Die Neue Zeit
10th January 2013, 15:08
http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/944/swp-why-i-am-resigning
I posted the full article here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/swp-conference-crazy-t177024/index.html?p=2561756), but here I'd like to focus on something more general:
We might consider a spectrum of misogynist behaviour by leaders of leftwing organisations, with George Galloway’s comments about rape at one end and the horrors of Gerry Healy at the other. You can argue about who else should be included on it - unfortunately it isn’t too hard to think of candidates.
Of course, as nothing is proven either way, we do not know if or where comrade Smith fits on that spectrum. Nevertheless, there is clearly a question mark over the sexual politics of many men in powerful positions on the left. I believe the root of this is that, whether through reputation, lack of internal democracy or both, these are often positions that are effectively unchallengeable. Not for nothing have recent sex abuse allegations in the wider world focused on the idea of a ‘culture of impunity’.
Socialist Worker has pointed to the way that institutions close up to protect powerful people within them. What is not acknowledged is that the SWP is itself an institution in this sense, with its instinct for self-protection to survive. As previously mentioned, its belief in its own world-historic importance gives a motive for an attempted cover-up, making abusers feel protected. Also, leaders are put into positions of power within an organisation with open recruitment but quite a closed culture, and this has a dramatic effect on any relationships that take place. Older male party leader with younger female party member is a triply unequal power relationship, and should be considered so.
That still does not account for how on earth an organisation that has such a good analysis of the way the police and courts effectively put the woman on trial in rape cases managed to replicate the state’s reactionary lines of questioning. How did it fail so badly to put its own politics into practice?
It may shed some light to learn that ‘feminism’ is used effectively as a swear word by the leadership’s supporters. This seems to be a legacy of a sharp political argument conducted decades ago against radical feminism and its separatist methods of organisation, but unfortunately it is being used today against young, militant anti-sexists coming into the party. In fact it is deployed against anyone who seems ‘too concerned’ about issues of gender.
So, here we have another case of an organization supposedly committed to women's rights and combatting sexism, but whose internal structure is conducive towards misogynists and other perpetrators of sexist discrimination.
Question: Is there no room for political organization that is well-educated on social discrimination and combatting it in all its forms, and is openly committed to those things in its internal organization (like pro-abortion literature spread internally, or having anti-discrimination enforcement committees), but one that knows the red line between reasonable politics on this and bourgeois identity politics?
For example, contrast the struggle for abortion rights in Ireland with this thoroughly bourgeois plank, one completely irrelevant to working-class politics: European Commission Calls for [Board Gender] Quotas (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-moves-towards-approving-board-gender-quotas-a-867181.html)
I posted the full article here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/swp-conference-crazy-t177024/index.html?p=2561756), but here I'd like to focus on something more general:
We might consider a spectrum of misogynist behaviour by leaders of leftwing organisations, with George Galloway’s comments about rape at one end and the horrors of Gerry Healy at the other. You can argue about who else should be included on it - unfortunately it isn’t too hard to think of candidates.
Of course, as nothing is proven either way, we do not know if or where comrade Smith fits on that spectrum. Nevertheless, there is clearly a question mark over the sexual politics of many men in powerful positions on the left. I believe the root of this is that, whether through reputation, lack of internal democracy or both, these are often positions that are effectively unchallengeable. Not for nothing have recent sex abuse allegations in the wider world focused on the idea of a ‘culture of impunity’.
Socialist Worker has pointed to the way that institutions close up to protect powerful people within them. What is not acknowledged is that the SWP is itself an institution in this sense, with its instinct for self-protection to survive. As previously mentioned, its belief in its own world-historic importance gives a motive for an attempted cover-up, making abusers feel protected. Also, leaders are put into positions of power within an organisation with open recruitment but quite a closed culture, and this has a dramatic effect on any relationships that take place. Older male party leader with younger female party member is a triply unequal power relationship, and should be considered so.
That still does not account for how on earth an organisation that has such a good analysis of the way the police and courts effectively put the woman on trial in rape cases managed to replicate the state’s reactionary lines of questioning. How did it fail so badly to put its own politics into practice?
It may shed some light to learn that ‘feminism’ is used effectively as a swear word by the leadership’s supporters. This seems to be a legacy of a sharp political argument conducted decades ago against radical feminism and its separatist methods of organisation, but unfortunately it is being used today against young, militant anti-sexists coming into the party. In fact it is deployed against anyone who seems ‘too concerned’ about issues of gender.
So, here we have another case of an organization supposedly committed to women's rights and combatting sexism, but whose internal structure is conducive towards misogynists and other perpetrators of sexist discrimination.
Question: Is there no room for political organization that is well-educated on social discrimination and combatting it in all its forms, and is openly committed to those things in its internal organization (like pro-abortion literature spread internally, or having anti-discrimination enforcement committees), but one that knows the red line between reasonable politics on this and bourgeois identity politics?
For example, contrast the struggle for abortion rights in Ireland with this thoroughly bourgeois plank, one completely irrelevant to working-class politics: European Commission Calls for [Board Gender] Quotas (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/european-commission-moves-towards-approving-board-gender-quotas-a-867181.html)