SWP expulsions and squabbles

[newbie]

Definitely before, but more so after. Of course the SWP is not uniform, different areas may have had different approaches.

Ok, I do indeed stand corrected.

Promoting strikes wherever possible should be the tradition of all socialists. But you are right the chance of it happening against the war was nil.

is it any wonder people laugh at trots?

I'm no theorist, and I sure wouldn't claim to know what all socialists are supposed to get up to but to a simple soul like me that attitude, "strike whenever possible" seems a pretty good way to polarise workers into the arms of the tories.

Not only is confrontation at all costs plainly tactical nonsense it's strategically utterly inept to seek strikes as an end in themselves. Unless you're a vanguard party trying to build membership and paper sales with zero regard for anything else, I s'pose.

 

[comrade spurski]

Ign are supposed to get up to but to a simple soul like me that attitude, "strike whenever pssible" seems a pretty good way to polarise workers into the arms of the tories.

Not only is confrontation at all costs plainly tactical nonsense it's strategically utterly inept to seek strikes as an end in themselves. Unless you're a vanguard party trying to build membership and paper sales with zero regard for anything else, I s'pose.[/quote]
Ignore post ... completely misread and answered something wrongly

 

[The39thStep]

cliff said:

Imagine if we had 15,000 members of the SWP and 30,000 supporters...​

​

john lennon said:

Imagine no possessions,it's easy if you try...​

In my imagination there is no complication I dream about you all the time In my mind a celebration, the sweetest of sensation Thinking you could be mine

Kylie Minogue on Party and Class​

 

[andysays]

​

Kylie Minogue on Party and Class​

Maybe Kylie's a secret Swappie, but I think it's a different kind of party she has in mind

 

[The39thStep]

Maybe Kylie's a secret Swappie, but I think it's a different kind of party she has in mind

That was the joke Andy. Its all in the ambiguity.

anyway I woke up the other night in a cold sweat after a horrendous nightmare . I was shaking and then to my horror I felt something heavy at the end of my bed on my feet. I looked down and saw what looked to be the severed head of Gloria Gaynor.

First I was afraid then I was petrified.

 

[eoin_k]

Promoting strikes wherever possible should be the tradition of all socialists.

Does that include the big one in the north of Ireland in 1973?

 

[butchersapron]

Very interesting. What do you recommend as the best place(s) to start to get a handle on autonomism's history and Italy? Any shorter key texts out there?

I'll re-post something i posted years ago and add a fw links to shorter texts:

Italy 1977-78: Living With An Earthquake - Red Notes
Working class autonomy and the crisis : Italian Marxist texts of the theory and practice of a class movement 1964-79 - Red Notes
Italy: Autonomia: post political politics
Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism - Steve Wright (should probably be your intro text along with the essential intro.chapter to Reading Capital Politically).
Books for Burning - Negri
Revolution Retrived - Negri - two collections of his fine 70s work.
Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. (pdf)

Other interesting/useful stuff:

Strike One to Educate One Hundred - early red Brigades stuff - up to mid-late 70s
Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black terrorist - fascsist terrorism in post war Italy and the links with the state, NATO, gladio etc
The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy - Richard Drake (interesting but his interpretations of what marxism is/was is way off, but this has loads of stuff that others don't
The Judge and the Historian - Carlo Ginzburg, great investigation into the fallout fo the bomb PInelli fell out of a window for.
The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies - Tom Behan
Long Awaited Moment: The Working Class and the Italian Communist Party in Milan, 1943-1948 - Behan - both these cover the potential revolutionary moment immediately after Musso's fall etc
Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: from Togliatti to Berlinguer - Joan Barth urban
The Italian left in the 20th Century -De Grand, standard intro text.
Also, a fascinating book, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91, goes very well with that Bona della book i mentioned above.

For short intro texts:

Our operaismo - Mario Tronti
The Renascence of Operaismo (recommended)
There and back again: mapping the pathways within autonomist Marxism
From operaismo to autonomist Marxism and The limits of Negri's class analysis: Italian autonomist theory in the seventies both offe excellent critiical thoughts from within/sympathetic to the tradition

This is barely scratching the surface to be honest.

 

[butchersapron]

What do you make of this?

Stop the War was characterised as the multitude on the streets, but it didn’t win. Not because direct action and protests aren’t important, but because there were no strikes or resistance in the workplace.

Who characterised the Stop the War Coalition as a multitude? Do you remember it being spoken of in this way?

I think this :

Doug stating that autonomism comes in many forms and that perhaps different autonomists wouldn’t agree with his definition. But a common theme was the rejection of political organisation and parties. Autonomism is characterised by non-hierarchical organisations with open, consensus democracy – something seen in the Occupy movement.
is the handy get out.

I don't remember anyone talking of it that way at all - it's just a way of saying look, STWC failed because it was autonomist , which is such a crazy thing to say on so many levels - from it's leadership being a mix of trots and stalinists who consciously destroyed any chance of autonomous action being supported and expanded by STW onward - and those trots are now the ones who characterise it as an autonomist multitude. Just a horrible mix of dishonesty and the effect of years of that dishonesty on lower level members who have their strings pulled to write and talk this...garbage. Then again, it's the same as their anti-anarchist rubbish from the 70s and 80s - no theory of the state, anti-organisation etc - actually it's exactly the same smears with autonomism changed for anarchism and with as little understanding of what is being criticised (criticised into existence!).

 

[xslavearcx]

I'll re-post something i posted years ago and add a fw links to shorter texts:

Italy 1977-78: Living With An Earthquake - Red Notes
Working class autonomy and the crisis : Italian Marxist texts of the theory and practice of a class movement 1964-79 - Red Notes
Italy: Autonomia: post political politics
Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism - Steve Wright (should probably be your intro text along with the essential intro.chapter to Reading Capital Politically).
Books for Burning - Negri
Revolution Retrived - Negri - two collections of his fine 70s work.
Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. (pdf)

Other interesting/useful stuff:

Strike One to Educate One Hundred - early red Brigades stuff - up to mid-late 70s
Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black terrorist - fascsist terrorism in post war Italy and the links with the state, NATO, gladio etc
The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy - Richard Drake (interesting but his interpretations of what marxism is/was is way off, but this has loads of stuff that others don't
The Judge and the Historian - Carlo Ginzburg, great investigation into the fallout fo the bomb PInelli fell out of a window for.
The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies - Tom Behan
Long Awaited Moment: The Working Class and the Italian Communist Party in Milan, 1943-1948 - Behan - both these cover the potential revolutionary moment immediately after Musso's fall etc
Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: from Togliatti to Berlinguer - Joan Barth urban
The Italian left in the 20th Century -De Grand, standard intro text.
Also, a fascinating book, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91, goes very well with that Bona della book i mentioned above.

For short intro texts:

Our operaismo - Mario Tronti
The Renascence of Operaismo (recommended)
There and back again: mapping the pathways within autonomist Marxism
From operaismo to autonomist Marxism and The limits of Negri's class analysis: Italian autonomist theory in the seventies both offe excellent critiical thoughts from within/sympathetic to the tradition

This is barely scratching the surface to be honest.

Thats really great butchersapron, thanks very much. was just about to come on this and ask for something of this nature....

 

[mk12]

I'll re-post something i posted years ago and add a fw links to shorter texts:

Italy 1977-78: Living With An Earthquake - Red Notes
Working class autonomy and the crisis : Italian Marxist texts of the theory and practice of a class movement 1964-79 - Red Notes
Italy: Autonomia: post political politics
Storming Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism - Steve Wright (should probably be your intro text along with the essential intro.chapter to Reading Capital Politically).
Books for Burning - Negri
Revolution Retrived - Negri - two collections of his fine 70s work.
Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics. (pdf)

Other interesting/useful stuff:

Strike One to Educate One Hundred - early red Brigades stuff - up to mid-late 70s
Stefano Delle Chiaie: Portrait of a Black terrorist - fascsist terrorism in post war Italy and the links with the state, NATO, gladio etc
The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy - Richard Drake (interesting but his interpretations of what marxism is/was is way off, but this has loads of stuff that others don't
The Judge and the Historian - Carlo Ginzburg, great investigation into the fallout fo the bomb PInelli fell out of a window for.
The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies - Tom Behan
Long Awaited Moment: The Working Class and the Italian Communist Party in Milan, 1943-1948 - Behan - both these cover the potential revolutionary moment immediately after Musso's fall etc
Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: from Togliatti to Berlinguer - Joan Barth urban
The Italian left in the 20th Century -De Grand, standard intro text.
Also, a fascinating book, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture, 1943-91, goes very well with that Bona della book i mentioned above.

For short intro texts:

Our operaismo - Mario Tronti
The Renascence of Operaismo (recommended)
There and back again: mapping the pathways within autonomist Marxism
From operaismo to autonomist Marxism and The limits of Negri's class analysis: Italian autonomist theory in the seventies both offe excellent critiical thoughts from within/sympathetic to the tradition

This is barely scratching the surface to be honest.

I remember taking Storming Heaven with me to Tenerife, while my girlfriend took Twighlight. It's good, but it isn't sit-round-the-pool-in-boiling-hot-weather reading.

 

[butchersapron]

I remember taking Storming Heaven with me to Tenerife, while my girlfriend took Twighlight. It's good, but it isn't sit-round-the-pool-in-boiling-hot-weather reading.

Supposed to be the future at our backs not the spanish sun!

 

[The39thStep]

I remember taking Storming Heaven with me to Tenerife, while my girlfriend took Twighlight. It's good, but it isn't sit-round-the-pool-in-boiling-hot-weather reading.

Surprised at that as my eldest daughter thought Twilight was essential non stop reading for around the pool in boiling hot weather

 

[killer b]

My eldest daughter thought storming heaven would have benefited from a few more vampires.

 

[rekil]

Used copies of Paul Ginsborg's History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics: 1943-1980 currently on amazon for pennies (not counting p&p) I have his Discontents one but haven't read it yet. ( )

That Piazza Fontana fillum was a great help with making sense of a very confusing (for me) era.

 

[butchersapron]

Used copies of Paul Ginsborg's History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics: 1943-1980 currently on amazon for pennies (not counting p&p) I have his Discontents one but haven't read it yet. ( )

That Piazza Fontana fillum was a great help with making sense of a very confusing (for me) era.

Ginsborg here.

 

[Oisin123]

http://revolutionarysocialism.tumbl.../m2013-eamonn-mccann-at-the-closing-rally-ian

This suggests Eamonn got it just about right. I imagine bb sitting on his hands scowling as part of the minority.

 

[rekil]

Ginsborg here.

Ta, I still prefer papery yokes.

 

[butchersapron]

Is this the SWP disappearing into the sucking pit of identity politics? of course not! Only the party can talk about these issues with falling into the traps that the seymourites have.

 

[andysays]

That was the joke Andy. Its all in the ambiguity.

anyway I woke up the other night in a cold sweat after a horrendous nightmare . I was shaking and then to my horror I felt something heavy at the end of my bed on my feet. I looked down and saw what looked to be the severed head of Gloria Gaynor.

First I was afraid then I was petrified.

I knew that

Nigel Irritable will be here shortly to berate us both for going off topic.

Maybe you should start another thread for the discussion of unlikely Leninist sub-texts to popular songs (you know you want to...)

 

[andysays]

My eldest daughter thought storming heaven would have benefited from a few more vampires.

Interesting. William Godwin's daughter famously thought Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and its Influence on Morals and Happiness would have benefited from some stuff about monsters made out of re-animated body parts.

Kids, eh...

 

[butchersapron]

I knew that

Nigel Irritable will be here shortly to berate us both for going off topic.

Maybe you should start another thread for the discussion of unlike Leninist sub-texts to popular songs (you know you want to...)

Careful, he'll be onto the Girls Aloud Kronstadt song next.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I knew that

Nigel Irritable will be here shortly to berate us both for going off topic.

Maybe you should start another thread for the discussion of unlikely Leninist sub-texts to popular songs (you know you want to...)

Not so much a sub text more a great tune.



Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[The39thStep]

I knew that

Nigel Irritable will be here shortly to berate us both for going off topic.

Maybe you should start another thread for the discussion of unlikely Leninist sub-texts to popular songs (you know you want to...)

In a dash so here are the headlines:

1.we do have the lyrics to the GirlAloud b side Kronstadt , it was on their first demo.

"In the Russian snow the sailors said to Lenin go
But Trotsky was not afraid
A revolution he had made
So if you are down and you feel sad
You won’t feel as down or bad
As the anarchists did at Kronstadt "

The anarchists are on the ice
Shot by Lenin which wasn’t nice
In the freezing Russian cold
There is a story which must be told
About Kronstadt

It must be said
There were some dead
And that isn’t very pleasant
But Russia’s better Red
Than run by Whites and peasant"

2. Here is a link to one of the edited highlights of revolutionary musical culture during the Miners Strike done on a portable cassette after Orgreave https://soundcloud.com/jonny-favourite

 

[The39thStep]

Careful, he'll be onto the Girls Aloud Kronstadt song next.

damn missed that post,

 

[butchersapron]

damn missed that post,

Did you notice Norman Strike did a thing at Marxism this year.

 

[andysays]

In a dash so here are the headlines:

1.we do have the lyrics to the GirlAloud b side Kronstadt , it was on their first demo.

I'm also in a dash, so I'll have to return to this later...

 

[butchersapron]

SWP "punch above" weight.

 

[butchersapron]

Question then is, what weight are they - a flyweight who can punch to standard lightweight power? What use is that against a heavyweight?

 

[DotCommunist]

bantam

 

[butchersapron]

Didn't the SWP CC declare the discussion is now over in january? Yet now we find Kimber offering this in public:

We have had five days of discussions and debates. Those discussions and debates must continue. No revolutionary party can base itself on anything except continual discussion and debate