Looking for a better way

[Kronsteen]

Hello.

I've been a member of UK-SWP for ten years, though I've always been skeptical of some of its ideas.

Some of these (State Capitalism, the insistence that overproduction and the declining rate of profit explain every capitalist crisis) weren't so important to me. Others (the inseparability of Marx and Engels, the 'socialism or barbarism' line) seemed doctrinaire and unsupported.

Some notions - as of the historical role of a socialist party - were just hazy and always formulated in set cliches, never actually explained.

My initial interest in marxism was in its philosophical aspects - epistemology, ethics, and of course the dialectic. Unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that marxist philosophy is the weakest part of marxism - and that if the philosophy is an essential part, then marxism as I've understood it is severely compromised.

These doubts, combined with the belligerent scientific illiteracy of almost all members, the infighting, sectarianism, and flip-flopping combined with institutional amnesia about the flip-flopping, have made me want to find an alternative, better marxism.

This seemed the best place to look.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

You will find interesting and intelligent people in the Philosophy and Science and Environment section (and of course elsewhere but this may be the sections you're looking for)

What is your take or experience with the CWI/Socialist Party?

What is your take on the CPGB?

[Kronsteen]

My encounters with both the CWI and CPGB have been minimal - and a little surreal.

I started calling myself a socialist in 2001, so for me figures like Ted Grand and Militant are mainly historical. I read some Grant when he died, and got the impression of a passionate and highly intelligent but blinkered man. His entryism was IMO a dead end, and his lifelong insistence that capitalism was just about to enter its death throes was...unhelpful.

A few months ago I was opposite a member of Militant in a debate. He spent most of the time screaming "Ultraleftist!" at me because I'd said the UK-Labour party no longer had a working class base. I suppose some socialists just get into the habit of communicating at the tops of their voices.

As for the CPGB, I've always known them as people who set up stalls outside SWP conferences. They told me I was covertly selling out to Islamic theocrats by being antiwar without emphasising my opposition to 'Islamic Culture'. I could see where they were coming from, but I think they had the emphases all wrong. A little like defending gay rights by saying gay people should really put their sexuality on one side in favour of revolutionary politics.

[Admiral Swagmeister G-Funk]

We're a sad bunch us British leftists. I left the CWI, not purely because of the party, but merely the state of revolutionary parties in Britain and their rigid, sectarian stances, of which they are all guilty of. A lot of it seems to have little to do with Marxism I think.

Welcome.

[Lyev]

Welcome.
I am actually an SP member, and have perhaps found myself in a similar situation to you (although I have only been calling myself a Marxist/been part of the CWI for just over a year).

I find the epithet 'ultra-leftist' very frustrating and it seems to be a term that SPers are pretty fond of. It is a very confused notion -- according to other members of the party, Lenin's Left-Wing Communism is wholly applicable to organisational methods of the UK-SWP. It is basically just a catch-all phrase designed to shut down any reasonable debate with whoever it is being aimed at.

Also, why do you find Marxist philosophy to be the weakest part of communist theory?

[Kronsteen]

I find the epithet 'ultra-leftist' very frustrating [...] It is basically just a catch-all phrase designed to shut down any reasonable debate with whoever it is being aimed at.

Indeed. I've started a discussion of the problem on the Learning section - the thread called 'socialist insults'.


Also, why do you find Marxist philosophy to be the weakest part of communist theory?

That's not an easy question to answer briefly.

Engels in the Anti-Duhring uses terms like contradiction and transformation so elastically, they get stretched hundreds of different ways for every example. The result is a combination of the blindingly obvious - eg, that things change all the time except when they don't - and the patently false eg, that external forces creating motion are really internal.

His grasp of maths and science is also, shall we say, not as good as he makes out. He thinks calculus and calculations with irrational or imaginary numbers only 'seem' to work, and in fact don't exist.

Lenin, annotating Hegel, thinks the grammar of copulas in indo-european languages reflects the structure of the universe.

Modern marxists like to misunderstand metaphors describing chaos theory and quantum physics in ways which 'justify' views projected by Engels onto Marx after the latter's death. They don't touch string/brane theory because it can't be abused in the same way.

As an analysis of capitalism, marxism is brilliant. As an explanation for human history, it's coherant. As a programme for change, I think it's the best hope. As a physical science...it isn't, and attempts to fold sciences into it are frankly embarrassing.