoys seeing people get their just desserts it just might raise a wry smile:

LETTER TO ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE, DELHI

25 March 2013

Dear Organizing Committee,

I was very surprised to receive your communication. You ask me ‘to withdraw [my] decision to attend’. But I only made that decision in response to an invitation to participate in your conference. So what you are in fact doing is withdrawing your invitation, as is indicated by the fact that you have already deleted me from the conference programme. I think you should take full responsibility for the decision you are actually taking.

I understand of course how important the issue of rape and sexual violence is in India, especially after last December’s gang rape and murder in Delhi. It is also a very important question in Britain, and for me personally, as it is for the Socialist Workers Party. We are strongly committed to women’s liberation. We took the rape allegations against a leading member extremely seriously; the controversy over how the party handled these allegations is indicative of that seriousness. The special conference that we recently held to resolve this controversy has set up a committee to review our procedures, and we intend to use this to reinforce our efforts to combat the oppression of women.

It is not for me to judge how grave the danger of disruption to your conference is. But an appeal circulated by an academic at JNU does not reflect well intellectually or morally on those agitating against my presence at the conference. This document is a farrago of nonsense that treats allegations as proven fact, cites tendentious opinion pieces as ‘reports’, and includes the laughable assertion that ‘the journal Historical Materialism is allied, and … is known to be principally operated by Socialist Workers Party members and supporters’.

Since this is a conference sponsored by Historical Materialism, let me remind you that I am a longstanding supporter of the journal and, along with Marxist intellectuals of many political tendencies, a member of its International Advisory Board. I have tried to support HM’s development both in Britain and internationally. Your decision damages HM’s commitment to promote Marxist theoretical development independently of organized political alignments.

So I regret your decision – not just for this reason, but also because I value my long-standing connections with the Marxist intellectual left in India. In taking this decision, based directly or indirectly on interested misrepresentations of debates inside the SWP, you run the risk of compromising your own intellectual and political integrity.

This is to say nothing of the personal inconvenience and expense you are exposing me to by withdrawing your invitation a week after you had circulated a programme that included me as chairing one session and speaking at another, and barely a week before I was due to fly to India. This is quite unacceptable in what is meant to be an academic conference, and it is also not how socialists should behave towards one another.

In comradeship,
Alex Callinicos
 
Here's Callinicos's response to getting the boot from the Indian academics. It's from his facebook page but is doing the rounds now on social media. If (unlike me of course) you are a particularly cruel and heartless bastard who enjoys seeing people get their just desserts it just might raise a wry smile:

LETTER TO ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE, DELHI

25 March 2013

Dear Organizing Committee,

I was very surprised to receive your communication. You ask me ‘to withdraw [my] decision to attend’. But I only made that decision in response to an invitation to participate in your conference. So what you are in fact doing is withdrawing your invitation, as is indicated by the fact that you have already deleted me from the conference programme. I think you should take full responsibility for the decision you are actually taking.

I understand of course how important the issue of rape and sexual violence is in India, especially after last December’s gang rape and murder in Delhi. It is also a very important question in Britain, and for me personally, as it is for the Socialist Workers Party. We are strongly committed to women’s liberation. We took the rape allegations against a leading member extremely seriously; the controversy over how the party handled these allegations is indicative of that seriousness. The special conference that we recently held to resolve this controversy has set up a committee to review our procedures, and we intend to use this to reinforce our efforts to combat the oppression of women.

It is not for me to judge how grave the danger of disruption to your conference is. But an appeal circulated by an academic at JNU does not reflect well intellectually or morally on those agitating against my presence at the conference. This document is a farrago of nonsense that treats allegations as proven fact, cites tendentious opinion pieces as ‘reports’, and includes the laughable assertion that ‘the journal Historical Materialism is allied, and … is known to be principally operated by Socialist Workers Party members and supporters’.

Since this is a conference sponsored by Historical Materialism, let me remind you that I am a longstanding supporter of the journal and, along with Marxist intellectuals of many political tendencies, a member of its International Advisory Board. I have tried to support HM’s development both in Britain and internationally. Your decision damages HM’s commitment to promote Marxist theoretical development independently of organized political alignments.

So I regret your decision – not just for this reason, but also because I value my long-standing connections with the Marxist intellectual left in India. In taking this decision, based directly or indirectly on interested misrepresentations of debates inside the SWP, you run the risk of compromising your own intellectual and political integrity.

This is to say nothing of the personal inconvenience and expense you are exposing me to by withdrawing your invitation a week after you had circulated a programme that included me as chairing one session and speaking at another, and barely a week before I was due to fly to India. This is quite unacceptable in what is meant to be an academic conference, and it is also not how socialists should behave towards one another.

In comradeship,
Alex Callinicos

Well, he's certainly got the tone of the nursery teacher talking down to small children down there...
 
Kamal Chenoy has a bit of a cheek, considering his Left Front's record and his own defence of that record, barring the prof from this event. His CPI is in a front with the CPM whose members disguised themselves as West Bengal police officers so they could rape and kill men and women land activists protesting at the neo-liberal policies of the CPM government. And his defence at the time? Basically "the rapes are media lies" and "we're not as bad as the hindu chauvinists who killed and raped in Gujarat". Yet he wants to bar a fellow marxist because of the delta scandal?! Nonsense.
 
"REMEMBER THAT TIME SHEFFIELD SWP BOLLOCKED ITS STUDENT MEMBERS IN PUBLIC STOOD IN A CIRCLE COS TWO OF THEM CRITICISED THE DISPUTES IN A STATEMENT. THAT WAS FUN"

that kind of stuff
 
Kamal Chenoy has a bit of a cheek, considering his Left Front's record and his own defence of that record, barring the prof from this event. His CPI is in a front with the CPM whose members disguised themselves as West Bengal police officers so they could rape and kill men and women land activists protesting at the neo-liberal policies of the CPM government. And his defence at the time? Basically "the rapes are media lies" and "we're not as bad as the hindu chauvinists who killed and raped in Gujarat". Yet he wants to bar a fellow marxist because of the delta scandal?! Nonsense.

'Your rape allegations are worse than ours so why can't we just get along'.

Louis MacNeice
 
Kamal Chenoy has a bit of a cheek, considering his Left Front's record and his own defence of that record, barring the prof from this event. His CPI is in a front with the CPM whose members disguised themselves as West Bengal police officers so they could rape and kill men and women land activists protesting at the neo-liberal policies of the CPM government. And his defence at the time? Basically "the rapes are media lies" and "we're not as bad as the hindu chauvinists who killed and raped in Gujarat". Yet he wants to bar a fellow marxist because of the delta scandal?! Nonsense.

If he's that "bad" why was Callinicos speaking for him in the first place?
 
What if they were bullies who treated them like children? I wouldn't put up with it. I wouldn't expect others to put up with. Not putting yourself in the position to get bullied seems a perfectly reasonable response.
For a certain brand of feminist anyone who says anything definite is a bully. It's that 'Man with Analysis' bully Abbie Bakan opined about. You can 'engage' with people, you can have 'dialogue' with them. But never, just never, may you say they're wrong.
 
For a certain brand of feminist anyone who says anything definite is a bully. It's that 'Man with Analysis' bully Abbie Bakan opined about. You can 'engage' with people, you can have 'dialogue' with them. But never, just never, may you say they're wrong.
Covering up rapes shouldn't come between fellow socialists- as long as one ignores those strident harridens
 
For a certain brand of feminist anyone who says anything definite is a bully. It's that 'Man with Analysis' bully Abbie Bakan opined about. You can 'engage' with people, you can have 'dialogue' with them. But never, just never, may you say they're wrong.

A feminist, even one of a 'certain brand' can still be bullied; they'd still be right to complain and the bully would still be wrong.

Could a Sheffield SWSS member have been bullied? If so, would they have been wrong to avoid a situation where they thought it would happen again?

Louis MacNeice
 
Refusing to offer someone a platform is not the same as censoring them.
What is it then? And how wide should any "No Platform for the SWP" extend? In any even,t this is (or seems to be) a case of an offer being withdrawn under threats of disruption? Do we know who or what group made these threats?
 
Well, the issue isn't just about gang rape in India, it's about casual attitudes. Then again, I'm not entirely convinced that, given what we know about Martin Smith and the full-timer in Sheffield, that the CC is above covering up a gang rape or bullying the victim of a gang rape into shutting up. They intentionally moved a full timer who was known to be abusive to another district where he had the power to prey upon young people and when he abused and rape the young people he had power over he was suspended for a couple of years and given a reading list.

BTW, I think it's really dangerous and morally suspect to suggest that certain kinds of rape are worse than others. You might want to reword questions like that in future.

Certain kinds of rape are worse than others and funnily enough are recognised as such by the bourgeois legal system that we have.
 
What is it then? And how wide should any "No Platform for the SWP" extend? In any even,t this is (or seems to be) a case of an offer being withdrawn under threats of disruption? Do we know who or what group made these threats?
What confusion. How wide should any No Platform platform be? Or how wide should any platform be? Which are you asking here?
 
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