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SWP expulsions and squabbles

Fozzie Bear said:
This just in:
http://isj.org.uk/?id=931

“The politics of the SWP crisis”-a response
Issue: 140
Posted: 18 October 13
by Jim Wolfreys, Colin Barker, Louis Bayman, Simon Behrman, Anindya Bhattacharyya, Estelle Cooch, Neil Davidson, Hannah Dee, Jacqui Freeman, Amy Gilligan, Mike Gonzalez, Mike Haynes, Jonny Jones, Andy Stone, Dan Swain, Megan Trudell, Alexis Wearmouth and Jennifer Wilkinson

As members of the editorial board of International Socialism we wish to disassociate ourselves from the recently published article, “The Politics of the SWP Crisis”, written by the journal’s editor and the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).1 It purports to offer a summary of the recent disputes that have divided the organisation along with an overview of the party’s trajectory over the past decade. The article’s account of both processes is partial and misleading. More than this, however, we believe that the political stance adopted by the authors will, if left unchecked, destroy the SWP as we know it and turn it into an irrelevant sect.
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The party is now in flames. Their lordships vs. the rest
 
This can only mean they are going to demand the greek and the timber go can't it? Not that they are surrounded by other CC members they (the faction) find acceptable, but that they go.
 
Wow, the prof seems to suggest the reason things only reached this stage was because the original mediation attempts took place outside of the party - effectively that the DC and CC who cocked this up so badly would have dealt with this very easily if they were brought in originally:

But there was a prehistory to the accusation, as a result of which conflicts developed from the start. This prehistory involved comrades now on both sides of the factional divide trying to mediate the conflict between W and the comrade she later accused of rape. These efforts were made in good faith, but they took place outside the party’s formal structures. This was a recipe for distrust and misunderstanding, and helped to ensure that sides were rapidly taken over the September 2012 complaint.
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The party structures that fucked this up were the only ones that could have dealt with the situation. Astonishing. Not a single thing learnt.
 
The weird thing about this endless horror show is just how predictable its development has been. If you go back to the early parts of this thread, it was clear to most here already that the opposition would lose at conference and then the hard elements would split or be purged. But that then the "soft" opposition would be pushed into a harder stance, rinse and repeat.

So after December, and the inevitable defection of much of the current opposition, the issue is how much of an opposition remains for yet another go around in a yet smaller SWP. At what point do the CC start expelling people?
 
I do like the bit in the Callnicos / Kimber reply to to the reply where they argue that "the most dynamic elements" of the ISN have "made straight for the world of the sects".

The language there is like Ted Grant at his most pompous, but at least Ted had a clear and readily understandable distinction in mind when he derided the rest of the far left as "squabbling sects on the fringes of the Labour movement" - ie they weren't inside the Labour Party. Here it's just straightforward abuse of little groups for being smaller. Even though the SWP itself tried to absorb one of the little groups being talked about not all that long ago.
 
Nobody else here will think it matters but the sheer neck of the opposition statement in denying their political differences and claiming it all comes down to matters of procedure is just odd. The uaf stuff is particularily stupid. we know the oppo have been going nuts about the failure of the uaf to physically confront the edl for months but if the prof mentions that he's constructing straw men?! Eh no he's effing not. You disagree with the politics of the majority in the SWP, fine but don't pretend you don't. No doubt partly it's cause they need to keep Stack and Birchall on board but it's so bloody dishonest.
 
Pickman's model said:
you asked first if she suffered from oppression and now you ask if she benefited from it. you're fucked in the head, and not in a good way.
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She quite clearly did benefit from it, as does the rest of the ruling class, that's the point. You say she suffered from women's oppression, I would say her benefits quite clearly outweighed her losses. She did not suffer from women's oppression, in the same way the working class woman would. Point of fact. Which underlines the point that women's oppression is a class issue, which is the point at which many socialists part company with feminists on the analysis of women's oppression.
 
ResistanceMP3 said:
She quite clearly did benefit from it, as does the rest of the ruling class, that's the point. You say she suffered from women's oppression, I would say her benefits quite clearly outweighed her losses. She did not suffer from women's oppression, in the same way the working class woman would. Point of fact. Which underlines the point that women's oppression is a class issue, which is the point at which many socialists part company with feminists on the analysis of women's oppression.
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in what concrete ways would you say she benefited from being oppressed.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Nobody else here will think it matters but the sheer neck of the opposition statement in denying their political differences and claiming it all comes down to matters of procedure is just odd. The uaf stuff is particularily stupid. we know the oppo have been going nuts about the failure of the uaf to physically confront the edl for months but if the prof mentions that he's constructing straw men?! Eh no he's effing not. You disagree with the politics of the majority in the SWP, fine but don't pretend you don't. No doubt partly it's cause they need to keep Stack and Birchall on board but it's so bloody dishonest.
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Hang on a second. As you yourself acknowledge, with your reference to Stack and Birchall, the opposition is not united around these sort of issues. There are people in the opposition who think that the SWP position is wrong on a range of issues and there are people who don't. Of those who do have wider disagreements, what precisely those "dissident" views are will also vary. So why is it "bloody dishonest" for the opposition to concentrate their argument on the issue they actually are united about, which is also the issue that created the opposition in the first place?

It would of course suit the leadership if instead of talking about the central issue, the opposition would obligingly divert themselves into a discussion of other issues. Then the CC could concentrate its fire on the views of this or that oppositionist or the heterodoxy of some subset of the opposition's views. But it's not dishonest of the opposition to insist on prioritising the issue that centrally they are an opposition because of. There isn't an opposition because of "movementist pressures" or because the students were elitist or because Seymour is less optimistic than the leadership, or because of twitter intersectionalism or whatever. Even though the existence of a factional dispute does inevitably lead some oppositional elements to question what had been common ground. There's an opposition because of the DC cases and their fall out.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Nobody else here will think it matters but the sheer neck of the opposition statement in denying their political differences and claiming it all comes down to matters of procedure is just odd. The uaf stuff is particularily stupid. we know the oppo have been going nuts about the failure of the uaf to physically confront the edl for months but if the prof mentions that he's constructing straw men?! Eh no he's effing not. You disagree with the politics of the majority in the SWP, fine but don't pretend you don't. No doubt partly it's cause they need to keep Stack and Birchall on board but it's so bloody dishonest.
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Interesting "The authors note “the increasing tendency for faction members to freelance in different areas of work, notably anti-fascism, where some members of the opposition counterpose squaddist ‘direct action’ against the Nazis by a self-appointed vanguard to the emphasis on mass mobilisation that has distinguished both the ANL and UAF.” The authors do not bother to cite any evidence for this “squaddism” but are happy instead to insult, by a process of lazy amalgamation, significant numbers of opposition comrades who have devoted a large part of their lives to developing and engaging in the party’s anti-fascist work."
 
Last year saw the 20 somethings leave, this coming year will see the 30 and 40 somethings going if the breadth of people signing up for the faction is anything to judge by.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Hang on a second. As you yourself acknowledge, with your reference to Stack and Birchall, the opposition is not united around these sort of issues. There are people in the opposition who think that the SWP position is wrong on a range of issues and there are people who don't. Of those who do have wider disagreements, what precisely those "dissident" views are will also vary. So why is it "bloody dishonest" for the opposition to concentrate their argument on the issue they actually are united about, which is also the issue that created the opposition in the first place?

It would of course suit the leadership if instead of talking about the central issue, the opposition would obligingly divert themselves into a discussion of other issues. Then the CC could concentrate its fire on the views of this or that oppositionist or the heterodoxy of some subset of the opposition's views. But it's not dishonest of the opposition to insist on prioritising the issue that centrally they are an opposition because of. There isn't an opposition because of "movementist pressures" or because the students were elitist or because Seymour is less optimistic than the leadership, or because of twitter intersectionalism or whatever. Even though the existence of a factional dispute does inevitably lead some oppositional elements to question what had been common ground. There's an opposition because of the DC cases and their fall out.
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think you're probably right, not dishonest , but perhaps better to have couched it the way you?
 
butchersapron said:
Last year saw the 20 somethings leave, this coming year will see the 30 and 40 somethings going if the breadth of people signing up for the faction is anything to judge by.
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I don't think that there are any significant number of 30 somethings. According to the resignation letter of that ex-CC guy who defected to Counterfire near the start of the crisis, the SWP had 50-100 subs payers recruited between 2001 and 2005 on the books. And that was before the crisis. That seems to have been a missing generation already - and a key reason why losing the students and other 20 somethings was even more of a disaster than it would otherwise have been.

Even when your name isn't mud, that sort of shift to an older age profile is very hard to undo. The English SP had a less drastic version of the same problem in the early 2000s. It had stopped its long 90s slide, but found itself with lots of branches where almost all of the activists had joined in the 80s.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
I don't think that there are any significant number of 30 somethings. According to the resignation letter of that ex-CC guy who defected to Counterfire near the start of the crisis, the SWP had 50-100 subs payers recruited between 2001 and 2005 on the books. And that was before the crisis. That seems to have been a missing generation already - and a key reason why losing the students and other 20 somethings was even more of a disaster than it would otherwise have been.

Even when your name isn't mud, that sort of shift to an older age profile is very hard to undo. The English SP had a less drastic version of the same problem in the early 2000s. It had stopped its long 90s slide, but found itself with lots of branches where almost all of the activists had joined in the 80s.
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is there any section on the British 'left' who have not followed the same trend?
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Even when your name isn't mud, that sort of shift to an older age profile is very hard to undo. The English SP had a less drastic version of the same problem in the early 2000s. It had stopped its long 90s slide, but found itself with lots of branches where almost all of the activists had joined in the 80s.
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That's an interesting aside, given that the SP now seems to have a reasonable cross section of ages represented (at least where ever I've seen) what would you say they did to address that?
 
From a personal pov, I'm very relieved to see Colin Barker's name attached to something critical. Not sure it will make any difference to the politics of the SWP, but I feel a little less mad.
 
I'll come back to this, because I conceded too early.
belboid said:
asking whether someone was so drunk they couldnt remember anything is different to asking about there general drinking habits tho, isnt it?
but you are confusing two things - whether 'men' benefit overall from women's oppression, and whether men receive any form of benefit from the specific ways women are oppressed.
In order to see men do receive some benefits, you dont have to check you privilege, just check your pay packet.
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what happens when you check your wife's/ partners pay packet? By that measure, most men would benefit if their wives wages were increased to the same level as theirs. If all women's wages were increased to the same level as men, the whole working class would benefit.
It's a different perspective, it's about viewing things in terms of the class, rather than the individual. As a class, we can only all benefit from increase of women's wages to the same levels as men. There is no real benefit 2 men, in the oppression of women.
I do understand the point you are making, but I think these points cloud the clarity class analysis of women's oppression gives. Women's oppression is caused by class society , not men.
 
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