Marxism Festival & Fringe 2013, 11-15 July, Central London

[The Idler]

Okay, here it is then,
Marxism Festival 2013,
Explaining a World in Turmoil (analogy for the party?)
11-15 July, Central London,
Hosted by the SWP (Britain).

Their website (http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk/) still looks a bit spartan (year since last tweet - download link to last years timetable - don't they re-use them roughly anyway?) but just got a leaflet in the post.
So this year you won't get these (http://openletterswp.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/open-letter-to-the-swp-about-the-current-crisis/)
but you will get these
2013 Speakers
Alex Callinicos (naturally)
Gigi Ibrahim
Steven Rose
Judith Orr (warm reception expected)
Louise Raw
Danny Dorling
John McDonnell MP
Richard Wilkinson (The Spirit Level author)

As for the fringe, I also received this from Weekly Worker folks a few days ago

July 11-15, central London, the Socialist Workers Party’s annual school, Marxism

Erstwhile SWP oppositionalist Richard Seymour writes in his Comment is Free column (March 22) that “the party's annual Marxism festival is looking to be a bleak, isolated affair” - and he may well be right. It may well also be an even more surly and unfriendly place for other lefties given the mood SWP loyalists are likely to be in. However, the CPGB will again be organising the 'Marxism Fringe', an initiative of ours that has been running for some years now. Given the crisis that the host organisation has been through, there is certainly plenty to talk about ... and you can guarantee it won’t be directly addressed in the official conference given the SWP leadership’s insistence on keeping up its ‘business-as-usual' charade. More details soon in NfA, then closer to the time of the event on the party website.


I have some doubts about this to be honest, if the festival deserves boycotting, then should a fringe be organised?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What is the point of the CPGBs fringe? What is it hoping to achieve? I'm really confused by this..

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The CPGB seems to be made up of no more than a couple dozen intellectuals residing in the London area. They seem to be largely oriented towards the SWP and its periphery. The purpose of the "Fringe Festival" is to poach members.

Both organisations appear to be delusional. Still both events might be interesting to attend although I would not want to give any creedence to an organisation who's leadership justifies rape.

[ed miliband]

the funniest part is the only non-swp people are keynesian social-democrats. MARXISM.

[The Idler]

The CPGB seems to be made up of no more than a couple dozen intellectuals residing in the London area. They seem to be largely oriented towards the SWP and its periphery. The purpose of the "Fringe Festival" is to poach members.

Both organisations appear to be delusional. Still both events might be interesting to attend although I would not want to give any creedence to an organisation who's leadership justifies rape.
Prior to what has emerged this year about the SWP, groups including the AWL, The Commune, Workers Power, Anarchists (yes) and I think even the Sparts have run fringe events at Marxism Festival.

[l'Enfermé]

The CPGB seems to be made up of no more than a couple dozen intellectuals residing in the London area. They seem to be largely oriented towards the SWP and its periphery. The purpose of the "Fringe Festival" is to poach members.

Both organisations appear to be delusional. Still both events might be interesting to attend although I would not want to give any creedence to an organisation who's leadership justifies rape.
Well you have no idea what you are talking about actually. The CPGB does not poach members. It doesn't seek to increase its ranks. It seeks the re-foundation of the Communist party by the various segments of the British left. Suggestion: abandon the prison of your sectarian Trot point of view.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Well you have no idea what you are talking about actually. The CPGB does not poach members. It doesn't seek to increase its ranks. It seeks the re-foundation of the Communist party by the various segments of the British left.

Perhaps I was wrong about the Marxist "Fringe Festival", I'm on the other side of the pond. As far as the CPGB goes, why do they have most of their website dedicated to the SWP crisis, for the last several weeks on end? Why does the front page of Weekly Worker have an article on the SWP, a rival socialist group? They seek the " re-foundation of the Communist party by the various segments of the British left" and the largest group in the British left is the now imploding SWP. They have advised SWP dissidents to stay in their party and fight but their seems to be a strong subtext of "join us".

Weekly Worker is considered to be the "gossip sheet" of the British left and they do seem to be hoping to recruit disillusioned Swappies. I don't blame them, they do seem to be better than the Cliffites.

[l'Enfermé]

Perhaps I was wrong about the Marxist "Fringe Festival", I'm on the other side of the pond. As far as the CPGB goes, why do they have most of their website dedicated to the SWP crisis, for the last several weeks on end? Why does the front page of Weekly Worker have an article on the SWP, a rival socialist group? They seek the " re-foundation of the Communist party by the various segments of the British left" and the largest group in the British left is the now imploding SWP. They have advised SWP dissidents to stay in their party and fight but their seems to be a strong subtext of "join us".

Weekly Worker is considered to be the "gossip sheet" of the British left and they do seem to be hoping to recruit disillusioned Swappies. I don't blame them, they do seem to be better than the Cliffites.
What a load of bullshit right there, comrade. Seriously? Why the CPGB has most of their website dedicated to the SWP crisis? What kind of question is that? The WW is a British leftist paper. The SWP crisis is the biggest event in the British left this century. Maybe that's why? Maybe you don't understand this because your are on the other side of the pond, I guess, but the SWP is by far the largest organisation to the left of the Labour party.

You yourself admitted that the WW advises SWP dissidents to stay in and continue the fight. Where is this strong subtext of "join us"? It's either the one or the other. Pick one. Or when they wrote, "Don't give up and leave the SWP, stay on and continue the fight!", did they add a winking emoticon too? "Don't leave the SWP, *wink*, don't join the CPGB *wink*"?

You, like most others, still fail to understand the logic of what the WW is doing. At its core, the WW project is the unification of British Marxists in a single organisation, the communist party. The premise of the WW's criticism is that all British leftists are comrades and that they all belong to the same movement. Their criticism of the left is not "gossip" but self-criticism. The errors of their British comrades(organisational, political or theoretical) undermine their committment to the social revolution, it's the WW's duty as communists to criticse them. What the WW does isn't even close to the kind of polemics Lenin or Trotsky wrote, in intensity, yet you don't call Iskra a gossip sheet. Sure, they could be nicer, more conciliatory, but that would serve only to make it easier for them to worm themselves into a comfortable position in official labour movement, something they are not interested in.

And "gossip", really? What a bourgeois way of looking at things. Gossip is public intrusion into the private affairs of individuals. Does the Weekly Worker publish articles about the personal lives of individuals? Does it ridicule the fashion sense of this or that leftist? Does it expose the sexual lives of its opponents? Please. What the WW does is level organisational and theoretical criticism of the left. If you don't agree, please point me in the direction of a WW article speculating about which hollywood celebrity Alex Callinicos is dating.

The Weekly Worker is a gossip rag only if you adopt the bourgeois attitude that every leftist sect in Britain is a sort of brand that has a right of private property over everything under its aegis. If that is your way of thinking, what are you doing calling yourself a socialist, an enemy of private property?

Political disputes within our common movement isn't the private affair of individuals, comrade.

And no, the CPGB is not hoping to recruit disillusioned SWPers. They have demonstrated quite clearly that they don't consider the poaching of members from left sects to a useful thing. If you think that this poaching of cadres is productive yourself, I tell you again: that is the logic of sectarianism in it's classic, Communist Manifesto, sense. An actual communist party in Britain today would count millions of workers in its ranks. What good are a dozen burnt-out SWP activists?

[Le Socialiste]

Hey y'all, I understand folks want to debate the whole CPGB-SWP thing - but can comrades take it elsewhere? I feel like this is an issue best suited to 'Politics', not 'Upcoming Events'. This is a place to post important events, not argue about whether the CPGB is trying to recruit disillusioned SWPers. Either post to the array of relevant threads on the topic that are ongoing (and I know there are), or drop it. This isn't the thread (or subforum) for such debate, and I'd like to keep it that way. Thanks. :)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The SWP crisis is the biggest event in the British left this century.

Haha, seriously?

I guess if that's true, then it shows how irrelevant 'the left' is and how separated it is from both the working classes and from general reality.

Perhaps 'the left', as evinced in Britain, is no longer a progressive force for Socialism at all and should be abandoned as a failure for something that is closer to Marx's idea of Socialism. I'm really not sure there's an argument that any of the British 'left' represents anything like the Socialism that Marx or any other revolutionary hitherto may have had in mind.