Respect/ SWP in decline?

[mutley]

The argument between fisher and mutley et al. hinges on the true inheritors of the mantle of leninism. and whether the SWP should properly be described as leninist.
This of course misses the point- Leninism is the problem!
as the militant wing of social democracy, leninism shares with its older cousin the same elitist and condisending view of the class, in which popular frontism as well as vanguardism are equally valid as both hold the intelligence and self organising ability of the working class in contempt.
may I bring this article to u75ers attention as it draws out the argument better than I;
http://redstarcommando.blogspot.com/2005/10/renegade-kautsky-and-his-disciple.html

Well I haven't read the main article yet and will try to, but I liked the one about 'anarchist workers have final sex romp'...

(added in edit) Look i'm sorry but this statement: 'As revolutionaries, as communists, we are not a vanguard, not an elite, we are no different than our brothers and sisters intheir billions the world over' is just blatantly not true. Billions of your brothers and sisters across the world are not actively seeking to engage in revolutionary political activity. A few are, most are just getting on with it day to day, all too many are pulled by various forms of prejudice, the range of consciousness is clearly massive and to try and organise on the basis of denying that is balls (imo)

 

[neprimerimye]

Er, why did you decide to start using the term 'leninism' in this discussion then? (post 75 above contrasting the swp with what a 'leninist' organisation would do)

On the PCS, it's well known and obvious that there's a tension between the pull from the bureaucracy and the pull from the party when ur high up in a union. If ur trying to work with a 'left' leader like Serwotka then the contradiction is even worse. I think it's pretty desperate to argue that what happened is symptomatic of some deep malaise, somehow connected to the questions of who gets the IB's and whether the peolple who write stuff for them are under some mystical cc mind control.

Well Mutley I guess it may seem pretty dastardly to some to discuss the SWP in terms of an ideology which it purports to support but it strikes me as fair. After all the SWP recruits, or at least it used to do so, on the basis that it is building a revolutionary party based on the ideas of Lenin. Given which it seems quite legitimate to ask whether or not it is living up to its own claims.

On the PCS it is true that comrades working in senior union positions are under considerable pressure to conform to the policies of that wing of the trade union bureaucracy dominant in a given union. Which is why I argued that the SWP leadership, in particular the trade union department, had failed in its task of supervising comrades in exactly such positions in the PCS. The comrades concerned were effectively abandoned to their own devices just as if the SWP were an undisciplined centrist sect lacking in political cohesion.

As you say the contradiction becomes more accentuated when working with lefts such as Mark Serwotka. But lets be clear Serwotka is not a hardened Stalinist apparatchik backed by a phalanx of battle toughed co-thinkers, as was the case with the old Stalinist union bosses, he’s a sincere young man who swings around politically open to being influenced by diverse forces. Surely then the SWP’s work in the PCS would have been best furthered by some open honest criticism of the course Serwotka and the SPEW/SSP dominated exec were taking prior to the crucial votes? Or was it the case that SW remained silent in order not to alienate the only prominent union leader to have committed himself to Respect?

Finally I find it pretty pathetic that rather than attempt a political reply to my interpretation of events you must resort to talking crap about mind control. No one has suggested, or even thought I suspect, that the members of the SWP are under the mind control of the groups CC mystical or otherwise. What has been argued is that the SWP lacks any real culture of internal debate or democratic accountability. An argument that can be supported by both solid evidence and experience.

 

[neprimerimye]

Since the subject of the thread is the politics of the SWP, and one of the distinctive features of them is their undemocratic party structure I don't see it as a bit far.

3) Cliff may have been more "preferable" and tolerant pre-1974, but there were downsides - his group "scabbed" during the Korean War and when the troops went into Ireland.

4) There is no reason why the principles that should govern the politics of a mass international shouldn't also apply in a non-revolutionary stage when the revolutionary forces are mainly at the level of propaganda groups.

Well I beg to differ and do consider that a generalised debate concerning Leninism or Democratic Centralism is straying off thread. Don’t get me wrong I’m not averse to such a discussion but not on this thread. Given that I’m only going to respond to your remarks concerning the SWP and your sect.

First on Korea the Socialist Review Group did not scab. The comrades who founded the SRG took a defeatist attitude towards British imperialism and called for the withdrawal of British troops from Korea. They refused however to back the contending forces of Stalinism in that war a stance they held in common with many comrades who held a defencist position on the Stalinist states by the way. This led to the purge of the future SRG comrades from the Trotskyist group in Britain by the bandit Gerry Healy fully backed by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel. To the credit of Ted Grant, a defencist comrade, he opposed the purge. So he and his supporters were then purged in their turn. That you repeat a slander retailed by the Sparts says much about your principles comrade.

On troops going onto the streets in Ireland again your comments are simply slanderous. IS did not back the troops going onto the streets but did point out that for the moment that they would allow the forces resisting the pogromists time to regroup. Therefore the leading committee of IS decided temporarily to withdraw the troops out now slogan from agitational use. That vote was very narrow and in retrospect I consider that the minority, including Duncan Hallas, was correct in arguing that the slogan should be retained. The relevant articles from SW can be found on Einde O’Callaghan’s The Reds/Die Roten site should you be interested in the facts.

Finally I agree that ‘there is no reason why the principles that should govern the politics of a mass international shouldn't also apply in a non-revolutionary stage when the revolutionary forces are mainly at the level of propaganda groups’. But I thought you were talking about the USFI?

 

[bolshiebhoy]

On troops going onto the streets in Ireland again your comments are simply slanderous. IS did not back the troops going onto the streets but did point out that for the moment that they would allow the forces resisting the pogromists time to regroup. Therefore the leading committee of IS decided temporarily to withdraw the troops out now slogan from agitational use. That vote was very narrow and in retrospect I consider that the minority, including Duncan Hallas, was correct in arguing that the slogan should be retained. The relevant articles from SW can be found on Einde O’Callaghan’s The Reds/Die Roten site should you be interested in the facts.

You think Mike. Personally I think the majority was dead right. And Hallas not for the first time was wrong in arguing against TC.

 

[neprimerimye]

You think Mike. Personally I think the majority was dead right. And Hallas not for the first time was wrong in arguing against TC.

Sure it was a tactical question and not a matter of principle. Both Cliff, Duncan and the rest of the IS leadership of the day got stuff wrong at times. And sometimes one was right and the other wrong. Is no biggie.

 

[mutley]

Even if one can access these materials easily debate is circumscribed. Thus the first IB contains a series of articles which are all authoered by the CC or members of the apparatus which set the limits of debate. Subsequent debate then takes the form of how to implement the line already laid down.

This is the part I had in mind when I wrote the 'crap' about cc mind control. There are the members of the 'apparatus' (whatever that is? fulltimers? Sounds like we've got a 'nomeklatura-in-waiting')) and the mystical 'limits of debate'. The 'subsequent debate' then just stays within these limits, allegedly. It sounds like poor sixth form level sociology to me. Plenty of comrades have argued plenty of things that had no connection to the 'line' or any 'limits of debate'. There was the guy who put in a contribution year after year arguing that we needed a programme for one. The latest first IB had oneputting fairly basic criticisms of the new sw for another.

I'm sorry, but buy and large people have been in agreement. And for the record, when we decided to join Respect we had an extra one day conference, open to all members (about 5 or 600 came) devoted to that one issue.

 

[neprimerimye]

This is the part I had in mind when I wrote the 'crap' about cc mind control. There are the members of the 'apparatus' (whatever that is? fulltimers? Sounds like we've got a 'nomeklatura-in-waiting')) and the mystical 'limits of debate'. The 'subsequent debate' then just stays within these limits, allegedly. It sounds like poor sixth form level sociology to me. Plenty of comrades have argued plenty of things that had no connection to the 'line' or any 'limits of debate'. There was the guy who put in a contribution year after year arguing that we needed a programme for one. The latest first IB had oneputting fairly basic criticisms of the new sw for another.

I'm sorry, but buy and large people have been in agreement. And for the record, when we decided to join Respect we had an extra one day conference, open to all members (about 5 or 600 came) devoted to that one issue.

Its fascinating to me that despite your obviously wanting to defend your group that you do not do so on a political basis. Implicit in my ciritique of the SWP lack of a genuinely democratic internal culture is a suggestion that factions should be permitted at any time and that the elective principle should prevail for all posts. In my view too the elective principle should also prevail in that fulltimers, or the apparatus to use the term I previously employed, should be subject to the democratic will of the members and not the agents of the CC in the Districts. This by the way should be regarded as normative in any genuinely Marxist party as Lenin makes clear numerous times.

That a tiny number of critical articles appear each year in the IB makes no real difference to my criticisms of the SWP's lack of a democratic culture. Some articles may well point out problems and suggest aternatives in terms of this or that detail. But none ever put forward a concrete political alternative at the political or programatic level for the organisation. Indeed as soon as such criticisms do appear to be in the offing then the apparatus does spring into action with branchs being split or members transferred between branches in order to keep critical comrades in minorities lacking representation at conference. If need be charges of factionalism will be manufactured and the comrade(s) concerned expelled.

The guy who argued for a program year in and year out was a member of the RDG. Why he was not expelled is interesting as the apparatus must have known this I cannot fathom. Unless it was thought useful to keep around a hard working but critical comrade who nevertheless failed to raise concrete political criticisms but instead raised abstract questions each year. Nice chap btw.

 

[treelover]

oh, dear, the 'Text Dwellers' from UK Left Network are arriving

banish ye devils(and bores)