SWP: Muddle, passivity, conformity [Archive]

Die Neue Zeit

26th January 2012, 14:38

http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004694

The SWP's annual conference was a big let-down following the positive ideas put forward in the final pre-conference internal bulletin. Peter Manson reports

Ten days after the Socialist Workers Party’s January 6-8 annual conference, the official record of the decisions taken landed in SWP comrades’ email inboxes.

According to national secretary Charlie Kimber, this report provides members with “a summary of the debates, commissions and motions” (Post-conference Bulletin January 2012). But it does no such thing. It lists all conference decisions, including the final version of motions and ‘commissions’ after any amendments, but it says not a word about the “debates”. So SWP members are none the wiser about points of contention, about arguments for and against; nor are they informed whether there was any opposition at all to any of the leadership’s proposals, or whether any votes were close.

The truth is that, as usual, all the decisions were either unanimous or overwhelmingly carried. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that in and of itself. But the problem is that in the SWP only such an outcome is considered acceptable by the leadership. Views that seriously challenge those of the central committee are strongly discouraged and in practice blocked. Any comrade known to oppose the CC’s trajectory will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to be elected to conference as a delegate. The leadership simply instructs local officials to mobilise against such comrades.

So, for example, when in 2009 the CC faced opposition from the SWP’s deposed leader, John Rees, it went all-out to ensure that as few supporters as possible of comrade Rees’s Left Platform were delegates. In that case it was unable to keep them out altogether, since Rees supporters actually controlled a handful of branches.

Any serious organisation seeking to win the trust of the working class would behave in a diametrically opposite way. It would positively encourage comrades to develop their own critique in order to be able to rectify mistakes, reject opportunist errors and in general strengthen the organisation’s policy and approach. It would strive to ensure that dissenting individual comrades or groups of comrades were able to put their minority views before the membership, especially at conference. Not in the SWP, where opposition to the leadership, or even an aspect of its politics, is regarded almost as treason.

Rank-and-file members may not even meet up outside official SWP structures to exchange experiences of their activity or discuss a common approach. To do so would risk being accused of ‘factionalism’ - factions are completely banned outside the three-month period before annual conference. The CC is the only permitted permanent faction. In other words, the SWP does not even practise the basic democracy that it demands of the bourgeois state. It does not permit freedom of association or freedom of expression.

This results in conferences that are little more than rallies. For instance, you might think that an enthusiastic and partisan membership organised in dozens of branches would throw up all sorts of contending ideas, leading to scores of motions and amendments on every conceivable subject. But the Post-conference Bulletin records just 13 motions (seven of them from the central committee itself), plus two ‘commissions’ (in effect the same as CC motions). The membership is not provided with the text of the handful of amendments that were put forward - although those with sufficient patience can theoretically identify the two amendments put to CC motions or commissions by comparing the final version to the one published in the appropriate Pre-conference Bulletin.

Motions

All but two of the 23 pages of motions in the official post-conference document are taken up by the nine lengthy submissions from the CC. A good deal of what is contained within them is out of date. For example, ‘The centrality of November 30 - industrial perspectives’ begins: “The public sector general strike planned for November 30 will be the largest strike this country has seen since 1926.”

What is the point in putting such long, detailed and time-specific analyses to conference for approval? Why not try to identify the principles and points of potential disagreement in a motion of a couple of paragraphs? As I say, only two (minor and non-controversial) amendments were moved to these motions/commissions.

The six successful motions that came from below were equally uncontroversial - at least in the sense that neither the CC nor anyone else was opposed to them (certainly not those that were amended by the CC). It was agreed that branches should produce more leaflets for workplaces instead of relying on the leadership to supply them; that there should be a debate within the SWP about new possible uses of the internet; and that the SWP should also launch an internal debate on the details of its precise position before and during a Scottish independence referendum (as opposed to its support for a ‘yes’ vote, which was agreed last year).

A motion from Manchester district and others called for Socialist Worker to “frequently carry” features on the theme, “debates in the movement”. It went on: “When such debates are also reflected within the party and united action is not immediately required on the issue, the features can also be used to air debates between SWP comrades …” This is an advance of sorts, but do not expect Socialist Worker to be transformed into a forum for controversy, with SWP leaders being challenged by the rank and file, or CC members arguing against each other. If the membership itself is not informed about internal differences, then it is hardly likely that the CC will suddenly go public on them.

The fifth successful motion, also moved by Manchester, called for the Socialist Worker column, ‘What the Socialist Workers Party stands for’, to be changed - although the new wording was agreed only after a CC amendment. The first sentence of the column previously read: “The workers create all the wealth under capitalism.” This, as Manchester explained, quoting Karl Marx from ‘Critique of the Gotha programme’, was completely wrong. Wealth ultimately derives from nature and it is added to by the labour of workers and other classes such as the petty bourgeoisie.

The CC-approved wording now reads: “Under capitalism workers’ labour creates all profit.” I suppose you can say that at least this is not a crass blunder like the previous version, but it is not exactly accurate. It would have been correct to say that ‘human labour creates all surplus value under capitalism’, but the CC position was that an easily understood term like ‘profit’ should be used instead. The trouble is that profit and surplus value are not identical. For instance, if a commodity trader buys cheap and sells dear there is not necessarily any labour involved in the transactions that produced that particular profit.

The real problem for the SWP is that this 300-word column, which substitutes for a carefully considered programme, is just a mess. It contains just four sections: ‘Revolution, not reform’, ‘There is no parliamentary road’, ‘Internationalism’ and ‘The revolutionary party’. What about immediate demands, democracy, socialism and the transition to communism, to name but a few obvious omissions?

This is even more clear when you look at the second part of Manchester’s amendment - to insert: “We defend the right of believers to practise their religion without state interference.” Let me say first of all that, while a working class organisation should indeed have something to say about religion, it needs to be a lot more thought through than this. In Britain there is generally no problem with believers being able to practise their faith. But there is a problem with the privilege extended to one particular religious institution: the established church in England. If I was only allowed one sentence on the subject, I would call for secularism, equality between believers and non-believers, and separation of church and state.

However, leaving the inadequacy of the addition to one side, in which of the above sections is this new sentence inserted, do you think? You will find it under ‘Internationalism’, of course! You can see how this absurd situation came about. In this section there appears: “We oppose everything which turns workers from one country against those from other countries. We oppose racism and imperialism.” It must have seemed natural to add demands for women’s, gay and now religious rights after this.

Let me repeat: this jumble results directly from the SWP’s opportunist refusal to draw up a programme. The absence of such an essential document allows the CC to twist and turn as it pleases according to circumstances, without risk of being held to account for any breach of principles. First develop the programme and then summarise its essential features in a short column. The programme must come first.

Democracy?

It is incredible that Manchester district, supported by its Rusholme branch, was the only SWP body other than the CC to propose any motions. It actually put forward four out of the six that came from below (the motion on leaflets was also from Manchester). The other two were put forward by individual comrades. So an organisation which claims over 7,000 members and scores of branches, industrial fractions and districts can only muster six ideas for change? Something is very wrong, comrades. What happened to the many constructive ideas raised in Pre-conference Bulletin No3 (see ‘Signs of an awakening’ Weekly Worker December 22 2011)? How come they did not make it to conference floor?

The one motion I have not yet mentioned is the only unsuccessful one. Once again it was proposed by Manchester and it began: “One internal bulletin to which the CC and any comrade or group of comrades can contribute should be produced prior to each party council meeting.” This is hardly asking the earth. According to the SWP constitution, party council “normally meets once a year”, so the comrades were in effect requesting an increase in the number of discussion bulletins from three to four.

But, no, Alex Callinicos rose to oppose it. There is so much to be done and so little time to do it. The SWP must be a party of action, not a never-ending discussion forum. Debate must be concentrated in the period before conference, the organisation’s decision-making body (in fact party council also “has power to take decisions on matters of general policy binding on the CC”). And, in any case, there is nothing to stop any SWP body or individual raising pressing matters directly with the CC in between conferences.

The leadership’s opposition to this extremely modest proposal clearly symbolises its determination to cling onto its uncontested power to run the organisation as its own private fiefdom. No democracy, please: we’re SWP.

Talking of ‘democracy’, the CC itself was re-elected as a block using the notorious, ‘take it or leave it’ slate system. No alternative slate was proposed, so once again the existing members retained their places on the nod. However, the number of CC members was increased from 13 to 14 by the addition of “a trade union activist whose name has been withheld to protect them from their employer” (Socialist Worker January 14).

But the name of this individual is published in the Post-conference Bulletin, and was previously published in Pre-conference Bulletin No1. These bulletins are supposed to go out to all 7,000 “registered members” - ie, anyone who has filled in a membership application form within the last two years. So much for security.

SWP comrades really should consider the use of pseudonyms.

Deicide

26th January 2012, 19:44

I'm looking for a party to join in the UK, I was almost decided upon the SWP. Now I'm not so sure, it's back to the drawing board..

Hit The North

27th January 2012, 01:07

^^^ Don't evaluate the SWP on the basis of what the bloody CPGB write about it but on the basis of your experience of working with SWP members. The same advice would go for any other organisation you might be contemplating joining.

blake 3:17

27th January 2012, 04:41

If I were in England I'd work with the SWP, wouldn't join. The BS since the death of Chris Harman just proves it.

I'm more sympathetic to the Counterfire group, but have heard they were awful in RESPECT.

For comrades in England: Does Callinicos call the shots?

ed miliband

27th January 2012, 16:14

Sam_b

27th January 2012, 16:24

For comrades in England: Does Callinicos call the shots?

I don't know what you mean by 'calling the shots', but Callinicos is a member of the Central Committee and is one of the SWP's theoretical engines.

As was said above, Counterfire are postr-respect, but feature individuals who were in RESPECT, for instance Chris Nineham, John Rees and Lindsey German. Their stuff on the economy right now (the likes of James Meadway etc) is pretty good and arguably better than the SWP's analysis.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

27th January 2012, 20:12

daft punk

27th January 2012, 21:10

I suggest if anyone is looking for a socialist organisation to become involved in, in Britain or elsewhere in the world have a look at the Committee for a Workers' International.
http://www.socialistworld.net/

The International Executive Committee (IEC) of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) met from 17 to 22 January 2012, in Belgium, following the most momentous year for working-class struggle for some time. Over 33 countries were represented at the IEC meeting, with over 85 comrades attending from Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Have a read of part of the CWI's perspective of the coming year below:

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5540

Too right. I dont wanna sound sectarian, but the SWP are, erm, very sectarian! They also have some crap policies and they don't see keen to campaign openly for socialism.

For instance they joined the Socialist Alliance but the just wanted to dominate and it disintegrated. However the SP do still work with them in some areas. The offer of a democratic federal structure is always open.

blake 3:17

27th January 2012, 21:33

Counterfire were formed after the RESPECT debacle.

My understanding was that the Rees faction played a particularly unhelpful role in RESPECT -- but that's a friend from another current who can be quite sectarian.

The Idler

27th January 2012, 21:52

I'm looking for a party to join in the UK, I was almost decided upon the SWP. Now I'm not so sure, it's back to the drawing board..
What are you looking for in a party?

The Idler

27th January 2012, 21:53

I don't know what you mean by 'calling the shots', but Callinicos is a member of the Central Committee and is one of the SWP's theoretical engines.

As was said above, Counterfire are postr-respect, but feature individuals who were in RESPECT, for instance Chris Nineham, John Rees and Lindsey German. Their stuff on the economy right now (the likes of James Meadway etc) is pretty good and arguably better than the SWP's analysis.
In what way is Counterfire's economic analysis better than that of the SWP?

Deicide

27th January 2012, 22:01

What are you looking for in a party?

The ability to get things done.

27th January 2012, 22:01

...

...

Ugh, you people... As a CWI member I really find this somewhat sad attempt at poaching (potential) SWP members quite embarrassing.

As communists I rather would think we should engage in our differences of opinion with the SWP and explain our positions clearer when they get tackled. Open debate and creating a climate that stimulates critical thinking is what our class needs to be educated in socialist ideas. I really don't see how snitching members is going to help, on the contrary.

The Idler

27th January 2012, 22:41

The ability to get things done.
Then join the Tories.

blake 3:17

27th January 2012, 22:46

As communists I rather would think we should engage in our differences of opinion with the SWP and explain our positions clearer when they get tackled. Open debate and creating a climate that stimulates critical thinking is what our class needs to be educated in socialist ideas. I really don't see how snitching members is going to help, on the contrary.

No wonder I like you.

The question is how do we make steps toward to ending the nightmare called Capitalism and replace it with a system where all people have as decent lives as possible.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

27th January 2012, 23:10

"Ugh, you people... As a CWI member I really find this somewhat sad attempt at poaching (potential) SWP members quite embarrassing."

Is not giving the theoretical analysis, of my socialist organisation, of the capitalist crisis and how to solve it the best way for an open discussion amongst socialists. I do this week in, week out, on the streets of Scotland in an attempt to recruit potential members to the CWI so what is the problem you have with this. In public meetings and other activites I explain the socialist position of the CWI against other socialist trends in Scorland, and through out Britain, so what is the problem of that. There is no difference in doing that and advancing the CWI's ideas on this or any other socialist discussion group/website.

The class struggle is just that; a struggle for the working class collectively and individually to grasp the theoretocal positions of various socialist/communist/revolutionary organisations as a means to overthrow capitalism and to create the socialist reconstruction of society. It is not negative to attempt to win new members, even if they did come from other socialist organisations or trends, to the CWI by advancing our ideology, programme, tactics and perspectives on the capitalist crisis and its consequences to the working class in Britain and through-out the world.

27th January 2012, 23:11

No wonder I like you.
Just posting a little common workers sense, but I wub you too :wub:

The question is how do we make steps toward to ending the nightmare called Capitalism and replace it with a system where all people have as decent lives as possible.

I've written about the subject (incoherently I guess) on my blog here on Revleft and more is to follow on the DemRep blog (http://demrep.wordpress.com) Rakunin and I write for.

But, to cut some slack, I see the decline of capitalism being translated in the decline of the left. We are part of capitalist society after all. Conversely, because we are marginal, acting as capitalist firms against each other vying for "marketshare" in the workers movement, we cannot offer any possible positive alternatives.

The solution is the organised working class, fighting for political power as a class. So the emancipation of the working class can only be done through the fight for communism and the fight for communism can only be done through the emancipation of the working class.

Such a party-movement is currently out of our reach, so how do we get there? If the left can unite in a common political organisation, we can make a serious impact in society. Such a common political organisation can only be based on programmatical - as opposed to theoretical - unity. The programme should be a rather simple document explaining how to get from where we are now (capitalism) towards where we want to be (workers power and communism after that) and the steps needed to strengthen the working class as an objective force for itself, to suit it for its historic task.

But left unity is outside our reach as well. Sectism prevails across the board. And on the basis of the things as they are today, I don't see much positive coming from a unity of, say, the SWP and SPEW in the UK. Like Socialist Alliance around the turn of the century, it would disintegrate as soon as one group tried to get the upperhand.

So, where does that leave us? For what can we fight today?

What we need on the left is a paradigm shift and some groups here and there are positive actors in this much needed process of, for lack of a better term, a "cultural revolution" on the far left. The fight for political freedom starts within the far left, today. To get anywhere forward, we need to nurish a culture of critique, thinking, education and debate. That is, as far as I can see, our starting point today.

Firebrand

28th January 2012, 00:01

The question is how do we make steps toward to ending the nightmare called Capitalism and replace it with a system where all people have as decent lives as possible.

We could probably start by admiting that while there are differences between various currents, fundamentally we all want the same thing so lets work together to support the chance of revolution and then iron out our differences afterwards.

28th January 2012, 00:16

We could probably start by admiting that while there are differences between various currents, fundamentally we all want the same thing so lets work together to support the chance of revolution and then iron out our differences afterwards.

Yeah, no.

We need the exact opposite: engage with eachother about our differences. Only through this process - which creates a culture where differences are no reason for a split and thus a weakening of our forces, but a reason to develop them in the confidence that you are not an outcast - can we get unity.

blake 3:17

28th January 2012, 00:46

@ Q -- I'll forgive you for that emoticon. In a better world we'd actually get to know each other. Maybe we will in a worse world...

We need the exact opposite: engage with eachother about our differences. Only through this process - which creates a culture where differences are no reason for a split and thus a weakening of our forces, but a reason to develop them in the confidence that you are not an outcast - can we get unity.

Yes!!!

I'm involved in a Left unity project (and have stayed out of internal squabbles for the most part) but the biggest problem is that people have been too too polite about our differences.

But to be fair to Firebrand (and our common goals):
We could probably start by admiting that while there are differences between various currents, fundamentally we all want the same thing so lets work together to support the chance of revolution and then iron out our differences afterwards.

In a non-revolutionary situation, what we need to do is work collectively towards reforms and engage in effective action. In that process we develop basic trusts and learn who's solid and who's got our backs and who's trustworthy and what our individual and collective abilities and inabilities are. Build on our individual and collective strengths, recognize and try overcome our individual and collective weaknesses.

Theory and practice are not discrete and separate entities. They're also not the same thing.

Firebrand

28th January 2012, 01:36

I'm not saying that we shouldn't talk about our differences. Just that we need to stop prioritising theory over practice. So we acknowledge that we have theoretical differences and we do discuss them, but we don't lose sight of the fact that we have a common goal and therefore when the time comes to act we don't let theoretical differences get in the way of unity.
Basically when we've got time to kill we can argue theory to our heart content but when we've actually got something to do we focus on what unites us not what divides us, that way we will all be stronger.
A good quote i seem to remember although i'm not sure where it's from and i am slighlty paraphasing is this
"Think of the difference between her and I as like the difference beween two artists; a cubist and a traditionalist. We may argue bitterly about whose style is better and not speak for years because of differences over techinique but we would stand side by side on the barricades against those who wished to destroy all the pretty paintings."
I suspect the original was better

Die Neue Zeit

28th January 2012, 05:19

What we need on the left is a paradigm shift and some groups here and there are positive actors in this much needed process of, for lack of a better term, a "cultural revolution" on the far left. The fight for political freedom starts within the far left, today. To get anywhere forward, we need to nurish a culture of critique, thinking, education and debate. That is, as far as I can see, our starting point today.

Don't you think, comrade, that a certain style "Revival" that I alluded to is exactly the paradigm shift you called for? ;)

Sam_b

28th January 2012, 12:05

Too right. I dont wanna sound sectarian, but the SWP are, erm, very sectarian!

This is coming from a member of an organisation that just released a book attacking the SSP not that long ago.

daft punk

28th January 2012, 12:21

Ugh, you people... As a CWI member I really find this somewhat sad attempt at poaching (potential) SWP members quite embarrassing.

As communists I rather would think we should engage in our differences of opinion with the SWP and explain our positions clearer when they get tackled. Open debate and creating a climate that stimulates critical thinking is what our class needs to be educated in socialist ideas. I really don't see how snitching members is going to help, on the contrary.

SWP’s reformism

http://www.socialistworld.net/pubs/history2/p18.html

articles on SWP
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Left_and_radical/SWP

A reply to 'An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party'. See link below.

Workers' party must be built

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/7477

swp site:socialismtoday.org

Book review

‘Socialism and left unity - a critique of the Socialist Workers Party’ by Peter Taaffe

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/publish/Facebook.gif (http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistworld.net%2 Fdoc%2F3344&t=%26lsquo%3BSocialism+and+left+unity+-+a+critique+of+the+Socialist+%0A++++++Workers+Part y%26rsquo%3B+by+Peter+Taaffe) http://www.socialistworld.net/img/publish/Twitter.gif (http://twitter.com/home?status=http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/3344&title=%26lsquo%3BSocialism+and+left+unity+-+a+critique+of+the+Socialist+%0A++++++Workers+Part y%26rsquo%3B+by+Peter+Taaffe)10/12/2008
A guide for future struggles.
Review by Steve Score, from The Socialist (paper of the Socialist Party - CWI in England and Wales)

http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/3344

http://www.socialistworld.net/pics2/2008/11/p01.jpg

This is coming from a member of an organisation that just released a book attacking the SSP not that long ago.
What did the CWI criticise the SSP for? Please summarise these criticisms if you can, and why you consider them unjustified. I am not too well up on the Scottish stuff. Was it to do with them stabbing Tommy Sheridan in the back?

Just posting a little common workers sense, but I wub you too :wub:

I've written about the subject (incoherently I guess) on my blog here on Revleft and more is to follow on the DemRep blog (http://demrep.wordpress.com/) Rakunin and I write for.

But, to cut some slack, I see the decline of capitalism being translated in the decline of the left. We are part of capitalist society after all. Conversely, because we are marginal, acting as capitalist firms against each other vying for "marketshare" in the workers movement, we cannot offer any possible positive alternatives.

The solution is the organised working class, fighting for political power as a class. So the emancipation of the working class can only be done through the fight for communism and the fight for communism can only be done through the emancipation of the working class.

Such a party-movement is currently out of our reach, so how do we get there? If the left can unite in a common political organisation, we can make a serious impact in society. Such a common political organisation can only be based on programmatical - as opposed to theoretical - unity. The programme should be a rather simple document explaining how to get from where we are now (capitalism) towards where we want to be (workers power and communism after that) and the steps needed to strengthen the working class as an objective force for itself, to suit it for its historic task.

But left unity is outside our reach as well. Sectism prevails across the board. And on the basis of the things as they are today, I don't see much positive coming from a unity of, say, the SWP and SPEW in the UK. Like Socialist Alliance around the turn of the century, it would disintegrate as soon as one group tried to get the upperhand.

So, where does that leave us? For what can we fight today?

What we need on the left is a paradigm shift and some groups here and there are positive actors in this much needed process of, for lack of a better term, a "cultural revolution" on the far left. The fight for political freedom starts within the far left, today. To get anywhere forward, we need to nurish a culture of critique, thinking, education and debate. That is, as far as I can see, our starting point today.

You talk about the need for unity and then say it would never happen.

The CWI will work with any organisation committed to socialism, so long as it's a federal structure where one organisation cant dominate. I dont think they would dominate if they were the majority, unlike the SWP or SLP. They work in all sorts of organisations as minorities. They were in the Labour Party for years, after all.

28th January 2012, 14:22

[snip stuff on the SWP]
Steps in a right direction, but the overall tendency is still to pretend to the working class that we're the only (real) revolutionaries around. It would be even a better step if we started to publish differences of opinion in our papers, so we debate on tactical, strategical, programmatical and theoretical issues on a weekly basis. If issues can clash when they're "hot", it has the potential of creating more clarity on politics and thus making revolutionary politics more appealing to the working class movement.

You talk about the need for unity and then say it would never happen.
I talked about the conditions that make them possible too.

The CWI will work with any organisation committed to socialism, so long as it's a federal structure where one organisation cant dominate. I dont think they would dominate if they were the majority, unlike the SWP or SLP. They work in all sorts of organisations as minorities. They were in the Labour Party for years, after all.
We were in the Labour Party for decades too, so?

Anyway, I think a federal structure is one step in the right direction too, but ultimately I would prefer one organisational structure where differences of opinion can be openly expressed in tendencies, platforms and factions - as this is the most efficient and democratic way forward. I agree that unity can only happen if it is voluntary and if we can trust each other in our daily struggle. And I don't really mean trust between organisations, but trust between comrades, on the rank and file level. So we may become one organisation with its differences and where those differences are debated openly and comradely.

But the point I was making in my last post was that it takes two to tango. We have to reach out to the SWP membership, not to try and recruit them, but respect them as a fellow revolutionary. Maybe even invite them to write down their personal differences, so we can publish it in The Socialist and take this seriously. This is the way to become relevant to the wider working class too, as activists all around would look at us for our debates on different relevant issues, issues that they also care about. This is the way to become a real mass force in the class movement.

Firebrand

28th January 2012, 22:29

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 00:05

“This is coming from a member of an organisation that just released a book attacking the SSP not that long ago.”

What is quite amazing is that the SWP and in this case an ex-SWP member who has set-up an organisation that is just the baby version of the SWP in Scotland, called the International Socialist Group, just cannot see political and theoretical debate and clarification, other than as an attack. Sam b has read the pamphlet he is talking about but he does not comprehend the reasoning of the tract in its explanation of how the degeneration of the SSP started and/or continued. The sad thing is that Sam b joined the SSP, and was active in it, when its political degeneration was in full swing, despite its superficial good points at the time.

Now Sam b has one advantage over me on the question of the SSP he was a member where I was not. But I was involved as a CWI member in all the debates at the time while he did not. But he joined, or should I say the SWP joined, the SSP when its political degeneration was in full swing. So he will say that the CWI is attacking the SSP, because at the time the CWI was attempting, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to redirect the SSP leadership back onto an international socialist route, rather than a left nationalist road that it was stuck on.

For Sam b’s clarification I leave a link to the Scottish debate that the CWI leadership and other sections wrote on the beginnings of the political and theoretical degeneration of, what became known as, the leadership of the SSP which started in 1998 until they left the CWI in 2001. And as Sam b brought up the recent pamphlet on the rise and fall of the SSP I also leave that link for readers to observe the political programme, theory, strategy and tactics of the CWI over other left political trends.

http://www.marxist.net/scotland/index.html

http://issuu.com/sdaly/docs/riseandfallssp?mode=a_p

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 00:21

Below is an article by the Socialist Party Scotland (CWI) on the Independence question. If readers compare the CWI's response to the SWP, or the baby swp in what is calles the ISG Scotland, they will see that the SPS is the only socialist group/party that is calling for a socialist Scotland and a scottish parliament that uses its powers to nationalise the economy under workers control and workers management.

National tensions over the issue of Scottish independence were raised significantly following the blundering intervention of David Cameron and the ConDem coalition this week.The UK Westminster government attempted to force the hand of the SNP Scottish administration into holding a referendum within the next 18 months, rather than SNP First Minister Alex Salmond’s preferred option of late 2014.

Crucially, the ConDem’s have insisted that a single yes or no question on the issue of Scottish independence form the basis of the referendum. This is also counter to the SNP’s current desire for a multi-option poll including a choice of “devolution max”.

The ConDem’s also oppose the idea that 16 and 17 year-olds be given a vote in the referendum, which the SNP government support. Ironically, the Lib Dem’s official policy is for votes for 16 and 17 year olds. The Socialist Party Scotland fully supports the right of 16 and 17 year-olds to vote in all elections

These three sticks or “strings” as Salmond has described them were wrapped up in the carrot of allowing the Scottish government to carry-out a “legally binding” independence referendum. Rather than the consultative one that the current devolutionary arrangements permit.

The SNP leadership lost no time in describing Cameron’s intervention as being “Thatcher-esque”. The Tories were operating in a “London knows best fashion, trying to dictate the rules for a referendum for which they have no mandate”.

Cameron and his LibDem Scottish secretary Michael Moore quickly dropped the insistence that a referendum had to be held within 18 months, but by then the damage, from their point of view, had been done. In fact Moore’s statement to the Westminster parliament described the SNP’s proposal’s as “unlawful” and still leaves open the possibility that the Westminster government could organise an independence referendum over the heads of the Scottish parliament. Such a “nuclear option” would result in a ratcheting up of national tensions as well as a likely boycott of such a poll.

As it is the crass intervention by the ConDem’s has boosted the standing of Salmond and the SNP and probably support for independence as well. Burned deep into the Scottish national consciousness, and particularly among the working class, is the memory of the brutal anti-working class Thatcher regime. The hated poll tax and her government’s refusal to recognise the rights of the Scottish people to self-determination resulted in the obliteration of the Tories electoral base. Today the Tories have only 1 MP in Scotland, outnumbered by the two Giant Panda’s recently gifted by the Chinese government and currently residing in Edinburgh zoo.

The ConDem attempts to dictate the terms and rules for the referendum have been a gift for the nationalists in Scotland, who will have gained at least temporary credit for “standing up” to the Tories. Of course Salmond’s refusal to bow to the pressure over the referendum does not extend to refusing to implement the ConDem cuts in Scotland. To a penny, all £3.7 billion of Tory/Liberal cuts have been inflicted on the people of Scotland by the self-proclaimed “Scotland’s party”. Salmond and John Swinney’s opposition to the mass strike on N30 when the SNP leadership crossed the picket lines is also an indication of the role the SNP will play in any future independent Scotland in defending the interests of big business.

It is nevertheless possible that the SNP and Cameron will come to an agreement. This could include that the powers will be transferred to Holyrood to allow a “legal” referendum. The major difference is likely to be over the timing, which Cameron and co will probably have to live with, and the SNP’s preference for a multi-option referendum.

Lying behind Cameron’s intervention is the calculation that an independence referendum would be defeated if held now or soon. That’s why both the Tories and now Labour have come out for a “quick resolution to this issue”. They hope that the SNP can be defeated over independence and a stabilisation of the national question can be achieved.

Salmond and the SNP also understand that with independence currently supported by around one-third of the Scottish people, it is better to delay a referendum until late 2014. They hope that the impact of the economic crisis and the savage cuts will be blamed on the ConDem's and the lack of powers for the Scottish parliament, bolstering public support for more decisive constitutional change.

It’s for this reason that the SNP are still holding-out for the prospect of a multi-option referendum. In fact they are the only party in Scotland who support a question being asked on extended devolution. They believe that even if independence was defeated, the current overwhelming public support (68% in the most recent poll) for a major extension of powers over tax, benefits, the minimum wage etc would see them in a win-win situation. “Devolution max” or "independence lite" is a safety net for the SNP which they would claim as another step towards independence at a future stage.

"Civic Scotland”, including the voluntary sector, a number of trade unions and the churches are to establish a body to define “devolution max” and push for this to be included as an option on a ballot.

Ironically despite Cameron, Milliband et al's insistence on a single question on independence, a multi-option referendum could also be benificial for the British ruling class as well. By allowing a question that would draw support away from outright independence it could help avoid the instability and loss of prestige that the break of the UK would mean for British capitalism.
If the run-up to 2014 saw a significant rise in support for independence even the Westminster parties could back a third option, to act as a lightning conductor, in an effort to avoid a majority for independence.

Pro-business SNP

The SNP leadership, pro-capitalist to the core, have long accepted a “gradualist” path to independence. They would happily settle for a form of extreme autonomy, within a newly designed federal UK state. Salmond has already made clear that an independent Scotland would maintain the Queen as head of state and keep the Pound as the Scottish currency, with a pledge to hold a referendum on joining the current crisis-ridden Euro at a certain stage. Salmond wants to use powers over corporation tax to reduce the “burden” on big business and encourage a low tax haven for inward investment. Their vision of an independent Scotland would be a nightmare for the majority of working class people and their families.

It is essential that a working class alternative is urgently built to the capitalist and cuts consensus among Scotland’s political elite, including the SNP. Any attempt to block the democratic rights of the Scottish people by the ConDem’s should be opposed, if necessary using the full power of the trade union and labour movement as witnessed on November 30th. A multi-option referendum is a genuine democratic right which the Socialist Party Scotland fully supports and cannot be traded as a bargaining chip by either government in Westminster or Holyrood.

The Socialist Party and our forerunner Militant have a long history of defending the democratic rights of the Scottish people. We supported the setting up of a parliament (Assembly) in the 1979 referendum and again in 1997, despite the lack of substantial powers. Today we fight for a parliament with full powers. A parliament that could nationalise the major sectors of the Scottish economy including oil, the power to increase the minimum wage to end poverty pay, increase benefits to provide a living income for all as well as tackling the obscenity of nuclear weapons by removing Trident from the Clyde.

However, with the SNP and the rest of the political establishment committed to defending the interests of capitalism we also need to build a new mass party of the working class to fight for a socialist majority in the parliament. prepared to use the powers in the interests of the working class. The Socialist Party Scotland has played a leading role in the setting up of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition which will be standing candidates across Scotland in May.

A socialist Scotland is the only sustainable answer to the nightmare of cuts and austerity. Central to this task is the need to stand implacably for the maximum unity of the working class across Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and to oppose any attempts to divide the workers’ movement on national lines. A voluntary and democratic socialist federation of these states as a step towards a socialist Europe to end the nightmare of austerity, cuts and capitalism once and for all.

30th January 2012, 02:12

Now Sam b has one advantage over me on the question of the SSP he was a member where I was not. But I was involved as a CWI member in all the debates at the time while he did not. But he joined, or should I say the SWP joined, the SSP when its political degeneration was in full swing. So he will say that the CWI is attacking the SSP, because at the time the CWI was attempting, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to redirect the SSP leadership back onto an international socialist route, rather than a left nationalist road that it was stuck on.

Below is an article by the Socialist Party Scotland (CWI) on the Independence question. If readers compare the CWI's response to the SWP, or the baby swp in what is calles the ISG Scotland, they will see that the SPS is the only socialist group/party that is calling for a socialist Scotland and a scottish parliament that uses its powers to nationalise the economy under workers control and workers management.

[...]

A socialist Scotland is the only sustainable answer to the nightmare of cuts and austerity. Central to this task is the need to stand implacably for the maximum unity of the working class across Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and to oppose any attempts to divide the workers’ movement on national lines. A voluntary and democratic socialist federation of these states as a step towards a socialist Europe to end the nightmare of austerity, cuts and capitalism once and for all.

I see a slight contradiction here comrade. The SPS calls for a socialist Scotland, yet within the framework of a voluntary and democratic federation of socialist states on the British Isles? Why all this hussle? It seems to me it could be easily mistaken to be a position to conform to nationalist politics and the possibility of a socialist state within Scotland itself. I'm sure that can't be the point, as I believe also the SPS must recognize that socialism cannot possibly be built on a national scale, let alone on a scale of that of Scotland?

Surely we should fight for a united European (federated?) republic, at the very least, as a concrete and positive step that can start to transcend capitalism and build towards world unity of the working class.

Therefore I think the call for an independent Scotland is misguided, to say the least, and we as communists should instead call for the unity of the entire European working class and for a European-wide mass workers party and European-wide unions and other type of working class self-organisations. The goal should be to seize power, as a class, on this continental scale.

Could you shed some light here?

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 02:15

^^^ Comrade, I call for an "independent Scotland," but I also think it should be coupled with immediate entry into the EU and the eurozone, probably something further than what Salmond has in mind with his currency fudging. [Or as James Turley inaccurately describes it, "Berlin." (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004691)]

30th January 2012, 02:18

^^^ Comrade, I call for an "independent Scotland," but I also think it should be coupled with immediate entry into the EU and the eurozone. [Or as James Turley inaccurately describes it, "Berlin." (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004691)]

James Turley has a point, as it is indeed Berlin that, more and more, calls the shots as a result of the EU crisis. I think that a call for an "independent" Scotland would place it even lower in the international pecking order of states, meaning absolute impoverishment for Scotland - not socialism.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 02:20

I'm still sticking with my guns, since I put the word "independent" in quotes anyway.

Care to explain the "even lower in the international pecking order" part? Scotland is getting richer and richer in oil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_Scotland's_oil#Recent_evidence), but of course with caveats (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-24/scots-independence-cost-may-exceed-oil-money-nationalists-claim.html).

30th January 2012, 02:26

Care to explain the "even lower in the international pecking order" part? Scotland is getting richer and richer in oil.

Libya has oilfields too.

The UK is a main player on the worldstage because it is a subsidiary of Washinton, where London is a subsidiary financial market. Scotland wouldn't have any of that, it would tumble down quite a few steps on the pecking order as a result.

Besides, even if it didn't, how could "independence" lead to building a socialist Scotland? Surely it would immediately become a pariah within the international community. And don't count on those North Sea oil fields then, count on some aircraft carriers to protect them against Scottish workers.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 02:34

30th January 2012, 02:39

I accept the CPGB's criticisms of the "socialist Scotland" slogan. Right now I'm posting about basic democratic stuff, and also looking back on the British Isles being deficient in Continentalism (Continental worker-class movements > Scottish organizing > "Little England" Labourism).

After what I said re. immediate entry into the EU and eurozone, I'm for continuing the struggle for a Euroworkers Demarchic Commonwealth.

I don't think we should be fighting "little England" nationalism with Scottish nationalism. What you're talking about would basically be a reshuffling of the imperialist cards, whereas the working class wouldn't be that much the wiser. On the contrary, it would be more divided and thus weaker than before. There is also the effect of nationalism in the working class movement that should actually be fought against and not nurished by such a reshuffle.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 02:43

30th January 2012, 02:55

Comrade, it isn't a revolutionary period. Why would the working class be more divided and weaker? Radicalized Scottish workers can link up more effectively with the GUE-NGL and the rest of the Continental worker movement, instead of having to put up with Little England-style No2EU crap.

[You could say that the No2EU crap was what tipped me over to support the "Berlin" option.]

Maybe it is getting late, but I don't see the point you're making. No2EU, while not exactly a brilliant campaign I agree, was not exactly effective on a mass scale either. Furthermore it has since died away into some dark corner of the footnotes of history. The underlying politics of that campaign are of course still around and need to be debated.

GUE-NGL is an entity that merely exists within the confines of the EU parliament and it isn't even agreed on what way forward is needed. For example, there is a rather huge difference between Dennis de Jong of the Dutch SP and Paul Murphy of the SP in Ireland.

It isn't a revolutionary period, this is true, and the working class is pretty damn weak as it is. I however do not see how adding insult to injury, by vamping up mass support for a nationalist trajectory, is going to help.

We don't need "little England" nationalism, we don't need Scottish nationalism. What we need is working class awareness and this can only happen if we emphasize international relations, such as trans-European. In the mean time, I think the call for tearing down the UK as a "union of crowns" is fitting and that we should instead agitate for a federative but united republic of the British Isles, that is including Ireland.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 03:02

Maybe it is getting late, but I don't see the point you're making. No2EU, while not exactly a brilliant campaign I agree, was not exactly effective on a mass scale either. Furthermore it has since died away into some dark corner of the footnotes of history. The underlying politics of that campaign are of course still around and need to be debated.

Indeed, but it's not that late in the night. ;)

GUE-NGL is an entity that merely exists within the confines of the EU parliament and it isn't even agreed on what way forward is needed. For example, there is a rather huge difference between Dennis de Jong of the Dutch SP and Paul Murphy of the SP in Ireland.

Like I said, comrade, "the rest of the Continental worker movement" implies other organizations besides the GUE-NGL. In addition to worker-class Continentalism, whatever "British" components contributed to "Marxism" were Scottish, not English (Smith, Ricardo, etc.).

It isn't a revolutionary period, this is true, and the working class is pretty damn weak as it is. I however do not see how adding insult to injury, by vamping up mass support for a nationalist trajectory, is going to help.

Again, I agree.

We don't need "little England" nationalism, we don't need Scottish nationalism. What we need is working class awareness and this can only happen if we emphasize international relations, such as trans-European. In the mean time, I think the call for tearing down the UK as a "union of crowns" is fitting and that we should instead agitate for a federative but united republic of the British Isles, that is including Ireland.

I define "Scottish nationalism" in today's context as an independence campaign that, at best, dodges questions about immediate EU and eurozone membership, and, at worst, rejects such.

Again, why campaign for only a united republic of the British Isles when unity at the EU level is more preferrable?

Crux

30th January 2012, 03:37

Crux

30th January 2012, 03:43

I define "Scottish nationalism" in today's context as an independence campaign that, at best, dodges questions about immediate EU and eurozone membership, and, at worst, rejects such.

Again, why campaign for only a united republic of the British Isles when unity at the EU level is more preferrable?
I keep getting suprised at how right wing and social democratic your politics are, but perhaps I shouldn't. I mean, you don't understand what the GUE-NGL is, naturally this is also connected to your cluelessness about what the EU is as such. The EU is and always will be a project by and for th european big capitalists. The EU is specifically a tool to circumvent the hassle that national parliaments, as well as national jurisdictions, sometimes represent for big capital in Europe. You might as well call for turning the IMF socialist.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 03:48

I keep getting suprised at how right wing and social democratic your politics are, but perhaps I shouldn't. I mean, you don't understand what the GUE-NGL is, naturally this is also connected to your cluelessness about what the EU is as such. The EU is and always will be a project by and for th european big capitalists. The EU is specifically a tool to circumvent the hassle that national parliaments, as well as national jurisdictions, sometimes represent for big capital in Europe. You might as well call for turning the IMF socialist.

Please, look who's the nationalist opportunist in this thread.

There are more leftist parties hooking up within the GUE-NGL, including the Irish branch of your very own CWI. Are you ignoring their contributions altogether?

Guess what? Marxism 101: the modern nation-state "is a project by and for the capitalists." (http://www.revleft.com/vb/modern-concept-nation-t167066/index.html)

As for the EU itself, in the immediate term I'm very much for greater political integration.

Crux

30th January 2012, 03:58

Please, look who's the nationalist opportunist in this thread.

There are more leftist parties hooking up within the GUE-NGL, including the Irish branch of your very own CWI. Are you ignoring their contributions altogether?

Guess what? Marxism 101: the modern nation-state "is a project by and for the capitalists." (http://www.revleft.com/vb/modern-concept-nation-t167066/index.html)

As for the EU itself, in the immediate term I'm very much for greater political integration.
Again you are clueless about what the GUE-NGL is. It is a parliamentary group in the european parliament, for the purpose of allowing the groups members speaking time.

And what do you think the EU that you advocate membership in, and even further integration with, is?

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 04:03

You, Sir, wanted to express your "expertise" on the EU, so I went back to the basics of the nation-state and its statelet derivatives. Besides:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm

The whole of Germany shall be declared a single and indivisible republic.

What I said, what comrade Cockshott posted previously, what the CPGB comrades advocate re. greater political integration is, monsieur, akin to but a step up from the above.

Crux

30th January 2012, 04:09

You, Sir, wanted to express your "expertise" on the EU, so I went back to the basics of the nation-state and its statelet derivatives. Besides:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm

What I said re. greater political integration is, monsieur, akin to but a step up from the above.
Someone's feeling a bit testy I see. So why is it that you are uncapable of grasping what the EU is and how it functions? It's quite readily apparent. Of course there's also the distinct possibility that you are indeed aware, in your own way, in which case I would say you are a reformist, at best.

Only it is not 1848, and the EU will not in itself become a new super-nation state. The EU project is, beyond the rhetoric, only intended as a project to more readily defend the interest of european big bussiness and imperialism. Nothing else. And you support this, albeit under the absurd pretense that this would represent a step forward.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 04:19

[Someone should split off the Scotland discussions.]

Someone's feeling a bit testy I see.

No, sir, I just wanted to imply certain things about how I view your positions, "activism," and ad hominems.

So why is it that you are uncapable of grasping what the EU is and how it functions? It's quite readily apparent. Of course there's also the distinct possibility that you are indeed aware, in your own way, in which case I would say you are a reformist, at best.

Au contraire, monsieur, I already know what it is. Awareness, however, isn't reformist.

Only it is not 1848, and the EU will not in itself become a new super-nation state. The EU project is, beyond the rhetoric, only intended as a project to more readily defend the interest of european big bussiness and imperialism. Nothing else. And you support this, albeit under the absurd pretense that this would represent a step forward.

Fine, sir, so if you think today's EU structures and trade arrangements suck too much (which they do), why not call for a new constitution with the force of law, and new governance structures, across all of continental Europe (notwithstanding disputes with Russia and its "near abroad")? That's still a step up from your national opportunism.

Those of us who are for greater political integration use the words "European Union" only for convenience, like this:

http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Berlinpaper.pdf

Crux

30th January 2012, 13:30

No, sir, I just wanted to imply certain things about how I view your positions, "activism," and ad hominems.
Ah your ever elusive "activism". Which does beg the question, since you seem to hold such strong opinions on it....what is your experience with it?

Au contraire, monsieur, I already know what it is. Awareness, however, isn't reformist.In that case you are a reformist.

Fine, sir, so if you think today's EU structures and trade arrangements suck too much (which they do), why not call for a new constitution with the force of law, and new governance structures, across all of continental Europe (notwithstanding disputes with Russia and its "near abroad")? That's still a step up from your national opportunism.

Those of us who are for greater political integration use the words "European Union" only for convenience, like this:

http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Berlinpaper.pdfBecause a new constitution in the Eu would just be a piece of paper and anyone who advocates further integration with the EU, and has illusions about changing the current EU into something progressive is either a) helplessly deluded b) a reformist, modern day soc dem or, most likely c) both.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 13:31

Q says “I see a slight contradiction here comrade. The SPS calls for a socialist Scotland, yet within the framework of a voluntary and democratic federation of socialist states on the British Isles? Why all this hussle? It seems to me it could be easily mistaken to be a position to conform to nationalist politics and the possibility of a socialist state within Scotland itself. I'm sure that can't be the point, as I believe also the SPS must recognize that socialism cannot possibly be built on a national scale, let alone on a scale of that of Scotland?

“Surely we should fight for a united European (federated?) republic, at the very least, as a concrete and positive step that can start to transcend capitalism and build towards world unity of the working class.”

I agree that socialism cannot be built in one country, that is the Stalin(istic), two stage conceptions. However, a revolution that leads to the beginnings of the socialist reconstruction of society on a European, or Asian, or Americas, scale starts in a national country. So the advancement of the demand of a socialist country but evolving into their neighbours, as a federation or confederation, and beyond is the correct strategy to have. It is erroneous to say that one country has to wait to reconstruct society on a socialist basis until others are ready.

In fact, the revolution in one country will very likely start a revolution in another country. This has been proved time and time again over the last 160 years. Even as recently as the revolutionary events in Tunisia which had repercussions in Egypt, and Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; which then swept across the continents to Europe and America.
That is why the Socialist Party Scotland advances the concept of “A socialist Scotland is the only sustainable answer to the nightmare of cuts and austerity. Central to this task is the need to stand implacably for the maximum unity of the working class across Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and to oppose any attempts to divide the workers’ movement on national lines. A voluntary and democratic socialist federation of these states as a step towards a socialist Europe to end the nightmare of austerity, cuts and capitalism once and for all.”

As you can see that the SPS programme is not based on the two stage theory of independence on a capitalist basis first and socialism much later down the line as some so-called ‘socialist’ groups in Scotland are calling for. I post links to four articles from the CWI Scotland on this question of nationalism or socialism. The object is to raise the educational level of readers on this paramount question that will decide class and state relationships in the future. And maybe there will be a better understanding of the complex issue of nationalism and socialism.

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1229 (http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1229)

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1314

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1412

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/882

30th January 2012, 14:18

I agree that socialism cannot be built in one country, that is the Stalin(istic), two stage conceptions. However, a revolution that leads to the beginnings of the socialist reconstruction of society on a European, or Asian, or Americas, scale starts in a national country. So the advancement of the demand of a socialist country but evolving into their neighbours, as a federation or confederation, and beyond is the correct strategy to have. It is erroneous to say that one country has to wait to reconstruct society on a socialist basis until others are ready.

In fact, the revolution in one country will very likely start a revolution in another country. This has been proved time and time again over the last 160 years. Even as recently as the revolutionary events in Tunisia which had repercussions in Egypt, and Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East; which then swept across the continents to Europe and America.

I can understand the consideration; revolution will indeed most likely not happen simultaneously across the planet, especially not if we are to act on the level of working class organisation that we have today.

However, like you say, we cannot build (or even start building) on a national level to overcome capitalism. An isolated revolution in Scotland will obviously immediately lead to complete disaster.

You say that "it is erroneous to say that one country has to wait to reconstruct society on a socialist basis until others are ready", but this is exactly what, for example, the Bolsheviks argued during the July days in 1917, when Petrograd was ready for revolution, but the rest of the vast Russian empire was not. Likewise one could say that we indeed should wait for favorable conditions for a trans-European revolution.

This in turn implies a trans-European mass workers party, like the RSDLP was for Russia. Only with such an organisation can we possibly organize for this momentous task.

A step in this direction could be a trans-European day of action, as a symbolic starting point of the unity of the working class and a message of strength that together we are strong.

Die Neue Zeit

30th January 2012, 14:35

Because a new constitution in the Eu would just be a piece of paper and anyone who advocates further integration with the EU, and has illusions about changing the current EU into something progressive is either a) helplessly deluded b) a reformist, modern day soc dem or, most likely c) both.

Back to the same old, same old, national-socialist revolutions. :rolleyes:

Crux

30th January 2012, 17:31

Back to the same old, same old, national-socialist revolutions. :rolleyes:
Back to the same old gobbedygook and misinformed and misleading use of your own made up terms I see. I have been clear enough, you on other hand, I believe, are only still here because of your obfuscations. I mean really. Few people feel wading through your theories and your made up vocabulary worth it, but if you do the reformism is quite apparent. This is a website for the revolutionary left.

daft punk

30th January 2012, 18:17

Steps in a right direction, but the overall tendency is still to pretend to the working class that we're the only (real) revolutionaries around. It would be even a better step if we started to publish differences of opinion in our papers, so we debate on tactical, strategical, programmatical and theoretical issues on a weekly basis. If issues can clash when they're "hot", it has the potential of creating more clarity on politics and thus making revolutionary politics more appealing to the working class movement.
most left groups do publish differences in opinion, the CWI certainly do.

We were in the Labour Party for decades too, so?who was ? So? So they are prepared to work with others.

Anyway, I think a federal structure is one step in the right direction too, but ultimately I would prefer one organisational structure where differences of opinion can be openly expressed in tendencies, platforms and factions - as this is the most efficient and democratic way forward. I agree that unity can only happen if it is voluntary and if we can trust each other in our daily struggle. And I don't really mean trust between organisations, but trust between comrades, on the rank and file level. So we may become one organisation with its differences and where those differences are debated openly and comradely.

But the point I was making in my last post was that it takes two to tango. We have to reach out to the SWP membership, not to try and recruit them, but respect them as a fellow revolutionary. Maybe even invite them to write down their personal differences, so we can publish it in The Socialist and take this seriously. This is the way to become relevant to the wider working class too, as activists all around would look at us for our debates on different relevant issues, issues that they also care about. This is the way to become a real mass force in the class movement.
Are you in the CWI? The CWI have reached out to the SWP loads of times. The SWP are in Solidarity in Scotland which is Tommy Sheridan/ CWI, and they stood 5 candidates in TUSC which the CWI helped set up.

Comrade, it isn't a revolutionary period. Why would the working class be more divided and weaker? Radicalized Scottish workers can link up more effectively with the GUE-NGL and the rest of the Continental worker movement, instead of having to put up with No2EU crap and other Little England appeasement.

[You could say that the No2EU crap was the last Little England appeasement straw that tipped me over to support the "Berlin" option (while of course pushing for greater integration).]
No2EU was not little England appeasement. The EU is a capitalist organisation set up to carry out neoliberal reforms. Ie attacks on the working class.

"No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaigns against the European Union’s austerity drive and in defence of decent public services and democracy here and across the European Union"

"We say...

Reject the Lisbon Treaty
No to EU directives that privatise our public services
Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain
Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
No to EU militarisation
Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies
Keep Britain out of the eurozone"

Sam_b

30th January 2012, 18:52

who was ? So? So they are prepared to work with others

Yet the CWI in Scotland are refusing to work with Coalition of Resistance because there are Labour party members in it. To my mind it is the Labour leadership that has started implementing cuts in areas, not the rank and file grassroots. Is there any real, logical reason why the CWI is refusing to work with CoR over the cuts, but instead feels the need to set up it's own anti-cuts organisation, SACA, which seems to only agitate for electoral candidacy and nothing else?

The CWI have reached out to the SWP loads of times.

Apart from in Scotland, where else? And was this merely because of the SWP/CWI 'alliance' that was formed through being the critical factor in the SSP, in other words being on the same wavelengths in the criticism of the project? I believe (this may be the other way round) that the SWP approached the CWI with regards to standing in Irish elections, and the CWI refused any alliance or agreement where left candidates wouldn't stand against each other.

It's alsop probably not worth using Solidarity as a shining example of unity as the proejct to my mind has all but collapsed.

No2EU was not little England appeasement. The EU is a capitalist organisation set up to carry out neoliberal reforms. Ie attacks on the working class.

"No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaigns against the European Union’s austerity drive and in defence of decent public services and democracy here and across the European Union"

"We say...

Really? I thought even CWI comrades had disassociated themselves with the UKIP-lite project by now. It was a failed coalition which included members with dangerous lines on the likes of immigration and did actually play into such 'little England' stereotypes, of which little England voted for the real deal, UKIP, instead. You can search the arguments that were made about NO2EU on this very site from the election.

Paul Cockshott

30th January 2012, 21:01

Reject the Lisbon Treaty
No to EU directives that privatise our public services
Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain
Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
No to EU militarisation
Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies
Keep Britain out of the eurozone"
This looks to me like a reactionary nationalist position.

Privatisation did not require any intervention from the EU when Thatcher started it, and is as likely to occur outside as inside. Even more likely outside if you pander to the prejudices of the Tory right.

Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain

This fails to address the real problem which is occuring on an EU wide basis as the economic policies associated with the current monetary union rules strangle the whole EU economy for the benefit of the rentier class. Instead of putting out that nationalist nonsense you should be calling for an EU wide cancellation of debts.

Developing British fishing is incidentally a codeword for removing the over-fishing restrictions - which are at least a rational element of in=kind planning to prevent environmental damage.

Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies

Ok yes, join up with the boss of Ryanair there. This is code for introducing national tax cuts on business taxes as Salmond proposes. Nothing could make the overall situation worse.

blake 3:17

30th January 2012, 21:12

This looks to me like a reactionary nationalist position.

You serious?

Developing British fishing is incidentally a codeword for removing the over-fishing restrictions - which are at least a rational element of in=kind planning to prevent environmental damage.

Preventing over fishing is a good thing.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 21:40

“Yet the CWI in Scotland are refusing to work with Coalition of Resistance because there are Labour party members in it. To my mind it is the Labour leadership that has started implementing cuts in areas, not the rank and file grassroots. Is there any real, logical reason why the CWI is refusing to work with CoR over the cuts, but instead feels the need to set up it's own anti-cuts organisation, SACA, which seems to only agitate for electoral candidacy and nothing else?”

Oh Sam, oh Sam, oh Sam, - when was the Coalition of Resistance set up in Scotland. I thought, and you can correct me if I am wrong, that it was set-up by the bulk of SWP members who resigned to set-up the baby SWP called the International Socialist Group Scotland; and that was in May/June 2011. The Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance, SACA was formed out of trade unions, anti-cuts groups and community groups in January 2011; when the ISG was still in the SWP.

It is also a misnomer to suggest that SACA or the SPS is not prepared to work with groups because it has Labour Party members in. That was/is not the argument of the SWP, and ISG members, during the discussions with the formation of SACA or even today. The ISG and a certain section of the SWP want anti-cuts groups to work with Labour politician who say they will oppose privatisation and cuts but not actually doing anything about it, all just to get elected. Then when these Labour politicians get into their cosy position after they have been elected ditch the anti-cuts lobby and say there is nothing we can do and carry out cuts. To me that is stabbing the working class in the back and you so-called Marxists are prepared to allow that to take place.

Instead there should be an independent anti-cuts/trade union/community groups stance against all the main stream politicians and parties. And if any Labour Party politician and activists agree with this stance they can be involved in it. But they must show in action not in word that they are prepared to stand up to the Labour Party that support cuts in working people’s lives.

That is why the Scottish Anti-cuts Coalition, SACC, is standing in the May 2012 Council Elections in Scotland. Now SACC will be standing against the Labour Party, SNP and the other capitalist parties on the basis of opposition to all cuts to jobs, pay, services, pensions and benefits; for councils to set needs budgets that protect services, the local communities and jobs and the demand to return of the money stolen from Councils to invest in public services; no to privatisation; full support for workers and trade unions in the public and private sector, local communities and young people who are taking action to fight the cuts, and abolish and oppose all anti-trade union laws; also make the rich elite pay increased tax and for the public ownership of the banks, the privatised utilities and the big corporations. Are you saying Sam that you, and the ISG do not support this political initiative? Now if any Labour Party, or even SNP, member/activist agrees with this programme then they will be expelled from their respective parties, because it is in complete opposition to the LP and SNP programme.

I consider CoR and the ISG as cosying up to the Scottish Labour, and Trade Union, bureaucracy that will lead ordinary working people down the road to capitulation, cuts and a starker austerity programme than we have at this moment. We are not students playing with politics but attempting to formulate an independent working class organisation with a trade union base to defend working people politically and, I will use these words, industrially.

What is amusing is that Sam gives the swp version of stalin's school of falsification in saying that the CWI in Scotland does not work with other Left political organisations. Yet it was trade unionists, some CWI members, who set-up the Defend Glasgow Services as a means to galvinise trade union and anti-cuts groups against the Glasgow Labour Council imposing stringent cuts on the local community long before Cor or the ISG was even thought about let alone conceived. Yet CoR and the ISG still want people to support Labour politicians.

I, and I believe the SPS as well, has no problem of anti-cuts groups being set up, we march separately, but strike together against the common enwemy; which is the Politicians who actively support the cuts and austerity programme and in scotland that is not only the ConDems, but also the SNP and the Labour party.

Sam_b

30th January 2012, 21:54

Oh Sam, oh Sam, oh Sam, - when was the Coalition of Resistance set up in Scotland. I thought, and you can correct me if I am wrong, that it was set-up by the bulk of SWP members who resigned to set-up the baby SWP called the International Socialist Group Scotland; and that was in May/June 2011. The Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance, SACA was formed out of trade unions, anti-cuts groups and community groups in January 2011; when the ISG was still in the SWP.

1. April.

2. No evidence to show that the ISG is somehow the 'baby SWP'. Thus the sectarianism of the dinosaurs of the left come out so easy. Is there somehow guilt by association here or something? If so is it okay that I can call your group a bunch of grasses after the disgraceful behaviour of some of your cadre around the Poll Tax riots?

I'm really not prepared to answer to your usual rhetoric until you can this bullshit, Jimmy. You are a one-trick pony in your almost-AWL like levels of obsession towards the SWP. I'm assuming it comes from the deperation of being on the very fringes of the left, the Scottish left in particular, and the marginalisation that has come with it.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 22:40

I stand corrected on the date of the formation of the ISG Scotland, April it is; which is still after the formation of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance in January 2011. which means you were still in the SWP pushing the line that Labour politicians, who were prepared to accept cuts, should not be excluded from the anti-cuts alliance.

But Sam I answered your scurrilous political and organisational remarks concerning the CWI in Scotland. I could say the same for your own comments that they have an AWL obsession with the CWI and if I am a political dinosaur then I could counter that your political critiques are political immature; to take the point about the comment on grasses during the poll tax riot, which is I assume you are referring to. You were a young lad when this took place so you have been feed the mis-information from some of the older dinosaurs you were once associated with on this issue.

Ok, you consider my phrase “ baby SWP” in connection with the ISG a bit harsh. But I consider that the political analysis of the ISG is just a slightly more undeveloped version of the SWP prognosis. Of course you will not accept this, then that is ok to disagree with me, but that is how I comprehend the material I read from your website.

Now if you want to offer a critique of another political thesis or organisation you must expect and accept there will be a rejoinder to your assessment. You can offer a rejoinder yourself but the immaturity shows through when say “I'm really not prepared to answer to your usual rhetoric until you can this bullshit, Jimmy.” I am not personally abusing you Sam as what take place on another, British, socialist website, so if you do not want to say anything in answer then do not write a reply.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

30th January 2012, 22:54

Ps, Sam, according to the Chambers Concise dictionary there seems to a number of means to the ‘rhetoric’; it could mean I write well; or the practice of using language effectively; or that I write insincere or meaningless words. I would say by your comments that it is the third version of the meanings. Nevertheless, I do not see anything rhetorical in my evaluation of your comments. What I put forward was a radical programme on how to politically combat the austerity programme that the ConDems put forward and which the Labour politicians through-out Britain, along with the SNP in Scotland, accept.

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2012, 05:00

Back to the same old gobbedygook and misinformed and misleading use of your own made up terms I see. I have been clear enough, you on other hand, I believe, are only still here because of your obfuscations. I mean really. Few people feel wading through your theories and your made up vocabulary worth it, but if you do the reformism is quite apparent. This is a website for the revolutionary left.

For someone who throws around the word "reformism" loosely at any given opportunity, how 'bout a term that's more high school English: Revolution In One Country?

What you (and Jimmy, though he hasn't criticized my position and has openly and honestly admitted an RIOC stance, so I won't polemicize against him) subscribe to is Revolution In One Country.

Comrade, it isn't a revolutionary period. Why would the working class be more divided and weaker? Radicalized Scottish workers can link up more effectively with the GUE-NGL and the rest of the Continental worker movement, instead of having to put up with No2EU crap and other Little England appeasement.

[You could say that the No2EU crap was the last Little England appeasement straw that tipped me over to support the "Berlin" option (while of course pushing for greater integration).]

No2EU was not little England appeasement. The EU is a capitalist organisation set up to carry out neoliberal reforms. Ie attacks on the working class.

"No2EU - Yes to Democracy campaigns against the European Union’s austerity drive and in defence of decent public services and democracy here and across the European Union"

"We say...

Really? I thought even CWI comrades had disassociated themselves with the UKIP-lite project by now. It was a failed coalition which included members with dangerous lines on the likes of immigration and did actually play into such 'little England' stereotypes, of which little England voted for the real deal, UKIP, instead. You can search the arguments that were made about NO2EU on this very site from the election.

Wow, my Little England description barely scratches the surface! Thanks for going for the proverbial jugular re. "UKIP-lite" :thumbup1:

Crux

31st January 2012, 06:38

For someone who throws around the word "reformism" loosely at any given opportunity, how 'bout a term that's more high school English: Revolution In One Country?

What you (and Jimmy, though he hasn't criticized my position and has openly and honestly admitted an RIOC stance, so I won't polemicize against him) subscribe to is Revolution In One Country.

RIOC? There you go inventing terms again. But then again isn't that prety much all you do? No, I do not advocate socialism in one country and no I do not believe the revolution will happen at the exact same time everywhere. And I certainly, unlike you, have no illusions in the undemocratic capitalist institution that is the EU. Stop trying to change the subject, DNZ. I think calling it reformism is almost too kind.

Die Neue Zeit

31st January 2012, 15:01

RIOC? There you go inventing terms again. But then again isn't that prety much all you do? No, I do not advocate socialism in one country and no I do not believe the revolution will happen at the exact same time everywhere. And I certainly, unlike you, have no illusions in the undemocratic capitalist institution that is the EU. Stop trying to change the subject, DNZ. I think calling it reformism is almost too kind.

First of all: RIOC is not an invented term, but an obvious jab at Socialism In One Country. Your political agenda is a national one.

You and other CWI members claim to be internationalists, but in the last analysis you refuse to organize the working class on an international (and preferrably transnational) level. So you end up saying nationalist rubbish like "not believing that the revolution will happen at the exact same time everywhere."

This is indeed the case if you refuse to organize! Because then you end up on revolutions happening spontaneously across the globe.

And when the subject of international organizing does get raised, you answer that "calling it reformism is almost too kind". But who here is the reformist? If you genuinely think that "RIOC" is possible and wait for spontaneous responses of the working class in other countries and if you further think you can carry out the demands Daft Punk raised earlier on a national scale then something has got to give: Either you end up with a country that is being outcasted from the capitalist hierarchy and will become completely isolated and bankrupt in no time (which I imagine is not your intention) or you accept the confines of the capitalist hierarchy of states and thus "play by the book", trying to offload the crisis to other states. This is also known as Keynesianism and has nothing to do with revolutionary politics.

So, put up or shut up.

Paul Cockshott

31st January 2012, 20:36

Quote:
This looks to me like a reactionary nationalist position.
You serious?

It is very clearly nationalist and echoes the prejudices of the Right wing nationalist press against the EU. UKIP-lite was a good comparison.

Quote:
Developing British fishing is incidentally a codeword for removing the over-fishing restrictions - which are at least a rational element of in=kind planning to prevent environmental damage.
Preventing over fishing is a good thing.
Yes preventing over fishing is a good thing and the common fisheries policy is designed, however imperectly, to do this. The agitation for saving the British Fishing industry is largely carried out in opposition to the restrictions on fishing that policy imposes.

Crux

31st January 2012, 21:01

First of all: RIOC is not an invented term, but an obvious jab at Socialism In One Country. Your political agenda is a national one.

You and other CWI members claim to be internationalists, but in the last analysis you refuse to organize the working class on an international (and preferrably transnational) level. So you end up saying nationalist rubbish like "not believing that the revolution will happen at the exact same time everywhere."

This is indeed the case if you refuse to organize! Because then you end up on revolutions happening spontaneously across the globe.

And when the subject of international organizing does get raised, you answer that "calling it reformism is almost too kind". But who here is the reformist? If you genuinely think that "RIOC" is possible and wait for spontaneous responses of the working class in other countries and if you further think you can carry out the demands Daft Punk raised earlier on a national scale then something has got to give: Either you end up with a country that is being outcasted from the capitalist hierarchy and will become completely isolated and bankrupt in no time (which I imagine is not your intention) or you accept the confines of the capitalist hierarchy of states and thus "play by the book", trying to offload the crisis to other states. This is also known as Keynesianism and has nothing to do with revolutionary politics.

So, put up or shut up.

hope you're having fun with that strawman you've built. Meanwhile you claim opposition to the EU is "national-socialism"...I am in an international organization. But then again what do I know about organizing. I've only been active for 5 years. Whereas you...well should I put that down as a "never been active in anything at all"?

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

31st January 2012, 21:07

DNZ ~~ please forgive my ignorance, but what does RIOC actually stand for and what is its definition?

DNZ you say that “You and other CWI members claim to be internationalists, but in the last analysis you refuse to organize the working class on an international (and preferrably transnational) level.”

While I do not want to be discourteous to you but with all due honest you do not know what you are talking about when it actually comes to the Committee for a Workers’ International, CWI. I cannot see, or accept, your critique, because by our international activities the CWI has political parties, groups and individuals in over 35 countries through-out the world. Now these individuals are linked to our international organisation by the programme of the CWI itself, which is the socialist transformation of society in an individual country and linking it to the socialist transformation in other countries as they develop.
According to your, and I hope I get the terminology right, ‘Handle’ you are a sympathiser of a number of so-called left political parties, I think former Stalinist communist parties, but no doubt I will be corrected if I am wrong.. Does that mean you are one of these internet rrrrrrevolutionaries that slags-off socialist activists who are active in the real world, but is not active yourself. It is easy to do that of course because internet rrrrrrevolutionaries never come up against the real problems of the capitalist world and how it affects the working class, and their political consciousness, in each national country, let along on a transnational basis, as you would like to call it. I would like to suggest that internet rrrrevolutionaries are the modern armchair socialists.

This thread is called “SWP: Muddle, passivity, conformity” now the SWP consider that the Scots should opt for independence by voting in any referendum, even one with ‘devomax, that is more economic and social powers in a capitalist Scotland, on the ballot form. And the, what I call baby SWP in Scotland, the ISG who are members who left the SWP, not on a political or theoretical principle but because they did not like what some of their leaders were doing on an organisational basis, last year, also supports an “anti-austerity yes vote”, (how banal a theory), for independence now. These two socialist organisations take the two-stage theory to its limit, that is capitalist independence now and fight for socialism sometime in the future after independence.

That is not the position of the CWI in Scotland we believe in this:
“It is essential that a working class alternative is urgently built to the capitalist and cuts consensus among Scotland’s political elite, including the SNP. Any attempt to block the democratic rights of the Scottish people by the ConDem’s should be opposed, if necessary using the full power of the trade union and labour movement as witnessed on November 30th. A multi-option referendum is a genuine democratic right which the Socialist Party Scotland fully supports and cannot be traded as a bargaining chip by either government in Westminster or Holyrood.
“The Socialist Party and our forerunner Militant have a long history of defending the democratic rights of the Scottish people. We supported the setting up of a parliament (Assembly) in the 1979 referendum and again in 1997, despite the lack of substantial powers. Today we fight for a parliament with full powers. A parliament that could nationalise the major sectors of the Scottish economy including oil, the power to increase the minimum wage to end poverty pay, increase benefits to provide a living income for all as well as tackling the obscenity of nuclear weapons by removing Trident from the Clyde.
“However, with the SNP and the rest of the political establishment committed to defending the interests of capitalism we also need to build a new mass party of the working class to fight for a socialist majority in the parliament. prepared to use the powers in the interests of the working class. The Socialist Party Scotland has played a leading role in the setting up of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition which will be standing candidates across Scotland in May.

“A socialist Scotland is the only sustainable answer to the nightmare of cuts and austerity. Central to this task is the need to stand implacably for the maximum unity of the working class across Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland and to oppose any attempts to divide the workers’ movement on national lines. A voluntary and democratic socialist federation of these states as a step towards a socialist Europe to end the nightmare of austerity, cuts and capitalism once and for all.”

This is not reformism but linking todays’ reality to fight for a better society now. Anyway Reforms can only be gained if they are fought for now and they can only be maintained if there is the socialist transformation of society based on the working class gaining economic and state power. Fighting for reforms raises the class and political consciousness of the working class and out of that they will see that the only way to succeed is to fight for Socialism. First on a national scale then on an international scale.

black magick hustla

31st January 2012, 21:47

"all leftist political organizations are rackets" cammatte

TheGeekySocialist

3rd February 2012, 10:30

my main issue with the SWP at the moment is that at my Uni getting them to work with anyone who doesn't pretty much agree with all they say is like trying to get a Thatcherite to say they love Tony Benn.

we need to unite the left now more than ever, the UK is being savaged by the coaltions agenda, we need to work together, SWP, Labour, SP, CPGB, AWL, whoever.

generally we agree on things like opposing privatisation and the cuts, so for fucks sake let's work together on stopping them rather than bickering over differences that most of the working class do not care about.

black magick hustla

3rd February 2012, 11:06

labor lol, how can you work with the party spearheading austerity lmao

Thirsty Crow

3rd February 2012, 11:14

labor lol, how can you work with the party spearheading austerity lmao
Entryism, that's how.

ed miliband

3rd February 2012, 11:32

TheGeekySocialist

3rd February 2012, 11:34

labor lol, how can you work with the party spearheading austerity lmao

the grassroots members rather than Blairite rats.

most of them here seem left wing enough to work with at least, none of them are pro-austerity that I work with anyway.

Искра

3rd February 2012, 11:34

Raya Dunayevskaya once wrote to N. Trotsky that "Trotskyism is Marxism-Leninism of 20th century". We could aslo add social-democracy....

TheGeekySocialist

3rd February 2012, 11:35

lots of thatcherites like tony benn

david cameron even cites him as an influence on his attitude to democracy etc

they don't really though, not his politics, they might like his style or passion or pretend even to share his values, but in terms of his politics none of them actually support them because if they did they wouldn't actually be Thatcherites.

ed miliband

3rd February 2012, 11:44

the grassroots members rather than Blairite rats.

most of them here seem left wing enough to work with at least, none of them are pro-austerity that I work with anyway.

yeah but they're obviously worthless if they are willing to remain in the labour party so fuck them

TheGeekySocialist

3rd February 2012, 13:37

yeah but they're obviously worthless if they are willing to remain in the labour party so fuck them

I disagree, if we can work with them to get more support for Left campaigns and stuff, then why shouldn't we?

Labour nationally are shit, but at grassroots are decent enough, imagine a lot of them will be entryists later on

ed miliband

3rd February 2012, 16:41

I mean you're welcome to it but you're wasting your time mate.

feral bro

3rd February 2012, 16:46

I disagree, if we can work with them to get more support for Left campaigns and stuff, then why shouldn't we?

Labour nationally are shit, but at grassroots are decent enough, imagine a lot of them will be entryists later on
hey, FUCK YOU!

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

3rd February 2012, 20:14

To the Geekysocialist; you say that “we need to unite the left now more than ever, the UK is being savaged by the coaltions agenda, we need to work together, SWP, Labour, SP, CPGB, AWL, whoever. generally we agree on things like opposing privatisation and the cuts, so for fucks sake let's work together on stopping them rather than bickering over differences that most of the working class do not care about.”

I give you an article, published last December, about a meeting to set-up an Electoral Coalition for the Local elections in Scotland in May based on an anti-cuts, pro-socialist programme. And while I agree with your sentiments not all left/socialist groups think in the same way. But we attempt to come to a compromise based on a common programme; it is the adage of march separately and strike together. Please read the commentary and judge for yourself how leftists/socialist/anti-cuts activists should come together.

“Over 70 trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists gathered for a conference in Glasgow on December 10, to launch the Scottish Anti Cuts Coalition. The coalition will stand candidates across Scotland in the May 2012 council elections.

From the chair, PCS national executive member Cheryl Gedling - who along with other leading public sector trade unionists has played a central role in the formation of SACC - introduced the discussion explaining that the conference had taken on further importance after the mass public sector strike on November 30.

Cheryl highlighted the colossal impact of the strike that had cost the economy £500 million and had shaken the ConDem government. Tory Chancellor Osborne’s provocative autumn statement unleashing further austerity on the poorest in society and the continuing loss of thousands of jobs a week in the public sector show the need for an anti-cuts electoral challenge.

Brian Smith, Branch Secretary of Glasgow City Unison and a member of Socialist Party Scotland underlined the anger of workers in response to SNP government ministers crossing picket lines and Labour’s inconsistent attitude towards the strike. Labour leader Ed Miliband refused to back the strikes and while Scottish Labour supported it, their MSPs had crossed picket lines on the previous strike on June 30.

Brian stressed the need to expose and oppose SNP and Labour politicians implementing the ConDem’s cuts in council chambers not just through general anti cuts campaigning but also a political challenge to the cuts agenda. Anti-cuts activists have an opportunity with all of Scotland’s councillors up for election in May under a proportional representation system to raise principled opposition to all cuts to a wide audience.

5 key principles
Brian urged support for a resolution to create a coalition of anti-cuts candidates based around five key points: Opposition to all cuts, Candidates if elected would put forward needs budgets protecting services, jobs and communities and build a mass campaign to demand a return of the money stolen by the Con Dems from public services, Opposition to privatisation, Full support to workers taking industrial action and communities, young people fighting the cuts, Taxation of the rich and Public Ownership allowing investment in jobs and services.

Brian outlined the basis for a voluntary coalition. That all candidates would sign up to the five pledges and can add to them with further political and local demands. Socialist Party Scotland members who are candidates for example will also raise wider socialist demands alongside the 5 key pledges.

The coalition will aim to stand credible candidates in as many areas as is practically possible, bearing in mind the importance of standing candidates with a good record of fighting cuts, local campaigning etc. Where, therefore, other Left candidates are standing who have a principled record of defending the interests of local communities and opposition to cuts, the coalition will not stand against them. Provided they clearly come out against all cuts.

The name “Scottish Anti Cuts Coalition” would be registered. Candidates who are members of already registered political parties can use their party name if they wish. He also noted the calling of a political conference by the United Left (broad left in the Unite trade union) on 14 January and said he hoped this would be step towards trade union’s taking part in building political representation for workers and that the coalition set up at this conference would attend and participate.

Rab Patterson, chair of Midlothian Trades Council and a member of Midlothian Against the Cuts gave a flavour of the frustration of working class communities at Labour councils carrying out cuts. In his community, Labour councillors had carried out a large scale cuts program and failed to take up the privatisation scandal at a local Southern Cross hospital, instead they had spent millions on legal fees trying to stop the council’s workforce enforcing their rights under equal pay legislation.

Dundee Unison Chairperson and Socialist Party Scotland member Jim McFarlane gave a picture of the scale of the N30 strike pointing to the magnificent 10,000 strong demonstration in Dundee, a city of 140,000. Jim said the mood of workers reflected a political turning point which anti cuts activists had to respond too. He recounted that the loudest cheers at the Dundee rally, were for speakers who denounced the politicians for not supporting the strike but also for those who pointed to the cuts policies of the SNP and Labour in power. Jim argued that the SNP and Labour had had every chance and opportunity to defend communities against cuts but have shown which side they are on. These political representatives who have betrayed workers should stand aside or be forced out by a principled anti cuts challenge.

These points were echoed by young people at the meeting. Youth Fight for Jobs activists, Ryan Stuart and Wayne Scott explained the disenfranchisement of young people who are consigned to unemployment or low paid work and are being hammered by education cuts.

Unison activists and Socialist Party Scotland members Diane Harvey and Ian Leech highlighted the role of Glasgow’s Labour council in attacking workers conditions and attacking community services. Ian raised the need for the anti-cuts movement to have political leadership that challenged Labour’s argument for cuts at a slower pace.

Diane pointed to the government’s strategy of trying to divide public and private sector workers and argued that the disputes of the electricians and the Unilever workers were undermining this. She explained that workers who took part in N30 were asking who to vote for.

Gordon Morgan gave support for the motion on behalf of Solidarity Scotland’s Socialist Movement and said he hoped an anti-cuts electoral challenge would be a catalyst for strengthing and building community anti cuts campaigns.

Labour and SNP
The Socialist Workers Party supported the motion but raised differences about the approach of the coalition towards Labour and the SNP. In several contributions they raised some doubts about the impact of an anti-cuts electoral challenge and how widely it should be standing candidates.

SWP members for example argued that Labour councillors, activists and MSP’s had played a positive role in the campaign against the Edinburgh SNP/Liberal coalition’s privatisation program and that raising the question of standing against them may be divisive.

They urged unity with Labour representatives against the “common class enemy, the ConDem’s”. This was answered in the debate by Socialist Party Scotland members who explained that Labour, if they win control of Edinburgh council, will implement a cuts program.

The International Socialist Group, a recent split from the SWP, expressed a change of attitude towards the idea of the coalition from their position at the 22 October meeting. In October, the ISG had opposed the initiative, saying it did not go far enough and called for the immediate creation of a new united left. At the conference the ISG made a similar argument but supported the resolution to set up a broad coalition.

Kevin McVey, Scottish Socialist Party National Secretary reported on discussion in the SSP about the coalition and declared that the SSP members present would abstain on the vote for the resolution. The SSP had concerns that no new forces were involved in the setting up of the coalition and that its constituent parts did not represent anything significant. He also made it clear that the SSP had begun selecting candidates for the elections.

This was replied to by Alan Brown, a leading PCS member speaking in a personal capacity, who highlighted the social and political weight of the trade unionists attending the conference and the wider support for the idea of standing anti cuts candidates amongst trade union members and the wider working class.

Brian Smith concluded the discussion by raising the need to organise meetings in local areas in the New Year to bring together activists, discuss candidates and seats and raise the profile of the coalition. He reported that he had been involved in discussions with community campaigners and trade unionists and was encouraging them to stand.

Socialist Party Scotland members played a key role in driving forward the initiative for a coalition and will be standing candidates in the elections in May. The launch of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition marks an important step forward. It will now be taken out among trade unionists, communities and the wider working class to build the challenge in May 2012 for a principled anti-cuts alternative.”

daft punk

3rd February 2012, 21:17

Yet the CWI in Scotland are refusing to work with Coalition of Resistance because there are Labour party members in it. To my mind it is the Labour leadership that has started implementing cuts in areas, not the rank and file grassroots. Is there any real, logical reason why the CWI is refusing to work with CoR over the cuts, but instead feels the need to set up it's own anti-cuts organisation, SACA, which seems to only agitate for electoral candidacy and nothing else? I dunno, you would have to ask them. I googled it though and the first item that came up was the CoR writing about a SACA organised demo, complete with photos and quotes.

They went on the 15,000 strong demo in October last year and afterwards SACA held a joint meeting with with PCS, with PCS president Janice Godrich, Brian Smith of SACA speaking. In December 300,000 went on strike and 35,000 marched in Glasgow. Socialist Party Scotland members visited 60 picket lines. Socialist Party Scotland member Alan Manley a nurse and assistant branch secretary of Tayside Unison spoke at the10,000 strong rally in Dundee.

"The CWI have reached out to the SWP loads of times. "

Apart from in Scotland, where else? And was this merely because of the SWP/CWI 'alliance' that was formed through being the critical factor in the SSP, in other words being on the same wavelengths in the criticism of the project? I believe (this may be the other way round) that the SWP approached the CWI with regards to standing in Irish elections, and the CWI refused any alliance or agreement where left candidates wouldn't stand against each other.

It's alsop probably not worth using Solidarity as a shining example of unity as the proejct to my mind has all but collapsed.
I'm a bit out of touch tbh. The CWI worked with the SWP in the Socialist Alliance, which collapsed after the SWP insisted on dominating it. Didnt your lot have a hand in that fiasco? The ISG voted for the SWP constitution in 2001.
There have been open letters. I think the SWP work or worked in TUSC, and No2EU thought I mentioned that.

Really? I thought even CWI comrades had disassociated themselves with the UKIP-lite project by now. It was a failed coalition which included members with dangerous lines on the likes of immigration and did actually play into such 'little England' stereotypes, of which little England voted for the real deal, UKIP, instead. You can search the arguments that were made about NO2EU on this very site from the election.

I dont think so. You seem to have a vivid imagination. There was nothing little England about No2EU. The CWI is an international revolutionary organisation and has nothing to do with little England. No2EU was an alliance for a specific election. It was replaced by TUSC.

No2EU was at a time when countries were having referendums on Europe and the workers on the left were opposing it. The EU is a capitalist institution set up to carry out privatisation and so on. All Marxist parties have always opposed the EU.

Of course the CWI have the Campaign for a New Workers Party which aims to build a broad left party. The SWP could join that if they wanted.

daft punk

3rd February 2012, 21:45

oh, just realised I double posted, sorry

"Reject the Lisbon Treaty
No to EU directives that privatise our public services
Defend and develop manufacturing, agriculture and fishing industries in Britain
Repeal anti-trade union ECJ rulings and EU rules promoting social dumping
No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
No to EU militarisation
Repatriate democratic powers to EU member states
Replace unequal EU trade deals with fair trade that benefits developing nations
Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies
Keep Britain out of the eurozone"

This looks to me like a reactionary nationalist position.
Jesus Christ. Do you know what the Lisbon Treaty is? It's about driving down wages across Europe, a race to the bottom. Taking away their rights and so on. Where does "No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
No to EU militarisation" sound like reactionary nationalism? Where does "fair trade that benefits developing nations" sound reactionary?

I think some of the phrases might sound reactionary if you don't understand them. Do you know what 'social dumping' means?

The point is that where workers have won certain wages and conditions over the years, we dont wanna see those gains lost. They should be an example, not something to scrap, hand in had with the fat cats.

Privatisation did not require any intervention from the EU when Thatcher started it, and is as likely to occur outside as inside. Even more likely outside if you pander to the prejudices of the Tory right.

Sorry but you sound a bit clueless on this. The CWI is a revolutionary party and has fuck all to do with pandering to Tories. In fact they largely brought Thatcher down by organising the Poll tax protests.

In 2004 the CWI wrote:

"
European Union‘s neo-liberal "Lisbon agenda"

In March 2000, the European Union summit in Lisbon adopted the US economy as their model. It was before the so-called ‘new economy‘ was exposed as a myth and before the stock market bubble burst. The assembled mainly social democratic prime ministers and presidents agreed that the US economy was superior on everything - growth, job creation, attracting investment etc.
The result was that the ‘Lisbon Agenda‘ aimed for massive privatisation and deregulation. A detailed timetable was set up for every field, from deregulation of telecommunications to employment policy. The overall target was to make the EU into “the most competitive region in the world“ by 2010.
For four years, the ‘Lisbon Agenda‘ has been used as a whip to introduce worsening conditions for pensioners and workers in the member countries. However, the process has been slowed down by massive protests on the part of workers and people in general. The enthusiasm among politicians has further cooled with the poor results of the process itself. Instead of boosting growth, Lisbon‘s neo-liberal policies have aggravated an already poor performance. EU-wide, GDP growth for 2003 was just 0.8 per cent."

http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/1139

go read some stuff on that website

This fails to address the real problem which is occuring on an EU wide basis as the economic policies associated with the current monetary union rules strangle the whole EU economy for the benefit of the rentier class. Instead of putting out that nationalist nonsense you should be calling for an EU wide cancellation of debts.

Developing British fishing is incidentally a codeword for removing the over-fishing restrictions - which are at least a rational element of in=kind planning to prevent environmental damage.
You have to bear in mind this was a coalition of different parties. But it was a British party campaigning in Britain, so it is naturally gonna have to mention Britain at some point. There is nothing wrong with developing manufacturing and agriculture in Britain. Do you want the whole economy to be finance and marketing, with all our food imported from Kenya and so on?

As far as I know they do call for all debts to be cancelled.

"Scrap EU rules designed to stop member states from implementing independent economic policies "

Ok yes, join up with the boss of Ryanair there. This is code for introducing national tax cuts on business taxes as Salmond proposes. Nothing could make the overall situation worse.

What are you, the crack code breaker? You rewrite everything anyone says to suit your conspiracy theories?

The EU is a way for the capitalists to override democracy and impose rules that suit them on countries where workers have won various rights.

Have a look at these articles going back 14 years on the EU (since they went on t'internet

http://www.socialistworld.net/view/1

In Jan this year the CWI met with representatives from 33 countries. They can hardly be accused of nationalism.

Paul Cockshott

5th February 2012, 10:50

oh, just realised I double posted, sorry

Jesus Christ. Do you know what the Lisbon Treaty is? It's about driving down wages across Europe, a race to the bottom. Taking away their rights and so on. Where does "No to racism and fascism, Yes to international solidarity of working people
No to EU militarisation" sound like reactionary nationalism? Where does "fair trade that benefits developing nations" sound reactionary?

The Lisbon treaty is as you say a movement towards a neoliberal agenda and should be opposed, but the problem is that the response you are giving to that is a nationalist one : opposing the powers of the EU with the powers of the existing capitalist nation states. The European Union is currently a solidly capitalist pro-federation, but so are all the nation states in Europe. It however a proto-federation that is running into a serious structural crisis. The Euro has proven to be very hard to maintain within a federation in which there is no central government able to redistribute fiscal resources between different parts of the continent. The tensions between debtor and creditor states and more generally between the rentier classes and the rest of the population have grown to crisis point. Accross the whole South of Europe the level of unemployment among young people has grown to catastrophic levels. This has led to mass protests on the streets and squares of Greece, Spain and Italy.

Accross the whole continent the trades union movements are protesting against the austerity measures being imposed at the dictate of Merkle.

The particular situation in Europe, half way between a system of nation states and a proper continental federation like the USA gives to this crisis a peculiar immobility. The people in the individual nation states can elect governments but these whilst governments have control over taxation they do not have control over the economy as a whole since the existence of the Union prevents the imposition of tariffs, capital flow controls or exchange controls. The nations that are within the Euro, moreover, have no control over domestic interest rates nor any ability to manipulate exchange rates to bring their current accounts into balance that way. So elected governments are effectively powerless to have a positive influence on their economies and are reduced to following the dictates of the European Central Bank. There is a growing tension between democracy and the financial demands of the creditor classes. The current moment sees the imposition on Italy and Greece of what are banker's governments which have not be elected by the people of these countries.

At the same time the central organs of the EU are paralysed to deal with the crisis as well for two reasons:

1. The division of power between the Brussels state structure of Parliament and Commission on the one hand and the essentially nationally based Council of Ministers.

2. The absence of independent tax raising and spending powers of the central Parliament and Commission.

In the absence of such central tax raising powers, the current treaty on fiscal union amounts only to a policy of constraint on public expenditure in the individual nation states, which if applied consistently would lead to a continual downward ratchet effect on the continental economy.

The absence of central tax raising powers means that the EU parliament can not yet act as a political focus for action by left parties across the continent. This gives rise to what are essentially national separatist policies by some of the more powerfull left parties - like KKE. Such separatist policies, which would involve breaking from the Euro, whilst they may give temporary respite from deflationary pressure, would not answer the problem of how to deal with the overall dominance at a continental level of the rentier interest
The immobility brought about by this must lead either to an aggravation of localism, which, if European history is any guide, is more likely to be exploited by the ultra right than the left, or to a reassertion of centralism. The question is how such a centralism can be developed in a progressive and democratic rather than a reactionary way. At present it is being developed in a conservative and reactionary way in the new fiscal union treaty. We believe that the interests of the people of Europe would be best served by a revolutionary centralism analogous to that brought about in China by the policy of New Democracy. The victory of New Democracy in China led to a period of rapid social advance and economic development that has continued down to the present. The programme we outline in this document (http://reality.gn.apc.org/econ/Berlinpaper.pdf)should be understood as an attempt to formulate a policy of New Democracy in Europe taking into account the very different level of economic and political development of Europe today and China in 65 years ago. To pursue the analogy, the centralism being imposed today by Merkle and Sarkozy is like a Kuaomintang centralism. The question is how to create and develop in Europe a centralism of the type fostered by the CPC in the 40s.

I think some of the phrases might sound reactionary if you don't understand them. Do you know what 'social dumping' means?

The point is that where workers have won certain wages and conditions over the years, we dont wanna see those gains lost. They should be an example, not something to scrap, hand in had with the fat cats.
Yes but social dumping is much more likely to occur if nation states have
greater autonomy in setting tax and working conditions. A key example is the
low rate of company taxation in Ireland, which Salmond wants to emulate
in Scotland. This aims to tempt investment into Ireland or Scotland by taxing less than it would have to face in Germany or Sweden.

Sorry but you sound a bit clueless on this. The CWI is a revolutionary party and has fuck all to do with pandering to Tories. In fact they largely brought Thatcher down by organising the Poll tax protests.
I was an organiser myself throughout the Anti Poll Tax campaign and am currently a member of Solidarity so I know about this past role, and I am not criticising this. My point is that it is a chauvinist illusion to blame privatisations on the EU, in fact the British State has been the prime propagandist for privatisations since the 1980s.

You have to bear in mind this was a coalition of different parties. But it was a British party campaigning in Britain, so it is naturally gonna have to mention Britain at some point. There is nothing wrong with developing manufacturing and agriculture in Britain. Do you want the whole economy to be finance and marketing, with all our food imported from Kenya and so on?
In Jan this year the CWI met with representatives from 33 countries. They can hardly be accused of nationalism
The problem is just there in what you say. If you start out from the perspective that you are a British Party, then you frame policy questions within a national context rather than an international one. I think that the CWI, if it really has significant support in other EU countries, is really missing an opportunity in not forming a single European Socialist Party that stands in all elections throughout Europe as the European Socialist Party. For goodness sake, your tendancy is supposed to descend in some way from the Trotskyist tradition. Trotsky was calling for a United States of Europe back during the first world war, under much worse circumstances, and here are you his political great grandchildren trying to throw the breaks on any movement towards a USE and joining nationalists like UKIP in defending the powers of nation states versus the Union.

As far as I know they do call for all debts to be cancelled.
Can you dig up a reference to this in their literature?

Sam_b

5th February 2012, 19:47

The ISG voted for the SWP constitution in 2001.

The ISG was not formed in 2001, most of our members were not in the SWP at the time. This is pretty much clutching at straws. It's akin to me saying the CWI supported the social contract.

The CWI worked with the SWP in the Socialist Alliance, which collapsed after the SWP insisted on dominating it

Rather liberal one-line interpretation, wouldn't you agree?

There was nothing little England about No2EU. The CWI is an international revolutionary organisation and has nothing to do with little England. No2EU was an alliance for a specific election. It was replaced by TUSC.

So what? This didn't stop NO2EU having terrible lines on immigration, for instance.

The EU is a capitalist institution set up to carry out privatisation and so on. All Marxist parties have always opposed the EU.

Cheers cos I obviously didn't know that.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

5th February 2012, 22:59

From Sam on 30th January ~~~ “I'm really not prepared to answer to your usual rhetoric until you can this bullshit, Jimmy. You are a one-trick pony in your almost-AWL like levels of obsession towards the SWP. I'm assuming it comes from the deperation of being on the very fringes of the left, the Scottish left in particular, and the marginalisation that has come with it.”

I read your comments to Daft Punk posted at 19:47 on 5th February. I find that they are your usual one-lined ISG rhetoric and have an AWL like obsessive level against contributors from the CWI.

Nevertheless, to you Daft Punk, the International Socialist Group Scotland was not even a twinkle in their father’s, and mother’s, consciousness when the SWP joined the SSP in 2001. (I need to add Daft Punk that the ISG Scotland was formed out of a split from the SWP in Scotland in April 2011, following the Rees/German split a year earlier, not due to a political and/or theoretical argument on their perspectives, but due to a strategy/organisational and personal issues.) The same year, January 2001, the majority of the membership of the CWI, which included people like McCombes, Curran, Sheridan, et al, in Scotland left the CWI, . I would like to suggest that you go to the documentation that I posted from Marxist.Net earlier in this thread to understand the political collapse of McCombes, etal, perception of the events in the late 1990s and through this century. However, I would like to suggest, I could be entirely wrong of course, that the political reason the SWP decided to join the SSP in 2001 was because there was a political and theoretical split from within the CWI, which they thought they could exploit within the SSP and control it to their own ends, as you indicated how the SWP did when they joined the Socialist Alliance; and as the CWI members in Scotland saw when Solidarity was formed.

I am not going to go into the events itself because you can read them in the documents and other articles, but when the decision to set up the Solidarity in 2006, out of the events around the famous court case, was made, the SWP opposed the introduction of socialism in the constitution and programme, because they wanted the broadest style of movement as possible, in other words another Respect style organisation but with a Scottish flavour. Now, I believe Sam b who is an ISG Scotland member now, was a SWP member then and supported that thesis of not wanting Solidarity as a socialist style organisation. At the same time I would suggest that this theoretical and political resonance still continues in the ISG Scotland, which is having not a working class political organisation that fights for social change, but a neutral middle class style political organisation that does not go anywhere but into an amorphous mass.

In fact, Tommy Sheridan and the bulk of Solidarity, in the latter part of the noughts, have politically and organisationally been involved in forming a wider new workers’ party by being in involved in the NO2EU campaign and also in TUSC. Something I believe that has been of chagrin to SWP members in Scotland. Yes, there are many issues when socialists become involved in broad movements of workers, such as NO2EU, that may not be in tune with pure socialism, but that is all in the nature of working in a capitalist society. It is not an academic/student orientated discussion group, it is working with real working class people who have prejudices of varying kinds, which may be homophobic, sexist, racist, etc. The object is to discuss everything through and come to some form of compromise that advances the ideas of working class collective action and the formation of workers’ organisations as an alternative pole to the mainstream capitalist parties; and I include the Labour Party, its leadership and the majority of its members in that category. The through the class struggle on the one hand and patiently explaining the political, theoretical and organisation consequences of various actions they can be won to Socialism.

But hey ho who am I, but a sectarian dinosaur, with over 3 decades of CWI experience, who knows nothing and is on the marginalised fringes of the Scottish Left and is so desperate that I give rhetorical bullshit as a means as a cover for analysis. But I do know the SWP and their baby off-shots.

Sam_b

6th February 2012, 00:02

You know so much about 'baby off-shoots' that you seem to have precious little idea about how the split came about?

Also, it's nice to see the recurrence of your usual tactic of "I have been in the CWI/in activism for 30/40/since 1885 years, and thus my opinion is somehow more valid". If the rest of the left is 'Middle Class' no wonder the CWI struggles for influence in Scotland.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 01:05

“You know so much about 'baby off-shoots' that you seem to have precious little idea about how the split came about?
Also, it's nice to see the recurrence of your usual tactic of "I have been in the CWI/in activism for 30/40/since 1885 years, and thus my opinion is somehow more valid". If the rest of the left is 'Middle Class' no wonder the CWI struggles for influence in Scotland.”

Ah Sam ~~~ Now one thing you should not do is put things in quotation marks because it means they are attributed to someone else’s words. I never said anything that has been attributed within the quotation remarks and you are coming close to debating in the Stalinist style of falsification and distortion on theoretical and political matters. So you are deliberately misrepresenting my words; or is it the fact you do not have the capacity to counter them because they are politically and theoretically true. If fact you have never politically given a critique to any of the observations I have made about the ISG Scotland and/or the SWP.

You said Sam that “If the rest of the left is 'Middle Class' no wonder the CWI struggles for influence in Scotland.” Taking aside that this thread is not about the CWI but about the SWP, if you look at what I said, which was “Now, I believe Sam b who is an ISG Scotland member now, was a SWP member then and supported that thesis of not wanting Solidarity as a socialist style organisation. At the same time I would suggest that this theoretical and political resonance still continues in the ISG Scotland, which is having not a working class political organisation that fights for social change, but a neutral middle class style political organisation that does not go anywhere but into an amorphous mass.” Now Sam I did not mention the rest of the Left but the theoretical disposition of the ISG, which is no different to the SWP’s theoretical and position at the time of the setting-up of Solidarity. Now by smoke and mirrors you are trying to divert attention to the ISG’s theoretical and political inadequacies. Something again that you tried to do earlier in this thread.

Sam, last year when I tried to raise publically on this site why the ISG Scotland was formed out of the SWP you would rather send me a private message than discuss it on a public forum. And I consider your explanation in this private message to say the least was rather vague. So please do not tell me that “you seem to have precious little idea about how the split came about?”, when you are not prepared to discuss it.

Nevertheless, I have read the ISG website and its material and talked to socialists on the ground, like SWP members, and I have formed an assessment out of that. Having circa 35 years in active trade unionism and socialist politics, 32 of them in the CWI, so I know the tactics, theory and strategy of the SWP down in England as well as up here in Scotland, along with academic qualifications up to Master’s level, in Social Science, does allow me a certain degree of understanding. Without sounding patronising you remind me of my daughters when they were 11/12/13/14 when they kept telling me I know nothing of life and/or what it was like to be young. However, Sam you must be at least 10 years older than that and it creates a certain arrogance that really hides your, and your organisation’s, theoretical impotency.

But let me make it quite clear Sam: my interpretation is no more valid, or less valid, because of my years in the socialist movement, both in activity and/or theoretical understanding, than anyone else’s. I would like to suggest that you defend your organisations theoretical and political position in an open form, such as this, to that it can add clarity to the theoretical debate on building the workers’ movement and socialism in Scotland and Britain and throughout the world.

daft punk

6th February 2012, 13:09

The victory of New Democracy in China led to a period of rapid social advance and economic development that has continued down to the present.
This is ludicrous.

My point is that it is a chauvinist illusion to blame privatisations on the EU, in fact the British State has been the prime propagandist for privatisations since the 1980s.

I'm talking about Europe. Much of the privatisation was pushed through by the EU, in fact they are getting ready to grab Greece's assets.

I think that the CWI, if it really has significant support in other EU countries, is really missing an opportunity in not forming a single European Socialist Party that stands in all elections throughout Europe as the European Socialist Party. For goodness sake, your tendancy is supposed to descend in some way from the Trotskyist tradition. Trotsky was calling for a United States of Europe back during the first world war, under much worse circumstances, and here are you his political great grandchildren trying to throw the breaks on any movement towards a USE and joining nationalists like UKIP in defending the powers of nation states versus the Union.
Not sure why they dont form a single party, there must be reasons. Nationalism isnt one.

Can you dig up a reference to this in their literature?[/QUOTE]

"
A socialist alternative needs to be put forward in every country of Europe - beginning with demands like: cancel the debt and nationalise the banks under democratic, popular control, and going on to explain the possibility of building a democratic socialist society capable of meeting the needs of all.
Without this there is the danger that right-wing, populist nationalists will seek to take advantage of the crisis by blaming foreign ’enemies’ and migrants. It is high time for the workers’ movement in Europe to plan concerted action to rally opposition and go onto the offensive against capitalism."

http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/5565

"Similarly, the ‘dictatorship of the market’, which is holding the whole of Europe to ransom, should be met with the cancellation of the debt to the bond parasites. This in turn could only succeed if nationalisation was carried through not just in one country but on a continental and world basis."

http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5423

"n the late eighties, the regimes of the region were toppled like dominos by mass movements opposing the horrific excesses of the ruling Stalinist bureaucratic elite. If these movements had been armed with a programme for the political revolution against the authoritarian one-party states, the conditions could have been created for establishing a genuine democratic socialist federation of Europe."

http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/4739

The ISG was not formed in 2001, most of our members were not in the SWP at the time. This is pretty much clutching at straws. It's akin to me saying the CWI supported the social contract.

socialistworld.net

Britain

England and Wales Socialist Alliance

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/publish/Facebook.gif (http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.socialistworld.net%2 Fdoc%2F164&t=England+and+Wales+Socialist+Alliance) http://www.socialistworld.net/img/publish/Twitter.gif (http://twitter.com/home?status=http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/164&title=England+and+Wales+Socialist+Alliance)07/12/2001

On Saturday December 1, 2001 the Socialist Alliance (SA) held a national conference to agree a new constitution. The SA was founded by ourselves and others in the mid 90s with the aim of bringing together different socialist organisations and individuals on the basis of the maximum possible principled unity, whilst at the same time preserving the rights of all those who participated. Therefore, the SA adopted a federal, inclusive approach. However, in the last two years, since the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) joined the SA, it has become increasingly centralised and dominated by the SWP. The national constitutional conference marked the completion of this process. The constitution proposed by the SWP was passed with 52% of the vote. This constitution is based on one member one vote (OMOV). Given the SWP’s numerical dominance within the small forces of the SA, OMOV means that they now take all crucial decisions in the SA, as last Saturday’s conference graphically proved.
Socialist Party Executive Committee statement

"...the ISG, agreed that it might ’be a bit too rigid’. Unfortunately, this had not prevented the ISG campaigning for the SWP constitution to be passed unamended."

http://www.socialistworld.net/mob/doc/164

Rather liberal one-line interpretation, wouldn't you agree?
Read the above article, read the articles at Socialist World.

So what? This didn't stop NO2EU having terrible lines on immigration, for instance.
There is one mention of immigration on the No2EU website. Just the one. It says

"Across Europe, it is clear that we are witnessing large movement of capital eastwards as labour heads west. And this is happening in accordance to the principles of the single European market, which allow the ‘free movement of goods, capital, services and labour’, regardless of the social consequences.

Single market rules, therefore, truncate all forms of democracy, including rights to fair wages, working conditions, welfare and social protection and collective bargaining. These EU policies can only mean a continuation of mass migration and, ultimately, feed the poison of racism and fascism, the last refuge of the corporate beast in crisis.

To reverse this increasingly perverse situation, all nation states must have democratic control over their own immigration policy and have the right to apply national legislation in defence of migrant and indigenous workers."

"This neo-liberal drive will increase ‘social dumping’, displacing workers with cheap foreign labour and feeding racism and the far-right."

Oh, so right wing, wanting to defend migrant workers. The point is to avoid a race to the bottom.

Nevertheless, to you Daft Punk, the International Socialist Group Scotland was not even a twinkle in their father’s, and mother’s, consciousness when the SWP joined the SSP in 2001.

see above article from the CWI in December 2001.

To be honest I don't know much about Scotland, it was just something I read.

Sam_b

6th February 2012, 13:23

"...the ISG, agreed that it might ’be a bit too rigid’. Unfortunately, this had not prevented the ISG campaigning for the SWP constitution to be passed unamended."

If you're going to play this game, you should probably learn the difference between the ISG, a defunct group that was the British affiliate to the fourth International; and ISG Scotland, a group formed out of members of Glasgow SWP in April 2011.

-

Also, this is quite good (http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/no2eu-and-fight-workers-party)at showing the problems with NO2EU, dispite having some shoogly conclusions.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 16:40

To Daft Punk (CWI) ~~~ The ISG you quote from 2001 and its involvement in the Socialist Alliance is not the ISG Scotland of today. The ISG Scotland is a breakaway from the SWP in April last year that has connections with the Rees/German breakaway, but on later issues, which evolved into the Counterfire website and the setting up of the Coalition of Resistance which was to rival the SWP’s Right to Work organisation. The Left in Britain at times can be like a Monty Python sketch. But that takes nothing away from your critique against the SWP and on the question of Europe.
Ps, if you want to know more about Scotland go on to Marxist.net and analysis the documentation and go back over this thread where I have put other links up as well. Good luck comrade.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 16:54

Sam b says “If the rest of the left is 'Middle Class' no wonder the CWI struggles for influence in Scotland.”

This throw-away one liner commentary betrays a lack of comprehension of the objective and subjective processes during the 1990s and into the 2000s, and of today, on the one hand; and a facetious posture to the building of a working class organisation that is for the socialist reconstruction of society on the other. I believe that is something you have learnt from your experience as a former SWP member and has been carried into the new organisation you are a member of; the ISG Scotland. It is certainly the experiences I have learnt from SWP members over the past few decades I have been involved in socialist politics, but, who am I………….

Sorry to come back to my length of time within the socialist movement Sam, but one of the many complaints/criticisms against Militant/Socialist Party/CWI is that we politically go on and on and on, we never stop explaining the objective reasons for certain events/circumstances that happen and there consequences to the subjective bearing of matters.

Now the circumstances, politically, socially and theoretically, during the 90s and into the new century was very complicated for the CWI and other socialist/revolutionary organisations. The collapse of the Stalinist States of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, from 1989 to 1991, had a devastating affect and effect on the consciousness of the working class in Scotland, Britain as a whole, and through-out the world. The past 2 decades has been of a more generalised worldwide ideological reaction which has affected the workers’ movement in particularly every country in one form or another in the world. The ideas of socialism and their protagonists, never mind Marxism and Trotskyism, and their supporters, have had to struggle just to maintain their existence against the background of a pro-capitalist, pro-market, pro-globalisation ideological bombardment. This has had the effect of creating ideological confusion which has left its mark on even those who claim, and still claim they are socialists, and Marxists and Trotskyists. This was no more so in Scotland.

To be honest I am not going to give a long history of the CWI in Scotland, I have linked the CWI educational and archive site, Marxist.net, previously on this thread on the Scottish Debate in the CWI, and posted other articles as well so I suggest you Sam, and other readers, study them to understand the objective and subjective events within the CWI in Scotland. I would recommend the Debate be read to fully understand the circumstances of the ideological degeneration of the majority of CWI member in Scotland from Marxism and Trotskyism. But suffice to say the CWI leadership from 1998 through to January 2001 disagreed with the political, theoretical and organisational proposals that the majority of members of the CWI who were in the leadership of the Scottish Socialist Party, SSP. Which was the liquidation of the Marxist/Trotskyist current in Scottish left politics and its inevitable evolution to reformist left nationalist politics. The majority of the Scottish section left the CWI on their own accord in January 2001 after a democratic discussion where the leadership of the CWI asked them to stay within the organisation to discuss out the politically debate and explore their interpretation; but to no avail. And very shortly afterward the SWP joined the SSP.

I was not in Scotland in that period but did I read and discussed the documents within the Socialist Party down in England. But after January 2001 the CWI was left with a very small handful of comrades who attempted to lessen the political backsliding of the leadership of the SSP; unfortunately it was not successful as the SSP leadership took more of a reformist left nationalist position. To be honest I am proud to call this small CWI group my comrades because they have kept a strand of Marxism/Trotskyism going in Scotland, where no other ‘socialist’ group has, and that includes the SWP and its break-away, the International Socialist Group Scotland.

I am personally not one for bragging and puffing my organisation up to the world, because one can always fall flat on one’s face. The CWI in Scotland over the past decade have kept the concept of Marxism afloat under the most difficult objective situation and have modestly increased its size. The consciousness of working class in Scotland, and Britain, has turned over the ideological dark winter since the collapse of Stalinism. But the political consciousness of the working class is still not a socialist consciousness, despite of all that has taken place over the past year through-out the world and in Britain. The events since 2008 and especially last year has shaken the working class out of their torpor, but it is the case that most of these workers know what they do not want, but are not yet clear of the alternative, that being socialism.

However, events, and big events at that, will change this and prepare the ground for further revolutionary or near-revolutionary explosions, leading to a molecular change in the consciousness of the working class. And in Scotland the Independence Debate/Referendum along with the class struggle on both sides of the border will facilitate the growth of the CWI in both membership and influence which will be orientated, as is now, to working class youth and the trade unions.

We are at the beginnings of that turn and because of my dinosaur years I do take a longer view in building the forces of the CWI. The political formation of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Coalition, SACC, to stand in the May Council Elections in Scotland is just one step along that process. Also, just a side issue on this, Sam b from the ISG Scotland in an earlier comment on this thread complains that the CWI in Scotland did not get involved with CoR because it had Labour Party members in it. But at open meetings and organising meetings of SACC the ISG Scotland were fighting for it to become a new Left Party to stand in the Council, and subsequent, Elections. Now is that not a theoretical confusional paradox if one we have ever heard.
New political formations of the working class, including mass parties, will arise in this period and these will give us opportunities. The change of consciousness will allow us to win the best to the banner of Marxism, to the CWI in Scotland, that is the Socialist Party.

Sam_b

6th February 2012, 17:21

Paul Cockshott

6th February 2012, 19:53

I'm talking about Europe. Much of the privatisation was pushed through by the EU, in fact they are getting ready to grab Greece's assets.
Privatisation is being imposed today on Greece by a Troika that includes the
IMF, ECB and EC but accross the current EU the biggest wave of privatisations occured much earlier - in the UK in the 80s and 90s followed by a much bigger wave accross what is now the eastern half of the EU in the 90s. These were not driven by the EU itself.

Not sure why they dont form a single party, there must be reasons. Nationalism isnt one.
I get the same sort of response from KPD and Linke comrades, they say that people are still attached to the nation states. Maybe to some extent, but it is the job of socialists to try and move politics forward, and remember the extent to which the EU is creating an international working population. Just look at the number of workers from the rest of the EU there now are in Scotland.

Can you dig up a reference to this in their literature?

"
A socialist alternative needs to be put forward in every country of Europe - beginning with demands like: cancel the debt and nationalise the banks under democratic, popular control, and going on to explain the possibility of building a democratic socialist society capable of meeting the needs of all.

Which debt?
Just the national debt or all debts. Since the document uses the singular it presumably means the national debt. It is a big mistake to limit it to the national debt. That leaves the great bulk of people oppressed by credit card and mortgage debt.

The Idler

6th February 2012, 20:43

How is making political and theoretical justification for the split considered "dirty laundry"? All the letter speaks of is "factionalism", you may not be a big hitter but as one of 39 founding members of the new ISG throwing around dubious terms like "dinosaur" you should expect some sort of a response.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 21:10

Sam then why are you perpetuating the ‘polemic’ with your one-liner invectives to pursue your one-up-manship if you find it so amusing!

No Sam I do not believe you are some big hitter on the Left in Scotland. I would also say that I am not a big, or small, hitter on the Left in Scotland as well. But the ideas you are portraying are erroneous and false and you are advocating them on this medium and I believe they need to be countered. Something I would do if you were at a public meeting! It has got nothing to do with ego or being a CWI-hack as you put it; it has to do with my experience in the socialist movement and working class movement. Something you do wish to deny, that I have something to add to the on-going debate in socialist philosophies in Scotland. How infantile is that? For the record I want you to debate your ideas on a variety of subjects such as Scottish independence, a new workers’ party, the building of the socialist movement, etc.

On the question of Daft Punk all I did was put meat to your bone in explaining where ISG Scotland came from. Only telling half a story, as you do/did, leads to confusion, both political and theoretical, to the audience. However, that is/was always my experience with the SWP, they only tell part of the story which leads to misinformation, falsification and lies by your former organisation. And continued by yourself in this thread at the very start when you portrayed the CWI in Scotland as the sectarians for not being involved in CoR and setting up another organisation in counter to it. When in reality it was the other way round. CoR and its founder in Scotland, the ISG, was set up after the foundation of the Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance.

Again my experience shows that when someone politically wishes to hide their political and theoretically identity/ideas they laugh at/criticise their opponent’s way of delivery. In the past, before you were born Sam, they criticised Militant’s hand gestures and movement saying that we were all clones from the genes of Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe. Now it is CWI speak. So be it Sam.

But if you come on to a medium and put a theoretical and political position that is contrary to the working class and socialist movement, expect to be polemicalised against, by the ideas of the CWI. After all you are not describing your own ideas, but depicting the ideas of the ISG Scotland; so are you not just using ISG speak, as politically bland as it, to make your point, as much as I am using CWI speak. My first political organisation I was involved in, but did not join, was the Communist Party in the second half of the 1970s, since 1980 when I joined the Labour Party Socialists/Labour Party and hence Militant/CWI I have had no political need to become involved in another socialist organisation. Why? Because the ideas of the CWI in Britain and internationally is in tune with my own intellectual interpretation of the world. So by that reasoning I am going to advocate the CWI ideas. Not as a clone, but as a living socialist active in a living intellectual socialist organisation in an ever moving world.

I am not going to say you are not worth it because you have an organisation smaller than the CWI and you are all petit-bourgeois students. But I believe political ideas that are incorrect should be taken up with both objective and subjective examples. Which I have tried to show, you are patently not confident in the ISG Scotland’s ideas, programme and strategy to make a case for them; rather you would make malicious and snide remarks, like I am an old political dinosaur, which I believe demeans you.

Sam_b

6th February 2012, 21:49

See, I wasn't really answering because this sort of 'discussion' if it even can be called that is so cliched, hacked, and generally tiring and remnants of the stuffy meetings-in-the-snug-of-pubs leftism that I wasn't really going to bother myself. But here goes.

It has got nothing to do with ego or being a CWI-hack as you put it

To which I would argue there is a reason why you keep bringing up the ISG in these threads. Jimmy you're probably old enough to know now that when your section is criticised a 'NO U' argument doesn't actually cut it. "But the ISG did this" well hoop hoop fucking hurrah son. I really hope you don't try to bat for influence in Scotland by going to public meetings and talking of the 'baby SWP'.

On the question of Daft Punk all I did was put meat to your bone in explaining where ISG Scotland came from.

Except you couldn't and didn't. I'd love to know what connections the ISG apparently has to 'the Rees and German breakaway' which I am assuming is in reference to the SWP conference which you weren't at, and i'm sure you know we stood against them in leaving the Party, but what's details eh?

. Only telling half a story,

Absolute definition of irony here.

However, that is/was always my experience with the SWP, they only tell part of the story which leads to misinformation, falsification and lies by your former organisation

Yadda fucking yadda. For the record, and please check the thread, I never once said SACA was set up in opposition to COR. What I am saying is that it will not work with COR. There's a pretty big difference there. One of an organisation set up because it's making waves down south and one so it can be used as a platform for the SPS.

In the past, before you were born Sam

Spare me that patrionising claptrap please.

I am not going to say you are not worth it because you have an organisation smaller than the CWI and you are all petit-bourgeois students

In fairness I imagine ISG is actually bigger, or getting to be as big, as the CWI in Scotland. At least in ground forces and activists we're bigger than the SWP in Glasgow (maybe not by 'paper membership') but the CWI is literally nowhere to be seen on the ground. I wish it were, in fairness, but that is the state of play the now.

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 22:59

I wonder if this is what is called 'Flaming'. To be honest your as abusive and non-political as Mr Newman over on the British "Socialist Unity" website. A little power, as 'Forum Moderator' goes a long way.

Sam b you said “I never once said SACA was set up in opposition to COR. What I am saying is that it will not work with COR.”

This was part of a post by you Sam b on the 30th January at 18:52. “Is there any real, logical reason why the CWI is refusing to work with CoR over the cuts, but instead feels the need to set up it's own anti-cuts organisation, SACA, which seems to only agitate for electoral candidacy and nothing else?”

The very inference, in this post, that the CWI refused to work with CoR and felt the need to set –up its own anti-cuts organisation indicated that the CWI, according to you set up something after CoR was set up. You had a go at an individual on the Tommy Sheridan thread not for political inconsistencies but grammatical mistakes; and very stringent you were as well. Well my interpretation of your words indicates half-truths and distortions on the reality of the situation which I will challenge, whether on this forum or out on the street. The political debate I have had with you on this thread has been on the political and theoretical difference of our two organisations and not taken to a personal level. But it seems that ios how you want to play the political debate if you cannot answer the critique that is put down; not only is your political organisation politically immature, but you Sam b are also personally immature.

Vladimir Innit Lenin

6th February 2012, 23:38

No, you started it! :rolleyes:

Jimmy Haddow (SPS)

6th February 2012, 23:44

Stammer and Tickle clarify please

Sam b just left me a message with “Strawman”. In this case I do not know what it means. Apart from the fact that Sam b is denying what he wrote and I made it all up.

Left Republican

7th February 2012, 17:50

I may be in the minority here, reading through this thread, but I have only good things to say about the SWP having worked with them on a number of issues.

I am not a member of the SWP and disagree with them on allot of things but I doubt they deserve all the neg press that this thread is giving them.

If we spent more time getting our own houses in order, than constantly sniping at each other, maybe the revolutionary left might be in better shape today.

daft punk

8th February 2012, 18:58

If you're going to play this game, you should probably learn the difference between the ISG, a defunct group that was the British affiliate to the fourth International; and ISG Scotland, a group formed out of members of Glasgow SWP in April 2011.

-

Also, this is quite good (http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/no2eu-and-fight-workers-party)at showing the problems with NO2EU, dispite having some shoogly conclusions.

oh, you mean that ISG. Well why didnt you say.

To Daft Punk (CWI) ~~~ The ISG you quote from 2001 and its involvement in the Socialist Alliance is not the ISG Scotland of today. The ISG Scotland is a breakaway from the SWP in April last year that has connections with the Rees/German breakaway, but on later issues, which evolved into the Counterfire website and the setting up of the Coalition of Resistance which was to rival the SWP’s Right to Work organisation. The Left in Britain at times can be like a Monty Python sketch. But that takes nothing away from your critique against the SWP and on the question of Europe.
Ps, if you want to know more about Scotland go on to Marxist.net and analysis the documentation and go back over this thread where I have put other links up as well. Good luck comrade.

cheers, you know what, i nearly wrote 'assuming this is the same organisation'. lol!

Sam b says “If the rest of the left is 'Middle Class' no wonder the CWI struggles for influence in Scotland.”

This throw-away one liner commentary betrays a lack of comprehension of the objective and subjective processes during the 1990s and into the 2000s, and of today, on the one hand; and a facetious posture to the building of a working class organisation that is for the socialist reconstruction of society on the other.

etc

good post. I didnt actually realise that the majority had split from the CWI, thats pretty shocking. I'm not really active so a bit out of touch on some stuff.

At least the CWI exist still, even if a few have broken away. Did they rejoin?

daft punk

8th February 2012, 19:06

I think these polemics are quite hilarious as it treats me as some sort of big hitter of the Scottish left out on the attack. Plus it's pretty hard to condemn me for not wishing to do dirty laundry in public over the split when the letter of resignation has already been widely circulated around certain groups and websites (see 'when you are not prepared to discuss it' et al). Not particularly interested in feeding the ego of a CWI hack or perpetuating a circle-jerk argument either .

It's also pretty funny that i'll say something then Jimmy will re-phrase it into CWI speak so his fellow member Daft Punk isn't caught bonny. Unable to speak for himself I presume.

just do the right think and join the CWI. And listen to Jimmy, he knows his stuff.

Privatisation is being imposed today on Greece by a Troika that includes the
IMF, ECB and EC but accross the current EU the biggest wave of privatisations occured much earlier - in the UK in the 80s and 90s followed by a much bigger wave accross what is now the eastern half of the EU in the 90s. These were not driven by the EU itself.

"In March 2000, the European Union summit in Lisbon adopted the US economy as their model. It was before the so-called ‘new economy‘ was exposed as a myth and before the stock market bubble burst. The assembled mainly social democratic prime ministers and presidents agreed that the US economy was superior on everything - growth, job creation, attracting investment etc.
The result was that the ‘Lisbon Agenda‘ aimed for massive privatisation and deregulation. "
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/1139

I get the same sort of response from KPD and Linke comrades, they say that people are still attached to the nation states. Maybe to some extent, but it is the job of socialists to try and move politics forward, and remember the extent to which the EU is creating an international working population. Just look at the number of workers from the rest of the EU there now are in Scotland.

Can you dig up a reference to this in their literature?
reference to what? As you can see they call for a socialist federation of Europe, they just dont have a Europe-wide party. However they do have a international obviously, and a section of their website on Europe.

Which debt?
Just the national debt or all debts. Since the document uses the singular it presumably means the national debt. It is a big mistake to limit it to the national debt. That leaves the great bulk of people oppressed by credit card and mortgage debt.

I dunno, all debt probably.