Rebuilding the socialist politics in the UK

[Futility Personified]

As everyone on this website knows, sectarianism is basically the godawful curse of leftism that seems to afflict a large amount of what we want to do and try and press onwards with.

My personal feelings regarding this are that the party leaders in the UK amongst groups like the SWP and SPEW passively encourage this, whether through aggressive critique of other groups with regards to things like how they washed their underpants in the Soviet Union (before underpants could get you sent to the gulag or prior to the collectivisation of elastic for waistband reinforcement and enhancement of the comfort of the genitalia of the proleteriat), hijacking of events or simple refusal to embrace methods such as working within unions, vilification of the far-right, things like No2EU and so on. I can't help but feel that this sort of psuedo-intellectual posturing is nothing more than egotistical wankery. I also find it somewhat depressing that of all the groups that there are in the UK that believe in workers unity, a lot of endorsement that i've heard during protests during talks with other socialists is basically under-selling other groups in order to prop their own organisation up. I've done this myself, and I regret it.

So how do people feel that sectarianism can at least be countered in the UK?
I'm not too familiar with the whole popular front concept that people sometimes bandy about here, but what i'd love to see one day would be a broad group of people with socialist and further left ideology unite despite differing methods and feelings on authoritarianism. To be in a party where everyone feels something is being achieved, be it through working and attempting to join in with union activity, to endorsing things that have recently occured in places like Bristol. Really this post was more of a venting on how screwed I feel we all are, but if other people have some views to put across please do so I can create some semblance of informed opinion.

[Blake's Baby]

I hate to come across as a sectarian, but...

There are reasons for the lack of cohesion among parties and groups (currents, tendencies) that claim the heritage of socialism. Some groups, such as the Stalinists, I wouldn't touch with someone else's barge-pole. Their theories are poisonous, I believe. Not just mistaken; actually massively harmful to the future of humanity. I would no more ally myself with Stalinists than I would knowingly drink concentrated sulphuric acid.

Stalinists would conversely see my views on communism as being little different to anarchism, and so petty-bourgeois, idealistic, ultra-leftist, and equally they'd claim that my view was harmful to the glorious forward march of whaterver it is that's supposed to be marching forward and therefore objectively supporting capitalism.

However, some groups seem to be opposed to each other over what seem to be fairly small reasons. The faction-fighting inside the Trotskyist millieu for instance seems to outsiders to be a storm in a teacup. The differences between different Trotskyist groups seem so insignificant it's a wonder they can't unite. On the other hand, I'm not bothered if they don't, because I don't think they have very much of any use to say anyway.

I presume the same can be said for what probably look like similarly small differences among the free-access communists (left-communists, council communists, Bordegists, Luxemburgists, De Leonists, SPGBers, and other 'impossibilists'). And it may be true. It may be that there's common ground between all these groups, and indeed the internationalist anarchists. I certainly hope so, because it's among these groups that I see the answer lying. But there are differences between them that seem really important - the nature of the Russian Revolution, for instance. How we understand historical process, even. This means that the Bordegists will never co-operate with other Left Communists groups, and even the two main organisations of non-Bordegist Left Communism, the ICC and the ICT, find it very difficult to work together. As for the SPGB, well, they don't like the violent anti-democratic putschists of the pro-Bolsheviks, and the pro-Bolsheviks think the SPGB are Marxist Quakers. The Anarchists think all the 'Leninists' are going to line them up against the wall on day 2, the Marxist groups think the Anarchists are a threat to the working class's ability to successfully organise...

[The Idler]

The differences are too great between most groups. Although ISG and Socialist Resistance merged recently and I noticed a joint Respect-RCG meeting too.

[Cleansing Conspiratorial Revolutionary Flame]

The differences are too great between most groups. Although ISG and Socialist Resistance merged recently and I noticed a joint Respect-RCG meeting too.
I disagree with this. While groups may differ with tendency. They easily can be combined together to form a sort of Unity that is to allow for Proletarian Politics above petty-Sectarianism. As the majority of Left Parties have the inevitable goal of Communism, if they're sincere that is, however the majority have a different way of gaining such a goal.

1.) Marxist-Leninists: *Require a centralized Socialist State that is to transform into a Communist society.
*Push forward a Leninist Vanguard Movement
*Claim to be the logical continuation of Bolshevik thought.
2.) Trotskyists: *Push forward a Democratic Centralized State that is to transform into a Communist Society.
*Push forward a Leninist Vanguard Movement.
*Claim to be logical continuation of Bolshevik thought.
3.) Hoxhaists:
*Are Marxist-Leninists
*Uphold the contributions of Stalin and Hoxha.
*Push forward a Socialist State that is inevitably to lead to a Communist Society
4.) Maoists:
*Push forward People's War in order to gain power of the State in order to declare a People's Republic.
*Consider themselves the logical continuation of Marxist-Leninism.
*Wish to found a state on the Principles of Mao.

Most of the descriptions aren't complete, but as you can see Unity is indeed possible, not unity of the common variety but perhaps a United Party of sorts that allows for each wing to democratically push forward their own goal. For example: Capitalists have coalition governments with disagreeing political parties. While Maoism, Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyism and Hoxhaism effectively counter-act eachother and are against eachother what should be remembered is that this is no longer:

1.) The 1930's Purges.
2.) Most Marxist-Leninists, ETC don't wish to return to the purges.
3.) Most advocate Democratic Centralism.

In fact-- It would be in the best interest for the Proletariat if this senseless Sectarianism were to be overcome and if these parties were willing to act together for a Revolutionary Interest.

We're at the moment, when it comes to these tendencies more of a permanent sort of unity for the Proletariat of the sort of the uniting of several parties from the split of the RSDLP whom were committed to the Revolution. However, such a unity will have to be made permanent in the sense that no longer can we allow for incidents that had occurred within the previous Working Class Movements that led to the disastrous case of Sectarianism that wasn't in the Proletarian Interest.

Be it:

1.) The suppression of Anarchists. (Anarchists can easily be needed for the Revolution and should be protected by any legitimate Vanguard Party to found Communist Economic Zones that represent the foundation of Communism itself.)
2.) The suppression of Trotskyists. (Trotskyists should in our present society be allowed to push forward their own goal at Class Liberation, if the class liberation itself is legitimate and truly founded. As previously said, this is no longer the 1930's where J.V Stalin is in power or for that matter, this is no longer a situation in which we can miss the opportunity of contribution that Trotskyists may give. (Lenin's deciding reason in respecting Trotsky as a Revolutionary Figure was his utter brilliance, even though Lenin himself had disagreed with Trotsky at times.)
3. Sectarianism against Marxist-Leninists. (Stalin ate babies and these type of arguments can't be accepted any longer as they don't contribute anything at all)

Its really what has been necessary for quite some time.

[[R]evolution!]

Punch New Labour MP's in the face till the party stops calling itself "socialist".

[Q]

Marxist unity (and, if they want to be involved, anarchists too) can only possibly happen, I think, on a common Marxist programme; a document spelling out the objective tasks of what is necessary to go from here to the seizure of power of the working class and the transformation of society towards communism after that. There needs to be an acceptance of such a programme, not necessarily an agreement, as such a programme needs to be debated and tested against living experience.

From such a programmatic approach does flow a minimum base of agreement though, a key set of principles without which you cannot work on the revolutionary project, or hold a pro-working class position even:
- The formation of the working class as its own self-aware collective entity, independent from the bosses and the state.
- Radical democracy, both as our projected future society as well as a principle within our movement today. It is not wrong to disagree, in fact quite the opposite. Controverse needs to happen in order for the movement to develop and politicise society, so let it happen openly.
- Internationalism as there can't be a positive national solution to capitalism. In Europe we have to work towards a common party-movement across the EU.

Incidentally, I do think the "Marxists-Leninists" and derivatives are going to have an issue with all three positions. But if they're willing to accept, I have no real issues being in one party with, for example, Maoists. As long as I have the right to openly disagree with whatever tactic, strategy or theory they have come up with, debate them on it and, tested against practical experiences, can win a majority in the party. Of course, they would have the same right to do so, as would anyone. This is what the workers movement is about: together forming our own collective politics.

[Sam_b]

whether through aggressive critique of other groups with regards to things like how they washed their underpants in the Soviet Union (before underpants could get you sent to the gulag or prior to the collectivisation of elastic for waistband reinforcement and enhancement of the comfort of the genitalia of the proleteriat)

1. How can it be 'passive' if you say it is an 'aggressive critique'?
2. Where have the SWP, for instance, ever done this?
3. How is critique sectarianism?


simple refusal to embrace methods such as working within unions, vilification of the far-right, things like No2EU and so on.

1. What do you mean by 'villification of the far-right'? I would argue SWP and CWI have consistently been antifascist and anti-Nazi.

2. Why in the hell should the left 'embrace' No2EU, with its horrible line on immigration?


. To be in a party where everyone feels something is being achieved

Why does there need to be a 'party' when groups can work within the united front?

[Comrade J]

I'm an Autonomist Marxist, so I'm not a great believer in parties or the usefulness of trade unionism. However, I think there are a couple of realisations that the left in the UK needs to come to before we can progress. Two that spring to mind -

1) Fuck nostalgia
You might think you look great on a march with your massive Stalin or Lenin banner or whatever, but in fact it is massively counter-productive. Historical fact is actually sidelined here for public perception, so regardless of what you think of these 'great figures' of the past, you have to accept that most workers in Britain will not share the same views, and to most people it looks like an archaic and thus futile ideology. Celebrate mass-worker actions and results in your slogans and banners, not individual historical leaders. For a supposedly revolutionary contingent, there is a hell of a lot of 'tradition' within some lefist ranks.

The reason the main political parties like the Tories do so well even now is because they reinvent their image. Of course, their ideology remains the same, but they have cleverly managed to convince people that they can offer something good, modern and fresh to society. We are the opposite of that: our image is not great yet in fact we really do have a fantastic solution to socio-economic problems.

(I realise I may be in the minority here, I've debated this to death on MSN with Sentinel for instance, but I think it is the most crucial step we must take.)

2) We probably won't see communism in our lifetimes
I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that we can only lay the groundwork; educate workers and those sympathetic to the proletariat however we can, and educate kids etc. as well as demonstrating your commitment and passion with action and dissent, to set an example and to help widen the movement into a growing plexus that the state will find difficult to curb.

With this in mind, sectarian arguments and division are reduced in their importance (though not absolutely negated) - this is something future generations can fight out. Right now, we need to present ourselves as a viable, realistic and powerful branch of society, and that can only be achieved by putting less emphasis on our doctrinal or ideological differences, and having at least the semblance of leftist solidarity, focusing on our shared beliefs regarding the innate unfairness of capitalism, the bourgeois state as a mechanism for class oppression and the rights of workers to be emancipated from wage slavery.

Additionally, a personal belief of mine that relates back to my first point to some extent is that we should disencourage support of old doctrines like Leninism, Maoism, 'Stalinism' and such, and focus on more recent Marxist evaluations by the likes of Negri for instance, which takes into account the 'information society', globalisation and the decline of the nation-state, and focuses on autonomous proletarian organisation outside the grip of communist parties. If anyone is interested in this, I can provide you with some good online literature, most of which comes from Italy in the 60's and 70's.

[Tim Finnegan]

Why does there need to be a 'party' when groups can work within the united front?
Well, the obvious answer is that trying to align the various far-left sects into a united front is like trying to herd cats, with each group acting more often than not to further its own presence rather than to foster any mass-movement. Frankly, if a mass revolutionary party is even viable, I don't even see it coming from that direction, but emerging on more reformist grounds and then developing a revolutionary tendency as experience of class struggle is gained.

[Q]

Frankly, if a single mass party is even viable, I don't even see it coming from that direction, but emerging on more reformist grounds and then developing a revolutionary tendency as experience of class struggle is gained.

I don't see that happening either really. In fact, things have tended to move the other way. The SPD started out as a Marxist party, but the rightwing (trade unionist bureaucratic layers and non-Marxist socialists) were allowed to take over. I hasten to add that I don't believe there is anything intrinsic in this process. The Bolsheviks for example, themselves very much part of the Marxist center, were able to carry society to revolution (which then eventually failed, but that's another story).

I have yet to see an example of the opposite. Even Militant, arguably the strongest Trotskyist formation in the UK post-WW2 in the 1980's, was not able to pull that trick but instead was kicked out of the Labour party.

[caramelpence]

Internationalism as there can't be a positive national solution to capitalism. In Europe we have to work towards a common party-movement across the EU

What does internationalism have to do with the EU, a bourgeois political institution? The EU means the strengthening of borders between European and non-European countries, combined with the imposition of neoliberal economic policies inside the member states. In human terms that means African immigrants drowning or being detained by immigration police as they desperately try to get across the Mediterranean sea in order to work in European countries, combined with privatization of welfare services. By calling for a "party-movement" (whatever that is - a term you've made up, apparently) along European lines you are giving recognition to a bourgeois political institution and dividing the workers of Europe from their class brothers in Africa and Asia. Any genuinely internationalist political formation - and I do not accept the Trotskyist fascination with party-building projects - will have to totally reject the Europhilia that you seem to have accepted.

Incidentally, most people here seem to think that "sectarianism" is synonymous with vigorous critique and debate, and they reject it on that basis. That is not the meaning of sectarianism, and critique and debate should not be rejected in the name of a superficial kind of "left unity". When Stalinists sell out workers, they should be openly and repeatedly condemned, and too bad if that some so-called leftists condemn that as "sectarianism".

[Die Neue Zeit]

Internationalism is bankrupt.

There are only two viable supra-national options, both to be pursued: transnationalism and worker-class pan-nationalism (like European continentalism).

Re. the original topic at hand: establish a (Left) Chartist Party of (Great) Britain and affiliate it to the European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL). Union links should be established only with the World Federation of Trade Unions.

[caramelpence]

Internationalism is bankrupt.

Fuck off, you vile hack.


worker-class pan-nationalism

"Worker" and "nationalism" are not words that should be put together.

[Tim Finnegan]

I don't see that happening either really. In fact, things have tended to move the other way. The SPD started out as a Marxist party, but the rightwing (trade unionist bureaucratic layers and non-Marxist socialists) were allowed to take over. I hasten to add that I don't believe there is anything intrinsic in this process. The Bolsheviks for example, themselves very much part of the Marxist center, were able to carry society to revolution (which then eventually failed, but that's another story).

I have yet to see an example of the opposite.
I disagree. All the revolutionary Marxist organisations of the period 1917-21 began as sections of broader reformist parties, which split off when the tension between the revolutionary and reformist wings became too powerful - sometimes years in advance, as in Russia, but sometimes as late as the moment of insurrection, as in Finland. The process I describe was very much in evidence, it was simply insufficiently developed in many regions.

Certainly, there's no less of an up-hill struggle convincing workers towards a revolutionary sect than towards a revolutionary tendency within a non-revolutionary movement or party, but without any of the benefits of an established place within the political presence of the working class and with all the added delights which that kind of political isolation so often brings.


Even Militant, arguably the strongest Trotskyist formation in the UK post-WW2 in the 1980's, was not able to pull that trick but instead was kicked out of the Labour party.A sect does not cease to be a sect because it implants itself in a larger host. Militant did not represent the organic emergence of a revolutionary tendency, but, rather, the wholly artificial injection of revolutionary-minded individuals into a party which, by that point, wasn't even socialist in the proper sense of the word.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Fuck off, you vile hack.

Bankruptcy of internationalism? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/bankruptcy-internationalismi-t144285/index.html)


"Worker" and "nationalism" are not words that should be put together.

To paraphrase Marx and Engels:

The proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the Pan-Nation, must constitute itself the Pan-Nation, it is so far, itself Pan-National, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

[caramelpence]

Bankruptcy of internationalism? (http://www.revleft.com/vb/proletarian-demographic-minorities-t155191/index.html)

Rambling shit by some guy who makes up words and wrongly thinks he's a theoretical big-shot? Yup.


To paraphrase Marx and Engels:

The proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the Pan-Nation, must constitute itself the Pan-Nation, it is so far, itself Pan-National, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

WTF?! No, not "to paraphrase Marx and Engels", this is to come up with some Euro-nationalist bullshit and to attribute it to two people who actually made meaningful theoretical contributions and who actually deserve to be called socialist, unlike you and you vile combination of meaningless drivel and disgraceful chauvinism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

All the revolutionary Marxist organisations of the period 1917-21 began as sections of broader reformist parties, which split off when the tension between the revolutionary and reformist wings became too powerful - sometimes years in advance, as in Russia, but sometimes as late as the moment of insurrection, as in Finland. The process I describe was very much in evidence, it was simply insufficiently developed in many regions.

Certainly, there's no less of an up-hill struggle convincing workers towards a revolutionary sect than towards a revolutionary tendency within a non-revolutionary movement or party, but without any of the benefits of an established place within the political presence of the working class and with all the added delights which that kind of political isolation so often brings.

A sect does not cease to be a sect because it implants itself in a larger host. Militant did not represent the organic emergence of a revolutionary tendency, but, rather, the wholly artificial injection of revolutionary-minded individuals into a party which, by that point, wasn't even socialist in the proper sense of the word.

Those splits only emerged during revolutionary periods.

We're talking about organizing prior to a revolutionary period. There are bourgeois and petit-bourgeois labour parties. There are proletarian-not-necessarily-communist parties. There are communist worker sects.

Until the early 1900s the pre-war SPD was a PNNC.

[Die Neue Zeit]

WTF?! No, not "to paraphrase Marx and Engels", this is to come up with some Euro-nationalist bullshit and to attribute it to two people who actually made meaningful theoretical contributions and who actually deserve to be called socialist, unlike you and you vile combination of meaningless drivel and disgraceful chauvinism.

I'm not talking just about things like a Communist Party of the European Union. I'm talking about renewed unity in the former Soviet space, preferrably one based on Stalin's larger, unitary RSFSR proposal than on Lenin's federal USSR. I'm talking about "Gran Colombia" Bolivarianism (preferrably under Chavez-like leadership). I'm talking about unity for sub-Saharan Africa. I'm talking about a new working-class approach to pan-Arabism.

[caramelpence]

I'm not talking just about things like a Communist Party of the European Union

I don't see how any of what you just said is any reason to retract my comments or view you as anything other than a right-wing creep. Let's start with the basics, which you clearly lack - internationalism is not just a nice idea, or some kind of ideological position that springs from perceived moral imperatives, it is a direct expression of the material interests of the working class and humanity as a whole and more particularly it is an expression of the material preconditions fort he establishment of a socialist society. This means that socialism requires an advanced productive apparatus as its basis and that the nature of capitalist development and the emergence of a world-system characterized by relations of mutual dependency means that this productive apparatus exists only on a world scale rather than in a single country or in a single region - that is why a socialist revolution has to be international in scope and that is why internationalism is a duty incumbent on all revolutionary socialists. Your bizarre plans, which you've self-evidently cooked up at your computer, have nothing to do with the liberation of working people anywhere. Without a revolution that spreads throughout the world and take full advantage of the entire set of productive advances that have been make possible by capitalism, any socialist society will find itself faced with a condition of material scarcity and all the social conflicts and political dangers that would emerge from such a condition. Not only do your schemes fail to take note of the material basis for internationalism - what makes you think that a polity comprised of all the Arab states would be able to develop a socialist society? What about all the resources they happen to lack and underdevelopment in the Arab world? - the fact that you support "Chavez-like leadership" indicates that you have no faith in the ability of working people to manage their society in a collective and democratic way and that you would rather put your faith in petty-bourgeois demagogues. You have nothing to offer any socialist or any working person.

Like I said, go back to the social-democratic chauvinist lair from whence you came.

[Q]

Ugh, before this gets anymore off track, please mind this message by your friendly neighbourhood commie:

http://oi51.tinypic.com/2ed73p2.jpg

[caramelpence]

Ugh, before this gets anymore off track

This is the second time you've accused someone (i.e. me) of being "off track" in order to avoid having to answer criticism. If you call for a Communist Party of the EU in the name of "internationalism" you should be prepared to provide a pretty good explanation. Haven't got one? Don't come out with such nonsense then.

[Q]

This is the second time you've accused someone (i.e. me) of being "off track" in order to avoid having to answer criticism. If you call for a Communist Party of the EU in the name of "internationalism" you should be prepared to provide a pretty good explanation. Haven't got one? Don't come out with such nonsense then.

I'll come back to your political criticisms later on. Your trollish attitude is something that is a separate problem.

[Zanthorus]

As everyone on this website knows, sectarianism is basically the godawful curse of leftism that seems to afflict a large amount of what we want to do and try and press onwards with.

Good. The more irrelevant the 'left' is, the better.

[caramelpence]

I'll come back to your political criticisms later on. Your trollish attitude is something that is a separate problem.

I'd love to be able to say that your support for a Communist Party of the EU is trolling, but you seem to be serious, just like your crackpot friend is serious in thinking the SPD was a model Marxist party and that "internationalism is bankrupt".

[Die Neue Zeit]

This means that socialism requires an advanced productive apparatus as its basis and that the nature of capitalist development and the emergence of a world-system characterized by relations of mutual dependency means that this productive apparatus exists only on a world scale rather than in a single country or in a single region - that is why a socialist revolution has to be international in scope and that is why internationalism is a duty incumbent on all revolutionary socialists.

Trans-nationalism does a much better job at this than inter-nationalism ever could.


the fact that you support "Chavez-like leadership" indicates that you have no faith in the ability of working people to manage their society in a collective and democratic way and that you would rather put your faith in petty-bourgeois demagogues

Key word: FAITH. This implies blind faith and similar religious stuff.

Oh, and the "Gran Colombia" region doesn't have a proletarian demographic majority.

[caramelpence]

Trans-nationalism does a much better job at this than inter-nationalism ever could.

How could it do a "better job" when you propose having polities based on assumed ethnic and cultural commonalities? You don't even advocate "transnationalism" (whatever that might mean in substantive terms), you just advocate nationalism with a slightly different conception of what constitutes a nation - and what's even more laughable is that several if not all of the proposed polities that you mention do not even have a basis in culture or popular consciousness! At least when theorists like Lenin put forward their ideas on the origin and development of nations and when they laid out the conditions for supporting national liberation struggles they were concerned with how nationhood and national oppression expressed themselves in actual political activity and beliefs - you apparently believe that it is sufficient to assert the desirability and feasibility of some bizarre polity that you've dreamed up in your own bedroom. Do you seriously think that there is any meaningful support for, say, a union of Subsaharan African states, in the sense of there being sizable numbers of working people who identify as members of a Subsaharan African nation? Do you not have any inkling that pan-Arabism might have been discredited as a political project back during the Cold War when the UAR collapsed or during the First Gulf War when the Syrian Ba'ath regime supported the American war effort against the Ba'ath government in Iraq? In any case, quite apart from whether people currently identify in pan-Arab or pan-Latin American terms, why is it the business of socialists to go calling for the division of the world into these ethnically based polities, given that socialism itself depends on internationalism in a very direct and material way?


Key word: FAITH. This implies blind faith and similar religious stuff.

Er, okay, I could just have easily as said "you don't accept the ability of working people to govern themselves collectively and democratically". Either way, you're an anti-worker fool.


Oh, and the "Gran Colombia" region doesn't have a proletarian demographic majority.

What does this even mean? Do you mean the working class of the "Gran Colombia" region does not comprise a majority of the population? If this is what you mean (in which case why you have to resort to such a pretentious term as "proletarian demographic majority" is beyond me) then what's your point? Weren't those kind of facile arguments dealt with about a century ago in Russia? Are you seriously suggesting that socialist revolutions can't or shouldn't be allowed to happen unless the working class is a majority of a country or the world's population?

First of all, please, ask your friends (do you have any friends?) to buy you a beginner's style guide or something similar. Secondly, buy a basic introduction to Marx, preferably one of the fun comic versions.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You don't even advocate "transnationalism" (whatever that might mean in substantive terms)

Obviously you haven't read my past posts on the subject. Internationalism is bankrupt because, in part, it's between nations. Transnationalism goes beyond nations.

What I have argued is that transnationalism and a new working-class approach to pan-nationalism can be combined.

[caramelpence]

Obviously you haven't read my past posts on the subject.

Correct, because I read stuff that's interesting and relevant, and you are neither of those things.


Internationalism is bankrupt because, in part, it's between nations

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all, whatever the literal meaning of "inter-". In political language, internationalism means the rejection of national affiliations in favor of an emphasis on the common humanity or class interests of different individuals. This is how the term has been used in left-wing discourse since it was introduced.


Transnationalism goes beyond nations

No, this isn't what transnationalism generally means in political language, it means movement between nations, but does not entail the rejection of national identities, and can be consistent with the strengthening of those identities and national boundaries in certain ways. In this sense, what you've said is consistent with transnationalism because you have advocated a set of ethnic and cultural polities, which entails a direct rejection of internationalism - the fact that you don't see this is a problem suggests that you have no understanding of the material basis for internationalism and simply see it as a nice idea that can be rejected or accepted depending on its applicability to your ramblings or a version of left-wing politics that you conceive essentially as a marketing project.


What I have argued is that transnationalism and a new working-class approach to pan-nationalism can be combined

You haven't argued anything.

[Zanthorus]

To expand slightly on my previous post:


...party leaders in the UK amongst groups like the SWP and SPEW passively encourage this... through aggressive critique of other groups... I can't help but feel that this sort of psuedo-intellectual posturing is nothing more than egotistical wankery.

As pointed out previously, simply offering a critique of another group is not sectarian. This is simply an epithet used by groups and individuals when they have been theoretically backed into a corner. Making vague appeals to 'anti-sectarianism' serves them to stifle debate. A sectarian is someone who tries to enforce a set of abstract principles on the movement and uses these principles as conditions for the support of any struggles. The classic example of sectarianism in the socialist movement is the Utopian Socialists who renounced all immediate struggles of the working-class and refused to have anything to do with any movement that wasn't geared towards the immediate abolition of capitalism. In our own day this tradition is continued by groups like the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Another lesser example of sectarianism would be the user Die Neue Zeit who looks down his nose at the immediate economic struggles of the proletariat and regards them as 'mere labour struggles'.

Thus, opposition to sectarianism means that one refuses to take up a position against the real movement of the working-class. It does not, contrary to popular belief, have anything to do with uniting with other 'socialist' groups. In fact, in many situations anti-sectarianism may necessitate vigorous critique and organisational splitting to combat the influence of groups which want to debase the movement and, for example, bring it into supporting competing nationalisms (This is the case with most of the so-called 'left' today). Engels once remarked that he had spent more of his life fighting against the 'so-called socialists' than against any members of the bourgeoisie. Elswhere he also noted that the various shouters for unity within the socialist movement were in fact the biggest brawlers and the worst of all sectarians.


So how do people feel that sectarianism can at least be countered in the UK?

A rise in the level of class struggle which will make all the sects impotent.

[Die Neue Zeit]

As pointed out previously, simply offering a critique of another group is not sectarian [...] Another lesser example of sectarianism would be the user Die Neue Zeit who looks down his nose at the immediate economic struggles of the proletariat and regards them as 'mere labour struggles'.

I object to your statement. I don't look down upon these conflicts. I just recognize mere labour disputes for what they are. There's a difference between this, the need to press genuine class struggle out of ordinary political struggle, and real sectarianism on the one hand and slippery slopes of economism on the other.

Also consider a brief discussion or two of mine in the past likening closed-shop unionization campaigns (the UK being rife with closed shops) with anti-immigrant sentiments:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/building-pan-left-t150572/index.html?p=2031336
http://www.revleft.com/vb/elections-uk-left-t154348/index.html?p=2111266


A rise in the level of class struggle which will make all the sects impotent.

Correction: A rise in the level of either mere labour disputes, ordinary political struggle, or genuine class struggle makes sects impotent.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually, it doesn't mean that at all, whatever the literal meaning of "inter-". In political language, internationalism means the rejection of national affiliations in favor of an emphasis on the common humanity or class interests of different individuals. This is how the term has been used in left-wing discourse since it was introduced.

What I'm saying is that said discourse is outdated.


No, this isn't what transnationalism generally means in political language, it means movement between nations

Now look who's gotten definitions while standing on his head? :rolleyes:

[Sam_b]

I think if possible i'm gonna call for this thread to be split. OP is a very interesting question and i'm hoping to see debate as well as my queries answered. That's not to say that the question of internationalism and tactics isn't important, but perhaps it's better suited to its own thread.

[Q]

What does internationalism have to do with the EU, a bourgeois political institution? The EU means the strengthening of borders between European and non-European countries, combined with the imposition of neoliberal economic policies inside the member states. In human terms that means African immigrants drowning or being detained by immigration police as they desperately try to get across the Mediterranean sea in order to work in European countries, combined with privatization of welfare services. By calling for a "party-movement" (whatever that is - a term you've made up, apparently) along European lines you are giving recognition to a bourgeois political institution and dividing the workers of Europe from their class brothers in Africa and Asia. Any genuinely internationalist political formation - and I do not accept the Trotskyist fascination with party-building projects - will have to totally reject the Europhilia that you seem to have accepted.

You are completely missing the point. Should we, following your logic, also reject organisation on a national scale? After all, the nationstate is as much a "bosses club" as the EU, if not more so.

The EU is a fact of life and there is little point in ignoring it and despite the deepest crisis the project is currently in since its existence, I don't think it is going away. Further more, it actually has a progressive role in that it becomes possible to organise the working class on a pan-European scale.

This is progressive because the dictatorship of the proletariat on a national scale is utterly impossible and will lead to disaster pretty much directly after the working class seizes power. A dotp on a trans-European scale though is a whole other matter and can actually provide a positive answer to capitalist society by providing a higher standard of living.

So, a common EU party and the demand for real unification is exactly about creating a space for the working class to develop across borders, much in the same sense as Marx and Engels supported the unification of "Greater Germany" into one republic.

Of course I'm all for global unity and I don't see why things should end with a European democratic republic. However, global unity will be an uneven process. The affinity between Spain and Portugal is on a different level than the afinity of Spain and India. For this same reason I also support regional unity projects on a class and democratic basis elsewhere, currently the most important example of which is perhaps the national question of Arab unity that has sprung up out of virtually nowhere after having been dormant for decades.

As for "party-movement": It's a term I borrowed from Jacob Richter (oh noes!) and I position it against the usual meaning of "party" as a bureaucratic contraption of an elevated "correct revolutionary leadership" that is so prevalent on the left today. I believe we should try to organise the whole class as a class that is self-aware of its own strength and historical mission to change the planet. A "party-movement" because it would need to exist of a political component (the party) that tries to unite and organise the vanguard of our class, i.e. the layer of workers that makes or breaks any collective action, the "natural leaders on the ground". This will only reach a small portion of our class however, so a movement of alternative culture institutions that promote all kinds of self-activity would be needed to politicise society durably. Think of community centers, sports clubs, etc (the possibilities are nigh endless). The point is not so much to maintain these institutions for its own sake, but exactly to talk politics in them, raise awareness as a long term patient task.

And yes, the SPD pre-1914 did exactly that. I don't disagree it had problems, it certainly had, but we should learn critically from these mistakes and weaknesses instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as the left has been doing for way too long.

[Android]

For this same reason I also support regional unity projects on a class and democratic basis elsewhere, currently the most important example of which is perhaps the national question of Arab unity that has sprung up out of virtually nowhere after having been dormant for decades.

Maybe I did not follow the recent revolts in the Arab world closely enough, but I did not see or read anywhere about people involved in that process raising the question of Arab unity at all. The only place I saw this questions being posed was in articles in the Weekly Worker.

So could you provide some evidence that pan-Arabism "sprung up out of virtually nowhere" and was an active factor in those revolts as you seem to be suggesting. It just wasn't something I noticed when observing those revolts.

[Thirsty Crow]

What I'm saying is that said discourse is outdated.

Excuse my malicious analogy, but the general discourse of the revolutionary transformation of society (world societies) is pretty much "outdated" as well, according to some people.

What makes you think that internationalism is "outdated"?

[Die Neue Zeit]

Some combination of Bordiga's "International" Communist Party but one that is both a real party and a real movement, on the one hand, and continental and other regional unity projects (EU, sub-Saharan Africa, former Soviet space, etc.) on the other, demonstrate the superiority of transnationalism and workers' pan-nationalism over mere internationalism with an international of various national parties.

[RED DAVE]

Internationalism is bankrupt.Maybe for you.


There are only two viable supra-national optionsOnly two.


both to be pursued: transnationalism and worker-class pan-nationalism (like European continentalism).You're sure these are the only two options. Did a little birdie tell you this, or did you find it in a fortune cookie?


Re. the original topic at hand: establish a (Left) Chartist Party of (Great) Britain and affiliate it to the European United Left-Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL). Union links should be established only with the World Federation of Trade Unions.This is social democracy.

RED DAVE

[The Idler]

Dunno why I didn't mention this before but look at the last 10 years of the left in the UK and attempts to unite parties.
Socialist Alliance.
Respect Coalition
Campaign for a New Workers Party.
Campaign for a Marxist Party.
No2EU, Trade Union and Socialist Coalition.
All have achieved pretty rubbish votes.

[Sam_b]

I would argue that Respect has done pretty well considering, and that Camapaign for a New Workers Party is a campaign rather than an organisation that fights in elections.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Respect probably did well off of Galloway's public profile, but you are right to identify that it's not MAINLY votes that count; the main criterion should be to what extent the left, whether united or dis-united, has infiltrated working class consciousness. Unfortunately, we have failed, and are failing, to do so on any meaningful level, despite some good gains around the end of 2010/early 2011 with regards to students, public sector workers and so on.

DNZ: why would we want a chartist party of great britain that is affiliated with the Green left? I don't object to such a party being the right-wing section of a revolutionary coalition, but tbh there is something wrong with your theorising if that is your ultimate strategic aim, whether you're and internationalist, transnationalist, pan-nationalist or whatever.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Respect probably did well off of Galloway's public profile, but you are right to identify that it's not MAINLY votes that count; the main criterion should be to what extent the left, whether united or dis-united, has infiltrated working class consciousness. Unfortunately, we have failed, and are failing, to do so on any meaningful level, despite some good gains around the end of 2010/early 2011 with regards to students, public sector workers and so on.

DNZ: why would we want a chartist party of great britain that is affiliated with the Green left? I don't object to such a party being the right-wing section of a revolutionary coalition, but tbh there is something wrong with your theorising if that is your ultimate strategic aim, whether you're and internationalist, transnationalist, pan-nationalist or whatever.

I merely mentioned the full name of the European left parliamentary group headed by Lothar Bisky. GUE-NGL's most prominent party is none other than Die Linke. The Greens all over Europe have their own European parliamentary group.

[flobdob]

The differences are too great between most groups. Although ISG and Socialist Resistance merged recently and I noticed a joint Respect-RCG meeting too.

Just to clarify, the RCG has not had a joint meeting with Respect. We certainly do not agree with their politics in the slightest.

I dunno what group has, but it sure ain't us.

[The Idler]

Just to clarify, the RCG has not had a joint meeting with Respect. We certainly do not agree with their politics in the slightest.

I dunno what group has, but it sure ain't us.Aren't Rock around the Blockade a front of the RCG?

*Liverpool Rock around the Blockade/Liverpool Respect joint public meeting*

Cuba: 50 years since the Bay of Pigs, 50 years of socialism

Speaker: Fernando Jacomino, Communist Party of Cuba, former vice-president
of the Cuban Book Institute.

The defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion of 14 April 1961 was the occasion of
the Havana Declaration when Fidel announced the socialist character of the
Cuban revolution. Fernando will speak about the cultural consequences today
of Cuba’s struggle for socialism and will be able to answer questions about
the key issues facing the Cuban people today.

Monday 23 May 7.30pm Methodist Centre, Bold Street (next to News from
Nowhere)

[Tim Finnegan]

This is social democracy.
And the majority of British workers are, at best, social democrats. That this is the milieu with which we have to engage if we are to turn them towards a more class struggle-orientated form of politics. Building fringe-sects in the hope that the proletarian masses will one day raise one little clique or another over their heads as the Bolsheviks come again is a fantasy, at best.


DNZ: why would we want a chartist party of great britain that is affiliated with the Green left? I don't object to such a party being the right-wing section of a revolutionary coalition, but tbh there is something wrong with your theorising if that is your ultimate strategic aim, whether you're and internationalist, transnationalist, pan-nationalist or whatever.
I can't speak for DNZ, but my own support for such a project would be rooted in the simple necessity of a working class political movement in Great Britain, something which we are sorely lacking. At this point, it is this class character, rather than the exact form of a party, movement, or party-movement program which I consider to be the crucial detail, and given the lack of even a strong class conciousness among the British proletariat, let alone a revolutionary one, a movement rooted in a broad-front of "social republicanism" will be more viable in the short-term than one of an explicitly revolutionary socialist nature. This certainly nothing to stop us discussing issues of class struggle within the movement, and even of discussing revolution- indeed, I believe that maintaining a consciously class-strugglist and at least potentially revolutionary wing in such a movement would be necessary to avoid its compromise- but we can't set out arguing those points to the exclusion of all others and hope to win a mass audience.
Most British workers still believe in the bourgeois mythology of a state set apart from and above civil society, and disbelieve in the process of class struggle, and these are lessons that can only be collectively learned through political experience, not through the injection of some external wisdom. No historical, worker-lead revolution has ever emerged from revolutionary fringe-sect, but they have and have only emerged from a militant wing of a broader working class movement. Whether this movement takes the form of a party, a loose movement, a coalition of syndicalist unions, or whatever your personal preference may be, is, I would argue, a secondary detail when considered next to the demand for the movement itself.

[redllewellyn]

In response to the original post i think sectarianism is obviously a problem and not one we can just wish away i think we can draw something positive from the last year and the upturn in struggle which is that when it comes to marches strikes and direct action there is much more unity because its a necessity.
I think a lot of sectarianism is due to frustration in bad situations where parties are struggling and in a downturn the left can turn in on itself and you get splits and most common sectarianism. In local politics and on a personal level i get on with nearly all the left wingers i know

[The Idler]

Oh yeah, I forgot there is also the Call for a New Anti Capitalist Party (http://anticapitalistparty.org.uk/)
I suppose the point is Socialist Alliance had the support of SPEW, SWP, AWL, CPB, WP, ISG and CPGB and dissolved in 2005.
All the rest have tried to unite different parties in campaigns/parties but failed to get much more than one or two distinct parties support. Campaign for a Marxist Party was an interesting one which had CPGB and RDG but they fell out.

[Blake's Baby]

Pretty sure CPB weren't involved with the Socialist Alliance. I believe at the time the Socialist Alliance was going on, the CPB were in negotiations with the SLP on a different alliance.

Were ISG really involved?

[dwyck]

To be honest a lot of these groups are pretty irrelevant and there's too much concentration on some sort of regroupment. If theres something to regroup around then go for it and work together as much as possible, but trying to force it isn't going to get anywhere. If you want to do something worthwhile stop being so inward looking to the current 'movement' and try attract normal people.

[Q]

Were ISG really involved?

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alliance_(England)) it was. And the CPB were indeed not involved.

[Blake's Baby]

OK, thanks for the info. Don't remember them ever being mentioned when I used to read Weekly Worker is all.

[The Idler]

My bad.

[Crux]

I merely mentioned the full name of the European left parliamentary group headed by Lothar Bisky. GUE-NGL's most prominent party is none other than Die Linke. The Greens all over Europe have their own European parliamentary group.
You have no idea how GUE-NGL work, do you?

[Die Neue Zeit]

They're a loose parliamentary group. This was demonstrated by Lothar Bisky himself supporting imperialist action against Libya vs. others, even within the Die Linke sub-group, opposing it.

The symbolic internationalism is still more crucial, and I don't think Trotskyist "international" fan clubs of some British or Latin American Trotskyist sect will suffice against the need for the British left (all the way up to the "British Road to Socialism" CPB and King Arthur's SLP gang) to swallow its own anti-continental pride.

[Crux]

They're a loose parliamentary group. This was demonstrated by Lothar Bisky himself supporting imperialist action against Libya vs. others, even within the Die Linke sub-group, opposing it.

The symbolic internationalism is still more crucial, and I don't think Trotskyist "international" fan clubs of some British or Latin American Trotskyist sect will suffice against the need for the British left to swallow its own anti-continental pride.
Ah, so I see yeah you have no idea how GUE-NGL work. It is a parliamentary group for the purposes of giving the left speaking time in the european parliament, it is not an international organization and it's certainly not a new international-in-waiting.

No, no it's not, but you wouldn't know that apparently. And your fixation with die linke, while certainly "interesting", like most other of your excentricies that you try to sell as some kind of self-invented ideology gets boring pretty quick.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Ah, so I see yeah you have no idea how GUE-NGL work. It is a parliamentary group for the purposes of giving the left speaking time in the european parliament, it is not an international organization and it's certainly not a new international-in-waiting.

The CWI isn't an "international in waiting," either, nor will it ever be.

What I mean by the arrogance of the British left is that, for the past number of Euro elections there has been no British organization, not even the "British Road to Socialism" CPB or King Arthur's SLP gang, affiliated directly with the GUE-NGL. The GUE-NGL has more prestige than the British-based "international" fan clubs of certain Trotskyist groups.

[Crux]

The CWI isn't an "international in waiting," either, nor will it ever be.

What I mean by the arrogance of the British left is that, for the past number of Euro elections there has been no British organization, not even the "British Road to Socialism" CPB or King Arthur's SLP gang, affiliated directly with the GUE-NGL. The GUE-NGL has more prestige than the British-based "international" fan clubs of certain Trotskyist groups.
True, we are the Committee for a Worker's International.

And what do you imagine can be gained by "affiliating" to the GUE-NGL?
Again, let me remind you that GUE-NGL is a parlimentary group in the european parliament. W"hat "prestige" exactly? Your snide comments is amusing, both considering your own excentric psotions and the fact you still fail to understand what the GUE-NGL, which you for some reason are advocating, is. I mean as you are probably aware our MEP already sits in the GUE-NGL group. The CWI isn't an "international fanclub" either, but let's take this one step at a time shall we.

[Jolly Red Giant]

And what do you imagine can be gained by "affiliating" to the GUE-NGL?
Again, let me remind you that GUE-NGL is a parlimentary group in the european parliament. W"hat "prestige" exactly? Your snide comments is amusing, both considering your own excentric psotions and the fact you still fail to understand what the GUE-NGL, which you for some reason are advocating, is. I mean as you are probably aware our MEP already sits in the GUE-NGL group.
Here is an interesting one -

in June 2010 then Socialist Party MEP, Joe Higgins, invited all 35 MEPs of the GUE/NGL to back a Europe wide week of Solidarity and Protest. The week of Solidarity and Protest was to demonstrate the the attacks of the ruling class are not isolated to individual countries but a worldwide campaign by the bourgeoisie to force the working class and the impoversihed masses to pay for the current crisis.

The agreed platform was as follows -
- Workers, pensioners, the unemployed, students, youth and those socially excluded must not pay for the crisis - Make the super rich and bankers pay - Solidarity with the working people of Greece and for the unity of working people across Europe. - No cutbacks, wage cuts, unemployment & increases in the retirement age - No to privatisation of public services - End the dictatorship of the financial markets, credit ratings institutions and IMF - Stop the bailouts of the banks - nationalise the banks and financial institutions in the interests of working people

All GUE/NGL MEP's were invited to endorse the campaign - yet out of the 35 MEP's only 16 (i.e. a minority) actually felt it possible to be associated with the effort. That is one hell of an endorsement for the European Parliamentary group that DNZ is touting.

[Lyev]

I object to your statement. I don't look down upon these conflicts. I just recognize mere labour disputes for what they are. There's a difference between this, the need to press genuine class struggle out of ordinary political struggle, and real sectarianism on the one hand and slippery slopes of economism on the other.Hi DNZ, I was wondering if you could elaborate on your idea of what exactly 'real' class struggle is as opposed to "mere labour struggle"? Is your qualm with a labour dispute that it is merely economic (or economist)? Why cannot an economic struggle develop into a political struggle or vice versa? What are communists to do when workers take up a strike against their bosses with economic demands only; do we refuse to become involved in that struggle?

[Crux]

Here's another question for you, DNZ, although in my experience you have always avoided answering, have you ever participated in any actual struggles, real or therwise?

[Devrim]

You have no idea how GUE-NGL work, do you?

It shouldn't surprise us. He has very little idea how anything works.

Devrim

[Lyev]

Here's another question for you, DNZ, although in my experience you have always avoided answering, have you ever participated in any actual struggles, real or therwise?To be fair, although I respect your contributions to this forum, I think this is a little underhand to bring this up right now, and tangential to the matter at hand. If you want to question DNZ's credentials (for want of a better phrase) as regards "actual struggles" it would probably be best to send him a PM or something and sort it out from there. Personally, I am a little younger than some posters here, so I have not really participated in any kind of "actual struggle" apart from demos and stalls etc. (which isn't really real struggle as such) However, this does not make my posts anymore or less worthy of consideration. And this thread has got enough off-topic detours anyway.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Hi DNZ, I was wondering if you could elaborate on your idea of what exactly 'real' class struggle is as opposed to "mere labour struggle"? Is your qualm with a labour dispute that it is merely economic (or economist)? Why cannot an economic struggle develop into a political struggle or vice versa? What are communists to do when workers take up a strike against their bosses with economic demands only; do we refuse to become involved in that struggle?

Comrade, I know you've read my work here and there, but I'll repeat again anyways: genuine class struggles arise from more generic political struggles (if you wish, call them "politico-political"). For example, the Chartist campaign for universal manhood suffrage or later campaigns for universal suffrage has squat to do with mere labour disputes. Even the "struggle for socialism" itself is economic and not political. Only in rare instances do political struggles and economic struggles merge, such as shorter workdays and workweeks, and even then one can emphasize the economist crap (reducing unemployment, leisure time) or the more political aspects (time for political participation, and maybe environmental aspects too with one less working day).

Even the petit-bourgeois Green party has more political consciousness than King Arthur's SLP gang ever could:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/beyond-popular-and-t148739/index.html

The rest of your questions were answered in my Theory thread on economism just a couple of months ago.

http://www.revleft.com/vb/why-mere-labour-t152648/index.html

[Tim Finnegan]

Comrade, I know you've read my work here and there, but I'll repeat again anyways: genuine class struggles arise from more generic political struggles (if you wish, call them "politico-political"). For example, the Chartist campaign for universal manhood suffrage or later campaigns for universal suffrage has squat to do with mere labour disputes. Even the "struggle for socialism" itself is economic and not political. Only in rare instances do political struggles and economic struggles merge, such as shorter workdays and workweeks, and even then one can emphasize the economist crap (reducing unemployment, leisure time) or the more political aspects (time for political participation, and maybe environmental aspects too with one less working day).
What about the (pre-Kinnock) British Labour Party, a political mass-organisation that emerged out of economic struggles? Unlike continental social democratic parties, the Labour Party was not a political party with trade union backing, but in fact the electoral wing of the labour movement (specifically, of the TUC, STUC and ICTU), that is, as the political representation of economic formations. Does that not suggest a rather steady merger of political and economic issues?

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

This post is about rebuilding 'socialist' politics in Britain. The way to do that is building the foundations of a new workers' party out of the anti-cuts struggles that thousands, nay, millions of people will become involved in over the coming years. The working class in Britain needs its own political voice more urgently than ever. The Trades Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts candidates in the English local elections, who received 25,000, are a step in that direction. This can be a step to create new political party of the working class.

In Scotland next year there are the local elections, the SNP government will at some stage implement even further cuts than before the Scottish parliamentary election in May. As part of this anti-cuts struggle, that can spread like wildfire in the months ahead, a political alternative to cuts and capitalism must be built. Socialist Party Scotland will be advocating that the anti-cuts movement, socialists, trade unionists and communities work to build a fighting coalition against cuts that will stand in the council elections next year. To elect councillors who will refuse to make cuts and will stand up to the Con-Dem government in London, the SNP in Edinburgh and the councils who are wielding the axe across Scotland. This can be an important platform to help build a powerful socialist alternative to the parties of cuts in the year ahead.

More importantly all this will start to percolate within the consciousness of working people that they need a political party of there own and that is what Socialists have to do.

[Arlekino]

More people employed in private sector than in public sector and I can't see possibility to get somewhere near to Socialism. Workers are little ignorant sorry to say about that I would not generalise entire working class but ignorant workers seems stronger than left wingers. The is another side I wish to explain about Unions. Union workers are more interesting to keep for himself jobs and majority are capitalist. Well is big question how to involve private sector workers to join struggles. As far I know nobody interesting in small companies workers rights but I could be wrong. Cleaners, Catering services and many others.
Is that make sense what I mean?

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5094

Watch this 30 minute video of an analysis of the present social events taking place in Britain, and internationally, by Lynn Walsh, editor of Socialism Today, the political journal of the Socialist Party/CWI

[Crux]

To be fair, although I respect your contributions to this forum, I think this is a little underhand to bring this up right now, and tangential to the matter at hand. If you want to question DNZ's credentials (for want of a better phrase) as regards "actual struggles" it would probably be best to send him a PM or something and sort it out from there. Personally, I am a little younger than some posters here, so I have not really participated in any kind of "actual struggle" apart from demos and stalls etc. (which isn't really real struggle as such) However, this does not make my posts anymore or less worthy of consideration. And this thread has got enough off-topic detours anyway. Thanks comrade
But then again you do not have the massive pretentions that DNZ has. So let me rephrase the question, have you (DNZ) participated in any kind of practical politics? I ask because I doubt it, because I find his theories "outlandish" both in form and content. And this is hardly the first time this question has been asked. In my experience DNZ has never adressed it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What about the (pre-Kinnock) British Labour Party, a political mass-organisation that emerged out of economic struggles? Unlike continental social democratic parties, the Labour Party was not a political party with trade union backing, but in fact the electoral wing of the labour movement (specifically, of the TUC, STUC and ICTU), that is, as the political representation of economic formations. Does that not suggest a rather steady merger of political and economic issues?

That's not a model to emulate by any stretch. It emerged so late, and it took a revolutionary situation beyond Britain just to get Labour going.

[LewisQ]

I saw that Lynn Walsh video. As ever, the SP's analysis is sound, but their ideas on the prospects for the development of class struggle in Western Europe are all over the place. Basically, their prescription (certainly for the UK and Ireland) amounts to this:

1: Labour get into power.
2: Labour prove unpopular.
3: ?????
4: Revolution!

It's like the SP are still punch-drunk from being kicked out of the Labour Party twenty years ago. They're still totally wedded to the all-power-to-the-TUC model and haven't come to terms with any of the complications which have emerged with regard to the labour movement in the past thirty years.

Taaffe recently posted another video in which he boasted of Militant bringing down Thatcher (nothing to do with the million who marched, then, Peter?) The CWI needs to sort its shit out and move on from its eighties mindset fast, in my opinion. At the moment, it can offer people no alternative to capitalism apart from half-baked labour reformist nostrums which are seen through all too easily. It's a pity, because I respect all the comrades in the movement and the work they do, and their integrity is unimpeachable.

[Tim Finnegan]

That's not a model to emulate by any stretch. It emerged so late, and it took a revolutionary situation beyond Britain just to get Labour going.
I'm not saying that it's a model to emulate, I'm just saying that it's a model which did, historically, exist, and appeared to reconcile economic and political struggles by applying the weight of economic bodies- trade unions- as the basis of independent working class political organisation. You suggest that political and economic struggles are typically set apart from each other, and I'm wondering whether or not this stands as a contradiction, and, if not, how it is instead analysed.

[RedSunRising]

It's like the SP are still punch-drunk from being kicked out of the Labour Party twenty years ago. They're still totally wedded to the all-power-to-the-TUC model and haven't come to terms with any of the complications which have emerged with regard to the labour movement in the past thirty years.


The CWI know exactly what they are doing.

[Crux]

The CWI know exactly what they are doing.Thank you. ;)

[Lyev]

Comrade, I know you've read my work here and there, but I'll repeat again anyways: genuine class struggles arise from more generic political struggles (if you wish, call them "politico-political"). For example, the Chartist campaign for universal manhood suffrage or later campaigns for universal suffrage has squat to do with mere labour disputes. Even the "struggle for socialism" itself is economic and not political. Only in rare instances do political struggles and economic struggles merge, such as shorter workdays and workweeks, and even then one can emphasize the economist crap (reducing unemployment, leisure time) or the more political aspects (time for political participation, and maybe environmental aspects too with one less working day).Excuse me if this seems silly, but are you dismissing the "struggle for socialism" as a mere labour struggle, then? Also, seeing as you seem somewhat hostile to "spontaneist" models*, do you think that workers can reach "politico-political" struggles and demands, to borrow your phrase, by themselves, without the external intervention of revolutionaries? Or do you think that the conscious party is requisite for workers reaching political struggle -- that is, real class struggle?

* It is your contention that "mere" economic struggle equates to spontaneism, right?

[Aesop]

I saw that Lynn Walsh video. As ever, the SP's analysis is sound, but their ideas on the prospects for the development of class struggle in Western Europe are all over the place. Basically, their prescription (certainly for the UK and Ireland) amounts to this:

1: Labour get into power.
2: Labour prove unpopular.
3: ?????
4: Revolution!

:thumbup1: If that was the case, why are the SP the most ardent in left in seeking to create a new workers party?


It's like the SP are still punch-drunk from being kicked out of the Labour Party twenty years ago. They're still totally wedded to the all-power-to-the-TUC model and haven't come to terms with any of the complications which have emerged with regard to the labour movement in the past thirty years.

How exactly is the SP stuck to the 'all-power-to the-TUC model?
Can you please expand on that otherwise it just looks like your spewing out nonsense. (Don't mean sound harsh)


Taaffe recently posted another video in which he boasted of Militant bringing down Thatcher (nothing to do with the million who marched, then, Peter?)

If your referring to the poll tax riots as being more decisive in bringing than thatcher in comparision to the coordinated grassroots mass non-payment of the poll tax than you need to read up a bit.

The CWI needs to sort its shit out and move on from its eighties mindset fast, in my opinion. At the moment, it can offer people no alternative to capitalism apart from half-baked labour reformist nostrums which are seen through all too easily.[/QUOTE]

So "A democratic socialist plan of production based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people, and in a way that safeguards the environment" is identical to what the labour party says ehy?

You may call the CWI demands mere 'labour reformist nostrums' but i call them transitional demands. Demands which relate to the masses and then once interested, will then realise that capitalism can not offer these reforms to the ruling class unwilling or unable to do it, thus any of these demands which are reached will showing the weakening of the bourgeoisie and the strength of the working class .

During these struggles the working class will not be easily held by the illusions of capitalism, which is essentially in achieving a socialist revolution.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Excuse me if this seems silly, but are you dismissing the "struggle for socialism" as a mere labour struggle, then? Also, seeing as you seem somewhat hostile to "spontaneist" models*, do you think that workers can reach "politico-political" struggles and demands, to borrow your phrase, by themselves, without the external intervention of revolutionaries? Or do you think that the conscious party is requisite for workers reaching political struggle -- that is, real class struggle?

* It is your contention that "mere" economic struggle equates to spontaneism, right?

I apologize for not being clear enough in my work. There are at least three sets of struggles: political, economic, and sociocultural. In each set, there are at least two types.

The "struggle for socialism" is the maximum type of economic struggle. Mere labour disputes are the lowest type (and most banal if infused with enough reactionary propaganda - just check out my Worker Struggles thread on Closed Shops), and there are other economic struggles ranking higher just for not being as parochial (like tenants rights, worker cooperatives with state aid, consumer debt relief, etc.).

However, it is still not a political struggle proper. Minimum political struggles aim for things like emphasizing local autonomy over decentralized federalism, "socio-income democracy" re. popular votes on tax rates or income multiple gaps, etc. Higher political struggles aim for freedom of class-strugglist assembly and association (forming party-movements), accompanying worker militias, massive media reform, full recallability of all public officials, etc.

Broad Economism is the lack of emphasis on all types of proper political struggle.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

After the May elections…
Can the anti-cuts movement find a political voice?


An electoral backlash against the Con-Dems has begun. But what are the prospects of anti-cuts anger finding a political outlet which can turn back the ‘age of austerity’? What is the role of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in building this? CLIVE HEEMSKERK writes.


MAY’S ELECTIONS FOR the Scottish parliament, the Welsh assembly and English local councils were the first gauge on the electoral plane of the gathering opposition to the Con-Dem government’s austerity agenda.


The overarching verdict was a crushing repudiation of the Liberal Democrats. They were disproportionately hit, compared to their Tory coalition ‘partners’, largely because, after 13 years of New Labour government, they had managed to position themselves as a perceived ‘radical alternative’ to the two main establishment parties. The subsequent disabusing of the hopes of many of their supporters when they joined the coalition, produced a deeper reaction.


In the poll for constituency members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs), the Liberal Democrats lost 55% of the votes they won in the last Scottish elections in 2007 (168,518), and 52% of their regional MSP list vote. In Wales they lost fewer seats – one assembly member compared to twelve MSPs – but their absolute vote still fell by one third. In the English local elections the Liberal Democrats lost 40% of the 1,846 seats they were defending (748), and control of nine of the 19 councils they held before May. This was an electoral massacre on an industrial scale.


The Tories, in contrast, did not suffer to nearly the same degree. In Scotland they lost 17% of their absolute vote in the constituencies poll compared to 2007, 13% in the regional lists, but in Wales they marginally increased their vote. In the English local elections they won an extra 86 councillors, largely at the expense of the Liberal Democrats, and took control of a further four councils.


Over 9,000 council seats were up for election in England, in every region with the exception of the London boroughs and a handful of unitary authorities, but not even the establishment parties contested every seat. A sample of 2,500 wards where they did, however, in which 6.3 million people voted, gave the Tories a 38% share of the vote, Labour 37% and the Liberal Democrats 16%. (Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, The Sunday Times, 8 May) This compares with the results in 2007, in the same local election cycle, when the Tories polled 40%, Labour 26% and the Lib Dems 24%.

The referendum on changing the parliamentary election system to the ‘Alternative Vote’ method, also held on 5 May, mobilised established Tory voters and was probably one factor for the more limited rebound against the Tories. But there were other factors as well.

ICM have conducted a series of polls for The Guardian newspaper tracking the rise in the number of respondents saying that ‘the cuts go too far’. A majority agreeing with this was first recorded late last year, after George Osborne’s comprehensive spending review, up from 43% holding that view in September before the plans were announced. But a class divide was also revealed, with 50% of so-called ‘AB’ voters agreeing that the cuts are ‘right or should go further’ while ‘DE’ manual, unskilled and unemployed workers were firmly opposed. Opinion has moved further against the cuts – reflected in the massive 26 March anti-cuts demonstration – but the full impact of what they really involve, and how widely they will hit, is still to be felt.

In reality, such polls are merely a record of a lagging consciousness. The conference votes for strike ballots by the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) and the ‘moderate’ Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) union, and the open hostility to the Con-Dems from bodies such as the Police Federation, the Royal College of Nursing, and other NHS ‘professional colleges’, point to how the opposition to the cuts will deepen and widen into a perfect storm. Then both parties of the coalition will meet their electoral nemesis.

A limited Labour recovery:

THE MAIN ELECTORAL beneficiary as the mood against the cuts further develops will be the Labour Party. This is not out of enthusiasm for, or even a full awareness of, Labour’s own cuts policy. Osborne’s austerity plan aims for UK public debt to peak at 70.3% of GDP in 2013-14 compared to Labour’s last budget target of 74.9%, which would still have involved ‘cuts worse than Thatcher’s’, according to the then chancellor, Alistair Darling. But Labour is still seen at least to be a viable governmental alternative to the Con-Dems and, in the absence of a mass working-class political alternative, electoral support will ebb and flow between the parties, much as it does in the USA between the Republicans and the allegedly more ‘labour-friendly’ Democrats.

This was one trend in the May elections, particularly for the Welsh assembly where Labour put on 86,752 votes in the constituency seats compared to 2007, a 22% increase in absolute votes. This was replicated in some urban areas in north England and the Midlands. Labour won an additional 857 councillors and took control of 26 councils, taking its total in England outside of London to 57.

But Labour’s recovery was certainly not uniform in the English council elections. It gained Ipswich in Suffolk and Gravesham in Kent. But, as the shadow culture secretary, Ivan Lewis, conceded, "there was little sign of those squeezed middle voters in the south-east, south-west and east of England returning to Labour". (The Guardian, 12 May)

This year was the largest of the four-yearly local election cycles, with 9,396 of the country’s 18,225 council seats up for election. Before May, Labour was behind the Liberal Democrats in these seats, with just 1,620 councillors, although that has now been reversed. But Labour had cumulatively lost over 1,400 seats in this cycle since 1999 and those losses have not yet been recouped.

Where Labour did win, expectations will be raised that the new councils will be a shield, at least, against the cuts. And the cuts could be stopped in their tracks if the Labour Party took a clear stand of opposition. If Labour leader Ed Miliband, for example, was to commit an incoming Labour government to reimburse councils who exhaust their reserves or borrow rather than make the savage cuts demanded of them, then not one council would have a reason to make the cuts.

The same pledge could be made to other public and semi-public bodies like universities, health authorities, housing associations, etc, to encourage them to incur ‘temporary’ deficits to avoid implementing cuts. Almost one in five secondary schools and one in ten primaries entered the 2010-11 financial year in the red, with a total deficit of £161 million, the highest since records began a decade ago. (The Guardian, 5 April) A NAHT survey found 37% of schools expected to make redundancies for the new autumn term. (The Guardian, 29 April) Labour could pledge to reimburse any school governing board that refused to make these cuts and the jobs would be saved.

But Labour, nationally and locally, has shown it will not take such a stance. Labour councils have lined up to pass on government cuts, with no attempt at resistance. They have not used their powers to lead the opposition to the NHS ‘reforms’, for example, by organising consultative ballots or initiating ‘referrals’ to block the preparations for the handover of health commissioning to the proposed new GP consortia. In a letter issued after the alleged ‘pause’ in the legislative process, David Nicholson, the NHS chief executive, claimed that nine in ten local councils had applied instead to be ‘early implementers’ of the reform provisions. (The Guardian, 16 April) Labour is not a vehicle to resist the cuts.

The absence of a workers’ party, to call it by its right name, is an important factor in how far the capitalists and their political representatives will dare to go in pushing through their austerity agenda. In the past, Labour was a ‘capitalist workers’ party’, a party with pro-capitalist leaders but with democratic structures that gave an opportunity for workers to fight for their interests, principally through the unions. It had the potential to act at least as a check on the capitalists, fearful of radicalising Labour’s working-class base. But this is no longer the case. The review of Labour’s structure introduced by Miliband in March as the election campaign got under way – under the heading, Refounding Labour: a party for the new generation – shows how far the Labour Party has already been ‘refounded’ as a ‘normal’ capitalist party like the US Democrats, and the next steps planned in this process (see box).

Significantly for how Labour is now perceived by many workers, in the first three unions with a political fund to ballot for national strike action against the cuts – the PCS civil service union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) and the University and College Union (UCU) – there is no broadly-supported call being raised for affiliation to the Labour Party, and certainly not as a means of enhancing the unions’ anti-cuts struggle. There are 1.673 million trade unionists in TUC-affiliated unions (out of a total TUC membership of 6.2 million) who pay into a political fund in unions not affiliated to Labour – PCS, the RMT transport workers’ union, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), NUT, UCU, etc – or, in Unison, the public-sector union, members who choose to pay into the general political fund and not the affiliated Labour Link fund.

Twelve unions are still affiliated to Labour, with 2.727 million members who pay into their political funds. But in the ‘big three’ in particular, which organise in the public sector – Unison, and the Unite and GMB general workers’ unions – the question will be relentlessly posed in the anti-cuts struggles ahead: if Labour is not the vehicle, what needs to be done politically to resist the cuts?

As a result, two processes can develop in tandem as the anti-cuts movement builds. Labour can pick up electoral support, including in ‘the south’, as the first alternative to hand in the polling booth against the Con-Dem hatchet-men. At the same time, amongst increasingly broader layers drawing on their experience of fighting the cuts, opposition can grow to Labour as well. This could include new forces which, if rooted in a mass opposition to the cuts, including in the trade unions, will not necessarily be completely ‘squeezed out’ on the electoral field.

Other outlets for protest:

MAY’S ELECTIONS GAVE some early signs that this ‘dual process’ is already underway: that while Labour will regain ground electorally, other outlets of protest can develop too. This was certainly shown by the results in Scotland.

The Scottish elections were a disaster for Labour, its worst result in the country since 1931, with the Scottish National Party (SNP) gaining an absolute majority in the Scottish parliament with 69 MSPs. Labour lost votes compared to its already poor performance in 2007 – 71,856 in the regional list vote (12%). Although it fared better in the constituency vote – a loss of 17,913 votes (3%) on 2007 – because of the collapse of the Con-Dems, particularly the Liberal Democrats, the SNP picked up 32 constituency MSPs, with Labour losing 20.

"Labour’s invitation to back the party as the best way of giving David Cameron a bloody nose", wrote John Curtice of Strathclyde University, "was one voters felt able to refuse". (The Guardian, 7 May) The results confirmed the findings of a pre-election survey conducted for The Scotsman newspaper which showed that 50% of Scots – more than voted for the SNP – believed that "the SNP would do a better job of standing up for Scotland against the coalition" than Labour. (The Guardian, 3 May) ‘Standing up for Scotland’ means, of course, different things for different people and classes. The SNP, their campaign bankrolled by big business figures, are proven defenders of capitalist interests – which will mean them attempting to meet the costs of the economic crisis by attacking jobs and services. But for Scottish workers and big sections of the middle class it means, above all, fighting savage austerity.

There is a parallel here with the situation that began to develop after Thatcher’s third election victory in 1987 when she moved to introduce the poll tax in Scotland a year ahead of England and Wales, despite having no ‘mandate’ in Scotland – there were just ten Scottish Tory MPs out of 72. Seventeen months after the general election, in November 1988, there was a by-election in the rock-solid Labour seat of Glasgow Govan. The SNP triumphed, overturning a 19,509 Labour majority, with two main slogans: ‘We’re not paying the poll tax’ and ‘the feeble fifty won’t stand up to Thatcher’, referring to Labour’s 50 Scottish MPs.

The SNP subsequently refused to support a campaign of mass non-payment of the poll tax, with SNP councillors, in the main, going along with Labour in implementing punitive enforcement measures against non-payers. The resultant political vacuum, that the most conscious anti-poll tax fighters had no political outlet, was an important factor in the early electoral successes of Scottish Militant Labour (SML), the predecessor of the Socialist Party Scotland, when it was formed in 1992. SML won four seats on Glasgow council in May 1992, just weeks after another Tory victory in the April 1992 general election (in which Tommy Sheridan came second in Glasgow Pollok with 6,287 votes, 19.3%). From May 1992 to February 1994, SML polled 33.3% of the total votes cast in 17 local council contests with Labour (36.1%) and the SNP (22.8%), winning six.

The success of SML laid the basis for the development of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), which was able to win representation in the Scottish parliament from 1999 to 2007. Tragically this position was thrown away as a result of the subsequent political mistakes and actions of the SSP leadership, including their role in the prosecution and jailing of Tommy Sheridan, leaving a clear field for the SNP in the Scottish parliament for the last four years. (See: www.socialistworld.net for a full analysis of the Scottish results.)

But now there is no hiding place for the SNP, even if the Con-Dems in Westminster concede amendments to the Scotland bill on corporation tax or higher borrowing powers for the Scottish parliament. The SNP will generate new opposition, and new opportunities to rebuild independent working-class political representation, as it attempts to preside over projected cuts of £3.3 billion to jobs and services in Scotland.

Testing the Greens:

AT THE OTHER end of Britain, in the south coast city of Brighton, the Green Party emerged as the main electoral outlet for opposition to the cuts. With 33% of the city-wide vote, the Greens surged from 13 to 23 councillors, displacing the Tories as the largest group (down from 26 to 18 councillors), while Labour remained with 13 seats.

The Greens also gained councillors in Bristol, Bolsover, Kings Lynn, Solihull, Stafford, Reading – where they now hold the balance of power – and Norwich, consolidating their position as the second party in a ‘hung council’. They now have 130 councillors in 43 local authorities.

The Greens’ record in local government, however, shows that they will disappoint those who see them as a shield against the cuts. In the south London borough of Lewisham, for example, for four years (2006-10), two Socialist Party and six Green councillors sat in a hung council, with Labour as the largest party but without an overall majority. The Socialist Party and Green councillors sometimes voted together against all the other parties, for example, in opposing plans to cut local hospital A&E services, or in support of the 2008 national teachers’ strike. But the Greens more often opposed the Socialist Party councillors’ proposals to resist the establishment parties’ pro-market agenda, siding with New Labour on key votes, or abstaining to help give it a majority, including votes on cutting council services, homes privatisation plans, and academy schools.

Such vacillation by the Greens is not accidental. Public representatives such as councillors or MPs who stand out are put under extreme pressure from the establishment politicians, backed up by the media and senior civil servants or, locally, by council executive officers, to ‘be realistic’, to accept ‘officers’ guidance’, and generally follow the logic of pro-capitalist policies. The Green Party has not emerged as an expression of the political interests of the working class, with no acceptance amongst its members of a class analysis of society and not based on working-class organisations, in particular the trade unions. Neither does it have a clear alternative to the capitalist ‘free-market’ system. When the stakes are high, therefore, the majority of Green councillors will be unable to resist.

The Brighton Greens have now formed a minority administration, promising a review of the previously agreed £24 million council budget cuts. But their own ‘alternative budget’, which they presented to the March council budget-making meeting, accepted that deep cuts had to be made, ruling out the idea of setting a ‘needs budget’ that would not pass on the Con-Dems’ cuts. While the Greens may continue to pick up electoral support in the vacuum that exists, they will not provide an effective political voice for the anti-cuts movement.

The TUSC election campaign:

MAY’S ELECTIONS TOOK place just five weeks after the half-a-million plus Trades Union Congress (TUC) organised anti-cuts demonstration on 26 March. But this magnificent manifestation on the streets of the enormous latent power of the working class and its basic organisations, the trade unions, did not transform consciousness as it could have done, at least immediately.

The TUC leadership organised nothing to follow up the demonstration. The possibility of co-ordinated strike action on 30 June by 750,000 civil servants, teachers and lecturers against the attack on public-sector pensions has come about only because of the initiative of the left-led PCS union (with Socialist Party members to the fore) and the NUT. The inspiring ‘Hardest Hit’ demonstration on 11 May to defend people with disabilities against the vicious government assault was organised and built for by the UK Disabled People’s Council, the Disability Benefits Consortium, and charities like Mencap, Sense and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), but not the TUC leaders. The momentum from 26 March was dissipated, even though its effects on thinking – the confidence it gave millions of workers – will resurface.

Instead, the TUC leaders diverted attention to the elections, a ‘lower form of struggle’. Elections are always just a snapshot of a moment in time, an episodic conjuncture, rather than a 3-D film of an ongoing process. But it was at this conjuncture – with a royal wedding diversion thrown in just a week before! – that the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) conducted its first local election campaign.

TUSC was set up last year to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists who wanted to resist the pro-austerity consensus of the establishment parties to stand candidates in the 2010 general election. It came out of a series of discussions by participants in the No2EU-Yes to Democracy coalition, which contested the 2009 European elections with the official support of the RMT, the Socialist Party, and others – the first time a trade union had officially backed a national electoral challenge to Labour since the party’s foundation. It is a coalition with a national steering committee which includes, in a personal capacity, leading officials of the RMT, PCS and NUT, including RMT general secretary Bob Crow. The Socialist Party, involved from the outset, and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which joined later, are also represented on the committee.

TUSC was established as a federal ‘umbrella’ coalition, with an agreed core policy statement endorsed by all its candidates but with participating organisations accountable for their own campaigns. For the local elections, a policy platform was agreed at a conference in January that committed TUSC council candidates to a clear anti-cuts stance. This included opposition to all cuts to council jobs, services, pay and conditions, a rejection of above-inflation increases in council tax, rent and service charges to compensate for government cuts, and opposition to the privatisation of council services, or the ‘half-way house’ transfer of council services to ‘social enterprises’ or ‘arms-length’ management organisations. When it came to government cuts to council funding, TUSC had a clear position that councils should refuse to implement the cuts, supporting the use of reserves and prudential borrowing powers – or a needs budget with an identified deficit if that was the only way to avoid cuts – as a prelude to mobilising the mass campaign that is necessary to force the government to make up councils’ funding shortfall.

The TUSC intervention was an extremely modest start. Exaggeration only underplays the scale of the task ahead – and there are limits to what can be gauged from results measured in hundreds rather than thousands. Nevertheless, the 177 candidates standing under the TUSC umbrella, in 50 councils, together polled over 25,000 votes. (A full breakdown of the results is available on the TUSC website at www.tusc.org.uk). Unfortunately, three sitting councillors were defeated, while polling over 30% of the vote. But in 19 seats TUSC candidates polled over 10% and, in nearly a third of wards contested, the TUSC vote was more than 5%. TUSC outpolled a Liberal Democrat candidate in one out of every eight seats where there was a contest.

Overall, in the wards TUSC contested, Labour polled 245,000 votes. In other words, for every ten Labour voters there was one person who voted for TUSC. In some areas the ratio was better: one TUSC voter for every seven Labour voters in Salford and Walsall, one-to-four for the seven TUSC candidates in Rugby. Labour won Gravesham in Kent – where Miliband held his post-election photocall – but failed to make further breakthroughs there, despite having targeted the county as a ‘gateway’ to the south. In the Kent seats contested by TUSC there was one TUSC voter (1,967 in total) to every five for Labour (9,210).

In eight wards contested by TUSC the Labour Party was so moribund that it either did not stand a candidate or stood for less than the total number of seats up for election. TUSC candidates in these wards included an RMT regional president, a Unite branch secretary, a Unison branch officer and a NASUWT teachers’ union association officer – trade unionists whose only means of fighting the cuts on the political plane was by picking up the TUSC banner.

But of course TUSC, at this stage, was not able to emerge as the ‘political wing’ of the anti-cuts movement: even to the degree, for example, that Scottish Militant Labour (SML) was able to develop in the aftermath of the victorious anti-poll tax struggle. Similarly, the Socialist Party in Ireland won councillors and then a parliamentary seat (in 1997) initially as a result of leading a mass movement against water charges, paving the way for the presence of five United Left Alliance TDs in the Irish parliament today, including the returning Joe Higgins. These experiences, however, do show how a vehicle for working class political representation, or at least a pre-formation of one, can be built out of mass struggles. And these will develop, on a far greater scale than even the anti-poll tax struggle, in the coming movement against the cuts.

TUSC is not a ‘finished product’ (see box) and other forces, perhaps based on trade unions thrown into action against the cuts or mass community campaigns, may emerge as the ‘political voice’ of the anti-cuts movement. But it is a portender of what needs to be done – and which still could achieve electoral breakthroughs in the events ahead – for building working class political representation as part of the struggle to turn back the ‘age of austerity’ and for socialism.

Next steps for TUSC:

THE IMPORTANCE of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) for the Socialist Party lies, above all, in its potential to act as a catalyst in the trade unions, both in the formal structures and below, for the idea of working class political representation.

Trade unions are still the basic organisations of the working class, which gives them enormous social weight. It is not for nothing that the capitalist media routinely denigrate the unions or demonise the most combative figures, such as Bob Crow, for ‘holding the public to ransom’ or ‘crippling the economy’. The 26 March demonstration was a glimpse of the social reserves the unions still possess.

A new workers’ party which could fill the present vacuum, revealed again by the lack of a political voice for the anti-cuts movement, will not necessarily develop through the official structures of the unions. It is almost certain that a majority of the larger unions, at least nationally, would not initially embrace a new party – in the same way that the biggest unions continued to back the Liberal Party in the early days of the Labour Representation Committee (the forerunner of the Labour Party). But the anti-cuts movement, as it develops, will again and again pose before trade unionists in struggle that there must be an alternative. TUSC can play a critical role in developing this consciousness.

It must also play a role, perhaps even an equally vital one, in enabling anti-cuts campaigns to step into the political domain. The road to a new workers’ party in the age of austerity is through the anti-cuts struggle, in the unions but also in community campaigns.

This conception of the role of TUSC is not universally accepted, however, even amongst some TUSC supporters. Some argue for the national steering committee to be restructured, to be composed of representatives of small socialist organisations and delegates from geographically organised bodies of individual members. But such proposals would eliminate the most important, trade union component of the coalition.

This approach was one of the arguments that was used by trade unionists against the Socialist Alliance, a ‘left unity’ organisation established in the mid-1990s. The then FBU general secretary Andy Gilchrist, for example, unable to advance positive reasons why the fire-fighters’ union should continue to fund Labour, fell back on the problems with the Socialist Alliance, "in terms of accountability and representation". Because the Socialist Alliance was "not actually constituted so that organisations can affiliate", he argued, trade unionists could not have a collective voice in it. (Red Pepper, September 2002) But TUSC is different.

The leading national trade union officials presently on the TUSC steering committee are not in a position to win support in their unions for formal affiliation to TUSC at this stage, so they participate in a personal capacity. Does this federal approach create a ‘democratic deficit’ in TUSC? No. They, and any other national union figures who join the committee in the future, are accountable to the ‘public opinion’ of their members. It is therefore justified at this stage for them to retain their rights on the steering committee, with decisions taken only on a consensus basis, principally to endorse candidates and election policy proposals.

There is a dilemma of how to involve individual supporters of TUSC who are not members of the Socialist Party and the SWP – who have representation on the steering committee – while not diluting the role of the trade unions. The Socialist Party is sponsoring a proposal that the recently-formed TUSC Independent Socialist Network should also have a committee place.

There will be discussion on these points, and the May elections campaign and future plans, at a TUSC candidates’ conference in July. But one thing is clear. While TUSC, undoubtedly, is still a work in progress, it is a coalition that should continue with the vital task of preparing the necessary forces to take forward the argument for a new political vehicle for the working class.



‘Refounding Labour’?:

THE DISCUSSION paper, Refounding Labour: a party for the new generation, that accompanied Ed Miliband’s announcement in March of a review of party structures, shows how far Labour has been transformed into a ‘normal’ capitalist party – and the next steps planned to continue the process.

Devastating facts are revealed on the state of the party’s organisation. "We began 2010", the paper says, "with half as many members as we had 20 years ago". In too many constituencies, it goes on, "our party barely functions… activism among Labour members has diminished… members nowadays get involved less often in canvassing on doorsteps, delivering leaflets, attending meetings, signing petitions or even displaying election posters". Tellingly, it comments that, "where once there were numerous union activists in almost all constituency parties, now they are few and far between".

The number of constituency parties (CLPs) represented at Labour’s annual conference fell to "only 412 in 2010, or under two thirds the total entitled to attend. Are too many local parties moribund?", the paper asks. "In many Labour-held seats", it admits, "a wide variety of organisational tasks previously performed by volunteers" are now done by MPs and councillors. And, of course, "representing Labour", it notes, "is now remunerated at all levels", including substantial councillors’ ‘allowances’. What is this if not a description of a self-serving apparatchik party?

Even a capitalist party, however, needs an electoral base, so Labour’s organisational atrophy is a problem for its tops. But the ‘solutions’ proposed are firmly rooted in the path set out by Tony Blair to transform Labour into New Labour. Peter Hain, chair of the national policy forum and overseeing the review, refers approvingly to the abolition of the socialist ‘Clause Four’ in 1994 – "hugely important" – and the "one member, one vote reforms", which severely curtailed the role of trade unions in the party structures.

The paper notes that "the last round of party reform gave constituency parties the option of moving to all-member meetings instead of having a general committee". This should be extended, it argues. But actually, "the distinction between the two options may be marginal given that the trend has been towards open discussions with all views being summarised and forwarded [not decided but ‘forwarded’! To where? – CH] rather than voting on old-style resolutions that come down firmly on one side of an issue" – trivial things, presumably, like whether Labour councils should implement the cuts or not!

The model is clear: "The delegate system could be abolished except perhaps for election to a CLP executive which managed the administration of the party". That would leave ‘campaigning and policy direction’ to be discussed at occasional all-member meetings, "with the option of adding in registered supporters" and "recognised consultee groups".

These new categories could also be involved in leadership elections (and candidate selection?), according to Hain at the review launch, in the electoral college section for affiliated trade unions, further diluting their already diminished position. (The Guardian, 29 March) What is this but a version of the US primary system?

The Labour Party was born in 1900 as the product of growing sections of workers looking to politically express their collective interests against the capitalist class and their political representatives, the Liberal and Conservative parties. Its formation was an important step: an independent party bringing workers together to struggle and discuss collectively impels different sections to move beyond their own particular interests to develop a broader class consciousness. This is necessary both for the task of ending capitalism and the building of a new, socialist society.

Remnants of Labour’s past still exist in its structures. This review, with recommendations to go to Labour’s autumn conference, will be another step in their eradication, making Labour ever more like the US Democrats, with workers and their organisations, the trade unions, mere supplicants to capitalist politicians.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

The post above I should have said comes from the Socialist Party's political journal "Socialism Today".

[Feodor Augustus]

British socialism is at a historic low point: it cannot survive outside the Labour Party, and cannot get a foothold inside it. What parts of the working class that are organised, remain by and large affiliated to the Labour machine; those that are not, are fragmented and isolated politically, and increasingly seem to removed from any kind of politics. We have gone from syndicalism without the syndicalists, to socialist politics without socialist workers.

Lenin was right about the role of the political centre, but his leading role of the party was a historic nonsense, and his partial interpretation of history a curse that has yet to be lifted. His latest imitators get more absurd by the year (Taffe's lot interpretation of the Poll Tax is a good example); but most of all, the failure to ever attempt to reconcile the two 'twins' of the labour movement, - 'Stalinism' (official Communism) and 'reformism' (social-democracy), - alongside the proliferation of sects based on their own particular 'understanding' of the development of historical forces (usually from the hand of a failed hack), has led to the sorry state we are in today.

This was compounded, of course, by the defeat of organsied labour from the late 1970s onwards, and the new neo-liberal hegemony. To rebuild, revolutionary socialists need to give up on the idea of building perfect parties with perfect politics; and to instead try and engage with the class movement, in its own organs, and attempt to become the 'political centre'. Our ability to be critical is our most important tool, but most of what passes for critical appraisal today is ego messaging of one form or another, - a.k.a. sectarianism

At a time of economic crisis, it seems we have almost nothing to offer. The search for perfect theory is an idealist preoccupation, that assumes that the self-propelling idea acts independently of external social forces. The best pamphlet in the world is only as important as the numbers who read it.
_ _ _ _ _

On the 'internationalism' controversy. The term itself was coined by the utilitarian Jeremy Bentham, and its literal meaning is indeed 'between nations'. Marx simply used the terminology of the day; but although he didn't change the form, he did change the content. What he called 'internationalism', today is the MTV-sounding 'globalism'. It is the content of the meaning that is worth defending, and not its most literal definition. (Although to say, in a literal sense, 'transnationalism' means beyond nations, 'internationalism' between, appears linguistically correct, - if not a curious decision to reinvent a well worn wheel.)

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

"(Taffe's lot interpretation of the Poll Tax is a good example)"

So what is your interpretation of the events in the poll tax? Are you just reading a particular interpretation or were you there at the time?

[jake williams]

Incidentally, I do think the "Marxists-Leninists" and derivatives are going to have an issue with all three positions.
I might or might not take issue, depending on what you actually mean.


- The formation of the working class as its own self-aware collective entity, independent from the bosses and the state.
If you're talking about political independence from the bourgeois state, then no Marxists of any sort would disagree. If you're talking about the capacity to organize without the use of worker's power organized in a state, then Marxists almost by definition would disagree in principle.


- Radical democracy, both as our projected future society as well as a principle within our movement today. It is not wrong to disagree, in fact quite the opposite. Controverse needs to happen in order for the movement to develop and politicise society, so let it happen openly.
It's not really clear what you're getting at here with any precision. Leninists support debate, criticism, and democratic centralism. If they don't, they're not Leninists, but almost everyone who self-identifies as a Leninists is at least basically supportive of these things. (I say basically mainly because there are some "Trotskyists" who seem more interested in ultraleftism as a hobby than they are in democratic centralism. There are also some "Stalinists" who are openly anti-democratic, but they're so exceptionally rare that I have a hard time finding anyone who has met one in real life, and I've met some odd people).

If by "radical democracy" you're suggesting that movements or organizations not be subject to democratic decisions, then you're simply advocating a retrenchment of the existing sectarianism and division that you're claiming to be trying to counter.


- Internationalism as there can't be a positive national solution to capitalism. In Europe we have to work towards a common party-movement across the EU.
No one thinks that the ultimate solution to capitalism is simply national. The right opposition didn't believe that, and the "Stalinists" certainly don't. I also don't think that anyone seriously believes that socialist revolution will be spontaneously, simultaneously and magically global. Thus any partial solution will have to be regionally bounded, and we still live in a world where such borders are plausible national. We could also conceivably see a limited international "partial solution", for example in Europe, which you yourself are suggesting. But this would be international in the same sense the Soviet Union was international, at least in principle: a group of nations brought together under particular historical circumstances, not the whole world at once but neither, simplistically, a single national group. Thus I don't see what opposition you would get from this, as you seem to be advancing a reasonable internationalism that, at least in principle, basically everyone agrees on.

[Devrim]

"(Taffe's lot interpretation of the Poll Tax is a good example)"

So what is your interpretation of the events in the poll tax? Are you just reading a particular interpretation or were you there at the time?

My interpretation is that contrary to later Militant myth building it wasn't what brought down Thatcher, and I was there at the time.

Devrim

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Devrim, I actually asked Feodor Augustus the question but please I would be enlightened to here your interpretation of the events of the Anti-poll tax struggle. Oh and by the way, I was also there at the beginning and was jailed for it and expelled from the Labour Party for it and there at the end of it.

[Paul Cockshott]

My interpretation is that contrary to later Militant myth building it wasn't what brought down Thatcher, and I was there at the time.

DevrimI was too. Could have sworn it was the Poll Tax that did the trick.

[Devrim]

Devrim, I actually asked Feodor Augustus the question but please I would be enlightened to here your interpretation of the events of the Anti-poll tax struggle. Oh and by the way, I was also there at the beginning and was jailed for it and expelled from the Labour Party for it and there at the end of it.


I was too. Could have sworn it was the Poll Tax that did the trick.

What finally did for Thatcher was the lost in the Eastbourne by election the crisis in the party over the ERM. Yes, the Poll Tax played a part, but it was far from the only or even the decisive reason that she was deposed. By the time of the leadership contest the Conservative Party was beginning to recover the losses that it had made in the polls from when the anti-Poll tax movement was at its high point.

Devrim

[Tim Finnegan]

If you're talking about political independence from the bourgeois state, then no Marxists of any sort would disagree. If you're talking about the capacity to organize without the use of worker's power organized in a state, then Marxists almost by definition would disagree in principle.
Speak for yourself. :thumbdown:

[jake williams]

Speak for yourself. :thumbdown:
What part? Do you support workers organizing politically subordinate to the bourgeois state? Or do you think it's possible to instantly abolish capitalism without any method for organized self-defence of the working class?

[Tim Finnegan]

What part? Do you support workers organizing politically subordinate to the bourgeois state? Or do you think it's possible to instantly abolish capitalism without any method for organized self-defence of the working class?
I think that the working class are able to organise themselves with recourse to a centralised state, and that such an entity would inevitably hamper the development of a free, communist society.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

“However, Thatcherism proved to be less stable than the pessimistic analysis associated with the new revisionist current assumed. Within the year of the chants of ‘ten more year, to celebrate Thatcher’s ‘first decade’ in Downing Street, the Poll tax rebellion acted as a catalyst which saw them abandon her ignominiously to the political wilderness. John Major, her replacement, managed to hold on to power in the 1992 general election by combining a retreat on the poll tax with the ideological shift in Tory Party rhetoric from Thatcher’s open class warfare to a more centrist discourse of a ‘classless society’.” (Page 113) (And I would add the incompetence of Neil Kinnock and the rest of the Labour leadership, combined with the effects of the collapse of Stalinism and world capitalism chants of ideological victory.)


“Ironically, this pessimistic conclusion was published in two parts in 1990, between the Poll Tax riot and Thatcher’s removal from Downing Street. The Poll Tax saw Thatcher hoisted by her own petard. She introduced this piece of crude class legislation, whereby all progressive elements to local taxation were abolished, in a fit of overconfidence in the wake of the defeat of the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. Unfortunately for Thatcher the Poll Tax precipitated a huge campaign of non-payment and civil disobedience, culminating in a great demonstration of 250000 and riot in March 1990. This movement was a first sign of the re-emergence of class politics after the defeats of the 1970s and 1980s, against which the Tories responded by ignominiously discarding Thatcher as Party leader, and giving their policies a much more egalitarian spin…” (Page 130).
‘Perry Anderson, Marxism and the New Left by Paul Blackledge, (2004).


As the title of this book suggests this is an academic political history of a leading left-wing academic, his rise to left-wing, Marxist politics in the 1960s through to the 1980s and his rejection of them after the collapse of Stalinism in the late 80s and onwards. However, I quote these passages by this author to show that the anti-poll tax campaign was the reason, the foundation, for the departure of Thatcher and everything else that came after that, for example, Europe, by-election defeats, were secondary. The author, Paul Blackledge, in no way could be called a Militant/SP/CWI member. As a side, this book is excellent in how the academic left developed after 1956 and their influences on the middle class and the labour movement.


Now I want to lay down this misrepresentation that is starting to take place, 20 years after the event, on the role of the Militant Tendency in the anti-poll tax campaign. As I said I was involved at the beginning, not in Scotland where it all began, 1987/88, but down in Kent. However, I was involved in Militant and we had discussions nationwide on the strategy and tactics on how to campaign and fight the Poll Tax. It was Militant who considered the way to fight the poll tax was to organise a civil disobedience campaign on non-payment of the poll tax. Every other left political tendency in Britain, whether it be the SWP, CP, Labour Party, et al, where crying in their milk about Thatcher’s 3rd election win, saying the working class had moved too far to the right and were not willing to fight Thatcher or capitalism. Militant did not have that view.


Militant tried through the Labour Party both in Scotland and down South to get the leaders to take up the fight, but they were more intent to move the party to the right and expulsions of left winger, not just Militant. So Militant with others started to build anti-poll tax unions throughout Scotland on the principle of ‘pay no poll tax’ and ‘can’t pay won’t pay’. The point is the political back bone of the anti-poll tax movement was the Non-Payment Campaign and the organisational backbone was the local anti-poll tax unions linked first of all into the Scottish Anti-Poll tax Federation and then into the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation founded in November 1989.


IN 1989, ONE million Scots were not paying the poll tax. Even the capitalist press, like Scotland on Sunday, estimated that 800,000 Scots were not paying out of the 3.9 million eligible to pay. The first months of 1990 saw a prairie fire of mass demonstrations sweep through formerly sleepy towns and villages in the south of England. Two thousand people denounced the Tory MP for Maidenhead as the ‘Ceausescu of Maidenhead’ for supporting the tax. In Hackney and Lambeth, 2,000 gathered outside the town halls. Hundreds lobbied Southwark, Waltham Forest and Haringey councils. Practically every area was affected in one way or another by poll tax demonstrations and protests in February and March. In Tory Kent demonstrations and burning of poll tax bills were taking place everywhere. Because people were hearing about what was taking place in Scotland via the anti-poll tax unions initially started by Militants and followed by others once they were seen that unity in action does work.


The 31 March 1990 demo and riot alone did not compel the government or Thatcher to immediately retreat. It took a protracted non-payment campaign with 18 million people refusing to pay to achieve this. This was accompanied by some strikes, such as by civil servants in Glasgow. Along with anti-poll tax unions defending non-payers in Court and against the bailiffs. Yes, the anti-poll tax campaign did end Thatcher, and if one reads the biographies of the ‘great and good’ of during that period they will tell one the same; and how privately they told Thatcher and her acolytes that it would end in her defeat.


Without the campaign of mass non-payment, the poll tax would still probably be in existence. It was the mass uprising, led by conscious socialists and Marxists, which brought about its defeat and that of Thatcher. We must learn all the lessons for today in order to prepare for the anti-cuts battles that have started to develop in Britain today.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

http://www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk/news-a-analysis/scottish-politics/308-inspiring-meetings-hear-fighting-anti-cuts-and-socialist-alternative

The Socialist Party Scotland held two public meetings with Peter Taaffe and Clare Daly, socialist TD in Ireland, and this is a report of them. The most difficult question in Scotland, and Britain as a whole, is working class political representation. The first steps are being made, I believe, in England and Wales with the formation of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition. In Scotland the SPS are trying to develop anti-cuts political opposition for next year's Local Elections. "Brian Smith, leader of the Defend Glasgow Services campaign and Glasgow City Unison branch secretary, exposed effectively the reality of the SNP government’s cuts agenda. 18,000 public sector jobs are going in 2011-12 in Scotland. Workers are facing pay cuts and attacks on pensions and terms and conditions. Brian called for a campaign of coordinated strike action against the cuts. The need for political representation was also discussed with the Socialist Party supporting the idea of a coalition of anti-cuts candidates committed to opposing all cuts to stand at next year’s Scottish council elections."

[Feodor Augustus]

Sorry to anyone not interested in a discussion of the anti-Poll Tax campaign. I was making a quite general point on the nature of historical interpretation within left-wing groups, and as I'd been following a thread on Socialist Unity this week on the subject, it seemed natural to cite the Militant/Socialist Party example. I did not intend to divert the discussion in this way, indeed my comment on Taffe was a bracketed aside; but nevertheless, I have seen a few older and wiser comrades suggest that if you want to understand the degeneration of the British Left, then the legacy of the anti-Poll Tax campaign is a good place to start.


So what is your interpretation of the events in the poll tax? Are you just reading a particular interpretation or were you there at the time?

I was born in 1987 Jimmy, so obviously was too young to be 'there at the time'; and even if I had been there, from what you've said, I doubt my credentials would match yours. At the same time, I don't think it unfair to suggest that your close involvement has clouded your vision to the point where you seem to dismiss all contributions made by anyone other than the Militant tendency. The moral of the story is thus that a bit of distance can often do the world of good.

Take for example the second extract from Paul Blackledge's book you posted:


Unfortunately for Thatcher the Poll Tax precipitated a huge campaign of non-payment and civil disobedience, culminating in a great demonstration of 250000 and riot in March 1990. This movement was a first sign of the re-emergence of class politics after the defeats of the 1970s and 1980s, against which the Tories responded by ignominiously discarding Thatcher as Party leader, and giving their policies a much more egalitarian spin…

One really has to suspend all critical thinking capacities to take from this that it was the leadership provided by socialist groups, particularly the Militant tendency, that proved to be the crucial piece in the jigsaw; and this seems the general thrust of your comments, as it is the general thrust of Socialist Party historiography. I would grant you that the Militant played a role, even an important one; and that in many regards they were qualitatively better in both theory and practice than many other groups on this issue. However there were far wider social forces at work, and to dismiss them or downgrade them is a critical error.

At the same time, when you say:


It was the mass uprising, led by conscious socialists and Marxists, which brought about its defeat and that of Thatcher. We must learn all the lessons for today in order to prepare for the anti-cuts battles that have started to develop in Britain today.

Then I'm sure you know that the 'mass uprising' you speak of, - and I presume you mean the Trafalgar Square riots, - was hardly the Militant tendencies finest moment. I think, though I'm not sure, that it was Steve Nally, - I've also seen Tommy Sheridan credited with this, - that went on television and threatened to 'name names' with regards the 'troublemakers'; and from then on Militant was increasingly marginalised within the movement. As you say, there are lessons to be learned: but that cannot be done without a healthy amount of self-criticism. (From everyone that is, not just the Militant folks.)

Also, and this is more of a side note, as someone who grew up as the only child of a single mother on a low income, I have to say that the anti-Poll Tax campaigns attachment to the notion of the nuclear family was of little benefit to the increasingly common single-parent single-income mostly matrifocal family unit. I fully support the position of being against the Poll Tax, but it was a real error to not also address the unfair burden Council Tax places on single-income households. (They have a flat rate reduction of just 25 per cent.) Arguably, these families are much more vulnerable, and thus while the defeat of the Poll Tax benefited the majority of working class families, it made the situation much harder for some of the worse off.
_ _ _ _ _

As for the topic of my first post in this thread, the jist of my post was the suggestion that the left should give up on building parties and instead involve itself in the already existent organs of the class movement. I would like to thank Devrim for a post of his in another thread. He wrote:


There used to be a time when people who called themselves marxist understood that the term 'party' meant something like the 'the largest sector of the politically active and fighting working class', and wasn't a term used by tiny groups who plainly weren't parties.

The term party once referred to communist organisations during a specific period of class struggle. It seems to have been forgotten now.

Unless I'm mistaken, this was what Marx had in mind when he used the term 'Party', and he politically involved himself in a number of organisations that were anything but 'tiny groups'. When I use the term 'Party', I do however mean the modern meaning as opposed to the traditional one; and to be honest, a lot of the time the far more pejorative 'sect' seems much more suited to a description of their nature. (See my signature, below.)

[Paul Cockshott]

There is absolutely no doubt that the anti poll tax campaign was both started by marxist groups, not just militant others too, and that these groups sustained and organised it at a local level. The riot in london was a side effect of a much bigger local campaign.

[Feodor Augustus]

There is absolutely no doubt that the anti poll tax campaign was both started by marxist groups, not just militant others too, and that these groups sustained and organised it at a local level. The riot in london was a side effect of a much bigger local campaign.

Yes, but 'marxist groups' start campaigns all the time, most of which end in failure. Thus the question of who started the campaign, is not the same as the question as to why it was a success. The historical process is too complex to be reduced to such basic formulations.

[jake williams]

I think that the working class are able to organise themselves with recourse to a centralised state, and that such an entity would inevitably hamper the development of a free, communist society.
The basic point of being a Marxist (in the context of left politics, not in the context of history in general) is that you would with Marx in the "statist"-anarchist split in the First International. You're more than welcome to believe that workers shouldn't try to organize a state, but I think it means you can't be a "Marxist" in a meaningful sense. You can agree with lots or even most things that Marx said and wrote, but so did Bakunin. It would make about as much sense as calling yourself a "Copernican" because you're not a geocentrist.

I also think you'd be mistaken, but that's a separate question. There are serious dangers which threaten workers' democratic control of any state, and they should be taken seriously. But if there's no organized representation of the working class in the first place, there isn't even any democracy to threaten, so if it's working class democracy you're concerned about, I think you should want a workers' state.

Regarding Q's point though, which I do think referred to independance from a bourgeois state (the relevant question facing socialist revolutionaries virtually everywhere right now), I don't think it's a difficult principle on which to establish unity. It's important though to carefully distinguish political "isolationism" from independance. Non-chalance, or worse active sabotage, of progressive reforms is not constructive. Certainly the tactics of each as they arise are subject to debate, but writing them off in principle isn't a serious way to proceed. Workers in advanced capitalist countries haven't seen the left accomplish anything for them in a very long time, from the labour parties to the unions to the radical left. Telling them that there no reforms or small victories for them to win is not a way to build a mass movement sufficiently capable of overthrowing capitalism.

[Q]

Regarding Q's point though, which I do think referred to independance from a bourgeois state (the relevant question facing socialist revolutionaries virtually everywhere right now)
Comrade, I believe you're well aware of my postings and as such of my positions. This is the reason I didn't really felt the need to reply to your earlier post. But yes, that is indeed my position.


I don't think it's a difficult principle on which to establish unity. It's important though to carefully distinguish political "isolationism" from independance. Non-chalance, or worse active sabotage, of progressive reforms is not constructive. Certainly the tactics of each as they arise are subject to debate, but writing them off in principle isn't a serious way to proceed. Workers in advanced capitalist countries haven't seen the left accomplish anything for them in a very long time, from the labour parties to the unions to the radical left. Telling them that there no reforms or small victories for them to win is not a way to build a mass movement sufficiently capable of overthrowing capitalism.

No disagreement here: Tactics are what they are. To write any tactic off on "principle" would be to cut off a finger of your political work. Very stupid indeed.

[The Idler]

The basic point of being a Marxist (in the context of left politics, not in the context of history in general) is that you would with Marx in the "statist"-anarchist split in the First International. You're more than welcome to believe that workers shouldn't try to organize a state, but I think it means you can't be a "Marxist" in a meaningful sense. You can agree with lots or even most things that Marx said and wrote, but so did Bakunin. It would make about as much sense as calling yourself a "Copernican" because you're not a geocentrist.
The SPGB believe workers shouldn't try to organise a state but are certainly Marxists.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Comrade Feodar, You say
“I don't think it unfair to suggest that your close involvement has clouded your vision to the point where you seem to dismiss all contributions made by anyone other than the Militant tendency. The moral of the story is thus that a bit of distance can often do the world of good.” With all due respect to you I am quite prepared to accept contributions on the question of the Anti-Poll struggle if they have a validity of political truth about them. As you said you were too young to be involved and now at the age of 24 all you will hear are the stories of the contending political groups of the time. My contention is that Militant was the only group in the Left political spectrum that put forward the Non-payment of the Poll Tax as a political strategy to take on the Tax. And that is what became the political backbone of the campaign; along with the creation of anti-poll tax unions as the organisational backbone.


The SWP did not get involved due to their leader, Tony Cliff, taking the stance of non –payment as a stupid idea. Saying that non-payment is like not paying your bus fare you will end getting thrown of the bus. The SWP did not get involved as a political party until the non-payment campaign was well on its way. Yes, individual members of the SWP, as well as other Lefts, did get involved in different parts of the country on the non-payment campaign and they need to be commented, but as a group/party none of them did until the battle was well on the way. Then when the poll tax was declared defeated these political groups jumped on the bandwagon saying how they ‘led’ the struggle and it was their ‘leadership’ that was supreme. Remember I was there.


Another point you make “Then I'm sure you know that the 'mass uprising' you speak of, - and I presume you mean the Trafalgar Square riots, - was hardly the Militant tendencies finest moment. I think, though I'm not sure, that it was Steve Nally, - I've also seen Tommy Sheridan credited with this, - that went on television and threatened to 'name names' with regards the 'troublemakers'; and from then on Militant was increasingly marginalised within the movement.” Have you seen this, please post it because it will be the first time I have ever seen this so-called interview that Tommy Sheridan and Steve Nally said they would name names. This implication, repeated ad nauseum, in the months that followed the 31st March Demo was that Militant members would collaborate with the police and supply to the State names of their opponents who they believed to be involved in violence against them. This is a total false claim made by individuals who do not support the Marxist political method of mass participation to end the capitalist system and the socialist reconstruction of society. In fact Militant and its members put the blame of the violence on the Day fair and squarely on the shoulders of the Thatcher government and their elite police squads. And the All British Anti-Poll Tax Federation, if my memory serves me correctly, called for a Labour Movement investigation of the violence by the police. Once again you were too young to remember these event and you have only been told certain things by certain people/groups. There was a 50,000 demonstration in Glasgow on the same day, at which Tommy Sheridan was on and then came down to the London Demo, where there was no trouble; and a separate demonstration in Cheltenham, a Tory backwater, where nearly 50 demonstrators were arrested.


The mass uprising I am talking about is not the 31st Demonstrations but the millions who took the decision not to pay the Poll Tax; not because of a political stance, while the majority did oppose Thatcher, but because the overwhelming majority of the people in the country could not afford it. Before the Poll Tax people homes were based on the Rating System, which was based on the more expensive the house the higher the Rate was. Which meant the rich paid more and the poor less. But the Poll Tax reversed this and it meant the poor paid more and the rich paid less for their households. A totally unfair system! Yes, the Council tax is not as fair a system as the Rating System pre-1989 but it was a damned sight better than the Poll tax. Yes, that was one of the weaknesses of the outcome of the Anti-Poll Tax campaign. It should have gone back to the Rating System, but it did not. Partly due to the political weakness and the abject cravenness of the Labour Party to look respectable to the Media and ruling class in not cow-towing to the ‘toy-town revolutionaries, Kinnock’s words, in the anti-poll tax movement. Along with the Collapse of the Stalinist regimes and international capitalism victory celebrations to its so-called victory over ‘communism; and the Gulf War as well . The movement was starting to ebb after John Major announced its ending and the relief of a system that was not the poll tax meant the majority of people were prepared to accept the Council Tax.


Yes I do think it is unfair to suggest that my closeness to the Anti-Poll Tax struggle has clouded my judgement. With all due respect to you it is because I was involved in the struggle I can answer the misrepresentations and downright lies made by other left political groups and individuals on the question of the poll tax. I will come back to the original point: “(Taffe's lot interpretation of the Poll Tax is a good example)” is what you said. So ‘what is your interpretation of the poll tax’. Because all I have heard is hostility to Militant which is not your interpretation but someone else’s. And if you are following what takes place on Socialist Unity as your guide-line then you are going to have a much distorted view of political life and political history, an example being the discussion on the Respect party and the SSP/Solidarity saga. Most of these ‘comrades’ are haters of Militant/Socialist Party/CWI. I suggest you read the original material of the Socialist Party and the CWI and then make up your mind, (as a side issue when I did my academic studies as a mature student I always read the original material of my subject rather than commentaries of the subjects), so I will post the CWI website for you and an article by LOUISE JAMES, one of the national organisers of the All Britain Anti-poll Tax Federation. Fraternally. Jimmy

http://www.socialistworld.net/

http://www.socialismtoday.org/137/demo.html

[Tim Finnegan]

The basic point of being a Marxist (in the context of left politics, not in the context of history in general) is that you would with Marx in the "statist"-anarchist split in the First International.
That's a gross over-simplification that I do not feel particularly obliged to honour, no matter how many how many chest-thumping chauvinists on either side of the fence have made a habit of swearing by it.


You're more than welcome to believe that workers shouldn't try to organize a state, but I think it means you can't be a "Marxist" in a meaningful sense. You can agree with lots or even most things that Marx said and wrote, but so did Bakunin. It would make about as much sense as calling yourself a "Copernican" because you're not a geocentrist.So, what, you've never heard of Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick or Otto Rühle? Or where they "not Marxists" either?


I also think you'd be mistaken, but that's a separate question. There are serious dangers which threaten workers' democratic control of any state, and they should be taken seriously. But if there's no organized representation of the working class in the first place, there isn't even any democracy to threaten...I don't remember suggesting anything like this. If you could dig up at exactly which point I made such a comment, it would probably help clarify things.


...so if it's working class democracy you're concerned about, I think you should want a workers' stateI thought that working class democracy was, by definition, rooted in the council-system, rather than the state? Even Leninists hold to that in theory principle, however much they depart from it in practice.

[jake williams]

...
That's a gross over-simplification that I do not feel particularly obliged to honour, no matter how many how many chest-thumping chauvinists on either side of the fence have made a habit of swearing by it.
Being a "Marxist" isn't limited to that, but I don't think there's any meaningful historical reason to call yourself a "Marxist" if you're really a "hard anti-statist". I should make clear that I don't think it's ideal that we call ourselves "Marxists" anyway. Our modern physicists should not be "Newtonians" nor should our modern biologists be "Darwinians". Anyway, what people often mean when they call themselves Marxists - that they're committed to historical materialism, anti-capitalism, revolution, and pro-working class politics - are things we should all take for granted on the radical left. The usefulness of referring to oneself as a Marxist is, I think, limited to those things which particularly distinguished Marx from his contemporaries. Including, centrally, the use of state power.

So, what, you've never heard of Anton Pannekoek, Paul Mattick or Otto Rühle? Or where they "not Marxists" either?
I'm not that familiar with them, but if they were actually "hard anti-statists", then no, in the sense I'm using the term. I'm not using it as a value judgment. Not everyone who calls themself a Marxist is a Marxist, nor an anarchist an anarchist, a socialist a socialist and so on.

I don't remember suggesting anything like this. If you could dig up at exactly which point I made such a comment, it would probably help clarify things.
By the definition of a "state" I'm using, the institutional forms organized by the working class to defend its class interests. If you're against any state, in the sense I'm using the term, then that's what you're against. If you're against something else, we may not disagree. Which brings us back to the original dispute: that there are forms of "anti-statism", so-called, that some or all MLs agree with, and some or all, respectively, which they disagree with.

I thought that working class democracy was, by definition, rooted in the council-system, rather than the state? Even Leninists hold to that in theory principle, however much they depart from it in practice. I'm not particularly hung up on organizational forms - we can envision council systems which are less democratic than regional-representative forms, depending on historical and social circumstances. I think council systems are a good candidate for the best way to organize worker representation, but that sort of question really isn't my priority.

And it's separate from the point that any such representative system need not be separate from the method of democratic control over the state. To dig up another thread, a workers' state basically has to be democratic, and to make such a state democratic requires a system of representation, and setting up a parallel system of representation could well be problematic.

[Tim Finnegan]

Being a "Marxist" isn't limited to that, but I don't think there's any meaningful historical reason to call yourself a "Marxist" if you're really a "hard anti-statist". I should make clear that I don't think it's ideal that we call ourselves "Marxists" anyway. Our modern physicists should not be "Newtonians" nor should our modern biologists be "Darwinians". Anyway, what people often mean when they call themselves Marxists - that they're committed to historical materialism, anti-capitalism, revolution, and pro-working class politics - are things we should all take for granted on the radical left. The usefulness of referring to oneself as a Marxist is, I think, limited to those things which particularly distinguished Marx from his contemporaries. Including, centrally, the use of state power.
But the Marxian concept of the workers' state (http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state), such as it was, was of a form of political power fundamentally different from that seen in the bourgeois state, not simply the same infrastructure with a working-class party at the head. While it's arguable that the exact deployment of the term "state" may be a semantic issue- personally, I avoid it because I consider it to be misleading- but your particular understanding of the concept, if I am to infer correctly from the "Preventing oppression in socialism" thread (which I swear I'm getting back to, I just haven't really managed to get my mind lined up enough for theoretical stuff for a few days), which does not involve an analysis of the state as an institution in and of itself.

I'm not that familiar with them, but if they were actually "hard anti-statists", then no, in the sense I'm using the term. I'm not using it as a value judgment. Not everyone who calls themself a Marxist is a Marxist, nor an anarchist an anarchist, a socialist a socialist and so on.

...

By the definition of a "state" I'm using, the institutional forms organized by the working class to defend its class interests. If you're against any state, in the sense I'm using the term, then that's what you're against. If you're against something else, we may not disagree. Which brings us back to the original dispute: that there are forms of "anti-statism", so-called, that some or all MLs agree with, and some or all, respectively, which they disagree with.Those are some awfully mobile goalposts you've got there. At what point do the "institutional forms organised by the working class" cease to become a state, and become mere anarchist chaos? At what point does a workers' council cease to be a healthy portion of the proletarian state power, and become a mere gaggle of insurrectionary proles?

I'm not particularly hung up on organizational forms - we can envision council systems which are less democratic than regional-representative forms, depending on historical and social circumstances. I think council systems are a good candidate for the best way to organize worker representation, but that sort of question really isn't my priority.The form of political organisation adopted by a revolutionary class is crucial to its success in establishing communism- communism being not merely a state of affairs which is constructed by a working class power, but a new society which is organically generated through the exercise of working class power- as the collapse of the compromised Russian experiment demonstrates. Its not something that you get to be "not particularly hung up on".


And it's separate from the point that any such representative system need not be separate from the method of democratic control over the state. To dig up another thread, a workers' state basically has to be democratic, and to make such a state democratic requires a system of representation, and setting up a parallel system of representation could well be problematic.Have you not read The Civil War in France? That's exactly what the Parisian workers did, and exactly Marx lauded them for.

[jake williams]

...
But the Marxian concept of the workers' state (http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state), such as it was, was of a form of political power fundamentally different from that seen in the bourgeois state, not simply the same infrastructure with a working-class party at the head.
Yes and no. I think there's a tendency to exaggerate the differences between the collective tasks a workers' state will have to carry out, and those a bourgeois state has to carry out, and in doing so, I think there's a tendency to exaggerate the differences in institutional form this would entail. So, for example, a workers' state will have to carry out policing functions, but "police" in a workers' state should have to look fundamentally different from that of a bourgeois state. (Futher, there are aspects of "policing" that one can tenably expect to exist in classless societies as well. Something like traffic police is a realistic example. There are others.)

At what point do the "institutional forms organised by the working class" cease to become a state, and become mere anarchist chaos?
I don't think there's a simple answer to that. We're speaking in very (uncomfortably) abstract terms about very complex social and historical dynamics.

At what point does a workers' council cease to be a healthy portion of the proletarian state power, and become a mere gaggle of insurrectionary proles?
Could you clarify?

The form of political organisation adopted by a revolutionary class is crucial to its success in establishing communism- communism being not merely a state of affairs which is constructed by a working class power, but a new society which is organically generated through the exercise of working class power- as the collapse of the compromised Russian experiment demonstrates. Its not something that you get to be "not particularly hung up on".
I think I misspoke. The fact that the institutional form of workers' democracy must be organically generated though the exercise of workers' power is exactly why I see limited use in precisely theorizing about it right now. The historical circumstances faced by workers in Paris in the 1850s or Russia in the 1910s are exceptionally different from each other, from today, and probably, from the period in which these questions will become relevant for either of us.

Have you not read The Civil War in France? That's exactly what the Parisian workers did, and exactly Marx lauded them for.
Again, I'm not ruling much out in all cases. If it works, it works.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yes and no. I think there's a tendency to exaggerate the differences between the collective tasks a workers' state will have to carry out, and those a bourgeois state has to carry out, and in doing so, I think there's a tendency to exaggerate the differences in institutional form this would entail. So, for example, a workers' state will have to carry out policing functions, but "police" in a workers' state should have to look fundamentally different from that of a bourgeois state. (Futher, there are aspects of "policing" that one can tenably expect to exist in classless societies as well. Something like traffic police is a realistic example. There are others.)
It doesn't matter if the two institutions may have to carry out mechanically similar or even identical tasks, because they must be definition fulfill fundamentally different social roles, and their entire form must follow from those essential roles. The capitalist state has the role of preserving the dominance of capital and the subjugation of labour, while the "workers' state" has the role of administering communist society. That the former will likely adopt certain activities also adopted by the former means little, because those activities are ultimately and end to the fundamental social role, which is to say that they are performed to keep society ticking over, rather than because they are useful and desirable, which is the only criteria upon which any "workers' state" would make its decisions.


I don't think there's a simple answer to that. We're speaking in very (uncomfortably) abstract terms about very complex social and historical dynamics.Well, humour me. What cannot be ultimately expressed as a concrete political program is of only very limited use to the revolutionary working class.


Could you clarify?Well, presumably, if there's a point at which autonomous working class political organisation ceases to constitute a state, then there is a point at which- in your logic- it ceases to constitute a "institutional form organized by the working class to defend its class interests", and is instead reduced to a relatively well-ordered mob. I'm just wondering where the line is.

I think I misspoke. The fact that the institutional form of workers' democracy must be organically generated though the exercise of workers' power is exactly why I see limited use in precisely theorizing about it right now. The historical circumstances faced by workers in Paris in the 1850s or Russia in the 1910s are exceptionally different from each other, from today, and probably, from the period in which these questions will become relevant for either of us.There's a difference between constructing overly-specific models of organisation and determining the essential form that such organisation may take. The former is, indeed, something which much be left to circumstance- although that's not to say that hypothetical models can not be useful in informing effective constructions- but the latter is an essential point of political principle. If the differences between worker-created and bourgeois-created institutions as fundamental as I have suggested in the other thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/preventing-oppression-socialism-t155914/index3.html), then it is necessary for the revolutionary working class to have a proper attitude towards political organisation in regards to those two breeds of institution.


Again, I'm not ruling much out in all cases. If it works, it works.It's beyond "what works, works", it's an essential point of praxis. Marx specifically says that "the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready made State machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation." The establishment of independent systems of self-organisation is necessary to maintain working class political independence.

[jake williams]

It doesn't matter if the two institutions may have to carry out mechanically similar or even identical tasks, because they must be definition fulfill fundamentally different social roles, and their entire form must follow from those essential roles. The capitalist state has the role of preserving the dominance of capital and the subjugation of labour, while the "workers' state" has the role of administering communist society. That the former will likely adopt certain activities also adopted by the former means little, because those activities are ultimately and end to the fundamental social role, which is to say that they are performed to keep society ticking over, rather than because they are useful and desirable, which is the only criteria upon which any "workers' state" would make its decisions.
I don't really disagree.

Well, humour me. What cannot be ultimately expressed as a concrete political program is of only very limited use to the revolutionary working class.
...
Well, presumably, if there's a point at which autonomous working class political organisation ceases to constitute a state, then there is a point at which- in your logic- it ceases to constitute a "institutional form organized by the working class to defend its class interests", and is instead reduced to a relatively well-ordered mob. I'm just wondering where the line is.
I think, basically, that it depends whether or not such a state is capable of carrying out the class interests of the working class. What this means depends on historical circumstances.

There's a difference between constructing overly-specific models of organisation and determining the essential form that such organisation may take.
I recognize the difference, but I think the details of the relationship between a system of workers' councils and the system of the state is the former rather than the latter. I could be convinced otherwise, but that's what I meant to say.

It's beyond "what works, works", it's an essential point of praxis. Marx specifically says that "the working class cannot simply lay hold on the ready made State machinery and wield it for their own purpose. The political instrument of their enslavement cannot serve as the political instrument of their emancipation." The establishment of independent systems of self-organisation is necessary to maintain working class political independence.
I don't really disagree with that either.

[Tim Finnegan]

I don't really disagree.
...

I think, basically, that it depends whether or not such a state is capable of carrying out the class interests of the working class. What this means depends on historical circumstances.
And according to Marx, the state, in the sense of a centralised hierarchical body (rather than in the sense of an autonomous communist municipality, as referred to by his- I think misleading- use of the term "workers' state) is by definition incapable of carrying the working class through a revolutionary struggle. Even at his most sympathetic to participation in bourgeois struggles, he never regarded the centralised bourgeois model of the state as capable of doing anything more useful than advancing the cause of the working class within capitalism- that is, to advance the cause of labour, but not to free it from capital- and, perhaps, dissolving itself so as to minimise the chaos and violence encountered in the eventual proletarian revolution.
I recognize the difference, but I think the details of the relationship between a system of workers' councils and the system of the state is the former rather than the latter. I could be convinced otherwise, but that's what I meant to say.

...

I don't really disagree with that either.These comments seem to contradict each other. On the one hand, you present the choice between communal and statist organisational forms as mere fine-tuning, but then you claim to accept Marx's assertion that the construction of the former not merely as an alternative to the latter but in direct political contradiction to it? How can the two be reconciled?

[Die Neue Zeit]

I thought that working class democracy was, by definition, rooted in the council-system, rather than the state? Even Leninists hold to that in theory principle, however much they depart from it in practice.


But the Marxian concept of the workers' state (http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-state), such as it was, was of a form of political power fundamentally different from that seen in the bourgeois state, not simply the same infrastructure with a working-class party at the head.

The Paris Communal Council was not elected by lower councils in a chained system of councils. Proletocracy is rooted in neither the council system nor the modern state apparatus. Not only is it not "simply the same infrastructure with a working-class party at the head," it may even be the party-movement itself in power, replacing entirely both the existing state bureaucracy and non-party/anti-party council/assembly movements with a radically new apparatus of its own, unrecognizable by the existing state bureaucracy and by the non-party/anti-party council/assembly movements.

[Tim Finnegan]

The Paris Communal Council was not elected by lower councils in a chained system of councils.
I'm aware of that; my reference to the Paris Commune was in regards to Jammoe's comments on a "parallel system of representation". The Paris Commune was a very immature example of workers' democracy, so it obviously can't be taken as a model for future emulation.


Proletocracy is rooted in neither the council system nor the modern state apparatus. Not only is it not "simply the same infrastructure with a working-class party at the head," it may even be the party-movement itself in power, replacing entirely both the existing state bureaucracy and non-party/anti-party council/assembly movements with a radically new apparatus of its own, unrecognizable by the existing state bureaucracy and by the non-party/anti-party council/assembly movements.But what is a workers' mass party, if not a council system with a logo? I'm not sure that I'd particularly want a party that proposed to position itself between the working class and political power in any fashion.

[Die Neue Zeit]

But what is a workers' mass party, if not a council system with a logo? I'm not sure that I'd particularly want a party that proposed to position itself between the working class and political power in any fashion.

Ah, thanks for clarifying comrade. A council system by itself can't seem to provide the same level of alternative culture and political independence that the pre-war SPD and the inter-war USPD did (mainly because of the lack of financial commitments that are required by obvious and de facto party-movements).

BTW, another problem with the council system is trying to contrast this with an assembly system of sorts. Branch meetings are an application of the assembly system, not the council system. Modern technology has expanded the possibilities for expanding the application of assembly system... at the expense of the council system.

Furthermore (and preferrably with demarchy), the organizational premises of nomenclatures and job slots for bureaucracies are also separate from the council system.

[Feodor Augustus]

As you said you were too young to be involved and now at the age of 24 all you will hear are the stories of the contending political groups of the time. My contention is that Militant was the only group in the Left political spectrum that put forward the Non-payment of the Poll Tax as a political strategy to take on the Tax. And that is what became the political backbone of the campaign; along with the creation of anti-poll tax unions as the organisational backbone.

So ‘what is your interpretation of the poll tax’. Because all I have heard is hostility to Militant which is not your interpretation but someone else’s. And if you are following what takes place on Socialist Unity as your guide-line...

As I am indeed too young to have been involved, my interpretation is inevitably based on the 'stories of the contending political groups of the time'. (Although to be fair, even if I had of been there at the time, like you, this would still be case: for it is impossible for anyone to be a first-hand witness to everything, and to not rely on the second-hand accounts of others. But this is an aside.) What I do try to do then, is ask questions of the accounts I read.

For example, the many anarchist accounts which show, whatever the other faults of the anarchist groups, 'that Militant was [not] the only group in the Left political spectrum that put forward the Non-payment of the Poll Tax as a political strategy to take on the Tax'; also display a quite one-sided judgement on the Militants role in the struggle. As the article you linked put it: they often look 'to prove that Militant is a "state-in-waiting" and fundamentally "opposed to the working class fighting back".'

The thrust of your post seems to be that I hold similar views, but as I said, my original comment was an aside, and was based on a thread I'd been reading on Socialist Unity, and in particular the comments made by a SPer named Sam: who, like me, was too young to be involved; but who nevertheless seems to have accepted a quite heroic interpretation of events from the SP press. For your part, you seem not to want to acknowledge that anyone but Militant played a key role, - do you think any groups other than Militant, overall, had a positive role? - but your evaluation seems more sober and considered than Sam's.

Nevertheless, can you accept that groups themselves have an obvious tendency to overstate their own role? And that, in turn, and in particular amongst younger members who lack first-hand experience of the events in question and the controversies that arose, these end up taking the form of something like a self-sustaining theoretical mythology, that in turn guides them in determining who they see as enemies and who they see as friends. This seems a problem across the Left, and is why rifts are almost never repaired. As some hack put it after the latest split from the SWP: the narcissism of small difference.

This puts a lot of people off, and moreover undermines much of the practical activity undertaken. If you would like for me to share my criticisms, then perhaps you would be content with the verdicts that the SWP often come across as incredibly over-zealous and, at times, outright obnoxious; while most of the anarchists I've encountered on the British Left seem to be either plagued by lifestylism or a fetish for direct action. These observations, like my sentence which ired you, will no doubt provoke someone else; but I do sometimes wonder whether the next large and successful left-wing organisations will be the ones who understand that sometimes there is no smoke without fire, and act accordingly. Instead, of course, of just 'defending the line'.

Case in point:


Have you seen this, please post it because it will be the first time I have ever seen this so-called interview that Tommy Sheridan and Steve Nally said they would name names.

Jimmy, please, the article you linked clearly states this:


A quote from All-Britain Federation secretary, Steve Nally, on ITN news, proposing to "hold our own internal inquiry" into the events "which will go public and if necessary name names".

She does not dispute this, but goes on to rationalise it: and I have no interest in debating whether it is appropriate or no to threaten to publicly name people. (Nor, for that matter, do I find James argument that Nally meant undercover police officers all that convincing.)

You asked me what 'my interpretation' was: in response to your contention, and as is shown in your comment about the spread of the struggle to 'Cheltenham, a Tory backwater', James' reference to 'A poll sponsored by The Sunday Correspondent, (8 April, 1990) [that] showed that three times as many people blamed the Tories than blamed the Labour Party for the riot. Too many people had been touched by the campaign: the Tories’ attempts to create a red scare failed.' And also the role other groups played from the start - as I understand it, even some Scottish nationalist groups were involved from the start. I would contend that given the size of the opposition and the amount of people it affected for the worst, it is impossible to assign to the Militant group such a pivotal role as they have since claimed. Or at least that was what my original comment meant.

I also don't really adhere to the triumphalism of James next sentences directly after the ones I just quoted:


The mass non-payment campaign, lifted by the scale of the magnificent demonstration, went on from strength to strength. It was the inability of Thatcher to successfully impose the poll tax on the working class, because of the organised campaign, which was overwhelmingly responsible for her removal as prime minister.

The defeat of the Poll Tax closed an old chapter, but it did not start a new one. In effect, the battle had been won but the war had been lost.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Comrade Feodor,

I would like to apologies for not answering your comments earlier but been busy etc. I originally was not going to come back on your contribution but having read and re-read your observations and I feel I need to remark on your interpretations. Not to have a polemic with you but to have a fraternal discussion of the strategy and tactics within the labour movement.


"For example, the many anarchist accounts which show, whatever the other faults of the anarchist groups, 'that Militant was [not] the only group in the Left political spectrum that put forward the Non-payment of the Poll Tax as a political strategy to take on the Tax'; also display a quite one-sided judgement on the Militants role in the struggle. As the article you linked put it: they often look 'to prove that Militant is a "state-in-waiting" and fundamentally "opposed to the working class fighting back".'”


I will not try to sound patronising in my comments but the Anarchists accounts deliberately down rate the activities of organised left political forces in the poll tax struggle, especially Militant. As far as the Anarchist ‘theoreticians’ are concerned the anti-poll tax movement was a spontaneous clash against Thatcher and the poll tax culminating in the 31 March riot which in their opinion brought down Thatcher. In their opinion nothing was organised, the Anti-Poll Tax Unions were a spontaneous creation and that is all that is needed, direct action, no working out of strategy and tactics, no convincing people by leafleting and organising meetings, or defending people in the Courts by the legal technicalities that were made by the APTUs as ‘McKenzie Friends’ and so on.



The Anarchists I spoke to during the anti-poll tax campaign, and only a few I will admit, thought the non-payment campaign was irrelevant to fighting the State, direct action is the way to do it was their call. However, I must admit that there were fellow travellers who were not ‘rounded out’ anarchists and were won over to the non-payment campaign and anti-poll tax unions. But in the end of the day, and I will come back to this time and again, the Non Payment strategy and tactics along with the developments of the APTUs was developed first by the Militant Tendency in Scotland in late 1987and early 1988.



Militant’s role is and was not a bureaucratic imposition grafted onto the struggle of the working class in the anti-poll tax struggle, or any other struggle for that matter. Rather it is a method of utilising past struggles, theory is nothing more than the concentrated experiences and history of the working class, for the current battles. Militant’s aim was not to stifle the immense hidden initiative and talent of workers in the anti- poll tax struggle. On the contrary the job of Militant was to tap the anger and initiatives and give it a coherent direction. Something the Anarchists were unable to do because of their philosophical outlook on the workers movement.



On the question of Comrade Sam: 2 “The thrust of your post seems to be that I hold similar views, but as I said, my original comment was an aside, and was based on a thread I'd been reading on Socialist Unity, and in particular the comments made by a SPer named Sam: who, like me, was too young to be involved; but who nevertheless seems to have accepted a quite heroic interpretation of events from the SP press. For your part, you seem not to want to acknowledge that anyone but Militant played a key role, - do you think any groups other than Militant, overall, had a positive role? - but your evaluation seems more sober and considered than Sam's.” As the SP/CWI are an organisation that prides itself on the education and self-education of its members, and the active working class at large, to learn the lessons, both defeats and victories, of the past then Comrade Sam has no doubt got an understanding of the events around the class battles of the 1980s and 90s to articulate them on the Socialist Unity website. I do not consider having read Comrade Sam’s comments on SU that he has made on Militant, to use your words, “heroic” in interpretation the anti-poll tax events. Sam may have bent the stick back a bit, as I have as well, from the opposite direction to the other contributors on SU; but that is in response to the, I believe, abuse and sectarianism of a large number of contributors on the SU website, whether Labour Party members or not. Other groups did play a role in the anti-poll tax movement. But the majority of the contributors on SU do not want to recognise that and they denigrate any SP member who attempts to put the record straight on Militant’s foremost role on the Anti-Poll Tax Movement. The object of discussing the lessons of the anti-poll tax movement, the battles of Liverpool City Council, and I may add Poplar Council in the 1920s, is to learn the lessons of these events for the struggles that are and will develop over the Cuts in Britain.



The size of the opposition to the poll tax in 1987, when it was first raised by Militant, was not a foregone conclusion. Yes, other Left groups such as the SWP and CP, and even the SNP, went out on the street to campaign against it. Campaigning against it and having a strategy to stop it are two different things. Only at the start did Militant, and that is the crux of this particular political debate, put forward the strategy of non-payment and to organisationally develop the ATPUs first to give substance to the opposition. Let me paraphrase Marx, once an idea grips the consciousness then it becomes a material reality. This is not to make Militant “heroic” or create “self-sustaining mythology”. But to show that Militant after the third General Election victory did not accept the theory by the majority of socialist groups that the British working class had moved to the ’right’, and would not fight Thatcher..

On the question of “naming names”, once again I certainly did not see the so-called news report that is supposed to have been said and if you read the section properly she quotes from the Anarchist pamphlet: “THE AUTHORS DISPLAY even greater hostility to another method of the organised working class – a labour movement inquiry. Indeed the proposal for an All-Britain Federation inquiry into the events of March 31 is highlighted to prove that Militant is a "state-in-waiting" and fundamentally "opposed to the working class fighting back" (p64). The evidence? A quote from All-Britain Federation secretary, Steve Nally, on ITN news, proposing to "hold our own internal inquiry" into the events "which will go public and if necessary name names".”

However, when the All Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation did hold its own enquiry into the riots the trouble did start with the anarchists having a sit down protest, no problem in that because the stewards just started to move the march around the sit down. But then the anarchist started to throw things at the stewards and hitting them, that is when the riot police started to wade in and this did not only affect the anarchists but also the main march itself, and led to the riot. As I said before the ABAPTF put the blame full and square on the Thatcher Government and the Police leadership for the riot and no individual names were named from the anti-poll tax side.


“(Nor, for that matter, do I find James argument that Nally meant undercover police officers all that convincing.)” Through the history of workers’ demonstrations and other types of opposition to the capitalist system and state the various State powers have always tried to derail the movement by installing shadowy individuals in it. Look at the revelations over the past year in the newspapers of undercover police activity in the environmental movement and on the day of the TUC demo on the 26th March an ex-undercover policeman wrote an article in the Guardian about his activities and how now is being shunned by the police force because he ‘came clean’. Also articles appeared last year of undercover police activity in the Anti-Racist movement 15 to 18 years ago that Militant, the SWP and others where involved in.

On the question of the SNP, yes they had aligned themselves to the left of the Labour Party in Scotland in 1988. In Scotland after the General Election in 1987 the Conservatives only had 10 out of the 72 MPs, with Labour having 50, the absolute majority of MPs in Scotland. Seventeen months after the general election, in November 1988, there was a by-election in the rock-solid Labour seat of Glasgow Govan. The SNP triumphed, overturning a 19,509 Labour majority, with two main slogans: ‘We’re not paying the poll tax’ and ‘the feeble fifty won’t stand up to Thatcher’, referring to Labour’s 50 Scottish MPs.

The SNP subsequently refused to support a campaign of mass non-payment of the poll tax, with SNP councillors, in the main, going along with Labour in implementing punitive enforcement measures against non-payers. The resultant political vacuum, that the most conscious anti-poll tax fighters had no political outlet, was an important factor in the early electoral successes of Scottish Militant Labour (SML), the predecessor of the Socialist Party Scotland, when it was formed in 1992. SML won four seats on Glasgow council in May 1992, just weeks after another Tory victory in the April 1992 general election (in which Tommy Sheridan came second in Glasgow Pollok with 6,287 votes, 19.3%). From May 1992 to February 1994, SML polled 33.3% of the total votes cast in 17 local council contests with Labour (36.1%) and the SNP (22.8%), winning six.

The success of SML laid the basis for the development of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), which was able to win representation in the Scottish parliament from 1999 to 2007. Tragically this position was thrown away as a result of the subsequent political mistakes and actions of the SSP leadership, including their role in the prosecution and jailing of Tommy Sheridan, leaving a clear field for the SNP in the Scottish parliament for the last four years.



Certainly, I believe, there would have been a large minority who would have not paid the poll tax due to economic factors. But what gave the anti-poll tax movement confidence was that there were other people struggling against the poll tax through a co-ordinated body called the All Britain Anti-Poll tax Federation, which gave a flow of information and ‘propaganda’ that did not come from the capitalist owned media. And no, not every of the 2000+ ATPUs were set-up by Militant members. But what was Militant’s “pivotal role”, to use your words, was the strategy in creating the idea of the APTU in late 1987, early 1988, in Scotland along with the idea of non-payment.



Ok, you do not accept the “triumphalism of James”, but let me quote Thatcher herself "For the first time a government had declared that anyone who could reasonably afford to do so should at least pay something towards the upkeep of the facilities and the provision of the services from which they benefited. A whole class of people - an 'underclass' if you will - had been dragged back into the ranks of responsible society and asked to become not just dependants but citizens. The violent riots of 31 March in and around Trafalgar Square was their and the Left's response. And the eventual abandonment of the charge represented one of the greatest victories for these people ever conceded by a Conservative Government."
(Margaret Thatcher: The Downing Street Years: page 661). The Scottish Conservative MPs before the poll tax was introduced publically supported it and Thatcher, but privately they were telling her to get rid of it or lose even more Scottish MPs. They lost all of their MPs in Scotland in the 1992 election.



“The defeat of the Poll Tax closed an old chapter, but it did not start a new one. In effect, the battle had been won but the war had been lost.” There is an element of truth in this. However, I feel, like a number of comments from yourself it is just a throwaway aside. At the same time of the poll tax struggle was the epoch making process of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, in other words the collapse of Stalinism, over 1989 to 1991. This was combined with international bourgeois triumphalism at their ’victory’ over ‘communism’ meant this had a devastating effect on the socialist consciousness of labour movement activists and the general political consciousness of the working class in Britain and through-out the world.


Working class political parties such as the Labour Party over the early 1990s collapsed completely from being a workers’ party albeit with a pro-capitalist leadership into bourgeois political parties. The working people in Britain for the past 15 to 20 years have not had its own political representation is due to the low level of political consciousness and a weakening of collective cohesion within the working class at the moment. Nevertheless, the “war” has not been lost, the “war” will continue as long as we have the capitalist system; because the capitalist system is a class system and as we will see in the events over the Cuts in the social wage of society the classes cannot be reconciled.



We must learn the lessons of the past such as the Anti-Poll Tax battle, the Liverpool City Council battle, the UCS battle, the events up to and including the 1926 General Strike, et al, to fight the Cuts that are being imposed on the British working class, as well as the European Working Class



In conclusion, I want to say that I do not take exception to your observations, but I do want to clarify your “asides” and comments based on my experience and political knowledge of 35 years involvement in the labour and trade union movement. I do not take “the line”, as you put it, because I discuss out within the SP the political perspectives, strategy and tactics of the political situation that flows from and within the capitalist world and labour movement. The collective cohesion of the SP/CWI is what I presume you mean when you say that we are ”just defending the line”.



I offer the above as a clarification to your comments and not as a hostile polemic. I believe a whole generation had lost the collective cohesion due to the events of, and over, the past 20 years. There has been a certain retying amongst a certain section of young people over the past 8/9 months around the student issues, which is another topic altogether. The point is to get involved in the anti-cuts movement to help to develop the cohesion of the working class in action. Along with building a political voice for the anti-cuts movement by building political representation for the working class by developing and building a new workers’ party. Fraternally, Jimmy

[Devrim]

Another point you make “Then I'm sure you know that the 'mass uprising' you speak of, - and I presume you mean the Trafalgar Square riots, - was hardly the Militant tendencies finest moment. I think, though I'm not sure, that it was Steve Nally, - I've also seen Tommy Sheridan credited with this, - that went on television and threatened to 'name names' with regards the 'troublemakers'; and from then on Militant was increasingly marginalised within the movement.” Have you seen this, please post it because it will be the first time I have ever seen this so-called interview that Tommy Sheridan and Steve Nally said they would name names.

I saw this interview at the time. If I remember correctly, it was on the lunchtime news on the Sunday after the London demo. The idea that some individual should post a clip from a news report from over twenty years ago is plainly absurd. I would imagine though that an organisation that was the size of militant at the time would probably have recorded it, and have a copy in their archives.

Of course, as has been pointed out your own source quotes directly from it:


A quote from All-Britain Federation secretary, Steve Nally, on ITN news, proposing to "hold our own internal inquiry" into the events "which will go public and if necessary name names"

http://www.socialismtoday.org/137/demo.html

It is clear that this interview happened, and one would imagine the political descendants of the Militant actually have a copy. Why not ask your own organisation about putting it up on their site for people to see it?


As I said before the ABAPTF put the blame full and square on the Thatcher Government and the Police leadership for the riot and no individual names were named from the anti-poll tax side.

I don't think that anybody has ever claimed that they said they would name names, but that they said they would. This is attested to by your source. Personally I think that they must have realised what a mistake it had been shortly after saying it.


The 31 March 1990 demo and riot alone did not compel the government or Thatcher to immediately retreat. It took a protracted non-payment campaign with 18 million people refusing to pay to achieve this. This was accompanied by some strikes, such as by civil servants in Glasgow.

I can remember one strike in England over the Poll Tax, which of course doesn't mean that others didn't happen. It was at Brixton UBO, and was incidentally organised by anarchists.


As the title of this book suggests this is an academic political history of a leading left-wing academic, his rise to left-wing, Marxist politics in the 1960s through to the 1980s and his rejection of them after the collapse of Stalinism in the late 80s and onwards. However, I quote these passages by this author to show that the anti-poll tax campaign was the reason, the foundation, for the departure of Thatcher and everything else that came after that, for example, Europe, by-election defeats, were secondary. The author, Paul Blackledge, in no way could be called a Militant/SP/CWI member.

It is a left-wing myth, and it is repeated throughout those circles, not only within the CWI, and IMT. It is pretty impossible to prove it either way. It is, however, my opinion that the role of the PollTax has been blown up to be greater than it was.

Devrim

[Jolly Red Giant]

I saw this interview at the time. If I remember correctly, it was on the lunchtime news on the Sunday after the London demo. The idea that some individual should post a clip from a news report from over twenty years ago is plainly absurd. I would imagine though that an organisation that was the size of militant at the time would probably have recorded it, and have a copy in their archives.
Devrim - do we really have to go through this nonsense again. I thought that we both agreed that debating the who, and what, of this interview was pointless. You again comment that somehow the CWI is suppressing the publication of a video of this interview - that we must have a copy and are refusing to upload it onto the internet. It is nonsense. Given the fact that some anarchists planned to engage in a riot surely you would have expected them to record their handywork for posterity??? How about you go and hassle them about it and stop repeatedly bring up this point every time a discussion on the poll tax pops up on this forum.


Of course, as has been pointed out your own source quotes directly from it:
Yes it does and it also outlines the context and the reasoning behind it - again as we have discussed previously more than once. You do not accept the position of the CWI on this - and that is fair enough - but in all honesty, to keep repeatedly bringing up the same points over and over again - when they have been repeatedly addressed by members of the CWI - is disingenuous. I would suggest that you simply post a link to the previous discussions and let people read through all the ins and outs there.

A thread dealing with the rebuilding of the left in Britain is really not the place to be re-hashing an old argument from 20 years ago (and one that has been done to death over that 20 years).



It is clear that this interview happened,
It is clear - yet you refuse to accept the context and the reasoning - and you ignore the fact that, not the CWI, but the rank-and-file members of the APTUs demanded action against these individuals at subsequent meetings and some were booted out of local APTU.

The one thing that you conveniently and repeatedly ignore is the fact that prior to the demonstration starting the mass of the participants on the demonstration took a democratic vote to engage in a mass, disciplined and peaceful protest. The individuals who engaged in the riot were thumbing their noses at the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people who attended the demonstration. Is it really surprising that those who wanted nothing to do with the riot would then demand that these people stand up and be held accountable for their actions (which they subsequently were). You also conveniently ignore the fact that not one single name was passed to any state institution and not one single piece of evidence that emerged from the APTUs was used in convicting those who were tried in the state courts for their part in the riot.


and one would imagine the political descendants of the Militant actually have a copy. Why not ask your own organisation about putting it up on their site for people to see it?
There you go again - we don't have a copy - and if one ever existed it is long gone. The CWI never hides it past actions or political positions - were archieve as much stuff as we possible can and make it available to whoever wants it (and recent developments in technology have made it substantially easier than it used to be). I suggest that if you want to continue chewing on this bone that you contact ITN and ask them to upload a copy - I am sure they would accomodate you if there was a possibility that it might embarrass the CWI.



I don't think that anybody has ever claimed that they said they would name names,
Of course they did - every left-wing hack in every far-left organsiation regarded it (from their perspective) as an ideal stick with which to beat the CWI. This nonsense became an urban legend and still emerges from time to time when some small sect recruits some unsuspecting teenager who swallows the myth hook, line and sinker.


Personally I think that they must have realised what a mistake it had been shortly after saying it.
There was no mistake - It is not only reasonable - it is absolutely vital - that the workers movement (and in this case the mass movement against the Poll Tax) holds people - who purport to be acting on behalf of that movement - democratically accountable for their actions. Those who participated in the riots went directly against the democratic wishes to the APTF as expressed in local meetings all over the country and at the begining of the demostration on the day - (and the responsibility for the riots rests with the state - not the protestors - just so I am not accused of blaming anyone other that the state for the riot). The APTF was right to hold these people accountable for their actions and the rank-and-file membership had every right to vent their anger at those who simply ignored the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of the members.



I can remember one strike in England over the Poll Tax, which of course doesn't mean that others didn't happen. It was at Brixton UBO, and was incidentally organised by anarchists.
Again - maybe you memory is a little fuzzy after all these years! At the time fo the anti-poll tax campaign there was a lengthy debate about the tactics surrounding the campaign. Sharp exchanges occurred, particularly between the Militant and the SWP who advocated payment of the poll tax and that trade unionists should refuse to collect the tax. Fortunately the Militant won the debate within the organising meetings that took place - the SWP strategy would have been a failure. There could be a situation where industrial action/ refusal of workers to collect a charge, could become necessary to defeat the bourgeois attacks - e.g. if the state used the courts to sequester payment of the charge from workers who were refusing to pay or from welfare recipients who were refusing to pay - but it is a high-risk strategy that is very difficult to implement.



It is a left-wing myth, and it is repeated throughout those circles, not only within the CWI, and IMT. It is pretty impossible to prove it either way. It is, however, my opinion that the role of the PollTax has been blown up to be greater than it was.
The defeat of the poll tax was a key defining moment in Thatcher's rule - it demonstrated that a mass movement of working class people could stop the bourgeois state in its tracks and when the bourgeoisie can no longer guarantee their representatives can do their bidding then they replace them with someone else.

Exactly the same scenario occurred in Ireland with the anti-water charges campaign in the mid-1990s (again led by the CWI in Ireland) a mass non-payment campaign led to collapsing support for the government and their eventual removal in the 1997 general election (despite the fact that they caved in and abolished the charges in 1996). A similar situation is currently opening up in Ireland where the govenment are intenting to impose a flat rate property tax and a flat rate utility charge coupled with the installation of water meters to facilitiate the privatisation of the country's water supply system. There will be a major political battle fought over these charges - the Socialist Party/ CWI will play a major part in organising opposition and will build a mass non-payment campaign in an attempt to defeat this part of the austerity programme of the IMF/ECB.

Final point - I suggest that if you want to discuss the anti-poll-tax campaign you do it in the context of the lessons that can be learnt for building the left in Britain and fighting the current onslaught of the ruling class on the working class in that country (and confine the urban myths to the dustbin of history).

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Downfall– The Tommy Sheridan Story’ by Alan McCombes

Book review by Philip Stott, from July/August 2011 issue of Socialism Today (journal of the Socialist Party – CWI in England and Wales)

The recently published book, Downfall – The Tommy Sheridan Story, has been lauded by sections of the Scottish media. But it’s only possible merit for socialistsis that it tangentially explains the reasons for the rise and fall of the Scottish Socialist Party by revealing the political retreat from socialist ideas of its author and former leading SSP figure, Alan McCombes.

Written by Alan McCombes, a founder and one-time chief strategist of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), Downfall was written with the purported aim of clearing up “the mysteries of the Tommy Sheridan legal drama” and allowing “the Scottish socialist left to move on and recover the ground it has lost”. Instead, however, it is a completely one-sided, blatantly self-serving and distorted account of the events that engulfed the SSP from November 2004 on, leading eventually to its demise.

The book attempts to justify why the leadership of the SSP became the main prop by which the capitalist state machine, the sworn enemies of socialism and the working class, achieved the prosecution and jailing of Tommy Sheridan. “If Tommy was allowed to walk away untouched by justice”, McCombes writes, “he would be unstoppable. History would be rewritten to his script and the reputations of honourable people would be forever stained”. Any hypocritical moralising bourgeois journalist could have written this sentence. Unfortunately, there are many more of the same vein in Downfall.

The ‘honourable’ author of Downfall at one time played a leading role in the ranks of Militant in Scotland – the forerunner of the Socialist Party. Judging by the evidence of this book he has retained nothing of his political past. The book’s title, ‘Downfall’, is no accident. It is the same as the film about the last days of Hitler. And McCombes openly attempts to equate Tommy Sheridan and those who backed him against the Murdoch empire with fascism and dictatorship. “I had long understood”, he writes, “the social and economic conditions upon which people like Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and a hundred other lesser dictators rose to power. But now, for the first time, I was beginning to get an insight into the politics of tyranny”.

How different is this from the right-wing journalists who smeared Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill and other leading left figures in the past as ‘dictators’? This book, if it has any merit, is a warning of the consequences of abandoning a Marxist programme, methods and principles. It is in many respects a story of political infanticide; given that those who brought the SSP into life went on to engineer its destruction after only a few short years.



Crisis engulfs the SSP
The SSP was launched in 1998 and until November 2004 had made a significant impact on Scottish politics. In the 2003 Scottish parliament elections the SSP polled 128,000 votes, winning six MSP’s and 6.7% of the national vote. Today, only smouldering wreckage remains. The 2011 Scottish elections saw the party slump to just 8,200 votes (0.4%). From 3,000 members at its height the SSP today has only a handful of activists.

If this book were a serious attempt to draw out the lessons of the SSP’s collapse and to point a way forward it would at least have a purpose. The need for a powerful mass working class and socialist party in Scotland is more important today than ever. At a time of unprecedented crisis for the capitalist system, when millions are facing savage cuts to jobs, public services and welfare benefits, the absence of socialist and left political representation of a sizable or mass character is a major obstacle.

But instead the motivation for Downfall, aside from swelling the author’s bank account, is purely to justify the SSP leadership’s role in the jailing of Tommy Sheridan. As Alan McCombes boasts, the “vast majority” of witnesses who gave evidence in Tommy’s perjury trial were SSP members.

As is well known a major crisis erupted in the SSP in late 2004 over how to deal with tabloid stories about Tommy Sheridan. On 9 November 2004 a special executive committee (EC) meeting of the SSP took place to discuss the issue. Tommy Sheridan said he wanted to take legal action against the News of the World (NoW), which subsequently ran stories about his alleged sexual activities. The EC voted for him to resign if he decided to go ahead with legal action. The next day Tommy Sheridan resigned as SSP national convener and the party was thrown into turmoil and never recovered.

The Committee for a Workers International (CWI) platform of the SSP wrote at the time that “if the EC had not given Tommy Sheridan an immediate ultimatum to drop his denial and legal action and made it clear publicly that the right-wing tabloid allegations were an attempt to undermine the SSP and Tommy Sheridan, this situation could potentially have been avoided”.

It was one thing to consider whether or not to take legal action as a party, we wrote. “That issue, however, should not have immediately been linked to Tommy’s right to take such action or his position in the party. Of course, the personal conduct of a leading member of a political party can damage, sometimes severely, the reputation of that party. The tabloid allegations, completely unproven, made against Tommy Sheridan, do not fall into that category.

“These events have been a gift to a brutal anti-working class scandal sheet with a long track record of attempting to undermine socialists and trade unionists, including through the use of ‘sex scandals’. The crisis has been made worse by repeated statements from leading SSP members to the press that the party would not back Tommy Sheridan in his legal action against the NoW. There were also claims by leading EC members that he wanted the party to lie to protect him”.

All this, we argued, “has played into the hands of the capitalist media who have produced acres of newsprint over how the SSP has lost its best asset and is tearing itself apart over the issue. The EC carries significant responsibility for that situation developing in the way that it has”. (23 November 2004)

Seven years on we would not alter a single word of this statement. Despite our political differences with Tommy Sheridan, who left the ranks of the CWI in 2001 with Alan McCombes, we recognised this would do major damage to the SSP.

Tommy Sheridan was widely seen as the public figure through which the vast majority of working class people identified with the SSP. This was a result of his uncompromising stand against the poll tax, and as a politician who was seen as a fighter for the poor and working class. We called for a united front by the SSP against the NoW. For us the over-riding interest was to avoid a damaging fall-out that would undermine the SSP.

What a contrast to the approach of the McCombes grouping. “Damage limitation was the name of the game”, claims McCombes, yet within days they had embarked on a course that was to cause catastrophic damage to the SSP. In response to Tommy Sheridan’s determination to take legal action they orchestrated a campaign to ensure his defeat.





By any means necessary
The lengths they were prepared to go are laid bare in Downfall. Two days after Tommy’s resignation McCombes met a Sunday Herald journalist, Paul Hutcheon, and confirmed that the SSP EC had discussed issues to do with Tommy’s personal life, and voted for him to resign. Effectively he was giving a green light to the Herald that the NoW stories were ‘true’. The following day he signed an affidavit at the Herald’s Glasgow offices confirming the information he had given.

At a press conference following Tommy’s resignation a reference was made to minutes of the EC meeting being “under lock and key”. It later became clear that these minutes reported Tommy Sheridan ‘admitting’ to attending a swingers’ club in Manchester. These were used as a key plank of the NoW’s defence alongside the SSP leaders’ own testimony during the 2006 defamation case and again at the perjury trial in 2010. There was widespread anger that such information could have been written down as ‘minutes’, kept, and their existence publicly declared to the press. The SSP leadership already knew that if a defamation case went ahead they would give evidence against Tommy Sheridan.

Throughout the book McCombes claims that he and the SSP leadership were motivated by the pursuit of a “fundamental morality” of “telling the truth”, and later of a “no-holds barred fight to the finish” against Tommy Sheridan. With this mindset all methods were justified to ‘save the party’. This included selling a video to the NoW, supposedly of Tommy Sheridan admitting to affairs and the swingers’ club visit, following the 2006 defamation victory.

There is not a word of criticism in Downfall about the deal done between Bob Bird, Scottish editor of the NoW, and SSP member George McNeilage, who recorded a tape, he claims, in November 2004. With a straight face Downfall describes how McNeilage gives Bob Bird a lecture about the crimes of News International and the Wapping dispute before asking for £200,000 from the same organisation that smashed the print workers in 1986.

McCombes says that when the video was made public by the NoW “the reaction of most of us was straightforward relief”. A perjury investigation by the Scottish Crown would now take place. The overwhelming majority of socialists in Scotland, however, and trade unionists and working class people generally, celebrated Tommy Sheridan’s win over Murdoch in 2006. This was a straight forward class response; a desire to see a socialist fighter triumph over the rich and powerful. Had the SSP leadership drawn back, even then, perhaps the SSP could have survived. But they chose a course of action that was to have catastrophic consequences.

The CWI did not agree with Tommy Sheridan that he should take a defamation case over these stories and we said so. The capitalist courts are not the best terrain for socialists to fight on, especially over issues of a personal character. But there was no question as to whose side we would be on if a court case did take place.

McCombes asks his critics, “what other course of action would you have taken?”. But that was already shown by the principled stand of a number of SSP members who did attend the November EC meeting. Rosemary Byrne, Graeme McIver, Jock Penman and Pat Smith all gave evidence in 2006 and 2010 that was unambiguous: at no time, they said, did Tommy Sheridan admit to visiting a swingers’ club in Manchester and the minutes of the meeting were therefore inaccurate. The NoW case in reality hinged on the evidence of the McCombes group and the disputed November ‘minutes’. They couldn’t believe their luck that the SSP leaders were prepared to side with them in this battle.

The tabloid snakes, with the toxic Murdoch brand at their head, live and breathe on ‘sex scandals’. Why should a responsible leadership of a socialist party offer up one of its own as a sacrifice? In the disturbed social and economic situation we are in today, with the re-emergence of class conflict and struggle on a wider scale, they will inevitably seek to undermine workers’ leaders and socialists with stories of a personal character. The phone-hacking conducted by News International’s papers, and probably most of the British tabloids, testify to this.

The actions of the SSP leadership in the Tommy Sheridan case only legitimise future ‘exposés’. Even if you believed every one of the stories written about Tommy Sheridan, and many are repeated tabloid-style in Downfall, he committed no crime against the interests of the working class. Tommy Sheridan’s political mistake was to break with the programme and ideas of the CWI and what is now the Socialist Party, and to encourage others to do the same. He has paid a heavy personal price for that, given the role played by his former comrades.

The central issue for socialists is to oppose everything that strengthens the hand of the capitalists and weakens the working class and its interests. In no sense can the jailing of Tommy Sheridan be seen as a step forward for the working class or for socialism.





Role of the capitalist state
The twelve-week perjury trial in 2010 was the longest and most expensive of its kind in Scottish legal history. The number of witnesses named by the prosecution was greater than the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war. Over four years following his successful defamation case against the NoW in 2006 the police, the Scottish Crown and News International conducted a colossal campaign against Tommy Sheridan, his family and supporters. More than £4 million of public money was spent, involving more than 40,000 hours of police time. In addition millions in legal costs, and payments to prosecution witnesses, were invested by the NoW itself.

This was not done without reason. McCombes claims that “Tommy Sheridan was no longer a threat to the state” but the campaign against him was an unambiguous example of class revenge. As even Downfall grudgingly admits, Tommy was a key figure in the mass anti-poll tax movement that was instrumental in ending the Thatcher era. The ruling class don’t easily forget.

There are incredible efforts by McCombes to testify to the ‘even-handed’ nature of the Scottish legal system and the police. He claims that because the Scottish National Party (SNP) now ‘control’ the justice system and the Crown Office (which is not the case), it is not an instrument of the capitalist state for dispensing class justice. “The SNP backed the anti-poll tax campaign”, he asserts. Again this is not true as the SNP, in the main, did not support the mass non-payment strategy and certainly today would run a mile from such a campaign that ‘broke the law’. But anyway, McCombes writes, the leading figures in the Crown Office who triggered the perjury inquiry and the prosecution of Tommy Sheridan came from “the backstreets” and went to “state schools”!

It is a basic ABC of Marxism that the state machine, including the legal system, is overwhelming biased and in the last analysis exists to defend capitalist interests. That extends to a criminal justice system that is overwhelmingly weighted against women, the working class and the poor generally. The top echelons, the judges, the leading advocates etc, are trained, educated and in that sense handpicked to ensure the interests of capitalism are protected. Was not Tommy Sheridan jailed for defying a court order in 1992 during the anti-poll tax campaign? Were scores of miners not prosecuted in Scotland for defending their jobs and communities in the 1984-85 miners strike? Or are we to swallow the idea that since devolution and under the influence of the pro-capitalist SNP there now exists a benign legal system in Scotland?

Lothian and Borders police are also given the McCombes clean bill of health. “Since 2006 the strongest criticisms of Lothian and Borders police have come not from the left but from the right”. They never showed “any special prejudice” towards Tommy Sheridan before the perjury inquiry. Will McCombes stand by these statements as the police, the courts and state in Scotland are increasingly used against workers and communities fighting to defend their jobs, services and pensions in the future?

Scottish Militant Labour
Alan McCombes has travelled a long way from his political roots. At one time he was a leading member of Militant in Scotland – the forerunner to what is now the Socialist Party.

Militant emerged as the largest Marxist organisation in Britain in the 1980s. We led mass struggles including the Liverpool council battle of 1983 to 1987. We spearheaded the anti-poll tax movement, with millions of people refusing to pay, which was a key factor in the fall of the seemingly invincible Margaret Thatcher.

Scottish Militant Labour (SML) was the autonomous section of the British Militant organisation, set-up in 1992 following a lengthy debate in the Militant and the CWI over a proposal from the Militant leadership to establish a Scottish organisation outside the Labour Party. This marked a departure following many years of work in the Labour Party. By the early 1990s, however, Labour was well on the way to being transformed from a ‘capitalist workers’ party’ – a party with pro-capitalist leaders but with democratic structures that allowed its working class base to fight for its interests – into an out-and-out party of capitalism. Under these conditions an open organisation in Scotland, given Militant’s leading role in the anti-poll tax struggle, offered the best strategy for building the forces of Marxism.

SML made a number of important gains in the early 1990s. Tommy Sheridan’s jailing in 1992 for defying a court order not to attend a mass demonstration to prevent a warrant sale by sheriff officers backfired spectacularly against the ruling class. From his prison cell he won 6,287 votes (19.3%) standing in Glasgow Pollok at the 1992 general election, coming second and defeating the SNP. A month later Tommy was elected to Glasgow council, shocking the Scottish political establishment. In the June 1994 European elections Tommy Sheridan, standing for SML in the all-Glasgow Euro-constituency, polled 12,113 votes (7.6%). This compares very well to the 18,581 votes (7.2%) he polled across Glasgow in 1999 when first elected to the Scottish parliament.

At least McCombes manages to mention his involvement in Militant and our role in the Liverpool and anti-poll tax struggles. However, he also finds it necessary to indulge in myth-making, distortions and cheap insults. He writes that the CWI is a “rigidly hierarchical organisation”, “dogmatic” and “intolerant”. It’s a wonder he stayed as a member of Militant for the 20 years that he did. Downfall is littered with such references, including accusations that the entire CWI is “London controlled”.

Surely the geographical location of the CWI’s international offices is a completely secondary question to its political programme and analysis? But McCombes’ criticisms about ‘London control’ are simply an example of his own nationalist political degeneration, reflected in an inability to debate ideas from a socialist and internationalist standpoint. He is left instead to resort to slurs.

In reality the CWI is scrupulously democratic. Full debate on policy, strategy and tactics, including differing views to that of the elected leadership, are encouraged through democratic discussion. The parties and groups that make up the CWI ensure full participation by members at all levels from the branches, to the national committees to the national congresses of the national sections that make up the CWI. This can take the form of debate and discussion as well as resolutions, documents and even the right to form factions – organised groupings to advocate a specific policy for the party or international. Once a position is decided at a congress the party then unites to carry out that policy – while upholding the right of all members to continue to argue for a change in policy or approach.

Each national section of the CWI has its own democratic structures and elected leadership which is responsible for developing its perspectives, policy, strategy and tactics as they apply to their specific countries. The CWI as an international has the right and duty to discuss the work of the national sections, just as the national sections also are encouraged to discuss the work of their sister sections and those of the CWI as a whole. In that way we learn from each other and strengthen the overall experience of the CWI as a whole.

The idea of an “intolerance of dissent” is laughable when you consider the almost three years of debate and voluminous written exchanges that took place between the CWI and leaders of the SSP before they left the CWI in 2001. The documents which formed ‘the Scottish debate’ are available at http://www.marxist.net/scotland/index.html

Building new mass workers’ parties
This example of the debate that took place over the launch of the SSP completely counters McCombes’ claim that the CWI is intolerant of dissent. Downfall only touches briefly on the differences that arose between the grouping that went on to become the leadership of the SSP and the CWI leadership.

In early 1998 Alan McCombes wrote a document agreed by the SML executive committee called ‘Initial proposals for a new Scottish Socialist Party’. In essence it was a proposal to dissolve SML by transferring all the full timers, offices and equipment to a new SSP and to wind-up the cohesive revolutionary organisation that had been built in Scotland over decades of work.

Not surprisingly the overwhelming majority of the leadership and the national sections of the CWI opposed this. The CWI leadership proposed instead two possible alternatives. Option one was to relaunch SML as a Marxist SSP affiliated to the CWI; and option two was to support the creation of the SSP as a broad socialist party but also to maintain an organised and well-resourced Marxist force within it. After six months of debate the majority of SML voted to go ahead with launching the SSP while effectively dissolving themselves into the broader party.

McCombes claims that this debate was tantamount to the CWI leaders “moving to crush the rebellious Scots”. In fact the 1998 CWI world congress, while putting on record its belief that the proposals put forward by the SML EC for the organisation of CWI members in Scotland were inadequate “for the functioning of a cohesive revolutionary organisation”, continued to recognise the CWI group in the SSP as a full section.

No expulsion or threats of expulsion, no “venom and fury” from the CWI, as Downfall claims. Instead a commitment to continue the discussions around the fundamental political issues that surrounded the Scottish debate. The CWI leadership were confident that over time and through experience the majority of CWI members in Scotland would be convinced of the need to build a revolutionary organisation within the SSP.

The 1990s was a difficult and complex time socialists internationally. The ideological triumph of capitalism after the collapse of Stalinism had a profound impact on workers’ consciousness and their organisations. The transformation of former workers’ parties into capitalist formations – from Labour to New Labour in Britain – was a product of this era. It was clear to the CWI that this process necessitated the building of new mass workers’ parties and encouraging all genuine steps in this direction, while also continuing to build distinct and cohesive Marxist organisations.

CWI sections have and are participating in a number of new left formations internationally in an effort to help build political representation for workers and young people. Despite the claims in Downfall the CWI supported the setting up of the SSP. But we insisted on continuing with building a clearly identified Marxist trend within the SSP. In contrast Alan McCombes and the other SSP leaders had drawn the conclusion that this was outmoded and historically redundant. That was the fundamental point of difference during the debate.

Alan McCombes and the other SSP leaders, including Tommy Sheridan, by this time an MSP, left the CWI in January 2001. Following the split the Scottish section of the CWI – then a platform in the SSP, now called Socialist Party Scotland – found ourselves in opposition to the political backsliding of the SSP leadership, who were moving rapidly away from the ideas they once stood for. This was reflected in key debates that took place over the political programme and direction that the SSP should take.

Political backsliding
One example was Alan McCombes’ draft of the SSP’s European manifesto for the 2004 elections. Omitting any reference to the need for public ownership of the multinational corporations that control the Scottish and European economies, the manifesto said the aim of the SSP was to build a ‘social Europe’, rather than a socialist Europe.

What this meant was shown by the manifesto highlighting the examples of Denmark and Norway as models for how an independent Scotland could operate. Denmark has “some of the most impressive public services in the world”, it claimed. This was no more than support for a 1960s-type Scandinavian social democratic model for capitalism, with a socialist Scotland pushed off into the distant future. Against the backdrop of the crisis engulfing Europe, with Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland facing economic collapse, mass movements, and the possible break-up of the Eurozone, how inadequate does the SSP’s 2004 manifesto seem today?

Similarly over the national question in Scotland there was an increasing turn to reformist, left nationalist ideas. McCombes argues that he worked “to gradually push SML from 1995 onwards towards a more clear-cut pro-independence stance”, which the CWI leadership only supported, he claims, through “gritted teeth”.

Militant and the CWI have always taken a sensitive and principled position on the national question. We base our approach on the analysis made by Marxists, including Lenin and Trotsky, who fought for a policy that advocated the right for nations and minorities to self-determination, up to and including the right of independence. They argued against outstanding revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg who felt this was a concession to nationalism. At the same time they stood implacably for the unity of the working class regardless of nationality or religion. This was summed up in the idea of a voluntary and democratic socialist federation of states.

Militant supported a Yes vote in the 1979 devolution referendum, while also explaining the limits of the devolved assembly and calling for public ownership and democratic working class control and management of the economy. We called for unity of the Scottish, English and Welsh working class and, while supporting Scotland’s right of self-determination, put forward the slogan of a Socialist Britain with autonomy for Scotland.

As the moods and consciousness of the working class has developed, so the CWI’s programme has evolved. By the late 1990s the idea of independence for Scotland had the support of around 30-40% of the Scottish people. In particular a majority of youth and a significant section of the working class supported independence. For many this was intimately linked to finding a solution to poverty and the inequalities under capitalism. In other words it was a class outlook, wrapped up in a national consciousness.

It was to take account of this change in consciousness that, in 1998, the SML conference voted to update our programme on the national question and support an independent socialist Scotland, which would link up with a socialist England, Wales and Ireland in a socialist confederation or alliance. But this was fully backed by the CWI international leadership – no teeth were ground. The change was an attempt to reach those workers and young people who looked to Scottish independence as a solution with socialist ideas.

However, after breaking from the CWI the SSP leaders increasingly dropped the ‘socialist’ prefix to promote the benefits of capitalist independence. By 2003 Alan McCombes was arguing that a central task for the SSP was to campaign to “break apart the UK” and advocated the creation of an “independence convention”. The SSP MSPs put an amendment to parliament that argued “the problem of poverty will never be solved until there is a fundamental redistribution of income and wealth which requires an independent Scotland” (September 2003). We countered that by omitting any reference to socialism this could only sow illusions that independence on a capitalist basis would be a solution to the problems facing working class communities in Scotland.

By the time the November 2004 crisis erupted the SSP leadership were in headlong retreat from the ideas and principles they once defended. Disarmed politically they capitulated in the most abject manner when the Murdoch press came calling for the SSP’s leading figure.

The task of re-building a fighting left and socialist alternative is already under way and will grow in the months and years ahead. Socialist Party Scotland, who are playing a leading role in the anti-cuts movement, are calling for a widespread anti-cuts challenge for next year’s Scottish local government elections, of candidates prepared to stand on a platform of no cuts, support for workers and communities opposing cuts, and for the setting of needs budgets. But what role will be played by Alan McCombes, after his part in reducing the SSP to a rump?

Perhaps the last page of Downfall is the most significant. McCombes admits to having “voluntarily stepped down from the frontline to make way for a new generation”. No longer active in socialist struggle and seemingly prepared to make his peace with capitalism, McCombes’ future lies elsewhere as a “freelance writer and journalist”. Downfall is his cynical and self-serving parting shot.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

This is an article about how to build working class representation in Britain from the Socialist Party.


Who speaks up for workers?
Next steps for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

The battle to defend public sector pensions shows again the political vacuum that exists in Britain today, with no mass party representing workers' interests.
Ahead of the 16 July conference of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, an electoral alliance involving leading militant trade unionists from the RMT, PCS and NUT, Clive Heemskerk looks at the role TUSC could play in helping to fill the vacuum and what the next steps should be for its development.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has now been in existence for 18 months. It was set up initially to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to stand candidates against the pro-austerity consensus of the establishment parties in the 2010 general election. Afterwards, however, a conference was held which agreed to continue with TUSC for future election campaigns.

By registering with the Electoral Commission, candidates can appear on the ballot paper as TUSC, or recognised variants such as Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts, rather than as 'Independent' which they would otherwise have to do under UK electoral law. 42 candidates stood at the 2010 general election and 177 contested May's local council elections.

The TUSC campaigns have been an extremely modest start. Generally candidates have polled no higher than Socialist Party and other left candidates had in previous elections (see Socialism Today No 149 for a full analysis of the May results).

Overall, in the seats contested in the local elections, for every voter who backed TUSC (25,000) there were ten Labour voters (245,000).

With no enthusiasm for, or even a full awareness of, Labour's own cuts policy, nevertheless Labour is still seen at least to be a viable governmental alternative to the Con-Dems.

The main purpose of TUSC's campaigns at this stage, however, is to reach the most militant trade unionists and community campaigners with the arguments for independent working class political representation. In that regard it has had some success.

TUSC candidates have involved an impressive array of union lay branch officers. Perhaps most indicative was the position in eight council wards in which the local Labour Parties were so moribund they didn't stand a candidate or stood for less than the total number of seats up for election.

TUSC candidates in these wards included an RMT transport workers' union regional president, a Unite branch secretary, a Unison branch chair, a Unite workplace rep, and a NASUWT teachers' union treasurer - trade unionists whose only means of fighting the cuts on the political plane was under the TUSC umbrella.

Regional officers of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the Communications Workers' Unions (CWU), and national officers of the RMT, the PCS civil servants' union, the National Union of Teachers (NUT), and the Prison Officers Association (POA), have been involved as TUSC steering committee members or election candidates.

The public sector pensions battle shows again the vacuum left by the transformation of Labour into the Blairised New Labour, from at bottom a workers' party into another 'normal' capitalist party. The symbolism is striking.

The Treasury chief secretary, Danny Alexander, the 'pension reforms' front man, is a Liberal Democrat, working with chancellor George Osborne, a Tory. The plans they hope to implement were drawn up by ex-cabinet minister, John Hutton, still a Labour member of the House of Lords. Meanwhile Labour spokespeople jostle to distance themselves from trade unionists taking action to defend their livelihoods.

In the 'age of austerity', it is clear, workers and big sections of the middle class too, lack a political voice. The capitalist politicians as a result feel less constrained in attempting to impose their policies than they would have done in the past. The steps taken - small though they are - on the road to re-establishing independent working class political representation, alone justify the establishment and continuation of TUSC.

Filling the vacuum


The Socialist Party is fully committed to TUSC. But this does not mean we see a linear progression from TUSC to a new workers' party as the most likely way that a new mass vehicle for working class political representation will develop.

The Labour Party itself was preceded by various attempts to establish a workers' party. Keir Hardie set up the Scottish Labour Party in 1888. The Bradford Labour Union, which arose out of the great Manningham Mills textile workers' strike (see The Socialist, No.668, 28/4/2011), was founded in 1891, followed by other Labour Unions across Northern England.

The Independent Labour Party (ILP), bringing together many of these organisations, was established in 1893, the political end product of the mass movement of militant 'new unionism' that developed in the late 1880s.

Yet these early attempts to build workers' political representation generally met with heavy election defeats, and at a national level the trade unions continued to support the Liberal Party. Even the ILP, the most successful 'pre-formation', did not develop into the mass workers' party that its founders hoped for, eventually becoming a component part of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC), formed in 1900 following a resolution at the 1899 TUC conference.

The LRC itself was not pre-ordained to develop into a mass party. To begin with a minority of TUC trade unionists were affiliated - 30% - and the LRC was able to contest just 15 seats in the 1900 general election. But the capitalists' subsequent offensive against the workers' movement under the new Tory government - typified in the Taff Vale court decision to open up railway union funds for strike damages - pushed the unions into political activity. By 1906 when the LRC became the Labour Party, nearly 60% of TUC trade unionists were affiliated.

The period we are entering, of growing mass battles against austerity policies, will see seismic changes in consciousness similar to those which preceded the formation of the Labour Party. Trade unions thrown into action against the cuts - or new struggles to defend themselves against anti-union laws - or mass community-based campaigns against particular aspects of the austerity agenda, may enter the electoral arena with a mass impact.

But filling the political vacuum today will most likely be as equally circuitous as the route to a new workers' party was over a hundred years ago. TUSC, which itself could make electoral breakthroughs on the road to a new mass formation, has an important role to play.

Trade union candidates



This May the PCS annual conference took the historic step of agreeing to hold a full membership ballot within the next year "to decide whether the union could stand or support candidates in national elections".

The motion agreed was moved by the union's left-led national executive committee (NEC), on which the Socialist Party has a strong but not majority presence. It recognised that "the political consensus that favours privatisation, cuts to public services and jobs" left union members with "a lack of real choice at the ballot box". On this basis, with no "voice for the interests of trade union members and other communities", the union should consider backing candidates when doing so "offers us the chance to advance our campaigns in members' interests".

If PCS members vote in favour this will be a major step forward for the whole trade union movement. The PCS has never been affiliated to the Labour Party, although a predecessor union, the Civil Servants Clerical Association, was from 1920 until barred from doing so by the 1927 Trade Unions Act (following the defeat of the general strike).

But while coming from a different tradition a yes vote would put the PCS in the same position as unions like the RMT, expelled from Labour in 2004, and the FBU, which voted to disaffiliate.

Overall there are now 1.673 million trade unionists in TUC-affiliated unions (out of a total TUC membership of 6.2 million - 27%) who pay into a union political fund which is not affiliated to Labour.

It was not an accident that the three unions with a political fund which took strike action on 30 June in defence of public sector pensions are not affiliated to, or more accurately, tied and bound by Labour - the PCS, the NUT and the University and College Union (UCU). An opportunity exists to extend unity in action onto the political plane.

Events and consciousness can develop more rapidly than may be apparent today. The idea that the most 'advanced' unions are those affiliated to Labour is clearly false. However, it is unlikely at this stage that even the left-led unions would win sufficiently wide membership support to take the lead, as at the time of the formation of the LRC, in establishing a new workers' party.

The PCS motion would allow the union's political fund to "support candidates as independents, or as members from existing parties, subject to NEC approval" - not to register a new party with the Electoral Commission.

But this would still be an important step forward. The RMT executive too decides on a case by case basis, considering requests from local branches and regional councils to back particular candidates. There are different rules also in the FBU, NUT, UCU etc on how their political funds operate.

In this situation it is vital that the TUSC banner remains available for trade unionists to take up, under their own control, when they wish to contest elections.

Community-based campaigns
In February this year the ex-MP for Wyre Forest, Dr Richard Taylor, issued an appeal for candidates to stand in the local elections in defence of the NHS. "It would be possible to register a new political party" - NHS Concern, he suggested - "as a referendum" on the Con-Dems' health 'reforms'. (The Guardian, 8 February) Richard Taylor was elected as an Independent Kidderminster Hospital and Health Concern candidate in 2001 as part of a campaign to restore the local hospital casualty unit, winning a landslide 58% vote.

In the event, the government announced a 'pause' in the NHS legislation in the run-up to the elections and there were no NHS Concern candidates in May. But Richard Taylor's intervention was a reminder of how community-based campaigns could emerge rapidly from the anti-cuts movement. However it also showed that the austerity agenda has many facets with, at this stage, not one overarching 'unifying' issue as, for example, the poll tax was from 1988-91.

The aftermath of the anti-poll tax movement showed how a wider electoral challenge can emerge from mass community campaigns.

Labour, before the advent of Blair and still seen then by many workers as 'our party', was the main electoral beneficiary of the opposition to the poll tax. But local Labour councillors, in the main, went along with punitive enforcement measures against poll tax non-payers.

This was an important factor in the early electoral successes of Scottish Militant Labour (SML), formed in 1992, the predecessor of the Socialist Party Scotland. Tommy Sheridan, chair of the All-Britain Anti-Poll Tax Federation, 'came from nowhere' to win second place in Glasgow Pollok with 6,287 votes (19.3%) in the April 1992 general election and, weeks later, SML won four seats on Glasgow council.

SML's success laid the basis for the development of the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), which won representation in the Scottish parliament from 1999 to 2007. This position was thrown away, unfortunately, by the subsequent political mistakes of the SSP leadership, including their role in the prosecution of Tommy Sheridan.

But it remains a fact that the translation of SML's support in the mass anti-poll tax movement into electoral success laid the basis for the emergence of a broad, socialist party in Scotland.

How the anti-cuts movement develops will be different, not least because of the central position of the trade unions. Fighting the cuts is also not a 'single-issue' campaign but, on the contrary, a 'multi-issue' one.

Richard Taylor's appeal called for "current and retired health workers" to be candidates, because "the presence of councillors with knowledge of the NHS would be vital in view of local authority health scrutiny functions". But what would 'NHS only' candidates say about the massive cuts to council jobs and services? What about linking with teachers, parents, librarians, social workers, council tenants and other council service users?

That's why TUSC is important for anti-cuts campaigners who want to take their struggle into the political domain on a broader basis. TUSC's local elections policy clearly opposes all cuts to jobs, services, pay and conditions, and candidates seeking to stand as TUSC must accept this minimum programme.

But with otherwise complete control of their candidacies, all anti-cuts campaigners can use the TUSC banner to fight elections as part of a national campaign. The road to a new political voice for workers in the age of austerity is through the anti-cuts struggle, in the unions but also in community campaigns.

The next steps for TUSC
TUSC is a federal 'umbrella' coalition, with core election policies but with participating candidates and organisations accountable for their own campaigns. The national steering committee, which only takes decisions if there is a consensus, includes, in a personal capacity, leading officials of the RMT, PCS and NUT, including RMT general secretary Bob Crow.

The Socialist Party, involved from the outset, and the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), which joined later, are also represented.

This federal approach guarantees the rights of participating organisations, at local and national level, of TUSC candidates and, in the absence of formal union affiliations at this stage, of the individual trade union leaders involved. For this latter reason in particular, the Socialist Party favours retaining it. The importance of TUSC lies, above all, in its potential to act as a catalyst in the trade unions for the idea of working class political representation.

That is why we are not in favour of moving to an 'individual membership' organisation which removes the rights of national trade union officials on the TUSC steering committee to endorse candidates and election policy proposals. Ironically, Labour's right-wing used 'one member, one vote reforms' in the 1990s to dilute the role of union representatives in the party's structures.

The argument that the federal approach makes it hard to build TUSC's profile between elections is also false. There was no individual membership of the Labour Party until 1918. Trades councils, ad-hoc groups of miners' lodges, or branches of constituent organisations like the ILP, would be the local organising body of the Labour Party. But this did not stop it winning elections! Above all TUSC will build a profile by its candidates and supporters being involved in struggle, against the cuts and in the unions.

But there are steps that can be taken to further involve individual supporters of TUSC who are not members of the Socialist Party and the SWP while not diluting the role of the trade unions. The Socialist Party is sponsoring a proposal that the recently-formed TUSC Independent Socialist Network should also have a steering committee place and no doubt other ideas will be discussed.

TUSC is still a 'work in progress', in a period when there is sustained hostility to all 'politicians' - the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey found that 40% of people "almost never" trust politicians, up from 11% in 1987. Consciousness has not yet developed on a mass basis for the need for a new vehicle of working class political representation.

But it will do in the 'Greek-style' events ahead. TUSC is a coalition that must continue with the vital task of taking forward the argument for workers to find their own political voice.

[SHORAS]

The Sheridan "name names" interview has been on Youtube a while. I thinks it's titled 'Poll Tax Revolt'. There are some hillarious soundbites too.

[Q]

The Sheridan "name names" interview has been on Youtube a while. I thinks it's titled 'Poll Tax Revolt'. There are some hillarious soundbites too.

You'll have to be a bit more specific. I've watched six "poll tax revolt" videos now and I see a few interviews, but nowhere is the "name names" stuff to be found.

[A Marxist Historian]

And according to Marx, the state, in the sense of a centralised hierarchical body (rather than in the sense of an autonomous communist municipality, as referred to by his- I think misleading- use of the term "workers' state) is by definition incapable of carrying the working class through a revolutionary struggle. Even at his most sympathetic to participation in bourgeois struggles, he never regarded the centralised bourgeois model of the state as capable of doing anything more useful than advancing the cause of the working class within capitalism- that is, to advance the cause of labour, but not to free it from capital- and, perhaps, dissolving itself so as to minimise the chaos and violence encountered in the eventual proletarian revolution.These comments seem to contradict each other. On the one hand, you present the choice between communal and statist organisational forms as mere fine-tuning, but then you claim to accept Marx's assertion that the construction of the former not merely as an alternative to the latter but in direct political contradiction to it? How can the two be reconciled?

You are projecting the difference between a bourgeois state and a workers' not-quite-a-state as the difference between centralism and decentralism. That is hardly a class distinction. Indeed, as a general abstract proposition Marx preferred centralization to decentralization.

Earlier in this thread you quote Marx's famous line about how the working class can't simply take hold of the bourgeois state. Your interpretation of this is that what Marx is really saying there is no such thing as a workers' state, though that contradicts other things Marx said as you know.

I hold to the simple obvious commonsense interpretation, that he is saying that workers need to smash the old capitalist state root and branch, not vote themselves into office in it. This is his fundamental statement against Social Democratic reformism in general and Bernsteinism in particular. It is thoroughly consistent with his call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or if you prefer a workers' state. The foundation stone of what is usually thought of as Leninism.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

You are projecting the difference between a bourgeois state and a workers' not-quite-a-state as the difference between centralism and decentralism. That is hardly a class distinction.
I don't think I am, actually. The distinct class character of each form of state is, I would've thought, assumed; I'm merely suggesting that the proper expression of the proletarian state is through a more decentralised, associative model.


Indeed, as a general abstract proposition Marx preferred centralization to decentralization.Well, there's centralisation and there's centralisation. Marx certainly advocated for a certain degree of centralised decision making (and there's a debate to what extent he was correct to do so), but he didn't argue for the centralisation of political power along the bourgeois model. Unless I am seriously misreading him, his centralisation would take the form of "upwards delegation", as it were, rather than the centralised state as representing the declared expression of popular sovereignty and delegating downwards from there, which is (give or take some technical complications in federal nations) the bourgeois model.


Earlier in this thread you quote Marx's famous line about how the working class can't simply take hold of the bourgeois state. Your interpretation of this is that what Marx is really saying there is no such thing as a workers' state, though that contradicts other things Marx said as you know.
Well, what I said is that I consider Marx's use of the term "workers's state" to be misleading, rather than his conception of the form that this "state" would take, i.e. autonomous municipalities. It's a semantic issue, rather than a theoretical one.


I hold to the simple obvious commonsense interpretation, that he is saying that workers need to smash the old capitalist state root and branch, not vote themselves into office in it. This is his fundamental statement against Social Democratic reformism in general and Bernsteinism in particular. It is thoroughly consistent with his call for the dictatorship of the proletariat, or if you prefer a workers' state. The foundation stone of what is usually thought of as Leninism.Well, by Leninists, certainly.

[Zanthorus]

I consider Marx's use of the term "workers's state" to be misleading,

Why, though? It's fully consistent with his general account of the state found, for example, in the critique of Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, or in his article 'On the Jewish Question'. The rule of society by the working-class is still the imposition over society of a particular, alien interest as the illusory general interest of society. If anything, the working-class is less qualified to represent the general interest of capitalist society than the bourgeoisie since it constitutes itself as the antagonist of that society and struggles for it's dissolution.

[Tim Finnegan]

Why, though? It's fully consistent with his general account of the state found, for example, in the critique of Hegel's Rechtsphilosophie, or in his article 'On the Jewish Question'. The rule of society by the working-class is still the imposition over society of a particular, alien interest as the illusory general interest of society. If anything, the working-class is less qualified to represent the general interest of capitalist society than the bourgeoisie since it constitutes itself as the antagonist of that society and struggles for it's dissolution.
Just chalk it up to rhetorical taste, I suppose. I'm not really prepared to defend myself on the field of theoretical honour. ;)

[robbo203]

You are projecting the difference between a bourgeois state and a workers' not-quite-a-state as the difference between centralism and decentralism. That is hardly a class distinction. Indeed, as a general abstract proposition Marx preferred centralization to decentralization..-

Yes and, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that this preference was at best an irrelevance and a red herring. There is absoilutely no guarantee that it assists the development of a socialist outlook upon which the establishment of socialism is dependent and it might even contribute to a growing sense of disempowerment and disenchantment




Earlier in this thread you quote Marx's famous line about how the working class can't simply take hold of the bourgeois state. Your interpretation of this is that what Marx is really saying there is no such thing as a workers' state, though that contradicts other things Marx said as you know.


But would it contradict Engels take on the matter?

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. Socialism Utopian and Scientific"

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes and, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that this preference was at best an irrelevance and a red herring. There is absoilutely no guarantee that it assists the development of a socialist outlook upon which the establishment of socialism is dependent and it might even contribute to a growing sense of disempowerment and disenchantment

Might or might not, depends on the circumstances. Marx had a preference towards centralization, but he was hardly obsessive on the subject. Nor am I.




But would it contradict Engels take on the matter?

The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of the productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage workers - proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. Socialism Utopian and Scientific"


At the time of the writing of that, that was obviously true. There weren't any workers' states then. He was writing in the present tense after all.

Wha he meant by bringing it to a head is that it made it *easier* for workers to overturn and smash it, smash the capitalist state, and make one of their own. Engels was, if anything, more of a centralizer than Marx. In their private correspondence Marx liked to call Engels "the general," due to his great interest in military matters.

Read for example what Engels said in his arguments with Bakunin. I think the article was called "On Authority." He said that Bakunin was wrong in being against authoritarianism, because a revolution is the most authoritarian thing on earth.

-M.H.-

[SHORAS]

You'll have to be a bit more specific. I've watched six "poll tax revolt" videos now and I see a few interviews, but nowhere is the "name names" stuff to be found.

My mistake. You've probably watched the video by now, it was Part 3 of The Poll Tax Revolt. It shows a short clip of Sheridan being interviewed where he blames a minority but doesn't say anything about naming names. Perhaps it is the interview however.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Socialist Party video: What next to defeat the cuts?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAEAVNQPqM

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12422/20-07-2011/capitalism-stuck-in-a-blind-alley


"On 14 and 15 July members of the National Committee of the Socialist Party met. This article is based on the introductory speech given by Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe." The "working class is moving to the left, socially if not yet politically. Thousands have joined the unions in the wake of the 30 June strike. The middle class is also affected. Every promise to them has been broken; their houses could be 'repossessed' to pay for care in old age and their children, denied not only this inheritance but also an education and a future, will be radicalised. In this context, a determined opposition, even a small, but independent new workers' party, based on struggle, with a socialist programme could be decisive."

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

A serious question here, one i've not seen posed much on the left (for reasons that will become clear).

The British revolutionary left, numerically, is dominated by Leninists, be they the Bolshevik-Leninist Trotskyists of the SWP and SPEW, or Marxist-Leninists of the CPGB/CPB.

Is it time to accept that Leninism, though it has its place of course in any Socialist democracy, has lost touch with the ordinary people of Britain as head of a vapid, inept UK socialist movement?

I am moved to ask by the direct action that has occurred in the past 12 months. On the student demos, in the university sit-ins and in the massive public sector day of action, the damage was done not by the paper sellers, not by the mass of party representatives giving speeches and leading chants, but by spontaneous, largely autonomous direct action.

The student demo in London was probably the best example. Those who first purported the direct action may not have numbered that many, but it was claer to all of us who were there that soon after, thousands of previously non-activist students were supportive of the action and later got more involved in the resistance movement.

University sit ins were largely independent of party politics, too, though of course their impact was questionable.

Finally, the public sector demo organised by the TUs, the 'day of action'. I thought the main protest was a bit of a predictable TU affair, a damp squib intended to let off steam instead of building up a head of resistance steam. Again, on that day, the most positive thing to come of it was the thousands of people who broke off from the main march and claimed Trafalgar Square, and then those who subsequently broke off from that mass grouping and proceeded to take direct action against certain tax dodging institutions.

So, yes, would the revolutionary left in the UK be more able to realise its revolutionary aims through the abandonment of traditional Leninist, party-orientated democratic centralist-style control of the movement, and a move towards the tactics and organisation that have become more evident in the past year or so, in the UK, in the Middle East and so on?

[Tim Finnegan]

The British revolutionary left, numerically, is dominated by Leninists, be they the Bolshevik-Leninist Trotskyists of the SWP and SPEW, or Marxist-Leninists of the CPGB/CPB.
I ask out of curiosity more than anything else, but are these tendencies even particularly significant imn the UK, let alone dominant? Perhaps it's a regional thing, but I've always understood the CPB to be a burned-out husk of the old CPGB, and the CPGB-ML (which is the "CPGB" to which I assume you refer?) to be a minor fringe-sect know more for their comedy value than their actual relevance.

I entirely agree with the rest of your post, however. The Leninist party model is quite frankly a dead horse, constructed on an inherited (and questionable) interpretation of Russia in 1905-1917, rather than on any objective examination of Britain in 2011.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

No they're not significant number wise at all, though (i'm not an expert on this so don't take my word) I do believe the CPGB and CPB have a moderate showing amongst the Trade Unions, for what that's worth.

SWP, followed by SPEW are the only organisations of any notable size, with the SWP being the only visible 'party' organisation really.

So, if we are to agree on the premise that Leninist modes of operation in terms of leadership of the movement are, if not quite 'dead', are outdated and out of favour/touch, then how, strategically, would we go about working towards a new way of operating, as a movement? I'm not an experienced activist by any means, so would welcome contributions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Tim: the CPGB i'm referring to is the CPGB-PCC, the Weekly Worker publishers. CPGB-ML is a Stalinoid irrelevance, mainly.

[Tim Finnegan]

So, if we are to agree on the premise that Leninist modes of operation in terms of leadership of the movement are, if not quite 'dead', are outdated and out of favour/touch, then how, strategically, would we go about working towards a new way of operating, as a movement? I'm not an experienced activist by any means, so would welcome contributions.
Like yourself, I'm not going to claim any great experience, but I think that one major step is to abandon the insistence on posing various grouplets as vanguards-to-be, which only ever seems to have the effect of breeding conflict within the movement and alienating those currently outside of it. Revolutionary socialist organisations need to accept their proper role as agitators, organisers, and educators, rather than insisting upon scrabbling for leadership positions.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Split the party role into a 'movement role'? I.e. into a socialist education movement, socialist agitation movement and whatever other veritable roles you could think of...

[A Marxist Historian]

Like yourself, I'm not going to claim any great experience, but I think that one major step is to abandon the insistence on posing various grouplets as vanguards-to-be, which only ever seems to have the effect of breeding conflict within the movement and alienating those currently outside of it. Revolutionary socialist organisations need to accept their proper role as agitators, organisers, and educators, rather than insisting upon scrabbling for leadership positions.

The problem isn't that all these groups are Leninist, but that they aren't. They all want to bring back the good old days of the old Labour Party, some within New Labour, most without, as with the BSP, being as how utterly discredited Labour is by now. Well, times have changed.

And then there's the largest group, the SWP, whose idea is to abandon not just Leninism but socialism altogether, and do things like have coalitions with bourgeois Muslim fundamentalists, and call for "respect" instead of socialism.

As for the so-called "Marxist Leninists," everybody knows they are really Stalinists, and nothing is more dead than Stalinism in England, except on the Internet.

If England is in fact headed into revolutionary crisis, which seems not impossible, people will want to see programs to solve the crisis. And the best most of our so-called Leninists can come up with these days is "tax the rich."

And as mass struggles develop, people are going to want to see leadership, not followship. Agitating and educating and even organizing are all very well, but when the rubber hits the road people want a clear lead as to what to *do.*

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

The problem isn't that all these groups are Leninist, but that they aren't. They all want to bring back the good old days of the old Labour Party, some within New Labour, most without, as with the BSP, being as how utterly discredited Labour is by now. Well, times have changed.

And then there's the largest group, the SWP, whose idea is to abandon not just Leninism but socialism altogether, and do things like have coalitions with bourgeois Muslim fundamentalists, and call for "respect" instead of socialism.

As for the so-called "Marxist Leninists," everybody knows they are really Stalinists, and nothing is more dead than Stalinism in England, except on the Internet.

If England is in fact headed into revolutionary crisis, which seems not impossible, people will want to see programs to solve the crisis. And the best most of our so-called Leninists can come up with these days is "tax the rich."
And as mass struggles develop, people are going to want to see leadership, not followship. Agitating and educating and even organizing are all very well, but when the rubber hits the road people want a clear lead as to what to *do.*

-M.H.-
Maybe we should let the working class decide for itself what it wants? What kind of leadership it wants, what form of organisation it wants to see from that leadership, who it wants in leadership positions; we can neither assume what the working class wants, nor appoint ourself to that role, as institutions any more than as as individuals. All of this party-posturing, whether of the SWP brand or of your own apparently more pure variety, is just substitutionism in a bad democratic drag.

[Martin Blank]

Split the discussion on the Bolsheviks and early Soviet republic to its own thread in History.

[A Marxist Historian]

Maybe we should let the working class decide for itself what it wants? What kind of leadership it wants, what form of organisation it wants to see from that leadership, who it wants in leadership positions; we can neither assume what the working class wants, nor appoint ourself to that role, as institutions any more than as as individuals. All of this party-posturing, whether of the SWP brand or of your own apparently more pure variety, is just substitutionism in a bad democratic drag.

It really doesn't matter what leftists think, the fact is that the working class will decide for itself what it wants.

If leftists however do not offer revolutionary alternatives, and just sit there hoping that the workers will spontaneously figure out what to do, then workers in choosing alternatives will choose from the alternatives on offer, namely those other than revolution and socialism.

Thus a few years ago you had construction workers spontaneously deciding in England that the solution was to run foreign construction workers out of England. And our "Leninists" of the Socialist Party not only went along with this, but jumped onto the bandwagon and provided "leadership" in this direction, boasting about this at every opportunity.

The perfect example of the problem with English "Leninists" being that they are not Leninists at all.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It really doesn't matter what leftists think, the fact is that the working class will decide for itself what it wants.

If leftists however do not offer revolutionary alternatives, and just sit there hoping that the workers will spontaneously figure out what to do, then workers in choosing alternatives will choose from the alternatives on offer, namely those other than revolution and socialism.

Thus a few years ago you had construction workers spontaneously deciding in England that the solution was to run foreign construction workers out of England. And our "Leninists" of the Socialist Party not only went along with this, but jumped onto the bandwagon and provided "leadership" in this direction, boasting about this at every opportunity.

The perfect example of the problem with English "Leninists" being that they are not Leninists at all.

-M.H.-

I don't think you can contrive the Leninist v non-Leninist argument as one of active leadership vs passive leadership/non-leadership at all. Clearly that is not what is being said, and not what is reality.

What I - and I believe Tim - were hinting at was that we need more non-traditional methods of leadership, of organisation, of education and of agitation.

Non-traditional methods of leadership and organisation in terms of that which transcends normal Leninist democratic-centralist party relations. It has become clear that over the decades, with politics, social and economic history being as complicated as it is, people have - politically, socially and culturally - become more fragmented. With this in mind, it is difficult to see how a single party - operating on the basis of Democratic Centralism - can really cater for such a variation of interests and wants.

Non-traditional methods of education in terms of those which transcend the paper sale. The Morning Star is probably the only remaining 'good quality' regular, revolutionary paper (I refuse to countenance that the Weekly Worker is of 'good quality'), and its lack of circulation shows not that the left is irrelevant, but that its means are irrelevant. We need to explore new channels of communication and reach out to a wider audience if we are to be able bring new people into our movement. And that is key. There is no point saying 'the working class will decide' and then leaving it at that, with them (The workers) and us, the same old clan of doddery, stale revolutionaries. We need to raise class and then political consciousness in as many people as we can, whilst simultaneously raising our public profile.

In terms of non-traditional methods of agitation, as I mentioned previously, TU-style days of action are, IMO, counter-productive. They are a waste of time, energy and resources on behalf of those comrades who are committed to our movement. I don't think anyone can argue that terrorism is really a plausible strategy, nor one we should support, in this country. So really we need a more fluid strategy of direct action, ones which are spontaneous, inventive and ones that are not telegraphed to the establishment nor agreed upon with police. In short, we don't want them to expect us, we don't want them to agree to our action and we don't want them to collaberate with us on such action. We need fast paced, leaderless, spontaneous action, where people are not identifiable in their party gear, selling the party paper and shouting a few chants.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Thus a few years ago you had construction workers spontaneously deciding in England that the solution was to run foreign construction workers out of England. And our "Leninists" of the Socialist Party not only went along with this, but jumped onto the bandwagon and provided "leadership" in this direction, boasting about this at every opportunity.

Another lefty who thinks that Murdoch's Sky News is the be-all-and-end-all of knowing what is happening in a strike.

It might have been a better idea to visit the picketline and see what the real story was.

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't think you can contrive the Leninist v non-Leninist argument as one of active leadership vs passive leadership/non-leadership at all. Clearly that is not what is being said, and not what is reality.

What I - and I believe Tim - were hinting at was that we need more non-traditional methods of leadership, of organisation, of education and of agitation.

Non-traditional methods of leadership and organisation in terms of that which transcends normal Leninist democratic-centralist party relations. It has become clear that over the decades, with politics, social and economic history being as complicated as it is, people have - politically, socially and culturally - become more fragmented. With this in mind, it is difficult to see how a single party - operating on the basis of Democratic Centralism - can really cater for such a variation of interests and wants.

Non-traditional methods of education in terms of those which transcend the paper sale. The Morning Star is probably the only remaining 'good quality' regular, revolutionary paper (I refuse to countenance that the Weekly Worker is of 'good quality'), and its lack of circulation shows not that the left is irrelevant, but that its means are irrelevant. We need to explore new channels of communication and reach out to a wider audience if we are to be able bring new people into our movement. And that is key. There is no point saying 'the working class will decide' and then leaving it at that, with them (The workers) and us, the same old clan of doddery, stale revolutionaries. We need to raise class and then political consciousness in as many people as we can, whilst simultaneously raising our public profile.

In terms of non-traditional methods of agitation, as I mentioned previously, TU-style days of action are, IMO, counter-productive. They are a waste of time, energy and resources on behalf of those comrades who are committed to our movement. I don't think anyone can argue that terrorism is really a plausible strategy, nor one we should support, in this country. So really we need a more fluid strategy of direct action, ones which are spontaneous, inventive and ones that are not telegraphed to the establishment nor agreed upon with police. In short, we don't want them to expect us, we don't want them to agree to our action and we don't want them to collaberate with us on such action. We need fast paced, leaderless, spontaneous action, where people are not identifiable in their party gear, selling the party paper and shouting a few chants.

I actually don't disagree really with much of what you're saying. I just have a different conception of "normal Leninist democratic centralism" than yours. The fragmentation of society is exactly what needs to be combatted however. The working class has tended to dissolve and lose its consciousness of itself as a class in England is my impression.

Of course I am an American, and the American working class has pretty much never had any consciousness of itself as a class as such in the first place...

Obviously times have changed, technology has changed, and new methods of revolutionary propaganda are needed. The Internet didn't exist in Lenin's time after all.

Clearly ritualistic "days of action" have passed their sell date. The next step however is not guerilla tactics, but the very traditional English tactic of the general strike. However, one does not want to see the ritualistic useless one-day general strikes you see in France or Greece or other continental countries either.

General strikes should not just be giant demos, they need to be tools to mobilize for the struggle for power, which ultimately means armed struggle.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Another lefty who thinks that Murdoch's Sky News is the be-all-and-end-all of knowing what is happening in a strike.

It might have been a better idea to visit the picketline and see what the real story was.

Never having read the publication in question, that doesn't apply to me.

My impression, judging from the current scandal, is that I didn't miss much.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I actually don't disagree really with much of what you're saying. I just have a different conception of "normal Leninist democratic centralism" than yours. The fragmentation of society is exactly what needs to be combatted however. The working class has tended to dissolve and lose its consciousness of itself as a class in England is my impression.

Of course I am an American, and the American working class has pretty much never had any consciousness of itself as a class as such in the first place...

Obviously times have changed, technology has changed, and new methods of revolutionary propaganda are needed. The Internet didn't exist in Lenin's time after all.

Clearly ritualistic "days of action" have passed their sell date. The next step however is not guerilla tactics, but the very traditional English tactic of the general strike. However, one does not want to see the ritualistic useless one-day general strikes you see in France or Greece or other continental countries either.

General strikes should not just be giant demos, they need to be tools to mobilize for the struggle for power, which ultimately means armed struggle.

-M.H.-

Fair points and I can now make more sense of your previous posts.

It seems as though the likes of the SWP would rather keep their place at the head of the revolutionary left movement (in terms of numbers, controlling events) than embrace any such changes.

This is what led me to question my previous acceptance of Leninist democratic centralism. It's all good and well to say that 'these people aren't really doing it right', but looking at the state of the British left over the past couple of decades, one has to wonder whether it is the system of organisation that has bred the quite un-impressive leadership cohorts that currently exist.

In essence, my point is that the likes of the utterly contemptuous Martin Smith have not bent the rules of Leninist democratic centralism so that it is beyond recognition; rather, the likes of he (and others) have actually been carrying out the role of a Leninist organisation.

I wonder if, blessed with the gift of hindsight, Lenin would review that ban on factions. Seems an historic mistake of political calculation to me.

[A Marxist Historian]

Fair points and I can now make more sense of your previous posts.

It seems as though the likes of the SWP would rather keep their place at the head of the revolutionary left movement (in terms of numbers, controlling events) than embrace any such changes.

This is what led me to question my previous acceptance of Leninist democratic centralism. It's all good and well to say that 'these people aren't really doing it right', but looking at the state of the British left over the past couple of decades, one has to wonder whether it is the system of organisation that has bred the quite un-impressive leadership cohorts that currently exist.

In essence, my point is that the likes of the utterly contemptuous Martin Smith have not bent the rules of Leninist democratic centralism so that it is beyond recognition; rather, the likes of he (and others) have actually been carrying out the role of a Leninist organisation.

I wonder if, blessed with the gift of hindsight, Lenin would review that ban on factions. Seems an historic mistake of political calculation to me.

It was intended as a strictly temporary affair for a particular *Soviet* situation.

What was the very first thing Lenin did after the ban came in?

You had the upcoming Third Congress of the Communist International, where its leader, Zinoviev, was planning to endorse the false, ultraleft policies of Zinoviev, Bela Kun etc. in the so-called "March Action" in Germany.

What did Lenin do?

He got together with Trotsky and other wiser heads, formed a faction, and launched a successful factional struggle against Zinoviev's false line. As Zinoviev fortunately capitulated, the faction was promptly dissolved.

It was *hard* to get rid of the ban on factions after Lenin died, as Lenin hadn't gotten around to calling for an end to it before he had his stroke, so the party leaders could cloak themselves in "orthodox Leninism." But when the Left Opposition was formed, led by Trotsky *and* Zinoviev, it was a faction and everybody knew it.

The faction ban was *not* "normal democratic centralism," indeed it was a very abnormal exception, which unfortunately got enshrined as "orthodox Leninism" for one reason and one only, that Lenin died at the wrong time.

That the SWP copies Stalin's precedent on this one tells you a lot about the SWP and nothing about Leninism.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

What in the name of Christ is a "false line"?

[A Marxist Historian]

What in the name of Christ is a "false line"?

A bit of Cominternspeak which seemed rather legitimate, as I was after all talking about a faction fight in the Comintern.

Zinoviev and Bela Kun had what was called, including by Z and BK, a "line," namely that circa spring 1921 was the time for "revolutionary offensive," and so the German CP undertook the "March Action," an attempt to set off a revolution then and there. It was a disaster which cut the membership of the party in half and greatly weakened its support in the unions. Very bad timing it turned out.

Lenin's "line" at that point was for a "united front" to resist capitalist attacks, as it just wasn't quite a moment when the German working class was ready for revolution, as it had been a year or two previously, and would be again a couple years later.

Clear?

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Nevertheless, it would be a difficult and overly complicated line to present to the working class.

I don't see how we would lose anything, given the British left's recent history, by abandoning what hasn't worked and instead of re-hashing it into the similar 'orthodox Leninism' which you propose, actually cutting away what has clearly not worked and embracing new methods - opposition to authoritarianism, anarchic methods and, as we both agree on, direct, unexpected action by the workers instead of the sluggish organised brigades that are rallied to sell their papers and sing a few songs at protests currently.

[Paul Cockshott]

So how do people feel that sectarianism can at least be countered in the UK?
The key issue is how would it be possible to construct a new left movement in the UK with mass support capable of shifting the actual balance of power.

My view is that this requires the construction of a new left wing movement that is unashamedly populist. It has to address the obvious failures of the current order with policies that are quite crude populism but are easy to understand, and which if put into practice would make most people immediately better off.

I will look first at the economy and then at the political system.

Debt
A major part of the current economic crisis is the excessive accumulation of debt. This not only hamstrings governments and leads to cuts in social expenditure but it also oppresses a large fraction of the population who struggle to pay off mortgage and credit card debts. A left populist movement should simply demand that all debts be cancelled forthwith, both the national debt, but more importantly all mortgage and credit card debts.

The first big losers here would be the banks, but they would also benefit from no longer having any debts to their customers. To completely cancel all debts from banks to customers would hit everyone, so the sensible thing would be to propose that personal bank deposits up to one years average wages be protected. It is likely that even with this restriction on liabilities most banks would be technically insolvent and would have to be bailed out. By this means demand 5 of the Communist Manifesto would be achieved.

The second big looser would be the millionaire class who would find that all their money in the bank other than a years wages had vanished. So much the worse for them.

Exploitation
A new populist movement should argue that all forms of exploitation are violations of human rights and should be illegal.
Marx said that profit, interest and rent were all incomes derived from exploitation, and we should argue the same, without necessarily saying that we got the idea from Marx. We should say that just as slavery was abolished in the 19th century, in the 21st century we should abolish the remaining forms of exploitation. This could be done by 3 quite simple measures.

Make charging interest illegal
Give employees the right to all value added in a business
Tax all rent income at 100%, this revenue would go to local authorities and would replace the council tax.

The first is easy to explain, and should be argued on moral grounds. The second needs a bit more explanation. What I mean is that employees collectively should have a right, enforceable in the courts, to bring an action for redress of exploitation against their employers if the company pays out any of the value that the employees have created as dividends or interest. Effectively this means that all firms would have to run as mutuals.
The last demand is of course borrowed in disguised form from demand 1 of the Communist Manifesto which called for the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

The effects of this would be to substantially increase the income of employees in the private sector by of the order of 50%.

The key points about these demands, as opposed to the old social democratic programme of nationalisations, is that they bring immediate and substantial increases in income to the great majority of the population, and also do not lay us open to the charge of wanting to put the state in charge of everything.

Politics
We should be saying that the entire political system, with its politicians and political parties is corrupt and based on swindling the people. What we need is real democracy as the protestors in Athens and Madrid are calling for. Each 6 months let an ordinary person be chosen at random to be the MP for their constituency and paid no more than the average income for doing their social duty. Make the House of Commons really a house of the common people rather than a house full of careerist lawyers, businessmen or corrupt placemen.

If we need a Queen for the tourism and for purely ceremonial occasions, why should the Windsor family monopolise the job. Run it like the Miner's Gala Queens, select an ordinary girl and let her be queen for a year. Run the selection on TV like a combination of the national lottery and the X factor.

Immigration
Right populist movements take advantage of workers fears of their wages and jobs being undercut by foreign workers but direct this legitimate economic fear into a xenophobic form. The left should address the fear along the lines that Marx did in the Programme of the French Workers Party which he helped draft which demanded
Legal prohibition of bosses employing foreign workers at a wage less than that of French workers;
This turns the hostility against the employers rather than the foreign workers. We should probably strengthen the demand by saying that the issuing of work permits to foreign workers to be the responsibility of the TUC and local Trades Councils rather than the state, and that a prior condition for getting a work permit should be that the incoming worker joins the appropriate trades union.

[Fivepence]

I think that this pamphlet goes some way to explaining the difficulties the various Brit Left groups have with a 'United Front' approach.

whatnextjournal.co.uk/Pages/sectariana/Pub.html

Its far from new, but.......

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Paul Cockshott:

1) Your debt proposals are not thought through. The only way such arrogant economic policy would work would be if Britain was led as part of a European Socialist Republic. If you are talking of a Chavez-type populist coming to power in a bourgeois election in Britain and enacting such a policy of just cancelling our debt unilaterally, the likely result would be economic meltdown. It's more important that our policy on debt is to re-distribute the inordinate amount of wealth created within our country and encourage economic growth in sectors like manufacturing and higher labour productivity, rather than take a measure which would likely lead to Capitalist economic (and possibly military) encirclement. You need to go back to the drawing board with that one.

2) In terms of exploitation, your points [2] and [3] are excellent, in particular 2. I like the idea, also, that rent income goes to local authorities and not the national government. We might want to think of altering this and distributing rent income tax at town/parish council level, rather than at regional level, for an even more solidified federal system.

3) I know you and DNZ like the randomised thing with MPs, but really that doesn't entail democracy, it is negative in that it is too focused on avoiding negatives (avoiding dictatorship) rather than entrenching democracy. It is also a rather reformist measure that you propose.
As you say, the political system is corrupt and rotten to the core. It needs to be revolutionised, along federal lines. Executive power over domestic lawmaking needs to be handed to town and city councils and regional assemblies. The national assembly needs to be split into 'final-stamp' and oversight bodies, which implements but does not enact domestic legislation. As such, I find your proposals unsatisfactory in that they do not deal with the problems of the system, merely advocate replacing the pawns of it.

4) I'm not sure the TUC should be entrusted with such an element of law, at least not until it has reformed itself in its members' interests. The TUC is, after all, by its leadership an unashamed defender of Capitalism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Each 6 months let an ordinary person be chosen at random to be the MP for their constituency and paid no more than the average income for doing their social duty.

See, I knew you'd come around to the Paris Commune's "average skilled worker's wage" and median standard of living for skilled workers.


Immigration
Right populist movements take advantage of workers fears of their wages and jobs being undercut by foreign workers but direct this legitimate economic fear into a xenophobic form. The left should address the fear along the lines that Marx did in the Programme of the French Workers Party which he helped draft which demanded
This turns the hostility against the employers rather than the foreign workers. We should probably strengthen the demand by saying that the issuing of work permits to foreign workers to be the responsibility of the TUC and local Trades Councils rather than the state, and that a prior condition for getting a work permit should be that the incoming worker joins the appropriate trades union.

Comrade, I'm against your suggestion of closed-shop unionism at the end:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/closed-shops-union-t155203/index.html

Incoming workers should, however, pay agency fees equivalent to union dues if they don't join.


The only way such arrogant economic policy would work would be if Britain was led as part of a European Socialist Republic. If you are talking of a Chavez-type populist coming to power in a bourgeois election in Britain and enacting such a policy of just cancelling our debt unilaterally, the likely result would be economic meltdown. It's more important that our policy on debt is to re-distribute the inordinate amount of wealth created within our country and encourage economic growth in sectors like manufacturing and higher labour productivity, rather than take a measure which would likely lead to Capitalist economic (and possibly military) encirclement. You need to go back to the drawing board with that one.

Cockshott already did, in his European Union program (and "European Socialist Republic" isn't necessary). Think "EU Chavismo." ;)

[Paul Cockshott]

I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation

[cheguvera]

labour party was created for working class.But leaders in this party does not represent the working class.They were not working for working class.Their main concern is elite class.

[A Marxist Historian]

Nevertheless, it would be a difficult and overly complicated line to present to the working class.

I don't see how we would lose anything, given the British left's recent history, by abandoning what hasn't worked and instead of re-hashing it into the similar 'orthodox Leninism' which you propose, actually cutting away what has clearly not worked and embracing new methods - opposition to authoritarianism, anarchic methods and, as we both agree on, direct, unexpected action by the workers instead of the sluggish organised brigades that are rallied to sell their papers and sing a few songs at protests currently.

I don't think anarchic methods are effective. Direct action by the workers indeed, and jumping into the bandwagon of what workers come up with themselves (assuming it is something worthwhile, not immigrant bashing or something) rather than wanting everything to be a cookie cutter replica of the past, sure.

But when push comes to shove, carefully planned out in advance strategy based on past experience, including last week's spontaneous past experience, is what wins.

I'll add to that, that in general in periods of economic depression, sitdown type strikes where you occupy and halt the means of production rather than just marching outside around them on a picket line have been more effective.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The key issue is how would it be possible to construct a new left movement in the UK with mass support capable of shifting the actual balance of power.

My view is that this requires the construction of a new left wing movement that is unashamedly populist. It has to address the obvious failures of the current order with policies that are quite crude populism but are easy to understand, and which if put into practice would make most people immediately better off.

I will look first at the economy and then at the political system.

Debt
A major part of the current economic crisis is the excessive accumulation of debt. This not only hamstrings governments and leads to cuts in social expenditure but it also oppresses a large fraction of the population who struggle to pay off mortgage and credit card debts. A left populist movement should simply demand that all debts be cancelled forthwith, both the national debt, but more importantly all mortgage and credit card debts.

The first big losers here would be the banks, but they would also benefit from no longer having any debts to their customers. To completely cancel all debts from banks to customers would hit everyone, so the sensible thing would be to propose that personal bank deposits up to one years average wages be protected. It is likely that even with this restriction on liabilities most banks would be technically insolvent and would have to be bailed out. By this means demand 5 of the Communist Manifesto would be achieved.

The second big looser would be the millionaire class who would find that all their money in the bank other than a years wages had vanished. So much the worse for them.

Exploitation
A new populist movement should argue that all forms of exploitation are violations of human rights and should be illegal.

Marx said that profit, interest and rent were all incomes derived from exploitation, and we should argue the same, without necessarily saying that we got the idea from Marx. We should say that just as slavery was abolished in the 19th century, in the 21st century we should abolish the remaining forms of exploitation. This could be done by 3 quite simple measures.
Make charging interest illegal
Give employees the right to all value added in a business
Tax all rent income at 100%, this revenue would go to local authorities and would replace the council tax.
The first is easy to explain, and should be argued on moral grounds. The second needs a bit more explanation. What I mean is that employees collectively should have a right, enforceable in the courts, to bring an action for redress of exploitation against their employers if the company pays out any of the value that the employees have created as dividends or interest. Effectively this means that all firms would have to run as mutuals.
The last demand is of course borrowed in disguised form from demand 1 of the Communist Manifesto which called for the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

The effects of this would be to substantially increase the income of employees in the private sector by of the order of 50%.

The key points about these demands, as opposed to the old social democratic programme of nationalisations, is that they bring immediate and substantial increases in income to the great majority of the population, and also do not lay us open to the charge of wanting to put the state in charge of everything.

Politics
We should be saying that the entire political system, with its politicians and political parties is corrupt and based on swindling the people. What we need is real democracy as the protestors in Athens and Madrid are calling for. Each 6 months let an ordinary person be chosen at random to be the MP for their constituency and paid no more than the average income for doing their social duty. Make the House of Commons really a house of the common people rather than a house full of careerist lawyers, businessmen or corrupt placemen.

If we need a Queen for the tourism and for purely ceremonial occasions, why should the Windsor family monopolise the job. Run it like the Miner's Gala Queens, select an ordinary girl and let her be queen for a year. Run the selection on TV like a combination of the national lottery and the X factor.

Immigration
Right populist movements take advantage of workers fears of their wages and jobs being undercut by foreign workers but direct this legitimate economic fear into a xenophobic form. The left should address the fear along the lines that Marx did in the Programme of the French Workers Party which he helped draft which demanded
This turns the hostility against the employers rather than the foreign workers. We should probably strengthen the demand by saying that the issuing of work permits to foreign workers to be the responsibility of the TUC and local Trades Councils rather than the state, and that a prior condition for getting a work permit should be that the incoming worker joins the appropriate trades union.


Equal pay for equal work for everybody is certainly a great demand, but I'd put more emphasis on direct imposition of this rather than trying to get parliament to pass a law.

Simply abolishing interest and rent however is economic nonsense, a true petty-bourgeois utopia. They serve real functions within the capitalist system. And I do not think it would be possible to abolish them in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism either.

The means of production need to be socialized. And England is not Tsarist Russia, certainly large scale industry can be socialized right away, and a lot of middle sized as well.

Abolishing interest would benefit debtors of all classes. It is not a working class demand. I don't see why the workers need to rescue all profligates who have gone deep into debt for cocaine, champagne, caviar and hookers.

Bankruptcy laws should be reasonable, no debtor's prisons or people forced to sell their homes and become homeless because they've made too free use of their credit cards. And foreclosures on any home worth less than half a million dollars should be outlawed, instead mortgages should be knocked down to the real value of homes, not the inflated vaues when originally sold.

But more to the point than messing around with laws, unions should mobilize defense guards to repel the police when they come to evict workers from their homes.

These ideas just by way of example.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation

Be it noted that this means if an Italian construction worker is a member of an Italian construction union, no English construction workers would have the right to demand he not be hired on the basis that he is not a member of an English union.

In the time of Karl Marx, when state immigration controls basically did not exist, the idea of union control over immigration and emigration made some sense, the First International did in fact think along those lines.

Nowadays, with the State as Leviathan and immigration and emigration control one of the biggest and most brutal and vicious functions of the State, and the unions quite weak, any proposition for "union control" simply means union auxiliaries for racist exploitation and, in the USA at least, outright murder. Especially since *all* unions these days, including "left wing" ones, are virulently infected with national chauvinism.

Union control over immigration and emigration would be a good plan for the Socialist United States of Europe of the future. Right now in the current situation, even raising it is probably a mistake.

-M.H.-

[Kotze]

Simply abolishing interest and rent however is economic nonsense, a true petty-bourgeois utopia. They serve real functions within the capitalist system.
(...)
Abolishing interest would benefit debtors of all classes. It is not a working class demand.Paul Cockshott recommends abolishing income from owning land not by outlawing that people pay rent, but by expropriation via confiscatory tax, set in a way that the market value of a piece of land without the improvements on it would drop to zero.

It is not important whether you can find anecdotal evidence where a person benefits that isn't working class, what matters is whether the working class benefits in the big picture.

[Jose Gracchus]

Youuuuu telll em Kotze.

Do you collect any salary for representing Cockshott?

[Paul Cockshott]

Simply abolishing interest and rent however is economic nonsense, a true petty-bourgeois utopia. They serve real functions within the capitalist system. And I do not think it would be possible to abolish them in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism either.
I disagree you have to realise that the proposals I am putting forward are transition measures aimed at replacing the capitalist economy. Interest does not serve a productive function, it is pure exploitation, and just serves as a source of income to the banks, rentiers and financial capitalists. Rent, I agree can not be abolished, since it is ultimately grounded in differential productivities of land, but it can be taxed at 100%. This is what the Communist Manifesto argued.


The means of production need to be socialized. And England is not Tsarist Russia, certainly large scale industry can be socialized right away, and a lot of middle sized as well.
I disagree, socialisation can not be done straight away, since socialisation can only really be achieved when the ability to plan the economy in detail exists. What people sometimes mean by socialisation is just nationalisation which is not really the same thing, nor is it even a necessary stage towards socialisation. I think it is better to go through the following steps:

Abolish exploitation by a fundamental constitutional enactment like the abolition of slavery in the US.
You then have an economy which is essentially made up of mutuals like John Lewis, so the workers movement encourages a process of mergers between firms to form industrial syndicates under workers control.
The industrial syndicates establish industrial level planning
The networks and administration required to allow social planning and the replacement of commodity production are built up
Finally you move to social production without money but using an integrated social plan

This can not all be done immediately. Step 1 is immediate but the rest is a process that may take a couple of decades.



Abolishing interest would benefit debtors of all classes. It is not a working class demand. I don't see why the workers need to rescue all profligates who have gone deep into debt for cocaine, champagne, caviar and hookers.

It is a demand that would predominantly benefit the working class and predominantly hit the millionaire class.
Most working class families have more debts than bank deposits so would gain. On the other hand what makes multi-millionaires what they are is their millions in the banks. Their millions are not gold or commodities, they are financial titles, either deposits with the banking system or bonds, derivatives, and to a lesser extent equities. The cancellation of debts, including all deposits with the banks greater than a years wages, would wipe finance capitalists out as an economic category. They would just become ordinary people who would have to go out and get a job if they wanted to earn a living.



Equal pay for equal work for everybody is certainly a great demand, but I'd put more emphasis on direct imposition of this rather than trying to get parliament to pass a law.

But more to the point than messing around with laws, unions should mobilize defense guards to repel the police when they come to evict workers from their homes.

These ideas just by way of example.

-M.H.-

I am all for taking direct action to stop baliffs and foreclosures, these can work as are defensive measures. I think that the socialist movement has to openly and politically campaign for the legal abolition of wage slavery in order to advance to a higher level of civilisation, just as earlier generations fought for the legal abolition of chattel slavery.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation

Don't agency fees do the same thing? My point is that immigration can be under working-class control via the unions through universal mandatory agency shop fees. Now, it's also possible that the same unions can control immigration by filtering out technically less qualified applicants, but that's another story.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Equal pay for equal work for everybody is certainly a great demand, but I'd put more emphasis on direct imposition of this rather than trying to get parliament to pass a law.

[...]

But more to the point than messing around with laws, unions should mobilize defense guards to repel the police when they come to evict workers from their homes.

That's nice, but it's not really political. Trotskyist economism and sloganeering strikes again (note to Cockshott: this is what MH's "defense guards" slogan amounts to). Proper political struggles raise the question of rule of law, and in an educative manner.

For example, equal pay for equal work, to be fully political, should be globalized (i.e., like an international bill of rights and enforced by some global labour union) and upward, based on real purchasing power parity. Neither sectional struggles nor their slogans address the economics concept of real purchasing power parity.

[A Marxist Historian]

Paul Cockshott recommends abolishing income from owning land not by outlawing that people pay rent, but by expropriation via confiscatory tax, set in a way that the market value of a piece of land without the improvements on it would drop to zero.

It is not important whether you can find anecdotal evidence where a person benefits that isn't working class, what matters is whether the working class benefits in the big picture.

Ah, a latterday advocate of Henry George's "Single Tax." Though old George in "Progress and Poverty" expressed this idea far, far better and more intelligently. In the late 19th Century, a lot of American Populists went for George's "Single Tax," it was a very popular idea.

The Georgites are still around, you find 'em on the Internet and so forth. Except nowadays sometimes they're a right wing movement not a left wing.

Which tells you something right there.

For a little bit more on them, here's the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

Marx's opinion, from said entry:

"Marx saw the Single Tax platform as a step backwards from the transition to communism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism). He argued that, 'The whole thing is... simply an attempt, decked out with socialism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism), to save capitalist domination and indeed to establish it afresh on an even wider basis than its present one.'[16] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism#cite_note-marx-15) Marx also criticized the way land value tax theory emphasizes the value of land, arguing that, 'His fundamental dogma is that everything would be all right if ground rent were paid to the state.'"

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I disagree you have to realise that the proposals I am putting forward are transition measures aimed at replacing the capitalist economy. Interest does not serve a productive function, it is pure exploitation, and just serves as a source of income to the banks, rentiers and financial capitalists. Rent, I agree can not be abolished, since it is ultimately grounded in differential productivities of land, but it can be taxed at 100%. This is what the Communist Manifesto argued.

I disagree, socialisation can not be done straight away, since socialisation can only really be achieved when the ability to plan the economy in detail exists. What people sometimes mean by socialisation is just nationalisation which is not really the same thing, nor is it even a necessary stage towards socialisation. I think it is better to go through the following steps:
Abolish exploitation by a fundamental constitutional enactment like the abolition of slavery in the US.
You then have an economy which is essentially made up of mutuals like John Lewis, so the workers movement encourages a process of mergers between firms to form industrial syndicates under workers control.
The industrial syndicates establish industrial level planning
The networks and administration required to allow social planning and the replacement of commodity production are built up
Finally you move to social production without money but using an integrated social plan
This can not all be done immediately. Step 1 is immediate but the rest is a process that may take a couple of decades.


It is a demand that would predominantly benefit the working class and predominantly hit the millionaire class.
Most working class families have more debts than bank deposits so would gain. On the other hand what makes multi-millionaires what they are is their millions in the banks. Their millions are not gold or commodities, they are financial titles, either deposits with the banking system or bonds, derivatives, and to a lesser extent equities. The cancellation of debts, including all deposits with the banks greater than a years wages, would wipe finance capitalists out as an economic category. They would just become ordinary people who would have to go out and get a job if they wanted to earn a living.


I am all for taking direct action to stop baliffs and foreclosures, these can work as are defensive measures. I think that the socialist movement has to openly and politically campaign for the legal abolition of wage slavery in order to advance to a higher level of civilisation, just as earlier generations fought for the legal abolition of chattel slavery.

Chattel slavery was not abolished through a campaign for legal abolition.

It was abolished by:

1) Lord Dunmore's Proclamation emancipating slaves in America so they'd fight for England vs. the Americans;

2) The Haitian Revolution;

3) Slave uprisings in Jamaica and so forth that persuaded English capitalists that after all that, they'd better do abolition themselves before you had another Haiti;

and 4) The American Civil War, with military necessity pushing a fairly willing Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

The idea of abolishing capitalism by some sort of "Enabling Act" or other is simply latter day "Clause Four" socialism, even after the decline and fall of the British Labour Party as a socialist party.

It is, quite simply, very stupid, and a terrible distraction from the class struggle.

-M.H.-

[Paul Cockshott]

The fact that the Labour Party has abandoned socialism should not be an argument for us doing the same. I take the essence of Lenins teaching to be the necessity to engage in political struggle on a programme of changing the political and economic system.

On the abolition of slavery in the US, yes the immediate circumstances were the wartime proclamation by Lincoln, but the precondition for that and for the war itself was his election with the support of the anti-slavery wing of the Republican party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I understand the reservations about the TUC but the key point is that immigration be under working class control via the unions in some way. A pre entry closed shop policy protects immigrant workers from excess exploitation

Don't agency fees do the same thing? My point is that immigration can be under working-class control via the unions through universal mandatory agency shop fees. Now, it's also possible that the same unions can control immigration by filtering out technically less qualified applicants, but that's another story.


Nowadays, with the State as Leviathan and immigration and emigration control one of the biggest and most brutal and vicious functions of the State, and the unions quite weak, any proposition for "union control" simply means union auxiliaries for racist exploitation and, in the USA at least, outright murder. Especially since *all* unions these days, including "left wing" ones, are virulently infected with national chauvinism.

Union control over immigration and emigration would be a good plan for the Socialist United States of Europe of the future. Right now in the current situation, even raising it is probably a mistake.

-M.H.-

You forget one aspect to worry about, as well, about closed-shop-controlled immigration. At best, it would reinvigorate craft unionism over more industry-based unionism, especially with the rhetoric of promoting the immigration of skilled workers.

[A Marxist Historian]

That's nice, but it's not really political. Trotskyist economism and sloganeering strikes again (note to Cockshott: this is what MH's "defense guards" slogan amounts to). Proper political struggles raise the question of rule of law, and in an educative manner.

For example, equal pay for equal work, to be fully political, should be globalized (i.e., like an international bill of rights and enforced by some global labour union) and upward, based on real purchasing power parity. Neither sectional struggles nor their slogans address the economics concept of real purchasing power parity.

Pure parliamentary cretinism of the worst sort. Your "proper political struggles" are futile attempts to get reformist laws passed, in an era when the social welfare state is being destroyed, not built up. A pipe dream.

Your "internationalal bill of rights" is truly absurd. Where would this be enacted? In the UN general assembly? That's just a bad joke.

A global labor union would be an excellent idea, but it would hardly be in a position to enforce reform laws on the capitalists. For that to be done, one needs to overthrow the capitalists by force of arms.

And forming workers defense guards is exactly *not* sloganeering. It's not a slogan, it's something one does. Union picket squads are the first nuclei of workers defense guards. In America at least, every union has a baseball team or something, easily convertible to something else as needed. Baseball bats can be used for hitting things other than baseballs.

There are a whole lot of union-sponsored NRA chapters for that matter.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

The fact that the Labour Party has abandoned socialism should not be an argument for us doing the same. I take the essence of Lenins teaching to be the necessity to engage in political struggle on a programme of changing the political and economic system.

On the abolition of slavery in the US, yes the immediate circumstances were the wartime proclamation by Lincoln, but the precondition for that and for the war itself was his election with the support of the anti-slavery wing of the Republican party.

Lincoln was not an abolitionist. He wanted to stop the expansion of slavery and preserve the Union. That was the basis he was elected on, not campaigning for abolition, which he did not engage in. He spent his first year in office promising the South that he would *never* take steps to abolish slavery, as long as they were willing not to secede.

He was even willing to entertain the "Crittenden Compromise," which would have guaranteed the South from slavery *ever* being abolished, if the South would agree that slavery's expansion would stop.

But he was a bourgeois revolutionary who was very *serious* about stopping the expansion of slavery, and was willing to abolish it, if that was what was necessary to win the Civil War. Which it was.

Slavery was abolished through revolution and civil war, with legislative political campaigning for abolition playing little or no role.

According to Lenin himself, the two most fundamental aspects of his ideas were (and here I am only just barely paraphrasing):

1. The dictatorship of the proletariat, and

2. The use of force in the transition to socialism.

-M.H.-

[agnixie]

Maybe we should let the working class decide for itself what it wants? What kind of leadership it wants, what form of organisation it wants to see from that leadership, who it wants in leadership positions; we can neither assume what the working class wants, nor appoint ourself to that role, as institutions any more than as as individuals. All of this party-posturing, whether of the SWP brand or of your own apparently more pure variety, is just substitutionism in a bad democratic drag.

Nonsense; whoever heard of a workers' revolution led by workers. :rolleyes:

;)

[Paul Cockshott]

That sounds more like Maoism , he may have said something like that in retrispect but that is not what is in 'What is to Be Done'

[Die Neue Zeit]

Pure parliamentary cretinism of the worst sort. Your "proper political struggles" are futile attempts to get reformist laws passed, in an era when the social welfare state is being destroyed, not built up. A pipe dream.

I don't hold such illusions. However, the eight-hour workday in Russia, for example, was instituted by Sovnarkom decree and not by a whole bunch of sectional union disputes. You confuse parliamentary cretinism with legislative necessity in general.


Your "internationalal bill of rights" is truly absurd. Where would this be enacted? In the UN general assembly? That's just a bad joke.

By similar institutions to those responsible for the World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc.


A global labor union would be an excellent idea, but it would hardly be in a position to enforce reform laws on the capitalists. For that to be done, one needs to overthrow the capitalists by force of arms.

Au contraire, I do think it would be in such a position. Don't scream "transitional" all the time.


And forming workers defense guards is exactly *not* sloganeering. It's not a slogan, it's something one does. Union picket squads are the first nuclei of workers defense guards. In America at least, every union has a baseball team or something, easily convertible to something else as needed. Baseball bats can be used for hitting things other than baseballs.

There are a whole lot of union-sponsored NRA chapters for that matter.

-M.H.-

But it doesn't address openly the need to lift restrictions on worker assembly and association, does it?

[Paul Cockshott]

I don't hold such illusions. However, the eight-hour workday in Russia, for example, was instituted by Sovnarkom decree and not by a whole bunch of sectional union disputes. You confuse parliamentary cretinism with legislative necessity in general.
this is a good point. The historian says that we are wrong to focus on legislation, but any socially revolutionary movement has as its goal the changing of legal property relations of the society. This is true whether that movement gains power by elections or by civil war or, as in the case of Lincoln and slavery, by a combination of the two.

Moreover civil wars only break out, if they do, when all peaceful means have been exhausted. People will not take up arms for a cause unless they are first convinced of its justice, and in a country where they have the vote, they will first attempt to obtain their goals by voting, only if this is thwarted its civil war with all its horrors likely to break out.

[Jose Gracchus]

You two are so bourgeois it is hard to truly grasp. If you were anyone else you two would surely have been restricted ages ago.

[Paul Cockshott]

can you elaborate in what is worthy of 'restriction' in the above?

[Jose Gracchus]

First of all, you openly support the machinery of the bourgeois state being left in place, with "populism" and maybe the juridicial substitution of jury-selected citizens for the top-level decision makers. Nothing about the general roll-up of the settled state bureaucracy.

Secondly, you have stated you regard the supercession of class society to be utopian and unlikely. You cannot possibly be a communist with such beliefs.

Third, I never hear you say anything about class struggles. Rather there is only a party and its program to be implemented by passive approval and acceptable, nothing of workers' active participation in the construction of a classless, post-commmodity, stateless society.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

While as interesting this historical and theoretical discussion that is taking place at the moment, I wonder what this has to do with “Building the Socialist Politics in the UK”. I thought discussing the developing Anti-Cuts movement in England and Wales and the beginnings of the Anti-Cuts movement in Scotland by left-wingers, trade unionists and socialists would be a better way of advancing the theoretical and historical discussion.

What is important for Socialists in Britain is where we are and where we have we been and where we are going in defending and advancing Socialism. Would it not be better to use the examples of the United Left Alliance in Ireland to build a left poll of attraction; or how the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in England and Wales are developing in little steps; or how the Trade Unions are fighting back against the Cuts and how socialists should intervene in this action; or even in the historical experience of the Poplar Council in the 1920s and the Liverpool and Lambeth Councils in the 1980s; or even the Anti-poll Tax battle as a means to build a new workers’ formation with socialist involved in it to develop working class representation once again. Just a thought!

[Paul Cockshott]

First of all, you openly support the machinery of the bourgeois state being left in place, with "populism" and maybe the juridicial substitution of jury-selected citizens for the top-level decision makers. Nothing about the general roll-up of the settled state bureaucracy.

If you replace the house of commons, house of lords and the monarchy with a citizens assembly chosen by lot, and generalise that principle throughout the local levels of the state, the health service etc, that would be a massive political revolution which would fundamentally change the nature of the state.

It would challenge the characteristic state form not only of Britain since the civil war, but of all existing bourgeois states.




Secondly, you have stated you regard the supercession of class society to be utopian and unlikely. You cannot possibly be a communist with such beliefs.

I dont say that the supercession of class society is impossible. I say, as a number of other Marxists as diverse as Mao and Macnair agree, that socialism is a form of class society in which class struggle and class conflict continue.



Third, I never hear you say anything about class struggles. Rather there is only a party and its program to be implemented by passive approval and acceptable, nothing of workers' active participation in the construction of a classless, post-commmodity, stateless society.

You are right that I do not have a detailed strategy for how socialists should try to conduct the political class struggle in Britain. I do have certain ideas which I have tried to put into practice in the past.

1. The primary goal of the movement has to be the overthrow of the existing parliamentary sytem and the establishment of a democracy.

2. That in this struggle it is necessary to constantly emphasise the illegitimacy of all laws and taxes etc that have not had direct popular approval. Where such opportunities exist the aim must be to either build up mass civil disobediance or the threat of this to win aims.

3. It almost certainly advantageous to put candidates forward for elections on a programme of revolutionary political and economic change, but if elected the candidates should follow the Irish Republican principle of abstaining from participating in an illegitimate parliament until we have a majority.

4. A movement of this sort might have to consider walking on two legs as the Irish movement did.

This was the basic strategy some of us arrived at in the mid 80s and which we used when we initiated the anti-poll tax and anti-water privatisation campaigns.

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't hold such illusions. However, the eight-hour workday in Russia, for example, was instituted by Sovnarkom decree and not by a whole bunch of sectional union disputes. You confuse parliamentary cretinism with legislative necessity in general.

Well yes as to Sovnarkom decree. After the capitalist state is overthrown, and not before, the new workers state will enact a lot of things. Campaigning to get them passed through current parliaments is dreaming if seriously intended, and not just a propaganda ploy.



By similar institutions to those responsible for the World Bank, IMF, WTO, etc.

Huh?

Why not just try to get socialism passed at a stockholder's meeting?
That's truly bizarre.


Au contraire, I do think it would be in such a position. Don't scream "transitional" all the time.

No, it wouldn't. A global trade union trying to implement socialist measures by strikes and plant occupations wouldn't work, if for no other reason than that the capitalists would simply close their plants down themselves if forced to operate under conditions that prevented them from making a profit. As in Italy in 1920, where the capitalists simply waited out the general strike until it had caused enough economic distress to enable Mussolini to organize a mass fascist movement to smash the unions.

No, to *enforce* socialist measures on capitalists, you need an enforcer. In other words, a workers state. Not a trade union.


But it doesn't address openly the need to lift restrictions on worker assembly and association, does it?

Well, in America workers do have freedom of assembly under the First Amendment, and freedom of association since the 1830s, with fairly broad rights in that category since the 1930s at any rate.

Not the case in Germany?

In any case, the issue is not freedom of association and assembly, a bourgeois freedom that has been a fundamental plank of bourgeois revolutions, but what gets done with that freedom. You can have all the freedom you like, up to and including the freedom to form workers militias, like you had in Austria in the Weimar years, and the question is still what you *do* with that freedom.

There is no formal constitutional right to form workers militias, but why would one be needed? In practice, whether they are formed is dependent on whether working class organizations want to form them. Whether the bourgeois state tolerates this or cracks down depends on the state of the class struggle, and has little to do with how the law currently reads.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

That sounds more like Maoism , he may have said something like that in retrispect but that is not what is in 'What is to Be Done'

No, not WITBD, but during the course of political debates during the Russian Civil War, when some relevant experience was there so this was no longer abstract speculation.

I don't have the quote ready to hand, but there are similar quotes in State and Revolution that surely you are familiar with.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

While as interesting this historical and theoretical discussion that is taking place at the moment, I wonder what this has to do with “Building the Socialist Politics in the UK”. I thought discussing the developing Anti-Cuts movement in England and Wales and the beginnings of the Anti-Cuts movement in Scotland by left-wingers, trade unionists and socialists would be a better way of advancing the theoretical and historical discussion.

What is important for Socialists in Britain is where we are and where we have we been and where we are going in defending and advancing Socialism. Would it not be better to use the examples of the United Left Alliance in Ireland to build a left poll of attraction; or how the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in England and Wales are developing in little steps; or how the Trade Unions are fighting back against the Cuts and how socialists should intervene in this action; or even in the historical experience of the Poplar Council in the 1920s and the Liverpool and Lambeth Councils in the 1980s; or even the Anti-poll Tax battle as a means to build a new workers’ formation with socialist involved in it to develop working class representation once again. Just a thought!

Well, perhaps this discussion has wandered off the track a bit, but not that far actually.

How can the cuts be stopped, at this point?

By overthrowing the capitalist state in England and replacing it with a workers state. Given the extreme level of economic crisis in Europe in general and England in particular, I seriously doubt that anything less than that would do it.

If England remains a capitalist country, then drastic assaults on the working class can only be slowed down slightly, not stopped.

Mucking around with electing left wingers to municipal councils is particularly pointless at this point, for any purpose other than providing a platform for agitation for mass action.

Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

Repeat that experience all over again, and things would be even worse.

-M.H.-

[Paul Cockshott]

No, not WITBD, but during the course of when some relevant experience was there so this was no longer abstract speculation.
I don't have the quote ready to hand, but there are similar quotes in State and Revolution that surely you are familiar with.
-M.H.-Yes he did then, but at this stage one has to be circumspect on a public forum.

[bricolage]

An interesting approach to 'anti-cuts' from Paul Mattick Jr;

Rail: Does that mean that it’s simply impossible to fight against cuts?

Mattick: I think that anti-austerity struggles have to become more radical. They have to concentrate on immediate material goods. For example, there are now millions of people who have been thrown out of their houses. There are a lot of empty houses, so people have to begin moving into those houses. There is a lot of food, so people have to take the food. If factories have closed, people need to go into the factories and start producing goods. But they cannot expect that employers are going to give them jobs. If they could be employed profitably, they already would be, as I say in the book. And they can’t expect the government to give them jobs. The government doesn’t have any money. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t important ways to fight austerity. This is still a rich country. There’s all sorts of stuff around. People have to begin to take the stuff that’s there. They have to demand the immediate improvement in their living conditions—very concrete things. So instead of asking for work, which they cannot get, they should just ask for food. A very intelligent move would be to say, OK, you can’t give us jobs—then just feed us, feed us for nothing. It’s not like there’s no food.http://libcom.org/library/paul-mattick-jr-economic-crisis-fact-fiction

[The Red]

This is all presuming, of course, that Scotland stays in the UK, which would greatly alter the shape of things.

[Paul Cockshott]

I would give 60/40 odds on the UK breaking up within five years.

[The Red]

I would give 60/40 odds on the UK breaking up within five years.

Scotland's possible, Ulster also has a chance of leaving if Scotland secedes but I doubt Scotland would have them. The idea of English independence and even devolution would likely be killed by Scottish independence though, the grumpy right wingers couldn't complain about 'subsidy junkies' any more.

[Die Neue Zeit]

First of all, you openly support the machinery of the bourgeois state being left in place, with "populism" and maybe the juridicial substitution of jury-selected citizens for the top-level decision makers. Nothing about the general roll-up of the settled state bureaucracy.

We both are for the replacement of the "settled state bureaucracy." There's nothing bourgeois about that. There's definitely nothing bourgeois about a party-movement's bureaucracy substituting for the "settled state bureaucracy." Re. demarchy, both of us have personally called for all public offices to be filled by lot at some point, not just the "top-level decision makers."

What we are against (and again we go by our definition of bureaucracy in relation to processes, not by someone else's definition in relation to hierarchy) is the immediate abolition of bureaucracy-as-process.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

While as interesting this historical and theoretical discussion that is taking place at the moment, I wonder what this has to do with “Building the Socialist Politics in the UK”. I thought discussing the developing Anti-Cuts movement in England and Wales and the beginnings of the Anti-Cuts movement in Scotland by left-wingers, trade unionists and socialists would be a better way of advancing the theoretical and historical discussion.

What is important for Socialists in Britain is where we are and where we have we been and where we are going in defending and advancing Socialism. Would it not be better to use the examples of the United Left Alliance in Ireland to build a left poll of attraction; or how the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in England and Wales are developing in little steps; or how the Trade Unions are fighting back against the Cuts and how socialists should intervene in this action; or even in the historical experience of the Poplar Council in the 1920s and the Liverpool and Lambeth Councils in the 1980s; or even the Anti-poll Tax battle as a means to build a new workers’ formation with socialist involved in it to develop working class representation once again. Just a thought!

I cannot think of a worse model than TUSC to base any resistance and revolutionary strategy/action on.

The problem with raising things like Liverpool Council's tactics in the 1980s is that, whilst obviously actions carried out with admirably good aims, they actually failed in the end.

Really, we should be looking to mass action like the anti-poll tax battle as you raise, rather than waiting for new party-led campaigns or resistance to come about for ordinary people to follow.

It's not about working class representation, it's about working class direct action. In that sense, this 'interesting theoretical discussion' is actually vital, if some people believe that the current methods utilised on the left, the current organisational structures and norms are out-of-date and inadequate.

[Jolly Red Giant]

I cannot think of a worse model than TUSC to base any resistance and revolutionary strategy/action on.
Maybe you can outline your reasons for this assertion.


The problem with raising things like Liverpool Council's tactics in the 1980s is that, whilst obviously actions carried out with admirably good aims, they actually failed in the end.
I would dispute that - it actually depends on what you expected the outcomes to be and the feasibility of achieving such outcomes - but in terms of laying down a marker and demonstrating in action socialist policies (i.e. building houses and creating jobs) on a limit scale it was a success.


Really, we should be looking to mass action like the anti-poll tax battle as you raise, rather than waiting for new party-led campaigns or resistance to come about for ordinary people to follow.
The reaility is that mass actions on the scale of the poll-tax campiagn require a 'party' to give them an organisation and political basis. Without the role of the CWI (and others) within the anti-poll tax campaign, it is likely that it would not have gained anything like the success it achieved. The same situation exists today. In Ireland there will be campaigns against the new 'household tax' (i.e. an Irish poll-tax) and against new water and utility charges. Opposition campaigns will not spring up spontaneously - but will be driven by the Socialist Party and the ULA. In the UK the anti-cuts campaigns without 'party' involvement will be limited to local groups and have very limited success. For the anti-cuts movement to be successful it requires nationawide organisation and it will need 'party' and TU involvement to achieve this.


It's not about working class representation, it's about working class direct action. In that sense, this 'interesting theoretical discussion' is actually vital, if some people believe that the current methods utilised on the left, the current organisational structures and norms are out-of-date and inadequate.
Representation and direct action are in effect the same thing - one cannot be built without the other and one cannot function without the other. To argue that they are seperate and one must exclude the other is a recipe of impotency.

As for the 'out-dated and inadequate' organisational structures and norms - despite all the huffing and puffing over the past few pages of this thread there has been little in the way of an 'alternative' outlined.



Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

For someone with the title 'Marxist Historian' you are clearly deficient in your research of this (among other) topics.

The issuing of the redundancy notices was a tactical error by the council - but remember this - the Militant did not have a majority within the Labour group and the reason put forward was because of the legal liability the councillors would have personally had for the £23million redundancy payments. The majoirty of the Labour group decided to 'issue' the redundancy notices in order to circumvent this liability and to facilitate access to loans for continued running of the council. With this decision the Militant members on the council accepted the majority decision - they could do nothing else.

The right-wing bureaucrats attempted to use the issue - not to oppose the 'redundancy notices' but to undermine the councils campaign to protect jobs. After the JSSC proposed an all-out strike in SUPPORT of the council - the right-wing NALGO and NUPE officials did their utmost to undermine the strike proposal. The Communist Party also played a role in assisting the right-wing to sabotage the JSSC proposal particularly in the NUT. Indeed NUPE refused to allow their memebrs to vote on the strike proposal.

Finally - not one single union called strike action AGAINST the Council. Indeed after the sabotaging of the JSSC proposal 50,000 people (one tenth of the city's population) took to the streets of Liverpool on Sept 25 to support the Council.

So - if you want to attempt a criticism of the actions of the Militant or the Socialist Council in Liverpool I suggest that you get your facts right first.

[A Marxist Historian]

Maybe you can outline your reasons for this assertion.


I would dispute that - it actually depends on what you expected the outcomes to be and the feasibility of achieving such outcomes - but in terms of laying down a marker and demonstrating in action socialist policies (i.e. building houses and creating jobs) on a limit scale it was a success.


The reaility is that mass actions on the scale of the poll-tax campiagn require a 'party' to give them an organisation and political basis. Without the role of the CWI (and others) within the anti-poll tax campaign, it is likely that it would not have gained anything like the success it achieved. The same situation exists today. In Ireland there will be campaigns against the new 'household tax' (i.e. an Irish poll-tax) and against new water and utility charges. Opposition campaigns will not spring up spontaneously - but will be driven by the Socialist Party and the ULA. In the UK the anti-cuts campaigns without 'party' involvement will be limited to local groups and have very limited success. For the anti-cuts movement to be successful it requires nationawide organisation and it will need 'party' and TU involvement to achieve this.


Representation and direct action are in effect the same thing - one cannot be built without the other and one cannot function without the other. To argue that they are seperate and one must exclude the other is a recipe of impotency.

As for the 'out-dated and inadequate' organisational structures and norms - despite all the huffing and puffing over the past few pages of this thread there has been little in the way of an 'alternative' outlined.


For someone with the title 'Marxist Historian' you are clearly deficient in your research of this (among other) topics.

The issuing of the redundancy notices was a tactical error by the council - but remember this - the Militant did not have a majority within the Labour group and the reason put forward was because of the legal liability the councillors would have personally had for the £23million redundancy payments. The majoirty of the Labour group decided to 'issue' the redundancy notices in order to circumvent this liability and to facilitate access to loans for continued running of the council. With this decision the Militant members on the council accepted the majority decision - they could do nothing else.

The right-wing bureaucrats attempted to use the issue - not to oppose the 'redundancy notices' but to undermine the councils campaign to protect jobs. After the JSSC proposed an all-out strike in SUPPORT of the council - the right-wing NALGO and NUPE officials did their utmost to undermine the strike proposal. The Communist Party also played a role in assisting the right-wing to sabotage the JSSC proposal particularly in the NUT. Indeed NUPE refused to allow their memebrs to vote on the strike proposal.

Finally - not one single union called strike action AGAINST the Council. Indeed after the sabotaging of the JSSC proposal 50,000 people (one tenth of the city's population) took to the streets of Liverpool on Sept 25 to support the Council.

So - if you want to attempt a criticism of the actions of the Militant or the Socialist Council in Liverpool I suggest that you get your facts right first.

These are inept lawyers arguments to cover what boiled down to betrayal. You can blame the pro-Labour majority for the decision all you like, the fact is that the Militant councillors voted for it and therefore shared responsibility.

The correct policy was Just Say No. If the Militant didn't swing enough votes in the council to prevent it from passing, then fine, the line has been drawn between the left and the right in a way every worker can understand.

If it did swing enough votes to prevent the motion from passing, and that meant that councillors would be personally liable for the money, the solution was to resign the worthless and dangerous councillors positions and take to the streets, having demonstrated in practice to the working class the worthlessness of bourgeois electoralism and the need for workers to follow better paths for their liberation.

One you take responsibility for the running of the bourgeois state, this sort of thing is what happens. For a contemporary example look at the coalition government in Berlin, in which the Left Party participates, which cooperates with all capitalist attacks on the working class, issuing occasional mild complaints.

Suppose you elect municipal councillors right now, get the majority, and face the task of balancing the local budget. What do you do? Well, either resign your positions or take it out of the workers' hides. Short of an immediate revolution, there are no other solutions.

And a local one-city municipal revolution with the rest of the country not ready for revolution and civil war means just another bloody defeat for the working class, with the British army marching in to throw you all in jail or shoot you if you resist.

If the unions were in fact willing to let bygones be bygones and forgive the Militant councillors for this and come out in their defense anyway, which is *not at all* what I have heard from other sources, well, the proof is in the pudding.

How many Grantite or Taafeite councillors are there on the Liverpool council now? Zip, I do believe? That indicates just how much credibility the Militant had in Liverpool with the workers as a result of the "heroic" Liverpool experience.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Maybe you can outline your reasons for this assertion.


I would dispute that - it actually depends on what you expected the outcomes to be and the feasibility of achieving such outcomes - but in terms of laying down a marker and demonstrating in action socialist policies (i.e. building houses and creating jobs) on a limit scale it was a success.


The reaility is that mass actions on the scale of the poll-tax campiagn require a 'party' to give them an organisation and political basis. Without the role of the CWI (and others) within the anti-poll tax campaign, it is likely that it would not have gained anything like the success it achieved. The same situation exists today. In Ireland there will be campaigns against the new 'household tax' (i.e. an Irish poll-tax) and against new water and utility charges. Opposition campaigns will not spring up spontaneously - but will be driven by the Socialist Party and the ULA. In the UK the anti-cuts campaigns without 'party' involvement will be limited to local groups and have very limited success. For the anti-cuts movement to be successful it requires nationawide organisation and it will need 'party' and TU involvement to achieve this.


Representation and direct action are in effect the same thing - one cannot be built without the other and one cannot function without the other. To argue that they are seperate and one must exclude the other is a recipe of impotency.

As for the 'out-dated and inadequate' organisational structures and norms - despite all the huffing and puffing over the past few pages of this thread there has been little in the way of an 'alternative' outlined.




1) A coalition between a Socialist party and Trade Union bureaucrats for the sake of improving performance in bourgeois elections cannot be seen as a strategy for revolution.

2) You mean the same CWI/Militant that condemned those who protested about the poll tax?

3) Representation and Direct Action are not at all the same thing. One can have perfectly representative government of all groups in society and still live in a bourgeois and Capitalist political and economic system. Having said that, nowhere have I said that the two are mutually exclusive, or somehow opposites. If I need you to put words in my mouth, i'll ask.

4) There have been alternatives highlighted in this thread by myself and others. Maybe you're not looking hard enough.

[Jolly Red Giant]

So do you now accept you were factually INCORRECT in your previous assertions about the Council and the redundancy notices - or are your still intent on living in internet wonderland?


These are inept lawyers arguments to cover what boiled down to betrayal. You can blame the pro-Labour majority for the decision all you like, the fact is that the Militant councillors voted for it and therefore shared responsibility.

The correct policy was Just Say No. If the Militant didn't swing enough votes in the council to prevent it from passing, then fine, the line has been drawn between the left and the right in a way every worker can understand.

If it did swing enough votes to prevent the motion from passing, and that meant that councillors would be personally liable for the money, the solution was to resign the worthless and dangerous councillors positions and take to the streets, having demonstrated in practice to the working class the worthlessness of bourgeois electoralism and the need for workers to follow better paths for their liberation.
It is very easy for an internet warrior who is 25 years removed from the situation that existed to pontificate about what should have been done. The reality on the ground, however, was quite different.

1. The decision was made AFTER the capitualtion of the other 'Left' councils to Tory demands.
2. There was a massive citywide and statewide propaganda campaign against the Council - facilitated by many trade union bureaucrats who refused to allow the ocuncillors to address their members.
3. The council workforce voted against all out strike action in support fo the council.
4. There was not a 'left' and a 'right' within the Labour group. The difference between most of the councillors in terms of politics were like the differences between the Militant and Eric Heffer. Some councillors did move to the right in the period after the defeat of the council - but that would hardly have been a surprise.Afterall - 47 of the councillors were banned from office and surcharged.

Now your strategy was to abandon all the gains that the council had made over the previous four years. The strategy that was adpted was an organised retreat in order to protect the real and practical gains of the council.


One you take responsibility for the running of the bourgeois state, this sort of thing is what happens. For a contemporary example look at the coalition government in Berlin, in which the Left Party participates, which cooperates with all capitalist attacks on the working class, issuing occasional mild complaints.
This had nothing to do with 'running' the bourgeois state. Real and tangable gains were made by the socialist council in Liverpool - to dismiss them is to tell working class people - we are simply going to ignore your plight until the revolution comes along and despite the fact that we can do something to help alleviate the severity of the situation you are facing under capitalism we are simply going to do nothing about it - in effect your attitude is 'you must be completely destitute so you will support the revolution - and I will elad it' - to do this is a betrayal of working class people.

From the very outset the Militant made it clear that any gains that were going to be made by the Council would be short-term and unless working class people mobilised to defend these gains the right-wing would remove them at the earliest available opportunity.


Suppose you elect municipal councillors right now, get the majority, and face the task of balancing the local budget. What do you do? Well, either resign your positions or take it out of the workers' hides. Short of an immediate revolution, there are no other solutions.
The situation faced by the Socialist Council in Liverpool in the mid-1980's was as bad as the situation now - yet the council built homes, schools, leisure centres, playschools, created jobs and increased council wages. If a socialist council was elected today it would and should do the same and also have to point out - like the Militant did at the time of the Council in Liverpool - that any gains made would be short-term without the mobilisation of working class people to take power.


And a local one-city municipal revolution with the rest of the country not ready for revolution and civil war means just another bloody defeat for the working class, with the British army marching in to throw you all in jail or shoot you if you resist.
And again I suggest that you actually try and find out about the history of the Liverpool council before you make such a stupid statement. Right from the very begining the Liverpool council attempted to mobilise other councils around England to oppose the Tory cuts and attempted to mobilise working class people around the country in defence of the councils that did decide to fight. It is not the fault of the Militant or the working class that the other left councils eventually capitulated. However, the Liverpool Council was never about setting the scene for revolution (and I suspect your understanding of the method of marxism is as weak as your understanding of the Liverpool Council) - it was about building houses, creating jobs and defending working class people from cutbacks and demonstrating to working class people that not all councillors are tools fo the bourgeoisie.


If the unions were in fact willing to let bygones be bygones and forgive the Militant councillors for this and come out in their defense anyway, which is *not at all* what I have heard from other sources, well, the proof is in the pudding.
You are once again suggesting that the unions in Liverpool were one single homogeneous 'revolutionary' unit in outlook and action. For years the left had to fight a constant and consistant battle within the unions against the right-wing - and not just the local bureaucrats, but the natuional leaderships, the LP leadership, the Tories the media and the wide variety of other so-called 'revolutionary' groups that existed at the time. And I will repeat once again your implication here - Not one single union organised - or even suggested organising - strike action against the 'redundancy notices' - most of the Council workforce understood the reasoning behind the move - and despite the fact that workers were worried about their jobs - a significant section of the workforce backed the call for all-out strike action against the government. Now I will repeat - the tactic was a mistake - the Militant were not in favour of it - but to have backed out of the fight by simply resigning from the council would have meant abandoning the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool. The Militant were never going to do that - and they were right not to. It was only the tiny sectarian left that crowed about 'betrayal' and 'forward to the revolution'.


How many Grantite or Taafeite councillors are there on the Liverpool council now? Zip, I do believe? That indicates just how much credibility the Militant had in Liverpool with the workers as a result of the "heroic" Liverpool experience.

So from a position of decrying councillors for 'running of the bourgeois state' - you now condemn the Militant for not having any councillors 'running the bourgeois state'. Make no mistake about it - the Socialist Council in Liverpool was defeated - the left in Liverpool was defeated. The defeat in Liverpool was a serious setback for the Militant. After almost a decade of fighting a large number of people simply had no more to give - many more suffered politically from the defeat. The defeat affected not just the Militant/CWI but every left-wing group in Liverpool.

The CWI did make tactical errors during the years of the Liverpool Council - in my opinion one of the biggest was not splitting the District Labour Party away from the national party when Kinnock began his offensive against the council. The CWI and the working class also learned a lot from this period and the lessons will have to be put to the test in the future.

As for the legacy of the Council - the people who moved into new houses during this period remember the council - the parents who who were able to bring their children to a local playschool or school or leisure facility remember the council - etc. But time passes and left-wing groups have to prove themselves to working class people over and over again. Building a revolutionary movement is not simply about typing a few words on a keyboard.

[Jolly Red Giant]

1) A coalition between a Socialist party and Trade Union bureaucrats for the sake of improving performance in bourgeois elections cannot be seen as a strategy for revolution.
Who said it was? - the TUSC is an attempt to begin the process of building a new mass left-wing party - not a 'strategy for revolution'.


2) You mean the same CWI/Militant that condemned those who protested about the poll tax?
I take it here that you are talking about those who actively intended to riot at the demo - AGAINST the expressed DEMOCRATIC wishes of the overwhelming majority of those who voted at the start of the demonstration for a mass organised, disciplined and peaceful demonstration. The bourgeois state wanted a riot - and were intent on provoking one if they needed to - and you are defending those who opposed the democratic decision of those on the demo and handed the biggest propaganda coup to the bourgeoisie that they could have wished for. These individuals were intent on engaging in their own little 'revolutionary' action - and to hell with the working class.


3) Representation and Direct Action are not at all the same thing.
They are two sides of the one coin - one cannot exist without the other - except in the mind of an 'ultra-left'


One can have perfectly representative government of all groups in society and still live in a bourgeois and Capitalist political and economic system.
No it cannot - give one example of a 'perfectly representative government of all groups in society' under capitalism - I'll even make it easier - give a theoretical example.


Having said that, nowhere have I said that the two are mutually exclusive, or somehow opposites.
I get it - they are not opposites - they are just not the 'same' - maybe you could educate me on how role of representation in direct action and vice-versa.


4) There have been alternatives highlighted in this thread by myself and others. Maybe you're not looking hard enough.
No there haven't - all I have seen is someone lecturing people about what 'will not' work - there have been no 'alternatives' put forward.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

I make a comment/contribution which starts off a discussion then I do not get back to it for ages principally because I am involved in real life and the class struggle in the real world, not the cyber land class struggle that takes place in socialist websites. Nevertheless, at least on Revleft website one can keep coming back to the question time and time again unlike other so-called socialist unity websites I know.

The interesting theoretical and historical discussion A Marxist Historian and El Granma was having before my intervention a few days ago was just that. It was not conducted in relation to the day to day experiences of the working class of Britain on how to fight against the Cuts, privatisation, to build a new workers’ political representation in Britain and the capitalist system, but in, from my point of view, a high fluting ivory tower way. I have no intention to insult here. I do want to say that I concur with the words of the Jolly Red Giant who puts the general theoretical and historical processes of the Liverpool events and the anti-poll tax struggle succinctly.

Yes we all believe, well I expect we do, in the public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers control and management with a democratic socialist plan of production based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people is the way forward. But are we going to do that now and with a sleight of hand? Of course not, how we get there is the living processes of the class struggle between the working class on the one side and the bourgeoisie on the other. Those battles will go forward and backward depending on the class strengths at a particular time and of course the leadership in those battles as well. In those living class battles mistakes will be made depending on the fluidity of the battle, its leadership and the objective conditions of the time. If it is a good, and by that I mean a Marxist, leadership then the mistakes are quickly recognised and rectified; if it is not a good leadership then they will not be rectified and will turn into a tendency and destroy any gains the working class may make.

On the question of the Liverpool City Council’s battle in the mid 1980 against the Thatcher government it must be recognised that the overwhelming members of the Liverpool Labour Party, the District Labour Party and the 47 Labour Councillors were not involved with the Militant Tendency. But the ideas put forward to build homes, nurseries and so on, along with the programme of No Rate or Rent rises to compensate for Tory Cuts was. But the Militant members said that it had to be fought for by mobilising the Liverpool working class and the working class of Britain through a concerted mass movement to either change the direction of the Thatcher government or push it out of office. Initially other Labour Councils said they would fight against the policies of the Thatcher government but they all retreated bar Lambeth and Liverpool. But because in Liverpool the working class was mobilised by the Council they won concession time after time. I also may say that during this period that the Liverpool Labour Party won national and local election with ever increasing votes and this was a by-product of the class struggle.

In spite of the Liverpool Labour unparalleled record of achievement the power of the State eventually prevailed. Thatcher’s unelected district auditor, supported by the House of Lords, removed the 47 Labour Councillors from office, the ruling class was cheered on by Neil Kinnock who made that grotesque speech at the 1985 Labour Party conference, and his lieutenant witch finder/hunter Peter Kilfoyle finished the job on behalf of the capitalist state by expelling the majority of the 47 from the Labour Party and any other Militant in Liverpool as well.

We live a bourgeois society where the absolute majority of people do not have the consciousness at the moment so see the need for a socialist society. The class struggle and the intervention of genuine socialists with a programme, strategy and tactics to fight the every day struggles that raise that understanding to fight for a better society that people will see there is an alternative to capitalism. That is what happened in Liverpool and in the Anti-Poll Tax campaign but other factors objective and subjective factors come into play that need to be reassessed as the battle goes on. We just cannot play the class struggle in the walls of cyber space. I intend to come back on the question of the anti-poll tax struggle, which I was heavily involved in, and the building of a new workers party as well because I believe the two participants, ‘A Marxist Historian’ and ‘El Granma’ has a distorted view on these events.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yes we all believe, well I expect we do, in the public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy under democratic workers control and management with a democratic socialist plan of production based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people is the way forward.
Um, no? Because we do not all consider Fabianism to be a useful expression of class struggle? :confused:

[bricolage]

I make a comment/contribution which starts off a discussion then I do not get back to it for ages principally because I am involved in real life and the class struggle in the real world, not the cyber land class struggle that takes place in socialist websites.
You made the comment two days ago which I hardly think counts as 'ages' and, despite the extent that you may want to blow your own trumpet, I wonder how much 'class struggle in the real world' you actually managed to get up to over one weekend.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Tim Finnegan: my interpretation of Fabianism is certainly not the public ownership of the means of production under workers control and management. But the slow piecemeal reforming of capitalism to a more equal society. Now that is not what I said.


Bricolage: Point taken, however, it did seem a long time. Nevertheless, if one is campaigning and fighting against the Cuts and privatisation with the trade unions and their members, along with Anti-Cuts groups then one is taking part in the class struggle. Now this is where I “blow my trumpet”, this is what I did this weekend and do every weekend and as well through the week.

[Tim Finnegan]

Tim Finnegan: my interpretation of Fabianism is certainly not the public ownership of the means of production under workers control and management. But the slow piecemeal reforming of capitalism to a more equal society. Now that is not what I said.
Call it "Bennism", then, whatever works. My point was that all this stuff about nationalising the "commanding heights of the economy" is Old Labour material, however much you throw around the phrase "workers' control" (a distinctly ambiguous slogan in your usage), so some of us don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with you on that. I wouldn't object to it, if that's how things went, but I don't see it as either a crucial advance, or even as necessarily being an advance.

I mean, the phrase "commanding heights" was coined in reference to the NEP, ferchrissake. Even for Leninists, that's not exactly something that you're supposed to be aiming for.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Who said it was? - the TUSC is an attempt to begin the process of building a new mass left-wing party - not a 'strategy for revolution'.


I take it here that you are talking about those who actively intended to riot at the demo - AGAINST the expressed DEMOCRATIC wishes of the overwhelming majority of those who voted at the start of the demonstration for a mass organised, disciplined and peaceful demonstration. The bourgeois state wanted a riot - and were intent on provoking one if they needed to - and you are defending those who opposed the democratic decision of those on the demo and handed the biggest propaganda coup to the bourgeoisie that they could have wished for. These individuals were intent on engaging in their own little 'revolutionary' action - and to hell with the working class.


They are two sides of the one coin - one cannot exist without the other - except in the mind of an 'ultra-left'


No it cannot - give one example of a 'perfectly representative government of all groups in society' under capitalism - I'll even make it easier - give a theoretical example.


I get it - they are not opposites - they are just not the 'same' - maybe you could educate me on how role of representation in direct action and vice-versa.


No there haven't - all I have seen is someone lecturing people about what 'will not' work - there have been no 'alternatives' put forward.

1) How will, in practice, a mass left-wing party ever come to power? Labourism failed many years ago, entryism to try and win the party back (lol) to Socialism failed too. No point flogging a dead horse. You need to realise that the party-election model has failed because it cannot transcend at least moderate dictatorship and formal hierarchy.

2) Talking nonsense. You cannot just dismiss something on the spurious, subjective assertion, from your singular person, that it is 'ultra-left'. That's a really pathetic, un-Scientific analysis.

3) I can give a perfect example. The House of Lords could be abolished tomorrow. The House of Commons could sit as the most sovereign and hegemonic political power in the land. It could be made up to perfectly reflect and represent, in numerical terms, the number of workers, of Capitalists, of White people, Black people, Asian people, disabled people, retired people and so on.

There are two key points, in regards to the representation issue, that you neglect:

a) Representation need only passive action by interest groups. Perfect representation can exist, but it does little to alter power relationships in society by itself.

b) It is not to what extent people are represented that matters, it is the institutions they are represented in, and this is where SPEWs analysis of society falls down and leads them to advocate non-revolutionary remedies. The most urgent problem for the working class in this country is not that they are under-represented, it is that they are under-powered, and under-powered in an institution (Parliament) of the state that was created by the bourgeoisie specifically to act in their interests and not in those of the 'dangerous' workers. So instead of calling for a few nationalisations here and there as the prescription for Socialism, as SPEW do, we should be calling for a radical re-organisation of power relationships in society, in relation to class. A large part of this would be the abolition of current bourgeois political structures and their replacement by local, directly elected, more autonomous non-party workers' councils. Sorry if that sounds too 'ultra-left' for you.

By labelling real alternatives 'ultra-left', you are doing the bourgeoisie's job for them. You are adding to the mythology that those who advocate a real shift in political and economic power, as opposed to a few nationalisations and red flags here and there, are all violent, crazy 'anarchists' and 'rioters'. Really, you should recognise the many viable and honourable currents within revolutionary Socialism, rather than attacking them for your own Labourite ends.

[A Marxist Historian]

So do you now accept you were factually INCORRECT in your previous assertions about the Council and the redundancy notices - or are your still intent on living in internet wonderland?

Reread your own posting. You accepted that I was factually correct in my previous assertions, and then came up with all sorts of excuses and lawyers' arguments to defend your group's actions. Which you continue to do so below.



It is very easy for an internet warrior who is 25 years removed from the situation that existed to pontificate about what should have been done. The reality on the ground, however, was quite different.

1. The decision was made AFTER the capitualtion of the other 'Left' councils to Tory demands.
2. There was a massive citywide and statewide propaganda campaign against the Council - facilitated by many trade union bureaucrats who refused to allow the ocuncillors to address their members.
3. The council workforce voted against all out strike action in support fo the council.
4. There was not a 'left' and a 'right' within the Labour group. The difference between most of the councillors in terms of politics were like the differences between the Militant and Eric Heffer. Some councillors did move to the right in the period after the defeat of the council - but that would hardly have been a surprise.Afterall - 47 of the councillors were banned from office and surcharged.

Now your strategy was to abandon all the gains that the council had made over the previous four years. The strategy that was adpted was an organised retreat in order to protect the real and practical gains of the council.

All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher, which was inevitable, as she was in charge of the bourgeois state and you weren't, England being a capitalist not a workers state. So you did an "organized retreat," and ended up finding yourself going along with issuing pink slips to lay off the workforce.


This had nothing to do with 'running' the bourgeois state. Real and tangable gains were made by the socialist council in Liverpool - to dismiss them is to tell working class people - we are simply going to ignore your plight until the revolution comes along and despite the fact that we can do something to help alleviate the severity of the situation you are facing under capitalism we are simply going to do nothing about it - in effect your attitude is 'you must be completely destitute so you will support the revolution - and I will elad it' - to do this is a betrayal of working class people.

From the very outset the Militant made it clear that any gains that were going to be made by the Council would be short-term and unless working class people mobilised to defend these gains the right-wing would remove them at the earliest available opportunity.


The situation faced by the Socialist Council in Liverpool in the mid-1980's was as bad as the situation now - yet the council built homes, schools, leisure centres, playschools, created jobs and increased council wages. If a socialist council was elected today it would and should do the same and also have to point out - like the Militant did at the time of the Council in Liverpool - that any gains made would be short-term without the mobilisation of working class people to take power.


And again I suggest that you actually try and find out about the history of the Liverpool council before you make such a stupid statement. Right from the very begining the Liverpool council attempted to mobilise other councils around England to oppose the Tory cuts and attempted to mobilise working class people around the country in defence of the councils that did decide to fight. It is not the fault of the Militant or the working class that the other left councils eventually capitulated. However, the Liverpool Council was never about setting the scene for revolution (and I suspect your understanding of the method of marxism is as weak as your understanding of the Liverpool Council) - it was about building houses, creating jobs and defending working class people from cutbacks and demonstrating to working class people that not all councillors are tools fo the bourgeoisie.


You are once again suggesting that the unions in Liverpool were one single homogeneous 'revolutionary' unit in outlook and action. For years the left had to fight a constant and consistant battle within the unions against the right-wing - and not just the local bureaucrats, but the natuional leaderships, the LP leadership, the Tories the media and the wide variety of other so-called 'revolutionary' groups that existed at the time. And I will repeat once again your implication here - Not one single union organised - or even suggested organising - strike action against the 'redundancy notices' - most of the Council workforce understood the reasoning behind the move - and despite the fact that workers were worried about their jobs - a significant section of the workforce backed the call for all-out strike action against the government. Now I will repeat - the tactic was a mistake - the Militant were not in favour of it - but to have backed out of the fight by simply resigning from the council would have meant abandoning the council workforce and the working class of Liverpool. The Militant were never going to do that - and they were right not to. It was only the tiny sectarian left that crowed about 'betrayal' and 'forward to the revolution'.


So from a position of decrying councillors for 'running of the bourgeois state' - you now condemn the Militant for not having any councillors 'running the bourgeois state'. Make no mistake about it - the Socialist Council in Liverpool was defeated - the left in Liverpool was defeated. The defeat in Liverpool was a serious setback for the Militant. After almost a decade of fighting a large number of people simply had no more to give - many more suffered politically from the defeat. The defeat affected not just the Militant/CWI but every left-wing group in Liverpool.

The CWI did make tactical errors during the years of the Liverpool Council - in my opinion one of the biggest was not splitting the District Labour Party away from the national party when Kinnock began his offensive against the council. The CWI and the working class also learned a lot from this period and the lessons will have to be put to the test in the future.

As for the legacy of the Council - the people who moved into new houses during this period remember the council - the parents who who were able to bring their children to a local playschool or school or leisure facility remember the council - etc. But time passes and left-wing groups have to prove themselves to working class people over and over again. Building a revolutionary movement is not simply about typing a few words on a keyboard.

My source is the Spartacist account, in which I place much more faith than yours. Also has good stuff on the Poplar experience in the 1920s.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/957/militant.html

Quoting from that:

------------------------------------------------------------------
Not surprisingly, Militant’s redundancy “tactic” was bitterly opposed by the unions. Hatton bleats: “Now we were their employers, and they fought us bitterly every inch of the way. We had told them that the redundancy notices were only a tactical ploy, but they sold the idea to their members as though it was for real. ‘Should we let our employers sack us—or should we stand and fight them now?’ was the line they took.” That is the end result of running the local state in the first place, which means becoming the bosses.
-----------------------------------------------------------------

In addition, the account notes that there was a revolt by black youth in Liverpool in 1981. What was the response to this by the Militant? Essentially to ignore it and to ignore black oppression in Liverpool altogether, for fear that, as MIlitant deputy council leader Hatton put it, they would "alienate white working people."

Meanwhile, while Militant was engaging in "municipal socialism" in Liverpool, you had the *real* class battle in England in the 1980s, namely the great coal miners' strike. And what was the record of the Militant on that?

To go along with strikebreaker Neil Kinnock's effort to break the miners' strike by agitating for a secret ballot on the strike, so that all the closet fears of coal miners of defeat could be mobilized by the bourgeois press to get the miners back to work. All serious union militants know that public discussion and debate, with public votes at membership meetings, is how you mobilize the workers for struggle. That is real working class democracy, not bourgeois democracy controlled by who has the most money, as in bourgeois elections.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Tim Finnegan: my interpretation of Fabianism is certainly not the public ownership of the means of production under workers control and management. But the slow piecemeal reforming of capitalism to a more equal society. Now that is not what I said.


Bricolage: Point taken, however, it did seem a long time. Nevertheless, if one is campaigning and fighting against the Cuts and privatisation with the trade unions and their members, along with Anti-Cuts groups then one is taking part in the class struggle. Now this is where I “blow my trumpet”, this is what I did this weekend and do every weekend and as well through the week.

What is municipal socialism, trying to get control of a municipal government to introduce social reforms in the context of a still existent bourgeois state, if not Fabianism?

In the 1980s, the Militant in Liverpool could actually push through some small reforms in the interests of the workers from their elected positions as small cogs in the wheel of the bourgeois state machinery. Until Thatcher got around to showing them the door, once she'd dealt with the real threat, Arthur Scargill and the coal miners.

Is this even possible now? Anyone who thinks so should wake up and smell the coffee, as we Americans say.

Just how would Militant maintain social services and balance the budget? Printing money? That just leads to inflation. By raising taxes on the rich, I suppose? At this point, the capitalists already are losing interest in actually making things in their factories with their profit margins way down, so their response would be to simply withdraw their money even further from the productive process and toss it even further into wild speculations. Or if that isn't working, just buy gold and wait for better times, the latest trend. Or, at best, capital flight to other countries with lower taxes.

No doubt you will answer that the Militant program calls for nationalizing everything. But without overthrowing the bourgeois state first, that is just "Clause Four" old Labour Social Democracy in a new form, dust in the eyes of the working class.

Fabianism, to be precise.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

1) How will, in practice, a mass left-wing party ever come to power? Labourism failed many years ago, entryism to try and win the party back (lol) to Socialism failed too. No point flogging a dead horse. You need to realise that the party-election model has failed because it cannot transcend at least moderate dictatorship and formal hierarchy.

I assume you mean "party-election" model to refer to today's mere electoral machinery, right?


3) I can give a perfect example. The House of Lords could be abolished tomorrow. The House of Commons could sit as the most sovereign and hegemonic political power in the land. It could be made up to perfectly reflect and represent, in numerical terms, the number of workers, of Capitalists, of White people, Black people, Asian people, disabled people, retired people and so on.

There are two key points, in regards to the representation issue, that you neglect:

a) Representation need only passive action by interest groups. Perfect representation can exist, but it does little to alter power relationships in society by itself.

b) It is not to what extent people are represented that matters, it is the institutions they are represented in, and this is where SPEWs analysis of society falls down and leads them to advocate non-revolutionary remedies. The most urgent problem for the working class in this country is not that they are under-represented, it is that they are under-powered, and under-powered in an institution (Parliament) of the state that was created by the bourgeoisie specifically to act in their interests and not in those of the 'dangerous' workers. So instead of calling for a few nationalisations here and there as the prescription for Socialism, as SPEW do, we should be calling for a radical re-organisation of power relationships in society, in relation to class. A large part of this would be the abolition of current bourgeois political structures and their replacement by local, directly elected, more autonomous non-party workers' councils. Sorry if that sounds too 'ultra-left' for you.

I'm quite OK with statistical representation, comrade.

Also, as you are already aware, the initial development of a revolutionary program cannot be anything other than representative. Real support is then shown by concrete, material political commitment well beyond going to the ballot box (read: voting party membership / citizenship). It would be ridiculous on the question of programs to extend delegation fetishes in KUMBAYA manner to EDLers claiming they're a "working-class movement."

The only problem I have there at the end is the "directly elected, more autonomous non-party" part.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

DNZ - I mean the entire party political-electoral system, in that the current set up of party apparatus' are geared towards bourgeois election systems. Historically, the mass workers' party thing was suited towards Labourite participation in bourgeois elections, but the point i'm trying to make is that we don't need (And probably wouldn't be able to) win a bourgeois election and bring in Socialism via statute. We have to work outside of bourgeois Parliaments to get a natural majority (a critical mass, if you will) of support amongst the people in the country.

DNZ: Representation is a necessary, but insufficient mode for revolution. A symptom rather than a cause. I don't refute its necessity, but merely state that it should be an organic occurrence post-revolution, rather than something that is instituted by statute in Bourgeois Parliament and then pointed to as some marker of Socialism.

The ONLY marker for Socialism is the transfer of economic and political power directly from the hands of the bourgeoisie into the hands of the working class, independent of the state, the army or any interest claiming to act as a 'vanguard' on behalf of the working class.

[Jolly Red Giant]

I don't have time for anything more than a few brief comments



2) Talking nonsense. You cannot just dismiss something on the spurious, subjective assertion, from your singular person, that it is 'ultra-left'. That's a really pathetic, un-Scientific analysis.
A mass demonstration in excess of 250,000 people take a vote at the start of the demonstration for a mass, organised, disciplined and peaceful demonstration - an expression of working class people engaged in participatory democracy - it was their demonstration and they decided the rules that should be followed. A handful of hotheads who had their own agenda (which had nothing to do with defeating the poll-tax or fighting capitalism) and who had an utter and total disregard for the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of those on the demo, decide to engage in acts of violence that did nothing except give the cops an excuse to wade indiscriminately into the crowd and gave the state a massive propaganda coup. These individuals should have been kicked from pillar to post by every protestor on the demo for giving the two-fingers to the democratic wishes of those who participated.


3) I can give a perfect example. The House of Lords could be abolished tomorrow. The House of Commons could sit as the most sovereign and hegemonic political power in the land. It could be made up to perfectly reflect and represent, in numerical terms, the number of workers, of Capitalists, of White people, Black people, Asian people, disabled people, retired people and so on.
Not as part of the capitalist system it couldn't - the House of Commons is part of the infrastructure of capitalist rule - it can never be representative in a democtratic sense because of this.


Reread your own posting. You accepted that I was factually correct in my previous assertions, and then came up with all sorts of excuses and lawyers' arguments to defend your group's actions. Which you continue to do so below.
Let's be clear - you stated :



Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

This is factually INCORRECT - no strike action was taken - organised - or proposed - against the redundancy notices.


All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher,
Did Thatcher knock down the 4,800 houses that were built by the council - or the 7,400 houses and flats that had major improvement works carried out?



My source is the Spartacist account, in which I place much more faith than yours.
Excuse me a minute - :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

[Zanthorus]

A mass demonstration in excess of 250,000 people take a vote at the start of the demonstration for a mass, organised, disciplined and peaceful demonstration - an expression of working class people engaged in participatory democracy - it was their demonstration and they decided the rules that should be followed. A handful of hotheads who had their own agenda (which had nothing to do with defeating the poll-tax or fighting capitalism) and who had an utter and total disregard for the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority of those on the demo, decide to engage in acts of violence that did nothing except give the cops an excuse to wade indiscriminately into the crowd and gave the state a massive propaganda coup. These individuals should have been kicked from pillar to post by every protestor on the demo for giving the two-fingers to the democratic wishes of those who participated.

Thanks for this historical exposition JRG. I'll add it to my ever growing list of examples of why adherence to the democratic principle is practically anti-working class.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

We need to put the Riot at the Anti-poll tax demonstration on the 31st March 1990 in perspective. The magnificent demonstration was organised by a group set up four months earlier, the All Britain Anti-Poll tax Federation. This organisation opposed the poll tax by following the Scottish Anti-poll Tax Union based on the sound principal of pay no poll tax and build anti-poll tax unions to give cohesion to people who could not pay the Tax or did not want to pay the Tax. Remember the Poll Tax came into Scotland a year earlier than England and Wales in April 1989.

In England and Wales in the build-up to the Demo local Anti-Poll Tax Unions (APTUs) had organised over 6,000 lobbies, demonstrations and public meetings in just two months. Before their very eyes the Tory government saw their support collapsing. Over a thousand local APTUs were being built by people who had never got involved with politics before, as well as seasoned political activists. At the start the ABAPTF had agreements with the London police on a number of issues such as Stewarding, if there was trouble the stewards would handle it and drop of points to the demo. It must be made clear that local APTUs up and down the country were taking votes, and certainly in the Union I was involved in, that they wanted a peaceful demonstration and these were being passed up to the Fed.

But evidence on and after the demonstration makes it clear that plans were laid down in advance by senior police officers to sabotage the demonstration, and to enable punitive action to be taken against the leaders of the anti-poll tax movement in the aftermath. Agreements previously made between the Federation and the police were broken. Coaches dropping off points were changed for no reason, so that stewards from the regions could not reach the main stewards’ point and as a result received no instructions on the day. The police disregarded guidelines laid down with the Federation that stewards would deal with sit-down protests. Instead the police waded in, using one such protest as a pretext to attack the demonstration. This provided the spark to the initial fighting, which then escalated, undoubtedly to the surprise of the police, into serious clashes and then a full-scale riot.
Now we will hear from the defenders of the violence that this is the State that caused the trouble and the sit-down protesters need to be defended for their action. While I accept that full blame for the Riot should be put on the elite police group and the senior police officers at the time for causing it. The riot would not have happened if these idiots had not done their sit-down protest. That was not what the democratic decision of the people involved in the ATPUs wanted. The wanted to have the demonstration and then move on to start Not to Pay the Poll Tax and defend the non-payers in the Courts and against the bailiffs. The people who caused the sit-down that commenced the Riot was a rag-tag and bob tail collection of individuals who called themselves Anarchists, and I believe they do not know what the political definition of Anarchism is, but that is another story. On a more controversial note I bet there was agents of the State, police spies, which were there to start violent trouble amongst the so-called anarchist trouble makers. Considering that over the past year we have been hearing of the State’s intervention into environmental And anti-racist groups to sow discord, lead them into violence and collect intelligence.

As JRG indicates the democratic will of the overwhelming majority of the 200,000 plus who went on that Demo wanted no trouble and it took place because a few individuals were not prepared to accept the majority will. From our point of view, the ones who were involved in the anti-poll tax movement, we wanted to build a mass movement of non-payment to stop the tax and hopefully bring down the Tory government. We did develop the mass movement, 18 million non-payers when in March 1991 the poll tax was announced it would end and while we did not bring down the Tory government the mass non-payment campaign did get rid of Thatcher. And the rioters were left on the historical sideline not involved in that great class battle.

[A Marxist Historian]

Replying to me:




Let's be clear - you stated :

This is factually INCORRECT - no strike action was taken - organised - or proposed - against the redundancy notices....

Well, let's quote Derek Hatton again, since he, as the deputy head of the Militant caucus on the Council at the time, presumably knows a whole lot more about this than the entire population of Revleft combined:

“Now we were their employers, and they fought us bitterly every inch of the way. We had told them that the redundancy notices were only a tactical ploy, but they sold the idea to their members as though it was for real. ‘Should we let our employers sack us—or should we stand and fight them now?’ was the line they took."

Now in my book, that sure sounded like threatening strike action. Sorry that I forgot that Brother Hatton, the whole lot of the Liverpool Militant crowd, and the local Liverpool labor leaders are all a totally spineless lot whose idea of how to "stand and fight" is to pass a petition around or something, or whine a bit at a union meeting.

-M.H.-

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

M.H.: you should reference quotes so they can be verified and in what context they were said. To me at the moment it is a one-sided sleight of hand quote from when one does not know when.

To make it quite clear nobody was made redundant from the Notices given out,and no industrial action by the Liverpool Council workers were carried out against the said notices. But after a series of, no doubt harsh worded, debates the Joint Shops Stewards Committee on the 7 September 1985 correctly rejected the redundancy plan. Instead the JSSC then proposed an all out strike to force the Government to financially aid the Council, all which Derek Hatton supported in public meetings in through-out Liverpool. A strike to bring more of the stolen money back to Liverpool.

I must add that actual redundancies were taking place in other Labour Councils around the country and not a word about them was being said by Neil Kinnock or the media at the time. I repeat no redundancies took place in Liverpool City Council because of Redundancy Notices being issued. So M.H. get off that hobby horse.

[Paul Cockshott]

The ONLY marker for Socialism is the transfer of economic and political power directly from the hands of the bourgeoisie into the hands of the working class, independent of the state, the army or any interest claiming to act as a 'vanguard' on behalf of the working class.

Yes but what constitutional form is this to have. You imply it is to be a system of political based on a restricted franchise - only working class people are going to have political rights. I would say that there is no chance of getting mass political support for restricting the franchise, it would be seen by the mass of the population as an attack on democracy. The only possible progressive avenue is to aim for an extension of participatory democracy and attempt within this greater democracy to mobilise a majority against the upper class.

[Jolly Red Giant]

M.H.: you should reference quotes so they can be verified and in what context they were said.
MH got it from that bastion of accuracy - the Sparts.

[A Marxist Historian]

M.H.: you should reference quotes so they can be verified and in what context they were said. To me at the moment it is a one-sided sleight of hand quote from when one does not know when.

To make it quite clear nobody was made redundant from the Notices given out,and no industrial action by the Liverpool Council workers were carried out against the said notices. But after a series of, no doubt harsh worded, debates the Joint Shops Stewards Committee on the 7 September 1985 correctly rejected the redundancy plan. Instead the JSSC then proposed an all out strike to force the Government to financially aid the Council, all which Derek Hatton supported in public meetings in through-out Liverpool. A strike to bring more of the stolen money back to Liverpool.

I must add that actual redundancies were taking place in other Labour Councils around the country and not a word about them was being said by Neil Kinnock or the media at the time. I repeat no redundancies took place in Liverpool City Council because of Redundancy Notices being issued. So M.H. get off that hobby horse.

The quote was repeated twice. The first time I produced it it was properly referenced, I repeat the referencing again.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/957/militant.html

Had you taken the trouble to follow the link, which obviously you did not, you would have discovered that the Sparts, not being petty reformist con artists like your comrades, did reference that quote from Hatton quite adequately.

For your benefit I shall reproduce the referencing, as it seems you were too lazy to bother to check, and instead preferred issuing worthless insinuations without bothering even to click on the link I provided you.

It was from Derek Hatton's 1988 book, Inside Left: The Story So Far.

What do you want? Page numbers? They are not college professors. If you want to call them liars, you will at bare minimum have to look at the book yourself, which surely is not exactly unknown to you.

Until then, if you are honest you will have to concede that the reference is accurate, thereby knocking your lawyers' brief for the Liverpool Council right out of the water. If your account is accurate, that means that the reformist treachery of the Militant was overruled by the JSSC, good for them.

At best, one can say of Hatton et.al. that they were willing to capitulate to rank and file rebellion when directed against them, fearing unpopularity. I suppose that puts them an inch or two ahead of "Kneel" Kinnock.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes but what constitutional form is this to have. You imply it is to be a system of political based on a restricted franchise - only working class people are going to have political rights. I would say that there is no chance of getting mass political support for restricting the franchise, it would be seen by the mass of the population as an attack on democracy. The only possible progressive avenue is to aim for an extension of participatory democracy and attempt within this greater democracy to mobilise a majority against the upper class.

Increasingly, democracy is seen as a dirty word that only means corruption, chaos, the rule of the bankers and deceit of the lower classes. That is why the right wing anti-immigrant populists are rising in popularity in Europe, in countries that often had military dictatorships not so long ago.

In America, "democratic" government is increasingly despised what with the irresponsible insanity going on in Washington. So the Tea Party reactionaries, with their simplistic call to lower or end taxes on the grounds the government will only waste whatever taxes it collects, rise in popularity. They are essentially right wing anarchists.

The only and best way to defend true democracy against the rising right wing tide seeking a Leader to rescue the country from worldwide economic catastrophe, is to specify and insist on *working class* democracy.

There is no need to "restrict" franchise. The very framework of working class democracy through workers' councils excludes the ruling class automatically. Rather than "restricting" democracy, the task is to extend democracy by including not just factory workers on the job in workers councils, but other broad layers of the population.

Thus in Russia you had not only workers councils, but soldiers and peasant councils for example, with, in principle at least, the right of instant recall so that you truly did have a *participatory* not a representative democracy. Modern possible equivalents should be obvious.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yes but what constitutional form is this to have. You imply it is to be a system of political based on a restricted franchise - only working class people are going to have political rights. I would say that there is no chance of getting mass political support for restricting the franchise, it would be seen by the mass of the population as an attack on democracy. The only possible progressive avenue is to aim for an extension of participatory democracy and attempt within this greater democracy to mobilise a majority against the upper class.

Wait, sorry, what? When have I ever mentioned anything about restricting the franchise? I leave that sort of stuff to statists like your mate DNZ.

I was talking about the power relationships within society. The only way to abolish the class system is, instead of simply inverting power via a vanguardist party grabbing state power, is to actually win over a critical mass of ordinary workers whereby they force, via collective democratic will, the destruction/irrelevance of the state tools of repression, and immediately begin the task of constructing an alternative society. That is, I believe, what the transition stage should be. It is pointless to call an inversion of state power a Socialist 'transition' stage, because in truth it bring a communist society no closer.

[Die Neue Zeit]

DNZ - I mean the entire party political-electoral system, in that the current set up of party apparatus' are geared towards bourgeois election systems. Historically, the mass workers' party thing was suited towards Labourite participation in bourgeois elections, but the point i'm trying to make is that we don't need (And probably wouldn't be able to) win a bourgeois election and bring in Socialism via statute. We have to work outside of bourgeois Parliaments to get a natural majority (a critical mass, if you will) of support amongst the people in the country.

I agree with part of your last statement. However, the mass workers party doesn't necessarily have to be suited towards bourgeois election systems. I've mentioned spoilage campaigns before.

Where you've stumbled (like Kautsky, too) is "amongst the people"; it should say "amongst at least the working class."


DNZ: Representation is a necessary, but insufficient mode for revolution. A symptom rather than a cause. I don't refute its necessity, but merely state that it should be an organic occurrence post-revolution, rather than something that is instituted by statute in Bourgeois Parliament and then pointed to as some marker of Socialism.

The ONLY marker for Socialism is the transfer of economic and political power directly from the hands of the bourgeoisie into the hands of the working class, independent of the state, the army or any interest claiming to act as a 'vanguard' on behalf of the working class.

Fair enough, but were the pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD merely "interests claiming to act as a 'vanguard'"?. Anyway, the workers' mass party-movement is still very necessary as an institution.


I leave that sort of stuff to statists like your mate DNZ.

If you re-read my material on sovereign socioeconomic organs, you'll note that I'm not really a "statist."

[Die Neue Zeit]

Yes but what constitutional form is this to have. You imply it is to be a system of political based on a restricted franchise - only working class people are going to have political rights. I would say that there is no chance of getting mass political support for restricting the franchise, it would be seen by the mass of the population as an attack on democracy. The only possible progressive avenue is to aim for an extension of participatory democracy and attempt within this greater democracy to mobilise a majority against the upper class.

I think that an extension of participatory democracy and attempting to mobilize against the upper class are quite compatible with the possibility of having a restricted demarchic franchise (and note here that Macnair clarified on the Bolshevik restrictions, since retirees and the disabled were quite eligible to vote and/or be chosen).

All political and related administrative offices, and also the ability to influence or participate in political decision-making, shall be free of any formal or de facto disqualifications due to non-ownership of non-possessive property or, more generally, of wealth.

[The double-negative on "disqualifications" and "non-ownership" allows for this possibility.]


The only and best way to defend true democracy against the rising right wing tide seeking a Leader to rescue the country from worldwide economic catastrophe, is to specify and insist on *working class* democracy.

There is no need to "restrict" franchise. The very framework of working class democracy through workers' councils excludes the ruling class automatically. Rather than "restricting" democracy, the task is to extend democracy by including not just factory workers on the job in workers councils, but other broad layers of the population.

Thus in Russia you had not only workers councils, but soldiers and peasant councils for example, with, in principle at least, the right of instant recall so that you truly did have a *participatory* not a representative democracy. Modern possible equivalents should be obvious.

-M.H.-

You ignore one crucial detail: the soviets enshrined in the 1918 constitution were not based on workplace elections like factory committees, but on geographic constituencies like party branches and parliaments. That is why the constitution had articles outlining who could or could not vote.

Re. "democracy": the DOTP is the highest form of Managed Democracy and the one best suited to working-class interests. The "battle of democracy" should deal simultaneously with both participatory democracy and managed democracy.

[Paul Cockshott]

There is no need to "restrict" franchise. The very framework of working class democracy through workers' councils excludes the ruling class automatically. Rather than "restricting" democracy, the task is to extend democracy by including not just factory workers on the job in workers councils, but other broad layers of the population.
You are very definitely proposing to restrict the franchise if only those at work are to have a political voice. By doing that you are excluding full time parents, the retired and the self employed and those in all work places where councils have not been set up. You would be giving full citizenship rights to at most around 15 million out of a population of nearly 60 million.

The idea that it is possible to turn the clock back and restrict the franchise in the 21st century is a reactionary dream.

Instead we should be calling for the replacement of elections by random selections from the people. That is the only means of ensuring that the class composition of the legislative bodies of the state are representative of the people rather than heavily biased towards the upper and middle classes as at present.

[A Marxist Historian]

You are very definitely proposing to restrict the franchise if only those at work are to have a political voice. By doing that you are excluding full time parents, the retired and the self employed and those in all work places where councils have not been set up. You would be giving full citizenship rights to at most around 15 million out of a population of nearly 60 million.

The idea that it is possible to turn the clock back and restrict the franchise in the 21st century is a reactionary dream.

Instead we should be calling for the replacement of elections by random selections from the people. That is the only means of ensuring that the class composition of the legislative bodies of the state are representative of the people rather than heavily biased towards the upper and middle classes as at present.

Hm? You apparently quoted my post, but didn't read it.

There are plenty of ways housewives etc. not only could be but *were* represented in Soviet structures in the Soviet Union. *Any* working class organization had the right to Soviet representation, which certainly included, for example, all those popular organizations of women that the Zhenotdel or womens' section of the Soviet Communist Party set up.

Thus you had retirees organizations, consumers organizations, housewives organizations, and on and on and so forth.

And the "self employed," i.e. the petty bourgeoisie, too, if they formed organizations and those organizations solidarized with the workers instead of the capitalists. Thus in America for example you have the National Lawyers Guild, an organization of progressive lawyers which at one time long ago had ambitions of competing with the right wing official lawyers' organization, the ABA. Why wouldn't it be allowed to send a delegate to a workers council, if it sided with the workers and accepted the socialist revolution?

As for the random selection idea, then you get a random government. On a bad day, the fascists could be in charge and start killing everybody. Compared to that, bourgeois parliamentary democracy looks awful good to me.

-M.H.-

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You are very definitely proposing to restrict the franchise if only those at work are to have a political voice. By doing that you are excluding full time parents, the retired and the self employed and those in all work places where councils have not been set up. You would be giving full citizenship rights to at most around 15 million out of a population of nearly 60 million.

The idea that it is possible to turn the clock back and restrict the franchise in the 21st century is a reactionary dream.

Instead we should be calling for the replacement of elections by random selections from the people. That is the only means of ensuring that the class composition of the legislative bodies of the state are representative of the people rather than heavily biased towards the upper and middle classes as at present.

How on earth can you criticise someone on the pretence (false, it clearly turns out) that they want to 'turn back time' and restrict the franchise, as in the earlier days of Capitalism, when you are proposing something that would, in practice, pre-date even democracy.

How the fuck would random selection work in reality, comrade? I know you and DNZ have elucidated, in theoretical terms, many complicated and contrived methods for job-slotting and random selection, but in reality how can this work without hierarchy, class/power authority and ultimately a degeneration of revolution?

Socialist democracy is the ultimate form of fermenting emancipation and the end of injustice, hitherto discovered. To suggest that random selection is anything other than a step backwards in time is either disingenuous and naive, or more likely (knowing DNZ), something that has no practical application outside the theoretical world.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

DNZ:

I don't see the need, semantics aside, to differentiate between 'the people', 'the masses', 'the working class' and so on. Due to the fluid nature of socio-economic reality, due to the existence of the petty bourgeoisie who, in revolutionary times, may be won over to Socialism, I use these phrases interchangeably < for future note.

Also, if you could answer this question in a simple way (note, simple!):

What is a party-movement? A party can be part of a movement, sure. A movement can encompass parties within it, too. But what exactly is this 'party-movement' you talk of? Seems like another nonsensical, theoretical epithet you've decided to create that, yet again, has no actual practical application outside of pen and paper, or the keyboard.

[robbo203]

The fact that the Labour Party has abandoned socialism should not be an argument for us doing the same. I take the essence of Lenins teaching to be the necessity to engage in political struggle on a programme of changing the political and economic system.

.

The very fact that you think the Labour Party "abandoned" socialism implying it once pusued socialism as an objective, speaks volumnes for your lack of understanding of socialism. Labour, even old Labour, was never a socialist party and never had socialism as its aim. It was a capitalist party from the word go. The old Clause Four was a recipe for state capitalism and involved the utterly contradictory notion of "common ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange". You can't have economic exchange where you have common ownership of the means of production. Exchange is an exchange of property rights and hence implies sectional, not common, ownership

[Paul Cockshott]

this is just sectarian hair splitting, I suspect that when clause 4 was drafted this meant that the coop would run all the shops. Putting clause 4 into practice would have been socialism by any but the most sectarian interpretation. It was not Marxian communism true, but it was socialism.

[robbo203]

this is just sectarian hair splitting, I suspect that when clause 4 was drafted this meant that the coop would run all the shops. Putting clause 4 into practice would have been socialism by any but the most sectarian interpretation. It was not Marxian communism true, but it was socialism.


Marxian "communism" was the same as marxian "socialism" as well you know. And this is not sectarian hair splitting. It signifies a fundemental difference of opinion over first principles. I do not support capitalism in any of its forms. You apparently do and ascribe to that form you favour the misleading title of "socialism".

[Die Neue Zeit]

What is a party-movement? A party can be part of a movement, sure. A movement can encompass parties within it, too. But what exactly is this 'party-movement' you talk of? Seems like another nonsensical, theoretical epithet you've decided to create that, yet again, has no actual practical application outside of pen and paper, or the keyboard.

Why the fetish for "activism" at the end?

You're not talking about a real party, being only part of a movement. The pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD weren't "part" of a German workers movement. They were the German workers movement.


I know you and DNZ have elucidated, in theoretical terms, many complicated and contrived methods for job-slotting and random selection, but in reality how can this work without hierarchy, class/power authority and ultimately a degeneration of revolution?

Socialist democracy is the ultimate form of fermenting emancipation and the end of injustice, hitherto discovered. To suggest that random selection is anything other than a step backwards in time is either disingenuous and naive, or more likely (knowing DNZ), something that has no practical application outside the theoretical world.

Council fetishes don't work in the long run. Decentralization fetishes don't work in the long run, either.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The very fact that you think the Labour Party "abandoned" socialism implying it once pusued socialism as an objective, speaks volumnes for your lack of understanding of socialism. Labour, even old Labour, was never a socialist party and never had socialism as its aim. It was a capitalist party from the word go. The old Clause Four was a recipe for state capitalism and involved the utterly contradictory notion of "common ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange". You can't have economic exchange where you have common ownership of the means of production. Exchange is an exchange of property rights and hence implies sectional, not common, ownership

Perhaps state capitalism was implied, but have you considered the possibility that those who inspired the old Clause Four were not politically educated enough?

Consumers exchanging gifts and such with each other might have been perceived as being different from distribution channels for goods.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Tim Finnegan (1 Aug): with all due respect but if one is using political and sociological and economic terminology these one has to be precise not just say “whatever works” that is sloppy analysis. Bennism is entirely different from Fabianism. Bennism is the partial nationalisation of the economy, circa 25 major companies, in the British economy and not under workers control and management. This was like taking the claws of a waking tiger one by one; and this is what happened under Allende’s Chile between 1970 to 73 which proved disastrous for the Chilean working class. Nevertheless, Bennism was to the left of Fabianism, and the pro-capitalist Labour Leadership at that time in the 1970s and 80s, which as I said the social gradual reforming of capitalism.

The commanding heights of the economy mean the main levers that control the most significant parts of the economic and social system. In today’s society and language it means the top 150 companies and banks that dominate and control up to 85 per cent of the British economy. To bring them under control there needs to a socialist transformation of society linked to democratic workers control and management and a democratic socialist plan of production based on the vast majority of people.
I offer a 4 minute introduction to this question by the Deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Party, Hannah Sell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1hah92U_8A

[Jolly Red Giant]

The quote was repeated twice. The first time I produced it it was properly referenced, I repeat the referencing again.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/957/militant.html

Had you taken the trouble to follow the link, which obviously you did not, you would have discovered that the Sparts, not being petty reformist con artists like your comrades, did reference that quote from Hatton quite adequately.
To start with the Sparts have been well known for plucking quotes out of the middle of texts specifically to make them say the opposite for what they were intended - and then also have a habit of being 'liberal' with the exactness of the quote.


For your benefit I shall reproduce the referencing, as it seems you were too lazy to bother to check, and instead preferred issuing worthless insinuations without bothering even to click on the link I provided you.
I read the link - and it is one of the most worthless pieces of drivel about Liverpool that exists - but very much on a par for the Sparts.


It was from Derek Hatton's 1988 book, Inside Left: The Story So Far.
I have never read the book - and have no interest in ever reading it. Hatton 'wrote' the book (it was actually ghost written by a journalist) after he had abandoned Marxism and the Militant. I have no doubt that his musing in the book match his well known 'theoretical understanding' of issues - Hatton was not known for having a very good grasp of the politics. So even if the quote actually does exist - it bears absolutely zero relevence on the Militant and the struggle in Liverpool.


If your account is accurate, that means that the reformist treachery of the Militant was overruled by the JSSC, good for them.
If you did something other than read a rant from an insignificant ultra-left sect you would actually learn that the opposite was the case. The JSSC on the proposal of the Militant stewards backed an all out strike IN SUPPORT of the Council - a strike that was sabotaged by the right-wing union bureaucrats. Furthermore, on the proposal of the Militant stewards the JSSC organised a blockade of the council meeting (with the support of the socialist councillors) in order to prevent the District Auditor and the council lawyers from implementing the 'redundancy notices'.

Again - do you refuse to back down on your claim that the workers organised strike action against the council. If that is the case I suggest you change your username as it is an insult to all Marxists and historians.

[robbo203]

Perhaps state capitalism was implied, but have you considered the possibility that those who inspired the old Clause Four were not politically educated enough?

Consumers exchanging gifts and such with each other might have been perceived as being different from distribution channels for goods.


State capitalism or nationalisation was not just implied in the early Labour Party programme but was actually stated as a goal. Like I said, the old Clause Four evinces a basic confusion about the nature of common ownership of the means of production in identifying this with nationalisation. Thus, it talks of common ownership of the means of exchange meaning nationalisation of ther banking system and so on . But the very idea is utterly illogical and incoherent. Economic exchange is the negation of common ownership; it signifies the absence of the latter and the existence instead of sectional ownership.

The situation you allude to above of consumers "exchanging" gifts is a somewhat different because it is a derivative from an economic exchange transaction and is not itself an economic exchange: you buy something first (which is an economic exchange) and then present to someone as a gift (which is not an economic exchange). When you give someone a gift you are not conducting a sale. It is not an economic transaction at all though it might conceivably be called a moral transaction.

There is a wonderful essay I have somewhere - I will try and find it - which is a brilliant analysis of Marcel Mauss's seminal work The Gift which makes this very point: gift exchanges are the exact opposite of commodity exchanges. Even to haggle over a gift would be to destroy its very essence. Gift exchanges are intended to cement social relationships; commodity exchanges on the other hand, reinforce and affirm a sense of atomism

Communism has been rightly called a gift economy but it is not a gift economy in the sense of individuals exchanging gifts at Christmas (which of course happens today in capitalism). It is a gift economy in the sense that it is based on a system of generalised reciprocity, meaning there is no quid pro quo set up in the sense that if you as an individual scratch my back then Illl scratch yours. The contributions that you make to society are not, and do not need to be, immediately reciprocated in this way. What there is instead is a generalised sense of moral obligation to give according to one's ability in return for being able to take according to ones need. Communism is about your relationship as an individual to society as a whole, not particular individuals with whom you may have dealings with. It is the practical realisation of our social nature as human beings in its most compete sense

This incidentally is why I find the criticisms levelled against free access communism - Marx's higher stage of communism - on this site so utterly inept and wide off the mark - anthropologically illiterate, in fact. Such cricitism fails to see that we are talking about a whole new ball game and it kind of irks me that the concept of a communist society should be so casually and presumptuously dismissed just because it does not fit in with the comfortable bourgeois assumptions about human behaviuour exhibited by such critics. Assumptions such as if you dont have to pay for anything but can simply take what you need - a logical corrollary of the idea of common ownership - then people will just start helping themselves to everything they can lay their hands withourt reagrd to anyone else..

That frankly is a load of bollocks and easily disproven but it doesnt stop some people here from making these knee jerk observations....

[A Marxist Historian]

To start with the Sparts have been well known for plucking quotes out of the middle of texts specifically to make them say the opposite for what they were intended - and then also have a habit of being 'liberal' with the exactness of the quote.

And the Jolly Red Giant, like all giants, is well known for eating children and grinding their bones to make his bread.:D

And here you and your buddy were accusing me of making baseless charges without backing them up.


I read the link - and it is one of the most worthless pieces of drivel about Liverpool that exists - but very much on a par for the Sparts.

I have never read the book - and have no interest in ever reading it. Hatton 'wrote' the book (it was actually ghost written by a journalist) after he had abandoned Marxism and the Militant. I have no doubt that his musing in the book match his well known 'theoretical understanding' of issues - Hatton was not known for having a very good grasp of the politics. So even if the quote actually does exist - it bears absolutely zero relevence on the Militant and the struggle in Liverpool.

So what the almost ideal perfect eyewitness, the deputy head of the Militant caucus on the Liverpool Council, says about what actually happened there should be ignored, and shouldn't even be read. He was a heretic and not loyal to the True Faith. Instead, the thoughts of Chairman Taaffe represent The Truth, as the Pope, as we all know, is infallible.


If you did something other than read a rant from an insignificant ultra-left sect you would actually learn that the opposite was the case. The JSSC on the proposal of the Militant stewards backed an all out strike IN SUPPORT of the Council - a strike that was sabotaged by the right-wing union bureaucrats. Furthermore, on the proposal of the Militant stewards the JSSC organised a blockade of the council meeting (with the support of the socialist councillors) in order to prevent the District Auditor and the council lawyers from implementing the 'redundancy notices'.

Not the opposite at all. If your account is correct the JSSC acted like working class leaders should. Once the Militant capitulated to the anger of the rank and file workers against them for their betrayal, instead of acting like dogs in the manger, the JSSC tried to do what was necessary in the situation, with the wrath of the British capialist class descending on the petty Kerenskys of the Militant on the Liverpool council, after Thatcher and Kinnock's real enemy, the coal miners, had been vanquished. In short, they weren't sectarians.

If I'd have been a shop steward on the JSSC I'd have wanted to do exactly the same sort of thing, despite my extremely low opinion of the Militant. Your organization may be no *better* than the average sellout labor fakers in the British labour movement, but neither are they any worse. An injury to one is an injury to all, and the Liverpool council was after all trying to resist the capitalist assault on the workers at that point, however ineffectively.


Again - do you refuse to back down on your claim that the workers organised strike action against the council. If that is the case I suggest you change your username as it is an insult to all Marxists and historians.

Reread my postings. If you do, you will notice that I already did "back down" on that. As I said, I failed to realise that for Derek Hatton, words like stand up and fight have a different meaning than the usual, him being just as reformist as you are--possibly more so, if your accusations against him have any merit.

-M.H.-

[Kiev Communard]

Communism has been rightly called a gift economy but it is not a gift economy in the sense of individuals exchanging gifts at Christmas (which of course happens today in capitalism). It is a gift economy in the sense that it is based on a system of generalised reciprocity, meaning there is no quid pro quo set up in the sense that if you as an individual scratch my back then Illl scratch yours. The contributions that you make to society are not, and do not need to be, immediately reciprocated in this way. What there is instead is a generalised sense of moral obligation to give according to one's ability in return for being able to take according to ones need. Communism is about your relationship as an individual to society as a whole, not particular individuals with whom you may have dealings with. It is the practical realisation of our social nature as human beings in its most compete sense.

Interestingly enough, the practices of gift exchange were generalised among some Native American peoples (as well as definitely many other communities that existed in transition from primitive communal mode to the early forms of class society), so that it may be said that the notion of generalised reciprocity you have alluded to has been rather widespread among primitive communal societies back then.

[Paul Cockshott]

No, not WITBD, but during the course of political debates during the Russian Civil War, when some relevant experience was there so this was no longer abstract speculation.

I don't have the quote ready to hand, but there are similar quotes in State and Revolution that surely you are familiar with.

-M.H.-
A belated response to this. I am reposting todays marmlist posting, which was an extract from a article I wrote in 1988 that they dug up. It is being reposted because it addresses the issues raised by MH


A revolutionary crisis is one in which there is a real possibility of state power passing from the hands of the ruling class. In all such conjunctures the immediately decisive element is military force. Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun; at least in a crisis it does.
That force is decisive, does not imply it must be used. What is important is that the ruling class should no longer be able to call on effective violence to impose its will.
This may be the result of defeat in an earlier war. In Poland for instance, the combined effect of the German invasion, the execution of the officer class by the Soviets at Katyn, and the suppression of the Warsaw uprising, left the bourgeoisie with no effective armed forces.
It may be the result of war weariness in the army; which refuses to obey orders. Examples of this are the February 1917 revolution in Russia or the 1975 revolution in Portugal.
It may be possible for power to be transfered peacefully; due to the collapse of the executive organs of the state and a consequent lack of co-ordination in the army, e.g., the initial establishment of the Paris Commune after the collapse of the imperial government.
The highest form of class struggle is revolutionary civil war. In this, the armed forces of the reactionaries are crushed and the former rulers forced to flee. Examples of this are the wars led by Cromwell, Toussaint L'Overture, Lincoln, Trotsky, Mao, Castro, HoChi Min and Giap.
The importance of the military factor in revolutions is so obvious that it scarcely needs to be emphasized. Even where, as in the Paris Commune, the initial transfer of power is peaceful, it has to be followed by the construction of a revolutionary army. 'Without a peoples army the people have nothing.'
It is sheer adventurism to advance revolutionary objectives in a period when military factors make the transfer of power impossible. Against every democratic and constitutional prejudice it has to be emphasized that the military situation determines where effective state power lies in a revolutionary conjuncture. Repeated experience has shown that a well disciplined army under decisive centralised command can suppress any threat to state power other than a superior army. An army can not be defeated by trades unions or other peaceful organisations of the working class.
To say that the military question is decisive in revolutionary situations, does not mean that the revolution reduces to a question of military organisation. A revolutionary war is a war of the masses and can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them. This requires that the party have a correct policy of forming a revolutionary alliance of all the oppressed; the policy of uniting all who can be united against the principle enemy. The fact that the struggle has taken an extreme form, war, does not imply that the immediate program of the CP should be extreme. The social aims of the people's war in China, were a comparatively moderate program of land reform. It aimed to unite the rural proletariat and peasantry as a whole against the landowners. Specifically socialist objectives: the formation of co-operatives and communes; were delayed until after the victory of the peoples war.

Revolutionary struggle in developed countries and the Military Question

What should be the attitude of communists in Britain to the military question. It is not enough to effectively ignore it by asserting that the troops, who are from working class backgrounds, would not consent to be used against workers. This is wishful thinking. There are four other approaches which at least deserve to be taken seriously:
i) Turning imperialist war into class war
This is what Lenin advocated during the first world war. The strategy worked in Russia. The preconditions for this are:
a. The existence of an imperialist war.
b. That it is prolonged.
c. That it is not an all out nuclear war.
d. That there is little prospect of 'our side' winning.
The cold war and nuclear deterrence prevented imperialist wars, and made this strategy irrelevant for its duration. If imperialist war re-emerges as a danger, this would again be an appropriate strategy.
ii) Reforming the armed forces
This strategy was advocated by Peter Tatchell and others on the left of the Labour Party. They aimed to replace a professional army with one based on a short period of conscription with general military training similar to the Swiss or former Jugoslav models. Along with this would go an attempt to change the class composition of the officer corps. This approach has a precedent in the classical social democratic program which called for a replacement of the standing army by an armed populace. Some support for it can be found in Engels article The Prussian Military Question and the German Worker's Party (The Pelican Marx Library, Political Writings, Vol 3). In this Engels argued that a conscript army with a short period of service, which depended for its effectiveness on a general mobilization, was an unsuitable instrument for the execution of a military-coup.
Whether this such reforms would be sufficient to prevent a military coup in a time of social crisis can not be said for sure, but in comparison with Britain's current mercenary army, they would certainly be a democratic advance. There is a strong case for the worker's movement to demand such reforms from a Labour government.
iii) Urban guerilla warfare
The Maoist strategy of people's war has been successfully applied in several colonial or semi-colonial countries. This involves using the countryside to surround the towns; building up red base areas and through protracted struggle, going from guerilla war to a general offensive. No attempt to apply this in an urban context has yet resulted in victory. The nearest to an example was probably the Algerian war of independence, but this was primarily a war of national rather than social liberation.
This has led most Marxists to conclude that urban guerilla struggle is inappropriate in developed capitalist countries. It is pointed out that the nature of guerilla struggle inevitably leads to the guerillas going underground and becoming isolated from the class. European experience seems to bear this out. The attempts by the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades, though sustained for several years never rose above isolated terrorism and have ceased to be a danger to the state. But it would be a mistake to conclude that this is inevitably the case.
An apparent counter example is close to home in Ireland. There, a guerilla war has been going on for more than 20 years. It has not become isolated from the population, indeed, a significant share of the working class vote goes to candidates who openly espouse the armed struggle. The fact that it has not long since been victorious is attributable not to military but to political factors: the political program of the IRA limits its appeal to around 25% of the population. Without a political program capable of broadening their base they are unable to break out of the stalemate.
Unlike the RAF and the Red Brigades, whose impetus came at first from the student movement, the nucleus of the IRA came from a section of the working class. It is this which enables them to move through the population like Mao's fish through water. It is their strong ties with the working class catholic population that prevents their eradication by the state. It thus remains possible that a genuinely working-class organisation, with a well thought out political program, could pursue the strategy of guerilla war to a successful conclusion.
(Marmilist moderator's note: in urban areas of 3rd World cities [e.g., Iraq] guerrilla war is taking an increasingly important and effective role, compared with the former forcus on rural guerrilla warfare. The U.S. military has responded by further developing its urban warfare doctrine. In developed capitalist countries, the use of both non-violent and armed resistance may again perhaps become more appropriate as forms of revolutionary struggle.)
iv) Formation of worker's defence guards
Trotsky raised the slogan of trades union defence guards that would go over from defending pickets to form the nucleus of a red army. In the USA there has been a strong tradition of strikers forming armed guards to defend picket lines against scabs. This is doubtless helped by the US constitution which secures the liberty to carry and bear arms. Such workers guards were successfully deployed in the 1948 communist revolution in Prague. In Britain nascent workers guards existed in the hit squads formed during the miner's strike. It is however, hard to see how such forces could go on to challenge state power in this country, where the general populace is completely disarmed.

[robbo203]

Interestingly enough, the practices of gift exchange were generalised among some Native American peoples (as well as definitely many other communities that existed in transition from primitive communal mode to the early forms of class society), so that it may be said that the notion of generalised reciprocity you have alluded to has been rather widespread among primitive communal societies back then.


Yes I would agree. I would just add that generalised reciprocity is not some arcane social arrangement that obtained sometime back in the mists of time among so-called primitive hunter-gatherer communistic societies. Modern examples abound all around us. For instance, here we are, each and every last one of us on this website, sharing information and ideas completely freely and without the slightest thought of an "economic return".

People who want to criticise free access communism for being "utopian" or "absurd" perhaps need to think again. Even under capitalism today most of the work that we do is unremunerated and is by no means confined to the "household economy". Why do we do it? Why would we do it in a communist society? Part of the reason I would suggest is that we are essentially social aninimals and it is precisely in a communist society that our social nature will find its most compete expression. Christ, even nationalism, that perverted capitalist expression of our human sociality that pits one " imagined community" (to use Benedict Anderson's expression) against another, springs from the self same root of human solidarity and our capacity to empathise

Free access communism is an idea whose time has come and nothing less than this will do.

[Paul Cockshott]

Hm? You apparently quoted my post, but didn't read it.

There are plenty of ways housewives etc. not only could be but *were* represented in Soviet structures in the Soviet Union. *Any* working class organization had the right to Soviet representation, which certainly included, for example, all those popular organizations of women that the Zhenotdel or womens' section of the Soviet Communist Party set up.

Thus you had retirees organizations, consumers organizations, housewives organizations, and on and on and so forth.
Yes you had this and you had your right of recall, for all the good it did, and you also had a single party dictatorship within months of the soviet system being set up right until its demise some 70 years later. This one party dictatorship is the inevitable result of the ultra hierarchical indirect Soviet form of election which raises all the imperfections of the first past the post voting system to the 4th power.


And the "self employed," i.e. the petty bourgeoisie, too, if they formed organizations and those organizations solidarized with the workers instead of the capitalists. Thus in America for example you have the National Lawyers Guild, an organization of progressive lawyers which at one time long ago had ambitions of competing with the right wing official lawyers' organization, the ABA. Why wouldn't it be allowed to send a delegate to a workers council, if it sided with the workers and accepted the socialist revolution?

Yes this was standard Communist Party practice in Eastern Europe, notionally independent bodies were allowed provided they 'accepted the socialist system', and in effect subordinated themselves to the CP.



As for the random selection idea, then you get a random government. On a bad day, the fascists could be in charge and start killing everybody. Compared to that, bourgeois parliamentary democracy looks awful good to me.

-M.H.-
This is far less likely to occur than under an electoral system, Suppose that the far right has 33% support in the population, in a random assembly of 1000 people, there will be an expected number of far right supporting representatives of 333, with a 95% confidence interval that the actual number will be between 323 and 343, the probability that it would be above 50% is vanishingly small.

[Paul Cockshott]

Marxian "communism" was the same as marxian "socialism" as well you know. And this is not sectarian hair splitting. It signifies a fundemental difference of opinion over first principles. I do not support capitalism in any of its forms. You apparently do and ascribe to that form you favour the misleading title of "socialism".
This is a subject that has been debated on another thread, my reading of it was that Marx saw himself as a communist not a socialist. The socialist movement has always been much broader than the communist movement and you give yourself no credibilty if you pretend that they have always been the same thing.

[robbo203]

This is a subject that has been debated on another thread, my reading of it was that Marx saw himself as a communist not a socialist. The socialist movement has always been much broader than the communist movement and you give yourself no credibilty if you pretend that they have always been the same thing.


Point is that people like Marx , Engels and many others around the time did not differentiate between "communism" and "socialism" but treated these terms as synonyms. This you can hardly deny can you? Even the RSDLP adhered to this early usage. The differentiation between socialism and communism was mainly an innovation by Lenin

This point, however, is quite different from the claim you make above - that the socialist movement has always been broader than the communist movement. Here we are talking about movements that self-define themselves as socialist or communist and I suppose if you want to argue that then on purely technical grounds that may well be the case.

Problem is what you call the "socialist movement" clearly bears little relation to what i and others call the socialist movement. You think, for instance, that the Labour party, of all organisations, was once a socialist party but "abandoned socialism". And then you have the nerve to talk about crediblity!

Anyone who seriously thinks for one moment that the capitalist Labour Party whose record of doing the dirty on the workers is unsurpassed , was once a socialist party is simply not living on the same planet as the rest of us

[Die Neue Zeit]

This incidentally is why I find the criticisms levelled against free access communism - Marx's higher stage of communism - on this site so utterly inept and wide off the mark - anthropologically illiterate, in fact. Such cricitism fails to see that we are talking about a whole new ball game and it kind of irks me that the concept of a communist society should be so casually and presumptuously dismissed just because it does not fit in with the comfortable bourgeois assumptions about human behaviuour exhibited by such critics. Assumptions such as if you dont have to pay for anything but can simply take what you need - a logical corrollary of the idea of common ownership - then people will just start helping themselves to everything they can lay their hands withourt reagrd to anyone else..

That frankly is a load of bollocks and easily disproven but it doesnt stop some people here from making these knee jerk observations....

There are hoarders that are the exception to the rule, but gift economics fetishes ignore material and temporal scarcity in general.


Interestingly enough, the practices of gift exchange were generalised among some Native American peoples (as well as definitely many other communities that existed in transition from primitive communal mode to the early forms of class society), so that it may be said that the notion of generalised reciprocity you have alluded to has been rather widespread among primitive communal societies back then.

That generalized reciprocity wasn't based on planned reciprocity.

[robbo203]

There are hoarders that are the exception to the rule, but gift economics fetishes ignore material and temporal scarcity in general..

I am not at all sure what you are talking about. Care to elaborate? If you are talking about scarcity in the abstract sense implied in the notion of opportunity costs then i would have to disagree.

If you are talking about crude scarcity in the sense of a shortfall between supply and demand then it is quite true that gift economies are oriented more towards abundance situations than scarcity situations. The internet as I suggested earlier is a very good example of a modern day gift economy. There is no shortgage of information out there in cyberspace and nor does the fact that my making use of this information prevent you from the doing the same. No zero sum game is involved.

You might say this is different for material goods but then I would contend that your whole perspective has got it back to front. It is the consumerist ideology of capitalism with it its buy! buy! buy! ethos - a reflection of capital's own competititon-fulled expansionist dynamic - that actually fetishises scarcity, that asserts along with the bourgeois economists that people's wants are infinite. Such an outlook can never even begin to understand, say, a phenomenon like the potlatch , that well known practice of competitive gift giving among certain tribes along the North West coast of America.

To the bourgeois economists, such a practice must be viewed as completely irrational and absurd and utterly at varaince with the timeless dogmas they hold. The sad fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, most leftists too - as we have seen time and time again on Revleft - have never really transcended this outlook but have bought into it lock stock and barrel. For all their "revolutionary" pretensions, they remain the pedlars and purveyors of this basic bouregois ideology with its own culturally unique take on what are the fundamentals of human behaviour...




That generalized reciprocity wasn't based on planned reciprocity.

This is a meaningless statement. Reciprocity entails human intentionality and in that sense is inescapably "planned". Reciprocity implies acknowlegement of a sense of obligation towards others which compels us to reciprocate in specific ways and which we go about doing in a premeditated or deliberate way.


If what you are trying to say here is that "planned reciprocity" in your book means some centralised authority telling people what they must do "for the common good" (of course)then you are completely missing what makes generalized reciprocity what it is - a generalised sense of mutual obligation that binds people and cements their relationships with one another through what are essentially moral transactions not economic transactions. Gift exchanges are unifying where economic exchanges are divisive and atomising. The one expresses and reinforces our social nature, the other inclines us towards economic individualism.

The very notion of planned reciprocity at least in the sense that you seem to using the term is a contradiction in terms. It is a social engineer's way of looking at something that is really an emergent property and not something that can be imposed from above. We can do without it frankly.

[A Marxist Historian]

A belated response to this. I am reposting todays marmlist posting, which was an extract from a article I wrote in 1988 that they dug up. It is being reposted because it addresses the issues raised by MH

This lengthy posting from marmlist somehow slides over the *obvious* way that the military question gets solved in most revolutions, which is nowadays more relevant than ever.

It's by winning over the rank and file soldiers to the revolutionary cause.

If you have an army that is more than just some tiny elite Special Forces unit, a mass army, then in a revolutionary social crisis the army, unlike the police, *will* divide if the people divide. And if the army is a tiny hardened elite affair, then it will be demoralized if facing an angry population and can be overwhelmed, just as the police get overwhelmed in revolutions.

Thus in Egypt for example, how could the workers defeat Tantawi? If, and only if, the rank and file soldiers rebel along with them. And indeed, winning over the soldiers was much on the minds of Egyptian radicals during the toppling of Mubaraq.

-M.H.-

[Jolly Red Giant]

And here you and your buddy were accusing me of making baseless charges without backing them up.
It was a statement of fact - the Sparts are noted for spending copious amounts of time digging through everything that every left-wing group or individual has every written to pluck a sentence out of in order to make it fit their line.

Now again to correct some more factual errors


So what the almost ideal perfect eyewitness,
Two points (1) Eye-witnesses can make mistakes - (2) he wasn't the only one - yet the Sparts and you use one line from a book ghost-written for Hatton to make a general claim about the Militant on the council.


the deputy head of the Militant caucus on the Liverpool Council,
Factually incorrect - Hatton was deputy head of the city council - he played practically no organisational or political role within the Militant locally or nationally or within the caucus of Militant councillors.


says about what actually happened there should be ignored,
That is not what I said - What I said was that one line from one book ghost-written for someone no longer involved with the Militant should not be extrapolated to the point where it was the position of the Militant.


and shouldn't even be read.
Again - I never said that it shouldn't be read - I said I had no interest in reading it. I knew Derek Hatton and was a member of the Militant during this period - his book offered no attraction to me in terms of what I could learn from it.


He was a heretic and not loyal to the True Faith.
Derek Hatton played a monumental role in the campaign of the socialist Council in Liverpool. He dedicated several years of his life day-in-day-out to this work. He was 100% committed to the Militant during this time. In terms of his theoretical and political understanding he was not the most advanced (nothing wrong with that either - many of the best activists never develop a major understanding of Marxism). He paid a high price for his activism - being vilified in the media, dragged through the courts on trumped up charges and surcharged. After the defeat in Liverpool he left the Militant - so did many others - he moved politically to the right - so did many others - he had a book ghost-written after this to try and make a few bob and cash in on his name (he couldn't get a job because of his profile) - his book was never intended, and should not be read as, a political analysis of the events of that period.


Instead, the thoughts of Chairman Taaffe represent The Truth, as the Pope, as we all know, is infallible.
Comrade Taaffe would be the first one to admit that many mistakes were made during this period of socialist control of Liverpool council. A massive amount of correct tactics and initiatives were employed as well. The problem is not that you make mistakes - but that you learn from them. The Sparts and you did not go through any of these campaigns - do not remotely understand what was going on - have no clue how Militant approached the issues - continue to make factual errors about the period - and just fancy ranting about the 'crimes' of the Militant.



Not the opposite at all. If your account is correct the JSSC acted like working class leaders should. Once the Militant capitulated to the anger of the rank and file workers against them for their betrayal,
Were you at the JSSC meeting? - do you have a transcript of who said what? can you provide a single shred of evidence that the stewards on the JSSC were opposed to the Militant? Can you demonstrate a single statement from any steward on the JSSC that they regarded the 'mistaken' tactic of the redundancy notices as a 'betrayal' by the Militant?


the JSSC tried to do what was necessary in the situation, with the wrath of the British capialist class descending on the petty Kerenskys of the Militant on the Liverpool council, after Thatcher and Kinnock's real enemy, the coal miners, had been vanquished. In short, they weren't sectarians.
The JSSC backed a proposal from the Militant stewards on the JSSC to organise an all-out strike against the Tories - not the council. The JSSC also condemned Kinnock for his attacks on the council.



If I'd have been a shop steward on the JSSC I'd have wanted to do exactly the same sort of thing, despite my extremely low opinion of the Militant.
So despite your extremely low opinion of the Militant you would have supported the Militant's proposal.


Your organization may be no *better* than the average sellout labor fakers in the British labour movement, but neither are they any worse. An injury to one is an injury to all, and the Liverpool council was after all trying to resist the capitalist assault on the workers at that point, however ineffectively.
So now you have gone from condemning the council to admitting that it was trying to resist a capitalist onslaught on the workers. Thanks for the acknowledgement.:rolleyes:



Reread my postings. If you do, you will notice that I already did "back down" on that.
You have not once stated that the workers in Liverpool city council did not take strike action against the council - you have fudged the issue repeatedly when your false accusations were exposed as lies.


As I said, I failed to realise that for Derek Hatton, words like stand up and fight have a different meaning than the usual, him being just as reformist as you are--possibly more so, if your accusations against him have any merit.

Derek Hatton deserves respect for his work as part of the socialist council in Liverpool in the 1980's. Politically he has moved a long way from the Militant since then - but he has a legacy that is second to none to practically every other 'revolutionary' in the UK.

As for you - your comments are laced with sectarianism - strewn with factual errors - and based on the rantings of a small ulta-left sect that most socialists view, not even with humour, but with distain.

[Paul Cockshott]

Point is that people like Marx , Engels and many others around the time did not differentiate between "communism" and "socialism" but treated these terms as synonyms. This you can hardly deny can you? Even the RSDLP adhered to this early usage. The differentiation between socialism and communism was mainly an innovation by Lenin
This is a germ of truth in what you say. It was Lenin who said that socialism was what Marx had described as the first stage of communism. In this he was certainly wrong, what Lenin meant by socialism was significantly different from what Marx had meant by communism. Lenin, like most of the European socialist movement of the early 20th century saw socialism as being primarily a matter of state ownership and the nationalisation of the banks. in this his idea of socialism had more in common with the clause 4 of the labour party than with Marx's first stage of communism.

The problem though with programmatic declarations or comments on programmes like Marx's comments on the German Workers Party programme, is that they are very brief and can cover a multitude of different practical interpretations which people can argue over.

I do however deny that communism and socialism are the same, the Communist Manifesto makes it clear that the communists , whilst not opposed to other working class parties, have more long range goals than the other parties have.



This point, however, is quite different from the claim you make above - that the socialist movement has always been broader than the communist movement. Here we are talking about movements that self-define themselves as socialist or communist and I suppose if you want to argue that then on purely technical grounds that may well be the case.

Problem is what you call the "socialist movement" clearly bears little relation to what i and others call the socialist movement. You think, for instance, that the Labour party, of all organisations, was once a socialist party but "abandoned socialism". And then you have the nerve to talk about crediblity!

Anyone who seriously thinks for one moment that the capitalist Labour Party whose record of doing the dirty on the workers is unsurpassed , was once a socialist party is simply not living on the same planet as the rest of usOf course the socialist movement is self defiined, You are doing exactly the same, defining you and those who hold very similar views as being the only true socialist movement, but that is another self definition.

There have been change in the Labour Party over time, until after the first world war it was not self defined as a socialist party, and again since Blair it no longer defines itself as a socialist party. This was a significant ideological shift. In the period it had overt socialist goals these goals were only taken seriously by a wing of the party, but that wing of the party, along with the CP was the most significant political expression of working class interests that the British working class has thrown up. You say that the Labour Party has an unparalleled record of doing the dirty on the workers, this is only true if you ignore the other 2 main parties in British politics.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why the fetish for "activism" at the end?

You're not talking about a real party, being only part of a movement. The pre-war SPD and inter-war USPD weren't "part" of a German workers movement. They were the German workers movement.



Council fetishes don't work in the long run. Decentralization fetishes don't work in the long run, either.

You've said nothing here except for trying to dis-credit activism, movements, decentralisation and workers' Soviets.

I'm trying to figure out what is revolutionary about you at all...

[robbo203]

This is a germ of truth in what you say. It was Lenin who said that socialism was what Marx had described as the first stage of communism. In this he was certainly wrong, what Lenin meant by socialism was significantly different from what Marx had meant by communism. Lenin, like most of the European socialist movement of the early 20th century saw socialism as being primarily a matter of state ownership and the nationalisation of the banks. in this his idea of socialism had more in common with the clause 4 of the labour party than with Marx's first stage of communism.

The problem though with programmatic declarations or comments on programmes like Marx's comments on the German Workers Party programme, is that they are very brief and can cover a multitude of different practical interpretations which people can argue over.

I do however deny that communism and socialism are the same, the Communist Manifesto makes it clear that the communists , whilst not opposed to other working class parties, have more long range goals than the other parties have.
.


Once again you are evading the point which is a pretty straightforward and simple - that in no way did Marx and Engels distinguish between socialism as a goal and communism as a goal. These were just two alternative terms to describe the same thing - a moneyless wageless stateless alternative to capitalism. In no way is this disproved by you saying the" Communist Manifesto makes it clear that the communists , whilst not opposed to other working class parties, have more long range goals than the other parties have"

This particular usage of the terms socialism and communismn as synonyms was pretty much universal prior to the early 20th century which saw the rise of social democratic parties and the Bolsheviks. Even the early Russian Socialist Democrats , the predecessors of the Bolsheviks/Mensheviks used the term "socialism" as a synomym for communism. Numerous writers from William Morris to Kropotkin did likewise.

You now agree that Lenin put forward an interpretation of socialism that was quite at odds with this. In fact Lenin's position was fundamentally contradictory and confused. On the one hand he called socialism the lower phase of communism (a view marx never held); on the other, he called it a "state capitalist monopoly" operated in the interests of the people. It can hardly be both.


You say that Lenin "like most of the European socialist movement of the early 20th century saw socialism as being primarily a matter of state ownership and the nationalisation of the banks", Indeed. but at this point in time we are talking about "socialism" having already come to be redefined in quite a different way to what it had originally meant - as a synonym for communism. Lenin was not just passively reflecting this shift in the meaning of the term "socialism" but was in fact its chief instigator.

You talk of nationalisation of the banks. Lenin argued that "Without big banks Socialism would be impossible," and that they "are the 'state apparatus' which we need to bring about socialism, and which we take ready made from capitalism; our task here is merely to lop off what capitalistically mutilates this excellent apparatus, to make it even bigger, even more democratic, even more comprehensive. A single State Bank, the biggest of the big . . .will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus." Such a view would have been considered ridiculous by previous generations who has a very different conception of socialism to lenin's. No doubt there are similarities between the kind of thinking that led Lenin to formulate such utter rubbish and those who drafted
the old state capitalist "Clause Four" of the capitalist Labour Party



Of course the socialist movement is self defiined, You are doing exactly the same, defining you and those who hold very similar views as being the only true socialist movement, but that is another self definition..

Quite true. The question is do you have to accept someone as being socialist just becuase they define themselves as such. You seem to be saying, yes, you have to do so irrespective of the fact that one person's socialism might totally contradict another's. According to you they must both be considered socialist. According to you, the Nazis must therefore be considered socialists as well becuase they call themselves "national socialists"



There have been change in the Labour Party over time, until after the first world war it was not self defined as a socialist party, and again since Blair it no longer defines itself as a socialist party. This was a significant ideological shift. In the period it had overt socialist goals these goals were only taken seriously by a wing of the party, but that wing of the party, along with the CP was the most significant political expression of working class interests that the British working class has thrown up. You say that the Labour Party has an unparalleled record of doing the dirty on the workers, this is only true if you ignore the other 2 main parties in British politics.


What were these overt socialist goals that the early Labour party upheld. Certainly nothing that had anything to do with socialism in the sense in which it was traditionally defined - as a synonym of communism. This is the point you constantly evade. At the end of the day we can all play these word games. If Old Labour is what you call socialism then - stuff it! - I am 100% opposed to your "socialism". Its not the label on the bottle that ultimately counts; its the contents inside and what you offering up is a rancid and regurgitated stew/ The question is whether, what the Labour Party stood for at any point in its long and sordid and sorry history was worthy of working class support. The answer is no. From the word go , it was a capitalist political party intent upon promoting the interest of British capitalism even when that meant trampling on the interests of British worklers

I dont ignore the record of the other two main political parties in the UK but there was nothing that they did that Labour did not in essence likewise do. The only difference is that all along Labour claimed to represent the interest of working people . That made them hypocrites on a scale that surpasssed even the Tories in my opinion

[A Marxist Historian]

Yes you had this and you had your right of recall, for all the good it did, and you also had a single party dictatorship within months of the soviet system being set up right until its demise some 70 years later. This one party dictatorship is the inevitable result of the ultra hierarchical indirect Soviet form of election which raises all the imperfections of the first past the post voting system to the 4th power.


Yes this was standard Communist Party practice in Eastern Europe, notionally independent bodies were allowed provided they 'accepted the socialist system', and in effect subordinated themselves to the CP.

In the particular conditions of the Soviet Union, a backward country not ready for socialism, it is perhaps understandable that it turned out that only a single party, the Bolshevik Party, whose platform until Stalin took over was not socialism in Russia, but world socialism, turned out to be a party that really was for socialism.

The reason that the Bolsheviks did not tolerate other parties was not because they desired a single party dictatorship, but due to the unfortunate habit of all the other parties of either going over to the other side altogether or raising rebellions or sabotaging from within, as did Martov and his Mensheviks.

Rather like the Northern Democrats in the US Civil War, who ranged from outright supporters of the Confederacy to to people like McClellan, the army commander and Democratic Party candidate in 1864, who never wanted to fight Robert E. Lee so Lincoln had to fire him.

While throwing "Copperhead" Democrats in jail, including those who claimed to be loyal supporters of the North, if they weren't.

So by 1865 the USA briefly had pretty much of a one party system too, with the Republicans temporarily renaming themselves the "Union" party.

During the American Revolution, Tories got the same treatment the Bolsheviks gave to their political opponents during the Civil War, and a substantial proportion of the US white population had to flee to Canada.

That's what revolutions are like. Only after things have settled down and the new regime is consolidated can you really have multi-party democracy and "loyal oppositions." You didn't get that in America till 1900, in the previous decade Adams's Federalists were persecuting Jefferson's "Democratic Republicans" quite fiercely.

The voting system has absolutely nothing to do with any of this.


This is far less likely to occur than under an electoral system, Suppose that the far right has 33% support in the population, in a random assembly of 1000 people, there will be an expected number of far right supporting representatives of 333, with a 95% confidence interval that the actual number will be between 323 and 343, the probability that it would be above 50% is vanishingly small.

Somehow, the idea of determining who is in charge by Las Vegas methods doesn't appeal.

So, let us imagine, following your example, we end up with fascists and communists in charge of the government *at the same time.* That is an obvious recipe for bloody civil war. At best!

Hey, what happens if the fascists luck out and get their fingers on the nukes? Or the water supply, which they could poison?

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

It was a statement of fact - the Sparts are noted for spending copious amounts of time digging through everything that every left-wing group or individual has every written to pluck a sentence out of in order to make it fit their line.

So I accuse you of making charges without backing them up. And what do you do? You do it again.

If you want to prove that the Spartacists have a habit of taking things out of context in their quotations, you have to provide evidence not assertion.

And even if you did, that would show nothing one way or another as to whether this *particular* damning quote from Hatton misrepresents what he had to say.


Now again to correct some more factual errors

Two points (1) Eye-witnesses can make mistakes - (2) he wasn't the only one - yet the Sparts and you use one line from a book ghost-written for Hatton to make a general claim about the Militant on the council.

Factually incorrect - Hatton was deputy head of the city council - he played practically no organisational or political role within the Militant locally or nationally or within the caucus of Militant councillors.

That is not what I said - What I said was that one line from one book ghost-written for someone no longer involved with the Militant should not be extrapolated to the point where it was the position of the Militant.

Again - I never said that it shouldn't be read - I said I had no interest in reading it. I knew Derek Hatton and was a member of the Militant during this period - his book offered no attraction to me in terms of what I could learn from it.

Derek Hatton played a monumental role in the campaign of the socialist Council in Liverpool. He dedicated several years of his life day-in-day-out to this work. He was 100% committed to the Militant during this time. In terms of his theoretical and political understanding he was not the most advanced (nothing wrong with that either - many of the best activists never develop a major understanding of Marxism). He paid a high price for his activism - being vilified in the media, dragged through the courts on trumped up charges and surcharged. After the defeat in Liverpool he left the Militant - so did many others - he moved politically to the right - so did many others - he had a book ghost-written after this to try and make a few bob and cash in on his name (he couldn't get a job because of his profile) - his book was never intended, and should not be read as, a political analysis of the events of that period.

So when it's convenient for you, he is a great leader to be admired, but when what he says is inconvenient for you, he is a mercenary deceiver out to make a buck. You should make up your mind.

If you want to dismiss what he had to say as bullshit *without even reading it,* and saying you have no intention of reading it, well, that shows just how worthless your charges vs. the Spartacists are.

I think his account is valuable for the same reason historians always value primary sources, eyewitness accounts, over secondary sources, most certainly including lawyers' briefs by the politically interested.

If you want to claim Hatton's take was wrong, you'd have to at least come up with some counterevidence to contradict it from another eyewitness source, which you haven't. Or critique it, which you refuse to do.

In short, lousy lawyers' arguments.


Comrade Taaffe would be the first one to admit that many mistakes were made during this period of socialist control of Liverpool council. A massive amount of correct tactics and initiatives were employed as well. The problem is not that you make mistakes - but that you learn from them. The Sparts and you did not go through any of these campaigns - do not remotely understand what was going on - have no clue how Militant approached the issues - continue to make factual errors about the period - and just fancy ranting about the 'crimes' of the Militant.


Were you at the JSSC meeting? - do you have a transcript of who said what? can you provide a single shred of evidence that the stewards on the JSSC were opposed to the Militant? Can you demonstrate a single statement from any steward on the JSSC that they regarded the 'mistaken' tactic of the redundancy notices as a 'betrayal' by the Militant?

There is an old line among historians. The way you turn white into black is first, you look at something white and discover hey, if you look closely at the white you see some light grey areas. Then you examine the grey area closer and some bit's are medium grey... Continue this process long enough and you've turned white into black.

The quote from Hatton, which you refuse to even look at, is more than ample evidence for my argument, unless you can refute it.


The JSSC backed a proposal from the Militant stewards on the JSSC to organise an all-out strike against the Tories - not the council. The JSSC also condemned Kinnock for his attacks on the council.

And that is relevant because?



So despite your extremely low opinion of the Militant you would have supported the Militant's proposal.


So now you have gone from condemning the council to admitting that it was trying to resist a capitalist onslaught on the workers. Thanks for the acknowledgement.:rolleyes:

Well, sure, as I said before, I do consider the Militant not as bad as the British Labour Party and its leader at the time, "Kneel" Kinnock.

In my book, that is damning with faint praise. If you want to accept it with thanks, be my guest.

When capialists attack the workers, even a reformist will want to resist, as a general principle. But here we are on "Revleft," where being a reformist is not considered a good thing.


You have not once stated that the workers in Liverpool city council did not take strike action against the council - you have fudged the issue repeatedly when your false accusations were exposed as lies.

Yawn. I did no such thing, nor did I lie at any point, as any objective person looking over our argument would acknowledge.

I certainly thought I'd said days ago that no, there was no strike vs. the Liverpool city council. But if it makes you happy, I repeat that now in clear enough words so that even you can get the point.



Derek Hatton deserves respect for his work as part of the socialist council in Liverpool in the 1980's. Politically he has moved a long way from the Militant since then - but he has a legacy that is second to none to practically every other 'revolutionary' in the UK.

As for you - your comments are laced with sectarianism - strewn with factual errors - and based on the rantings of a small ulta-left sect that most socialists view, not even with humour, but with distain.

You have been engaged in one long rant here, horrified at me bringing some truths to light about the record of the Militant in Liverpool which you wish to bury. You will note that nobody on this thread but your comrade Jimmy Haddow has been giving you "rep" brownie points for your postings. There's a reason for that. And the reason is certainly not because of any vast popularity and authority I possess here.

-M.H.-

[Crux]

You will note that nobody on this thread but your comrade Jimmy Haddow has been giving you "rep" brownie points for your postings. There's a reason for that. And the reason is certainly not because of any vast popularity and authority I possess here.

-M.H.-
Your point being? Can't wait for your next brilliant swing at giants. I mean, ouch.

Oh and let's not forget:
Originally Posted by A Marxist Historian http://www.revleft.org/vb/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.org/vb/showthread.php?p=2189622#post2189622)
Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

This has already been debunked, but just pointing out, that's what happen when you are in the habit of using the Spart's as your most reliable source.

[Threetune]

Your point being? Can't wait for your next brilliant swing at giants. I mean, ouch.

Oh and let's not forget:
Originally Posted by A Marxist Historian http://www.revleft.org/vb/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.org/vb/showthread.php?p=2189622#post2189622)
Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

This has already been debunked, but just pointing out, that's what happen when you are in the habit of using the Spart's as your most reliable source.

And what’s your most reliable source on this question? Be careful, I was there and know all the personalities.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You've said nothing here except for trying to dis-credit activism, movements, decentralisation and workers' Soviets.

I'm trying to figure out what is revolutionary about you at all...

1) I put "activism" in quotes for a reason that you forgot from what you read in the past.

2) There are "movements" and there are movements.

3) and 4) Again, it's about Revolutionary Strategy.

[A Marxist Historian]

Your point being? Can't wait for your next brilliant swing at giants. I mean, ouch.

Oh and let's not forget:
Originally Posted by A Marxist Historian http://www.revleft.org/vb/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.revleft.org/vb/showthread.php?p=2189622#post2189622)
Even in the '80s, yes indeed let's look at Liverpool. Grant/Taafe "municipal socialism" led to the unions calling strikes against the municipal socialists after they issued pink slips to council workers.

This has already been debunked, but just pointing out, that's what happen when you are in the habit of using the Spart's as your most reliable source.

That was my interpretation of what Hatton had to say. Turned out to be incorrect. I think most reasonable people would read what Hatton said and think the unions were at least threatening strike action. And Militant defenders here have gone out of their way to avoid challenging the accuracy of the Spartacist quote, which they could do with the greatest of ease if they wanted to. Clearly because they know it is accurate.

Yes, I misinterpreted that, as I've said some three-four times now in various ways. Worth some high school debate brownie points to Jolly Red. Big deal.

Which is exactly the relevance of me mentioning the rep score. Even on that level, Jolly Red isn't winning this argument.

But what difference does it make who wins the argument? What's important is just what the role was of the Militant in Liverpool, and all Jolly Red can come up with is defense brief lawyers' arguments.

And, oh yes, all the council houses that were built. As if Thatcher would have knocked them all down if Militant didn't hang onto their seats on the Council like grim death, even if that meant issuing layoff notices to the Council workforce.

And then of course there are the *other* criticisms of Militant on the Liverpool council that I raised which the defenders of Militant have avoided answering, not being able to score cheap debating points. Like the councilmembers' unwillingness to offend the "white working class" by doing *anything* for the particular benefit of the black youth who revolted in Liverpool in the early '80s.

Classic Left Social Democracy. Eugene Debs: "We have nothing special to offer the Negro people."

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

And what’s your most reliable source on this question? Be careful, I was there and know all the personalities.

Threetune: Have you been following this thread? Since you were there, can you shed some light here and verify, or contradict, the quote from Derek Hatton's book on all this which the Spartacists quoted?

Which I reproduced here, and which I misinterpreted a bit?

-M.H.-

[Crux]

That was my interpretation of what Hatton had to say. Turned out to be incorrect. I think most reasonable people would read what Hatton said and think the unions were at least threatening strike action. And Militant defenders here have gone out of their way to avoid challenging the accuracy of the Spartacist quote, which they could do with the greatest of ease if they wanted to. Clearly because they know it is accurate.

Yes, I misinterpreted that, as I've said some three-four times now in various ways. Worth some high school debate brownie points to Jolly Red. Big deal.

Which is exactly the relevance of me mentioning the rep score. Even on that level, Jolly Red isn't winning this argument.

But what difference does it make who wins the argument? What's important is just what the role was of the Militant in Liverpool, and all Jolly Red can come up with is defense brief lawyers' arguments.

And, oh yes, all the council houses that were built. As if Thatcher would have knocked them all down if Militant didn't hang onto their seats on the Council like grim death, even if that meant issuing layoff notices to the Council workforce.

And then of course there are the *other* criticisms of Militant on the Liverpool council that I raised which the defenders of Militant have avoided answering, not being able to score cheap debating points. Like the councilmembers' unwillingness to offend the "white working class" by doing *anything* for the particular benefit of the black youth who revolted in Liverpool in the early '80s.

Classic Left Social Democracy. Eugene Debs: "We have nothing special to offer the Negro people."

-M.H.-
Well, forgive me if I am misrepresenting you here, but your position seems to be that Militant should've quit the council. And then what?
As for the miner's strike, something that you mentioned as well, the Militant was involved, and did in fact recruit over a hundred members directly from that struggle, as well as using our international contacts to help build international solidarity. But that's just a side point.

Throwing more mud I see. Eugene Debs was, at least as far as I know, not a member of the Militant in Liverpool. So why do you feel the urge to quote him now?

[Crux]

And what’s your most reliable source on this question? Be careful, I was there and know all the personalities.
My sympathies to "all the personalities" then, knowing you must be quite unpleasant.

[Jolly Red Giant]

That was my interpretation of what Hatton had to say. Turned out to be incorrect. I think most reasonable people would read what Hatton said and think the unions were at least threatening strike action.
That is what happens when you take one source (and a source that could not even be classed as a secondary source in historical terms) and use it to try and browbeat a political organisation - and you dare to criticise my research techniques :rolleyes:


And Militant defenders here have gone out of their way to avoid challenging the accuracy of the Spartacist quote, which they could do with the greatest of ease if they wanted to. Clearly because they know it is accurate.
It could well be - but the reality is that the quote is pretty much irrelevent. You were attempting to use the quote - which you didn't interpret properly to start with - as the basis for politically criticising the Militant - when the quote came from a ghost-written book from someone who was not a member of the Militant. You presented it as a quote that was 'approved' politically by the Militant - yet you ignore the fact that the primary function of Hatton's book was not to outline a detailed historical or political account of the socialist council in Liverpool, but to try and cash in on his public name in order to provide some income for his family.


Yes, I misinterpreted that, as I've said some three-four times now in various ways. Worth some high school debate brownie points to Jolly Red. Big deal.
You were bloody well wrong - and is shows your research skills in a very poor light.


Which is exactly the relevance of me mentioning the rep score. Even on that level, Jolly Red isn't winning this argument.
Let me see - how many factual mistakes have I had to point out to you?


What's important is just what the role was of the Militant in Liverpool, and all Jolly Red can come up with is defense brief lawyers' arguments.
And clearly you have absolutely zero idea of what role Militant played on the council or in the city.


And, oh yes, all the council houses that were built. As if Thatcher would have knocked them all down if Militant didn't hang onto their seats on the Council like grim death, even if that meant issuing layoff notices to the Council workforce.

To quote you directly - All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher, which was inevitable - again to point out another one of your factual errors - some of the gains were lost - not ALL - and the second point - NOT ONE SINGLE WORKER WAS MADE REDUNDANT during the period of the socialist council in Liverpool - in fact thousands of jobs were created by the council's policies.


And then of course there are the *other* criticisms of Militant on the Liverpool council that I raised which the defenders of Militant have avoided answering, not being able to score cheap debating points. Like the councilmembers' unwillingness to offend the "white working class" by doing *anything* for the particular benefit of the black youth who revolted in Liverpool in the early '80s.
This is absolute clap-trap that the Black Caucus attempted to peddle during the 1980's for the specific reason that the Council would not provide 'jobs for the boys' for them and allow them to engage in milking the system for every penny they could - and instead the council appointed someone under the direct control of the council and directly responsible to the council. The record of the socialist council in Liverpool and of the Militant in the issue of race relations is second to none - again something that you would have found out if you had carried out the minimum of research rather than relying on the political rantings of the Sparts.

Finally -


and which I misinterpreted a bit?
Understatement of the century :blushing:

[A Marxist Historian]

That is what happens when you take one source (and a source that could not even be classed as a secondary source in historical terms) and use it to try and browbeat a political organisation - and you dare to criticise my research techniques :rolleyes:

Hm? The quote is primary source material from an ideal source, major participant Derek Hatton's account of events, which according to you was *not* written for political purposes, but to tell his side of the story, and make a little money. Making it one of the best possible sources you could find. The Spartacist account and your account are both secondary sources.

So it trumps what you have to say unless the quote is altered, dragged out of context, lopped out from a following statement directly contradicting it, whatever. Until you can demonstrate that it is questionable in some fashion. And you are refusing even to read the book, which presumably you could obtain with the greatest of ease. That certainly implies that you know already that it is none of these things.


It could well be - but the reality is that the quote is pretty much irrelevent. You were attempting to use the quote - which you didn't interpret properly to start with - as the basis for politically criticising the Militant - when the quote came from a ghost-written book from someone who was not a member of the Militant. You presented it as a quote that was 'approved' politically by the Militant - yet you ignore the fact that the primary function of Hatton's book was not to outline a detailed historical or political account of the socialist council in Liverpool, but to try and cash in on his public name in order to provide some income for his family.

Thereby if anything making it *more* reliable, if he wasn't trying to prove a political point.

Whether the quote was 'approved' politically by the Militant is more than besides the point. The point is whether what Hatton or his ghostwriter said was true or not. And if it was ghostwritten, it was presumably drawn from the ghostwriter talking to Hatton, so that would not mean it was invalid either.[/QUOTE]


You were bloody well wrong - and is shows your research skills in a very poor light.

Eh. This is only the Internet after all, here today gone tomorrow, where there are plenty of folk like you ready to harp on minor points. Which has the genuine advantage of an easy way to obtain precision the hard way, school of hard knocks.

No, when I quickly knock off an Internet posting I don't treat it the same way as I would, say, an article published in a historical journal.



Let me see - how many factual mistakes have I had to point out to you?

One, by my count.



And clearly you have absolutely zero idea of what role Militant played on the council or in the city.

To quote you directly - All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher, which was inevitable - again to point out another one of your factual errors - some of the gains were lost - not ALL - and the second point - NOT ONE SINGLE WORKER WAS MADE REDUNDANT during the period of the socialist council in Liverpool - in fact thousands of jobs were created by the council's policies.

I did not claim that all gains were torn up by Thatcher, but *were being* torn up. Result being, as you put it, "some lost but not all." In fact you know that perfectly well, as in the very paragraph you are complaining about it's me saying that the council houses put up were not going to be torn down by Thatcher! So you are just playing word games here to confuse the issue.



This is absolute clap-trap that the Black Caucus attempted to peddle during the 1980's for the specific reason that the Council would not provide 'jobs for the boys' for them and allow them to engage in milking the system for every penny they could - and instead the council appointed someone under the direct control of the council and directly responsible to the council. The record of the socialist council in Liverpool and of the Militant in the issue of race relations is second to none - again something that you would have found out if you had carried out the minimum of research rather than relying on the political rantings of the Sparts.

Finally -

Understatement of the century :blushing:

The black youth of Liverpool *rebelled* vs. white racism in Toxteth in 1981, in a situation where black youth unemployment was reaching 80 to 90%. And, as the Guardian put it (another excellent primary source quote in that secondary source you disdain):

"Nowhere else in Britain are blacks so exposed to threats, taunts, and abuse if they leave an area of the city." Guardian, 19 July, 1988.

And between 1981 and 1988 what did you have? You had the period when the Militant was fighting so heroically for the working people, with a record in race relations second to none. What a triumph.

So let's see what Derek Hatton had to say about all this in his book, nicely quoted in that secondary source you enjoy sneering at.

He said that Militant’s position “has always been that while accepting there is discrimination, the problems of the black community are part of the overall struggle. It is a class problem, and a Socialist problem, and must be solved within that wide framework,” and continued, “To do otherwise is to alienate many white working-class people from identifying with the struggle.”

So by your account, if the Black Caucus wanted some "jobs for the boys," with a black youth unemployment rate exceeding 80%, that proves that they were all just a bunch of crooks, trying to rip off the honest representatives of the "white working-class people," like Hatton and you folks.

When I compared this to Eugene Debs's "socialists have nothing special to offer the Negro people," I was indeed engaging in the "understatement of the century."

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Well, forgive me if I am misrepresenting you here, but your position seems to be that Militant should've quit the council. And then what?
As for the miner's strike, something that you mentioned as well, the Militant was involved, and did in fact recruit over a hundred members directly from that struggle, as well as using our international contacts to help build international solidarity. But that's just a side point.

Throwing more mud I see. Eugene Debs was, at least as far as I know, not a member of the Militant in Liverpool. So why do you feel the urge to quote him now?

My position is not that they should have quit the Council, but that they should have quit the Council if the only way they could stay on the council and not go to jail or debtor's prison (do you still have that in England? It's coming back in America with the new bankruptcy laws) due to failure to balance the budget was to go along with sending out layoff notices to the council staff.

Which is the defense you folk have argued for this action.

As it turns out, this decision was reversed by pressure from the JSSC. Which is very much to the credit of the JSSC, but hardly any credit to the Militant.

I think the a propos nature of my quote from Debs has been fully demonstrated at this point.

As for the miners strike, if you recruited a hundred people on the basis of your going along with Kinnock's efforts to sabotage the strike by demanding a secret ballot, I cannot see that as a good thing.

International solidarity is another matter. In my own union, I was involved in the successful effort of leftists to send money to the miners. Anything you did along those lines is praiseworthy.

-M.H.-

[Jolly Red Giant]

Hm? The quote is primary source material from an ideal source, major participant Derek Hatton's account of events, which according to you was *not* written for political purposes, but to tell his side of the story, and make a little money. Making it one of the best possible sources you could find. The Spartacist account and your account are both secondary sources.
If you are attempting to get technical about it - the quote was not referenced properly and as such cannot be verified.


So it trumps what you have to say unless the quote is altered, dragged out of context, lopped out from a following statement directly contradicting it, whatever. Until you can demonstrate that it is questionable in some fashion. And you are refusing even to read the book, which presumably you could obtain with the greatest of ease. That certainly implies that you know already that it is none of these things.
You are the person that is attempting to use the quote - so the onus is on you to reference and verify it. You go find it in the book - which clearly you have not read (yet you criticise me for not doing so) - If you want to use the quote then reference it properly - in the proper context and using the proper support material. If you attempted to use this quote in a historical piece from the source you used without the appropraite referencing - it would be completely disregarded.




Thereby if anything making it *more* reliable, if he wasn't trying to prove a political point.
It depends on the purpose that you are using the quote for - I could take a single sentence quote (unreferenced) from Mein Kampf and use it to present Hitler as a kind compassionate man - it doesn't make it anymore reliable just because you need it to pretend you have any idea of the events around the Liverpool council in the 1980's



Whether the quote was 'approved' politically by the Militant is more than besides the point. The point is whether what Hatton or his ghostwriter said was true or not. And if it was ghostwritten, it was presumably drawn from the ghostwriter talking to Hatton, so that would not mean it was invalid either.
If you are attempting to use a quote to demonstrate the attitude of the Militant then you should reference material from the Militant from the period at hand - not reference the personal recollections of the personal outlook of an individual who was not a member of the Militant. By all means use the quote (if it is authentic) to criticise Hatton's outlook in 1988 - but the material is not relevent to the attitude of the Militant in 1986.



Eh. This is only the Internet after all, here today gone tomorrow, where there are plenty of folk like you ready to harp on minor points. Which has the genuine advantage of an easy way to obtain precision the hard way, school of hard knocks.
If you are going to use the internet with the username 'A Marxist Historian' then you are setting yourself up to get kicked in the nuts. The internet is notorious for its lack of reliability - and I will repeat this again - your criticism of the Militant and the Liverpool Council is based on a rabid sectarian rant from a miniscule ultra-left group who the overwhelming majority of left wing activists regard as an irrelevent bunch of nutcases (you actually couldn't have picked a worse source to use)



No, when I quickly knock off an Internet posting I don't treat it the same way as I would, say, an article published in a historical journal.
Clearly - because the one thing that you appear not to be interested in is accuracy.




One, by my count.
Let's see shall we -
(1) that unions in Liverpool called strikes against the issuing of redundancy notices by the council - FALSE
(2) That the council workers did not take strike action in support of the council which is *not at all* what I have heard from other sources - FALSE
(3) 'All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher' - FALSE
(4) 'to ignore black oppression in Liverpool altogether' - FALSE
(5) The Militant went along with strikebreaker Neil Kinnock's effort to break the miners' strike - FALSE
(6) 'Derek Hatton ... since he, as the deputy head of the Militant caucus on the Council at the time' - FALSE
(7) 'Like the councilmembers' unwillingness to offend the "white working class" by doing *anything* for the particular benefit of the black youth who revolted in Liverpool in the early '80s' - FALSE (and you repeated this several times)

And that is only in the last four pages.

Finally -
'My source is the Spartacist account, in which I place much more faith than yours.' - that one is just sheer stupidity on your part.



I did not claim that all gains were torn up by Thatcher, but *were being* torn up. Result being, as you put it, "some lost but not all." In fact you know that perfectly well, as in the very paragraph you are complaining about it's me saying that the council houses put up were not going to be torn down by Thatcher! So you are just playing word games here to confuse the issue.
The word games are being played by you my friend -



The black youth of Liverpool *rebelled* vs. white racism in Toxteth in 1981, in a situation where black youth unemployment was reaching 80 to 90%. And, as the Guardian put it (another excellent primary source quote in that secondary source you disdain):

"Nowhere else in Britain are blacks so exposed to threats, taunts, and abuse if they leave an area of the city." Guardian, 19 July, 1988.

And between 1981 and 1988 what did you have? You had the period when the Militant was fighting so heroically for the working people, with a record in race relations second to none. What a triumph.

So let's see what Derek Hatton had to say about all this in his book, nicely quoted in that secondary source you enjoy sneering at.

He said that Militant’s position “has always been that while accepting there is discrimination, the problems of the black community are part of the overall struggle. It is a class problem, and a Socialist problem, and must be solved within that wide framework,” and continued, “To do otherwise is to alienate many white working-class people from identifying with the struggle.”

So by your account, if the Black Caucus wanted some "jobs for the boys," with a black youth unemployment rate exceeding 80%, that proves that they were all just a bunch of crooks, trying to rip off the honest representatives of the "white working-class people," like Hatton and you folks.

Let's deal concretely with the policies and the impact of the council's policies on the black community in Liverpool -

When the socialist council came to power in 1983 this was the situation -
1. They inherited the situation where less than one per cent of the council's workforce were black.
2. The council housing allocation system operated by the Liberals was blatantly racist, contributing to a process which condemned most black families to ghetto conditions.
3. Of the 3000 meals-on-wheels provided daily by the previous Liberal-Tory council, only nine went to black families.

Incidently - the Black Caucus lauded the Littlewoods company as the prime example of a multi-racial employer in Liverpool - 42 out of its 7,000 strong workforce were black (including the race relations officer for the company who was a member of the Black Caucus).

What did the council do -
1. between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of new workers taken on were black.
2. Between 1984-1985 in the Liverpool 8 District alone the council -


Spent £48 million on housing – more than any other local authority's local housing budget.
Rehoused 1730 families.
Built 978 dwellings.
Carried out large-scale improvements to 1782 dwellings.
Demolished 2100 empty slums.
Carried out major landscape work.
Rebuilt 150 shops.

3. While the Council was in power, the number of black people in receipt of home-helps and meals-on-wheels rose from 0.3 per cent to 13 per cent.
4. Grants to Liverpool 8 projects were increased by £2million each year - despite the fact that the schemes run by Black Caucus supporters refused to furnish accounts to the council.
5. trade-union representation was implemented on all interview panels for council jobs
6. All workplace were monitored to ensure no discrimination
7. The council awarded a grant of £150,000 to the Liverpool 8 Law Centre
8. Black trainee housing manager schemes were introduced to ensure that black housing problems were dealt with.
9. Racial awareness courses were run for all council employees
10. A new Equal Opportunities Committee was established.
11. A Chinese Unit composed of three social workers and headed by a Chinese senior worker was established to cater for the 7,000 strong Chinese-speaking community in Liverpool.
12. Race relations advisers were appointed to all schools in the city.
13. The council introduced the first ever anti-racist code of practice for schools in Liverpool and co-ordinated parent support groups for primary schools in Liverpool 8.
14. The council introduced further childcare facilities for Liverpool 8 families, and also mother-tongue facilities in nurseries. It build a fully equipped modern sports centre in Liverpool 8 and upgraded youth facilities so that now the majority of such facilities in the city even to this day are situated in Liverpool 8.
15. The council massively improved the funding of the youth projects within the area and it funded 32 voluntary organisations in Liverpool 8.
16. The council also launched a campaign for further government funding in an attempt to set up an ethnic library service, a seperate Chinese social work unit, a multi-cultural support centre and a language centre.
17. The Liverpool City Council spent more per head on the black population of Liverpool 8 than any other council in the country.

In March 1985 21 black community organisations publically disaccociated themselves from the Black Caucus and backed the Council's policies - why? because they could see the benefits that were accruing to the black community.

With every passing day the council's support in the black community increased and the Black Caucus got more rabid in condeming the council and Militant as racist - they had some very interesting bed-fellows including the Sun and other Murdoch newspapers, right-wing Tories, and the BNP who participate in marches in Liverpool chanting slogans in support of the Black Caucus and engaged in attacks on members of the Young Socialists who were organising campaigns against racism with black youths.

[Jolly Red Giant]

As for the miners strike, if you recruited a hundred people on the basis of your going along with Kinnock's efforts to sabotage the strike by demanding a secret ballot, I cannot see that as a good thing.

In all honesty - where do you dig up this bullsh*t from - are you reading stuff from the Sparts again :rolleyes:

[A Marxist Historian]

If you are attempting to get technical about it - the quote was not referenced properly and as such cannot be verified.

You are the person that is attempting to use the quote - so the onus is on you to reference and verify it. You go find it in the book - which clearly you have not read (yet you criticise me for not doing so) - If you want to use the quote then reference it properly - in the proper context and using the proper support material. If you attempted to use this quote in a historical piece from the source you used without the appropraite referencing - it would be completely disregarded.

What's technically missing from the ref, for a fullblown footnote or bibliography entry? The page number and the publishing house, otherwise it meets academic standards just fine. Someone as familiar as you with the Liverpool story could find the page number in five minutes paging through the book. Me, maybe it would take me ten. And I refuse to believe that the Sparts not listing the publisher is a problem here.

In fact, here's a hint for you to help you find it in thirty seconds. The Wikipedia entry on the Militant Tendency says that "In his autobiography, Deputy Council leader Derek Hatton acknowledges that taking this advice [the pink slip sendout] was an enormous mistake, from which the council never recovered." The reference is to page 89 of the book. Presumably the quote, if not on that page, is only a few pages away from it.

And, what ho! The entry gives us yet another source saying the same thing. This is how Wikipedia summarizes the conclusions of one Michael Crick, in his book The March of Militant, from p. 260. "Although technically not redundancy notices, and not technically necessarily leading to redundancy, as indeed they did not, this was a minor detail to the majority of council staff, who felt the future of their jobs at the council were no longer guaranteed."

Tired of secondary sources? Well, here's a primary source, from footnote 65 to the Wikipedia piece. "They would say to us 'It's just a piece of paper, of course we'll re-employ everybody' but from a union point of view, we couldn't accept that because there was no guarantee." - Graham Burgess, Liverpool City Council Senior shop steward of the white collar staff union Nalgo (now Unison) in 1985, speaking to the Daily Post, Tuesday, May 1, 2007."

Back to Hatton's book. You ought to be able to obtain this book with the greatest of ease from one of your comrades who has a copy, of which surely there are many, unless the book has been put on some sort of organizational blacklist. Or check it out from the library, unless your ruling class has destroyed the library system where you live. I mean hey, this is the autobio of the guy whom the public at least thought was the *leader* of the whole Militant Liverpool enterprise. The weird thing is that you don't have one right on your bookshelf already.

I have no idea how I, in the USA, could get hold of this book. Order it from Amazon? That would take weeks (and besides I am broke, like most of us these days).

I get the distinct impression that you've figured all that out in advance, so that you have no fear that I could get hold of the book anytime soon. Convenient for you.

Then there's your claim that the quote should properly only be used "to criticise Hatton's outlook in 1988." Being as it was a purely factual quote, not a political statement of any nature, that boils down to calling him a liar. Without evidence.

As for your claims down below in the rest of this posting, I'm not going to waste my time arguing with you any further if this is your method of argument. Especially now that you are saying that Hatton was "an individual who was not a member of the Militant." Huh? A few days ago you were saying that he was a former member who had *left* the Militant.

According to Wikipedia's Hatton entry,

"Hatton became a member of the Labour Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_(UK)) and later the high-profile deputy leader of Liverpool City Council (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_City_Council) in 1983. Hatton was the most vocal, prominent member of the council's leadership and a member of Militant Tendency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militant_Tendency), a Trotskyist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism) organisation then pursuing entryist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism) tactics within the Labour Party."

*At best,* if we want to be generous, you were being shall we say sloppy. Moreover, your "sloppiness" is over a matter where it is really rather hard to see it as simple carelessness, as presumably you know lots and lots and lots about Hatton and his relationship to the Militant. So you lose the right to pester me about any sloppiness in my postings.

(Nor is it likely Wikipedia got it all wrong, as this is so easily checkable. Though I suppose anything is "technically" possible with Wikipedia.)

-M.H.-


It depends on the purpose that you are using the quote for - I could take a single sentence quote (unreferenced) from Mein Kampf and use it to present Hitler as a kind compassionate man - it doesn't make it anymore reliable just because you need it to pretend you have any idea of the events around the Liverpool council in the 1980's



If you are attempting to use a quote to demonstrate the attitude of the Militant then you should reference material from the Militant from the period at hand - not reference the personal recollections of the personal outlook of an individual who was not a member of the Militant. By all means use the quote (if it is authentic) to criticise Hatton's outlook in 1988 - but the material is not relevent to the attitude of the Militant in 1986.



If you are going to use the internet with the username 'A Marxist Historian' then you are setting yourself up to get kicked in the nuts. The internet is notorious for its lack of reliability - and I will repeat this again - your criticism of the Militant and the Liverpool Council is based on a rabid sectarian rant from a miniscule ultra-left group who the overwhelming majority of left wing activists regard as an irrelevent bunch of nutcases (you actually couldn't have picked a worse source to use)



Clearly - because the one thing that you appear not to be interested in is accuracy.



Let's see shall we -
(1) that unions in Liverpool called strikes against the issuing of redundancy notices by the council - FALSE
(2) That the council workers did not take strike action in support of the council which is *not at all* what I have heard from other sources - FALSE
(3) 'All those gains were being torn up by Thatcher' - FALSE
(4) 'to ignore black oppression in Liverpool altogether' - FALSE
(5) The Militant went along with strikebreaker Neil Kinnock's effort to break the miners' strike - FALSE
(6) 'Derek Hatton ... since he, as the deputy head of the Militant caucus on the Council at the time' - FALSE
(7) 'Like the councilmembers' unwillingness to offend the "white working class" by doing *anything* for the particular benefit of the black youth who revolted in Liverpool in the early '80s' - FALSE (and you repeated this several times)

And that is only in the last four pages.

Finally -
'My source is the Spartacist account, in which I place much more faith than yours.' - that one is just sheer stupidity on your part.


The word games are being played by you my friend -


Let's deal concretely with the policies and the impact of the council's policies on the black community in Liverpool -

When the socialist council came to power in 1983 this was the situation -
1. They inherited the situation where less than one per cent of the council's workforce were black.
2. The council housing allocation system operated by the Liberals was blatantly racist, contributing to a process which condemned most black families to ghetto conditions.
3. Of the 3000 meals-on-wheels provided daily by the previous Liberal-Tory council, only nine went to black families.

Incidently - the Black Caucus lauded the Littlewoods company as the prime example of a multi-racial employer in Liverpool - 42 out of its 7,000 strong workforce were black (including the race relations officer for the company who was a member of the Black Caucus).

What did the council do -
1. between 20 per cent and 30 per cent of new workers taken on were black.
2. Between 1984-1985 in the Liverpool 8 District alone the council -


Spent £48 million on housing – more than any other local authority's local housing budget.
Rehoused 1730 families.
Built 978 dwellings.
Carried out large-scale improvements to 1782 dwellings.
Demolished 2100 empty slums.
Carried out major landscape work.
Rebuilt 150 shops.
3. While the Council was in power, the number of black people in receipt of home-helps and meals-on-wheels rose from 0.3 per cent to 13 per cent.
4. Grants to Liverpool 8 projects were increased by £2million each year - despite the fact that the schemes run by Black Caucus supporters refused to furnish accounts to the council.
5. trade-union representation was implemented on all interview panels for council jobs
6. All workplace were monitored to ensure no discrimination
7. The council awarded a grant of £150,000 to the Liverpool 8 Law Centre
8. Black trainee housing manager schemes were introduced to ensure that black housing problems were dealt with.
9. Racial awareness courses were run for all council employees
10. A new Equal Opportunities Committee was established.
11. A Chinese Unit composed of three social workers and headed by a Chinese senior worker was established to cater for the 7,000 strong Chinese-speaking community in Liverpool.
12. Race relations advisers were appointed to all schools in the city.
13. The council introduced the first ever anti-racist code of practice for schools in Liverpool and co-ordinated parent support groups for primary schools in Liverpool 8.
14. The council introduced further childcare facilities for Liverpool 8 families, and also mother-tongue facilities in nurseries. It build a fully equipped modern sports centre in Liverpool 8 and upgraded youth facilities so that now the majority of such facilities in the city even to this day are situated in Liverpool 8.
15. The council massively improved the funding of the youth projects within the area and it funded 32 voluntary organisations in Liverpool 8.
16. The council also launched a campaign for further government funding in an attempt to set up an ethnic library service, a seperate Chinese social work unit, a multi-cultural support centre and a language centre.
17. The Liverpool City Council spent more per head on the black population of Liverpool 8 than any other council in the country.

In March 1985 21 black community organisations publically disaccociated themselves from the Black Caucus and backed the Council's policies - why? because they could see the benefits that were accruing to the black community.

With every passing day the council's support in the black community increased and the Black Caucus got more rabid in condeming the council and Militant as racist - they had some very interesting bed-fellows including the Sun and other Murdoch newspapers, right-wing Tories, and the BNP who participate in marches in Liverpool chanting slogans in support of the Black Caucus and engaged in attacks on members of the Young Socialists who were organising campaigns against racism with black youths.

[A Marxist Historian]

In all honesty - where do you dig up this bullsh*t from - are you reading stuff from the Sparts again :rolleyes:

Yup, and my own twenty years of trade union experience, including a big strike I participated in, during the preparations for which I was one of the representatives from my local on the joint union strike committee. Calling for a secret ballot to determine whether to go on strike or not, as opposed to standing up and being counted at membership meetings, is disastrous.

And here's another source I casually found on the Internet in five minutes, confirming everything the Spartacists have to say about Liverpool and then some, going into all the detail anybody would possibly want.

http://archive.workersliberty.org/publications/readings/trots/liverp.htm

The appendices include a much longer and fuller version of the brief quote from Hatton that has given you so much heartburn which the Spartacists printed, for your benefit. And of the quote with Hatton's ultra-Debsian race views as well. And a statement from the Black Caucus head that refutes your scurrilous remarks about them rather well.

Indeed it turns out that the *unions* were initially supporting them against you, with NALGO even picketing you on their behalf, until you managed to alienate them so thoroughly that they turned against the labour movement altogether. "Second to none in race relations" indeed!

-M.H.-