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SWP expulsions and squabbles

Karmickameleon said:
What's important is the role is he's playing now, which I think is very positive. He admitted his mistake and, if the party leadership were capable of doing the same thing, they would a) apologise to the women concerned b) resign. In that case, the slow motion car crash that we are currently witnessing could be averted. Of course, this ain't gonna happen...
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Important to who and why? Not to me, he'd do the same shit over coming years before realising he had the wool pulled over again. Did you mistake me for someone who wanted the SWP to exist after this?
 
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J Ed said:
Why would anyone bring it up then even if they did know about it? When it is advantageous and you aren't busy carrying their bags Labour Party members will definitely revel in it and exploit it, as at last year's NUS conference where the few remaining SWP stragglers (and sadly the rest of the left by association) were absolutely hammered in the election by the rape cover by right-wing Labour students.

Also, what the fuck is wrong with you?
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They tried to do this in the Library campaigns in SheffieLd too. When me and a mate were giving one of their counciLors a hard time over it one of them, assuming we were SWP, repLied that members of a party that tried to cover up a rape by a senior member didn't have any right to criticise. Suffice to say we toLd them in no uncertain terms that we weren't members.

(Sorry about the capitaL L's, the L key on my keyboard is knackered so I'm having to c&p an L in whenever I need to type one and I can't be arsed to change it to Lower case)
 
SpineyNorman said:
They tried to do this in the Library campaigns in SheffieLd too. When me and a mate were giving one of their counciLors a hard time over it one of them, assuming we were SWP, repLied that members of a party that tried to cover up a rape by a senior member didn't have any right to criticise. Suffice to say we toLd them in no uncertain terms that we weren't members.

(Sorry about the capitaL L's, the L key on my keyboard is knackered so I'm having to c&p an L in whenever I need to type one and I can't be arsed to change it to Lower case)
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I had problems with the L on my keyboard as well, so I downloaded some software to remap my keyboad and turnded my hash key into a second L (don't think I have ever needed the hash key). Took a bit of time to get used to, but probably better than C+P every time. I 'll see if I can find the software.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
I'm not really inclined to have much sympathy for the sort of left wing non-members the SWP find useful for a period and then turn on, and that goes for Rosen as much as the rest, but I don't think this is actually true.

I don't recall seeing Rosen wheel out the CC line on this at any point. Iirc, his early approach seemed to consist more of befuddlement then anything else.
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Fair enough, that was exaggeration. His whole line of argument was less staunch defence but, as butchers says, that non-members should keep their noses out. By mid-March he was prepared to admit that mistakes had been made but now was the time for a wait and see policy.
 
emanymton said:
Just me being overly cynical I think, that and I don't especially like Seymour, and Mieville. I have never doubted their genuine outrage, more the speed with which they broke completely with the SWP.
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You seem to be suggesting that they should have moved more slowly. In my view, those who moved into opposition first deserve a great deal of respect. It was the hardest step to take and once they made it, the ability of everyone else to think the unthinkable was suddenly a great deal easier.
 
There's a real damaging residue of the idea of 'stay and fight' that i think must have developed in the mid 20s around the debates whether to split with the official Communist parties. It really hampers organisations by fostering a fake unity that opens up the possibility of recuperation via one method or another. Fight yes, not on the ground your opponent has chosen. It doesn't make you any less serious to take a proper critical look at the lay of the land and place your troops accordingly.
 
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I tend to agree with that. If you are in a losing position, you "stay and fight" to the degree that you think it will help you bring more with you. But often it's treated as if it was some kind of moral imperative rather than a tactical call. If you think that winning is a possibility, you stay and fight with different ends in mind, but its still a tactical assessment.
 
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I was reading about that in Revolutionary Perspectives- I'm a little too dim with theory to grasp which side the rev spec people fall on and what the argument is really about.
 
DotCommunist said:
I was reading about that in Revolutionary Perspectives- I'm a little too dim with theory to grasp which side the rev spec people fall on and what the argument is really about.
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It's not the sort of issue that an activist group needs a "position" on, and it is bizarre that the CWI is having a semi-factional row about it, as opposed to holding a couple of seminars and publishing a few magazine articles debating different points of view for those members with an interest.

I'm not particularly bothered about having to read up on a rather technical issue of Marxist theory, even if it isn't an area I'd dream of prioritising under other circumstances. But I'm deeply sceptical of the usefulness of having a whole bunch of people who will mostly have a limited grasp of the intricacies of the issues in question debate them in factional terms.

(This is my general view on questions of an analytical or historic nature, rather than questions that bear directly on programme, strategy or tactics. It's just more obviously wrongheaded when the issue is this technical)
 
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on a related note Frogwoman (who follows these things) has mentioned to me that amongst SP facebook/blogs/etc there has been some rumblings of 'We shouldn't be having these arguments in public' from some quarters- as if in the wake of deltagate parties need to keep dirty laundry private. Which seems to me the direct opposite of the 'lesson' to be learned from the whole sorry saga.


edit to respond to your edit


and when its over a complex theoretical issue rather than actual dirty laundry then why would anyone care if it was done in public anyway?
 
DotCommunist said:
on a related note Frogwoman (who follows these things) has mentioned to me that amongst SP facebook/blogs/etc there has been some rumblings of 'We shouldn't be having these arguments in public' from some quarters- as if in the wake of deltagate parties need to keep dirty laundry private. Which seems to me the direct opposite of the 'lesson' to be learned from the whole sorry saga.
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Not quite. Militant used to have a view that members should defend the "line" in public and debate it internally. The SP, by contrast, doesn't have that sort of rule, and has explicitly said that trying to push members into all singing from the same hymn book is impossible and counterproductive, particularly when it comes to things like Facebook, blogs etc. The direction of travel has consistently been towards a more and more laissez faire attitude, the further entryism recedes into the distance (there are sensible reasons for entryism to encourage a tendency towards keeping your trap shut)

However, that tolerance wouldnt extend to actively trying to undermine some campaign or action of the organisation. And more importantly there is still a strong cultural pressure not to actually put the boot into the organisation in public. Which is different from saying you dont agree with it. And in this particular row, the main reason why the whole thing is semi-factional as opposed to educational is that the member who was the driving force behind the initial argument has been using his blog to roundly and personally ridicule people he doesn't agree with. This has predictably got other people's backs up. And without taking sides on the substantial issue - because I haven't done the reading yet - I have a lot of sympathy with the view that this is entirely inappropriate. Not the public disagreement, but the tone and personal abuse. It also means that some people aren't drawing that distinction and just want him to shut up entirely, which I also disagree with. Either way,this has nothing to do with lessons drawn from the SWPs row.

Short version: it's not public disagreement on a very technical area of theory that's the problem.
 
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I see what you are saying. Just to clarify the inference that these issues of 'lets not do this in public' is a reaction to deltagate was mine not Frogwomans. I've heard about the whole open turn thing and assumed that to be part of (or rather the beginning of) what you describe as increasingly lassaiz faire stuff. It's what I'd see as healthy myself, a culture of open questioning and debate within a party. I do understand that presenting what looks like a house divided might also trouble people. Just from the standpoint of 'fight whats important not ourselves', the issues that face society are more important so...
 
Nigel Irritable said:
It's not the sort of issue that an activist group needs a "position" on, and it is bizarre that the CWI is having a semi-factional row about it, as opposed to holding a couple of seminars and publishing a few magazine articles debating different points of view for those members with an interest.

I'm not particularly bothered about having to read up on a rather technical issue of Marxist theory, even if it isn't an area I'd dream of prioritising under other circumstances. But I'm deeply sceptical of the usefulness of having a whole bunch of people who will mostly have a limited grasp of the intricacies of the issues in question debate them in factional terms.

(This is my general view on questions of an analytical or historic nature, rather than questions that bear directly on programme, strategy or tactics. It's just more obviously wrongheaded when the issue is this technical)
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tho the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall does have key programmatic implications. I assume the critic is condemning the SP's 'underconsumptionism' - a heinous belief which takes you straight to Keynesianism.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
(This is my general view on questions of an analytical or historic nature, rather than questions that bear directly on programme, strategy or tactics. It's just more obviously wrongheaded when the issue is this technical)
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You seem to be suggesting that the argument in question is purely over some minor theoretical technical position?

The political implications in terms of programme, strategy or tactics are quite considerable I would say. Taaffe and co are as near as dam it to coming out with an underconsumptionist position that rejects the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as being the ultimate essence behind crisis and posit all kinds of other reasons for the crisis (although their arguments and articles are so badly researched, written and thought through that it's often difficult to work out exactly what they are trying to say), the political implications of this are somewhat profound, ranging from the notion that everything would be OK if Labour was paid a bit more by Capital and that it's only neoliberalism and financialised capitalism that are to blame here, not the essence of the capital/labour relation itself. Quite profound implications I would say.

edit: belboid beat me to it
 
Yeah I know it seems like arcane Marxist jargon fetishism but it actually does matter. Are the SP a Keynesian liberal and/or democratic sociailist party trying to make capitalism work better for the working class by adopting some Krugmanite type of position, or are you a properply revolutionary Marxist organisation who doesn't see that as an escape route for capitalism?
 
No. It is perfectly possible to hold any given set of programmatic positions alongside any position on the relationship of the TRPF to the current crisis, as long as you don't reject the idea that capitalism is inherently prone to crisis.

Peter Taaffe is wrong to suggest that the view which prioritises the TRPF as a proximate cause leads automatically to one solution revolution infantilism. His opponents are wrong to suggest that a position which views the TRPF as one cause amongst a number leads automatically to Keynsianism.

As for the argument that "proper Marxists" don't see an "escape route for capitalism", that kind of final-crisis mongering doesn't follow from either position. There is always a way out for capitalism. Generally by crucifying the working class.
 
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I see by the way that there's been a minor row in the NCAFC today, with a few people resigning. They are having a debate around privilege theory at their conference. Some of its advocates were irritated by it being a debate rather than a positive presentation with "non derailing" questions because hetciswhitedudes would start going on about Marxism. And it spiralled from there.
 
Yeah, all the economics you need for the non-labourite programmatic conclusions is a) capitalism can never escape crisis for long, and b) exploitation is inherent to capitalist production. Most of the rest on TRPF is fanatacism, though there's some interesting philosophy of political economy type stuff in there. A lot of outrage over "keynesianism" gets thrown around in the process, occassionally with justification. Just on the off chance that anyone's interested whilst waiting for IB3......personally I'm still waiting for the reply Kliman promised me here http://www.newleftproject.org/index...ork_zombie_social_democracy_with_a_human_face
 
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Nigel Irritable said:
I see by the way that there's been a minor row in the NCAFC today, with a few people resigning. They are having a debate around privilege theory at their conference. Some of its advocates were irritated by it being a debate rather than a positive presentation with "non derailing" questions because hetciswhitedudes would start going on about Marxism. And it spiralled from there.
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I followed that 'discussion' a bit, it just seemed like a number of people accusing each other of sexism etc?
 
Also, its particularly funny to see the AWL, who have been entirely cynically pushing the idea that the rest of the left is sexist because they think they can gain from doing so, getting bitten by this. Following on from the whole primitive Desert tribes thing.
 
Nigel Irritable said:
Also, its particularly funny to see the AWL, who have been entirely cynically pushing the idea that the rest of the left is sexist because they think they can gain from doing so, getting bitten by this. Following on from the whole primitive Desert tribes thing.
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I thought that too, bit of a monster of their own making?
 
J Ed said:
I thought that too, bit of a monster of their own making?
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Yes. If you read their conference documents, they talk about these issues pretty straightforwardly in terms of the opportunities they present, the cynical fucks. But of course the more they pander to anti-left sentiment of that sort, the more vulnerable they are to the same shit.
 
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