Socialist Workers Party(SWP)

[Conflict]

What are your views on the Socialist Workers Party? I was invited to one of their meetings, but i know little about them.

[Lucretia]

What are your views on the Socialist Workers Party? I was invited to one of their meetings, but i know little about them.

Which one? In the US or in the UK?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

This one

http://www.themilitant.com/index.shtml

or

this

http://www.swp.org.uk/

[Jimmie Higgins]

What are your views on the Socialist Workers Party? I was invited to one of their meetings, but i know little about them.US SWP: They are a Trotskyist group in the US and have been around since the 1940s. Pathfinder Press is very valuable for the Trotskyist legacy and tradition of that period. They have some valuable writings from the Civil Rights era and worked with Malcolm X in the last year of his life. In the 1970s when the youth radicalism of the 1960s began to be reflected more in the labor movement and as class militancy began to intensify, they tried to orient towards industries with the expectation that an upsurge in labor militancy would develop. Due to the downturn that happened instead, their organization was hit pretty hard and so they tried to maintain their connections to the labor movement, but shrank in the process. A political criticism of them as a consequence is that they have a reputation of orienting more towards union leadership, but I have really little experience or knowledge of how their politics play out in practice because I've only met individual members.

Politically what seperates them from other Trotskyist groups is that they are very pro-cuba, beyond just a defense of Cuba against US imperialism. They characterize many other national liberation struggles as socialist and also say that Malcolm X had become a socialist at the end of his life. They don't agree with Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution in favor of an earlier Lenin theory of worker-peasant democratic regimes as being the way underdeveloped countries could move towards socialism.

That's just my general impression of where they are as a group - a member no doubt knows more of the history or could correct my over-generalizations. Get opinions from others, but the best thing is to read their publications and talk to their members. If a non-member says something about them that make you wary, ask the SWP member about it, "I heard X, is that true, what is your argument for or against X?". If you agree with what they have to say, then check out what they do and if it seems right and based on what they talk about that you agree with, then consider joining.

[Igor]

I think the best way to find out is just go to that meeting, if possible. I bet they have a fairly clear view on their views.

[Conflict]

Which one? In the US or in the UK?
Neither. The Irish one.:)

[Blake's Baby]

As the poster in other threads refers specifically to the Hardcore scene in the UK, lists a lot of UK punk bands as being her or more likely his favourites, and spends some time in a sport thread discussing the Euro2012 footie championships, my guess is it's likely to be the UK SWP that's meant.

But that's still just a guess.

EDIT: and I think that fist logo is the logo of the SWP in the UK.

EDIT number 2: Hmmm, I'm sure the poost saying 'neither, the Irish one' wasn't there when I posted this originally...

[Firebrand]

My advice is to go along and see whats what, the worst thing that can happen is that you decide its not for you and don't go again. Even if you don't agree with their politics you might meet some nice people with leftist views, and it doesn't hurt to have a look.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The US SWP has a fascinating and important history. They were the original US Trotskyist organisation and the second largest communist group.For a time they were close to becoming a mass organisation. Most of the "57 varieties" of Trot groups split from the SWP at various points. My understanding is that they are not Trotskyist anymore.Their leader, Jack Barnes, official "renounced" Trotskyism in his essay, "Their Trotsky and Ours" and they left the ISFI.

According to some Jack Barnes was a manipulative, evil guy who basically destroyed the SWP. Its now down to (according to some) around 120 members, most very elderly while Barnes and his partner own a condo assessed at over $1million in NYC. Of course Barnes has his defenders as well.

Surf around Louis Proyect's blogs and sites and its possible to dig up a lot of fascinating leftist history.There is a yahoo group made up of former SWP members. Apparently the "degeneration" of this group was a traumatic experience for many.

As far as today, they may be doing some good activism.They have been criticized by Trotskyists for the fact that they still have the copyright on the classic Trotskyist literature-James Cannon, etc and milk it for all its worth.At demos and leftist events they are regarded as a "travelling bookstore".

The UK SWP..well they have been criticized by many in the left but you will have to ask someone in the UK about them.

If you are interested in either group, by all means check them out and make your own decision.

[Deicide]

Just go to one of their meetings, there's usually several on every month all around the UK. I don't completely agree with their politics, but I went to one of their meetings and met a nice girl there, and we've gotten pretty close ;) So it was worth it anyway..

[eyeheartlenin]

Barnes destroyed the SWP as a political party. Today the (US) SWP exists solely as a book-selling cult, which, although it owns property worth an estimated $14 million in NYC, beggars its rapidly declining membership with fund drives. Having repudiated Trotskyism and identified Cuba as a healthy workers' state (with a government that repeatedly imprisoned Trotskyists on account of their politics), Barnes' SWP is an organization without political value, a good way to waste one's money and one's life.

[The Idler]

The Socialist Workers Party in the UK consistently produce some of the most attractive popular materials in Britain and the second or third largest socialist rally of speeches in Britain called "Marxism Festival" though it is not a festival in the traditional sense.

They are known for an extremely high and rapid turnover with annual regional recruitment targets mainly in universities. They are keen to get people on direct debits for membership or publications. Its sometimes said that the biggest group left of Labour in Britain is ex-Socialist Workers Party members. They have been known to use petitions to get members and many members are paper members with little interest in socialism who never have any further contact, partly because the only membership requirement is that members agree with "Where we stand", though this is not tested. The activist members are mobilised heavily and pressurised.

Room for disagreement and discussion with the SWP depends on how much power you have. Galloway and Benn get a free rein at Marxism, but average members might find disagreeing with full-timers on Central Committee a different experience. Their internal bulletin is not published by themselves publicly (nor is their full-time Central Committee members I think) and members are known to be summarily expelled or leave.

Central Committee formulate policy and National Committee which doesn't include all members still only in practice acts in a consultative role, rubber-stamping slates (who are generally fairly secure/permanent) etc. Serious criticism is generally unwelcome, their tolerance for this is a low as their rhetoric at public meetings of "revolution", "resistance", "fight back", "building the movement" is high. "Unity" is a another slogan, which might lead you to think they hadn't left two major unity fronts (Socialist Alliance and Respect Coalition) in the last decade, but many new members won't be aware of this. Members occasionally come out with sectarian statements like they're the only serious revolutionary party in the UK. They will constantly talk about "the upturn" sometimes to sideline critical voices, but generally because they genuinely need this optimism to sustain hyperactivism which sometimes leads to dead-ends or u-turns (invasion of union talks for a recent example). If challenged on this economically, they might say it is an upsurge in consciousness to avoid empirical analysis.

There's more that could be said about their politics, but thats just some of the practices that have been raised by groups from across the political spectrum.

Dunno about the Irish one, but heard they had some disagreements with the UK one.

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

What are your views on the Socialist Workers Party? I was invited to one of their meetings, but i know little about them.
I think you are smart to want to know something before you go to the meeting. There have been threads about the SWP UK on this forum I suggest you search for them. As for the SWP US, it has devolved into a sterile cult around Jack Barnes. The have, as he put it, "junked the old Trotskyism," for an amorphous left nationalism -- fulsomely supporting the politics of the Cuban government (as opposed to the Trotskyist position of defense of Cuba against imperialism and counterrevolution), being absolutely gaga over the Sandinistas, etc. They were Trotskyist until the early sixties when they made a sharp right turn towards reformism. The Irish SWP? Can't help you with that, comrade. Are they affiliated with the British SWP?

[Aurora]

The Irish SWP is the Irish section of the International Socialist Tendency their largest section is the SWP UK, i have a lot of criticism of them but i won't bore you with details, the best thing to do would be to learn on your own time and go to some meetings with a critical mind, no group is perfect and your not going to agree with them on everything but it will be a good place to develop new skills and hopefully argue and discuss with some likeminded people.

Some background on the SWP, the SWP comes from the Trotskyist tradition but their main theorist Tony Cliff moved away from some orthodox positions and developed his own theories on the nature of the eastern bloc, what sort of program to put forward and how to orientate to the class. Some of the leading members of the SWP in Ireland are Eamon McCann who has written several books and writes a newspaper column in Derry, Kieran Allen who is a professor of sociology at UCD and Richard Boyd Barrett who is currently a TD for Dun Laoghaire.

[Kronsteen]

Its sometimes said that the biggest group left of Labour in Britain is ex-Socialist Workers Party members.

Heh! It's true there's a lot of us about, though most were only members for a few months. Recruitment is high, but retention is low.

As for what you say about the authoritarian tendencies of the UK-SWP, it's still a problem, but the party has got a lot less authoritarian in the last few years.

20 years ago it wasn't uncommon for half of a day-long conference to be taken up by central committee members and loyal aparachiks taking turns blasting some inexperienced comrade for asking an inconvenient question. 10 year ago I remember a young student being expelled for writing about a big meeting on his blog before the CC published its own version.

But following the collapse of the Respect coalition (2006?) the mood suddenly shifted, and the worst CC members (Rees, Nineham, German and later Bambery) were expelled.

The founder and leading intellectual of the UK-SWP was Tony Cliff, and if anyone wants a flavour of the best of their theorising, his articles on the MIA (http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/index.htm) are well worth reading.

The OP asked about the Irish SWP. They've just started a periodical here (http://www.irishmarxistreview.net/index.php/imr). Issue 2 isn't up yet, but I've uploaded it here (http://speedy.sh/zndbp/IMR2.pdf), if anyone wants to read.