Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
That is the question... I don't have the answer, but IMHO part of it will come from what is best in the IS/SWP tradition. Another part from the dreaded movementism ....
SWP expulsions and squabbles
- Thread starter Nigel Irritable
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That is the question... I don't have the answer, but IMHO part of it will come from what is best in the IS/SWP tradition. Another part from the dreaded movementism ....
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
How do you know? He said with a glass of wine in one hand while typing with the other.
Yeh, sorry, I know what I mean but I'm not sure I can express myself more clearly right now. I need to go to bed as I'll have to be up in the early hours with the kids. I'll try again tomorrow.
I have no commitment to the idea of a vanguard btw!
I'm thinking about the relationship between theory and personal and shared experience and how we can use the former without at the same time denying our own expertise by imagining that the 'professional' knows best, without handing over our power.
Does that make more sense?
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
Oskarsdrum has already answered you in part: factory branches, shopfloor newsletters, women's voice .... I would add ANL, Stop the War and -despite all the errors- Respect.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I'm going to watch the cricket now. Important debate.Yes.makes sense. But...and this is where....professional stuff isn't political...
oskarsdrum
Active Member
discokermit said:
Wow that's a firm critique! Was trotskyism a big part of things over that time, I guess with the whole notion of the "leninist turn" it probably did. But then again Hallas and Sedgewick were always on with lampooning the self-proclaimed vanguard and whatnot right.
Oh yeah, I agree about the ANL Karmickameleon, although whether that was closely related to IS politics as such or a more broadly good plan well executed - I'm not sure?
oskarsdrum
Active Member
butchersapron said:
Now there's dedication. Following the extended last rites of this test seems a little less appearling than wading through Chris Harman's collected work on women's oppression.
appearling speeling.
oskarsdrum
Active Member
it's a neologism 
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
[quote
I'm thinking about the relationship between theory and personal and shared experience and how we can use the former without at the same time denying our own expertise by imagining that the 'professional' knows best, without handing over our power.
Does that make more sense?[/quote]
That makes a lot of sense..but the answer, of course, is our collective project. One response is the demagogic: "in our organisation we do not have followers who are led by the leadership. We are all leaders..." (Anne, Mark et al in IB3). But anyone with a degree of experience of the SWP knows that this isn't the reality.
Part of the error comes from Cliff's "organised distrust" of the membership. I can bear witness to this as I was once a full-time organiser for the organisation and, when "promoted", I was astonished to suddenly be party to a major debate which had been hidden from the membership in general. Of course, things have degenerated greatly since then with the current leadership not just hiding debates on the CC, but actively lying and covering up for one of their own.
I'm thinking about the relationship between theory and personal and shared experience and how we can use the former without at the same time denying our own expertise by imagining that the 'professional' knows best, without handing over our power.
Does that make more sense?[/quote]
That makes a lot of sense..but the answer, of course, is our collective project. One response is the demagogic: "in our organisation we do not have followers who are led by the leadership. We are all leaders..." (Anne, Mark et al in IB3). But anyone with a degree of experience of the SWP knows that this isn't the reality.
Part of the error comes from Cliff's "organised distrust" of the membership. I can bear witness to this as I was once a full-time organiser for the organisation and, when "promoted", I was astonished to suddenly be party to a major debate which had been hidden from the membership in general. Of course, things have degenerated greatly since then with the current leadership not just hiding debates on the CC, but actively lying and covering up for one of their own.
imposs1904
Thread Killa'
sorry to be nosy but what was the debate and when? just curious.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Raining now.
Karmickameleon
Too long in exile
I'd rather not say when, suffice to say it was time ago. It was about the role and nature of SW. The important point is that the membership were unaware of the debate raging among the leadership = organised distrust of the members.
But it's not just a top down process, it goes two ways. If the leadership have a position of distrust, then the membership have a position of trust, otherwise it wouldn't work, and this crisis is about the fact that it no longer does. I'm interested in how the membership end up being persuaded of a pov that doesn't match their own experience. That involves thinking that the leadership has 'powers' unavailable to the membership, instead of having a sense of our own authority (that we look to ourselves to think things through, work things out, judge the truth of something ) we trust the perspective of the leader over our own.
I don't want to over-psychologise this, but it seems to me that unless we examine these kinds of processes, include them as part of a political analysis, then we end up thinking either the problem is purely political (leninism, vanguardism, democratic centralism) or personal (they are cunts, nutters, mindless).
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
eh?
And a decades long culture of top-down authoritarianism that you buy into to be a member (this is is what a responsible socialist does - and here's my surrogate family whilst i'm away from home for the first time in my life) is enough surely? Stack laid out one of the mechanisms of control - a ladder to the CC and a) doing what a potential sponsor wants b( keeping your mouth shut. Same as any other other managerial bullshit - bit without the external targets or measures of success. After all, from what possible position can you judge the proletarian standpoint?
I've given you everything you need to work it out.
I'm trying to say that the membership aren't just done to.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
The second simply does not follow from the first here. There is no logical connection. They can both distrust each other. or trust each other.
If they both distrusted each other, the organisation wouldn't function would it?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes, they are complicit too - which is clear as day once you see the opportunists attempts to justify themselves in terms of leninism or the real tradition. They have been for decades. Which is why the SWP and their vocal members have been so despised for so long.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
In the way that the USSR didn't function for 70 years. It existed though. It's simple, a new feed of students every autumn. That was it for decades.
i certainly recognise this deception. The 'leaders' within the branch that i was involved were permanent. They are still there (and i left in the 1990s!). They were the ones who had the ear of the fulltimers (and individuals on the CC). i found this irksome, and goodness knows why i was able to tolerate it for so long (not far off a couple of decades). Maybe because, generally speaking, these were hardworking and sincere comrades. But when political problems arose it became rapidly clear that there were no mechanisms to seriously challenge such people - let alone remove them. they held all the powerful cards and were well used to playing them appropriately.
Vanguardism, and the organised distrust of the membership? The swp's practice of the theory (which in itself may be deeply questionable in the cultural conditions of the early 21st C ) was always going to end badly. The Delta affair has allowed the scales to fall away from the eyes of many, and good luck to those who want to achieve serious internal reform, but my reading of the bulletins suggests they may be on a hiding to nothing. The unflinching upwardly obedient robots remain dominant.
A surrogate family in which the mummy daddy leadership have all the answers?
Were they robots when they joined or did they become so?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Yes and in which you're told that you control mummy and daddy. Nice for M&D!
Yes that's an interesting question. i joined when it became SWP, but i'd been influenced and drawn in by 'old fashioned' IS politics. The 1970s were a hugely optimistic period when workers were still winning strikes with ease. i was certainly politically naieve (how the fuck do you spell that?), so it was quite a heady combination that propelled me into what was a thriving organisation developing significant roots and prospects.
No question the SWP changed throughout my period, probably for the worse. But i stuck with. i don't repudiate everything the SWP has done BTW, far from it. But the depth they have plunged to around this matter make me angry and distressed in equal measure.
No question the SWP changed throughout my period, probably for the worse. But i stuck with. i don't repudiate everything the SWP has done BTW, far from it. But the depth they have plunged to around this matter make me angry and distressed in equal measure.
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