A little over 120 active members to be exact.
Red Green and Black Alliance
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Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
This is gibberish. The SWP is an organisation much larger than any equivalent anarchist organisation. If you want to talk about people in their broader sphere, as opposed to formal members, they are larger again through groups like People Before Proft and their various front organisations.
I'm no fan of the SWP but they are much more of a force on the Irish left than the semi-anarchoid milieu. Sorry if you find that intrusion of reality upsetting.
smokedout said:
Don't be so fucking stupid. The anarchist "scene" produces plenty of publications. The fact that your lack of organisation means that you sell fuck all of them isn't something to be proud of.
It isn't an advantage that most of the people you count amongst your numbers can't be arsed to join an organisation and coordinate their work usefully, you fucking nimrod. I'm no more a fan of the WSM than I am of the SWP, but at least they have this much right unlike most of their brethern in Britain. Once more, organisation matters.
thegonzokid
New Member
No doubt this another doomed attempt to 'unite' the Left. I very much doubt any genuine anarchists would agree to any kind of alliance with orthodox Trots like the SWP.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Come off it Nigel, surely you know enough about the UK anarchists to know that the reason they join no organisation, or only provisional ones or only single issue ones is due to a deep distrust of political party-like organisations, rather than 'not being arsed'.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
i say laziness, you say self-defeating stupidity. The effect is much the same.
AKA pseudonym
Well-Known Member
to be pedantic the shinners would be the largest org on the left...
i still am of the opinion that on the ground (A) outnumber swp'ers in genuine activity...
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
not really
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
If you think that the SF are meaningfully "on the left", sure. The SWP aren't even the second largest, but they are still very much bigger than the WSM, which is the only even slightly substantial anarchist organisation.
AKA pseudonym said:
If you define "genuine activity" as "activity anarchists are involved in", then you can probably convince yourself that they outnumber the SWP. It's not a definition that tells you anything much though. Organisation to organisation the SWP are much larger. Milieu to milieu they are larger as well. Although I should note that you are already cherry picking by trying to compare "anarchism" in all its puny breadth to one single Trotskyist group.
Random said:
How so?
What practical difference does it make if the abject lack of organisation of British anarchism is down to the laziness of self-described anarchists, as I suggested, the shallowness of their political commitment, as belboid suggested, or self-defeating stupidity as you suggested? The results would be much the same.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
the emperor has no clothes
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
Because, like I said, anarchists are involved in lots of single issue, temporary and local groups and campaigns. Anyway, aren't you the one that says that it's activity that counts and that membership figures are largely meaningless? Well anarchist 'membership' is defined purely by activity, so if you want to compare them with a trot group you should multiply the numbers by at least 100 or something
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
So are plenty of other people. The fact that some of the people who are involved in some campaigns would indentify themselves as "anarchists" does not make their anarchism important.
Random said:
Paper membership figures are meaningless. The number of activists an organisation can coordinate is not. That has nothing to do with the question of whether organisation matters in the first place. It does matter.
And the inability of British anarchists to get organised in any meaningful way guarantees that they will continue to punch well below their alleged numbers just as they always have in the past.
Are you seriously telling me that you don't think it matters that self-described "anarchists" are nearly entirely disorganised?
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
I'm saying that it would be no benefit for them all to sign up to some central organisation and try to recruit paper members and sell a weekly progpaganda sheet.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
So you think that producing publications is of no benefit?
Or is that you think that there's no benefit in producing regular, professional looking, widely distributed publications as opposed to the amateurish, infrequent and very poorly distributed stuff that the anarcho milieu already produces? Because that's the difference between what's it's possible for an organisation of a few hundred to do if they take themselves and their politics seriously and what it's possible for the current shambolic disorganised anarchist "scene" to do.
As for recruiting "paper members", presumably you do accept that it's possible to recruit actual members rather than merely paper ones, so what precisely does this have to do with excusing anarchists shambolic disorganisation?
Of course having an organisation doesn't only mean that you can produced more, better and more widely publications. Or even just that you can recruit people more effectively to your politics. It also gives you the ability to take political initiatives, establish campaigns, or work in campaigns to collectively push for the strategies and approaches you think are necessary. It's in discussions like this that I really find myself wonding what exactly the point of talking to most British anarchists is. I've rarely come across such a proudly and dedicatedly self-defeating bunch of political half wits.
For the last fucking time, organisation matters. Disorganisation is not a strength and not something to be proud of if you take your own politics at all seriously.
Silver_Fox
New Member
As oppossed to the success of anarchism? What day is that gonna work in?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Desperate stuff. Obviously its a much better idea to produced sporadic amateurish publications which you then can't be arsed to sell and to fail to recruit anyone much to your politics or your organisations. Aren't you supposed to be one of the less moronic anarchists around these parts?
Here's a fucking clue: You don't have to agree with the Trotskyist conception of organisation, or your feeble parody of it, to realise that organisation is in fact a good and necessary thing for a political current that wants to actually have some kind of effect on the world.
Try actually making a fucking argument.
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
You're very bad tempered tonight. Using 'fuck' so often is a sign of poor ability to express yourself.
As I've been trying to say, anarchists in teh UK are organised ina decentralised way, as you might expect from anarchists. The centralised organisations of the Leninists in the UK haven't really produced the results that they're designed to - no mass readership, no mass membership, no discernable influence apart from in certain local areas. Rather like the anarchist grouplets, in fact.
chilango
Ha! Ha! Armageddon
Both perfectly sane responses to British politics that are shared much more widely across "The Working Class". No?
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I just have a decreasing tolerance for complete stupidity.
Random said:
Well yes, I would expect it from anarchists, a political current that has been a tiny, marginalised, ineffectual mess even by the standards of the left for generations across much of the world. I'd expect all kinds of self-defeating stupidity from anarchists. That doesn't mean that it is desirable or even inevitable.
One island over from Britain, most class struggle anarchist activists are organised into one group and guess what? They can produce better looking publications more regularly and distribute them more widly and provide a structure to involve new people and once in a while they can even use their low level organisation to have a minor political impact. You really would have to be a determinedly self-marginalising fool to think that's a bad thing.
Random said:
Now you are reduced to pulling Cockneyrebel's much missed "but the entire left is tiny and irrelevant" trick. It's been a while.
Yes, the likes of the SWP and Socialist Party are tiny and irrelevant compared to, say, the Liberal Democrats. But that doesn't mean that they operate on the same scale and are just as tiny and irrelevant as Permanent Revolution or SolFed. Here's another hint for you, before you can dream about your politics and organisations being significant on a mainstream scale, you might first have to grow beyond scattered and ineffectual grouplets of a few dozen.
I know that anarchists are allergic to learning lessons from the socialist groups. Showing no capacity to learn from decades of being out organised and out manouevred by bigger, more organised, political currents is almost a badge of pride for your stupider brethern. But perhaps you can learn from the WSM, who, whether you agree with the details of their politics or not, have at least shown that the anarchism doesn't absolutely have to mean rank idiocy.
i agree with every word you say here .. and i am a sort of anarchist but then again maybe i am not!
anarchism,some good ideas, some good activity totally disorganised = failure
leftism, some good ideas some BAD ideas some good activity lots of BAD activity often put organisation above constructibe activity = failure
libertarian ideas plus good organisation and constructive and meaningfull activity = success!
AKA pseudonym
Well-Known Member
Says it all really... you admit the swp arent the biggest on the left in Ireland...
and if we were to just to judge on actual activity on the ground, the (A) tendency woud be the larger or rather more involved... Which to me is an indicator of actual strength......
Paper membership means fuck all in the real world....
As i say the swp are the pariahs on the left in Ireland and no group woulp have any links with this sect... even when they are involved with PBP they dishonestly dropped there SWP links...
nuff said
so PBP are not SWP?
Random
Ethnic nalgocrat
anarchism,some good ideas, some good activity totally disorganised = failure
leftism, some good ideas some BAD ideas some good activity lots of BAD activity often put organisation above constructibe activity = failure
libertarian ideas plus good organisation and constructive and meaningfull activity = success!
One day mate, one day...
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I think you are under some misapprehension about my political views. I'm not in the SWP and I'm not a particular friend of theirs. I have no dog in a race between the SWP and the WSM or other anarchists. If anything I'd tend to be more sympathetic to the WSM or Organise! than to the SWP for the straightforward reason that they are easier to work with and are less likely to screw you over for short term game. But I'm familiar with both and the SWP are considerably bigger.
You whole argument seems to start from your own personal activism experiences, ie you get involved in anarchoid things and then think that the fact that you meet anarchists is evidence of something beyond your own interests. Then you combine that with your obvious dislike of the SWP and you start making wild claims.
Trust me. The SWP are a lot bigger than the WSM. The SWP plus their periphery, allies and milieu is larger than the anarchoid milieu.
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
There are plenty of anarchists around, they just tend not to join large organisations and generally expend more energy on doing useful things than on creating an endless stream of fronts and publishing tedious newspapers, and thus the SWP and friends have the higher profile. Among activists of course, they are well known for being a shower of wrong 'uns whose only redeeming feature is that everyone hates them so they'll never get any genuine support or influence.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
More anarchist self-delusion. It isn't that they have a higher profile, although they do. They are just bigger than you.
Tell us all about your massive, throbbing milleu, Nigel.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
I'm having more fun pointing at your tiny one.
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