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SWP expulsions and squabbles

The left and right of British politics are full of people 'bred by' the IS. People move in all sorts of directions. That tells us very little. I'm personally surprised she's moved this far from the fairly obvious bog standard IS position on this subject.
 
That's just silly butchers. Opposition to 'lesser evil' imperialisms was kind of the whole point of state capitalism as a theory. This is a huge reversal of her own history as a socialist.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
The left and right of British politics are full of people 'bred by' the IS. People move in all sorts of directions. That tells us very little. I'm personally surprised she's moved this far from the fairly obvious bog standard IS position on this subject.
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If hundreds/thousands can pass through your ranks and then abandon socialist ideas entirely, doesn't that tell us you're not doing it right?
 
bolshiebhoy said:
It's the articulate rebuttals that make this thread worth coming back to again and again.
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Your contributions on this thread illustrate why so many people regard the swp as a lunatic sect of an organisation.
You defend the cc when it runs a coach and horse through the very basic socialist principle of women being belived when they say they have been raped.
You attack ex cc members when they break from IS politics.
You defend members of the swp who berate and bully those it disagrees with because they are fighting for socialism.
You attack swp members who disagree with you because they refuse to keep their criticisms of the swp in house because they fear that the swp is damaging the fight for socialism.

Your politics come across as every bit stalinist as lindsey german.

Part of politics is to continuously learn surely...and I fail to understand how anyone learns without listening...and your contributions rarely show any ability to listen....just like the swp...I dont know you...I may have come across you during my 23 yrs in the swp but the way you present on here explains why I had very few friends in the swp and none in it now

Bizarrely enough I remember charlie kimber standing up at a swp event stating that the swp needs to be involved in " a dialogue not a diatribe"
.....around the time blair was first elected....he like you has a very fucked up view of dialogue.
 
Three things spurski

1) Berating is good and defensible, it's what people do when they believe something to be true, its sometimes called sharp arguing but berating will do as a term if you prefer. Bullying is different and is not something I think anyone beyond the worst hack would defend.

2) Calling LG a Stalinist and then comparing others to her is to rob the term of much useful content. Yes on the question of Ukraine and Syria before it she and Rees seem to have made their peace with the tankies but I'm not sure what else calling her or Counterfire Stalinists tells us. I continue to think she has one of the better, most nuanced positions on women's oppression and Marxism around. If anything the identity politics of the most extreme ex members is much more akin to Stalinist politics than hers or the SWP are.

3) It's difficult to listen when people are shouting which is what most of the people addressing me or anyone who isn't in the smash the SWP now camp tend to do on this thread. That said where people do at least try to understand where the people they disagree with are coming from and pitch their arguments accordingly then yes I do think I've learned things from people on here (but not as much as from oppositionists not posting here). My ideas have changed over the last year or so but I think the current state of the various splits and proposed alternatives leaves me more confident than ever that whatever failings the SWP might have it is still the best option on offer.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Three things spurski

1) Berating is good and defensible, it's what people do when they believe something to be true, its sometimes called sharp arguing but berating will do as a term if you prefer. Bullying is different and is not something I think anyone beyond the worst hack would defend.

2) Calling LG a Stalinist and then comparing others to her is to rob the term of much useful content. Yes on the question of Ukraine and Syria before it she and Rees seem to have made their peace with the tankies but I'm not sure what else calling her or Counterfire Stalinists tells us. I continue to think she has one of the better, most nuanced positions on women's oppression and Marxism around. If anything the identity politics of the most extreme ex members is much more akin to Stalinist politics than hers or the SWP are.

3) It's difficult to listen when people are shouting which is what most of the people addressing me or anyone who isn't in the smash the SWP now camp tend to do on this thread. That said where people do at least try to understand where the people they disagree with are coming from and pitch their arguments accordingly then yes I do think I've learned things from people on here (but not as much as from oppositionists not posting here). My ideas have changed over the last year or so but I think the current state of the various splits and proposed alternatives leaves me more confident than ever that whatever failings the SWP might have it is still the best option on offer.
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1) when arguing that immigration is not the cause of the problems faced by working class people I never berate even though I passionately believe my view point is correct. When arguing that the country can afford better pensions, wages, benefits, to spend more on services I dont berate...even though I am passionate about this. I dont berate when disagreeing because the point is to be heard and to get people to agree ...I have berated managers, I have berated name calling racists and homophobes...cos the point is to shut them up ... this forum is a discusion forum...there are some horrible fuckers on here occasionally but you seem to be incapanle of debating with ANYONE and seem only able to berate imo.

2) fair enough...

3) in my opinion people shout at you in response to your posts which are at times breathe taking in their callousness.
You may think the swp is the best option available but the truth is that an organisation ( a party , a campaign group or a union etc.) is simply a tool...and if a tool is broken it not only can not do its job it can also be harmful and in my opinion the swp is extremely harmful
 
bolshiebhoy said:
It's the articulate rebuttals that make this thread worth coming back to again and again.
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Fine. If you're talking about state capitalist theory in general, it was around for years before Cliff was born. If you're talking about his bastardised version, the point was to avoid difficult conversations about what went wrong with the Russian Revolution or how to understand the USSR by dismissing it as the same 'evil' as everything else.
 
edit: apologies to Karmickameleon, hadn't seen s/he had posted it already.

Seymour finally posts part 5.

When Callinicos phoned back, his disarray was greatly aggravated. As he tried to explain that the meeting was about why I had been shouting my head off to the whole world that the CC was corrupt and covering up rape allegations and all sorts... his voice choked and he broke into quite audible, mournful sobs. I froze. My stomach froze. He was a sixty year old man, of colonial aristocratic pedigree, and fairly tough I assumed. The last thing I expected or knew how to deal with was him weeping down the phone.
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"DON'T PLAY GAMES WITH ME!" Callinicos retorted, really channelling Bishop Brennan at this point.
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Callinicos and Choonara maintained that the crisis was not inevitable, and that the true responsibility for it rested with whoever had leaked the conference transcript, then Tom Walker for what he had said in his resignation statement, and then myself for what I had written on my blog.
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And the prof basically adopts the proletarian standpoint nonsense of that fraud whose name i forget whose IB contribution we had a laugh at last year:

What I had failed to understand, what I plainly did not understand, what I obviously had complete contempt for, was political morality. You see, it is the "political morality" of a revolutionary party which ensures that if members of a disputes committee, long-standing cadres, believe that someone is guilty of rape, they will discipline that person.
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At a personal level, the short-term relief and catharsis of publicly lancing the boil started to give way to a new fear: they might not actually fucking expel me, and I would actually have to actually stay in and fight as I was urging everyone else to do. Worse, I would be expected to evince 'leadership'. In an organisation where the majority of people already thought I was suspect because of my mildly heretical leanings on Syriza, I would have to persuade people that the organisation was in such a severe crisis that the entire leadership had to be overthrown and replaced with... well, something nicer. I would have to attend branch meetings for the first time in years, that would be fun.
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He really is the most awful person. He probably thinks he's being modest here.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
It's the articulate rebuttals that make this thread worth coming back to again and again.
Click to expand...

You're a rabid dog with just enough smarts left in your addled brain to put on a show of normality to gain acceptance. You need to be kicked every time you come back here with your tail between your legs just to keep your awful yowling to a minimum.
 
I shouldn't share this bit of info (and my inner rabid dog is fuming with me) as it only serves to back up what butchers said last night about LG not having far to move from her IS days, but hey ho. She's been discussing Ukraine with me on FB and she did actually use the Iraq example that butchers mentioned. she accused those of us condemning Russia of being abstract in the same way as those who didn't recognise the concrete relative balance of power between the US and Iraq back in the day. Hasnt come back yet on my counter argument that Russia is a slightly bigger fish than Iraq but we'll see. Think they must be feeling the flak from all sides this morning. even Billy Bragg had a pop at them last night!
 
butchersapron said:
Yes, that lept out at me. I can see bb is going to have some fun with that later.
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It's too easy. The whole thing was clearly an intellectual game to him,the practical outcome of which he couldn't have cared less about, as with his flippant remarks about where people who left would end up. Worth saying though he's a million miles in that indifference from the likes of decent folk like Renton who cared, cared a lot, what happened politically to everyone involved. The opposition (as with the loyalists) had many strange alliances of very disparate people.
 
leyton96 said:
You're a rabid dog with just enough smarts left in your addled brain to put on a show of normality to gain acceptance. You need to be kicked every time you come back here with your tail between your legs just to keep your awful yowling to a minimum.
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Fucking hell, if acceptance by the majority on this thread is what counts as normal!
 
bolshiebhoy said:
It's too easy. The whole thing was clearly an intellectual game to him,the practical outcome of which he couldn't have cared less about, as with his flippant remarks about where people who left would end up. Worth saying though he's a million miles in that indifference from the likes of decent folk like Renton who cared, cared a lot, what happened politically to everyone involved. The opposition (as with the loyalists) had many strange alliances of very disparate people.
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The thing about that little aside by him is its arrogance - it's easy enough to make a case for him having a different role on the party etc - one that i think Callinicos would be happy to adopt himself even - but that was just dripping with dismissive arrogance and i can see him smirking as he typed it.
 
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