Afternoon, Den - the attitude in your last post was closer to the kind of critical self-awareness that I generally found lacking in the debate with the SWP, but also more generally in the SP. You mistake me if you think I'm looking for a perfect set of answers - if anything the opposite - a willingness to put in question the assumptions about what the Leninist tradition "knows" it has got right.
I think one can get lost in 'questioning for the sake of questioning' as well. It can become an excuse for inactivity. Thats not an implication or a critisism or intended in any way as a personal comment about you. Thats my experience of my own life and watching folk around me. If I was implying anything earlier it was that - that despite best intentions one can end up paralized by 'thinking too much' as well as 'thinking too little', if you see what I mean. Thats what i meant by saying about getting ones hands dirty - I don't know the real you so i am not able to pass cynical judgement in your case (all I can do is poke and see what reaction i get). As a young leftie I had to decide 'OK, next step - who do I get involved with from those on offer'. The SP (then Militant) was the best on offer at the time and, by luck and upon reflection, I think it was a reasonably good decision to make because they basically agreed with me on most things
(i hope you don't take that jest too literally)
The problem is the implied identity between "the class" and the SP's idea of "the class" - the risk is a kind of self-congratulation mechanism where you pre-select the kind of people whose response "counts" and dismiss those that don't share your perspectives/ideas as "backward layers" or "petit-bourgeois". You see this in Trotsky, but time and again in someone like Cannon. Yes, workerism is a problem. Because it often involves projecting a certain stereotype of what "advanced layers" look like - ie. those who tend to go along with what the party is saying - and judges other opinions from the standpoint of a superiority that is assumed rather than justified.
I still think you are reading into what i am saying too much because of what you think a leninist would be thinking
- its pretty clumsily worded (i tend to bang stuff out here and look over it after when i get a chance - which i haven't had today). I really wasn't trying to imply what you seem to think - if anything the opposite - trying to say that SP members live in a real world and have the constant re-learning that comes from having to question such easy read stereotypes (like the one you state - 'advanced layers'). Abstract ideas are tested on the ground. I think thats harder to do if one does not have that 'grounding'. Its the relationship between ideas and practice that i think is where we tend to stand out. In having that attitude it means that precisely such 'self-congratulatory mechanisms' are tested by reality ie raw theoretical 'marxists' or 'socialists' or whatever they want to label themselves as can learn and re-learn through the process of acting on and being acted upon by lived reality. (by the way - most 'advanced layers do not go along with the party at this moment in time...)
Why do working people need to be "iniated" to learn from their own experience?
And in any case who determines what the correct lessons are?
Again you are trying to read to much into something that was simply stating what it was - trying to find some hidden implication beyond a straight up comment based on my actual experience. I am not trying to imply any special leadership qualities (beyond the simple store of ideas gained from discussion of historical examples - ideas i would not normally have the time etc to know about - and through experience via involvement in events i did not initiate - but learnt from hugely). Personally, while I was 'selling' my 'ideas' to miners - I was learning a damn site more in practice from the experience (the 84-85 dispute); while I was selling ideas to folk in liverpool i was also learning much more watching ideas applied in practice. Again, ideas are tested in practice. i am just using myself as an example - its not anything special
Examples of 'initiatives' - say, calling for and building the poll tax unions, or say, signing up the membership of a union branch/organising a union meeting and raising ideas of how to fight cuts etc etc etc. If the ideas raised chime with peoples already lived experience then they will join that anti-poll tax union and begin to organise their mates; if the ideas raised chime with peoples already lived experience then they will vote and build for an action as branch members. It is concrete - it is also normal that someone somewhere takes the first step and says 'I think we need to do this' before other folk agree and turn that idea into something real. That also means that when someone approaches the SP with a plan for a campaign that the Sp get involved in that initiative. You can try and read my presumed 'leninist' and 'vangardist' illusions into what I said or into the word 'initiative' if you like but the folk i am appealing to arn't interested in labels just practical ideas that can provide steps forward from their present conditions. All simple stuff, like my mum ringing me when she is facing a disiplinary at work - she's not ringing me because I am a leninst vangardist who thinks they 'know it all' already - she's my mum, she knows I care about the issues, I'm on side, I have some useful knowledge/experience and wants some advice that she can choose to take up or ignore.
I'm not asking the SP to "get it right" to meet some perfect model. I'm asking it to be more willing to accept that its own assumptions might need to be questioned rather than be "proved" through greater and greater amounts of activism. Frankly, this will lead to more and more people burning themselves out, but on a project that is flawed from the beginning. I'm not saying its better to do bugger all or read books all day - i'm not in an ivory tower now Just know that thinking a bit harder never does any harm if you're going to act effectively.
But you set up a problem by saying 'I want them to be more willing to accept' - that means you assume you already know what their assumptions are. And you then go on to talk about 'greater and greater amounts of activism' implying strongly that that is what we do because you take for granted the first assumption. From someone who is asking us to be more self-critical I think it is only fair to accept what i said at the beginning - that you should avoid falling into the very trap you say others a guilty of.
I have no problem with thinking a bit harder - I have spend my entire life trying to go beyond the limited education and opportunities on offer, and pushing for others to do the same - and that does not mean 'marxist classics alone funnily enough (naturally it is up to other folk I am talking to to decide weather my view of what the 'correct lessons' are actually 'are' or not - I am pretty confident that folk are able to work things out for themselves - to answer your side point, made above) - but applying those ideas (one thought about...) helps to test such ideas in practice - It think thats a fair point to make.
The real point I was trying to make wasn't 'nrr, your an ivory tower academic' - it was we could do with fresh ideas being bought in from fresh individuals while agreeing on a basic common platform that involves application of all our ideas in practice - thats how assumptions are challenged and new ideas formed. So when are you joining fella?
