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SWP expulsions and squabbles

belboid said:
so those without children are now added to the list of non-oppressed women! you really are a fucking joke.

Good thing no one has proposed the myth that women had some solidarity with thatcher. Except you
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but you're raising an argument, I've never denied. And never denied they are subject to what could be described as some aspects of the superstructure of women's oppression. I alluded to it, and Pitman pointed that out earlier. But with their wealth, the fundamentals, the economic base of such oppression, so to speak, no. The wealthier you are, the less you are affected by such aspects.

Who would be bothered about black people being called nigger, if they weren't discriminated against the economic base?

It's an important point, in my opinion. One I felt worth making. That's it.

now, I will go back and have a look again at what you said about wages. And see whether I've misunderstood it.
 
belboid said:
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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no you are confused. How do they benefit? Think about the bigger picture. Read properly what I have said.
bolshiebhoy said: ↑
I admire your honesty but in fairness the SWP has been arguing against the feminist notion of male benefits since the 80's when we all had the argument the first time round. I'd argue it's pretty core to the Marxist understanding of oppression to reject those feminist ideas and the fact that the SWP has to part company with most of the rest of the left on a question of Marxist theory isn't something it should worry about. Kind of thing you have to do from time to time if you're not just about making friends. If people have lately been joining the party and sticking around for a while and not realising that or only realising it now then clearly the party didn't do a very good job of arguing its own politics with the people it was recruitin​
 
ResistanceMP3 said:
but you're raising an argument, I've never denied. And never denied they are subject to what could be described as some aspects of the superstructure of women's oppression. I alluded to it, and Pitman pointed that out earlier. But with their wealth, the fundamentals, the economic base of such oppression, so to speak, no. The wealthier you are, the less you are affected by such aspects.

Who would be bothered about black people being called nigger, if they weren't discriminated against the economic base?

It's an important point, in my opinion. One I felt worth making. That's it.

now, I will go back and have a look again at what you said about wages. And see whether I've misunderstood it.
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Re the highlighted bit...Are you being serious????????????????
 
comrade spurski said:
Re the highlighted bit...Are you being serious????????????????
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well not really. Not at this point in time. I refuse to use the words cunt n twat because they are sexist. And I certainly wouldn't use the word nigger.

but there is an important issue there. The superstructure isn't the source of the oppression, the economic base is. it's the arguments against "political correctness".


sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never hurt me. And while that is not entirely true, I would rather be called names, then hit with the sticks and stones of discrimination in housing, education, wages etc etc. I think to equate to racism with name-calling, as some white people do "well it's okay for me to call him nigger, because he calls me honkey" is to totally misunderstand what racism really is.
 
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I don't use the words cunt twat n nigger out of solidarity with those who wish to fight racism and sexism, but I don't actually believe not using those words will end racism and sexism.
 
when someone calls me a paki I want to rip their throat out...when they call my mrs a paki lover I want to rip their throat out and if they did it to my kids I would want to rip their throat out...
I don't consider the economic foundation of racism when some racist shit bag abuses us so I couldn't disagree with you strongly enough.

Is it ok for a homeless jobless person to racislly abuse me and my family cos we work and have a roof over our heads?
Is it ok for Rio ferdinand to suffer racist abuse even though he is richer than god?

seriously mate ... you really need to think a bit more before you type cos you are coming across like a prick who thinks that it's not so bad for some one to suffer verbal racial abuse
 
comrade spurski said:
when someone calls me a paki I want to rip their throat out...when they call my mrs a paki lover I want to rip their throat out and if they did it to my kids I would want to rip their throat out...
I don't consider the economic foundation of racism when some racist shit bag abuses us so I couldn't disagree with you strongly enough.

Is it ok for a homeless jobless person to racislly abuse me and my family cos we work and have a roof over our heads?
Is it ok for Rio ferdinand to suffer racist abuse even though he is richer than god?

seriously mate ... you really need to think a bit more before you type cos you are coming across like a prick who thinks that it's not so bad for some one to suffer verbal racial abuse
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Well you must be right, coming across that way,and for that I seriously apologise. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am genuinely mystified how you could draw that conclusion from what I have said. But you have, along with many others, so I have to hold my hands up.
 
killer b said:
i've always found him very agreeable in person too fwiw. generally politically too.
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I used to think he was decent bloke, in many ways I guess I he still is, just blinded by loyalty.

You know his daughters must be late teens, early twenties by now, I wounder how we would feel about one of then getting involved with Smith.
 
butchersapron said:
He put together a book called Class Struggle and Social Welfare a decade or so back that i found relly helpful in undermining statist assumptions about collective welfare provision - so much so that i scanned large parts of it in to put on-line.
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Didn't he do one with Colin Baker on leadership in social movements. Something tells me you might have a different view of that one.
 
butchersapron said:
He put together a book called Class Struggle and Social Welfare a decade or so back that i found relly helpful in undermining statist assumptions about collective welfare provision - so much so that i scanned large parts of it in to put on-line.
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I'd be interested in seeing that some time.
 
butchersapron said:
He put together a book called Class Struggle and Social Welfare a decade or so back that i found relly helpful in undermining statist assumptions about collective welfare provision - so much so that i scanned large parts of it in to put on-line.
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My daughter has just started studying politics at university, and her first essay/ presentation is on the state and whether we need it, to my surprise she declared that she was taking an anarchist approach!
This book sounds like it would be brilliant for her.
 
comrade spurski said:
seriously mate ... you really need to think a bit more before you type cos you are coming across like a prick who thinks that it's not so bad for some one to suffer verbal racial abuse
Click to expand...
I was on the train last year coming home from the match, when some lary woman got on. She spotted these 2 Muslim women, and a child, and started playing to the carriage about Islam and Muslims etc. Everybody ignored her including myself for a while. Pretty shortly though, I couldn’t take any more, so I just started glaring at. Pretty soon she commented “am I offending you” to which I replied, “no you are repulsing me, shut the fuck up”. She kept on going, not only threatened by the man in the wheelchair. Long story short, in the end several people started having a go at her, one who mentioned he had seen her on Piccadilly with some other National Front. My point is, I just want to assure you I am not for 1 minute suggesting you should let people get away with that kind of shite.

I was really quite mortified that I had offended the genuine person like yourself. So, sorry. Again.

I honestly thought I was stating what would be obvious to any socialist. Obviously I was wrong. I will try to make clear, what I was trying to say.
Hypothetically, if you had a choice to end racism ideological, or racism is it physically manifests, which would you choose? Would you choose to end racism in the newspapers, radio, the political discourse etc, (political correctness)? Or would you choose to end racism in the way it manifests in the police, courts, National local government, housing, employment being beaten up on the streets?
You don’t even have to be a socialist to answer that, if you were black in Washington DC where something like 20% of the black male population under the age of 25 is in prison.
But even on a personal level, once you take away the power to discriminate, you take away the power of the word. It’s only because of the physical manifestation of real racial oppression, that the words have power be racially abusive see [below].
The 2nd less hypothetical example that was in my mind when I was saying the above, was in a workers state. In a workers state, there would still be the muck of ages, there would still be racists people knocking about. Without the power to do anything about that racism though, the words become as empty as honkey.
I’ve had this conversation many times with soft white racists, who claim that black people are racist’s towards them. I argue, that is not possible in the UK, where there is no institutional racism directed towards white people, but is towards black people. To equate racism with name-calling, when racism has seen the Holocaust, slavery, colonialism and the Klu Klux Klan etc, I argue is an insult to racism. I know some on here disagree with that, but that is my position.
Lastly, in my head, I was really just restating Karl Marx versus Hegel. Hegel, to change the world you just change the way they think. Marx, you change the world to change how people think.


Some of the stuff, I wrote on this topic, to someone.
I’ve only read about 4 or 5 books on racism. They all seem to lead up to the best one IMO, “Staying Power, a History of Black People in Britain”.

In the book he argues, racism didn’t exist before capitalism. In that book he goes through a pretty lengthy discussion of the distinction between racism and prejudice (in societies before capitalism), but basically his argument is;
slavery was MASSIVELY profitable. It was probably THE most important economic factor/primer pump in the development the of British economy/dominance. At a time of bourgeois revolutions that were declaring “all men are born equal” “liberty, fraternity and equality” how could people justify slavery?

The planters created a whole “science”, to justify the supposition that some races are superior, and some races inferior, racism.
So in the 1st place at the base
1. there was the economic imperative for slavery.
2. A physical oppression. Slaves were being shipped, the Golden Triangle monumentally successful.
Only then, on top of the economic base, was created a superstructure of ideology to justify such exploitation, the pseudoscience of racism.

At university I did studies of American political history. There was a “Marxist” lecturer there. His basic argument was;
how do you explain the dynamic the American legislators attitude to racism, and then the civil rights movement of the 60s? Moral imperative, or economic imperative? Probably a bit of both, but the economic need, the shortage of labour, were a major factor. [I’m not going to go into economic determinism.]

You talked about the racism against the Irish. I was born in 60, and I never felt the racism against the Irish, was as bad as it was against blacks. Again today, I do not experience the racism against blacks, as much as you do against Asians (I could be wrong). so yes I agree we have moved away a bit from the Irish, and I would argue the blacks. In other words there is a dynamic as to who is, and who isn’t the scapegoat.

So my argument is, if you remove the fundamentals of racism from the base (and this isn’t just economics, the busing of students in civil rights America was part of that changing the base), then the superstructure the ideology becomes irrelevant if not forgotten. IE, nobody today argues, not even the BNP even though they might believe in private, that one race is genetically superior to another. That was common belief in the 1960s.

Could draw a similar example with women, is the drawing of women into the workplace nothing to do with the changing attitudes of the legislator in the UK? Nothing to do with the changes in the ideology?

But my original comment, I meant in a more simplistic way. If the physical realities of racism, you didn’t get beat up, you didn’t suffer discrimination in housing education and every single part of the life, if racism no longer existed, if somebody called Nigger, it would have no meaning beyond Taffy, honkey to you, but more importantly to the person who is saying it. It’s only because racism exists, that the word Nigger Paki has any power. Does that make sense?

You should read some of the arguments in Socialist Workers ISJ attacking political correctness. That might give you some further insight as to where I’m coming from?

Now if that doesn't make sense, just tell me. I won't mind.

I don't mind the fact that I am obviously not very good at explaining myself, but it does irk that people believe I am disingenuous, when I am not.
ResistanceMP3, Yesterday at 8:30 PM EditReportReply

Okay just re-read that, and it is very much economic determinism. So I just want to briefly balance it.


Once the base created the superstructure of racism, it just doesn’t sit there passively, reflecting changes in the base. One comrade at a district educational argued, the relationship between basin structure is like 2 men in a tug-of-war, changes in the base can affect the superstructure, but changes in superstructure can also affect the base.


So in other words, I’m not saying you shouldn’t challenge the ideas of the racists, you should only concentrate on changing the fundamentals the things in the economic base. The ideology can get out of hand even for capitalism, i.e. fascism. And so then our priority has to be given to defending what you’ve got, by challenging those ideas. But that is a labour of Sisyphus, while you still have capitalism. Only Changes in the base will bring about far more permanent changes
 
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