THE SWP, MARXISTS AND RESPECT
Ger Francis is a member of the Respect National Council, and a former full-time organiser for the SWP. Here he makes a valuable and interesting contribution to the debate of how Marxists should work in pluralist left parties, with particular reference to Respect.
The SWP, Marxists & Respect
by Ger Francis
1. Context
1.1 The background to this article is the recent split inside Respect. A number of us who were SWP members were expelled because of this split. Others simply left the party when practice came into conflict with a commitment to build a broad organisation to the left of Labour. The common thread is a decision to put class before party.
1.2 With the space once occupied by social democracy increasingly vacated, the emergence of Respect as an attempt to fill at least some of this space is an important stage in the rebuilding of working class political organisation. Respect is also defined by an unprecedented relationship between the left and parts of the most oppressed sections of British society. With racism now a defining feature of our age, this is a tremendous achievement. Marxists have something to offer in building this alliance, but also a great deal to learn from it. The purpose of this article is to make some suggestions towards the development of a Marxist current that is engaged in building Respect.
1.3 As a starting point I want to re-examine some of my own experience inside the SWP, focusing on two general areas of politics and practice. Firstly, a tendency of the SWP leadership to have perspectives regarding the prospects of class struggle so overblown as to render them badly defective. And secondly, a model of a Leninist party so top down as to engender a culture of self censorship and deference inside the SWP, massively hindering debate, self-criticism and the ability to internally readjust imbalances in perspectives. My comments necessarily emphasise some negative aspects of my experience in the SWP in order to draw out some lessons for future practice. They do not accurately reflect the totality of that experience, much of which was positive and enriching.[1]
2. A tendency to exaggerate
2.1 The events of 1989 have proved to be a severe test for the perspectives and analysis of the Marxist left in general. The perspectives of the SWP in the aftermath of the 1989 collapse of the regimes across East European were critically flawed. A celebratory tone and cheery optimism for the prospects of a growth of the international left stood out. This was wishful thinking.
2.2 The collapse of the Eastern bloc equalled in popular consciousness the collapse of the feasibility of any socialist project. If those regimes had been overthrown by forces trying to reclaim some more democratic version of socialism, or even social democracy, the wider consequences might have been different. Instead, they were overthrown and replaced by forces which embraced neo liberalism and Western bourgeois democracy.
2.3 The collapse allowed imperialism to go on the offensive, most dramatically in Iraq and later the Balkans. Neo-liberalism ran riot with massive consequences, not least on the living standards and life expectancy of those living in the countries worst affected. A wave of racism swept Europe, and far-right parties previously considered ‘beyond the pale’ won mass support and in some cases were integrated into bourgeois governments. Whole swathes of the left internationally were demoralised. In Western Europe mass parties of the working class split and declined and social democracy moved dramatically to the right. In Britain, these events gave momentum to the right inside the labour movement to go places hitherto unimagined, symbolised by Blair’s ascendancy. However one explains the causes of such a development, the consequences are unarguable. The imperialist offensive was deepened, and the working class movement was pushed even more on to the defensive.
2.4 This massive underestimation of the impact of the 1989 events on class consciousness was compounded by a theorisation of the period that drew radically more optimistic conclusions. The SWP claimed that many of the features of the crises of the 1930’s existed in the 1990’s. They were unfolding at a slower pace but nevertheless opened a favourable period for revolutionary advance.
2.5 The disconnection of theory from reality was perhaps summed up in the formulation that there were large numbers of radicalised youth who had ‘90 per cent agreement and only 10 per cent disagreement’ with the politics of the SWP, and were just waiting to be scooped up. Those in the IS Tendency who critised the ‘1930’s in slow motion’ perspective at the time as inaccurate and damaging have been vindicated by time.
2.6 On the basis of this perspective, whole chunks of the SWP’s infrastructure were literally destroyed by a process of endlessly splitting and re-splitting of branches in anticipation that great gains could be made by ‘pushing outwards’. Expansion was driven purely by voluntarism, sustained by an unreal perspective about ‘opportunities’ disconnected from the actual level of class consciousness. This illusion of growth was maintained by an open-door recruitment policy in which members were signed up on the basis of the most minimum connection with our politics, or even our activity.
2.7 A tendency to either to exaggerate class consciousness, or downplay weaknesses in social movements, also marked the analysis of the SWP after Seattle and again after 9/11. The post-Seattle mood, and the organisational forms it took in this country, was more accurately captured by the phrase ‘global justice movement’. The largest expression of this mood in the UK was around the issue of debt cancellation, which was driven by an alliance of NGO’s and Christian churches. Its political ambition is probably most accurately reflected in Naomi Klein’s brilliant recent book The Shock Doctrine. This is a swingeing critique of neo-liberalism which ends with a clarion call for a return to a social democratic model based on Keynesian economics.
2.8 It is important to say that, in light of just how defensive a position the Western labour movement finds itself in, and how all-persuasive the neo-liberal agenda has become, the development of strong labour movement currents around the programme Klein outlines would represent a huge move to the left. Even that is beyond the current stage of development in mass politics. Some of Klein’s views may find partial expression in individual campaigns, but the totality of them is far in advance of the kind of programme which any mass labour movement force is willing to fight for. Such politics are not the sum total of our ambitions as Marxists. But an honest assessment of where we are tells us a great deal about the current state of class consciousness.
2.9 The SWP inflated the significance of currents and eddies associated with the global justice movement. It was always a gross exaggeration to talk about an ‘anti-capitalist movement’ in this country, later downgraded into an ‘anti-capitalist mood’, as evidenced by the failure of its ‘anti-capitalist united front’, Globalise Resistance.[2] Attempts to explain this by saying the anti-capitalist movement had ‘morphed’ into the anti-war movement exaggerated the existence of the former and the political character of the latter.
2.10 There have been important turning points since 1989, which the SWP rightly tried to give leadership to – and for which it deserves credit. The anti-war movement does signify the discrediting of post-1989 imperialist propaganda about a new, peaceful, world order under their hegemony. Large numbers of people woke up to the reality that imperialist domination means war and conquest. It was an important ideological lesson, which gives us a starting point for the rebuilding of a socialist and Marxist movement.
2.11 However, it is also the case that the political impact of the anti-war movement itself has been partial. Tony Blair was, after all, re-elected in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. This is not to deny the huge significance of the Stop the War movement, both in terms of its contribution to the international anti-war movement or its contribution to creating a new generation of activists. But we cannot escape the fact that its political impact has been less enduring and comprehensive than hoped for.
Tariq Ali explains this relative weakness by arguing that “…the decline of the large working-class parties and the trade unions in the Western world has made it very difficult to sustain a permanent opposition to the war”. He rejects the view that it can be explained by the contrasting nature of the resistance or liberation movements, and looks for an answer in the blows dealt to working class organisation in Europe over several decades.[3]
The political impact of the anti-war movement itself was weakened by the legacy of a prolonged period of defeat for the labour movement. So, the most significant political advance out of this movement was the formation of Respect – which by any definition is an embryo rather than a fully formed political alternative to the parties of war and neo-liberalism.
2.12 It is fundamental to any development of political strategy or tactics that we correctly understand where we are: the strengths and weaknesses both of our side and theirs. Throughout the past 20 years – at least – there has been a pronounced tendency in the SWP to exaggerate the opportunities and downplay the threats.
3. A deformed internal political culture
3.1 The systematic problems of flawed perspectives are compounded by the SWP’s internal regime in which a model of democratic centralism prevails where the emphasis on ‘centralism’ far outweighs that on the ‘democratic’.
3.2 Authority inside the SWP is maintained by a highly centralised leadership, who employ full timers to execute their line, subject to almost immediate sacking if it is deemed they are not acting effectively. Conscious of having to stay in favour with the leadership if they want to retain their livelihood, and for many their sense of status, self-censorship among the full time staff becomes instinctive.
3.3 The advantage of this method is it creates an organisation with a very high degree of discipline, capable of intervening in a tight and coherent manner. The disadvantage is that without consciously seeking to create a political culture where members feel they can question and challenge the leadership, there can be a very fine line between discipline and deference.
This was compounded by the tendency to emphasise the positive, resulting in leading members exaggerating and distorting the reality of the work that they do in order to highlight the ‘opportunities’. The effect is too often an atmosphere in which members can easily slide from exaggeration to dishonesty.
One consequence of this culture has been the development of a widespread cynicism inside the organisation, especially among members with many years of membership. It was commonplace for experienced comrades simply not to take seriously much of what was said in ‘Party Notes’ and be very sceptical of reports in Socialist Worker.
3.4 The lack of a culture of internal party debate was accurately described by John Molyneaux:[4]
“…the nature of the problem can most clearly be seen if we look at the outcome of all these meetings, councils, conferences, elections, etc. The fact is that in the last 15 years (perhaps longer) there has not been a single substantial issue on which the CC has been defeated at a conference or party council or NC. Indeed I don’t think that in this period there has ever been even a serious challenge or a close vote. On the contrary, the overwhelming majority of conference or council sessions have ended with the virtually unanimous endorsement of whatever is proposed by the leadership. Similarly, in this period there has never been a contested election for the CC: i.e., not one comrade has ever been proposed or proposed themselves for the CC other than those nominated by the CC themselves. It is worth emphasising that such a state of affairs is a long way from the norm in the history of the socialist movement. It was not the norm in the Bolshevik Party or the Communist International before its Stalinisation. It was not the norm at any point in the Trotskyist tradition under Trotsky.”
3.5 The recent debacle over their intervention in Respect serves to highlight the havoc the deformed political culture inside the organisation can wreak. When the dispute inside Respect first came into the open none of those sympathetic to the concerns expressed in George Galloway’s original letter, including its author, either desired or predicted a split with the SWP.
Indeed, like many observers on the left outside Respect, we watched with open mouths as the SWP responded to a rather mild rebuke by denouncing the most resolutely anti-imperialist MP in the country as ‘right-wing’ and claiming a ‘witch-hunt’ was being executed against them.[5] A reaction of incredulity turned into one of horror when the SWP started repeating the criticisms of the so-called ‘pro-war left’ in conjuring up the spectre of Islamic fundamentalism haunting Respect.[6]
3.6 The political premise of the SWP attacks was patently ludicrous. Tensions over candidate selection in two branches did not warrant their hysterical response. The SWP’s description of George Galloway was nonsensical, which even a cursory listen to his weekly radio programme shows. In a series of articles[7], Salma Yaqoob both demolished accusations of ‘communalism’ against her and the theoretical pretensions behind SWP allegations that Respect was in thrall to ‘community leaders i.e. small businessmen’. Claims of a ‘left/right’ split among the group of Tower Hamlets councillors were further discredited when one of those supposedly on the ‘left’, SWP member Ahmed Hussain, defected to join the Tory party! The SWP’s intention was to drive George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob out Respect in order to reassert their control. Instead their actions unified the overwhelming majority of the independents to take sides against them.
3.7 Inside the SWP itself, however, the picture was very different. Resistance to the leadership did not even manifest itself in a platform at conference. Critical members were easily expelled. The leadership were supported to the hilt, despite effectively destroying a central plank of SWP strategy. While John Rees had brought the SWP, Respect and OFFU into disrepute for accepting a politically tainted donation, the strongest rebuke he received from the SWP conference was praise for some very contrived apologies. Even to those of us familiar with the SWP’s mode of operation and lack of internal debate and dissent, the ease with which it could get its membership to swallow its sectarian nonsense was shocking.
3.8 This was made easier by the fact that the bulk of SWP members are largely inactive in Respect and very few were directly involved, even in East London and Birmingham, where Respect is strongest. Because of this lack of engagement, many SWP members were without any gauge against which to measure the actions and arguments of their leaders.
Marxist organisations can ultimately only survive on the basis of a bond of trust between membership and leadership. There is inevitable unevenness in any party. Not everybody is involved in the same arena of struggle at the same time and to the same intensity. Political assessments will be arrived at by a combination of independent judgement and influence of the views from those you politically trust. This kind of trust is built up over years and decades of joint work and it is not easily discarded.
Many of the arguments used to justify SWP behaviour have entailed cynically exploiting the trust of ordinary members in order to protect the reputations and standing of a clique inside the leadership. But there is a political sectarianism that underpins this focus on self-preservation. The SWP leadership appears to have drawn the conclusion that if they cannot dominate the space to the left of labour, they have to do everything possible to prevent any other left wing force emerging. This is classic sectarianism that runs counter to the instincts of many SWP members who are motivated by a desire to advance the struggle of the working class as a whole.
This has been made easier by a culture in which questioning of the leadership is often viewed with suspicion, and where members can feel bullied and intimidated from so doing. The consequence has been to make it more difficult internally to alter the sectarian route the SWP is now embarked on.
3.9 Internal democracy, and a culture of genuine debate and dissent, is therefore absolutely essential in all forms of political organisation. Without it political leaderships become atrophied. This culture is not automatic and is something that political leaderships have to be proactive in helping to create. It is not something to be turned on and off when politically expedient.
3.10 In an article[8] written in 1986 about the decline of the Workers Revolutionary Party, Duncan Hallas saw in their experience ‘a most salutary warning about the dangers of mistaking wishes for reality, of false perspectives uncorrected by experience, of virulent sectarianism and political dishonesty’ which culminated in a ‘tragic waste of the efforts and sacrifices of many well-intentioned revolutionaries’. While the current ultra-left lurch of the SWP has not reached the depths of the WRP’s ‘virulent sectarianism’, the exaggerated perspectives, lack of accountability and dishonesty of its leadership is enough to serve as a warning.
4. Conclusion
4.1 The SWP, from 2001 onwards, were on the verge of transforming their relationship with mass forces, and of becoming something very different from the SWP of the 1980’s and 1990’s. But their inability to genuinely absorb the lessons from their work in Stop the War and Respect, and adjust their practice and thinking accordingly, has led them to put this positive process into reverse, and retreat to safe, familiar and much more isolated ground. In the process, the SWP have become locked into a destructive sectarianism: they would be happier with a weak and broken Respect, but subordinate to their control, rather than a Respect strong and vibrant but outside of their control, for fear that it could act as a competitor to them in the political space to the left of labour.
4.2 Breaking with some of the perspectives and practices of the SWP does not have to mean however throwing the baby out with the bathwater. While the SWP provide a very poor model of applied Leninism in the 21st century, I see nothing in their practice that invalidates Leninist concepts of organisation per se. Similarly, a Marxist critique of capitalism as an inherently barbaric system, and a conception of the centrality of class struggle as the motor that drives fundamental change, remains no less valid now than it did before this split. Revolutionary change is required for human society to escape the threat of barbarism and build a new world on the basis of socialism. I remain convinced, too, that progress for the left as a whole in this country requires the development of Marxist currents which attempt to combine and test political method and practice.
4.3 What does this mean for our practice today? Our contribution to the international class struggle starts with the work we do to undermine British imperialism. In this context, the significance of the developments that have taken place around Respect, under the leadership of George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob, should not be underestimated. The demands made by Respect would probably have been accommodated by left social democracy in previous generations, but they have been given backbone by a resolute anti-imperialism, anti-racism and a critique of capitalism. This is the correct political orientation for mass politics.
In the context of British politics today the development of such a mass current would represent a huge shift to the left. It is inconceivable to me that such a development could emerge without an active engagement in electoral politics. Indeed it is also inconceivable to me how any serious Marxist current could emerge without also having such an engagement both with that electoral struggle and with the forces that are attracted to it.
4.4 The tasks of Marxists in Respect is to recognise the importance of what we have built out of the anti-war movement, do everything we can to facilitate it, while drawing on the best traditions and practices of Marxism and the broader socialist tradition to inform it. The actuality of building Respect provides the central arena in which the discussions we will have between us can acquire real meaning. Grappling with the issues posed by building a broad left wing party, by engagement in electoral work, by deepening our base in communities, by finding common ground with oppressed sections of the community from a religious background…all these are challenging tasks that require clear political strategies and tactics, and consistent work.
It is this engagement in building Respect which will define the nature of different Marxist currents. In my view there is no point in unity on the basis of a shared history if there is not the same unity on perspectives and strategy. And there is even less point if we are not testing and refining our views by extensive engagement in the practical problems of building Respect and relating to the forces that it attracts. This is a process, which will develop organically and at its own pace.
4.5 Another perspective sees the critical focus for Respect as being to unite ‘with other organised forces on the left…left-leaning activists and currents in the TUs, anti-globalisation and environmental movements’[9] I think this approach is mistaken. Such organised forces, in as much as they do exist, are extremely weak. A political orientation in this direction will inevitable find itself on barren terrain. Proposals for an ‘Action Programme’ which contain a wish list of demands, most of which have not emerged organically or are linked to any broader movement and therefore without forces to progress them, is abstract propaganda. Calls for Respect to rebrand itself as an ‘anti-capitalist’ party exaggerate developments to our left, underplay those to our right, and make a fetish of an orientation of those who call themselves socialists – whether or not they play any useful role in the real world at all.
4.6 Marxists can play a constructive role in the process of building a broad party but only if they drop an attitude of smug superiority to ‘reformists’, who are often regarded as there only to be used because they happen to have some temporary popularity denied the people who should really be leading the class. It is imperative that we have a sense of humility about who we are, what we represent, and where the success of Respect so far really lies.
4.7 Finally, how does all this relate to a commitment to socialist internationalism? We are politically active in the oldest imperialist power. The best contribution we can make to the international struggle for socialism is to progress the left here and undermine British imperialism and its capitalist class. If we can contribute to the emergence of a new generation of activists in Birmingham, East London or elsewhere, shaped by a progressive politics influenced by Marxism, such that it was capable of taking forward the struggle for working class representation and socialism, and if this experience could in any way aid the recomposition of the international left, then that would be no mean achievement.
NOTES
[1] For example, there are valuable lessons in the way in which the SWP embedded its members with an ideology sufficient to ensure that on the fundamental questions of the day their instincts were to adopt a principled viewpoint. (That did not mean the correct tactics followed unfortunately). Some of these lessons and experiences are directly relevant to building Respect. As the recent case of Ahmed Hussain illustrates, electoral politics attracts opportunists. Here was somebody who was prepared to use the SWP because he saw it in his best interests to progress his career, and who was also used by the SWP to progress their unprincipled drive for control in Tower Hamlets. Cllr Hussain has since found a more effective vehicle for his ambitions – the Tory party. While the sight of an SWP councillor joining the Tories is in a category all of its own, the corrupting dangers of personal ambition are real wherever Respect has an electoral footprint. And while the Ahmed Hussain’s case is unique, I doubt it will be our last experience of councillor defection. The best way to inoculate Respect against this kind of opportunism is for it to have a strong sense of ideology rooted in principles of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, anti-racism, equality and social justice. Respect needs to have a stronger ideological foundation and its members need to be more rooted in it. Marxists have a valuable contribution to make to this task.
[2] In his recent book, “The Resources of Critique”, Alex Callinicos now provides a more sober and accurate assessment of the balance of class forces. Shame it comes at least two decades too late. He states the obvious but from within the SWP tradition the bluntness of his assertions stand out. He writes:
‘The revolutionary imagination of the twentieth century took as its social reference point the proletarian collectivity forged from the working class that emerged from the second Industrial Revolution, out of the great industrial plants of Petrograd and Turinm Berlin and Glasgow, Detroit and Billaincourt, Gdansk and Sao Paulo. But we live today amid the ruins of this working class collectivity, which was systematically dismantled…in the great neo-liberal offensive and capitalist restructuring of the past generation.
There remains, nevertheless, good reasons for holding on to the idea of the proletariat as the universal class…But what cannot be disputed is that this working class is an aggregate if different categories of wage-labourer scattered across a globally integrated economic system, and not any kind of collectivity, let alone a revolutionary political subject. On the one hand, the old forms of proletarian collectivity – above all, the trade union movement and social democratic parties in the North – are in crisis, and, on the other, new forms have yet to take place.’
[3] Tariq Ali, ‘Imperialism and democracy don’t mix’ International Socialist Review, November–December 2007,
‘…the decline of the large working-class parties and the trade unions in the Western world has made it very difficult to sustain a permanent opposition to the war. Against the Vietnam War, by comparison, a mobilization was kept going. In the European countries, just to remind you, the main trade unions in every single Western European country were opposed to the war in Vietnam. It doesn’t mean they mobilized permanently, but they were opposed to it and they encouraged their members to come out. Most of the social democratic parties and communist parties in Europe were opposed to the war in Vietnam. In Sweden you had an ultra example: the Swedish social democratic prime minister, Olaf Palm, led a torch-lit procession against the war in Vietnam outside the U.S. embassy in Stockholm. All this has disappeared and you cannot recreate that just like this….
People can then say that if the resistance had been better organized, if it had more national flavor, they would get more international support, but I don’t think that’s it. They say there are too many suicide bombings, too much violence. But in the Vietnam War the NLF [National Liberation Front] was not a religious organization, but they used to blow up cafes in the middle of Saigon, they used to carry out acts that would be described today as terrorist —and were described by the U.S. then as terrorist. They used to blow up collaborators, they used to blow up places where soldiers gathered. No one blinked at that. Those who were opposed to the war backed them. Suicide bombing? What was the attack on the U.S. embassy in 1968? It was a suicide act. They knew they’d all die, but they felt that the symbolic value of capturing the American embassy in the heart of Saigon and putting up the NLF flag even for ten minutes was worth the suicide rate. So I don’t buy the argument that it’s just the tactics of the Iraqi resistance. I don’t think it’s helped, and I’ve criticized them myself, but I don’t think that is the central feature. After all, you had a resistance against the Italians in Libya, which was a totally religious resistance, and all progressive forces backed it. Prior to that, the Mahdi, a big religious leader fought the British occupation of the Sudan. When he defeated General Gordon in Khartoum, the great English socialist William Morris called it a victory for the English working class! I just do not buy this argument that the reason there isn’t more support for the resistance is that they aren’t more like us. I mean they weren’t like you in the Sudan; they weren’t like you in Libya; they weren’t like you in Algeria, a resistance that is romanticized a lot; they weren’t like you in Vietnam. There, Vietnam was a one-party state, the Communist Party was in total control, there were no freedoms and the NLF was very violent, yet the American antiwar movement supported all that quite happily. So what’s the problem? I think one of the problems is what I said earlier—the big, big decline of the massive working-class organizations all over Europe which supplied people for all these mobilizations.’
[4] Quoted in http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1413
[5] The ‘witch-hunt’ claim was cynical in the extreme. Respect does not have the capacity in its constitution or standing orders to expel anybody. The only ‘expulsions’ to take place were by the SWP of their own members critical of their leadership’s stance.
[6] See http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=10186 where Martin Smith favourably quotes a hostile commentator as saying “the split will strengthen the weight of Islamists in Respect Renewal…”
[7] ‘The SWP takes a step backwards’: and ‘Challenges for Respect’:
[8] ‘Cult comes a cropper’, Socialist Review, December 1985:
[9] ISG, ‘Statement to Birmingham Meeting’, Feb 23rd 2008.
‘The common thread is a decision to put class before party.’
Indeed, Respect Renewal have decided to put class before party. The question however is which class? Because by circumventing the democratic norms of the labour movement (conferences made up of elected delegates, etc etc,) it is clearly not the working class…
Comment by Snowball — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:38 am
For a somewhat different point of view, outwith the Gerr’s stand, one can read:
http://www.chartist.org.uk
Coatesy’s analysis
Comment by Andrew Coates — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Wow, the first comment was an attempt by to completely divert the discussion away from the role of revolutionaries and onto another war over the split.
Congratulations Snowball!
Comment by tonyc — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:56 am
Ger Francis is right. The SWP is very much a “top down” political party.
But is it REALLY any more “top down” that Respect Renewal?
On another point, Ger suggests that the “Stop The War” movement (and the capitalisation of that phrase can only ever imply the Stop The War Coalition) created a new generation of activists. Where are these activists, and what are they doing? I would contend that quite the opposite occurred, the Stop The War Coalition created a new generation of inactivists, people who became demoralised with endless street marches and who disengaged from politics as a result. The generation who were lied to when they were told that they could stop the war have left the political arena. Why should this generation ever trust left leaders ever again? “Tony Blair was, after all, re-elected in the wake of the invasion of Iraq” (Ger). Quite.
An Amateur Antrhopologist
Comment by An Amateur Anthropologist — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:58 am
Tonyc - no, I just got bored after reading the first paragraph…
Perhaps I’ll try to read the rest at some point, but I can’t say reading yet another rant about the SWP on the Socialist Unity blog is high up the list of priorities at the moment…I find they are all much of a muchness to be honest.
Comment by Snowball — 4 March, 2008 @ 11:05 am
Snowball, go troll somewhere else.
Ger, excellent article. Illuminating.
I think that revolutionaries have a very important role in any left formation, but the SWP method of “domination” whilst stifling the growth of Respect was, very obviously, the completely wrong way to go about it.
I think we need a revolutionary current in Respect (Renewal), but how that current will work with wider forces and what shape it will take is open for discussion.
Comment by TH Respect Survivor — 4 March, 2008 @ 11:24 am
And it took how long to reach these conclusions about the SWP.
Comment by Rudebwoy — 4 March, 2008 @ 11:54 am
Great another article attacking the revolutionary left on socialist unity website..fantastic, brilliant, so insightful, so balanced, so dialectical, oh my we have finally seen the light, I will have to re read this time and again, it replace Marx’s communist manifesto as the most important document ever produced.. how could I have ever thought Ger was anything but a genius..on the other hand.. what a load of sectarian rubbish. Carry on Ger….
Comment by jj — 4 March, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
Yes, because the SWP is the revolutionary left. What a load of sectarian rubbish jj.
Comment by TH Respect Survivor — 4 March, 2008 @ 12:54 pm
I agree with much of what Ger is saying though certainly not all of it. However where I think Ger may be wrong is where he says
“4.5 Another perspective sees the critical focus for Respect as being to unite ‘with other organised forces on the left…left-leaning activists and currents in the TUs, anti-globalisation and environmental movements’[9] I think this approach is mistaken. Such organised forces, in as much as they do exist, are extremely weak. A political orientation in this direction will inevitable find itself on barren terrain”.
I can’t comment on the recent “ISG Statement to Birmingham Meeting” Ger is referring in Footnote 9 to as I haven’t read it, but I do have to declare an interest as an ISG member.
Nevertheless I think Ger is being unfair as the statement as he himself quotes it does not simply refer solely orientating to “other organised forces on the left” but also to “left-leaning activists and currents in the TUs, anti-globalisation and environmental movements” and that as I understand it equally suggests an orientation to ‘unorganised’ forces on the left.
Ger, can you clarify your position in all this? What political and social forces do you think are likely to become the building blocks for a future (hopefully mass) left alternative to New Labour and which Respect Renewal needs to orientate to in the here and now?
Comment by Patrick Scott — 4 March, 2008 @ 1:09 pm
I don’t think it’s at all fair to call this a rant.
It is more a critique of the swp, followed by some fairly brief thoughts about the role of Marxists in wider formations than a substantial contribution to ‘the debate of how Marxists should work in pluralist left parties’. The sub-heading is a bit misleading imo.
But for me one of the most interesting things is the way that the defeats of the working class in the last 25 years are then interpeted to mean that an orientation on that class is out of date. So Ger asserts that ‘The best contribution we can make to the international struggle for socialism is to progress the left here and undermine British imperialism and its capitalist class’ in part 4.7. This assertion isn’t really backed up by an argument, and seems to me to automatically dismiss any continued orientation on the class in the UK as new struggles emerge. It just assumes that there won’t be any of significance. Past generations will have seen the decline of (for example) textile workers, or the gas workers of the 1880’s. Are we now in a situation where struggles based on new sectors are precluded? I hope not cos I reckon we’re f**cked if the answer to that one is yes.
On the internal swp stuff, there is clearly a problem with a system that is too inflexible to allow disagreemment to emerge in the party until things reach the point of expulsions. Some of us stick with it because the swp nevertheless contains the biggest substantial groups that haven’t written off the working class. we may be wrong to do so, but I’m not convinced that a looser wider formation will actually take us forward.
Comment by Dead man on leave — 4 March, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
In case you missed it, the New Zealanders have put together a very good summing up of the broad party perspective — History calls for a broad left party — which warrants a read.
In it Vaughan Gunson and Grant Morgan analyse the SWP’s preferred Respect intervention with some consideration. They call it the ” Broad-narrow coalition”:
A broad-narrow coalition is where a Marxist group forms an alliance with other groups and individuals on the left in a bid to “take control’’ behind the scenes. This is the substance of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) involvement in the Respect coalition in Britain.
The SWP leadership voiced the need to create broad left formations in the space vacated by the old social democratic parties. They described Respect as a “united front of a special type’’, refusing to accept the label of “party’’ for the new alliance of forces. This seemingly semantic rejection of one word actually concealed a world of difference.
The SWP leadership manoeuvred within Respect to determine all important matters, regardless of the coalition’s own nominal democratic processes. In reality, the SWP continued to act as a narrow group within Respect, putting group interests ahead of all else because in their minds only they were the flag bearers of real political change. Such top-down control by a self-selected group is at odds with building a stable mass party based on the necessary principles of equal rights and open democracy.
Since the narrow group was more important than the broad formation, the SWP leadership never prioritised the growth of Respect. So on demonstrations and other public events they promoted SWP publications, while blocking Respect from producing its own mass outreach paper.
In an Internal Bulletin prior to the last SWP conference, a statement by the group’s central committee revealed their narrow approach: “The building of a revolutionary party is the over-arching priority for any revolutionary Marxist. All other strategic decisions are subordinate to this goal.’’
But this should never be a Marxist’s top priority. Marxist organisation exists merely as a means to an end: to unite socialists so they increase their ability to reach outwards and stimulate the organised self-activity of the working class. This is as true in non-revolutionary eras as it is in revolutionary periods.
Unsurprisingly the way the SWP worked within Respect angered other socialists and activists committed to building a broad left alternative to the British Labour Party. Hence the inevitable split in the coalition and the formation of Respect Renewal, which includes the majority of the non-SWP leadership of Respect.
In many ways the Ger Francis critique of what needs to be done parallels that of the Kiwis. So I think a new platform for discussion is emerging across geographical and political boundaries because there are more hard yards being registered and lessons learnt…and successes too, for the lucky one.
I think the bifurcation in the far left has consolidated on this question at the same time that a growing consensus is forming among those who seek to promote ‘broad party modes’ and the new political culture to go with them.
The New Zealanders also speak with some experience on the question of Marxists inside a broad partyish formation.
Comment by Dave Riley — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
SWP.. domination.. control freakery.. blah blah blah
Comment by johnnyrook — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:12 pm
Dead man
I don’t follow that reading. In fact what Ger writes “The best contribution we can make to the international struggle for socialism is to progress the left here and undermine British imperialism and its capitalist class’ in part 4.7.
seems to echo what Alex Callinicos argued against Socialist Worker in New Zealand, when they argued for a greater orientation on the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.
New layers of workers entering trade union struggle is of course inevitable, the question is whether such struggles are likely to connect with a conscious left critique of society. What I think we can say is that since the defeat of the miners, there has been a sustained retreat in politics, organisatioon and ideology.
What is more, the social and political weight of organised labour is much weaker, so how do we reverse that?
It is not unreasonable to look at the issue that there are a number of progressive constituencies of opinion who don’t yet feel any affinity with organised labour.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:15 pm
Wow, there are *so* many areas of Ger’s piece that I’d like him to expand on - hopefully by the time we reach post 500 he will have
Just these for now though:
What is his take on the SWP’s “transformation” away from its “…relationship with mass forces, and of becoming something very different from the SWP of the 1980’s and 1990’s.”?
This concluding remark echoes the official history of the party and would be agreed by the entire, current, Central Committee. So what was it about the SWP over those decades that is up for criticism? I’m not asking this because of my own halcyon-tinted view, but to understand what was wrong in order to better grasp how it might be fixed.
The second point is on the nature of today’s “movement”. I was shocked to read Callinicos’s quote (hats off to Ger for ploughing through *that* one) about the *idea* of the proletariat being a “universal class” - and it takes a lot to shock me these days. It could be the first stirrings of an abandonment of class politics by the party in favour of a new ‘turn’.
If you look at a couple of vague indicators [Galloway’s audience figures and the readership stats of this - among many - blogs] it would seem that there are somewhere between 20 and 50 thousand folk in Britain who want to hear, read, see, listen to and, in some cases, turn out for meetings about progressive ideas. Hardly any of them, yet, self-identify with “the movement”.
One of the things that seems positive to me, about Respect, is that its current form prevents anyone from mapping categories onto events [this can also bite it in the arse further down the line, of course], while allowing lots of folk to find a way in to progressive, and further down the line, socialist ideas.
Is the catch-all for this audience electoral campaigns and campaigning? I’d like to hear from Ger as to his own experience of holding the organisation together outside of purely electoral work - what’s worked, what hasn’t etc.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:18 pm
I don’t think its unreasonable, its a question of priorities. A smaller, tighter organisation that can fight an effective war of manouvre in industrial battles, or a wider formation that doesn’t do that, but attempts to engage in wider counter hegemonic projects?
And do these things have to be counter posed to each other? In practice they seem to.
Comment by Dead man on leave — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:21 pm
It is an interesting quote from Callinicos, a late convert to Hobsbawm?
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
Thought the quotes from Alex Callinicos and Tariq Ali in the footnotes were especially well chosen, and illustrate the basis of our current strategic predicament. Again, the history of our collective misunderstanding of the aftermath of the collapse of Stalinism and the mistaken perspectives of the ‘1990’s ast the 30’s in slow motion’ and the over-exaggeration of the anti-capitalist movement - all this in retrospect seems true, and has been said before, but is well said here.
Just to add: We in the SWP emerged from the post-1989 turmoil as one of the stongest and most confident sections of the revolutionary left anywhere, boyed up by the anti-poll tax victory, the fall of Thatcher and our analysis of State Capitalism. But a strength can simultaneously be a weakness.
When the rest of the left asked ‘did Leninism lead to Stalinism’ we could simply answer NO! - correctly. But that then meant we could justify any amount of internal authoritarianism within our own party, as these could never be the source of degeneration! At the same time, other currents had to become more critical of authoritarian tendencies and histories of the left in order to survive the wreckage of stalinism.
This leads to a paradox within the I.S tradition - the most ‘libertarian’ Marxists of the 1960’s, the most critical of Stalinist State Capitalism, born from its original commitments to ‘Neither washington nor Moscow’ somehow become the most hierachical of organisations today!
This paradox is well illustrated by a recent article on ‘Cuba after Castro’:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=14241
This rightly critcises the difficulties faced by a “hierarchical regime used to giving orders and having them carried out”!
Now any young anti-capitalist activist encountering this sentence in Socialist Worker will think this odd coming from the SWP, which is itself, in its own small way a “hierarchical regime used to giving orders and having them carried out”!
Comment by Larry — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:26 pm
17 and 18. Callinicos has gone to print with an *idea* that was always a suspicion among many. That the “proletariat” was itself an idea from which you could extract the best sides of to win a tactical debate with no reference to external realities.
I’d even grant that this was true in the 80s and 90s for those who’d accuse me of being “stuck”.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:34 pm
johnnyrook .. blah blah blah … incoherence.. wastaspace
Comment by ronnie jock — 4 March, 2008 @ 2:41 pm
I know you can’t cover everything in one article but I am rather struck by the fact that this article fails to mention the Socialist Alliance. The SWP’s intervention in the SA was the start of them working in a coalition; I presume the start of their “united front of a special kind” approach. After a short honeymoon period when the Left worked together well with the SWP in the SA it all started to get rather poisonous and the SWP started behaving in ways that will be very familiar to those on the receiving end in Respect.
In the later period of the SA a particular area of concern to independents* in the SA was the plight of Steve Godward an independent socialist and victimised FBU militant. Steve was Chair of both Stop the War and of the SA in Birmingham. Steve fell out with the SWP big time and was told that he would be “politically finished” by the SWP at the time. I have been struck how former SWP members and Galloway himself have been “given the brush” in the same way as Godward. Of course Ger Francis played a central role in all of this as the then SWP Organiser.
Of course people make mistakes and perhaps do awful things when they were functionaries in groups like the SWP or the old WRP for that matter - I believe it is right to let bygones be bygones but on the other hand if we are expecting the SWP to take lessons from Ger Francis then maybe he needs to say something about his own errors in the past. The Socialist Unity blog did once describe Ger as a “political thug”. See:
http://socialistunity.blogspot.com/2007/01/swp-expels-leading-member.html
NB. I see from Google search results that Andy has commented on this before – but I don’t have time to dig through all the past comments.
On this see also Sue Blackwell’s account - she was an SWP member for over 25 years but quit over these events.
WHY WE WERE RIGHT TO LEAVE THE SWP - By Sue Blackwell and Rumy Husan
http://www.sue.be/politics/swp/
Here is Steve Godward’s account, see:
Setting the record straight:
Birmingham anti-war movement and Socialist Alliance
http://www.labournet.net/other/0309/bhamsa1.html
If Ger has dealt with this before then I apologise for raising it again - it is not my intention to “troll” but I do think it is legitimate to raise this as these events were a major concern amongst the independents in the socialist alliance.
To move on to some of the points in the article two issues strike me.
Firstly - Ger’s comments on “1989″. Interesting - I largely agree with the analysis here. I would suggest that the events of 1989-1991 had a significant effect in accelerating the process of the degeneration of Social Democracy internationally away from reformist class politics. I would add that this process was already fairly advanced in Britain after the defeat of the 1984-85 miners strike – Kinnock’s New Realism was the real start of the destruction of social democracy within the Labour Party. We can quibble about the details but the central and significant point is that social democracy has essentially ceased to be which has transformed the political landscape in which socialists work. The SWP seem to be oblivious of any change in the world and still talk in terms analogous to the centrality of building the *revolutionary* communist party as opposed to the *reformist* Labour or Social Democratic Party – another epoch of history!
Secondly, Ger concludes in 4.5 that it would be a mistake to “unite ‘with other organised forces on the left…left-leaning activists and currents in the TUs, anti-globalisation and environmental movements’[9]”. This is aimed at the ISG but I would look at this from the perspective of being an independent socialist. Clearly, Ger thinks people like myself should join Respect and devote all of my activities to non-socialist politics. This was precisely why a large number of SA independents didn’t join Respect in the first instance – if you are driven by a socialist class consciousness then you will want to be part of an organization that is committed to socialism. I could join the Greens or the Liberals if all I thought was necessary was “progressive” politics. Instead I think the political gulf on the Left needs to be filled by a new workers party, it needs to be explicitly socialist and it needs to reject the control freakery of the sects and be democratic.
*(I know this from the discussions that took place on the IndieSA list – the discussion forum for independents in the SA)
Comment by garagelanduk — 4 March, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
PS. I think it right to identify myself as I’m being critical of Ger. I’m Dave Parks an independent socialist from Exeter, a member of Exeter Socialists, which was formerly the independents in Exeter SA.
Also, I wrote “I know this from the discussions that took place on the IndieSA list – the discussion forum for independents in the SA” - I would add also from attending the meetings of the SA Independents which Steve took part in.
Comment by garagelanduk — 4 March, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
Dave #21
This issue is complicated.
You are absolutely correct that the events in Birmingham were of serious concern not only to a layer of independencts within the SA, but also to a number of pro-SA members of the SWP.
From my perspective we need to seperate out the question of the political content with the political process.
The account from Sue and Rumy in terms of political process is very persuasive of how the SWP works, and reflects a political culture that Ger has demonstrably broken with.
However, in terms of the political coontent of the criticisms. Rumy in particular has expressed views that are deeply islamophobic, and the situation in Birmigham was also compliacted by the almost open racism of Jim Denham. Alongside his many strengths, Steve Godward was unfortunately influenced by the AWL’s politics.
So the crisis of Birmingham was created by both sides. It would have been a bigger problem to allow islamophobia to exclude radical Muslims who were both againist the war and generally progressive.
However, the way that the issue was dealt with in terms of process does reflect the way the SWP works. And indeed the lack of structures that allow such political disagreements to be fraternally resolved in the SWP was part of the culture that created the problem - there are in fact no other mechanisms existing except bureaucratic ones.
With regard to your other point. From my point of view the space that exists is to create a mass left social democratic party. But that doesn’t preclude socialists organising within that party.
The difficult task is to create something that can both be broad and politically counter-hegemonic, but also place no or few restrictions on activists who want to push for campainging socialist and class struggle politics.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 March, 2008 @ 4:36 pm
Snowball’s dismissal of an article he can’t be bothered to read I take as a lack of political confidence dressed up as arrogance. JJ is at least consistent in maintaining his/her normal standard of shockingly unpolitical posts.
Amateur Antrhopologist: Without any shadow of a doubt, the SWP is a more top down organisation than RR. But RR is only in its infancy and in the process of developing not just structures but more importantly a different internal culture of how we operate.
There is no question that many people became demoralised with our inability to stop the war and drifted away from organised activity although not all. Our successes in South Birmingham however rested on a carry over of some of these people and the shifting of political climate as a result of the anti-war movement. I think it is unfair to say that leaders of the anti-war movement deliberately mislead people about how formidable the challenge of actually stopping the war was going to be. Tariq Ali has some interesting comments on this issue in the full interview. Link in footnotes.
Patrick Scott. Apologies if I misrepresented the ISG’s position. It irritates when that happens to me and it certainly was not my intention with regard to the SR/ISG comrades. I have nothing against an orientation towards ‘left-leaning activists and currents in the TUs, anti-globalisation and environmental movements’. I just think those currents are very weak and therefore our primary focus (and obsession) must be elsewhere. Most of our voter base in Birmingham is overwhelmingly working class, traditionally old Labour, and angry at war and racism. It is from there we will build and we have to orientate ourselves accordingly.
Dead man on leave: It is a misreading to say I ‘dismiss any continued orientation on the class in the UK’. My point was to critique the SWP’s failure to fully acknowledge the impact of over 20 years of defeat. Incidentally, I think some are misreading the quote from Alex Callinicos for the same reason.
Battersea: 2 quick points. A central criticism, both pre and post 9/11, period would be the way an internal culture emerged wherein honest accounting was increasingly distorted by exaggeration and, in many cases, pure bullshit, about what was actually taking place on the ground. For example, when I was an organiser there was for a period a lot of excited chatter about work around call centres which supposedly provided evidence of the militancy of new groups of workers not weighed down by past defeats, and which was given weight with open ended analogies to the new unionism of the 1890’s. None of this was bourn out of by my experience and for good reason. I have since been told it was all fantasy, based on stories from an organiser in the North West, desperate to prove his creditentials to the centre, whose exaggeration took a life of its own once Chris Bambery starting spinning it in Party Notes. When the truth of the situation became known, the call centre orientation was quietly dropped with no explanation. I suspect this was not the only such case of its kind.
As to building local organisation, my experience is that we have found it difficult to build traditional party branch structures. One reason is that we don’t get everything right. Our blueprints for how we build local organisation have often proved ineffective and we have had to think in different and new ways. It has taken a while to realise this. Another reason is that we have become victims of our own success, and sheer pressures of time have mitigated against doing the time consuming but essential task of cadre building. (This coming May election is the fifth one in a row we will have contested in Birmingham. We have none in 2009, assuming there is no general election, and are looking forward to some breathing space to concentrate on building local structures).
Having said that, my experience is that this work has a dynamic of its own, and people build Respect in their own way. For example, our Springfield candidate Salma Iqbal is organising a women only disco for Friday night to raise funds for her campaign and so far has sold over 120 tickets at £6 a head. Another supporter, and committee member, organises after school help classes for Yemeni kids and also ropes them into Respect activity (a bunch of them were out leafleting over the w/end.) Many of the Muslim women hold women only circles which provide indispensable support for isolated Muslim women, sometimes involving 50 women at a time, and through them we get access to informal networks (these groups were pivotal to mobilising the women’s vote in the Muslim community). My point is that there are lots of Respect organising taking place by people who often are not even members, and in ways that we are often not aware of. We have a challenge in knitting this together, and harnessing the goodwill of many many other people, but these are good challenges to have.
Will come back to the points from garagelanduk later…
Comment by Ger Francis — 4 March, 2008 @ 4:54 pm
Of course everyone aims to put “class before party”. (Lenin for example). But was that what was going on? Galloway’s working class base is not big (not like say Benn’s was and still is to some extent, not like Sheridan’s was to some extent). Neither side of the split can claim to represent more than an embryon of something interesting, not the working class as such.
The tests will come quickly. I follow from afar and generally sympathetic to the SWP, for all its faults. The London mayoral elections and Respect Renewal’s position on them does not seem to me to be a good sign for the future of RR.
Comment by John Mullen — 4 March, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
A number of us who were SWP members were expelled because of this split.
no ger, you were expelled almost a year earlier for blatant and repeated breaches of party discipline
Comment by Dave Festive — 4 March, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Ger - your analysis of the SWP is spot on but you are as deluded today as you were 20 years ago. Talking about “The Class” makes you sound like a fantasist.
Sorry, it isn’t the real world.
Comment by Don — 4 March, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
Your analysis of the significance of 1989 is embarrassingly simplistic (really you should delete it or something). Also, given your role in the Sue Blackwell debacle it’s a bit rich that you’re now criticising the SWP for their centralism. At the very least you ought to offer a mea culpa.
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 4 March, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
Some of this thread moves towards a really good debate. Loads of us need to reach an understanding of the past 20 years and what’s really going on now. Its not enough to be exhorted into more activism, we also need explanation and discussion, and a plurality of Marxist perspectives to consider.
But some contributions would benefit from being more detailed. For example post # 28 by Jeremy merely says Ger’s analysis of 1989 is ‘embarrassingly simplistic’. But this criticism is so simplistic and sparse itself! Please could Jeremy elaborate on this criticism and provide a more nuanced and richer account of the impact of 1989? Come on, lets really raise the quality of debate!
Comment by Larry R — 4 March, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
An interesting analysis and for someone who has never been in SWP, I wouldn’t know the internal arguments (that is those that were permitted). But it is very interesting, nevertheless and obviously there will be dismissive comments by SWP loyalists, but I feel tthis also addresses those on the left from other traditions. There are no unflawed traditions or we wouldn’t see today’s mess.
The references to exaggeration is well known, and SWP do not have a monoploy. I recall Tariq Ali in my IMG days referring to this as ‘the bullshit brigade’. This to my mind is part of the syndicalist tradition which thinks the working class is eager and ready to take on the ruling class and it is only the corporatist role of the trade union and labour bureaucracy holding them back. Part of the poblem here is Ger’s opening comment that includes: ‘With the space once occupied by social democracy increasingly vacated, the emergence of Respect as an attempt to fill at least some of this space is an important stage in the rebuilding of working class political organisation’
We need to look at Social Democracy historically. It was founded in Britain as a Bourgeois workers party and was a mechanism for the ruling class to make concessions, at least to the most priveleged working class based on the revenues extracted from imperialism. We don’t want to fill that vacuum, if it is indeed a vacuum, rather than a rapidly contracting reservoir.
But where I entirley agree with Ger is that Respect has emerged under Salma and George’s leadership as a serious anti-Imperialist current - one that revolutionaries can be comfortable in. In politics now that is more important than trade union militancy, important though that is. The SWP advance the syndicalist analysis, that has nothing to do with Marxism that conciousness is forged at the point of production. A bit odd when most revolutions have taken palce in the world where very little production goes on. The highest form of conciousness, even if it isn’t revolutionary in intent is those who fight at the level of the state - against the British imperialist intentions, racist immigration laws or restrictions on democratic rights. Only some - revolutionaries will be consistent on all these. On eexaggeration banded about by the SWP in 2003 was that Britain could be made ungovernable with the outbreak of war. OK it wasn’t as barmy as the WRP in 1974 who were warning of the impending military coup (rather than the minority Labour Government) but nevertheless was ridiculous. Take nothing away from the 2 million person march, but nothing came to a standstill and as the bombing on Iraq took place the media returned to their patriotic duty, MPs were mainly quiet with notable exceptions and in the mainstream news only Robert Fisk’s voice was heard. Hardly ungovernable, certainly no breakdown of bourgeois hegemony.
1989 was a vital point and I am not a Stalinist one bit and travelled to Russia before 1991 and after and could witness the effect of Stalinism on the working class. In the end the CPSU was so rotten it crumbled into dust, although the working class have fought on through mass political parties, most notably Zyuganov’s Communist Party. However, when there was much rejoicing on the left, I raised no glasses to the new era - that most countries are in EU, on verge of joining EU and USA has bases on adjacent to Russia in former Soviet Republics. I do not agree that Russia was State Capitalist, but supposing it was: wouldn’t the analysis be that State Capitalism was better for the working class than the waves of racism that have swept Europe because of Imperialism marching in to Czechoslovkia, Poland, Hungary etc? USSR under pressure from the working class did support anti-colonial struggles. Let’s not get into all that, but if you draw a balance sheet of the past 20 years, you have to conclude that the working clas sposition viz a viz the ruling class is worse off and it’s not simply because they haven’t fought for higher wages.
Respect isn’t to fill the gap that was never vacated by Social Democracy. The struggle in the communities, not just the workplaces against racism, deprivation etc. The fight against imperialist wars. The fight for all democratic rights - women, LGBT and disabled. The environmental issues need no explaining.There are so many involved in this who are campaigning irrespective of Respect.
Other parties are progressive on this, and those who will join no party.
Much can be done,but the enemy is stronger than some admit.
Comment by howard t — 4 March, 2008 @ 6:45 pm
Interesting critique of the SWP by Ger.Thanks for having the wisedom and integrity to leave the SWP and have the intelligence to be prepared to take time to relect critically and reappraise your experiences and present your insights.
2.5 The disconnection of theory from reality was perhaps summed up in the formulation that there were large numbers of radicalised youth who had ‘90 per cent agreement and only 10 per cent disagreement’ with the politics of the SWP, and were just waiting to be scooped up. Those in the IS Tendency who critised the ‘1930’s in slow motion’ perspective at the time as inaccurate and damaging have been vindicated by time.
Most enlightenning for me as a longstanding non believer(of the SWP school of so called revolutionary Socialism)and weary observer of the SWP,their flawed tactics,dubious lines,weird twists,bizarre deviations,incredible back flips,stunning about turns etc,etc,etc is
2.5 , which says just so much…………………the disconnect ‘line’/perception/ analysis is such a fundamental flaw/ diversion which,at the time the SWP leadership get’s it oh so wrong and it goes largely unchallenged due to lack of critical internal discussion and democracy,serving merely to obscure and deludes the uncritical faithful and fodder,but ultimately misleads, burns out and alienates both internally and externally.How familiar is that! How manic depressive!
Ger’s critique is in many ways very constructive and helpful and serves to point out many lessons which need to be learnt and learnt well by all genuine Socialists and those committed and interested in creating a genuinely grounded and effective,popular,grassroots democratic broad Left party.
Reasons to be cheerful as against sneerful
Comment by Doughnut — 4 March, 2008 @ 7:27 pm
‘reflect critically’ as against ‘relect’…apologies
Comment by Doughnut — 4 March, 2008 @ 7:29 pm
Howard t # 30
You are correct to criticise our common misconception of “filling the vacuum left by social democracy”, but not just because it was a rotten tradition:
Perhaps there was never a vacuum that could simply be ‘filled’ by us raising old social democratic demands? And perhaps there are ‘objective’ reasons why social democracy moved to the right?
An explanation would go along the lines of: Social democracy historically fitted with the tendency towards state monopoly capitalism that marked most of the twentieth century and was associated with ever more socialised forces of production. The capitalist class had to form nationalised structures to govern these more socialised forces of production - and a nationally organised working class could extract concessions within this setup. What was commonly called ’socialism’ - state capitalism - seemed to fit with ‘the direction of history’. However, this set-up reached a crisis point between 1968-1973, with growing working class, social movement and anti-imperialist victories, connected to a crisis of profitability and accumulation.
Following this the capitalists groped towards a new strategy - now known as globalising neo-liberalism, helping the productive forces burst beyond the limits of state capitalism. (As you can see, for us ‘State Capitalism’ applies to more than the USSR - it denotes Atlee’s Britain, Roosevelts USA, Nassers Egypt etc etc).
This new capitalist strategy outmanoeuvred the old nationally organised working classes with their social democratic organisations. It was of course far more than Cliff’s simple and linear conception of a ‘downturn’! For the working class to have dealt with this change would have required a far more internationalist level of consciousness and organisation. As the ‘flow of history’ seemed to move against ’socialism’, simple social democratic gains appeared beyond the reach of the working class.
Now, I think my analysis above is far too simplistic and deterministic - it missses out on the sometimes victorious resistances to neo-liberalism that we have seen for instance in France. But i hope it points towards some wider factors that we can’t ignore or wish away.
Now - Howard t rightly points out the continued vitality of anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic movements and demands. And given the absence of working class militancy he proposes that this should be the basis for building a new left like Respect.
However, these social movements are of course lead by bourgeois cross-class alliances. They gain their power by trying to complete the tasks of 1789, of political liberty. Of course socialists can only build a counter-hegemonic strategy by adopting these demands as our own and weaving them into our project of social emancipation and a post-capitalist social order. But traditionally, we have needed the collectivity of the working class struggle to stand at the centre of this.
How else can we unite otherwise disparate liberation movements such as those against Islamophobia and Homophobia? Without class collectivity, these struggles can be divergent and contradictory. respect can not be built out of these struggles alone. I doubt if I have provided ‘the answer’ here, but maybe this is the kind of debate we need to be having, while at the same time as we organise practical day to day resistance? And here, perhaps we have the informational networks suited to the task, matching the decentred neo-liberal world in a way that a centralised party with its centralised press once was suited to match the nationally organised ruling class of state capitalism?
Comment by Larry R — 4 March, 2008 @ 7:46 pm
Thanks for opening up this important thread. I hope it will only be used by people who seriously want answers so others can look elsewhere. I asked in another thread about how revolutionaries could organise in RR and got what I thought was short shrift and nearly stopped looking. Like you Dead Man I have stuck with the SWP with gritted teeth because when it comes to interventions around Stop the War or public sector strikes or UAF I know they will work their socks off to make a difference. Maybe that doesnt sound much but its more appealing right now than joining a reformist party because I do believe that reformism is a dead end. The point about conscienceness and the working class is that revolutionary consciousness comes from a combination of experience AND political debate - yes strikes on their own wont do it, that IS syndicalism. But neither will having wonderful politics and staying outside the struggle - and that has to include the organised working class and trade union/unofficial industrial action. I worry that some ex-SWP members are dismising that too readily just because there isnt much of it or its easily defeated.
One comment above said that revolutionaries can be comfortable under George and Salma’s leadership. How would this work? Would a Marxist current caucus and put out independant literature occassionally for example? Would George be happy with that? We are often not told the truth about GG in the SWP and I have heard some terrible things he has said about Trotsktyists so would really be interested in an honest answer.
Comment by DrDoolittle — 4 March, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
33. When the SWP were still in the united Respect, they put out independent literature occasionally, didn’t they? I don’t recall George being unhappy with that…
On the issue of “interventions around Stop the War or public sector strikes or UAF” you don’t have to be in the SWP to do this. So, if you are doing this under the auspices of the SWP despite knowing, however deep down, that their perspectives are wrong, the regime is deeply flawed and the core leadership seriously compromised then you have to ask yourself some serious questions about whether working through ‘the party’, helping perpetuate its leadership clique, is ultimately doing more harm than good.
You say you are not up for ‘joining a reformist party’ but that is not really what is being counterposed. (Incidentally, what were your views on the SWP joining the Soc Alliance, SSP, and setting up Respect in the first place?)
Respect was initially, and Respect Renewal remains a broad left, pluralist party in which a wide spectrum of left tendencies can co-exist, reformists and revolutionaries working together for common goals.
Personally, I see the growth of influence of revolutionary ideas in society as entirely bound up with the ability of revolutionaries to interact with broader progressive layers- and I think the SWP has now decisively failed that test.
Comment by robm — 4 March, 2008 @ 8:53 pm
Of course not only SWP members support struggles that would be stupid to claim. But there is a difference between essentially cheerleading and arguing for a strategy that can win independantly of the bureaucracy or whoever. This I think the SWP does well and I don’t see anyone else doing it efectively. I guess it comes down to which is more likely to happen over the next couple of years - the SWP changing its leadership and worst methods, or RR growing into a serious left alternative with space for Marxists to operate freely. I think a lot of us are staying put to see because the thought of jumping from the frying pan into a deep void is rather scary. But good luck and I’ll keep watching. By the way I read somewhere that SWP and RR are supporting the Convention of the Left - is that true and how is that working out? Maybe there’s hope yet!
Comment by DrDoolittle — 4 March, 2008 @ 9:11 pm
Dr Doolittle-
You say you have heard - some ‘terrible’ things about what GG is ’suppose’ to have said ?
I am sure a person with your supposed intellect does not respond to the Gutter Press Comments that have been thrown around the blogs by some very embittered Trolls.
Having had the pleasure to meet Mr Galloway I would feel it would serve you better to approach the man himself - He is in Parliament every weekday and can also be found in his constituency, or better still write to him ask for his comments on all the things that he is ‘SUPPOSED’ to have said then publish them for all to see.
You will also find him up and down the country spreading the word of socialism.
With Tony Benn I would say he is the most prominent figure For Stop The War and the struggles in Palestine and Worldwide.
I feel disgusted by the way he is been snubbed by the Hierarchy of the SWP and the way he has been overlooked! from meeting the Palestinian Women’s Group that are visiting his Bethnal Green and Bow Consistency this snub is diabolical.
My advice to you is if you have a query about what GG is suppose to have said ask him for yourself get your response straight from the horses mouth as they say.
You need to question WHY are so many people who have “SEEN THE LIGHT” and realised that the SWP are on a road to nowhere.
You also need to wonder why so many X SWP members now show their allegiance to RR.
Makes you sit up and think what is going to happen to with the
BIG BAD WOLF .?
Comment by Carole — 4 March, 2008 @ 9:17 pm
It’s good to see the likes of “Dead Man” and “Doolittle” on this thread and I hope they keep kicking the tyres…
I want to wholeheartedly agree with ‘robm’ above: The SWP leadership have done a fantastic job of painting anything and anyone outside its ranks as somehow being in the “wilderness”. Incapable of holding a coherent political opinion. Unable to “relate” to other workers. Inconsistent in their activity and efforts, and any other old nonsense you’d like to toss in the skip.
Respect, and the Socialist Alliance experiment have fortunately proved that the opposite is the case, to a few inside the SWP and many outside it.
Doolittle keeps asking for something akin to a charter of guarantees in terms of what will and won’t be permitted of revolutionaries in Respect-R. But, if this blog is anything to go by, no one, thankfully, has come up with a rigid set of rules that exclude them. At least there is a more than one-sided debate here!
Contrast that with the SWP. No debate, no disagreements, no accountability, no change and now, no idea of what to do next… In fact, it just recently got a whole lot more frightening with the standing of candidates *against* a sitting, asian, Respect councillor in east London (a key BNP target).
It was tough building the SWP under Thatcher. But give me *those* challenges any day compared with the ones the SWP’s leadership are creating now. It’s far easier to build a socialist current when you’re not held in utter contempt by fellow activists… and that’s the trajectory they’re following now.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 4 March, 2008 @ 9:26 pm
How about let’s just stop taking about the SWP. Let then
R.I.P. For at the end of the day your a long time Dead.
Comment by sunshine 1 — 4 March, 2008 @ 9:47 pm
Sorry BPS I understood from your earlier posts that you aren’t a member of RR? Am I mistaken? (not a snipe - genuine question)
Comment by DrDoolittle — 4 March, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
Anyone know whats happening with the Progressive Left List?
Comment by Hammersmith Palais — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:00 pm
40. DrDoolittle: No I’m not a member (for geopolitical reasons).
I live about 5.5 hours flight time from the nearest Respect office
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:01 pm
Well done to Ger for kicking off this discussion.
Dr Dolittle asked “how revolutionaries could organise in RR”. I think the answer has to be “sensitively and expecting to be in a minority from time to time”.
There is no great skill to it. It is pretty easy to maintain a separate magazine, website, leaflets and opinions while still remaining absolutely committed to building RR. This is what we are trying to do with the new Socialist Resistance magazine. At the moment we are more concerned with environmental issues than most RR members and we will use our own press to explore and develop our thinking on this. You can do the same on any issue. We’ll be carrying an article on the London elections saying what we think and we. There will also be a long piece on what sort of party we think is needed. It’s not a problem that some RR contributors to this discussion will disagree with it.
Attempting to control a broader organisation by using your own organisational structures and discipline is incredibly destructive. Something like RR has to be given time to develop its own decision making structures and learn from its mistakes. The old Respect was Those of us who are Marxists in it can argue and explain but must never repeat the mistake of using weight of numbers to impose our will. That was the one thing that most inhibited Repsect’s growth as a party with its own internal life. My experience in my RR branch is that this is changing rapidly. It’s a good place to be.
Comment by Liam — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:04 pm
The question arises: Can anti-capitalists organise in and contribute to broader left formations? Yes - but it depend on how much freedom they have within them.
I’m an ex-swp member now in the Green Party, and it seems the Green Left, as an explicitly socialist and anti-capitalist current have the space to organise here. I want to simultaneously promote radical anti-capitalist solutions, practical lived alternatives, links with Trades Unions and also help promote the Party as a whole. At the moment its possible to do all these without much compromise.
What about within R.R?
I’m sure some in Renewal would like revolutionaries to keep quiet! RR supporter Mark P (wrongly) argued on another thread, in response to the idea of a revolutionary current in renewal: “”No, instead commit ourselves entirely and resolutely to a party of left social-democracy”, “Respect is a party of left social-democracy or it is nothing”.
But that is just Mark P. Of course, more important is the attitude of figures like Galloway, Yaqoob and Smith.
Others are not against a distinct revolutionary contribution, and welcome it as part of a plural formation - but nevertheless wish to liquidate themselves into reformism. So ex-SWP member Clive Searle said in another thread here: “If ‘revolutionaries’ want to organise separately within Respect they are more than welcome. I don’t think that this my main priority now”.
The positive point of building a broad, plural formation is that it can unite ordinary activists from different struggles, who are not revolutionaries or Leninists on a more permanent basis, allowing for further debate. It can strengthen the position of socialists and provide a position for winning current struggles and regrouping left forces.
But it must be a compromise between different tendencies around a minimum platform. The point is, where does it lead? If anti-capitalists end up sacrificing all their political energies in building a reformist party that eventually betrays these hopes, like past Labour and Green Parties, then thats a waste of time, or worse.
But at the same time, anti-capitalists can sometimes take the initiative in these formations, and build broad counter-hegemonic alliances around their programme. And this can put them in a better position should capitalist crisis provide a moment of rupture.
Anyway, I thought I try something new for me! I dont think any of the answers on offer are perfect - neither the SWP or other revolutionary groups, nor the Labour Left, nor Respect-renewal nor the Green Party.
We are at a time when we need to keep on fighting back and organising, where we also need to keep on discussing and learning in an honest and open way. We need organs of free and open debate amongst ourselves, like this blog and other forums, we need spaces like the convention of the Left, and we need unity in struggle. I have no other answer at the moment.
Comment by Larry R — 4 March, 2008 @ 10:56 pm
Dr Doolittle asks ‘How revolutionaries could organise in RR’ . This is the wrong way of looking at things.
I speak as someone who spent over 20 years in the SWP and are now involved in helping build the Manchester RR branch.
This branch building has become a very interesting process. It is challenging, you have to work this out with others but it is a lively and dynamic place. It contains members and supporters from 16 to 70+, they are black, white, asian, arabic.
It is engaged in a number of different activities. For example, It involves the organising of the campaigns for the local elections, in Cheetham Hill, Moss Side. It means we all have to think about fundraising to pay for the publicity.
It means filling the coach to the demo on 15th March. This has involved building a rather good North Manchester Against Wars meeting ( see www.mancsagainsttanks.org). 164 at the meeting, and only one SWP member turned up
It means changing some of the practices that have developed over the years on the Left that have become a barrier to allow others to get involved.
We have organised the branch by series of teams, these work around Elections, Publicity, Membership, Fund-raising, the Respect newspaper, & Events. This allows people from different traditions and practices to work together on each area, learn from each other, and then report back to the monthly Branch meetings and in the monthly news letter
As a revolutionary I’m not organising ‘in’ Respect R. I’m organising as ‘part’ of Respect R. If there is an issue we work it out together as a whole. If I have experience on something I share it. On other issues I listen and learn.
My focus and that other the other ex-SWP members in the branch, of which there are a few, is that we are building RR, not another version of the SWP just with nicer people.
We are part of creating a political home that fits the needs of the moment and that brings people into a political orbit of the branch to start discussions and organise activities
Alternatively I could go to the North Manchester SWP meeting, that last I went to had four people at it, and it meets in a pub called The Ostrich, the irony!
I’d rather be in the RR branch, 30 attended the last meeting, We are expecting more for this weeks branch meeting in the aftermath of George’s Galloways’ meetings in Manchester 2 weeks ago.
That’s the type of political home and environment that I would think Dr Doolittle and a number of SWP members would prefer to be in rather than cling on to an organisation that is rapidly disappearing in political isolation
Have look
http://www.gmrespect.org.uk/about.htm
Comment by Richard Searle — 4 March, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
Oh Richard
More attacks on the revolutionary left!!!
Can u let me know.. what is the position of RR regaridng who to vote for in the london mayoral election.. u see Liam says there is no position but Phil says its to vote Green, GG and Salma have already decieded - back KL. Just out of interest does RR have a position and did the membership decide it?
PS How are the RR branches doing in Liverpool, sheffield, bolton, bury, newcastle, Leeds, Preston.. oh I forgot.. u don’t have any!!!!! but I am sure the walkabout of GG inspired a lot of people with his talk of how the speaker of the hosue of commons has every right to claim huge amounts of expenses and its all a plot because he is scottish.!!! seriously he argues that is one of the reasons for the critiscism. U couldn’t make it up could u.
Comment by jj — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:05 am
what was the world at war meeting like in Manchester?
Comment by jj — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:09 am
#46 and your name is ?
Comment by Richard Searle — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:09 am
But you just did make it up JJ! - Galloway on Question time said the speaker of the commons was being attacked by Tory snobs for being a manual worker and a catholic, - not for being Scottish! I don’t think Galloway is right, but I’m just pointing out your ignorance! Why, oh why, oh why can’t you engage in debate like a nice Marxist? Then I’d take you seriously!
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:11 am
Its sad idiots like JJ posting here further demean the reputation of the SWP, already weakened by Rees blunders in Respect.
This is happening at a time when excellent SWP trades unionists are under attack from both the bosses and the union leaders.
This weeks shocking news is that both Karen Reissmann and Yunus Bakhsh have been bared from standing for Unison elections - as the union leaders line up with the bosses who have been victimising these activists.
This is a real witch-hunt of the SWP (unlike the fake ‘witchunt’ in Respect) - and we must rally round these comrades.
See the story in the latest SW, online today.
Really sad to see these comrades who I have respected for years being attacked. And it bodes badly for any of us in the unions.
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:24 am
JJ - sorry, are you saying that Michael Martin isn’t drawing hostility because he’s a working class catholic? Have you read the Guardian’s “Parliamentary Sketch” lately?
Comment by Graham Day — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:38 am
What a dull dishonest little artlcle Grr has penned. How about asking Steve Godward, Rumy Hasan and Sue Blackwell if Grrs protestations as to the SWPs tactics are merited - or should one say merited coming from Grr? As for his claim to have left or been expelled from the SWP due to his politics, as is the case with some of his fellow travellers, it is simply a lie.
Politically Grrs ‘critique’ of the SWP is unoriginal and borrowed from various critics of the SWP from within the IS Tradition. In light of which his open wooing of the American SWP, note his remark that the criticisms of the SWP from within the IS Tendency were accurate, is grotesque at very best. Happily the largest Australian group on the IS Tradition, Socialist Alternative, is far more clear sighted than the ISO on this and has made clear their contempt for the foolish attempt of the SWP to build a populist party as a substitute for decling Labourism. Grr will find no suport from that quarter but may well receive support from the New Zealand ISO a declining group best characterised as liberals on crack.
Moreover Grrs pathetic attempt to claim that he remains based on Leninist orthodoxy is ludicrous given that he makes no claim to be willing to build an openly revolutionary tendency within Respect Renewal. Indeed his criticism of the SWPs Leninism is partial and self serving in that he fails to understand that the ‘Leninism’ of the SWP is a massive distance from the practice of the Bolsheviks and for that matter from the practice of the IS/SWP in the early 1970s. In short his ‘criticism’ of the SWPs ‘Leninism’ is that of a party hack expelled from the group with a chip on his shoulder.
In fact the tragedy of Grr Francis lies in his rather silly declaration that he ‘left’ - read was expelled a year before the fratricide that has so convulsed Respect - the SWP in order to put the interests of class before those of party. Which is absurd if by this he means the interests of the working class given that Respect is not a party based on the interests of the working classes but is rather a populist cross class party dominated by a tiny fragment of petty bourgeois opportunists.
Had Grr the political courage to look clearly at the history of the IS/SWP he might realise that the self appointed leaders of the SWP long ago, before Grr even joined the SWP(I), junked the idea of placing the working classses at the centre of their practice and substituted their own petty sectarian interests in the name of building the ‘revolutionary party’. Despite which and despite their grave errors of analysis they do at least have the merit today of continuing the effort to build a revolutionary tendency. A task that Grr having fled from is now an open enemy of and therefore someting akin to a political scab.
Comment by Mike — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:51 am
Mike
You just back from the pub?
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:57 am
Larry
I’m confident people will rally round Karen and Yunus. There’s also the attack on the four Socialist Party Unison members. The attacks on these comrades have to be factored in to a proper assessment of the state of the trade union left today.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 5 March, 2008 @ 1:12 am
Indeed Andy. Post 26 (and 52): Not sure what you both are on. I was expelled in January 2008 specifically over my differences with the SWP and its orientation in Respect.
Post 27: Not sure what you talking about Don, I find that kind of language as irritating as you appear to. Having said that I hold to the traditional Marxist view about the working class being the power engine of capitalism and therefore having greater potential than any other social group to fundamentally challenge it. I do long however to read some convincing Marxist analysis about the nature of working class composition and consciousness in the 21st century.
Post 28: Jeremy, you may well be right about the analysis being simplistic. It would help though if you clarified why. As for me offering a mea culpa over the dispute in Birmingham STW…don’t hold your breath. The fundamental problem was well summed up Andy. A number of those most critical of the direction of STW pandered to pro-war anti-Muslim propaganda: ‘Rumy in particular has expressed views that are deeply islamophobic, and the situation in Birmingham was also complicated by the almost open racism of Jim Denham. Alongside his many strengths, Steve Godward was unfortunately influenced by the AWL’s politics.’ It does not surprise me in the least that ‘Mike’ tries to take up their defense since his arguments have far more in common with the like of Denham than they have differences. (To be fair to both Steve and Sue Blackwell, they deserve a far better attorney). The case of Steve was the most unfortunate. I was the person who approached him about joining the Socialist Alliance and always had a lot of time for him. However, once he refused to speak on the platform of the first STW public meeting because he was pulled by AWL arguments, it was always going to be down hill from there on in. The choice facing us was clear: either those hostile and suspicious of Muslim engagement determined the direction of STW, or those welcoming to Muslim involvement did. That was the fundamental issue for me, Dave P, and I have never had any doubts about what was the right call in these circumstances.
Post 30: I agree with Howard T when he says ‘Respect isn’t to fill the gap that was never vacated by Social Democracy.’ It would be the height of delusion to think a party with one MP and a handful of councilors could do. Whatever Respect’s limitations however, we have created something real, with a not insignificant electoral footprint in a small number of areas from which we can learn, generalize and build. As to how Marxists should operate, there is much experience but no exact blueprint. Richard’s approach is similar to my own: get stuck in, discuss, debate, be open minded, non-prescriptive, have a sense of humility, and lets evaluate as we go along…
Comment by Ger Francis — 5 March, 2008 @ 1:12 am
This website seems to have quietly started up with no fanfare, unless I missed something!?
http://www.socialistrenewal.org.uk/home.htm
Who is behind that then?
Seems like a good resource for the issues we chew over on this blog!
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 1:36 am
Ger
“you may well be right about the analysis being simplistic. It would help though if you clarified why.”
Because it ignores a multitude of other historical and social factors. Just taking your point about class consciousness, for example. You guys have been waiting for the proletariat to wake up to its historical role for what seems like forever. Just in my lifetime there’s been the deferential working-class, partisan dealignment, the instrumental working-class, authoritarian populism (remember Stuart Hall and Martin Jacques endlessly banging on about Gramsci and hegemonic projects?), dull economic compulsion, etc, etc, all offered as explanations for the fact that large chunks of the working class seem not to recognise that their best interests lie with you guys (despite the fact that you - revolutionary socialists - cannot stay friends with each other for more than about fifteen seconds).
I’ve been following your kind of politics for I suppose twenty years now – I’ve been to endless meetings, events, etc., (though admittedly mostly a while ago now) - and it’s always the same thing:
1. We need a renewal of the left!
2. Yes, there are reasons for optimism!
3. Oh dear – nearly a of the third of the working class are voting for the forces of reaction (Tories in my day!).
4. But that’s explicable – hegemony, council houses, manufactured racism, union bashing, Falklands War.
5. But we should be optimistic. Band Aid, Live Aid, Sports Aid - a new politics is sweeping the land! (Sound familiar? Check out: Stuart Hall & Martin Jacques, “People Aid: A new politics sweeps the land”, Marxism Today, July 1986.)
6. Build class consciousness.
7. We’re on the march! Again!
And round it goes.
So basically I don’t buy the whole 1989 hugely significant thing. Miner’s Strike. Now that was important. Possibly.
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 2:29 am
“Who is behind that then?” (socialistrenewal.org.uk)
A simple “Whois” search tells us: one Clive Searle (actually, it’s listed as being registered to a “Cyathea.co.uk”, which isn’t a person, but a dormant website which is listed as belonging to Clive Searle; both share the same listed registrants/home address).
For those who have no idea what a “whois” search is, just visit the UK internet domain name “authority”, nominet.org.uk, and type in the address of your favourite UK-domain (that’s with .uk at the end) - eg. swp.org.uk - in the “whois” box on the right of the page. It’s the web equivalent of an electoral register, if you like.
Comment by Internet smartalec — 5 March, 2008 @ 2:29 am
Jeremy: In terms of the specific combativity of British workers, unquestionably the defeat of the miners had deep and profound consequences that still resonate to this day. But the impact of that defeat was largely confined to these shores. The impact of the ’89 collapse resonated around the world. Amm…I would have thought this is blindingly obvious and uncontentious.
I certainly agree that the revolutionary subjectivity of the modern Western working class is more often than not presented like some religious tablet of stone in much Marxist analysis. I read little that convincingly addresses the changing nature of the Western working class and the complexities of modern class consciousness. Anybody out there with suggestions please let me know.
But lets accept that what you say is true. What does that mean in terms of strategy? You imply submission.
Comment by Ger Francis — 5 March, 2008 @ 7:55 am
This is a refreshingly open-minded discussion paper from Ger. Although I come from a different political background (1980s CP / Marxism Today/Eurocommunist) and haven’t had anything like the same involvement in Respect what is exciting about is is the willingness to be reflective, self-critical and free of bold claims based on a wilful certainty about the world.
In large measure the culture of Marxism, particularly the early twentry-first century British version practiced by our miniscule Far Left, precludes all this. By engaging with these fatal flaws Ger opens up the possibility for a plural political formation in which a much more open-minded Marxism might flourish, though not dominate.
Part of this process means debunking the myth, largel;y clung to across the Far Left that Marxism remains undamaged and intact, provides a totalising narrative of the world, will continue to frame how we organise and represents the most radical end of the political spectrum. Yet experience suggests that Marxism often instead produces a mix of dogmatic beliefs and conservative-minded organisations, and thios is by no means restricted to the SWP.
The worst expression of this is the assumption of near-automatic leadership and centrality to a left-of-Labour project by these apparewnt guardians of ’socialist truth’. This must be given up, so that ideas and organisations acquire a dep-seated mix of pluralism and participation. A pluralism that will treat participants equally, not awarding the Marxist ‘current’ the privilege of unchallenged claim to the radical.
This in no way precludes the participation of revolutionary socialists in a left-of-labour project but it does demand two key elements. Firstly the strength of such a project will be its breadth of appeal around the axis of left social-democracy, not the centrality given to those whose priority is to defend the revolutionary socialist core. Secondly, entirely new ways of organising must be develooped to appeakl to audiences entirely beyond the reach of tiny Far Left groups who have a proven record of reelling far more than they ever atttract, incapable of retaining most members and sustaining any detectable pattern of growth. If such groups are able to dicate how a left-of-labour project organises then it will have no future. That much is certain.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 5 March, 2008 @ 7:58 am
Mike….keep on taking the medication mate.You need it or something.Better still your bitter twisted invective does your cause(whatever that is?)no favours whatsoever.Ever tried counselling?
Comment by Percy — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:33 am
I read with interest post 45 by Richard Searle and the activities of the Manchester Branch.
In Newham we don’t have any such activerty, we don’t have any Branch meeting’s and I don’t think we even have a Branch, if we do I’ve never been invited to any of it’s meetings although we do have some sort of committee and three Councillors.
This very morning whilst supping my tea I read in the local rag of a paper that Respect have named their team to stand for the London Assembly in May. It said that George Galloway heads the list and will be joined by two members of Newham Respect and that Councillor Hanif Abdulmuhit will contest the City and East London seat. It’s nice that the local capitalist press keeps one informed as it seems that I’m only a paper member in what seem’s to be a bit of a closed shop in Newham.
Comment by sunshine 1 — 5 March, 2008 @ 9:13 am
1.2 “With the space once occupied by social democracy increasingly vacated”
Social Democracy can move both left and right, depending on the circumstances. The Northern Rock nationalisation and increasing attempts to control the European tax havens of the rich show it’s still capable of adopting elements of its classic programme for a mixed economy. It’s still important for unions and LP members to fight to extend such measures and make them permanent.
2.1 “The events of 1989 have proved to be a severe test for the perspectives and analysis of the Marxist left in general. The perspectives of the SWP in the aftermath of the 1989 collapse of the regimes across East European were critically flawed. A celebratory tone and cheery optimism for the prospects of a growth of the international left stood out. This was wishful thinking.”
The main flaw was in failing to see the contradictory situation arising from 1989 and not defending the socialised nature of the economy. Cliff quoted the CPB’s General Secretary, Nina Temple approvingly, when she said “I think the SWP was right, the Trotskyists were right, that it was not socialism in Eastern Europe”. He also quoted Hobsbawm’s statement in 1990 that: “ It obviously wasn’t a workers state, nobody in the Soviet Union believed it was a workers state.”
The logic of this position was left social democratic.
It led to the false presumption that there was nothing whatever to defend in the economic relationships in Eastern Europe, a spontaneist conception of the political struggle and a failure to identify the rightist elements politically.
In the UK, the SWP recruited a large number of people on this perspective, but had nothing to say to them when it became clear that the collapse of the Soviet economy was obviously a disaster for the working class.
Harman’s “sideways move argument” exemplified this approach.
The SWP were also unable to predict that the bureaucracy would be forced to adopt measures of state control in order to prevent a national disaster and that neo-Stalinist political forces would re-emerge.
2.2 “The collapse of the Eastern bloc equalled in popular consciousness the collapse of the feasibility of any socialist project. If those regimes had been overthrown by forces trying to reclaim some more democratic version of socialism, or even social democracy, the wider consequences might have been different. Instead, they were overthrown and replaced by forces which embraced neo liberalism and Western bourgeois democracy”
The idea that a social democratic opposition to Stalinism could have led to radically different consequences after 1989 is utopian. Gorbachev represented that option, became completely isolated, and is now a discredited figure in Russia.
Social Democracy could only have worked via a mixed economy and parliamentary democracy. But that required not only breaking the control of the Stalinized CP, but also preventing the development of workers democracy and workers councils.
There is a definite link in the train of thought which sees the space occupied by social democracy in the west being vacated, while believing social democracy could have been a viable alternative to Stalinism in the USSR and Eastern Europe.
The same link which leads to programmatic adaptation towards social democratic currents from the former Stalinist parties in broad mass parties in Western Europe.
It derives from the similar mistake made by Cliff in the early 1990’s.
Lack of programmatic clarity and blurring the political differences between left social democracy and Marxism.
Comment by prianikoff — 5 March, 2008 @ 9:25 am
I largely agree with Ger’s analysis however I do think that he needs to give more attention to the reason behind the SWP’s failour to “genuinely absorb the lessons from their work in Stop the War and Respect”.
I think we need to locate this firmly with the theoretical faliour to square the need for broad socialist formations with the need for revolutionary socialism.
The idea of a ‘united front of a special kind’ was that the broad movements/united fronts such as StWC and UAF etc. showed that a revolutionary party could successfully work together with different political tendencies while remaining primarily an independent party. With Respect it was thought that this strategy could mean that we could have our cake and eat it - a independent revo’ organisation (that could continue to go “straight to the class”) and a broad left organisation that would attract a wide spectrum of activists and supporters.
The fundamental problem with this is that political parties are very different from single/limited issue united fronts (a point made well by Nick Wrack http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=879). The essential operation of a broad party means that if a group within it continues to see itself as the primary site for providing a ‘comprehensive political programme’ or for being the dynamic force to drive through change, this creates a dynamic of competition. A small example: at a Manchester StW demo’ this meant that the SWP prioritised having 6/7 Socialist worker stalls over promoting Respect.
Rather then the power hungry-ness of cc members, it was the fact that the strategy of UFSK allows SWP members to justify the continued primacy of the revolutionary party, and the relatively large size of the SWP inside Respect, that necessarily lead to its structural domination and the limitation of the independent internal life of Respect.
The consultation of this is that the problem with the SWP wasn’t that they were organised revolutionaries but that they gave the revo’ party primacy over the broad party ==> there is nothing nessisarly wrong with organising inside RR as revolutionaries as long as we reject that UFSK.
Hence I would like to see a revolutionary current within Respect that does not see itself as the finished product but which tries to increase not it’s influence but the influence of revolutionary ideas and strategy within the party. Key to this is that the revolutionary grouping must accept the primacy of the broad socialist grouping as the vehicle for trying to change the world and except that ideas from different currents can be as important as their’s.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 5 March, 2008 @ 10:45 am
just a small extra comment:
I think people are confused when they talk about “Socialists with in Respect” - whether they would self-identify as such or not all Respect members are socialists of the broad sort. Socialism as a concept encompasses a very wide variety of progressive positions. We should talk rather of this or that current of socialism within Respect i.e. Islamic/Christian socialists, Marxist socialists, Social-democratic socialists etc.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 5 March, 2008 @ 10:49 am
I know that you couldn’t cover everything Ger but I also see at least one vital omission in your otherwise informative analysis.
ie: the negative role of the social-democratic and communist parties, and the TU bureaucracy [TUB’s)(the TUB’s then as now), in as Birchall aptly put it ‘Baling out the System’ in the mid to late 70’s
Haven’t got time to go into it now so will come back later.
Comment by Halshall — 5 March, 2008 @ 12:19 pm
Thank you Ger
I am enjoying the discussions on this blog as I am one on the sidelines having only been to a few SWP meetings one what I found very distasteful.
I found that all the people from the SWP that I was in contact on a one to one situation completely turned into some demonic form when they were together making attacks on something that I commented upon I found this display from some members of the SWP quiet disturbing they wanted open debates but were all singing from the same hymn sheet it was to cult like for me as I really dont believe in the revolution I sit wondering who would ‘run it’ when it if it ever came.
I have never been one for theories and - what was once can be again - we have moved on and some people should look at what year we are! in fact which Century come to that!
What I believe in is doing! going out into the masses ,and letting people know there are things that can be done, and everyone can make a difference.
Education now is more important than it ever was.
I can go back to being told that I should “get a job and help my mum” that was from priests and teachers and I was only fourteen being obedient I done both Most working class people now know that a good education is more important than it ever was.
Our social security system has made huge improvements, not so many poor and needy fall through the net, but the need is still there for fighting for that much fairer system.
But? how do we go about this, we know that this cannot only be achieved by having little closed meetings, and everyone agreeing to whoever dictates on that day, this will never be achieved by a group of people who read books on the revolution, and what was achieved by Lenin Marx’s of whatever bible they worship, it is much more complicated than that.
Being of Russian heritage they should listen to the words uttered words ‘Glasnost’ springs to mind this is needed to get anywhere in any relationship it is an important word and the SWP have failed to include this into there terminology.
The need to get people to join Trade Unions, this is important.
We have moved into a more capitalistic society and peoples need to want, and to have ,are now things that we all strive to and we should not be embarrassed to want, as long as there is a sense of achievement by getting it and not having it handed to you on a plate.
To have a progressive left personally as someone on the outside feels is very important, but also important is supporting other opinions and open democracy I feel that is much more important to the society we find ourselves in today.
Firstly to sustain the status quo we must be open and honest I felt stifled with some members of the SWP I hated the secret meetings the debates you could not debate in and the constant lists made up at secret meetings,and double standards that they have.
We need to move more into the society that we now live in but our number One task is to put all our cards on the table from the off
I look at Respect as the way forward SWP may have been good at some organization and being able to delegate and committed to certain things but we need much more listening to contributions from others
The SWP need to press fast forward and stop living in the past we need to fight for a future that is more inclusive open and honest.
Respect is the way forward but we must start as we intend to go on.
Glasnost
Comment by Carole — 5 March, 2008 @ 1:20 pm
“all offered as explanations for the fact that large chunks of the working class seem not to recognise that their best interests lie with you guys (despite the fact that you - revolutionary socialists - cannot stay friends with each other for more than about fifteen seconds)”
Great line - I suggest someone put this on a T-shirt.
Ger, have you ever dealt publically with the accusations from Sue Blackwell and others? Until you do, people will take your criticisms of the SWP _after_ being expelled from it with the same pinch of salt you do when someone is dumped by their partner and says “Yeah, well, s/he was only a slag anyway.”
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 5 March, 2008 @ 2:00 pm
Ger
“The impact of the ’89 collapse resonated around the world. Amm…I would have thought this is blindingly obvious and uncontentious.”
Well no it isn’t obvious since there is no reason to suppose that it was any more significant in the case of other countries than it were in the UK (and for all the reasons I’ve explained, it wasn’t particularly significant in the UK). Also, the ‘resonating around the world’ thing - if it were true - isn’t enough to sustain your thesis. By analogy: somebody is dying of cancer; on the way to hospital they get run down by a truck; you turn around and say look what counts is that they were run down by a truck; well no, because they were dying anyway. (So there’s an inherent problem with counterfactuals in all this stuff.)
Partly the problem here is to do with the idea that you can isolate causal variables in the way that you suppose. You know that there’s this difference between necessary and sufficient conditions, right? So consider:
1. Was 1989 necessary to produce the situation we’re in now? Answer: No - It is possible to imagine the Left being just as weak now with the Soviet Union still intact (so my point that it was weak before 1989).
2. Was 1989 sufficient to produce the situation we’re in now? Answer: No - (a) that’s incoherent - social forces don’t play out in isolation; (b) one can imagine the Left responding differently to 1989, and being in a better situation than now.
As far the question about submission. Well I’m not a revolutionary socialist, so in a sense it’s not my problem. But, fwiw, if i were you guys I’d aim local. Frankly, you don’t really have anything interesting to say about global forces (I don’t mean you personally), but you do good work at the local level: Louise has been pushing prison reform on here - bloody good that somebody is talking about that; abortion - don’t let the forces of reaction roll back gains there; as a buttress against the BNP - you’re definitely needed; housing; wages; etc, etc.
(Sorry that last bit sounded terribly patronising… but there you go).
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 2:09 pm
Hi Jeremy,
Yes - on your last points - we need a left to fight for reforms and provide a butress against the BNP etc. That certainly makes sense to me. But also, looking at climate change, I can’t see how a society driven by uncontrolled capitalist growth can possibly make the necessary transition to a low carbon economy. While I’m not sure if classic revolutionary left politics are still viable today, I still enetertain the possibility of a politics that somehow point beyond capitalism.
Re the debate about the significance of the collapse of Stalinism in 1989. Please look at my post # 33 above (if you can be arsed!!!) - where I attempt to locate these changes in long term trends over the 20th century in the global economy: i.e The move from nationally organised state capitalisms to a globalising neo-liberalism. That explains why a certain view of ’socialism’ seemed possible to mainstream western politicians in the mid twentieth century, but not so now.
Yes, your general point about the left is true. We have been around a long time, mostly loosing, mostly entertaining illusions. But yes, we still need to search for political alternatives. Perhaps we need to do this without hype and boosterism.
Comment by Larry — 5 March, 2008 @ 2:38 pm
I would like to thank Ger Francis for his reply in post #55 concerning Sue Blackwell and Steve Godward. No doubt all the other socialists like myself and Tony Greenstein were “under the influence of the AWL” as we shared a similiar position to Steve Godward and Sue Blackwell - indeed the whole of the third who walked out of the last SA conference in protest at the closing down of the SA were no doubt indistinguishable from the AWL and as such fair targets for witch hunting purges from any positions in the movement. Presumably *all* of the independents in Exeter would also be fair game for such an approach as we opposed the move to Respect - we wanted to retain a socialist organisation.
Ger Francis wrote in #55 “It does not surprise me in the least that ‘Mike’ tries to take up their defense since his arguments have far more in common with the like of Denham than they have differences. (To be fair to both Steve and Sue Blackwell, they deserve a far better attorney). ”
I’m sure Mike Pearn can defend himself - but this illustrates the point nicely. It is absurd to equate Mike’s politics with the AWL’s they have next to nothing in common. Mike harkens back to the good old days of the IS tradition before it degenerated and went rotten - as he sees it - a viewpoint far removed from that of the AWL.
In essense Ger is saying that the bureacratic and undemocratic process of packing meetings to remove people you disagree with is fine in a coalition - especially if those people advocate class struggle socialist politics.
For critics of the SWP within the Socialist Alliance the events in Birmingham were symptomatic of what was rotten and poisonous with the methods of the SWP. Ger says here that he has no regrets. Speaks volumes!
Comment by garagelanduk — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:15 pm
Larry
The trouble with a politics that somehow points beyond capitalism is the resilience of capitalism and the nature of people. Too many people do too well out of capitalism - well in the West, anyway - that it’ll be easy to construct a mass movement to bring its downfall. You should have a look at some of the happiness studies data. It’s rather disturbing if you’re committed to the view that the proletariat are downtrodden and alienated (which is not to argue that they are not in a certain kind of way downtrodden).
Your analysis of larger forces in #33 is well put. There was an interesting book by David Coates called “Labour in power?” (published about 1980, I think). It was a fairly sophisticated Marxist analysis purporting to show how the tendency of the rate of the profit to decline impacted on the global stage to rob governments of any real room for manoeuvre. The point being, of course, that it’s a fairly standard Marxist thought that the space for political actors to make an impact is radically circumscribed. You’ve got to wait until the time is right. The trouble is I think you might be in the midst of a rather long ‘war of position’ phase (to borrow some terminology from Gramsci)!
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:18 pm
Jeremy,
I think by any happiness criteria, New labour Briatin is a despperate failure, worth looking at the recent pamphlet “Feel Bad Britain” about this very question: http://www.hegemonics.co.uk/index.html
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:37 pm
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Isn’t it wonderful how Ger was full of passionate intensity for the SWP, and now equally full of passionate intensity against them, with not a moment for pause or hint of a mea cupla? Never seems to have any self-doubt at all, this boy.
“If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too”
As for his comment #55, is Ger suggesting that his problems with Sue Blackwell are also due to her “pandering to pro-war anti-Muslim propaganda”? If not, then what?
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
Odd that I should have mentioned Tony Greenstein in my last post #71. I justs did a Google on Steve Godward and the first article I came across was by Tony Greenstein on Indymedia which is a MUST read in the context of this debate. See:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/07/273662.html
For me the key point here is the exact parallel between what happened in the Socialist Alliance and later with Respect. Read it - those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it!
Comment by garagelanduk — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Dave #71
Anyone who has followed Mike Pearn’s contributions towards the debate over Respect over the last few years would see exactly the same caracatures, accusing Muslims of being petit bourgeois business people, accsusing Muslims of being inherently reactionary, etc, as the AWL use. Mike’s obsession with Slama Yaqoob’s brothers activities for example, as if they would be relevent, even if Mike’s information was accuate, which it is not.
The fact that Mike has formally some different positions from the AWL doesn’t contradict the fact that over this question he has almost an indistinguishable position.
There were genuine political problems in Birmingham. Now within that, there were two structural political problems. i) that the SWP’s approiach to the Socialist Alliance was the same as their approach to Respect - seeking to control it by bureuacratic means; and ii) within the SWP there was no structure or mechanism for politically dealing with the political reservations of Sue and Rumy. Indeed, from what I can gather, the political culture of the SWP had also allowed Rumy’s islaomphobia to remain unchallenged for far too long. There was also a problem of context that the Socialist Allaince in most places, had failed to outgrow the culture of being a collection of left groups.
Now, it is a huge leap from Ger saying he is not going to give a mea culpa for events where he was only one player among many; to you concluding that that is justifying the use of bureaucratic manouvres as a way of resolving political differences.
Life is more nuanced than you seem prepared to admit.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
Andy
I don’t have time to read that but I know the work of Layard, Seligman, Argyle, etc. The point is that we’re no happier now than we were fifty years ago (that’s what the data suggests). But this is precisely what one would expect if one thinks that happiness is not hugely influenced by external circumstances (did you know that people who suffer terrible accidents, and end up paralysed, are only very slightly less happy in the long-term than they were before?).
The fact is that people in Western countries - where capitalism is most advanced - *tend* to be happier than people in non-Western countries (and yes, I’m aware that there’s a tension here with my previous contention that happiness is not hugely influenced by external events: the key word is “hugely” - the way the various forces play out is complex; for example, there’s evidence that we require a certain basic level of material well-being before we reach normal levels of happiness).
Did you see the research announced today that shows that genes are a big part of the story? (Again I don’t think this is what a Marxist analysis would lead one to expect.)
The general point is that you’ve got to read beyond Leftist sources; otherwise you’re not going to be right about this kind of stuff. (And I quickly say that I have no idea how much you’ve read - for all I know you might be an expert.)
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 3:57 pm
Jeremy, you shoud read the pamphlet by Pat Devine and others, it is very good, but your original contention was that too many people do well out of capitalism, and that this is reflected in happiness studies, just to quote a few examples to contradict this:
“crippling depression and chronic anxiety are the biggest causes of misery in Britain today”
http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/research/mentalhealth/DEPRESSION_REPORT_LAYARD.pdf
Richard Wilkinson of Sussex University showed how the health of a whole society and of every group within it suffers when income gaps widen
R. Wilkinson, Unhealthy Societies, Routledge, London 1995.
More people leave the prison system with a drug addiction than enter it. There are currently 3000 children in prison at any one time in Britain, an 800% increase since 1993 and the highest proportion in the developed world. Twenty-nine of them have killed themselves since 1990
BBC Newsnight, 4th December 2006.
Britain has the highest rate of premature birth in Europe, primarily, a recent Leicester University study suggested, because of stress amongst women in the mid- to late stages of pregnancy.< br />
The Observer, 7th January 2007.
Doesn’t sound so happy to me.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:12 pm
#76
” Indeed, from what I can gather, the political culture of the SWP had also allowed Rumy’s islaomphobia to remain unchallenged for far too long.”
Out of curiosity, Andy, where did you gather that?
Comment by Darren — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
darren
From Rumy’s own islamophobic writings, despite the fact he had been a member of the SWP for almost two decades.
Paradoxically the SWP is quite tolerant of people thinking or even doing completely their own thing, as long as they don’t actively oppose or undermine whatever the latest wheeze from the centre is.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
Any links?
It would be interesting to check them out.
Comment by Darren — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:19 pm
Rumy condemns himself here:
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/07/274757.html
As an apostate, he is de-facto Islamaphobic. The high-pitched voice you hear in the background is Ger Francis wearing a fake beard begging to be allowed to stone him.
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:25 pm
Andy
The fact that some large minority of people are desperately unhappy (which is true - it’s always been true) in no way contradicts the proposition that too many people do too well out of capitalism to make it easy to construct an efficacious mass movement. The point is even if you’re talking about 20% of the population being miserable, 80% are not.
This is partly a numbers game (not entirely, but partly). Surely this is the whole point that Marx was making when he insisted that immiseration of the proletariat was a necessary condition for the emergence of a fully class conscious proletariat (and therefore necessary also for any potential revolution).
This is not a moral point. It’s a point about practical politics. However much we both might regret the fact that some people are screwed up by depression, drugs, etc (even if we disagree about whether this situation can be changed by a socialist revolution - you know, the lessons of history aren’t on your side in that respect), if there are a lot more people who are basically happy with their lot, then it makes the task of a revolutionary party that much harder.
I wouldn’t have thought that was particularly contentious?
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
http://www.whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/Politics/Rumy2.html
http://www.workerspower.com/index.php?id=29,207,0,0,1,0
And the source article for these quotes is lost to me right now:
“when you see a bearded Muslim, dressed in the ‘traditional’ garb, make no mistake: he is bad news and stands in vehement contradiction to practically everything the Left stands for.”
“All the lessons of the struggles against women’s oppression should have told the Left that you do not hype up someone who is devout in the adherence to a religion that reduces women to second class status, and then revels in her oppression by covering herself by a hijab.”
By the way, if you want to undersatnd the problems in Birmingham, the racist AWL member Jim Denham from Brum responded to these specific comments as follows:
http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=978#comment-14116
“The comments from Rumy (about Salma Yaqoob, etc) you quote seem to me to be entirely proper comments for a marxist socialistb to make about Islamism.”
“
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Post 69: “1. Was 1989 necessary to produce the situation we’re in now? Answer: No - It is possible to imagine the Left being just as weak now with the Soviet Union still intact (so my point that it was weak before 1989).”
There is an interesting pamphlet by Permanent Revolution, which argues that the 15-year-long capitlist boom (now possibly coming to an end) is the result of the bringing of Eastern Europe, ex-USSR and China into the world market. I expect other Marxist economists have made similar points. The ideological effects of this (economic) defeat may be as great as those due to the discrediting of “socialism” when these states were brought down.
Capitalism has had more room for manoeuvre economically and has justfied its warmongering with reference to defending “Western Values”, including the “benefits” of these >15 years of neoliberalism.
The collapse of the “workers’ states” was a disaster, not because of what they were, but because it allowed a rampant neoliberalism to develop.
Having said that, when it happened, it looks like there was never going to be any other outcome - as the working class was so thoroughly pissed off with what they were told was a “socialist paradise” that they were prepared to countenance capitalist hell instead. This might not have been the case in ‘56 or ‘68.
BTW, I’m not a supporter of Permanent Revolution. I’m in the ISG.
Comment by PhilW — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:38 pm
Jeremey #83
Try arguing againstyt what I actually say and think, instead of creating a r-r-revolutionary straw man who is easy to knock down.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 4:39 pm
Andy
“Try arguing againstyt what I actually say and think,”
You said:
“but your original contention was that too many people do well out of capitalism, and that this is reflected in happiness studies, just to quote a few examples to contradict this”
You then gave lots of examples of people who are miserable. But it is the case that the fact that some minority of people are miserable does not contradict the proposition that too many are happy for revolution to be an easy thing to achieve.
That *is* a response to the point you made. If you want me to express it in the terms of formal logic (thereby laying out exactly why your response does not contradict my original point) then I can.
But you don’t want me to. Not least because you’re out of your depth here.
Andy, I’m sure you’re a good guy, etc., but you should know when to concede a point. The fact that you are emotionally committed to the project of revolutionary socialism has no impact on the facts of the matter on the ground. And surely that’s part of the point of Ger’s original posting.
Anyway, this has been fun, but I’m out of here now. I do appreciate that you haven’t just shouted me down (as would have happened on Lenin’s blog, for example).
Comment by Jeremy Stangroom — 5 March, 2008 @ 5:04 pm
Andy Newman said: Now, it is a huge leap from Ger saying he is not going to give a mea culpa for events where he was only one player among many; to you concluding that that is justifying the use of bureaucratic manouvres as a way of resolving political differences.”
With all due respect Andy, these strike me as weasel words.
As I understand the situation Ger was the SWP fulltimer in charge of the SWP’s intervention into Birmingham StW and the Birmingham SA. Given what we know about the SWP’s structure and what we know from the writings of Sue Blackwell amongst others, he was the person who organised all of the “bureaucratic manouvers” used by the SWP to sieze control of those organisations and drive out those who disagreed with their political approach.
In this regard he wasn’t “one player amongst many” but the central player. As you yourself seemed to recognise when you referred to him as a “political thug”.
Nowadays you seem to share the political view of Ger’s side in those disputes. Ger, likewise, hasn’t changed his view. Both of you are entitled to hold those positions. But what’s interesting in the context of this article, with its lengthy critique of the SWP’s undemocratic conduct, is that you have joined Ger in silence about Ger’s own undemocratic conduct.
People are entitled to view Ger’s fine words about democracy and openness with a great deal of suspicion when he accompanies them with a defence of his own right to act in an undemocratic and wildly nasty way against political opponents. And people are entitled to view your attitudes with a similar scepticism when you are now prepared to gloss over such behaviour, when they agree with you on wider political issues. “Democracy and openness” is a much less inspiring rallying cry when it includes as a footnote “unless we thing that packing and purges are necessary”.
I’m not really interested in whether Ger still thinks that he was right on the political issues in the SWP’s dispute with Steve Godward and most of the rest of the left in Birmingham. I’m interested in whether he still thinks that being politically right gives him the right to trample over democracy and the rights of his opponents. His answer, that he “has no regrets” rather strongly implies that he still thinks exactly that, which makes his critique of the SWP ring more than little hollow. I presume that the SWP leadership think that they were politically right in their dispute with Galloway and his supporters and that it was really important to boot Ger, Hoveman, Ovenden etc out on their arses.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 5 March, 2008 @ 5:09 pm
Spot on.
Not only does Francis think he was right, he boasts about having “dealt with” Steve Godward.
It comes as no surprise that Andy Newman now seeks to cover up for him. They are peas in a pod.
Comment by bill j — 5 March, 2008 @ 5:20 pm
I agree with Irish Mark P. As I said in my original post when I raised this - I am quiet happy to let by gones be by gones. But the apologetics and re-writing of history around those events disgusts me.
Comment by garagelanduk — 5 March, 2008 @ 5:39 pm
#33 Larry R - thanks for engaging in a genuine discussion with the points I raised and I take note of the structural changes you refer to in capitalism.
I would contend however that British social democracy was always rotten (even though I spent many years myself in this rotten party!) It was born rotten as the party to organise the British working class within the confines of imperialist politics, whgic by 1900 was very much the monopoly capital you referred to. Therefore in 1914 when the Second International collapsed, the rupture in Britain was limited - unlike in France, Germany etc wher ether had been a genuine Socialist Party until its betrayal and sizeable parties, supporting the Third International were born. (The CPGB was formed instead out of sects that had previously existed, but was nevertheless at first healthy, though doomed).
I agree largely with your analysis of the democratic tasks of the bourgeois revolution and this explains permanent revolution far better than those who clearly ahve never read it but claim to defend permanent revolution. In essence, what you are saying is that the working class has to be hegemonic in relation to all these tasks. I agree. But even when we cannot be hegemonic because of bourgeois accommodation, than we must ensure that we develop a party that champions these demands against the hypocricy of the bourgeois politicians.
Comment by howard t — 5 March, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
In the wake of 68 there was the ‘upturn’ in class struggle.
Following that we had the downturn led by the mass parties of socil-democracy and the various CPs (in Europe).
(see Burchall ‘ Bailing out the System’), since then we’ve had ‘Thacherism’ and defeats for the W/C like the miners (in the UK), and the continual sellouts of the TU bureacracy which have kept workers in their place, demoralised and defeated.
The interventions of the ‘revolutionary left’ have been largely ineffectual both politically and industrially since the upturn, except to mitigate some of the worst effects.
The effect of 1989 on the ‘left’is hard to summarise except given the nature of the mass CPs and their conservative role in holding back struggle it is clearly a mixed one.
I would suggest that in these respects Ger’s article is lacking.
The British LP under ‘New Labour’ could hardly have gotten away with it’s betrayals of the W/C without the complicity ( with certain eceptions; eg :-Serwrotka, Crow etc ) of the TU leaders.
Now we have the leaders of the biggest revolutionary group betraying the W/C.
I hope this doesn’t sound either too reductionist or pessimistic, but with the contraction of W/C self-activity since the mid-70s the rest seem to follow in a long sorry saga.
Comment by Halshall — 5 March, 2008 @ 6:37 pm
Howard t - # 91
I agree with your description of the birth of the British Labour Party compared to other Social Democratic parties. It reminds me of Tony Cliff at a meeting, who once paraphrased Shakespears Twelfth Night to describe the different origins of social democratic parties: “Some are born rotten, some achieve rotteness, and some have rottenness thrust upon them” to describe the Labour Party, the German SPD and the Russian Bolsheviks / CP USSR respectively!
However, in post #33 I was not just talking about the particular traditions and trajectories of social democratic parties in particular countries. I was talking about a general structural trend in twentieth century capitalism that made Social Democracy and Stalinism appear as realistic political propositions to a major portion of society that included both sections of the working class and the ruling class. Capitalism itself was moving towards state control of the economy. Its what some Sociologists called ‘organised capitalism’ (Lash and Urry 1986), and its what lead certain bourgeois politicians to say ‘we are all socialists now’. And that is what changed after 1973. So all Social Democratic / Stalinist / state socialist currents, whatever their origins were going to loose traction in the last quater of the twentieth century.
Now us revolutionary international socialists had always said that this ’socialism’ was not real socialism at all. But we were under the illusion that its demise would clear the way for the real thing, and that we would emerge victorious from its rubble! Of course, the movement of capitalism towards state socialism / state capitalism somehow made our ideas more credible, we could exist in its shadow, and as it negation.
What we have now is a bigger task - the recomposition of the working class and class consciousness on a global scale. Thus if it is true, the quote from Callinicos’s ‘Resources of Critique’ in Ger Frances piece above that describes todays working class as “an aggregate of different categories of wage-labourer scattered across a globally integrated economic system, and not any kind of collectivity, let alone a revolutionary political subject” presents us with such a daunting task.
Now Halshall # 92 is right to point out the other elements to this process of neo-liberal victory - the craven surrender of Trade Union bureacrats and Labour leaderships. And of course nothing is ever simply a grand structural trend towars neo-liberalism or anything else - these ’structures’ are themselves composed of individual acts, are the outcomes of particular class battles and strategies, that ultimately aggregate together as a ’stucture’ or ‘historic trend’.
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 7:22 pm
Jeremy #87
It is utterly ludicrous for you to say that you are responding to what I am actually saying, and then totally falsely attribute this to me with no evidence whatsoever:
“The fact that you are emotionally committed to the project of revolutionary socialism “
Where have I written that I am “committed to the project of revolutionary socialism ” ????? I have argued till I am blue in the face that I am committed to building a broad, left social democratic party.
if you make assumptions as huge as that, then how can we have a debate?
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:09 pm
Larry, what I took from the Callinicos quote was something altogether different. [if someone wants to put a used copy of the book up on eBay I might buy it…].
Surely, a problem socialists face today is that one part of the change in “consciousness” of workers is that no one ’stands for’ us. What does tend to occur, with a promisingly increasing rate of frequency, is that workers do turn out for a bit of political toe-dipping from time to time armed with an equally appropriate dose of cynicism toward “the leadership”.
The picture, therefore, that Callinicos paints to contrast older forms of class struggle with today’s conditions is useless. Take a look at Detroit for example, now on the one hand it has the lowest level of union membership in car-making history and yet, only last year, saw a one-day shutdown of only one group winning an industry wide pay and conditions contract.
Are Detroit car workers closer to being a “revolutionary subject” of history? Not really.
But they all knew full bloody well that the fear of disruption, particularly with competition at hysterical rates with imported cars (and US built, “foreign” owned plants) meant that the owners didn’t have room to sneeze.
Some of the political machine minders in the US are finally waking up to the fact that the grassroots mobilisations around Obama *may* have something to do with the war! Quite a few others are beginning to examine the racism in the Billary campaign output. And you have to get a grasp of the scale of this - over 3 million people turned out yesterday just in Texas [and this is just for nominations of candidates].
Certainly, it would be nice to have revolutionary socialists at the doors of these protests, campaigns and very local initiatives but we have been hog-tied for so long with forms of organisation - and far more importantly - a culture that has prevented any lasting engagement at a level that makes sense to those entering political activity.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:26 pm
88 and 90
Actually there is no rewriting of history.
The events in Birmingham did cause concern right throughout the socialist alliance. BUt I have always recogniced there were two sides to the story.
Birmingham was like a canary in a coal-mine at showing some problems with the relationship between the SWP and the Socialist Allaince and also the way that the SWP didn’t have the culture, structures or politics to allow internal disagreements to be democratically resolved. That is the context that Ger was working in. Clearly the record of the last two or three years shows that Ger has broken from that context, culture and politics. And indeed the importnat thing to recognise is that when you are in the SWP, there is no real alternative to working in that way.
But there was always another side to the story, and the Islamophobia in the left in Birmingham did need to be neutralised and excluded. I have always argued that the political problem was a real one. What was lacking was the culture of open debate, or indeed democratic structures, in the SWP that would have allowed Sue and Rumy to express their concerns and be won over.
The people who are rewriting hisstory are those who don’t recognise that Steve was to a certain degree architect of his own misfortune as well; and that the pernicious role played by islamophobia.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:41 pm
Having escaped the clutches of the left centrists the danger for RR now is to fall into the hands of the right centrists. Assorted Stalinists and other counter-revolutionaries and liquidationists.
For me, Marxists in RR should be fighting for RR to be Marxist, to champion Marxist analysis and develop Marxist programmes. That is not the same as the wild-eyed petty bourgeois ultra-leftism of the SWP. Stalinists will of course say that it is.
It is a sociological law that when a centrist zigs it is because the situation called for a zag and with the SWP going all Stalinist third period on us and the right centrists insisting on reformism and popular fronts and dissolution then I think we can safely say that the time is right for making RR a genuine Marxist grouping that is capable of connecting with any emerging vanguard of the working class.
I do think that it is the people who can take their analysis of the degeneracy of the SWP all the way back to its roots in the degeneration of the fourth international after the death of Trotsky and during WW 2 and the beginning of the Cold War who will eventually be in a position to take practical Marxism forward and rediscover the Transitional Programme and make it relevant to today.
Comment by David Ellis — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
Andy - I don’t think Sue B in Birmingham was being ‘Islamophobic’! Perhaps we need to make the following distinction:
There are some good, sincere people on the left who mistakenly emphasise their secularist or feminist commitments in a way that can block making a neccessary alliance with Muslims. This is a tactical error - but it is very different to actual Islamophobia, which is part of a racist / imperialist scapegoating of Muslims.
Thats why some in the SWP were wrong during their ‘respect turn’ to make hysterical and shrill denunciations of other socialists as ‘Islamophobes’! _ Just as they are are wrong now in their anti-Respect turn in denouncing former Muslim allies as ‘communalists’! These shrill accusations are a moralistic substitute for inter-left debate, and represent two sides of the same coin.
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 8:59 pm
Larry
I am pretty sure I haven’t accused Sue of being islamophobic.
Actually the misguided secularism you descrobe is not a tactial but a strategic error based upon not grasping the importance of multi-culturalism to the socialist project.
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 March, 2008 @ 9:03 pm
David Ellis ‘http…thetroublewithcentrism.blogspot.com’- gets a lot of milage out of his single political concept! Centrist, centrist, centrist, everything he disagrees with is CENTRIST! There are of course other words in the Marxist lexicon, which in the right hands can be a subtle and illuminating tool of analysis!
Comment by Larry R — 5 March, 2008 @ 9:04 pm
“neutralised and excluded”
Andy your still running on Lubyanka time mate, what Ger did in Birmingham damaged people, yet he seems to have not learnt a thing from his behavior, it seems all that was important for him was that he got his own way politically.[and you to a lesser degree]
I wonder sometimes why some on the left show so little self awareness, if you spend years of your life, not only as a member of the SWP but as a willing tool of that organizations leadership. Then write as Ger has above, do you not feel it might be time to ask whether your cut out to be a ‘progressive’ politician. Instead of telling other people how to live their lives should you not at the very least take time out from politics to ask yourself how you became such a pliable and willing fool?
I’m pleased Ger has seen the light as far as the SWP is concerned, and we may be able to learn lessons from his experience and I am certain he has much to offer the struggle, but I wonder after reading his piece whether it should be as a front line politician, whether revolutionary or reformist, for as a worker I really do not want people leading me in struggle who have had a history of smearing decent comrades, yet have no doubts about having done so.
Politics is about neutralizing your opponents arguments, but excluding them and by underhand means at that and being proud of the fact, what type of world will that lead to? Much the same as the current dug heap I would have thought. It was for this very reason the Russian workers refused to defend the USSR in 89, which gave the green light to Capital and its latest murderous onslaught.
When a rank and file party member makes a mistake it is not a major problem, but when someone in a leading position does the same, it cannot just be airbrushed away by changing horses, nor by turning on former comrades and claiming they were totally to blame, it is a tad more complex than that. We workers are not quite than gullible
Comment by Mick Hall — 5 March, 2008 @ 11:57 pm
MIck, note your out of context quote from me, that completely misrepresents what i said.
I said: “Islamophobia in the left in Birmingham did need to be neutralised and excluded.”
i.e, it was the political ideas of islamophobia that needed to be neutralised and excluded.
That is not the same thing as neutralising and excluding people.
You will note all along that I have argued that the political process was flawed.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:29 am
#74: You’re missing the more gemane lines -
“Things fall apart,
the *centre* cannot hold…” (my emphasis)
Comment by Nas — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:36 am
Andy Newman wrote “Anyone who has followed Mike Pearn’s contributions towards the debate over Respect over the last few years would see exactly the same caracatures, accusing Muslims of being petit bourgeois business people, accsusing Muslims of being inherently reactionary, etc, as the AWL use. Mike’s obsession with Slama Yaqoob’s brothers activities for example, as if they would be relevent, even if Mike’s information was accuate, which it is not.”
The problem with this comment is that my remarks concerning Salma Yaqoob and her brothers are true. Two of her brothers are in fact small scale businessmen and another, Rashad, has worked for a major Dubai based finance house and is currently concerned with advising Muslim businessmen in the hows of tax dodging. As for the my remarks that many of the leading figures in Respect prior to the split being petty bourgeois this too is factually accurate. The point is that these elements are petty bourgeois not that they are Muslims.
My positions then having absolutely nothing in common with those of the misnamed AWL which regards islam as a reactionary creed. my own view is that Islam in common with all religions can be either progressive or reactionary depending on circumstances and the class forces that adopt a given religion as a ideological tool to express their class or social interests.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:55 am
David Ellis wrote “For me, Marxists in RR should be fighting for RR to be Marxist…
I do think that it is the people who can take their analysis of the degeneracy of the SWP all the way back to its roots in the degeneration of the fourth international after the death of Trotsky and during WW 2 and the beginning of the Cold War who will eventually be in a position to take practical Marxism forward and rediscover the Transitional Programme and make it relevant to today.”
What utter drivel given that Leon Trotsky was firmly opposed to cross class populist political organisations such as Respect. I would suggest that Cde Ellis take some time out to read what Trotsky actually wrote about populist and workers parties in the last few of his life. Should he do so he will discover that Trotsky adamantly opposed populism and supported the fight for parties based on and in the working classes. A politics which has nothing in common with the deas of any of those groups which have supported any version of Respect the populist coalition.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 1:12 am
Mike - # 104
You say your “remarks concerning Salma Yaqoob and her brothers are true”. But Salma Yaqoobs brothers are not at issue here. It seems quite bizarre for you to bring her brothers into it!
In fact I know Trotskysists just as entrenched in rhetorics of pure class struggle as you are who have petty borgeois and even proper bourgeois siblings, parents, uncles etc. It is even quite usual for Trotskysists to be upper middle class - but we don’t crudely attack them for it! This is a really weak argument!
Now I really haven’t a clue about Salma Yaqoobs personal life or kinship / financial arrangements and how they might be combined or affect her politics. So you will have to enlighten us here.
How about some Marxist politics? I don’t think being “petty bourgeois” is akin to political leprosy. Many of the petty bourgeois can be poorer than many waged workers - and certainly more oppressed - especially if the are in a persecuted ethic minority. And any successful socialist movement will incorporate them into a counter-hegemonic bloc with the working classes - along with other popular classes.
The real issue is who leads this bloc? The answer is that the working class elements must lead the petty bourgeois, etc - not the other way around. Here we might agree? But in your writings terms like ‘petty bourgois’ are not used as part of an analysis of strategy and tactics, or the composition of class forces - they are merely crude political swear words.
Comment by Larry — 6 March, 2008 @ 1:55 am
Regarding the rather boring topic of a six year old dispute inside Brum STW: my view then, and now, was that unless those with an ultra-left hostility to an orientation on the Muslim community were marginalized, (and that’s the charitable description of their politics), there would have been two anti-war movements in the city. One, involving mainly the white hard left. The other, involving Muslims and in all likelihood dominated by the likes of hizb ut tahir. The ultra-left faction lost a vote, did not accept the outcome, and set up their own anti-war network which very quickly disappeared from the scene. This latter point, at least, is uncontentious.
It is in the nature of faction fights that people get hurt and upset. That’s regrettable, but I have never had any doubts about my own political position in this instance. Indeed, without having marginalized those hostile to an engagement with the Muslim community, not only would the anti-war movement have been irrevocably set back, the subsequent history of politics in the city would have been very different because Respect certainly would not have emerged organically out of the Stop the War Coalition in Birmingham in the way it did. Of course, this does not count for much with the likes of Dave Parks because he wants a ‘genuine’ socialist organisation. Fine. Go build one then.
Comment by Ger Francis — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:24 am
“Of course, this does not count for much with the likes of Dave Parks because he wants a ‘genuine’ socialist organisation. Fine. Go build one then.” - Ger Francis
Abrasive, certainly. Essentially correct, yes. Respect from the outset never sought to establish itself as The Socialist Party. What unravelled and led to the fall-out were essentially competing visions of alliance-building rather than an argument over the purity, or impurity, of the organisation’s socialist credentials.
The SWP’s practice of ‘the united front of a special type’ fell victim to a combination of Leninist control culture and narrow SWP party-building priorities. The SWP in particular cannot tolerate other poles of attraction emerging that challemge what it considers its leafership of the outside Left; George Galloway and Salma Yaqoob as individuals, a thriving Respect represented precisely this kind of challenge.
The alternative model is more complex but is founded primarily on the overwhelming necessity for a broad left-of-Labour Party. Many would add to the mix the central, leading role which must be played by those communities which provide currently the overwhelming majority of Respect’s electoral base, the Muslim community. Of course that base is no accident, the fact that this represents a section of society that has been demonised and criminalised adds further to the significance. In understanding the centrality of this feature of Respect a process must unfold that ensure means of participation and representation that fundamentally challenge a traditional left culture which has been almost exclusively white.
The experience in Tower Hamlets, Newham and Birmingham in particular need to inform a local turn to establish a similar base in other places, a turn informed by these existing breakthroughs.
This is so much more important than establishing a ‘revolutionary socialist’ currebnt to do what precisely? To defend the integrity of our socialism precisely? Gawd, could such a suggestion be any more patronising? Respect remains a fragile, largely unfulfilled project, full of opportunities, which can easily be squandered and lost. Let thiose who hanker after a socialist party try and form one, or stay in the one they belonng too. Respect canm be far more interesting and significant than that if we simply open up our imagination to its potential.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:55 am
#93 Larry. I don’t agree that an analysis projecting State Capitalist theory gave the left better leverage in dealing with Social Democracy and Stalinism, partly because they were two different things.
I won’t labout the workers’ state concept here - namely that the state was run on the basis of defending institutions of the working class, but with the event of Stalin to defend the bureaucratic interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy. Even mor important is the historical role of Stalin’s ‘Socialism in one country’ adopted in 1924 after lenin’s death (I am right about the timing here, aren’t I?)
In relation to Social democracy it is a different matter and I guess we are in agreement that the 1945 Labour government was able to institutionalise widesweeping social reforms including nationalisations and the national health service because of the relationship post war between the classes, including in this respect the relative strength of the Soviet Union (another way of looking at it was the ruling class had to choose between reform and possibly revolution - they chose reform). This was never Socialism, at best the advance of free medical care and the 1944 education act was a major concession to the working class, rights worth defending over the years. But not socialism. They were always in their minds waiting for the arrival of Thatcher so they could free their capital from state control and use it to accumulate wealth on the global market. (What percentage of BT, BA, BP is now invested in Britain rather than in overseas buy-outs etc I wonder?)
However, if we consider Ger Francis’s original piece, he isn’t referring to the ideological framework inside SWP, of which the ex-SWPers here do not seem to differ on. (There have been supporters of the workers’ state theory inside SWP, but none of you left because you fell out with State Capitalism).
The real issue seems to be internal democracy and the relatinship between SWP and the working class. I guess I have big differences in analysis with most of Respect on many issues, but that does not pose any practicla problem for as long as no one is trying to hi-jack the organisation.
Comment by howard t — 6 March, 2008 @ 7:12 am
Larry: `David Ellis ‘http…thetroublewithcentrism.blogspot.com’- gets a lot of milage out of his single political concept! Centrist, centrist, centrist, everything he disagrees with is CENTRIST! There are of course other words in the Marxist lexicon, which in the right hands can be a subtle and illuminating tool of analysis!’
Now Larry you wouldn’t have a go at a physicist for constantly banging on about atoms would you? It is the phenomena currently under study. Of course there are other categories such as sectarian and opportunist and Stalinist and bourgeois. I use them all. (one of them smilie things).
Mark P: `Let thiose who hanker after a socialist party try and form one, or stay in the one they belonng too. Respect canm be far more interesting and significant than that if we simply open up our imagination to its potential.’
So it’s not just revolutionary socialism Mark P wants banned now but socialism. There Will Be Gulags.
Mike: `What utter drivel given that Leon Trotsky was firmly opposed to cross class populist political organisations such as Respect. I would suggest that Cde Ellis take some time out to read what Trotsky actually wrote about populist and workers parties in the last few of his life. Should he do so he will discover that Trotsky adamantly opposed populism and supported the fight for parties based on and in the working classes. A politics which has nothing in common with the deas of any of those groups which have supported any version of Respect the populist coalition.’
I think you are confusing connecting with populism. You are only interested in staying pure and formally correct. You will never build anything except a sect.
Comment by David Ellis — 6 March, 2008 @ 7:48 am
“So it’s not just revolutionary socialism Mark P wants banned now but socialism. There Will Be Gulags.” - David Ellis
Typical of the pomposity of a significant section of the Far Left.
First nobody , including me, is suggesting the ‘banning’ of revolutionary socialism. Simply suggesting that these tiny grooups should neither expect nor assume that they will play a leading role in a broad left of labour party. The key word is BROAD, if a far left group dominates the breadth clearly is a fiction,
Second, ’socialism’ isn’t being banned either, what is being suggested is that if the supposed purity of the socialism is the sole test for an effective broad left-of-labour party of the early twenty-first century then we will end up with the same old same old left party which is primarily white, male, middle-aged (and probably mainly middle-class) of small membership. Its just a hunch, but hey have you spotted that England lacks the large and broad left-of-labour party that just about EVERY other European country has, maybe there’s not exactly a glorious record of achieving this here?
As for ‘Gulags’, grow up and acquire a sense of proprtion before you start demeaning yourself by throwing around accusations like that. In one phrase you have revealed the rank immaturity of your politics. Thankyou for that at least.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 8:00 am
To repeat what I said in post 65 (though it’ll no doubt just be ignored again), “Socialism” is a much broader term then many here want to acknowledge, failour to see this is setting up a false divide: socialist party verses non-socialist. Respect calls for nationalisation, it demands high tax on the rich, it opposes privatisation - IT IS SOCIALIST. It is people trying to hive the word off for their particular (pure) brand that is part of the reason more people don’t self-identify as such.
Mark P, I can agree with almost all of your post 108 above. The problem with the SWP is in a nut shell that it prioritised its party over the broad party. In Renewal the broad party needs to be the priority and the majority political life/identity should me connected to it.
However, I think you are in danger of mirroring one of the SWP’s other flawed conceptions of Respect - the idea that Respect doesn’t need an internal life that involves debate and discussion of policy, tactics and theory.
I believe it does and also that political positions can be sharpened and strengthened by being developed by collective groups. Thus I think it would be a positive (rather then a negative) development if different currents were to form within Respect to develop different ideologies. All with the proviso that building out and remaining open to new ideas remains the top priority etc. etc.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 6 March, 2008 @ 8:59 am
Joseph. I entirely agree that Respect needs a rich party culture. This must be bottom-up, genuinely and imaginatively participatory, plural, open-minded not dogmatic, fluid and fun to be a part of rather than always a chore.
Whether right now that is aided by a small group defining themselves as the revolutionary socialist current within Respect or whatever and to what purpose, well lets just say I remain to be convinced, but if thats your and others priority,of course thats your choice.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:11 am
To return to the question of Dave Parks/Garageland.
On the one had Ger is completely correct that there is little to be gained by thrashing over the events of six years ago. Hey, I am sure we could find someone who holds something against Dave Parks from his days in the WRP.
But, we should be careful not to dismiss the potential contribution of those socialist activists who still remain to be convinced about Respect. That is why it is necessary to disentangle the issues which have somehow become all mixed up.
The control freakery and bureaucratic methods of the SWP were deeply resented in the Socialist Alliance. Unfortunately the issue became confused with and obscured another danger to the Socialist Alliance which was left-sect purism, itself mixed with a dose of islamophobia. The fact that trust and communication had also broken down meant that there was a lot of misunderstanding.
A different example to Birmingham is the Bedford case, where in formal terms the SWP did behave undemocratically, but where the real issue was whole project being endangered there by frankly cultist behaviour by the RDG, trying to impose the most utterly bizarre politics on the local group.
So in my opinion, legitimate and justified concern by committed and sensible activists over the control of the SA by the SWP became expressed through examples like Birmingham and Bedford where in terms of political content the SWP were correct.
What does this mean six years later?
Well there is a legacy of distrust on all sides, but that can only be resolved by a period of practical collaboration over concrete campaigns and issues. Picking over the events of the past and arguing the toss about who was right or wrong helps no-one.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:26 am
“my view then, and now, was that unless those with an ultra-left hostility to an orientation on the Muslim community were marginalized, (and that’s the charitable description of their politics), there would have been two anti-war movements in the city.”
[…]
“Indeed, without having marginalized those hostile to an engagement with the Muslim community…”
And let’s be absolutely crystal-clear about this, Ger; when you refer to “those”, does that include Sue Blackwell?
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:48 am
‘Dustin’, I am not interested in reopening old wounds. Move on.
Joseph, I agree with you. Of course Respect is socialist. What is interesting though is the way large numbers of people absorb basic socialist values of equality and social justice without ever describing themselves as socialist. It is exactly for that reason I have always felt Respect should not fetishise the term and insist on beating people over the head with it. One of our challenges is to relate socialist values in a way that connects with people who are alienated by traditional socialist language.
Re Respect’s internal life. As somebody who was on the NC before the split, it is immeasurably healthier now. Everything is not stitched up in advance. Discussion and debate has meaning. In short, there is a reason for attending. But this is a work in progress. We need greater member involvement at all levels of the organization and one of our biggest challenges is to make the leadership much more reflective of our base. It needs to be blacker, younger and more female.
I agree with Andy, it is in the process of this engagement that real trust and confidence is built and past suspicions and hostility are overcome. Our words of commitment to internal democracy will be tested by what we practice. That does not mean a precondition is that we all have to be on the same page over past disputes. I don’t agree with all of Andy’s take on the disagreements inside the SA and Bham STW. But I find myself in large agreement with his perspectives about how Respect should orientate itself. And that for me is much more important.
Finally, there are existing currents. People of like minded approach already discuss and exchange ideas. And if they want to formalize these contacts around ‘platforms’ etc that’s up to them. There is nothing inherently positive about that however, whether they declare themselves ‘revolutionary’ or not. Depends on what such currents say and do. I am very much with Mark P on this. The litmus test for any Marxist contribution will be in our ability to build Respect on the ground, not our ability to mouth abstract propaganda.
Comment by Ger Francis — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:20 am
#52
If I were Ger Francis I wouldn’t be too worried about any lack of endorsement from an abstentionist and propagandist sect such as Socialist Alternative. For years SA’s magazine pretended that Galloway and Respect didn’t exist - only to publish a lengthy article on their website when things suddenly went wrong.
Anyway I would like to commend Ger on a well thought out piece, I wouldn’t read too much into the past behaviour of individuals. People change their minds over time sometimes they move rightwards other times leftwards.
One point though that remains is that to create socialism their needs to be a revolution and for their to be a successful revolution there needs to a revolutionary party. There is alas no other way. One thing that can be very tempting in this situation is to confuse the ideas of what a party is - particularly to confuse a revolutionary party (an organisation of committed revolutionary activists) with an electoralist party and assume that a choice must be made between the two.
So where should the balance be in respect? People on this board have complained that their were rallies where their were half a dozen SWP stalls but no Respect ones. So how many SWP stall should there have been? If there had been zero then that would have effectively meant liquidating the SWP into Respect.
Comment by Mark Lockett — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:33 am
For a revolution we need a revolutionary party - a compelling idea.
Liquidation - a scary concept.
However,
Broad left party - needed
Party within party - doesn’t work.
So,
How do we square this?
Why do we think we need a revo’ party? - Because eventually there will come a time when we need to push things forward and change the world. Lessons of Luxenburg etc. etc.
But, before that we need to fight for reforms and push the system to the stage were reform/revolution actualy becomes a real debate.
Its not true that we can only do that by having a seperate marxist party - we can best do that by being organised as revolutionaries within a broad left movement.
One the paper -
I would have liked to see only one (or even none) independent SW stalls. Rather the ideas and analysis of SWP activists could have been presented to the public as a part of a Respect paper that also contained other ideas and stragteries.
We do need to keep some organisation as Revolutionaries but we need to do this in a sensitive way and not assume we have right to leadership or that the world will fall apart if others take a lead.
Better big blunt-er axe then tiny sharper one.
Comment by Joseph Kisolo — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:51 am
Thanks Matt. I don’t have a blueprint and am open minded about it all. Engagement in Respect is applied Marxism in my book. Let things develop organically is my feeling. Review, debate, assess and fine-tune as we go along is my inclination.
Comment by Ger Francis — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:05 am
Mark what I was trying to put across that in Tower Hamlets we hardly ever seen SWP stalls sometimes outside stations when there was a stop the war demo coming up
There were areas that they would have never gone as they would be F’off as most people in Tower Hamlets had no time for there sectarian politics.
the SWP local core activist to get there foot in the door as they say we worked hard to get respect out there and make it a recognized brand outside supermarkets on the markets outside library but coming up to the local elections the only effort was put into promoting the SWP even though the people manning the stalls were prospective candidates for the elections.
sadly we had the opportunity to take over the council and make a real difference to tower hamlets but instead when we had the opportunity to market respect it was abused by the swp we need only to look at the election results to see the outcome not one swp got elected even in the same ward where swp/respect stood with respect only the respect got elected
I will say it again the swp did not put in the effort to promote respect as it should have when i was on any demos the promotion of the swp was paramount to them
as an activist i could see that the swp inside respect was winding down respect for some time they did not try to gain any new members and were constantly digging into George Galloway which i found very offensive
Comment by Carole — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Ger Francis said: ‘Dustin’, I am not interested in reopening old wounds. Move on.
Translation: I want to have my cake and eat it too. I want to criticise the SWP for its undemocratic and bloodyminded conduct, while still cherishing the memory of my own such behaviour, defending it now and reserving my right to behave in exactly the same way in the future. While telling people who bring up my hypocrisy to “move on”.
You will have to forgive us Ger if we don’t take you Damascene conversion too seriously. It appears from this exchange that you are still the same cynical hack, just one who lost a faction fight on this occasion. What’s more it seems that you have learnt nothing from the experience of being on the receiving end of the behaviour you liked to dish out for so long, or at least nothing that you are capable of applying to your own behaviour. If so, your fine words about democracy and openness are just so much self-serving cant.
I’m not really surprised by the above. I’m much more surprised by Andy Newman’s shift towards such situational ethics - bad when the SWP does it, “complex” when one of his allies does it should perhaps be the new Socialsit Unity motto.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:18 am
David Ellis wrote “I think you are confusing connecting with populism. You are only interested in staying pure and formally correct. You will never build anything except a sect.”
In present circumstances the building of a sect would be a major achievement!
But no I do not confuse connecting with elements in revolt against aspects of bourgeois sciety with populism. Although given that the populism of Respect, which you seem to be backing, has no connections with anybody but a few lefties in Cardiff you may wish t think about what ‘connecting’ really means.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:33 am
Some replies to remarks made by Larry in post 106.
“You say your “remarks concerning Salma Yaqoob and her brothers are true”. But Salma Yaqoobs brothers are not at issue here. It seems quite bizarre for you to bring her brothers into it!”
But I didn’t Andy Newman did. Following which I was obliged to defend my comments made some time ago in another context.
“In fact I know Trotskysists… who have petty borgeois and even proper bourgeois siblings, parents, uncles etc. It is even quite usual for Trotskysists to be upper middle class - but we don’t crudely attack them for it!”
Actualy it is a sign of weakness in the Trotskyist movement that too many of the leaders of it are drawn from social groups alien to the workers cause. Sure we dont attack the individuals but lets understand this for what it is - a weakness. As for the yaqoobs they are not socialists let alone Bolshevik Leninists so do cmpare like to like.
“Now I really haven’t a clue about Salma Yaqoobs personal life or kinship / financial arrangements and how they might be combined or affect her politics. So you will have to enlighten us here.”
Actually I dont have to do any such thing.
“How about some Marxist politics? I don’t think being “petty bourgeois” is akin to political leprosy. Many of the petty bourgeois can be poorer than many waged workers - and certainly more oppressed - especially if the are in a persecuted ethic minority. And any successful socialist movement will incorporate them into a counter-hegemonic bloc with the working classes - along with other popular classes.”
Sure and what else is new? The point is that the advanced sections of the exploited must be at the centre of any alliance and that the formation of a common party with the oppressed petty bourgeoisie is contrary to the traditions and politics of the Marxist movement.
“The real issue is who leads this bloc? The answer is that the working class elements must lead the petty bourgeois, etc - not the other way around. Here we might agree?”
Yes we agree and it is clear that in Respect the working class forces, so far as they represented by the SWP, thought they were leading the bloc (how Maoist of you to use such a word) but were in fact being led by the nose like a pig to the slaughter.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:50 am
But hang on, in what way was working class forces represented by the SWP in Respect?
Comment by tonyc — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:57 am
Comment by Veritas — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:01 pm
Sunshine 1 #62 - “In Newham we don’t have any such activerty, we don’t have any Branch meeting’s and I don’t think we even have a Branch, if we do I’ve never been invited to any of it’s meetings although we do have some sort of committee and three Councillors.”
Sunshine (I take it your name is ironic, as you seem to be a bit of a miserable old so-and-so) - I was disappointed that Respect seemed very quiet in last December, then found that my spam filter was diligently keeping all the RR emails from me. So it might be worth checking you email settings, if you are really interested in getting involved.
Mark # 117 - “People on this board have complained that their were rallies where their were half a dozen SWP stalls but no Respect ones. So how many SWP stall should there have been? If there had been zero then that would have effectively meant liquidating the SWP into Respect.”
Joseph and others have said that such liquidating (and committing to Respect instead) would be the best thing in the current political circumstances, and that’s a fair point, but I think the issue boils down again to the question of control of Respect by the SWP.
In retrospect it’s clear that having a national secretary whose main allegiance is to a different organisation can’t help in prioritising Respect’s profile, but also I don’t think SWP members understand that having their excellent organisers taking the leading positions locally can lead to passivity and lack of development among the rest of the membership.
Of course it’s not directly the *fault* of SWP members that Respect stalls don’t (or didn’t) get organised - it’s just that the way they organised in Respect *didn’t work* in terms of building an active Respect membership, and we need to try a different way. As far as I’m concerned the SWP can have as many stalls as it likes at demos, but if it’s organising as a separate body to Respect then it needs not to be in control of Respect, so that Respect’s activity is not turned on and off according to SWP priorities.
That’s a lesson that’s been learned the hard way, and I’m sorry that the SWP uses the cry of ‘witch-hunt’ to avoid addressing and engaging with these very real organisational and political questions.
Comment by steph — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:08 pm
To Irish Mark P (and others):
The reason some of us are uninterested in re-opening old wounds around Stop the War is that the vast majority of those involved (on both sides) have long since moved on. Some of those who once fulminated about Salma Yaqoob being a representative of “Islamic fundamentalism” and a mortal danger to the left, now invite her on to their platforms. No-one is asking them to recant or anything so stupid and counterproductive. Times change, people’s views evolve, and new situations lead to new alliances. We would probably still disagree if we rehearsed the old debates, but to what purpose? A few remain bitter about their defeat, and will drag it up at every opportunity. So be it.
Like Ger I have absolutely no regrets about what was done. It was necessary in order to prevent Muslims being driven out of the anti-war movement by chauvinistic rubbish about the danger of Islamic fundamentalism in Stop the War, spouted by people who couldn’t mobilise to fill a phone box, with no influence over anybody outside the miniscule bubble of the far left. Their arguments were confronted with the vigour that the situation demanded in meetings of more 100 people, votes were taken, and they lost.
Meanwhile, Ger has produced an interesting article reflecting on some limited aspects of the SWP’s perspectives and methods, relating it to his experience in Respect, and drawing some tentative conclusions about how those from a Marxist tradition should engage in this attempt to build a broad left party. You can discuss that if you like. Or you can shoot the messenger.
Comment by Birmingham Respect Member — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:22 pm
“In retrospect it’s clear that having a national secretary whose main allegiance is to a different organisation can’t help in prioritising Respect’s profile, but also I don’t think SWP members understand that having their excellent organisers taking the leading positions locally can lead to passivity and lack of development among the rest of the membership.”
I hope people don’t take this to be a sneering point, but having re-read the SWP CC’s document in the SWP Internal Bulletin, which says that “the building of a revolutionary party is the over-arching priority for any revolutionary Marxist. All other strategic decisions are subordinate to this goal”, it’s clear that leading SWP people should never have accepted, let alone asked for, leading positions in Respect.
It was just never gonna be possible for John Rees to really lead Respect if every single thing he did was subordinate to the goal of building the revolutionary party.
I think that’s part of the problem here. If people believe that the building of the SWP subordinates all other strategic decisions, that’s their right. But they can’t then claim to be the natural leaders of Respect. You can’t do both.
In the abstract, there’s nothing wrong with wearing different hats.
But when you openly say that you must subordinate everything else to the building of the party, you shouldn’t - as a marxist - attempt to run the coalition. It’s just nuts.
Comment by tonyc — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:32 pm
Actually I have to disagree a little with Tony C here.
It is quite possible to conceive of the SWP ’subordinating everything to the building of a revolutionary party’ and still, at the same time, building Respect as a serious organisation. However, this would have meant throwing everything into Respect, placing the whole of the SWP apparatus and infrastructure at the disposal of a Respect in which the SWP did not seek to take a majority of leading positions or try to force through its own agenda.
Such a Respect would be one in which the SWP bent all its efforts to recruiting directly to Respect, building and strengthening its branches and structures into a fully fledged, broad left party.
With that kind of perspective it is not inconceivable that a Respect of say, 200,000 members could be created- in the long-term- dragging the whole political agenda in this country to the left and creating very favourable conditions for the SWP to recruit to itself through force of arguments. Even to win only 20% of Respect to the ‘revolutionary party’ would be an absolutely huge leap forward for the SWP.
However, the SWP has proved time and time again that it is just too inflexible and terrified of the real world to even consider pushing out in such a way…
Comment by RobM — 6 March, 2008 @ 12:57 pm
Andy wrote in #161 “On the one had Ger is completely correct that there is little to be gained by thrashing over the events of six years ago. Hey, I am sure we could find someone who holds something against Dave Parks from his days in the WRP.”
Really?
There might be comrades who resented me not buying them a pint back then (1989-1994) or who disagreed with my perspective on something - but I am PROUD of the fact that you WILL NOT find anyone who will accuse me of underhand tactics or of abusing the democratic process. Just to be clear - I was never a member of Healy’s WRP - I joined the WRP (Cliff Slaughter - Workers Press) in 1989 when I was an active member of the Labour Party and of Devon Labour Briefing (DLB). The comrades from Labour Briefing presumably had no problem with me as I edited the latest ever edition of DLB (there is an entry on DLB on Wikipedia that mentions the role of the WRP). In the easrly 90s I worked closely with socialists and anarchists in Exeter Anti-Fascist Action. The anarchists can’t have had a problem with the way I operated as they used to invite me as an observer to SW Anarchist Network meetings. As a leading member of Exeter AFA (a WRP member at the time) I never tried to PACK meetings to get my way - the method I used was to try to persuade through reasoned argument and if that didn’t work I had to accept the majority view if it was against me - as often happened. That is how you work in a genuine coalition.
But this exchange has brought great clarity. Clearly Andy Newman and Ger Francis believe it is legitimate and right for the SWP to have packed meetings of an *alliance* and a *coalition* in order to remove ALL of their opponenets from office - when they are “sectarians” or fictional “islamophobes” - but not alright when they are on the receiving end. I’m glad we have that cleared up!
Comment by garagelanduk — 6 March, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
#129: “in which the SWP did not seek to take a majority of leading positions or try to force through its own agenda”
this was always going to be the crux of the matter. I see no reason at all why the SWP should not have dominated Respect to begin with, based on its numbers, etc. And I see no reason why it should not consistently have fought for it’s own agenda within Respect.
The problems were only going to arise once Respect began to develop a momentum of its own that would tend to lead to a reduction of the SWP’s de facto control. Once that happened it was bound to test whether the SWP were committed to building a genuinely much broader movement within which they fought in a principled way for their point of view, or whether they would try to use their numerical clout and party discipline to ensure that they maintained control regardless. The whole world knows which of those paths they preferred - the mystery to some of us is why anyone might have imagined that they would do anything else.
It would of interest to me if people could offer historical examples where other groups did not use their formal power to continue their effective control over a broad movement but were prepared instead to relinquish it instead in the interests of the wider project.
Comment by Andy Wilson — 6 March, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
Andy, can I remind you about this article you wrote:
http://socialistunity.blogspot.com/2007/01/swp-expels-leading-member.html
(I presume you are the “AN” who penned this since it’s your old blog and those are your initials.)
Quote:
“Ger seems to have pandered to a backwards and incorrect position that electoral success requires Asian candidates.”
[…]
Further quote:
“Sadly, Ger was and is a political thug. He has played a disastrous role in both Birmingham Stop the war Coalition, and the Socialist Alliance, as has been fully documented by Sue Blackwell and Rumy Hassan. Ger polarised the left in Birmingham, using bureaucratic manoeuvres and allegedly even physical intimidation, to exclude those, like Steve Godward, who were regarded as “unhelpful” to the implementation of every wheeze that came from London. Instead of developing an empowering environment for independent minded activists, Birmingham SWP have sought to reduce the anti war movement to an army of automatons who will do what they are told. Ger was a star comrade because he got “results”.
That article was written just over a year ago - hardly ancient history. Can you explain what exactly Ger Francis has done in that 12 months then to redeem himself in your eyes? Why would you now recommend that people now jump into a politcal bed with someone you referred to 12 months ago as a “political thug” who plays “disastrous roles” in left-wing groups?
Comment by Dustin the Turkey — 6 March, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Very interesting article- I’m not entirely convinced though that Ger has learnt the lessons it seems more about building Respect tahn a genuine rebuilding of the movement, of class before party to use his somewhat formulaic statement.
I penned a quick article
“Renewal? Or Doomed to Repetition?
Mistakes and wrong turns are fertile ground for learning. However, this is only if they are subject to critical reflection. All too often they are simply repeated in renewed form. Ger Francis, former henchman of Birmingham SWP, now of Respect Renewal claims to have learned his lesson. ….Jason Travis is not so sure.
The current period in left history is an interesting one. Debates formerly suppressed or kept internal have bubbled up to the surface. The internet has blown apart forever the idea of internal party secrecy and various left broad alliances have splintered. For some this is a time of exciting opportunity: for others of despair. Is it the early hours of the new dawn- most have left the party, others wander the streets in aimless drunkenness looking for their home, others- the most lost- punch the air and proclaim they are the light and the way?
We may be approaching a new day but we’ve got a hell of hangover to get through first.
Over the last few weeks there’s been a spate of publications about what sort of party we need. Mark Hoskisson writing in Permanent Revolution argues for a revolutionary party, Dave Packer argues in Socialist Outlook for an anti-capitalist but non-revolutionary party, Hilary Wainwright argues for a new sort of party (my reply here), Mark Perryman argues for a new sort of politics (as long as it isn’t revolutionary- replies here)and now Ger Francis argues that revolutionaries cannot even be anti-capitalist as that would be too ‘abstract’.”
continues here http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1983
Jason
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 2:33 pm
#118
Not all of the ideas of the SWP could be presented to the public as ideas of Respect. I’m sure George Galloway doesn’t agree with the SWP about the class nature of the Cuban state. In fact he sees Cuban as a genuine socialist state whereas the SWP see it as state capitalist. But there’s more - the difference between the two views represents very different ideas on how we get from where we are to socialism. What the SWP and Galloway do/did agree on was a series of short and medium term tactics around building a broad left electoral party and the anti-war movement in the here and now.
#122
“In present circumstances the building of a sect would be a major achievement!”
No Mike the construction of a sect is complete useless in all circumstances by definition. Since a sect artificially seperates itself from the class struggle it is useless in propgressing that struggle. (This oversimplifies the fact that there are shades of sectarianism).
#126
“In retrospect it’s clear that having a national secretary whose main allegiance is to a different organisation can’t help in prioritising Respect’s profile,” - why not? there is not necessarily a contradiction between building two different organisations at the same time as long as we (the revolutionaries) are clear about the difference between the two. Some years ago I was heavily involved with the Australian Socialist Alliance. One thing that was very clear to me was that the SA was not the kind of organisation that the sort people who typically join the small marxist groups would be interested. Typically the people who joined the small marxist groups were angry young radical students - to whom the SA would seem quite conservative and stodgy and slow moving. But to older leftward leaning workers who were fed up with Labor and not really attacted to the Greens the SA could be a thing they could get involved with and a few hundred did.
Also Respect didn’t fail to grow into a mass party that could challenge for the government at the general election’s because the SWP gave the wrong priority to stalls. In fact from my experience in the Australian SA where the kind of priority to stalls was given that you want is that it probably on the whole did not have a big effect. The best that could be said is that the SWP made tactical errors in giving things the wrong emplasis. Also I am in no position to judge whether the SWP was preparing for a whole year to pull out of Respect or not. But if they were that would indicate very poor judgement indeed (as indeed the final split indicated very poor judgement on the SWP’s behalf). Respect gave the SWP potentially a much larger audience but the kind of message that the much larger audience could be won over on was more agitational than propagandistic basis.
Another factor to mention is that the SWP is making arguments to people other than “join Respect” or “vote Respect”. If the SWP had gone into the recent postal service strikes with the message “Vote Respect to save Royal Mail” that would have been a disaster. Voting Respect is not a strategy that can win the postal dispute.
#129
“With that kind of perspective it is not inconceivable that a Respect of say, 200,000 members could be created- in the long-term- dragging the whole political agenda in this country to the left” - I sorry RobM but the idea that the SWP can by turning it’s appartus to the task of building Respect get the party to 200,000 members in the forseeable future is simply crackers. The real new left party will come out of the struggle in an organic fashion in a similar way to which Respect itself emerged from the anti-war movement or the Left Party in Germany emerged from the movement against Agenda 2010. While it is possible for Respect to grow modestly in the current political climate in Britain through getting the tactics right to grow in a qualitative fashion will require both the growth of the movement and the correct tactical orientation to it. (Same applies to the SWP).
Comment by Mark Lockett — 6 March, 2008 @ 3:25 pm
Dave #130
There was nothing “fictional” about the Islamophobia.
I acknowledge that there was a lot of anger, and clearly still is, about the whole experience of the socialist alliance. But it doesn’t help to mythologise what happened.
I can see that the break down of trust involved in the various fights within the socialist alliance will be hard to overcome, and that reconcilliation may be a long process. But to achieve that we need both collaborative experience of working on common projects, and also an acknowledgement that there was fault on all sides in the past.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 3:26 pm
#132
Dustin
With regard to your mischeif making. If I was minded to do so I culd have hidden articles from the past that show I have changed my mind over things, but I don’t do so. In politics we say things based upon the best information we have at the time, and make judgements based upon what we think is going on. You can if you wish trawl back and find disparaging comments I made about galloway as well.
Politics is not friendship, what happens is that those of us working on common projects recognise that people change their mind and their judgements, or former differences don’t matter so much as they once did, or were always based upon misunderstandings.
My expereiencne of the winding up of Socialist Alliance and the early year of Respect was not positive, and along with many people I felt that the baby had been thrown out with the bathwater. From the outside it looked as if Respect was monolithically controlled by the SWP, and there was no prospect of it growing into a living organisation.
The whole situation changed when Galloway took the lid off with his letter in August, and it turned out that lots of people who we assumed had bought into the SWP way of working in reality were very unhappy with it.
One of the triumphs of the SWP’s way of working is to isolate everyone, as Jo Benefield said, even after 35 years in the SWP she still thought it was Only Bristol that had problems. Once people start comparing their experiences, and seeing each others point of view, then we are able to look at past disputes in a different light.
Remember that scene in Ken Loach’s “Land and Freedom” when the two Scousers find that they are shooting at each other on different sides in barcelona, without either of them understanding why. That is a bit like the expereince of being an SWP member trying to move forward the SA or Respect project, but without understanding wheat is going on in other areas, becasue all information flows through the SWP’s centre.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 3:39 pm
“Mark Perryman argues for a new sort of politics (as long as it isn’t revolutionary)” - Jason
Thanks for the pompous ticking-off. To be precise, which you and your like nevber seem to be much bothered with, I argue for a broad politics of left-of-labour which is not dominated by the self-appoointed revolutionary grouplets of a few hundred, or in your particular case a few tens, of members. Anythung which is remains neither politically viable nor particularly ‘revolutionary’. In fact all past experience is that such a situation produces a political culture which is highly conservative.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:07 pm
#134 You are right we must relate to the class struggle.
You are right we need to grow the movement. This is not however counterposed to having different ideas- such as revolutionary socialism- in the mix.
#135 “collaborative experience of working on common projects, and also an acknowledgement that there was fault on all sides in the past.
”
Yes I think this is key.
#136 The scouser in Land and Freedom firing on the Tortskyists and others was misled by the Stalinists into a counter-revolutionary manouvre.
You’re right to argue for complete open-ness, tansparency and accountability. I’m yet to be convinced this is much of a feature of Respect Renewal. I’m willing to be convinced if it is demonstrated in public.
More crucially though why do most socialists in Respect Renewal refuse to ahve an open and democratic debate about the class basis of its politics and the need for socialism?
Jason
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
Andy: “In politics we say things based upon the best information we have at the time, and make judgements based upon what we think is going on.”
Or we add and subtract bits and pieces of that information, if it can make the SWP look bad.
Comment by Willy Wonka — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:14 pm
#137 Hi Mark
I don’t think I was being pompous at all - in fact I said quite clearly- to be very precise- in my article http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1961
on yours and Hilary’s article- both here http://www.redpepper.org.uk/article1018.html
“Mark and Hilary’s pieces both shine through with this determination to make politics anew, to put the pop back into popular, to weave politics into our work, social life and imagination. ”
However, despite your liking for precision- you and your lost is not very precise- you seem to have not read my words properly, I fear.
I completely agree with you that
“There is an urgent need to break out of this ghetto of unimagination. Starting with a local turn, we need a politics that is entirely based on change from below, immersed in communities, engineering a practical idealism and human solidarity.”
But you then explicitly reject the left- you’re for change from below but for ordinary working class people to run their own lives as this would be in an lamost Blairite abuse of language ‘conservative’.
” argue for a broad politics of left-of-labour which is not dominated by the self-appoointed revolutionary grouplets of a few hundred, or in your particular case a few tens, of members. Anythung which is remains neither politically viable nor particularly ‘revolutionary’. In fact all past experience is that such a situation produces a political culture which is highly conservative.”
I’m all in favour of participating in mass movements. I don’t think being deliberatley vague, uncleaqr and even to be honest imprecise on what sort of politics we need is that helpful. I think ordinary working class people can cope with real debate.
However, despite my disagreement with you on politics- I’m for building a woirking class movement capable of carrying out a socialist revolution you’re- apprantley although it is hard to work out- either for reforming the system or at least staying quiet on what we need to do, I nevertheless enjoyed your article.
I expedct we’d agree on the need to build the movement even as we disagree on what to say within it.
Jason
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:30 pm
#140 ‘you and your lost’ Typo lost for lot should be ‘you and your like’ quoting from #137
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
I am getting very confused now -
So the SWP’ want to be the SWP’ and there prime objective is to keep themselves on the front burner as the SWP’ - right got that
So explain why they continue to parade themselves as Respect?
When they had the opportunity to build Respect they chose to only put emphasis on to flying the SWP banner? - am I right so far
So they now claim the victory at goldsmiths but had to use the Respect banner. - yes
So they are Respect. - NO
So they are the SWP. - Kind of
Well are they Respect or SWP, -?
So they use the name ‘Respect’ which automatically signifies Respect - yes
And George Galloway is Respect - yes
But the SWP have tried to delete him as having any significance to the Respect party. = that’s right
So they want to use the name Respect to promote themselves to some higher status but on the other hand they feel their status is of much higher than Respect? -yes
So they are not Respect. - that’s right
They are the SWP - yes
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Comment by Carole — 6 March, 2008 @ 4:52 pm
“you’re for change from below but for ordinary working class people to run their own lives as this would be in an lamost Blairite abuse of language ‘conservative’.” Jason
We’re trading typos I’m afraid, but your wilful substitrution of my critique of the revolutionarty grouplets with a suggested rejection on my part of ‘ordinary working class people to run their own lives’ betrays a puffed-up self importance of your groups and others like it of quite staggering proportions.
Lets be frank, revolutionary grouplets are almost entirely unrepresentative of ‘ordinarty working class people’. You aspire to be representative but you’re not. A politics that is genuinely participative would leave you in a tiny minority, this is precisely the breadth of appeal a left-of-labour party should aspire to not satisfying the whims and fancies of a conservative Far Left.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
I see! Size is all that matters. And you’re a supporter of Respect Renewal!?
Comment by bill j — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
# 130 “Andy wrote in #161 “On the one had Ger is completely correct that there is little to be gained by thrashing over the events of six years ago. Hey, I am sure we could find someone who holds something against Dave Parks from his days in the WRP.”
Really?
There might be comrades who resented me not buying them a pint back then (1989-1994)”
Mmm, that’s a bit naughty.
When I originally read Andy’s comment about Dave being a former member of the WRP, I guessed (wrongly) that Dave must have been a member during the Healy years.
Was that the intended impression?
Comment by Darren — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:03 pm
No - I knew Dave had been in the WRP - I had no idea when.
My point was only that a lot of things hapened in the past, and we are only going to build something in the future if we move on.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:10 pm
The problem with platitutes like “moving on” or “acknowledging that there was fault on all sides”, Andy, is that they are just that. Platitudes.
Here we have someone with a record of organising the packing of meetings and various bureaucratic manoueverings writing a long piece which amongst other things calls for democracy and openness. While at the same time telling us that he’s proud of his previous role and of the actions which led you to label him a “political thug”.
Why would anyone take his current arguments at face value when he sees no contradiction between them and his past role as SWP honcho in Birmingham? He may have lost a faction fight and resent the methods that were used against his side, but he’s quite open about the fact that such methods are just fine when he’s the one in the driving seat.
Either these methods are unnacceptable or they are not. Ger, and you for that matter, can’t have it both ways.
Comment by Irish Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:25 pm
Moving on? Does the “new politics” of Respect Renewal endorse the kind of of political methods we have been discussing here or not? That is the crux of the issue for those looking to the future.
Comment by garagelanduk — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:37 pm
Carole it’s really not that difficult to understand. The SWP were a major element within Respect and still remain so. Indeed, they were the biggest component involved in founding Respect 4 years ago.
Not a lot has changed since the split in terms of membership - people like me who are not in the SWP continue to build Respect alongside people who are in the SWP. Very few Respect members have actually joined “Renewal”. As has been admitted, Renewal must rely on its ‘high profile’ members as the ‘foot soldiers’ chose to remain within Respect.
Thought I’d answer seeing as everytime I come on here you are asking the same question, and yet don’t seem to receive much response.
Comment by JB — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:38 pm
Dave #148
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. It doesn’t matter what we say here, why should you beleive us?
Respect Renewal has suffficient members - including Ger - committed to inclusive and participatory membership, and democratic practices, to make that happen.
But it is a young project, and I suggest you judge us on the present and the future not the past.
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:51 pm
I have to say there is some confusion above between what constitutes a party to the left of Labour and Marxism. If the only alternative is to have a party where everyone insists they are Marxists and that it is made clear from the beginning that our intention is to have a Marxist Party, then I’d rather not bother as that’s the recipe for building a sect.
Some of our contributions earlier grappled with the framework that a party needs to have and that it needs to be pluralistic, championing the the democratic needs of the oppressed and welcoming them into this party. It will include the most determined fighters for working class interests. Some of them will be Marxists, Communists and other shades of Socialist.
In the 80’s Tony Benn had this vision of re-founding the Labour Party based on the progressive movements. An interesting dream, but impossible inside the Labour Party. Respect can attempt that, though
Comment by howard t — 6 March, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
JB (post 149)just which part of the world do you live in? In Thames Valley I cant think of a single functioning SWP-REESpect branch while RESPECT Renewal is recruiting month by month, slowly, in most towns that i know. But that’s what your SWP-Respect is JJ a ‘fantasy’ Coalition of the SWP (who are losing members daily, with branches not functioning in most large towns) and a few, a very few friends.
You really are deluded, the SWP-REESpect will be dead in all but name after the May GLA elections, after all the SWP are only involved in a face saving job having made the decision to pull out of Respect some time ago (but hey dont what ever you do tell the members).
The SWP would rather see the destruction of the good name of Respect than have a rival to the left of Labour.
JB you cant have a ‘Coalition’ (remember that’s what the project was all about) with one party!
Comment by Neil Williams — 6 March, 2008 @ 6:03 pm
Andy Wilson, up at #131, asked after, “…historical examples where other groups did not use their formal power to continue their effective control over a broad movement but were prepared instead to relinquish it instead in the interests of the wider project.”
The Salvation Army?
Dismally, I can’t think of any. But as we all know there are dozens of great examples in British labour movement history where the midwives were ‘forced’ to reliquish the reins.
Looking back, it seems the best behaved, and it’s annoying to have to admit this, was the CP. You’ve got CND, the anti-apartheid movement, Miners’ Support, then with the Millies there was the anti-Poll Tax campaigns.
What’s odd about the SWP over the past couple of decades is that despite tailing a lot of these initiatives there was a structural failure to learn anything from them. Culturally, I think that the best period of the SWP’s recent history (and I’m a tad biased here) was when it was more like the stereotyped picture it painted of the very class enemies it successfully (we’re led to believe) displaced: The CP and other ortho-Trot groups.
Despite having one of the largest physical and full-timer infrastructures on the left, it did *not* have the same level of central control in periods of heightened class struggle, or after, when it had a large number of geographical branches.
People were able to “act locally” and in fact, successes of *that* type were typically (and cynically) redistributed to the rest of the organisation - allowing for the absence of hype and unreality contained in “Party Notes”.
During, and right after, the Great Miners Strike the SWP felt like a genuine federation. We all knew, quietly, that there *were* different “currents” within the party. The problem was that a nod and a wink among those of like minds wasn’t sufficient to correct the sectarianism of the group, especially once the tide turned in the early 90s.
I still remember Ger Francis as a new recruit, I remember Kevin Ovenden and Rob Hovemen all in various ways ‘distancing’ themselves from the more mechanical and let’s say “crude” formulations of the party 20 years ago…
Personally, I was blessed with a friendship that in an albeit confused (it was, after all, like fighting a bar of soap at times), but nevertheless committed and principled way ran up against the leadership of the SWP much earlier on.
I’m very glad that folk such as Ger, Kevin and Rob have moved in the direction they have. It speaks volumes as to how ‘objective circumstances’ seem to have a left-wing bias. For those of you on this thread who are suspicious of the hows and whys of working as leftists in something like RR I can only offer a crumb of advice:
“Organised mistrust” starts at home!
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 6 March, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
#143
“…your wilful substitrution of my critique of the revolutionarty grouplets with a suggested rejection on my part of ‘ordinary working class people to run their own lives’ betrays a puffed-up self importance of your groups and others like it of quite staggering proportions.”
But what are you saying, Mark? I only suggest you reject - and I was clear in it being a sugggestion, a supposition- only suggest you reject ‘‘ordinary working class people to run their own lives’ because you are not clear.
And even here you are not- do or do you not support a different society where workers control outr own lives?
I don’t think that’s a puffed up sense of self-importance that I should along with other working class people have a say in running my own life.
I expect your characterisation of ‘puffed up self-importance’ is a misunderstanding
(I won’t say ‘wilful’ because i’m not psychic!) to maintain that I am saying revolutionary groups should run society- however, a clear reading of my argument is completely different.
“Lets be frank, revolutionary grouplets are almost entirely unrepresentative of ‘ordinarty working class people’. You aspire to be representative but you’re not. A politics that is genuinely participative would leave you in a tiny minority, this is precisely the breadth of appeal a left-of-labour party should aspire to not satisfying the whims and fancies of a conservative Far Left.”
Perhaps I would be in a tiny minority- if so fine. However, I don’t deign to know in advance what most ordinary working class people want. I have a suspicion that actually many would be considerably tot he left of you on these matters.
But anyway let’s build a genuine participatory politics- let’s build working class movements and ask working class people what they want rather than trying to second guess or worse assume, eh?
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
My contribution to engage with Mark and Hilary’s articles is here by the way- http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1961 plus a response to Ger here http://www.permanentrevolution.net/?view=entry&entry=1983
Jason
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
“I see! Size is all that matters.” Bill J
er no. But its a useful barometer. If Respect gets zilch votes in the London Assembly elections while Lindesy German comes a creditable fifth in the Mayoral poll and sensationally grabs a London Assembly seat then I’d have the good grace to reconsider the continuing viability of Respect Renewal, that the SWP were perhaps more in tune with the needs of a left-of-Labour Party than I realised.
Likwise whats so wrong asking those who spend their entire time lecturing others on how we’re not revolutionary enough to explain why these far left grouplets which offer these long critiques are so tiny and ineffective? Or is the ability to be self-reflective something impossible for the conservartive Left. Yours and others contributions certainly indicate this to be the case.
As for your comrade Jason once again he conflates the right of your tiny grouplet to be heard with the self-organisation of working people. The two as any right-thinking person would surely admit are not the same at all and to pretend otherwise I say again is the pumped-up self importance of those who style themselves revolutioinaries but represent no one except their grouplet. Thus, the conservatism of the Far Left is explained. Thankyou and good night, your likely contribution to an effective left of Labour Party will be marginal in the extreme, and thank goodness for that.
Mark P
Comment by Mark P — 6 March, 2008 @ 6:51 pm
Larry much earlier asked about:
“This website seems to have quietly started up with no fanfare, unless I missed something!?
http://www.socialistrenewal.org.uk/home.htm
Who is behind that then?
Seems like a good resource for the issues we chew over on this blog!”
I suppose I must plead guilty having been outed by an internet search engine.
Actually the reason myself and a few others in Manchester thought it was worthwhile idea to set up the site was precisely to act as a ‘resource’ - because we kept having to trawl through back pages of blogs to find documents about the Respect split - in the days before SR brought out their natty little book.
So that’s all it is really - a resource where you can get some of the background articles to the issues being raised here. Nothing special - hence the lack of fanfare. But I’ll keep posting up articles now and then so that they are not lost to the ether but more easily found.
As for internet smartalec #58. Well done for spotting that cyathea.co.uk is not a person. Cyathea is actually the latin genus for the world’s largest group of tree ferns. But that’s another story altogether.
Comment by Clive Searle — 6 March, 2008 @ 7:12 pm
tonyc wrote “But hang on, in what way was working class forces represented by the SWP in Respect?”
By virtue of its politics, albeit there are seriousw problems with said politios, and its toeholds within the workers movement the SWP represents the best interests of the class.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
Irish Mark P’s criticisms of my actions in STW are second hand, and drawn from those whose accounts are highly prejudicial. He wants to see his pals as victims, mowed down while heroically upholding socialist principles and democratic, inclusive norms. There is another version. Here is Salma Yaqoob’s account of her experiences at the hands of secular fundamentalists in the Brum anti-war movement at the time:
“Although initially we were welcomed and accepted, it became apparent very quickly that not everybody saw our involvement in positive terms and as being unproblematic. Our relief turned to disappointment when labels such as ‘reactionary fundamentalists’ and ridiculous accusations regarding our beliefs and motives were thrown at us by a few individuals who believed that the secularists should not be working with religious people, especially Muslims….This was exemplified following a particularly successful meeting organised jointly with an Islamic organisation (which agreed to pay for the considerable cost of the event even though the majority of the panel were not Muslim speakers) called ‘Peace in Troubled Times’—one of the largest indoor political rallies ever held in Birmingham—which was attended by more than 2,000 people. The platform was diverse including leading environmentalist George Monbiot, John Rees from the Socialist Alliance, myself, and Zaid Shakir, an American imam and scholar. Up till then very few non-white people were involved in the coalition, and Muslim participation remained very small. The presence of the imam attracted large numbers of Muslims who were able to hear the anti-war arguments and were encouraged to participate in peaceful protest.
The meeting seemed to symbolise the spirit of unity and mutual respect that we were seeking to foster. Not only were Muslims able and prepared to listen to non-Muslim analyses, but non-Muslims were able to hear a Muslim perspective.
This meeting, however, sparked a great controversy within the anti-war movement due to the presence of the imam, who naturally referred to Islam and the Quran in his address. Whilst no Muslims at the event or after had expressed any objections to the fact that the majority of the speakers expressed secular views, some people in the coalition expressed strong objections to the fact that one of the five speakers had overtly referred to Islam. Many of us could not comprehend the intolerance of such views—after all, the imam had only used verses of the Quran stressing the importance of peace and unity—there did not seem to be any cause for such contention and lack of inclusiveness. However, they maintained that any reference to Islam or Quranic verses, whatever their content, was offensive to them. It should be noted, however, that a similar attitude to Christian speakers at other meetings who quoted from the Bible was conspicuously absent.
Also, some people expressed moral indignation at the fact there was a section of the hall reserved for ‘women only’. The fact that many Muslim women expected and preferred such an arrangement escaped the intellectual grasp of some people, who thought that this was more evidence of enforced sexism and patriarchy, just as some of them could not accept that wearing a headscarf might actually be a choice exercised by Muslim women, and not forced upon them by men and an unjust religion. The accusations of forced segregation afterwards were simply untrue. There was no coercion—if some men and women wanted to sit together no one insisted on other than their choice. Not having interacted with Muslims as a community, the sight of some men and women sitting separately may have been an unusual one. However, instead of seeking to understand it and contextualising it in terms of other people’s experiences and culture, some people were quick to condemn and judge behaviour that was not completely their own norm.
On reflection, it seems our critics could not conceive of any notion of Islam other than an extreme one….Many people have questioned the lack of political engagement of Muslims in this country up till now, and while many of the other factors which have led to political disengagement across the population apply equally to Muslim communities, the extra burden of having to constantly fight off these negative stereotypes before even being able to enter a dialogue with others is a significant factor. In this way, while full acceptance by some elements of the anti-war movement was a welcome and refreshing novelty, the hostility and degree of animosity of other elements was very disturbing and disheartening.
It was certainly a very testing time in terms of personal resilience and patience, and at times I even reconsidered my own involvement, questioning whether the coalition work was the best use of my time and energy….Unfortunately many Muslims had already left in disgust and disbelief by the time we held city-wide elections, whose results vindicated the majority’s co-operative stance and completely isolated the hostile minority. It was quite telling of this minority’s understanding of democracy that, instead of accepting the majority verdict and working together in anti-war activities, they decided to form a splinter group whose main activity was to attempt to undermine the Stop the War Coalition by distributing leaflets at our events and articles on the internet calling it ‘undemocratic’, and referring to the ‘unholy alliance’ of Muslims and socialists.”
http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=4
One of the great achievements of the anti-war movement was that it took the anti-war case into deep within the Muslim community via new forms of organizing by holding meetings in mosques, women’s circles, schools, community centers and the like. It established new norms and practices of engagement. But while this might be more the norm now, it certainly was not the case in the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan, when the anti-war movement was in its infancy and anti-Muslim prejudice was growing, with the images of the Twin Towers still fresh in people’s minds. This was all new, Birmingham was paving the way, and the old ultra-left were out of their depth. When things reached the stage where the very Muslim activists who were providing the dynamism behind the movement locally were leaving, or under pressure to leave, demoralized by insane sectarian hostility to their involvement, something had to be done to marginalize the influence of those who could not build a piss up in a brewery, but who were quite capable of poisoning the atmosphere in the coalition due to their anti-Islamic suspicion and hostility.
The ’sinister methods’ we deployed was to hold open meetings at which the differing perspectives could be argued out, and voted out. What else can you do you in a campaign when there are irreconcilable differences, damaging infighting, and alternative perspectives? Unfortunately, when it gets to that stage, options are very limited. Ours conclusion was to let the supporters of STW decide. Both sides mobilized. One side lost.
I don’t see any comparison with the SWP’s recent behaviour in Respect. Our motivation was to combat sectarianism and make the movement more open to those bearing the brunt of racism. The recent SWP behaviour is shaped by sectarianism and control freakery, designed to narrow Respect in order to be better able to control it.
I have never, for one second, doubted the correctness of the political line we adopted.
Comment by Ger Francis — 6 March, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
The events according to Sue Blackwell, follow the link. I quote the first paragraph below.
Why We Left the SWP
http://www.sue.be/politics/swp/open_letter.html
“The Left outside Labour in Birmingham had been united as never before during the 2001 General Election campaign. But this completely unravelled during and after the Afghan war and the situation has continued to deteriorate ever since.
1. The 5th February 2002 General Meeting of Birmingham Stop the War Coalition (BSTWC) and its Aftermath
This meeting overturned the democratic constitution of the BSTWC, thereby forcing a split. The facts are these. At this meeting, a highly contentious “amendment” to a motion (but, in effect, a motion in its own right) was put forward by the Chair of the coalition (Salma Yaqoob) and seconded by an SWP member (Lynne Hubbard). The meeting was systematically packed with SWP and Socialist Action members who voted in favour of the amendment. The amendment did away with the hitherto democratic and open structures of BSTWC: elections every three months, committee meetings open to all, and regular general meetings. Thereafter, only the rump BSTWC committee had the right to decide when a general meeting takes place, when elections take place, and who is invited to attend committee meetings. The amendment, which had not been circulated in advance to Coalition members, including committee members, was voted through in a highly dubious manner - but, in any case, should have been disallowed as it brought in significant rule changes. Such amendments are clearly not allowed in democratic organisations. This resulted in what can only be described as a “bureaucratic coup” where Steve Godward, the Vice-Chair of BSTWC, was removed. Thereafter, BSTWC became a political cabal of Salma Yaqoob, the SWP, and Socialist Action. The implications were clear: anyone opposed to this undemocratic railroading simply could not work in the “new” coalition, and that is why half the members walked out (including, apart from the SWP, all members of the Socialist Alliance). The result has been a disastrous split in the anti-war movement in Birmingham, and great acrimony on the left in general. Attempts to unify last summer, when 3 officers from the National STWC came to Birmingham, also floundered.
Thereafter, BSTWC did not have a general meeting for TEN months - starkly revealing its new undemocratic character. The cabal has made all the key decisions, including when meetings take place and who speaks from the platform at public meetings. Prior to war breaking out, Doug Jewell, Vice-Chair of BSTWC, had agreed that the Chair of Birmingham Socialist Alliance (Steve Godward) could speak on the platform the day war broke out. But at the demo on 20th March, he was prevented from speaking, yet various people from other organisations spoke. (A comrade who asked whether there would be a Socialist Alliance speaker was told that Lynne Hubbard was the SA speaker; yet it was not Lynne but Steve who had been nominated by the Bham SA Committee.)
As a result of continued pressure and appeals for unity, the BSTWC officers did eventually call a general meeting in December 2002. This set up a delegate forum taking reps from local groups. But even this has now proved too much for the officers of BSTWC. They have pushed yet another constitutional change through the delegate forum, getting it to abolish itself. BSTWC will become a membership organisation with general meetings only every three months - leaving all decisions in the hands of the officers meantime.”
Comment by garagelanduk — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:00 pm
I must admit I hadn’t realised how bad Yaqoob was until I read that. What is really clear is her rejection of any differentiation amongst the “Muslim” community. The assumption is that anyone who is a “Muslim” i.e. born into a Muslim family is a believer and shares a common religious interest.
Also incidently it reveals how Francis really has nothing in common with “Marxism” or “socialism” or the “working class”.
Personally I don’t know why he bothers. No one’s forcing him to pretend to be what he’s not. Why doesn’t he just admit it - I don’t believe in any of that rubbish any more. I think any kind of bureaucratic underhand dealings are justified to win my views. And I will stop at nothing to get me way.
(He really was well tutored in the SWP’s essential politics after all.)
There are a million examples that could be quoted of course to refute his view, but the one I’ll always remember is how during the Oldham riots in 2001, we listened to the police radio with they cops directing Muslim elders to trouble spots to quell the disorder. And then when it was all over these same elders, encouraged youth to hand themselves in to the cops - resulting in them receiving long prison sentences.
Comment by bill j — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:23 pm
Bill
The working class is so lucky to have “Permanent Revolution” to turn to for leadership.
Interesting your total break from Lenin over this issue though. I am not a great one for quoting the old Marxist greybeards, but the contrast between the position of the real Lenin and Russian government from the position promoted by so called r-r-r-revolutionaries today is too stark to pass without coomment.
One of the very first acts of the new Soviet government was the November 1917 “Proclamation to all the toiling Muslims of Russia and the East”, which Llenin personally drafted and signed:
“Henceforth your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions are declaed free and inviolable. Build your national life freely and without hinderence. You yoursellves must build your own lives in your image and likeness”
There were people in Russian socialist circles who argued the same position as Bill J does. I am a lot more tolerant than the Bolsheviks so I blush to report how they were repsonded to.
Read the transcripts of the Baku congress of 1920. Comrade Narbutabekov - referring to secularists in the socialist movement said: “they must be ruthlessly destroyed, just like counter-revolutionaries”
“We are not affraid of open counter revolutionaries, we have encountered them on the war fronts. BUt comrades there are among us persons who, behind the mask of communism, are bringing ruin upon Societ power as a whole, spoiling the entire Soviet policy in the east, and we must declare fearlessly: Down with these prococatuers and demagogues!”
Karl radek referred to the secularists in the Communist Party who had sought to undermine Iislam in Turkmenitan at the same conference as: “West European KulturTraeger, West European Brigands, of carrying out a policy of Red Imperialism”
Comment by Andy Newman — 6 March, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
An interesting comment Andy but all it proves is that in power the Bolsheviks adopted the idea of national-cultural autonomy from the Austro-Marxists. The fake Marxists in Respect want by contrast to tail petty bourgeois elements in the name of a broad party.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:03 pm
Andy, I really don’t know what you are talking about.
Nothing Bill wrote contradicts the points you make above- yet you strongly and completely without any evidence whatsoever imply that it does.
Bill’s point and he’s right that some people in any community play a divisive role- why should a particular community have leaders selected by
anyone except the community itself, democratically. Do you deny that the muslim community has differet classes?
Plus some rudeness about how lucky the working class is etc. I don’t go around making sarcastic remarks about you- some boards have moderators- this one may be doesn’t but doesn’t it therefore mean we should all be more responsible and at least polite.
When I was in Oldham NUT we passed a motion complaining about Oldham council publishing a book asking Asians to integrate and stop wearing their own clotes and speaking their own langauge- we complained because it was racist. I’ve brought this up on this board before but that doesn’t fit your stereotype so you ignore it.
Of course though I can’t possibly be antiracist becuase that wouldn’t fit your stereotype.
A shame really but never mind we’ll get on with antiracist and other work and leave attempts to ‘lead’ to others.
Comment by Jason — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:07 pm
Andy that’s interesting and I get the point, but the debate about communities in Britain doesn’t correspond with the tasks facing the Bolsheviks in 1920 for one major reason - in 1920 iot was the case of defending a revolution. In Britain the task is to build a credible anti-imperialist party that revolutionaries participate in, where there are left-reformists and centrists (I do not in this sense use centrist as a dirty word - I’m putting it in the sense of breaking from the clutches of the Labour bureaucracy).
However declarations such as the one cited in relation to religious freedom must be part of any democratic programme that such a party advances. I pose it like that as some contributors might believe that the only party with mass support that can be built to the left of Labour will be Marxist throughout.
As it is impossible to amalgamate all the British sects who claim to be Marxist, if no other reason they deny any other group is Marxist or they would fuse out of revolutionary duty, then it might be best to kick that in to touch.
As we need to build a movement that can relate to mass campaigns and struggles on a day to day way, I would rather be in a party with Salma Yacoub and George Galloway - who are not Marxists than the marxists from Permananent Revolution (Have they ever read the book, by the way?)
Comment by howard t — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:15 pm
Bit difficult posting this evening with a fractious baby but I also wanted to point out that the Baku Congress which Andy praises was a disaster with no real gains made for the infant workers republic. It was in point of fact a mess dreamt up by the October scab Zinoviev.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 10:57 pm
Mark Lockett wrote “No Mike the construction of a sect is complete useless in all circumstances by definition. Since a sect artificially seperates itself from the class struggle it is useless in propgressing that struggle.”
No it is sectarianism that separates itself from the class on the basis of a supposed ‘principle’. Sects on the other hand may in a period of retreat or of recomposition, such as that through which we are now passing, may well be all that can practically be built.
Indeed Marx and Engels recognised that after 1851 all that could be built was a sect and while they personally withdrew from that task themselves did not denigrate those who made the attempt and at a later period worked woth those sects in orer to construct workers parties.
The pity of the foolish attempts of the last few years to build broad parties is that they are opposed to the ideas of marxism with regard to the centrality of the class. Rather than attempting to build healthy socialist groups tyhey seek to build broad parties based on class forces alien to the working classes with the result that the socialist groups involved drift into convulsions and the loss of cadre.
The task today is to build a healthy socialist current that places the need for a workers party at the centre of its concerns and does not see itself as the nucleus of a revolutionary party that can only be born out of mass struggle. It is a task that, sad to say, seems to be ignored by all the major socialist groups known to me.
Comment by Mike — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:16 pm
Kremlinology is a perilous art but are we seeing the dawning of an glimmer of reality on the SWP and the beginning of the end of their absurd masquerade as Rees-pect?
This weeks’s Socialist Worker is, at the very least, decidedly odd. The demo on the 5th anniversary of the war on Iraq gets an advert above the title on the front page and a virtually invisible advert strip on the left hand side of page two. But there are no stories about the success or otherwise of the World Against War tour or any other building activity. Possibly a mistake or is this the conclusion by the editor that the demo is going to be less than impressive.
As for Reespect and Lindsey German’s campaign for mayor, the entire Reespect coverage in this week’s Socialist Worker is relegated to one half column on the right hand side of page two composed of three snippets. Not exactly awe-inspiring. There isn’t even coverage of the press conference held in the Brick Lane area last Friday.
Incidentally from the report carried on the Reespect website of the press conference, none of the three remaining councillors allied to Reespect turned up and it was left to the controversial Kumar Murshid as the only Bengali candidate available to talk to those members of the Bengali press the report claims turned up to the event. The Bengali press are, by the way, not the only people the increasingly desperate Kumar is speaking to as he sees the ship he clambered so enthusiastically aboard slipping beneath the waves.
To add to the mystery, Socialist Worker makes no mention of the proposal to stand as the “Left List”. This proposal came to light when two leaflets suddenly appeared on the Reespect website, with no prior warning, announcing in passing that Lindsey German and her friends would be standing as the Left List and not as Respect. A press release, I am reliably informed, was drafted several days later, announcing this decision and blaming it on the undemocratic decision by the forces of evil to deprive the members, etc, etc. The press release does not appear to have been released and the latest Reespect leaflet makes no mention of Left List but puffs Lindsey German with barely a mention even of Respect.
What is going on? One explanation could be that the SWP forgot to register the name Left List, or indeed any other usable name as an alternative to Respect. Given Rees’s history of incompetence over little matters of detail such as whether he could remove Linda Smith as nominating officer, a failure to register is certainly not out of the question. And if this is the case, then I understand Lindsey German would have to stand for mayor as an independent and, most importantly, would have to stand as an independent for the London members election without a list (which is only available for registered parties).
With a humiliating result a racing certainty if they are unable to trade off Respect’s reputation or stand under an appealing name (which Left List certainly isn’t), perhaps the SWP Central Committee has finally come to the conclusion that the game is up and there is no point in wasting members’ efforts and, even more importantly given the dire economic predicament of the SWP, wasting more money on this charade. And maybe they are also not quite ready to break the bad news to the members, never mind the small number of fellow travellers they have led up the garden path, so Socialist Worker is downplaying Respect instead.
And then again, maybe there is a cunning plan to grasp stunning electoral success from the jaws of disaster that this amateur kremlinologist has failed to discern.
Comment by felix — 6 March, 2008 @ 11:37 pm
#153
That’s very encouraging (not to mention generous, from my point of view), BPS.
As for the handwaving, doctrinaire guff from some quarters about leadership in different immigrant communities, so much of this rubbish is simply argument by analogy making up for zero theorised experience of serious engagement in those fields. Put simply, so many of these isolated revolutionists have no idea what they are talking about.
Comment by Kevin Ovenden — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:17 am
Oh dear Poor L&J
what a complete waste - they were in the position to carry on with the NOW rapidly moving forward Respect Party.
They were so used to secret little meets conspiring in darkened corners its now gone and pushed them back into the dark ages.
There ‘cunning plan’ as Felix puts is just led them on the
‘Road to Nowhere’ I really am convinced that they only had good intentions when they ventured into doing what they thought to be the right thing (I always think the best of everyone) but sadly EGO became much more important and the embittered battle to score points sadly just did not work out for them.
I am just curious? that all I have seen on there websites is to fund-raise for the Respect campaign how kind of them to pus all that effect in for Respect - so does anyone know if all that money that has been collected in the Respect name now goes to those who are really standing for respect?
I am not sure but I can check that taking gifts and to fund-raise under false pretences is fraudulent and could even result in a prison sentence. OMG!
I am sure they will do the right thing as we would not like something so terrible to happen especially over someones EGO
Comment by Carole — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:40 am
Interesting reading, Felix.
It might be, of course, that the editorial board of Socialist Worker is given a collective going over by Rees and German on account of their omissions.
As for the registration of the name - I agree that it’s possible they put some muppet in charge. I doubt that was Rees. He seems to be doing quite well implicating others in this pile up. He’s got the hapless Oliur Rahman quoted in the imbecilic press release denying the Trot to Tory defection.
He’s got Elaine Graham Leigh taking on the Electoral Commission for him. The letter she’s sent them, circulated round their pretend national council, is a wonder to behold. It goes on the rampage and betrays total ignorance of electoral law. I imagine the Electoral Commission are now more inclined to take a hard line. It’s clearly his handiwork. More fool her for putting her name to it.
Comment by Nas — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:44 am
STOP insulting the MUPPETS
Comment by Kermit The Frog — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:51 am
I love the way ‘felix’ reads Socialist Worker! (#168). I am willing to lay odds that he/she is an XSWP member.
There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the Alamo Project is now tail spinning beyond control.
Paring away the online edition’s “Events” section you see a pale shadow of an organisation that once had multiple branches in *all* the main centres of Britain. No offence to the residents, but it now seems that the modern recompostition of the working class has resulted in a odd focus on St. Albans (the new Petrograd?)…
PS. Kevin, @169, you’re welcome
PPS. Andy Wilson and the group who opposed his expulsion 20-odd years ago republished Jim Higgins’ “More Years for the Locust” whose sections on how the SWP blew the “Women’s Voice” and “Flame” and other initiatives is as sharp now as it was in the early 1970s. Current SWP members who read it today will shiver at its purchase on ‘modern times’…
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:53 am
Oh, and that letter from Elaine Graham Leigh to the Electoral Commission also seems to invite them to investigate George Galloway’s finances. Remember that when the SWP leaders start claiming that others have “gone to the state”. I’m led to believe that the dodgy cheque business will get a definitive ruling from the EC soon and that it is looking very bad for Rees and his minions.
Comment by Nas — 7 March, 2008 @ 12:57 am
I read over the Socialist worker online and I have never been or wanted to be a member of the SWP
Also I read other publications online it by no way means I want to become a member or have ever been a member of these.
speculating is quite bad for one!
Comment by Carole — 7 March, 2008 @ 2:08 am
Like Mark L I was also heavily involved in the Socialist Allince in Australia, we are both members of Solidarity which is affiliated to the IST.
Regarding the issue of the Broad party and revolutionary organisation, I pretty much agree with Joseph Kisolo on this one.
Those of us who are for revolutionary change need to have a strategy for building a revolutionary organisation. It is also clear that this needs to be done in the contect of bringing the whole left forward and advancing the interests of the working class. In the current context, at least in Britian this means building Respect as a viable and growing broad left party.
I don’t think building revolutionary organisation, in the sense of an organised grouping of revolutionaries who attempt to build the influence of revolutionary ideas is in any way inconsisitent with constructing a Broad party.
What it does mean is that revolutionary organisation needs to take on the form of a platform or current rather than another party which replicates the work and interventions of the broad party in an attempt to build its own influence.
Now, some have argued that what is needed is a loose network of individual revolutionaries who are in conversation etc, but who’s main focus is the day to day activities in respect.
This may be the best that can be achieved at the moment, but I don’t think it is an acceptable long term solution.
The main reason is that, despite the seriouse problems of the SWP’s current practice, it has at least played a useful role in the education of a layer of revolutionary activists, some of who are now in RR, Ger Francis included.
Without building some mechanism for developing a new layer of revolutionary activists or at least a practical knowledge of marxism I think it will be difficult to build a healthy revolutionary current that does not privelidge those who have had the benefit of a rounded marxist education derived from revolutionary parties.
I think you need this sort of education as I disagre with Murray smith when he argues “Revolutionaries must deal with the issues of the broad party when they arise, as they arise”. The problem here is that the solution to problems can best be found with the benefit of the examples of history and the analysis of theory. It is still necessary to discuss expected problems IN ADVANCE of them occuring otherwise you run the danger of lurching from one crisis to the next.
Now, I think it is correct to make the practical issues of the class the centre of ones analysis and activity, but it is also necessary to build something approaching the “university of the class”,.
Again, I don’t think that building a broad party and an organised revolutionary current is counterposed. More to the point without building a left movement that can really test analysis and engage with the questions facing the class the leninist concept of generalising from struggle and activity is very hard to carry out in a real way.
I do also think there is a real danger in discarding what is right with the SWP’s analysis in the context of breaking with the leaderships or party’s limitations.
Also, I think it would be a massive disaster if the cadre and forces build up by the SWP were to be frittered away. If it is at all possible, there needs to be some strategy of orienting on the better elements of the SWP in an attempt to change the party’s direction.
Unless those Marxists in RR can show they are seriouse about constructing a revolutionary current as part of their orientation on Respect, then many in the SWP will not take them seriously and they will be open to being labelled as “moving away from revolutionary politics”.
And Andy, you really should kick off some of these mad sectarians that wreck this website. Otherwise it is pretty excellent.
Comment by Kieran — 7 March, 2008 @ 6:03 am
‘Irish Mark P’s’ (p.159)
Reduced to ad honimen, are we? That can’t be a good sign.
Comment by zino — 7 March, 2008 @ 8:55 am
One explanation could be that the SWP forgot to register the name Left List, or indeed any other usable name as an alternative to Respect.
A quick check of the Electoral Commission’s Web site confirms that, yes, EC provisions on registering political parties do cover the GLA elections - and no, Lindsey and friends won’t be standing as ‘the Left List’. Hence the recent shift to a Martin Bell-style personalised candidacy, although Lord knows where that leaves Michael Gavan and the other GLA candidates.
Comment by Phil — 7 March, 2008 @ 9:00 am
Socialist Worker “Respect” events section, 2nd week of March 2006, before elections
Socialist Worker “Respect” events section, 2nd week of March 2008, before elections
Comment by THE BREAKTHROUGH IS COMING!!!!!!!! — 7 March, 2008 @ 9:11 am
“although Lord knows where that leaves Michael Gavan and the other GLA candidates.”
I suspect that if he wanted to rethink his recent strategy and actually stand as a Respect candidate on the list, we’d welcome him back - as we’d welcome the other councillors back.
The SWP really has put him in a terrible position - one of their leading members in Newham was going round telling people that the Respect councillor on Gavan’s appeal panel would vote to back the council in sacking him.
I’ve no doubt that so much poison was spread, some of it must’ve stuck.
Which may explain why he didn’t even acknowledge George Galloway’s letter correcting Rees’s rubbish spinning of the PFI money given to OFFU (which Michael never knew had been solicited by Rees).
Some of the words that have been put into Oliur Rahman’s mouth, for example - words that he would never say, however much animosity recent events have generated in all of us - show the level to which Rees will stoop. As I’ve said, I have no doubt that if you keep up those antics, some of the poison will seep into the politics of otherwise good people like Rahman and Gavan.
Comment by tonyc — 7 March, 2008 @ 9:19 am
The relevent comparison is this one, a similar period in advance of the 2004 London elections (they were in June that year), where Respect has a much much higher profile in Socialist Worker:
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=534
Comment by Andy Newman — 7 March, 2008 @ 9:32 am
2004
ESF rogues’ gallery - The SWP and George Galloway
Submitted on 8 October, 2004 - 21:17 Social Forums ‘Respect’ and George Galloway Solidarity 3/59 ESF Extra, 7 October 2004
The Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) is the biggest left group in Britain. Earlier this year the SWP and some other socialists put a big effort into a Respect election campaign for the European Parliament (held on 10 June). The election campaign was organised around the politics and personality of George Galloway MP, a figure who will be prominent at the ESF. But was it left-wing? Does George Galloway deserve to be a hero of the left? Does the SWP’s self-submergence in Respect help socialist and anti-capitalist politics? Colin Foster says no.
In the Euro-elections Respect failed to win a seat, with the average vote across the country, at 1.65%. Since then Respect has contended a number of Parliamentary by-elections. In the latest by-election in Hartlepool the Respect candidate gained 3% of the vote.
In heavily-Muslim electorates it has done better, winning one council by-election in East London.
None of this has got anywhere near the fantastic claims made for Respect at its founding conference January 2004 and later. The Euro-election vote was the sort of figure that any socialist candidate standing in an appropriate constituency at any time in the last century could have matched or bettered.
Yet the SWP’s leaders said had that the alliance would morph a sizeable part of last year’s anti-war movement into votes for Respect and “transform” British politics, “break the mould”.
The expectation of massive gains was the entire rationale for Respect, and the entire rationale behind combining with George Galloway — a man doubly tainted, by his long time Stalinism and by his decade of association with the Saddam Hussein regime.
In the Euro-election Respect promoted George Galloway as its hero: on its ballot papers, everywhere, said “Respect, the Unity Coalition (George Galloway)”.
But what Galloway is politically has been known with certainty for a decade. No international socialist, standing for the liberation of the workers of Iraq, should hold hands politically with Galloway, a man who held hands with the quasi-fascists who ruled Iraq.
Respect has not drawn anti-war activists into the left. If anything, the opposite: it has converted socialists into promoters of downright right-wing politics. How?
* George Galloway can make a leftish speech to left-wing audiences. But left is not what he is. Galloway gave one major press interview during the Euro-election campaign. Asked to describe his general politics “in one word”, Galloway chose to emphasise that he is “not as left wing as you think” and is strongly against abortion “I can’t accept that [a woman’s right to choose], because I believe in God” (Independent, 5 April 2004).
* That helped rope in the Muslim Association of Britain, a British offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. After the Independent interview, MAB made its first public statement on Respect politics, saying that Galloway’s statements about God and abortion made it much happier with the alliance. Having won MAB endorsement, Galloway then told leftish Guardian readers that he was “not opposed to a woman’s right to choose”. This is the man Respect tells voters to trust.
* In the 1980s George Galloway was an old-fashioned Labour Party Stalinist of the Morning Star stripe. At that point he condemned Saddam Hussein’s massacre of Kurds at Halabja in 1988. He worked with a campaign which advocated sanctions against Iraq. But in the early 1990s he switched dramatically.
By January 1994 the switch had gone so far that he stood before the man whom his associates in the 1980s had called a mass murderer, and said to his face: “Sir… we salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability… We are with you. Until victory! Until Jerusalem!”
Galloway was calling for the Arab states to unite with Saddam to conquer Israel. Such a stance has nothing in common with democratic solidarity for the Palestinian people. It is nothing other than Arab-chauvinist warmongering.
* From 1994 to 2003, Galloway’s sole claim to left-wing credentials was his activity on Iraq. Otherwise he was a standard not-quite-Blairite Labour MP: he himself has said that he was not left enough to join the not-very-left Campaign Group. He “campaigned” against sanctions on Iraq, and on his own account spent more than £800,000 on it. But not to organise lots of demonstrations and meetings. He visited Iraq (on his account) almost monthly, and acted as a go-between between the Iraqi government and businessmen and journalists. Galloway is happy to admit to running that political operation on money from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and a Jordanian businessman rich from a percentage on Iraq’s oil exports. Galloway has also never refuted the allegation that he once published the newspaper East with money paid out by the Pakistani governments of Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in order to promote their politics on the Kashmir question in Britain.
Even if Galloway never took a penny directly from the Iraqi regime, socialists ought to run a mile from a politician with this kind of track record
* On his own account also, Galloway “couldn’t live on three workers’ wages” and “needs £150,000 a year to function properly as a leading figure in a part of the British political system” (Scotsman, 19 May 2003).
* In the Euro-elections Respect fought a communalist campaign. They appealed to Muslims to vote as Muslims for “George Galloway… a fighter for Muslims… Married to a Palestinian doctor… teetotal… strong religious principles”. This is as reactionary as asking Catholics to vote as Catholics for a candidate because he is a “fighter for Catholics”.
Respect turned not to Islamic-background workers or Islamic-background radicals and leftists, but to the Islamic communities, of all classes.
The Marxist attitude to all communities and nations, even oppressed nations fighting for liberation, is to split them on class lines, not shore up their “unity” by allying with the petty bourgeois and bourgeois establishments there. Socialists would work with that establishment in some situations, for example in organising physical defence against fascists. Even then as much as possible, we would directly relate to the working class in those communities.
Respect rejected the class approach because in the short term it would not have produced the large Muslim vote that they hoped would allow them to pole-vault itself into “big time” bourgeois institutional politics.
* In Yorkshire, the Respect list was headed by Anas Altikriti of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). MAB is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Arab world’s biggest authoritarian-religious organisation. Some on the left like to believe that MAB is not like the Brotherhood elsewhere in the world and has evolved beyond radical Islamism. But how do they reconcile that with, for example, the MAB freesheet Inspire (28 September 2002) — that it should be “punishable by death” or at least “seen as an act of mutiny and treason” for people brought up Muslim to renounce Islam?
* Respect opposes the US/UK occupation of Iraq. So do the Greens. When challenged to prove itself better than the Greens, Respect says that unlike the Greens it wants the US/UK troops out “now”. All this means is that Respect, unlike the Greens, solidarises with the Islamist militias which are at war against the Americans — and against Iraq’s reviving labour movement. Who would, if they could, impose a religious dictatorship on Iraq. That is a right-wing, not a left-wing, stance.
We have been here before — it is what the Communist Parties did during the notorious right-wing “popular front” period of the 1930s. The entire Respect operation was designed, promoted, and justified on the grounds that it would win lots of votes, and Galloway was the key to that. But winning a lot of votes in elections does not necessarily advance socialism. It depends who wins the votes, and on what basis they get them.
Comment by Memories — 7 March, 2008 @ 10:30 am
I suspect that if he wanted to rethink his recent strategy and actually stand as a Respect candidate on the list, we’d welcome him back - as we’d welcome the other councillors back.
That’s a point, actually. It seems to me that one of the striking aspects of this split has been the lack of bitterness on the RR side - it’s hard to think of anyone who’s been active in RESPECT who’d be barred from joining RR (with the possible exception of Ahmed Hussain). Or is that just a rose-tinted view from outside?
Comment by Phil — 7 March, 2008 @ 10:36 am
Kieran wrote “it (the SWP) has at least played a useful role in the education of a layer of revolutionary activists, some of who are now in RR, Ger Francis included.”
Proving only that educational standards have fallen.
Comment by Mike — 7 March, 2008 @ 11:12 am
Phil - absolutely, it’s exactly the way it looks.
I can tell you that in 3 different Tower Hamlets Respect committee meetings and at Respect National Council meetings, it’s been unanimous that we would welcome people back.
Not in a “HAHAHAHA DESTROY REES” sort of way - but in the genuine, “we really gotta build a coalition here” way.
Everyone has said that the councillors, the activists etc. would be welcome to join us.
Every time the issue comes up, there’s a real wave of goodwill towards anyone who wants to work with us. I think the irony is, that goodwill was always there - it was just ignored before the split. The warmth and dynamism coming from the new people really building things in Respect is tangible. It was just never allowed to develop before.
Comment by tonyc — 7 March, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Well it’s shaping up as a good debate. Well done to GF for kicking it off. Very interesting re: the SWP’s internal regime methodology. I do think you are eventually going to have to go back a lot further on SWP history however. Simply moving on is not a real option. Those who do not learn etc…
Anyway:
Marxists must fight for RR to adopt Marxist method, programme and leadership;
This must be done in an exemplary way not in an opportunist or sectarian way;
No more gangsterism: Proper accounting, proper elections and candidate membership of at least 3 months to prevent last minute gerrymandering.
I hope the ISG aren’t going to settle for being HM’s Loyal Opposition but are going to be proactive developing a thrusting, dynamic, transitional programme to replace the sub-reformist rot bequeathed by the SWP.
I think RR have made the best possible start in their political life by rejecting and surviving SWP sectarianism and calling for a vote for Livingstone in solidarity with the working class to keep out the hated Boris Johnson whilst at the same time standing their own candidates for the GLA at both constituency and London-wide levels. If Respect and the Muslim community had been blamed for Livingstone’s defeat by the wider working class it would have been an enormous disaster for both. If that had happened it would have been better to have left the Muslim communities alone and voting Labour at least they would have maintained a fraternal connection with the wider working class. Fortunately GG’s political instincts were fully functioning on this one.
Obviously RR is going to have to consolidate its position in its core constituency but it is vital that it does not make a virtue out of a necessity but continues to see itself as potentially representing the entire working class even if eventually it has to subsume itself into larger leftward moving organisations.
Unlike the SWP, RR needs to select councillors who are willing to take the fight all the way for their communities and mobilise in defence of working class interests. We don’t want to see some Respect mayor in five years time announcing that a Respect cut is better than a New Labour cut.
Now, let the programmes speak.
* Forward to the gorgeous, fluffy, wonderful world revolution;
* Down with Mark P.
I’m kidding on the last one.
Comment by David Ellis — 7 March, 2008 @ 4:41 pm
#162 Andy Newman to Bill J: “Read the transcripts of the Baku congress of 1920. Comrade Narbutabekov - referring to secularists in the socialist movement said: “they must be ruthlessly destroyed, just like counter-revolutionaries”
It’s clear that what was meant by “secularists” was Great Russian national chauvinists who were monopolising power in the Soviet governments of Central Asia.
In the paragraph which direct follows the Council of People’s Commisars ‘Appeal to Toiling Muslims and Peoples of the East’, Narbutabekov details what this meant:-
“..now as we travel about, Moslems come up to us and say that our beliefs are being trampled on, that we are not being allowed to pray, not being allowed to bury our dead in accordance with our customs and religion”
Congress of the Peoples of the East
New Park Publications pps 63-4
Such a repressive policy of forced secularisation wouldn’t be acceptable even in a fully developed socialist society. In a situation of Civil War between Red and White, it was rightly condemned by Narbutabekov as “sowing counterrevolution among the toiling masses”
Does this mean that the Bolsheviks didn’t stand for separation of religion and state, or refused to organise for women’s education, political emancipation, the right to work outside the home and the gradual elimination of bride-price?
Absolutely not. They continued to fight for all of these things and organised amongst the working population to achieve them.
This had to be done with extreme sensetivity, including accepting a parallel court system where the local population supported kadi(sharia) courts.
But always on the basis that the appellants could appeal to a *higher Civil court* if dissatisfied with the verdict.
Similarly, when the Baku Congress called for a “Holy War” to drive Imperialist forces from Asia, it’s quite explicit what the difference with the pan-Islamist perspective is.
“You have often heard the call to holy war from your governments, you have marched under the green banner of the Prophet, but all those holy wars were fradulent, serving only the interests of your self seeking rulers, and you, the peasants and workers remained in slavery and want after these wars. You conquered the good things of life for others, but yourselves never enjoyed any of them”
By contrast, the manifesto states:-
“This is a holy war for the liberation of the Peoples of the East, for the ending of the division of mankind into opressor peoples and oppressed peoples, for complete equality of all peoples and races, whatever language they might speak, whatever the colour of their skin and whatever religion they might profess….for the liberation of mankind from the yoke of capitalist and imperialist slavery”
CoPoE ibid page 172
It’s quite clear that this is a completely different approach to merging programmes with the Pan-Islamists.
Comment by prianikoff — 7 March, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
# 186
David,
glad to see a note of optimism, personally I feel that GF perhaps exaggerates somewhat the significance of 1989, and downplays the treachery of the TU bureaucracies (with a few exceptions)to this day.
This in turn relates to the lack of confidence of the British W/C movement following the ‘downturn in class struggle’ since the mid - 70s, and the corresponding lack of a substantive and independent movement from below.
However 1989 did deflate much of the social - democratic left and their forever compromising views of the ‘mixed economy’ version of capitalism.
Since then a whole generation of ex-CPs have left the field of class conflict and regrettably not been replaced. At least not as a significant movement.
I still think the potential is there, particularly in the public sector, but whether it will be frittered away again through failure to spread the action to others in struggle a la the CWU strike I’ve no idea.
As for the role of the Greens, this has its hopes to unite around specific issues but so far I cannot see any grand alliance of them and the left. Anyway the experience of Green/Red alliances abroad (particularly in Germany have been disasterous), very much corrupted by an electoral opportunism which has come back to destroy it, but also having the effect of promoting a new left in ‘Der Linke’.
2nd prefs for KL are vital of course.
Comment by Halshall — 7 March, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
I think Ger Francis’ article, along with articles by Mark Perryman, Hilary Wainwright, Mark Hoskisson and others, are all part of a valuable debate on and around the left about how we can rebuild class struggle, working class confidence and the role of socialists within that.
I largely agree with Halsall when s/he writes
“This in turn relates to the lack of confidence of the British W/C movement following the ‘downturn in class struggle’ since the mid - 70s, and the corresponding lack of a substantive and independent movement from below.”
Though surely this should be dated from the mid-80s (NOT 70s- indeed 79 and 84 were two major years of an upturn in the class struggle) with the defeat of the miners?
I agree with David Ellis’s sense of optimism but it is surely wrong-footed in putting the building of one party or group among others before the rebuilding of the working class
“Obviously RR is going to have to consolidate its position in its core constituency but it is vital that it does not make a virtue out of a necessity but continues to see itself as potentially representing the entire working class even if eventually it has to subsume itself into larger leftward moving organisations.”
Perhaps but meanwhile let’s have united fronts of socialists and non-socialist, including RR of course but also the vast majority who are not in RR or any other left group.
Generally, although there is a real lack of confidence and networks of activists are either etiolated or non-existent I think there is a wide constituency for socialist ideas out there- I was talking to someone today about this and she said, “No one could disagree with your ideas.”
Alas, that’s not entirely true but in my experience many people who become active in political campaigns- this particular person is active in migrant worker, fair-trade, antiracist and make poverty history type campaigns- the idea that most working class people are not winnable tom socialism seems to be confined to that almost vanishingly small number of people who are part of the organised left.
Often the active rank and file- whether in unions or campaigns- are considerably to the left and a lot less anti-socialist than activists in avowedly socialist groups, bizarrely. I guess it’s linked to opportunist short cuts that actually end up as self defeating.
Anyway, good to have the debate out in the open at least.
The conventionoftheleft.org website’s worth a visit too
Comment by Jason — 8 March, 2008 @ 5:52 pm
Often the active rank and file- whether in unions or campaigns- are considerably to the left and a lot less anti-socialist than activists in avowedly socialist groups, bizarrely. I guess it’s linked to opportunist short cuts that actually end up as self defeating.
I’d agree, although I tend to think it’s more related to maximalist short cuts that end up as self-defeating. At one of the last meetings I attended of the Manchester Socialist Movement, there was a long argument about a statement from the SLP which they’d circulated for endorsement. It was essentially in the form of a petition - we demand that the Labour Party return to a principled socialist programme consisting of… - and it divided the meeting down the middle: all the non-aligned activists who’d come into the SM without previous revolutionary left experience were strongly in favour, and all the time-served old hacks were more or less strongly opposed. (It passed.) My problem with it was that it was asking for the moon - more specifically, it was asking for immediate unconditional withdrawal from the North of Ireland and the abolition of the monarchy and the peerage, among much else. I agreed with every word of it in principle, but I knew that it wouldn’t get anywhere. The difference between the newer activists and us older hacks is that we knew how empowering it is to push for a demand and win it - even if it’s only an extra half a percent or the reinstatement of a victimised colleague. More importantly, we knew how disempowering it is to hammer endlessly on a locked door.
So, in the context of that meeting, I was arguing against people who were calling for the abolition of the monarchy - but if that made me look ‘anti-socialist’ it had nothing to do with opportunism on my part. (Opportunism on the SLP’s part, maybe.)
Comment by Phil — 8 March, 2008 @ 6:22 pm
#182 memories perhaps articulates the sectarian roots of much of British Trotskyism which actually stands in complete contrast to Trotsky’s own approach of the anti-imperialist united front. It is not the task of Marxists to split petty-bourgeois forces ‘along class lines’. Think about it - that means handing the middle layers in society over to the counter-revolution. Our task is to raise the programme of the petty bourgeoisie in as much as it counters imperialism.
Call it hegemony if you wish - in any case how can you split a class along class lines? It is the case of which class the working class or the bourgeoisie wins over the petty bourgeoisie by its programme.
I don’t think, frankly the Popular Front applies here. If you actually look at the programme of the popular front it was a strictly bourgois programme which communists supported, thus being left only to fight for the democratic stage of the revolution. Galloway advances a defence of working class interests as a left reformists. Marxists have every right to engage in that defence with George Galloway and alongside all social forces who even partially are prepared to defend those interests, including left labour forces, the Muslim community - whoever.
If anyone thinks Respect should be the most left-wing propagandist group engaging in action with no one, then I’m off
Comment by howard t — 8 March, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
#191 What I find it genuinely hard to get my head around though in relation to
“If anyone thinks Respect should be the most left-wing propagandist group engaging in action with no one, then I’m off”
is if we make it concrete.
e.g. let’s say for a NHS run by pateints and health care workers
for affordable decent housing under the control and management of the people who live in them
for jobs and services under the democratic control of the people who in the jobs and who use the services
Try talking to people about this- I do. I find about 95% of people find this entirely reasonable.
OK if you live in some leafy suburb that proportion might go down to- I’d gues about 85% but I may be wrong because I don’t live in one of those.
But- and this is the bit I find incredible- about 90% of those organised in the revolutionary left-which itself is about 0.1% of the population say -
“Oh no this is left propagandism, sectariansism, cutting yourself off from the class, too advanced.”
But try talking to people- it isn’t.
Comment by Jason — 8 March, 2008 @ 11:22 pm
Jason - this is exactly what I mean. It’s easy to raise a socialist programme which means workers control of either a service or production. How is that going to happen outside of a workers’ state, given that the capitalist class isn’t too fond of the working class running the economy?
In which case, the struggles we are involved in are defensive ones where alliances are required across the movement, rather than narrowing it down to those who have a Marxist perspective.
In the not too distant past, industrial struggles were at a much higher level, the revolutionary left was much larger. That we were set back has little to do with the fact that not enough literature was sold, or that the demands raised were not left enough.
There is a place for propaganda, rhetoric and analysis, but much of the left restrict their contribution to just that and spend little time thinking about what issues the mass of workers will fight on and never analyse why the fight may be very limited, only ever concluding that its not enough rank&filism and betrayal by the trade union bureaucracy. There’s never an acceptance of how reformism has gripped the working class and that there are no simple solutions.
The left can remain isolated in its subjectivism. It can on the other hand link up with social forces breaking from Labour’s strangle hold. Respect is able to do that and not reduce itself to a propaganda sect.
By the way I live and work in the inner city, but I haven’t detected that the vast majority of the work force support workers self management. Getting them to fight against racism, homophobia, defend abortion rights, fight privatisation, low public sector pay seem concrete enough to me.
Comment by howard t — 9 March, 2008 @ 12:06 am
“Getting them to fight against racism, homophobia, defend abortion rights, fight privatisation, low public sector pay seem concrete enough to me.”
Sure- this is very important and the main way we do it is by building united front campaigns combining local service users, rank and file trade unionists and others for e.g. demonstrations, cross union strike committees, etc. Or anti-deportation campaigns and other direct action.
This could be usefully linked to a political organisation that also raises these matters and perhaps uses elections to identify and mobilise further support.
I don’t see how in any way you put off anyone by saying that people whoi use and work in services should run and manage them. But you explicitly reject this as ‘exactly what I mean’- i.e. ‘left-wing propagandist group engaging in action with no one’
But this is not my experience at all. In active campaigns and at work and my neigbour and others most people seem to think this is reasonable enough- I don’t why your experience is so different.
I haven’t carried out a survey- I now think perhaps someone should.
I’m also not saying we can win people easily back to class struggle let alone revolutionary politics- that’s a wider question. But I am saying that many basic postions of socialism are easaily argued for and won- in my ecperiences anyway. The question of reformism is different.
You say “By the way I live and work in the inner city, but I haven’t detected that the vast majority of the work force support workers self management.”
As I say not my experience- may be you don’t really ask them or use different terms- I don’t know.
Reformism- i think you;re right. “…reformism has gripped the working class and that there are no simple solutions.”
Yes becuase many people think that if any of these things can be achieved we have to go through establsihement methods- pressure, lobby groups, voting Labour (or in a small minority a new reformist party).
I think actually if anything more people think even that’s a waste of time.
But how do you win people to action and ideas? By proposing specific concrete actions and linking this with an overall vision that most people (in my experience) can relate to (ie. we don’t get enough say on our lives we should run our own lives) and work from there.
It will of course be a long hard battle. But at the moment I think we’re more hampered than we should be because a small section of society called the elft have so many arguments- e.g you assume I’m not involved in action “restrict their contribution to just that and spend little time thinking about what issues the mass of workers will fight on ” but you’ve never met me (as far as I’m aware!) Or may be you din’;t mean me or any specific left person or group but have a schema. I don’t know.
I’m just saying let;s actually ask people rather than assume people will be put off by socialism. If you say let’s concentrate on action- fine. Let’s. Let us know about the specifics of “Getting them to fight against racism, homophobia, defend abortion rights, fight privatisation, low public sector pay seem concrete enough to me.” And let’s do it.
But I think there is a place for politics in these specific battles and each raises the question of who manages and rules society- the great majority or a tiny elite.
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 8:15 am
#194 Jason - the problem is the revolutionary left are experts at propaganda, even if much analysis is suspect. The problem is that very few are capable of engaging in practical activities on a united front bassis. SWP are notorious for ploughing in and only running things on their lines so ’success’ is monitored by whether they recruit the dvanced militants who agree with their analysis, rather than anything that advances the class as a whole. Others have only propaganda to offer.
I would say quite categorically that the far left has not been short of analysis for the past 50 years and more. The mass of the working class are not stupid or don’t understand these things because socialist ideas are too difficult for them. Had it have been that easy Gerry Healy with a daily newspaper would have easily have advanced the socialist programme.
The complexity is bourgeois domination, usually via social democracy which isn’t broken by propaganda, but by united action on the issues of the day which can be won. If they break from Labourism, - good, but only individuals will at the moment and that isn’t the mass of the working class, any more than the person buying a left newspaper who chats away.
Of course, the fact that society is run so undemocratically will emerge in any struggle, but you have to win with everybody who is prepared to fight on the issue itself. You cannot form a fight against the closure of the local post office, hospital or school on the basis of workers control, but via an alliance of all those affected - the ’stakeholders’ that the government has betrayed and wish to keep that service.
All I’m saying is that the left thinks that organisisng around the maximum progtramme is sufficient. Reality is somewhat different, but it seems that most left groups only go into the campaigns to differentiate themselves in order to recruit. Their contribution is in essence sectarian. They’re not all called Sparts.
Comment by howard t — 9 March, 2008 @ 9:26 am
“Of course, the fact that society is run so undemocratically will emerge in any struggle, but you have to win with everybody who is prepared to fight on the issue itself. You cannot form a fight against the closure of the local post office, hospital or school on the basis of workers control, but via an alliance of all those affected - the ’stakeholders’ that the government has betrayed and wish to keep that service.”
I agree with that. But where we may disagree is I think socialists can and should raise the issue of services being run by those who use them and that of you do this you don’t lose support you gain it.
To be concrete if we had a campaign against an Academy I don’t necessarily think we should have as the basis of the campaign that everyone who supports it has to sign up tot he idea that schools should be run democratically by the community- it should be all who oppose the academy. Actually if nearly everyone agreed you might even have the demand for local accountability and involvement of parents, students and education workers on the info put out- it’s so uncontroversial I don’t necessarily see that as being a problem. But it’s tactical.
But it is perfectly possible and feasible to argue that one of the problems of Academies is that it takes away any such control that people have and outs in the hands of unaccountable business making it a profit at our expense and able to suspend th ecurriculum and pay and conditions. Not very hard arguements.
“that most left groups only go into the campaigns to differentiate themselves in order to recruit. Their contribution is in essence sectarian. They’re not all called Sparts.”
Not convinced of this. I have seen some campaigns over the last 20 years or so I’ve been involved run like this but not most actually. For example, in Bolton in the Sukula campaign, the swp, workers power (now permanent revolution) and others not in left groups (plus more sporadically anarchists and LP members) have worked together and this sort of joint work is replicated in other campaigns I’ve worked in.
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 10:41 am
I agree with the general perspective pitched by Kieren (#176). But the problem I have with his argument is that it is a touch schematic.
The only way broad left parties are going to come into being is if people actively build them in everyday activity. It is a risk exercise. It’s not about getting it “just so” — especially before hand.
So while I strongly differ with Murray Smith on the cadre question I think Kieren is mistaken to argue: “… I disagre with Murray smith when he argues “Revolutionaries must deal with the issues of the broad party when they arise, as they arise”. The problem here is that the solution to problems can best be found with the benefit of the examples of history and the analysis of theory. It is still necessary to discuss expected problems IN ADVANCE of them occurring otherwise you run the danger of lurching from one crisis to the next.”
That’s precisely the prophylactic that narrow formations prescribe for themselves so that they can stay narrow. They do that rather than take the risk and make the best of what may be in front of them. And I grant you, it is a risky exercise.You are going to be pulled hither and yon. Afterall there is a new cleavage on the far left internationally precisely on this question and many comrades will surely lose their nerve and yearn for the ideological comfort of the old ways and means.
So the continuity question is problematical precisely because this cadre left is so unwilling to unconditionally embrace the broad party option.
The means of sustaining and reproducing a cadre core outside the old style Leninist factory system we’re used to has not been worked out either.I think thats’ clear. That challenge is something you have to sweat over at the coal face — but I think it is a crucial component of the total broad left package you may aspire to put together
How you do that is going to vary. My view would be that you need to coalesce a Marxian core which is absolutely committed to the project and seeks to aggressively advance it rather than simply be a passenger and in house propagandist with its own ideological patent.In effect you want that core to be “the best builders” and win its credentials and status on that basis.
To do it another way — one formatted by hesitancies and ambivalence; or undemocratic manoevres — simply won’t work.
What organisational form that coalescence takes is going to vary from country to country and over time — I think that’s an open question.
As the New Zealand Socialist Worker group points out:”Some outwards-focused Marxists around the world take the position that a Marxist group should dissolve into the broad left party, perhaps organising as a tendency within it, but not maintaining any independent organisation. Others say that a Marxist group should continue to organise independently at the same time as doing everything possible to build a mass party of the broad left.”
The degree to which “other cadre Marxists” sign up — those who for now reject the Broad Party orientation — depends absolutely on how much these projects thrive. That’s what happened in Scotland remember — as the SSP was such a success that the SWP had to affiliate.
Comment by Dave Riley — 9 March, 2008 @ 2:25 pm
I don’t see how in any way you put off anyone by saying that people whoi use and work in services should run and manage them.
I think this is the wrong approach even if it attracts people. Outside times with much higher levels of struggle and class consciousness, it’s not a basis on which to fight and win (see my previous comment), so you’re setting people up for disillusionment and/or burnout.
Comment by Phil — 9 March, 2008 @ 2:43 pm
I remember once being part of a strike over pay in central London where I was freshly outside the SWP (after a dozen years in it).
The union organised several meetings where different tactics were put forward to pressure management. These ranged from legal action (there were 50 full time silks on the payroll and in the union), letter writing to the subscribers (it was a publisher), letter writing to MPs (it was a not-for-profit, with an unhealthy number of Jags and BMWs in the basement car park!) through to rolling one-day strikes spread over months.
The one SWP member and yours truly cooperated on making the argument that none of the above were exclusive, but that strike action in a well-known “charity” was going to move things far faster than all the other campaign options on the table.
We won the vote for extended strike action and the campaign for a rise.
Before, during and after the strike there were a few individuals who became interested in socialist ideas (this put me in a rather odd position, but ‘loyalty’ took over and I didn’t object to folk attending the nearest SWP branch meeting).
The reason why I raise it, apart from it being a textbook example of the map from “economism” to “politics”, is that it was the ability to argue the best tactics around a minimal set of demands that led to a wider examination of socialist ideas. But it meant sitting through sinfully boring meetings and quietly getting on with the debate on its own terms.
I cannot recall ever raising the demand for collective ownership of the means of production (despite the fact that quite a few folk knew I quite liked the idea) until the strike was underway and after it had won. Fortunately, the TU bureaucracy did a sterling service of demonstrating their corruption throughout, which helped no end with the subsequent propaganda…
So I’m with Phil, set realistic targets, work your butt off to see them realised, promote the best tactics in the campaign, build, ahem, respect for your dedication and involvement and use your politics in the post-mortem.
These, rather basic, steps seem to be lost on today’s SWP.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 9 March, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
Todays basic SWP seems rather lost
Comment by Donkey — 9 March, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
xxx
Comment by xxx — 9 March, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
#199 “I think this is the wrong approach even if it attracts people. Outside times with much higher levels of struggle and class consciousness, it’s not a basis on which to fight and win (see my previous comment), so you’re setting people up for disillusionment and/or burnout.”
I can’t see how using arguments that our services should be run by us sets people up for burn-out or disillusion at all- unless someone is suggesting that these are the demands of say as strike action. But any action would have specific demands which outside of a revolutionary situation is extremely unlikely to have workers’ control as the strike demand- in fact to win workers’ control on a sustained basis is going to take more than a strike.
However, the argument of some on here like Get, Howard, Mark Perryman and others is that the idea that workers should run society is beyond most people. I don’t from my experience of working in campaigns and working in a variety of jobs from post office sorting offices to hospitals to schools don’t agree.
Perhaps in some cases talking about the need to run our own services and having a different vision of society based on working class self-management will put people off- fine. We unite around specific demands anyway. I’m just warning that it should not be assumed that these ideas are beyond or in contradiction to ordinary working class people’s ideas.
One final example- in the Sukula campaign we have had a series of specific demands-
no to the eviction of the Sukula family
no to taking the Sukula childrn into care
no to the eviction of any families under Section 9
no to any children being taken into care for reasons solely because of parent’s immigration status
no to Section 9
no forced move to Liverpool
all these we won- at least in the nort -west and Section 9 nationally.
We are still fighting for the Sukulas to have permanent leave to remain
and for Flores to have right to study
Also as a campaign we are against all deportations and immigration controls.
Has this demoralised people because we haven’t yet got rid of immigration controls? No. To get rid of controls would may be require a revolution- or at least the serious threat of one. But to say we can onluy campaign for one specific family therefore would be a very poor conclusion and cut off the attraction of the campaign to other asylum seekers, migrants and anti-racists.
Phil, with all due respect, I don’t think people are foolish- it’s perfectly possible to see which are the immediate specific action demands and whoich are more general principles.
All too often I fear people on th eleft actually see the working class as something to be molly-coddled and walked through a process. In my opinion people don’t always need guidance but are quite capable of working things out for themselves.
All I’m arguing is that alongside having small realistics targets every stp of the way, we have a grander vision of working class people being able to run our own struggles as part of a struggle to run our own society.
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 5:08 pm
One addition as well
The discussion here has centred on united front campaigns and strikes.
Respect and Respect Renewal are political parties.
In a party we should have a vision of society - I think we should argue for socialism- but most ’socialists’ say no- let’s just ahve specific demands, and actually disconnected from campaigns just as policies to gather votes.
No- parties are only useful in so far as they help galvanise and organise class struggle and it is dishonest to pretend that reforms can be won from elections- it has to be from the self-organisation of the working class. And we should be clear what our final goal is.
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
Jason’s last comment(#203) reflects much of the subjectivity and schematic way that much of the left approaches politics. ‘it is dishonest to pretend that reforms can be won from elections- it has to be from the self-organisation of the working class’. Simply not true. Reforms are granted by the bourgeoisie if it is their best option - this could be making it easier for women to be brought ionto the workforce as was the case post-1945 as capital needed more labour. Social reforms such as abortion rights, anti-racist legislation, gay rights have more to do with social campaigning by the oppressed than trade unions, although some of the left trade unionists would have contributed to those reforms. It was significant that significant reforms were brought in by the Wilson government in the 60s who rose to power more out of capitalism wishing to reform than growing class struggle. The 74 Labout government did follow the pattern that Jason refers to when Heath was kicked out by the miners strike’s success. You then have to answer why it was a reformist Labour government that came in as the only possible option to replace the Tories, but that’s another matter.
Comment by howard t — 9 March, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
it’s perfectly possible to see which are the immediate specific action demands and whoich are more general principles.
All too often I fear people on th eleft actually see the working class as something to be molly-coddled and walked through a process. In my opinion people don’t always need guidance but are quite capable of working things out for themselves.
I don’t think anyone’s saying that working people are inherently reformist, or that union struggles can only produce trade union consciousness, or that we should call for people to “vote Labour without illusions” just one more time (and if the SWP’s turn to RESPECT had done nothing else, it would have the merit of having buried that slogan). I think Keith and I are saying something a bit different - that staying focused on specific, short-term, achievable goals is the best way to build for the longer term, not least because the specific, short-term, achievable goals are the ones you can actually hope to achieve. I suppose I’m saying that I’m much more concerned with what people are doing than with what they believe - to the point that I think proselytising for left ideas may actually be a distraction.
Comment by Phil — 9 March, 2008 @ 6:07 pm
#204- of course change can come about through elections of mainstream parties- though even there, I think organisation outside parliament is a much bigger factor.
But you’re not seriously suggesting that Respect Renewal or Respect can gain reforms from their participation in elections? That was the context of my comment- though I suppose I could have been clearer.
#205 Phil- I agrre with you on the following
“staying focused on specific, short-term, achievable goals is the best way to build for the longer term”
in the sense that we should always be focused on specific and achievable goals.
That’s why the Sukula campaign succeeded on at least many of or demands.
But that real example also shows that discussing ideas, and campaigning with imagination and creativity, is not counter-posed to focusing on action.
“to the point that I think proselytising for left ideas may actually be a distraction.”
I don’t agree here if you mean by left ideas that we can actually do something and take power in our own lives.
If the ideas are cut off from real action then yes your point would be a truism.
But I think ideas when taken up by many people actually become a material force. What distinguishes human beings is our ability to think and be conscious and creative.
But anyway we’ll join toegether in fighting for specific actions even if we disagree on ideas. I don’t think we should deny the power of human creativity and imagination- and actually ideas are as central in my opinion to the ordinary working class as college professors. But that’s a seperate debate I guess.
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 6:48 pm
Jason (202 & 203), you have an annoying habit of moving the goal posts (or bean bags if you were at my school)
First off, when arguing with folk like Phil and moi, you don’t have to go to any great lengths to convince us that socialism’s a great idea.
Secondly, you keep flying up and down the ladder of ideas and experience of those fresh to political campaigning through to middle aged white blokes (I can’t speak for Phil here) who have experienced the tender molly-coddling of far left groups and the “process” of socialist “education”.
Had you amended your list of demands in the Sakula campaign (and hat’s off to you all for your well earnt successes, btw) to include a call for the abolition of all immigration laws then I suspect it wouldn’t have made one iota of difference to the commitment and energy of those taking part. You could probably have gone further and issued a call for all power to the soviets.
As I mentioned earlier on, participating in campaigns, strikes etc., obviously puts socialists into a place where they can talk about all these things (and most importantly why they seem so far off). And they should. And there’s nothing stopping them either.
The issue for this thread is whether or not commitment to “a program”, a vision of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the international proletariat, the nature of pre-Putin Russia and eastern europe should be a precondition for pulling people toward a left of labour initiative.
I don’t think it should be, mainly because it never has been, is unlikely to be (if the initiative is going anywhere), and would prove Karl Marx wrong - and that would be a hellish thing!
Now, back to the thread, the problem with the SWP’s approach to these issues - of how to relate and build sustainable relationships - is that although, from an external viewpoint, they appear to be committed to campaigning one week and back to party building the next, they are in fact only doing one thing: Being sectarian (in the classic, and now deeply dangerous, sense).
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 9 March, 2008 @ 7:10 pm
Well sorry to annoy you!
One slight caveat- if the Sukula campaign had included all power to the soviets I think it would have mad a difference- people would have seen us as weird.
It may not have been fatal but it would have been indulgent and I suspect deeply damaging.
Whereas being against all deportations gained us more support- whilst probably alienating some as well- by allowing us to unite- even if just for one demonstration- different campaigns http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4300770.stm
and unite different groups in a quite specific demand- the withdrawal of Section 9.
“The issue for this thread is whether or not commitment to “a program”, a vision of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the international proletariat, the nature of pre-Putin Russia and eastern europe should be a precondition for pulling people toward a left of labour initiative.”
Put that way I almost agree with you- we shouldn’t have commitment to program as pre-condition.
Indeed if masses or even several hundred workers were demanding a new party but not ready for revolutionary socialism of course it could be an excellent inititiative.
Our difference is that I am saying it is entirely possible to argue for socialism and revolution in the broadest sense of a society run by workers- not an abstract list of programmatic demands, nor a dusting off of the Transitional Program or Communist Manifesto (both written for specific periods)- but using the method- argue for socialism connected to a series of quite specific demands, linked to our vision of a socialist society by demands that increase the self-activity and self-mobilisation of the working class.
Such as demands for workers’ control- but not as an abstract appendage but as they flow out of real campaigns with specific demands.
Anyway I’ve found the excahnge clarifying - for me at least!
Cheers
Comment by Jason — 9 March, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
“Put that way I almost agree with you…”
I give up! I’m never gonna win ‘im! Give me back those bean bags or I’ll hit you over the head with my “abstract appendage”!
Cheers to you Jason and have a good week.
Comment by BatterseaPowerStation — 9 March, 2008 @ 8:14 pm
through to middle aged white blokes (I can’t speak for Phil here)
Oh yes you can.
Comment by Phil — 9 March, 2008 @ 8:32 pm
Post 201 is by a troll masquerading under someone else’s user name for this site. It is true Farooq jumped ship because we would not pander to him. Good riddance. We don’t need opportunists in our ranks. It is in the nature of the terrain that we will attract them however. But we are determined to weed out, and to inoculate ourselves as much as possible against them. To that end, his example will be very helpful.
As for the damage it might cause. Well, it gives our enemies publicity for a week but not much more. Although he polled 16% this was achieved largely on what existed already, he added little to it. We all felt his campaign was poor but since we had no plans to stand in the ward anyway were not too worried about it. Plus, he was no electoral purchase whatsoever in Sparkbrook.
I have just come from a 300 strong meeting with GG, built over two wards, to launch our local election campaign and showcase our candidates. In terms of the quality of our platform it was the best Respect meeting we have ever had. Today’s event followed a 200 strong women only disco on Friday night in support of Salma Iqbal’s Springfield campaign and to mark International Women’s Day.
If this is indicative of ‘more problems’ for Salma Yaqoob, they are the kind of problems I like.
Comment by Ger Francis — 9 March, 2008 @ 9:12 pm
Ger if you have got a longer report on tonights fantastic RESPECT Birminham meeting i would love to post it on the Respect Supporters Blog with any pics you may have. Only wish i had been there!
Neil
Comment by Neil Williams — 9 March, 2008 @ 10:25 pm
Thanks Neil. Will email you something tomorrow.
Comment by Ger Francis — 9 March, 2008 @ 10:29 pm
ROFL. Amazing isn’t it, the benefit of hindsight? “the SWP’s internal regime in which a model of democratic centralism prevails where the emphasis on ‘centralism’ far outweighs that on the ‘democratic’” - I couldn’t have put it better myself. Thank you Ger for lumping me in with the AWL, who have never ceased to attack me for my “anti-semitic” calls to boycott Israel. And a genuine thank you to those of you who have bothered to read my web pages. Please have a look at my pages on Palestine as well, they’re rather more important than the never-ending saga of the British left eating its own entrails. I’ll put in a link to this page from my SWP section, it makes highly entertaining reading and I need something to laugh at these days after I’ve read the news about the latest atrocities in Gaza. All for now folks.
Comment by Sue Blackwell — 10 March, 2008 @ 12:06 am
The Brum STW dispute had nothing to do with the issue of Israel or the Palestinians. It had everything to do with a grouping who accused the anti-war movement locally of giving succour to ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. And that grouping included Sue Blackwell and Jim Denham, despite whatever differences existed on other issues.
Comment by Ger Francis — 10 March, 2008 @ 12:29 am
As usual, I have stumbled upon this debate far too late, but can I correct the “neprimenye” fellow in comment 52? You seem to confuse Socialist Worker - New Zealand, the organisation behind UNITYblognz.com which I belong to, for the New Zealand ISO, who split from us in 1997 and are pretty much our equivalent of the hyper-propagandist Socialist Alternative in Australia - i.e., the guys you seem to support.
I would also note that it’s a cheap rhetorical ploy to call your political opponents a “declining” or “shrinking” group - whether factually accurate or not, it’s supposed to automatically discredit their arguments without actaully having to face them, and therefore demeans both sides of the debate. There’s a guy call Phil F. in this country who does that all the time, and I wonder if you were by any chance related?
Comment by Daphne, a liberal on crack — 10 March, 2008 @ 3:08 am
Daphne I was referring to the ISO in the good old USA not the Dunedin based group.
Phil F is no relative of mine by the way, though he is a friend, and from what one gathers your crack liberal sectlet is in decline.
Comment by Mike — 11 March, 2008 @ 12:24 am
Speaking as a poor girl from bromsgrove [south of Birmingham]all I can say is that I attended a meeting of Respect [renewal]in Sparkbrook to launch their local election campaign and it was BOSTIN!
Time to rally round and spread the word .. a new hegemonic and objectively anti-capitalist anti-imperialist organisation is in the process of formation…under authentic, honest leadership…
Lots of love charlotte
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