anarchists who joined the SWP
- Thread starter TremulousTetra
- Start date
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
Post 331 was mainly about semantics.
'Sorry' argued that there could be only one meaning of the word State, I disagree think there can be more than one.
1.
Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.
Marxist definition Engles, the State is the soldiers, police, and their appendices.
I don't think anybody has a problem with this definition of the state, which is basically about the institutions so I will call it the IDS (institutional definition of state).
2.
Another definition of the state I would argue is when one talks about an industrial state, for an agrarian state. I would argue this is different because one is not talking about the institutions of a geographic area, one is talking about the nature of the economic base.
3. I also think he can use the term state, to talk about different modes of government, different styles of democracy rather than different styles of coercive force.
4.
I would also argue that the today left in general do interchange, or substitute, the word State for country in circumstances where the term country cannot be applied.
I think we would agree that A country is: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.. But I think we would also argue that a country is a particularly new phenomena. Countries can not be argued to have existed beyond hundreds of years, where as geographic areas with IDS and class structures have existed for thousands of years. What do you call them? We call some of them state instead of the word country. Rome is a good example.
Rome started off as a citystate, that is a geographic use of word state. Citystate does describe the fact that rome had an IDS and a class structure, but it also describes the strict geographic limits of that state. Aagain, Rome spread out to encompass much of what today is called the country Italy. This again was referred to as the Roman state, not the Roman country. Rome then spread out even further to create the Roman Empire. However there is it distinction between Rome the state, a Roman Empire. Romes institutions of coercive force had a different relationship to the citizens of the geographic state of Rome, than they did to the subjects of the Empire. The notion of distinction between the state as institutions of coercibe force, and the state as a geographic area, made a real material difference to the quality of people's lives if they were born in the right or wrong geographic area.
I think you could from this go on to argue that the use of state has a geographic term, substitution for country, is relevant to any regimes that exist in a period of transition. What I mean by transition, is a period when workers have control of some areas, but have not yet developed the conditions for proper communism/anarchism.
You can have a geographic area that doesn't have the state, but you cannot have a state that does not have a geographic area. The state and a geographic area are not divisible, but they are distinguishable. So I'm just arguing you can use the word State to be talking to be talking about something other than the institutions of coercive force, and so state has more than the meaning "the institutions of coercive force".
This is not something I've heard in the meeting, or read in Marxist publications, it's just something that seems obvious to meet. It's something I have always construed for myself, without really analysing my assumption, which is why I probably found it so difficult to explain. However it is not central to what I've been trying to argue in this thread, is just here to explain my intelligible post 331. It's something I got derailed into, and perhaps I shouldn't have.
Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.
'Sorry' argued that there could be only one meaning of the word State, I disagree think there can be more than one.
1.
Bourgeoisie definition of the word State is, a body that holds the legal monopoly over coercive force within a geographic territory.
Marxist definition Engles, the State is the soldiers, police, and their appendices.
I don't think anybody has a problem with this definition of the state, which is basically about the institutions so I will call it the IDS (institutional definition of state).
2.
Another definition of the state I would argue is when one talks about an industrial state, for an agrarian state. I would argue this is different because one is not talking about the institutions of a geographic area, one is talking about the nature of the economic base.
3. I also think he can use the term state, to talk about different modes of government, different styles of democracy rather than different styles of coercive force.
4.
I would also argue that the today left in general do interchange, or substitute, the word State for country in circumstances where the term country cannot be applied.
I think we would agree that A country is: a geographical area under the control of a particular state.. But I think we would also argue that a country is a particularly new phenomena. Countries can not be argued to have existed beyond hundreds of years, where as geographic areas with IDS and class structures have existed for thousands of years. What do you call them? We call some of them state instead of the word country. Rome is a good example.
Rome started off as a citystate, that is a geographic use of word state. Citystate does describe the fact that rome had an IDS and a class structure, but it also describes the strict geographic limits of that state. Aagain, Rome spread out to encompass much of what today is called the country Italy. This again was referred to as the Roman state, not the Roman country. Rome then spread out even further to create the Roman Empire. However there is it distinction between Rome the state, a Roman Empire. Romes institutions of coercive force had a different relationship to the citizens of the geographic state of Rome, than they did to the subjects of the Empire. The notion of distinction between the state as institutions of coercibe force, and the state as a geographic area, made a real material difference to the quality of people's lives if they were born in the right or wrong geographic area.
I think you could from this go on to argue that the use of state has a geographic term, substitution for country, is relevant to any regimes that exist in a period of transition. What I mean by transition, is a period when workers have control of some areas, but have not yet developed the conditions for proper communism/anarchism.
You can have a geographic area that doesn't have the state, but you cannot have a state that does not have a geographic area. The state and a geographic area are not divisible, but they are distinguishable. So I'm just arguing you can use the word State to be talking to be talking about something other than the institutions of coercive force, and so state has more than the meaning "the institutions of coercive force".
This is not something I've heard in the meeting, or read in Marxist publications, it's just something that seems obvious to meet. It's something I have always construed for myself, without really analysing my assumption, which is why I probably found it so difficult to explain. However it is not central to what I've been trying to argue in this thread, is just here to explain my intelligible post 331. It's something I got derailed into, and perhaps I shouldn't have.
Fraternal greetings ResistanceMP3.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Comrade, Bakewell tarts are a DEFORMED version of the authentic Bakewell Pudding ( much nicer and tastier)
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Raise high the noble banner of the Bakewell Pudding. Root out all revisionist supporters of the reactionary Bakewell Tart. Let the Cake Cheka carry out summary revolutionary justice on kulak scoundrels such as the aptly named Top (AKA Running) Dog
charlie mowbray said:
they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
One of the leaders of one of these tendencies, Vladimir Smirnov of the Democratic Centralists, was later to opine whilst in the gulag: ‘There has never been a proletarian revolution, nor a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia, there has simply been a "popular revolution" from below and a dictatorship from above. Lenin was never an ideologist of the proletariat. From beginning to end he was an ideologist of the intelligentsia.’charlie mowbray said:
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
I f you go to Highgate cemetery you will discover the tomb of the philosopher Herbert Spencer close by that of Karl Marx. I kid you not!Herbert Read said:they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.
charlie mowbray said:
Its more than a coincidence
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Interesting factet. Vladimir Smirnov was married to the daughter of the famous Swedish playwright Strindberg
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Didn't he also work out a fully formed, full length state-capitalist analysis of the USSR whilst in the Gulag - that never saw the light of day (according to Serge anyway).
Herbert Read said:they do but they mostly shop at karl Marks and Spencer. The SWP chattering clasess.
The BNP woman who 'infiltrated' Manchester SWP did indeed use to shop at M&S.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
Yes. He was a leading economist within the Bolshevik Party until expelled in 1927
TremulousTetra
prismatic universe
no it woz 'bureaucratic deformation' lenincharlie mowbray said:
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No, it 'woz' in Russian and has been translated into English as both 'distortions' and 'deformations'.
roger rosewall
New Member
Fisher_Gate said:
The SWP and IS before it have never had a position of refusing to take positions above that of shop steward.
However around 1983/4 the SWP did withdraw a number of comrades from positions held in the unions on the basis that they had not been elected as revolutionaries but on the basis of personal support. At least one person was expelled for refusing to resign from a NATFHE regional exec to my certain knowledge.
There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned.
The IMGs idiotic letter was written in 1977 by the way and quite rightly confined to the waste pape basket where it belonged. it was jouined the year later by another letter which recognised the SWP as rvolutionary and withdrew the nonsense about syndicalism.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Hmmm...Callinicos 'Socialists and the Trade Unions'...
"There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned."
Are there?
"There are i any case a number, asmall number, of SWP members sitting on union executives at present so clearly the idea that socialists only hold union office if elected on the basis of revolutionary positions has been abandoned."
Are there?
roger rosewall
New Member
butchersapron said:
While I have the greatest respect for Callincos as a theorist his little book on trade unions is a bit of a stinker. Began as an essay defending the abandonment of the rank and file strategy, for conjunctural reasons, and was then rewritten as a dreadful educational tract for students. Callinicos has of course a great deal of experience of trade unions as we all know.
And yes there are SWPers in leading tu positions. For example the 2 SWP members who voted along with the rest of the sell outs on the SCPS Exec to drop strike action against pension cuts. Revolutionaries placed would have voted ahgainst such a position and demanded that the decision whether to drop suspended strike action was in the pruview of the members and the members alone. it is unbleievable that the SWP would have allowed its members to rat out their members in such a way even a few years ago.
roger rosewall
New Member
butchersapron said:
There is a long text from the Democratic Centralist (Decist) faction in the recent book The Russian Communist Left published by the ICC. See even they have some use! And very interesting it is too.
Duncan Hallas was quite right to claim that Lenin first developed the idea of a deformed workers state in my opinion. Lenin did after all argue that the state was actually a bureaucratically deformed workers and peasants state from which the term degenerated workers state is clearly derived. Denial of this obvious fact serves the interests of the bourgeois school of falsification that seeks to argue that the Stalinist counter revolution was a legitimate result of October 1917.
