SWP expulsions and squabbles

[ReturnOfElfman]

their position on education is complex. on the one hand, everything you say, plus marxism. on the other, you only have to learn the key buzzwords, throw yourself into unquestioning activity and before you know it you're a fulltimer and doing a meeting at marxism. agreement and obedience are more important than reading. buying is more important than reading.

I know a guy who joined the SWP around the time I left and a few months later became a full timer. He was on the dole and became quite active because of his spare time and was taken under the wing of a well known experienced member, who isn't too popular with a lot of people. The problem with this guy is he didn't know too much about revolutionary socialism other than what he was told as he didn't read too much outside of the paper. I can remember talking to him after this while he was on an SWP stall and someone came over to talk. She ended up asking 'are you lot communists then?' (in a negative way) and he tried to convince her that they weren't communist

This is just one example of how they let drones get full time positions who know nothing but follow what they're told.

 

[butchersapron]

Do you want to buy a paper? No thanks i'm a communist. They love that.

 

[discokermit]

Do you want to buy a paper? No thanks i'm a communist. They love that.

i refused to sell the edition with the headline "the end of communism" on the grounds of being a communist. they loved that as well.

 

[butchersapron]

Did you not scrawl in a ?

 

[discokermit]

Did you not scrawl in a ?

i wanted to put " " around communism but i couldn't be arsed. just threw my toys out of the pram, told everyone to fuck off and sulked for a couple of weeks.

 

[Das Uberdog]

You're still talking like them: in the present period

you read an awful lot into not much

 

[butchersapron]

you read an awful lot into not much

Hey, i was right about the swp and you didn't listen...maybe, just maybe you speak like them after being in them? It's not a huge claim.

 

[Das Uberdog]

i did listen, i accepted your correction didn't i? 'speaking like them' or whatever, i don't understand all this 'back covering' business - at best it's a needlessly hostile little contribution on your part

 

[butchersapron]

i did listen, i accepted your correction didn't i? 'speaking like them' or whatever, i don't understand all this 'back covering' business - at best it's a needlessly hostile little contribution on your part

Which correction? I meant your previous life as as an aggressive swp booster (and now here washed clean) , not being wrong on a fact (no matter how telling it effected your tale of how the swp happened).

This:

i could actually forgive certain elements of the SWPs terrible internal culture if the organisation itself were achieving something tangible. what it does in the present period is paralyze the thing beyond any hope of revival

Is both the logic and justification of the swp cc for the last thirty years. You don't even know that you're doing it.

 

[ViolentPanda]

So the books and pamphlets they publish play no role in pushing the political ideas the CC want to push to members and the wider public?

I don't think it's right to say "plays no role", because obviously it's great if you actually convince people with argument, but does everyone who buys the books and the pamphlets actually read them? The number of times I've seen pristine copies of tomes by Cliff, Harman, Callinicos etc in charity shops says "probably not"?

 

[Das Uberdog]

my previous jaunts on urban were inspired as much by the constant counter-productive harping which used to go on as much as any loyalty i had to the party (which i did have). this place used to be a genuinely annoying whine-fest, almost as obsessed with the SWP as you rightly accuse AMM of being today. not really sure how 'you being right on the SWP' (in respect to what exactly? i didn't change my mind because of anything you told me if that's what you think!) would be relevant to anything anyway, other than just another assertion of your supreme urban ego.

Is both the logic and justification of the swp cc for the last thirty years. You don't even know that you're doing it.

no it's not, because i don't use it to justify anything. i would always have an issue with the culture of the SWP 'in any period' - but at least in a situation where the organisation was achieving something i could still invest in it as an effective vehicle. that's all i was saying, everything else is what you've put in.

 

[discokermit]

no it's not, because i don't use it to justify anything. i would always have an issue with the culture of the SWP 'in any period' - but at least in a situation where the organisation was achieving something i could still invest in it as an effective vehicle. that's all i was saying, everything else is what you've put in.

so, an organisation working to the whim of tony cliff is good as long as cliff is getting it right?

 

[Das Uberdog]

no, i discount that exact point in the quotation you use

 

[butchersapron]

my previous jaunts on urban were inspired as much by the constant counter-productive harping which used to go on as much as any loyalty i had to the party (which i did have). this place used to be a genuinely annoying whine-fest, almost as obsessed with the SWP as you rightly accuse AMM of being today. not really sure how 'you being right on the SWP' (in respect to what exactly? i didn't change my mind because of anything you told me if that's what you think!) would be relevant to anything anyway, other than just another assertion of your supreme urban ego.



no it's not, because i don't use it to justify anything. i would always have an issue with the culture of the SWP 'in any period' - but at least in a situation where the organisation was achieving something i could still invest in it as an effective vehicle. that's all i was saying, everything else is what you've put in.

You're doing it again - i was right to be an aggressive dicky knob because that period called for it. See also :"the constant counter-productive harping"

And me being right on the swp didn't mean that i had personally changed your views, but that i said that your views would change after experience. And here we fucking are. With you right and me wrong.

And all this pleading means, i believed in it at that point - at which point every new year of individual recruits covers its back for evermore.

 

[butchersapron]

no, i discount that exact point in the quotation you use

You seem to be me be saying, right org - wrong people. Which is not a lesson leant but a desire to make it all over again.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I don't think it's right to say "plays no role", because obviously it's great if you actually convince people with argument, but does everyone who buys the books and the pamphlets actually read them? The number of times I've seen pristine copies of tomes by Cliff, Harman, Callinicos etc in charity shops says "probably not"?

Of course

 

[Nigel Irritable]

And now there's another faction declared, the "democratic centralist faction" on a political basis best summarised as "calm down calm down". It' seems to be a bunch of panicked middle cadre who are worried that the CC have shat the bed and are about to lose much of the younger membership but who don't have the bottle to back the original faction. Details over on the CPGB site.

Their initial statement is piss weak stuff, placing themselves as a moderate grouping in between the poles of the CC and the DO. It doesn't put forward any clear demands or proposals.

 

[articul8]

I actually have a lot of time for what they are trying to do and how they do it, but after all this time to still be concentrating on the SWP (and to only have gone as far as Debord and Adorno) is a bit...well crap.

I'll start again - where should they be going in order to go further than Debord/Adorno?

 

[butchersapron]

I'll start again - where should they be going in order to go further than Debord/Adorno?

I wouldn't start from here.

 

[The39thStep]

And now there's another faction declared, the "democratic centralist faction" on a political basis best summarised as "calm down calm down". It' seems to be a bunch of panicked middle cadre who are worried that the CC have shat the bed and are about to lose much of the younger membership but who don't have the bottle to back the original faction. Details over on the CPGB site.

Their initial statement is piss weak stuff, placing themselves as a moderate grouping in between the poles of the CC and the DO. It doesn't put forward any clear demands or proposals.

Why can't the SP be more like this?

 

[One_Stop_Shop]

I think the point made earlier about the how full timers and central committee members want to keep their jobs because despite their low pay it gives them a fun, ego boosting thing to do in life is important. I agree with the person that said this comes from political problems and is a symptom, but once it kicks in it also becomes a something which cements the problems. I imagine most of the CC would be screwed if they lost their posts, what job would they do? This is something you see across the trade union movement as well with both those paid by the union and those lay officials on full time facility time. Funnily enough at a lay level there is quite a lot of far left people who get full time facility year on year and who are in far left groups. As far as I know there is also the issue that full timers in left groups such as the SWP and Socialist Party aren't even elected!

There is also the issue that this isn't about just the wrong people being in place but about the politics and the organisational forms. It's hardly just the SWP, look around the world at the amount of far left groups who operate like cults. And in this country as far as I can see the other left organisations are just the same. The Socialist Party also have unelected full timers, also have leaders who have been around decades and decades and who operate in very similar ways to the SWP as do the myriad of even smaller left organisations. In the anti cuts stuff I've been involved with all of the far left groups have been pretty much as bad as each other, building their do nothing fronts at any expense.

 

[One_Stop_Shop]

I think the post above me, which I've just seen, seems to be making the same point. Which is why I originally posted on this thread. There are too many people in very similar left groups who take glee out of this (whether they admit it or not), yet are doing the same thing themselves. You can almost feel the excitment from people in other groups who post up threads like this, but who are totally missing the wood for the trees.

 

[dennisr]

I think the post above me, which I've just seen, seems to be making the same point as you as well. (gleefully - you can almost feel the excitment...)

 

[butchersapron]

"calm down calm down".

*resists 80s militant joke*

 

[dennisr]

wood <---------------------------------------------------------------------------------> trees

 

[Das Uberdog]

You seem to be me be saying, right org - wrong people. Which is not a lesson leant but a desire to make it all over again.

well that's not what i mean, i mean that i could still at least theoretically invest time in an organisation which was at least progressing the political situation whilst still having an awful internal culture, but also that the SWP can't even say that for itself.

And me being right on the swp didn't mean that i had personally changed your views, but that i said that your views would change after experience. And here we fucking are. With you right and me wrong.

as for the rest^^^, no i wasn't right to be an SWP troll but i really don't understand what relevance all this 'right and wrong' stuff has to anything whatsoever. p+p also had an inordinate obsession with my favoured tiny Trot sect and was bloated with irrascible whingers too, and i was like 16 -where does right or wrong come into any of that? why are we even talking about it? where have i come in and 'i'm right and you're wrong'? labelling something to a period in time isn't a justification for anything in itself, still less is it some credible analogy with my attitudes somehow pyscho-politically linked back to my time in the SWP. it doesn't have to be anything other than what it claims to be at face value; a description of a given period. this is quite a strenuously warped logical connection you're making.



fwiw though sorry to anyone i aggravated as an inflammatory SWP mouthpiece back in the day.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

fwiw though sorry to anyone i aggravated as an inflammatory SWP mouthpiece back in the day.

that's ok, winding up SWPers was the number one entertainment on here, you made it worthwhile

 

[butchersapron]

well that's not what i mean, i mean that i could still at least theoretically invest time in an organisation which was at least progressing the political situation whilst still having an awful internal culture, but also that the SWP can't even say that for itself.



as for the rest^^^, no i wasn't right to be an SWP troll but i really don't understand what relevance all this 'right and wrong' stuff has to anything whatsoever. p+p also had an inordinate obsession with my favoured tiny Trot sect and was bloated with irrascible whingers too, and i was like 16 -where does right or wrong come into any of that? why are we even talking about it? where have i come in and 'i'm right and you're wrong'? labelling something to a period in time isn't a justification for anything in itself, still less is it some credible analogy with my attitudes somehow pyscho-politically linked back to my time in the SWP. it doesn't have to be anything other than what it claims to be at face value; a description of a given period. this is quite a strenuously warped logical connection you're making.



fwiw though sorry to anyone i aggravated as an inflammatory SWP mouthpiece back in the day.

Where does right or wrong come into it? I thought you were being all serious and that now?

 

[Das Uberdog]

this is a nonsensical argument

 

[butchersapron]

I don't see how suggesting that there are long term well informed critiques of how vanguardist parties operate in general and the swp in particular that have proven to to be correct and so deserve to be taken seriously are nonsensical. When the musical marxists say it you think it's great.