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SWP expulsions and squabbles

BK Double Stack said:
This is stupid. Like, everything about it.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4092616.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2014_05_16
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DotCommunist said:
bah, paywall
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The Times said:
No sex please comrades, we’re British

When Karl Marx dreamt of the socialist revolution, he failed to anticipate that it could be derailed by the political etiquette of the bedroom.

Two of Britain’s leading Marxist writers have resigned from the revolutionary group that they helped to create following a bitter ideological dispute over the acceptability of sexual “race play”.

China Miéville, one of Britain’s best known science-fiction authors, quit the International Socialist Network (ISN) along with Richard Seymour, a political writer and columnist for The Guardian newspaper, who was accused of defending the right to be racist in bed.

The controversy, which involves a bewildering array of acronyms, both for Britain’s disparate radical groups and for sexual practices, has bemused even veteran activists familiar with the internecine warfare of the left.

The ISN was founded last year by former members of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), who resigned after claims that it had covered up allegations that its leader, named only as Comrade Delta, had raped a member.

The new group aimed to create an “independent revolutionary organisation” but its own future has been thrown into doubt after comments by a leading member who is also a professional bondage mistress. Margaret Corvid, an activist, writer and exponent of BDSM (bondage, domination and sadomasochism), was attacked by members of the group after praising a photograph of Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea Football Club owner, sitting on a chair designed to resemble a half-naked black woman.

Corvid was denounced by angry comrades who saw the chair as an extension of “race play”, which typically sees a white “master” dominate a black “slave” in the bedroom.

Several left-wing commentators argued that the practice was only acceptable “when it is people of colour dominating and subverting whiteness” while others insisted the entire concept was discriminatory.

Corvid’s insistence that “race play is not a fetish interest of mine, but human furniture and other humiliation and objectification is” failed to stem the growing controversy.

Seymour, 37, a PhD student at the London School of Economics, gallantly came to Ms Corvid’s defence, only to fuel the flames.

In one comment he wrote: “I think ‘race play’ is just inter-racial couples using real painful experiences and processing them in a particular erotic context, without straightforwardly reproducing them or seeking to perpetuate them. I don’t think — or am not yet convinced — that they are being racist in so doing.”

The ISN’s ruling steering committee, which included Corvid, responded by publishing a statement addressed to “Dear comrades”, denouncing those who supported “race play”, describing it as “deeply problematic with regards to racial and gender politics”.

The statement led to the resignation of Miéville, Seymour, and Corvid, along with five other comrades. In their resignation letter they complained that Corvid had been “browbeaten, patronised, marginalised and moralised against” and claimed that they had been accused of being “politically dishonest, and set out to split or destroy the network”. Miéville, who is best known for his award-winning novel The City & the City and describes his writing as “new weird”, has not obviously personally suffered under the boot of capitalism. He was a pupil at Oakham, a public school, before going to the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Harvard. In the 2001 general election he stood for the Socialist Alliance , a grouping of far-left and Trotskyist organisations, and he now teaches creative writing at Warwick University.

Seymour was involved in an argument with the Times columnist Oliver Kamm over alleged inaccuracies in Seymour’s best-known book, The Liberal Defence of Murder. His latest book, Against Austerity, criticises the left for its failure to prevent the government’s austerity measures.

The “splitters” remain involved in left-wing groups, including Left Unity, which was founded last year by Miéville, the film-maker Ken Loach, the former children’s laureate Michael Rosen and the actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, who died in January.

Miéville, Seymour and the ISN could not be contacted for comment.
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belboid said:
It also points out that China is quite posh. Which is shocking, I mean who'd have thought someone called 'China' was posh??!!
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its the typical thing they think the reader wants to hear- shock horror someone who espouses pro-working class politics might not be actually have grown up with rickets and hewn coal with his teeth. See also: the rush to point out that Tony Benn was a bit posh
 
With Marxism 2014 coming up very soon, I thought that it was time to resuscitate this thread! It seems there have been a number of dropouts from the Marxism events scheduled, the latest here:

Creeping Feminism ‏@swpoffcampus Jul 1
So far Piratones, Robb Johnson & Dirty Revolution have pulled out of #Marxism2014! Please help spread the word about #SWP rape apologism!

8:17 PM - 1 Jul 2014 · Details
 
Karmickameleon said:
With Marxism 2014 coming up very soon, I thought that it was time to resuscitate this thread! It seems there have been a number of dropouts from the Marxism events scheduled, the latest here:

Creeping Feminism ‏@swpoffcampus Jul 1
So far Piratones, Robb Johnson & Dirty Revolution have pulled out of #Marxism2014! Please help spread the word about #SWP rape apologism!

8:17 PM - 1 Jul 2014 · Details
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They may be pulling out but the main attraction will still be there. Can't wait:

"Alex is one of the best known Marxist writers today. His works include Imperialism and Global Political Economy and An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto. He will launch his new book on Deciphering Capital at Marxism 2014"
 
In response to the Prof's article in ISJ entitled Thunder on the Left, in which he (AC) says:

"The present crisis is much more diffuse, but in some ways more threatening, because the revolutionary left is much weaker than it was in 1979. This makes the attempts to split and even to destroy organisations such as the NPA and the SWP so irresponsible. These parties represent decades of concentrated efforts by thousands of militants to develop credible revolutionary alternatives. They are not to be thrown away lightly."

Jonny Jones has responded on Facebook thus:

This, I think, is the crux of the problem. I often ask myself: why did Alex ally with a clique who were absolutely determined to split the SWP, at any cost, in order to hold on to Martin Smith? A political operator who was prepared to lie about and smear survivors of his abuse, ably assisted by his chums like Amy L, John McL, etc. Why did Joseph, who admitted to me in person that he was disturbed by the handling of the rape accusation, make his peace with the very people who had organised to vilify him and trivialise his concerns? Why, when they realised that they had been played by Martin, could the comrades who made up the so-called middle ground, with a few honourable exceptions, not row back?
I had a conversation with Paul McG last autumn in which he told me that going for the IDOOM contingent on the Central Committee at the last conference was impossible because it would split the party. Instead, he invited us to ally to isolate them and go for them at the following conference. As he was elected to the CC in December, he didn't raise a single complaint about the conduct of the liars and the smearers; the party wreckers on the CC, NC and elsewhere. Earlier this year, John R took me to task for leaving the party saying the opposition had achieved everything it wanted. Amy was isolated in her Marxism "ghetto", and I should hear the things Alex says about her, "and even about Judith!" Well, yes, I should have. I'd have loved to. But I didn't. All I heard was guff about how the CC was agreed, that "everybody had behaved badly"; equating name-calling on Facebook with a systematic campaign to smear a rape survivor as suffering from mental health problems, and both her and the comrade who Martin sexually harassed of being politically motivated). What rubbish.
In his criticism of Richard in the last ISJ, Alex suggests that 'Slavoj Zizek is much closer to a genuine revolutionary Marxist approach when he says that “authentic politics” is “the art of the impossible-it changes the very parameters of what is considered ‘possible’ in the existing constellation”.' Well quite. What, I wonder, would have happened if the manoeuvres and deals and ploys and arguments that occurred behind the scenes had played out in front of the membership? How would the membership have reacted had the duplicity of Martin Smith and his IDOOM faction been laid bare, and the middle ground who whispered in ears shouted from platforms? I suspect the 'existing constellation' could have been very significantly rearranged in a positive way. However, whether due to conservatism or cowardice, this didn't happen. Instead, the existing constellation of shit hit the fan and was rearranged over all our faces.
The real tragedy of this is that I think this article, while very general, is a good one. It tries to identify and grapple with some of the very real problems we face as the Left. I have some disagreements, and I think that the real devil is in the details a level below this; I only wish that the discussion could have happened on better terms, in an organisation that proved itself willing and able to show *in practice*, at the most critical juncture, that is committed to women's liberation and has no time for victim blaming. Instead, what trumped making that explicit was a cold calculation over numbers, experience, cadre. How could we possibly stay in an organisation in which people who had led the charge were not held to account, were kept on the CC, and even promoted to it?
There was a chance last year to show that the SWP could do things differently. That chance was thrown away. Now that's what I call irresponsible.
---
 
Karmickameleon said:
In response to the Prof's article in ISJ entitled Thunder on the Left, in which he (AC) says:

"The present crisis is much more diffuse, but in some ways more threatening, because the revolutionary left is much weaker than it was in 1979. This makes the attempts to split and even to destroy organisations such as the NPA and the SWP so irresponsible. These parties represent decades of concentrated efforts by thousands of militants to develop credible revolutionary alternatives. They are not to be thrown away lightly."
---
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Distinct lack of self awareness and irony there. Surely he can't be that much of an idiot, he's a professor FFS?
 
quiquaquo said:
Distinct lack of self awareness and irony there. Surely he can't be that much of an idiot, he's a professor FFS?
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quiquaquo said:
Distinct lack of self awareness and irony there. Surely he can't be that much of an idiot, he's a professor FFS?
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Actually, there is some good stuff in the Prof's article, but as you say there is a striking (but hardly) surprising lack of self-awareness and irony. At the end of the day, it all reads like sophisticated sophistry designed to justify his own role in the rape crisis. I was particularly struck by this from AC:

"One reason why we suffered such a severe crisis was because we take combating sexism so seriously."

As a friend has pointed out, this should be rewritten to read:

One reason why we suffered such a severe crisis was because a lot our members took combating sexism so seriously.

Exactly! All credit to those like Jonny who did so.
 
Cracking article by the Prof that has genuinely confused a lot of leavers by the look of it. His reclaiming of Vogel will have left quite a few scratching their heads.
 
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