United Kingdom local elections, 2014 - London - SPGB campaign

[The Idler]

United Kingdom local elections, 2014 - London - SPGB campaign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2014

The SPGB are standing in four wards in London
The campaign blog is here
http://spgb.blogspot.co.uk/

In North London;
- Junction (in Islington, North London)

In South London;
- Clapham Town (in Lambeth, South London)
- Ferndale (in Lambeth, South London)
- Larkhall (in Lambeth, South London)

Campaigning as follows;
- Thursday 1 May - North London - Literature Stall at Marx Memorial Library (Clerkenwell Green - from 12 noon) (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/literature-stall-marx-memorial-library-clerkenwell-green)
- Saturday 3 May - South London - Election/Literature Stall (South London - 12 noon) (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/electionliterature-stall-south-london-12-noon)
- Saturday 10 May - South London - Election/Literature Stall (South London - 12 noon) (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/electionliterature-stall-south-london-noon)
- Saturday 17 May - South London - Election/Literature Stall (South London - 12 noon) (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/electionliterature-stall-south-london-noon-0)
- Tuesday 20 May - West London - The European Elections 2014 (West London - 8.00pm) (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/european-elections-2014-west-london-800pm)

If you can come along and help out and unite for socialism, please do or for any other enquiry or just to wish the SPGB support then contact the SPGB.

[RedWorker]

Hi The Idler,

Can you please explain (at least somewhat detailed) what would happen if the SPGB won a majority? What is their plan? And what if they won some seats only?

Thanks.

[bricolage]

Because it worked so well last time around...

[The Idler]

Hi The Idler,

Can you please explain (at least somewhat detailed) what would happen if the SPGB won a majority? What is their plan? And what if they won some seats only?

Thanks.
Well, the SPGB are trying to hasten a significant majority of the working-class to want and understand socialism, not a majority of parliamentary seats in any particular parliament.
With a significant majority of the working-class wanting and understanding socialism, there would be many reforms on offer from the ruling class with the caveat that workers stop supporting socialism.
With the working-class in political power and consciously wanting socialism, the SPGB will have performed its function. The working-class could take the productive capacities of the world and begin producing for use not profit.

Assuming a parliamentary minority of seats and minority of support, the SPGB could continue to advocate for socialism with the new parliamentary platform. The SPGB delegates would not abstain on all votes in parliament. Instead judgement would be used on what is of benefit to the working-class and what is not.

[The Idler]

Because it worked so well last time around...
The case for revolutionary socialism was put to large numbers of people, they rejected it peaceably. Nobody was bayoneted and nobody was shot. The object was not achieved, but there's no need to be sniffy about efforts at trying. If there's a better way of capturing political power for socialism then I'm sure the SPGB would be interested in hearing it. Or if you think you can do better at campaigning, then you're welcome to come along and put the case for revolutionary socialism to the electorate.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I don't know what a better way might be, maybe posting another five threads about these sub-reformist election campaigns, maybe one for each borough of the United Kingdom.

[bricolage]

The case for revolutionary socialism was put to large numbers of people, they rejected it peaceably. Nobody was bayoneted and nobody was shot. The object was not achieved, but there's no need to be sniffy about efforts at trying. If there's a better way of capturing political power for socialism then I'm sure the SPGB would be interested in hearing it. Or if you think you can do better at campaigning, then you're welcome to come along and put the case for revolutionary socialism to the electorate.
I recall elections where the SPGB got how ever many hundred votes and called it a success because you came above TUSC or the Lib Dems: it's completely deluded.

I don't have an answer on 'capturing political power for socialism' at the moment but neither do SPGB, however I'm not repeating the same tactic that has failed for the last 100+ years in the vain hope that this time it will be different. What's that quote about insanity again...

[RedWorker]

The case for revolutionary socialism was put to large numbers of people, they rejected it peaceably. Nobody was bayoneted and nobody was shot. The object was not achieved, but there's no need to be sniffy about efforts at trying. If there's a better way of capturing political power for socialism then I'm sure the SPGB would be interested in hearing it. Or if you think you can do better at campaigning, then you're welcome to come along and put the case for revolutionary socialism to the electorate.

I don't think they rejected it, but rather were tricked, had a lack of knowledge, or were caught up in one of many efficiencies of the electoral system: "but they won't get any votes so it's a waste to vote them, etc.".

[The Idler]

I don't know what a better way might be, maybe posting another five threads about these sub-reformist election campaigns, maybe one for each borough of the United Kingdom.
I posted this topic, then one about the SPGB campaign in local elections, and one about Euro-elections generally. Contesting elections for the capture of political power is not sub-reformist. The last time Orthodox Trotskyism was put to workers, was the Communist League standing in London local elections a few years ago and workers rejected it.

I recall elections where the SPGB got how ever many hundred votes and called it a success because you came above TUSC or the Lib Dems: it's completely deluded.
Success in an election is winning not losing one but if the SPGB got more votes than TUSC that means TUSC are even less successful. As I said in the other topic on the debate with UKIP, the SPGB say that the SPGB has not been successful in achieving its object.

I don't have an answer on 'capturing political power for socialism' at the moment but neither do SPGB, however I'm not repeating the same tactic that has failed for the last 100+ years in the vain hope that this time it will be different. What's that quote about insanity again...
So when the SPGB debate, they're called a debating club, when they contest elections, they're accused of having no answer on capturing political power for socialism, when critics are asked for other more effective tactics, none are forthcoming.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

As I said in the other topic on the debate with UKIP, the SPGB say that the SPGB has not been successful in achieving its object.


So why continue with the same strategy?

As it happens, I think it is necessary to maintain a presence, as a party, at elections. After all, what does it say if a party has no presence during an election period?

But the obsession on the voting aspect of the election seems to be self-defeating and indeed, as the SPGB has itself admitted, defeated.

Why isn't the SPGB campaigning in different areas? It really says a lot about the party's lack of size and capabilities that it can only contest 4 local wards. It's almost pointless.

[bricolage]

Success in an election is winning not losing one but if the SPGB got more votes than TUSC that means TUSC are even less successful.
Which hardly counts as any kind of achievement.
Beating TUSC is not hard.


As I said in the other topic on the debate with UKIP, the SPGB say that the SPGB has not been successful in achieving its object.
At least you can admit that.


So when the SPGB debate, they're called a debating club, when they contest elections, they're accused of having no answer on capturing political power for socialism, when critics are asked for other more effective tactics, none are forthcoming.
I'm asking you to consider why, having been debating and contesting elections for over one hundred years no more workers have been drawn to the SPGB's ideas of socialism than when you started. In that light I'm suggesting that the tactics *might* not be working.

And without seeming too pretentious, I always like a parable here: For years the dominant treatment is medicine was bloodletting, pretty much whatever was wrong with you you had some blown drawn. Sometime in the 19th Century people started realising that bloodletting that it didn't work and that it had no real demonstrable results, the problem was they didn't know what else to do. So, out of fear of 'doing nothing' and with a lack of 'something' people kept bloodletting. It was better to do something, anything, even if you knew it didn't work but especially if that thing was the thing you'd been doing for so long, than have to take a step back and come up with something else. Like I said, maybe a bit pretentious, but it seems to be where a lot of us are right now.

[The Idler]

So why continue with the same strategy?
As Engels put it 'in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work that we are now pursuing, '. But its also worth mentioning the SPGB does not restrict itself to talk, debates, rallies, lectures, contesting elections, hustings, festivals, events, demonstrations etc. Its a myth that one tactic is being pursued alone.

As it happens, I think it is necessary to maintain a presence, as a party, at elections. After all, what does it say if a party has no presence during an election period?

But the obsession on the voting aspect of the election seems to be self-defeating and indeed, as the SPGB has itself admitted, defeated. Are you criticising voting, elections, parliamentary elections or measuring SPGB support on any of these here, I'm not sure?


Why isn't the SPGB campaigning in different areas? It really says a lot about the party's lack of size and capabilities that it can only contest 4 local wards. It's almost pointless.
It's a shame workers don't support socialism, but the SPGB is one of the biggest parties describing itself as Marxist and working hard (particularly in the simultaneous Euro elections) in the hope that other workers will join the SPGB and help.

[The Idler]

I'm asking you to consider why, having been debating and contesting elections for over one hundred years no more workers have been drawn to the SPGB's ideas of socialism than when you started. In that light I'm suggesting that the tactics *might* not be working.

It's not a case of *might* not be working, I'm saying they *ARE NOT* successful at achieving the object of socialism. The party is a merely a means to an end, not an end in itself.


And without seeming too pretentious, I always like a parable here: For years the dominant treatment is medicine was bloodletting, pretty much whatever was wrong with you you had some blown drawn. Sometime in the 19th Century people started realising that bloodletting that it didn't work and that it had no real demonstrable results, the problem was they didn't know what else to do. So, out of fear of 'doing nothing' and with a lack of 'something' people kept bloodletting. It was better to do something, anything, even if you knew it didn't work but especially if that thing was the thing you'd been doing for so long, than have to take a step back and come up with something else. Like I said, maybe a bit pretentious, but it seems to be where a lot of us are right now.
I understand the parable and you might have used this in the UKIP thread where the SPGB were accused of offering nothing as an alternative to forcibly censoring fascists.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I posted this topic, then one about the SPGB campaign in local elections, and one about Euro-elections generally.

Right. And, for the first time since the enthusiasm for Sawant thankfully died down (which reminds me - how would you like it if the ciwis posted separate topics for every election campaign they participate in?), anyone using the "New Posts" function was assaulted by - elections, elections, elections.


Contesting elections for the capture of political power is not sub-reformist.

No, taken for itself it is, in fact, reformist - because reformism, as the term is used by every group except the SPGB, consists precisely in attempts to use the bourgeois state "for socialism". Of course, most reformists imagine a gradual transition from capitalism, whereas the SPGB claims that they want an immediate transition to the higher phase of the communist society. The thing is, though, the SPGB clearly doesn't have any sort of strategy for this transition. They want to win the elections - then something will happen - then socialism. In fact, if I were a malicious person, I would heartily wish that the SPGB win one of their precious elections.

What makes the SPGB campaign sub-reformist is that most reformists at least participate in the class struggle, albeit in a confused and counterproductive manner. The SPGB limits itself to passive propaganda.


The last time Orthodox Trotskyism was put to workers, was the Communist League standing in London local elections a few years ago and workers rejected it.

Oh, are we playing the "well my sect is not any worse than yours" game? That might be the case - certainly the SL have been a bit disoriented ever since the Soviet Union fell to capitalist restoration - but that doesn't mean that your sect is any good. However, hilariously, almost every statement in the above paragraph is incorrect.

The Communist League - I assume you're talking about the split from the Marxist Party - used to be Healyites. Now, the old Healyite organisation, the SLL/WRP, maintained a sort of literary orthodoxy, particularly in their dispute with Pablo, Frank and later Lambert. But their practice, like the practice of many ostensibly Trotskyist parties, had nothing to do with the Trotskyism of Trotsky or Cannon.

And the Communist League, at this point, were no longer Healyites, although they still worshiped old Gerry. Like the badly misnamed Workers' Power group, they turned to the "anti-capitalist" and "anti-globalisation" movements, and pretty much abandoned any kind of Marxism, even the most degenerated.

Now, obviously the Communist League didn't do very well in the elections. But this doesn't mean the workers rejected them - it means the voters did. Many voters are not proletarians and many proletarians don't vote. In fact the constant conflation of voters and proletarians by the SPGB really accounts for a lot of their strange positions.

In fact, "a couple of years ago" couldn't have been later than 2005, since the Communist League dissolved into the fairly formless "A World to Win" in that year. I just had a look at their site - "no to corporate power, yes to people's power". It's a good thing Marx is dead or these populist kiddies banging on about "corporations" and "the people" would give the old man a heart attack.


Success in an election is winning not losing one but if the SPGB got more votes than TUSC that means TUSC are even less successful.

Well aren't you proud. This really reeks of the lowest sort of politicking - "so, how many votes did you get, Dave?"


So when the SPGB debate, they're called a debating club, when they contest elections, they're accused of having no answer on capturing political power for socialism, when critics are asked for other more effective tactics, none are forthcoming.

I mean - we can't state how the SPGB might help the seizure of state power because the SPGB, as an organisation, is incapable of helping. For the SPGB to help it would have to abandon pretty much everything that makes it distinct. In general, though, it's not that we don't have a strategy - our strategy has always been the same. Building the revolutionary workers' party, agitating for rank-and-file militancy in the unions and similar organisations, fighting for reforms from a revolutionary perspective, eventually building organs of dual power and smashing the bourgeois state.

[The Idler]

Right. And, for the first time since the enthusiasm for Sawant thankfully died down (which reminds me - how would you like it if the ciwis posted separate topics for every election campaign they participate in?), anyone using the "New Posts" function was assaulted by - elections, elections, elections.

Posting two topics about two campaigns in two major nationwide (or continent-wide) elections to parliamentary legislatures is not excessive, same goes for CWI campaigns such as Sawant in elections. Elections are not necessarily a bad thing, there are plenty of topics about very small protests and small strikes. Why should election campaigns be any different?


No, taken for itself it is, in fact, reformist - because reformism, as the term is used by every group except the SPGB, consists precisely in attempts to use the bourgeois state "for socialism". Of course, most reformists imagine a gradual transition from capitalism, whereas the SPGB claims that they want an immediate transition to the higher phase of the communist society. The thing is, though, the SPGB clearly doesn't have any sort of strategy for this transition. They want to win the elections - then something will happen - then socialism. In fact, if I were a malicious person, I would heartily wish that the SPGB win one of their precious elections.

What makes the SPGB campaign sub-reformist is that most reformists at least participate in the class struggle, albeit in a confused and counterproductive manner. The SPGB limits itself to passive propaganda.
Again, the myth is repeated. How does aiming at capturing political power including by contesting elections to legislatures count as passive propaganda? It doesn't. How does contesting elections prove no strategy? It doesn't.

Also could you point out where the SPGB have been in favour of 'immediate transition to the higher phase of the communist society'?

Oh, are we playing the "well my sect is not any worse than yours" game? That might be the case - certainly the SL have been a bit disoriented ever since the Soviet Union fell to capitalist restoration - but that doesn't mean that your sect is any good. However, hilariously, almost every statement in the above paragraph is incorrect.

The Communist League - I assume you're talking about the split from the Marxist Party - used to be Healyites. Now, the old Healyite organisation, the SLL/WRP, maintained a sort of literary orthodoxy, particularly in their dispute with Pablo, Frank and later Lambert. But their practice, like the practice of many ostensibly Trotskyist parties, had nothing to do with the Trotskyism of Trotsky or Cannon.

And the Communist League, at this point, were no longer Healyites, although they still worshiped old Gerry. Like the badly misnamed Workers' Power group, they turned to the "anti-capitalist" and "anti-globalisation" movements, and pretty much abandoned any kind of Marxism, even the most degenerated.

Now, obviously the Communist League didn't do very well in the elections. But this doesn't mean the workers rejected them - it means the voters did. Many voters are not proletarians and many proletarians don't vote. In fact the constant conflation of voters and proletarians by the SPGB really accounts for a lot of their strange positions.

In fact, "a couple of years ago" couldn't have been later than 2005, since the Communist League dissolved into the fairly formless "A World to Win" in that year. I just had a look at their site - "no to corporate power, yes to people's power". It's a good thing Marx is dead or these populist kiddies banging on about "corporations" and "the people" would give the old man a heart attack.
Your assumptions are completely incorrect. I'm not talking about that Communist League which started in 1990, I'm talking about the Communist League which started in 1988 and which stood in general elections in 2010 and 2012.



Well aren't you proud. This really reeks of the lowest sort of politicking - "so, how many votes did you get, Dave?"
I'm not proud, but bricolage was saying the SPGB claimed beating TUSC was a success. I'm saying in terms of a first past the post election, success is winning the election, losing candidates are degrees of unsuccessfulness.



I mean - we can't state how the SPGB might help the seizure of state power because the SPGB, as an organisation, is incapable of helping. For the SPGB to help it would have to abandon pretty much everything that makes it distinct. In general, though, it's not that we don't have a strategy - our strategy has always been the same. Building the revolutionary workers' party, agitating for rank-and-file militancy in the unions and similar organisations, fighting for reforms from a revolutionary perspective, eventually building organs of dual power and smashing the bourgeois state.
What makes the SPGB distinct is the SPGB strategy is building the revolutionary socialist party, agitating for trade unions to represent their members best interests in respect of wages and conditions, fighting against illusions in futile reforms from a revolutionary perspective, immediately capturing political power so that the state (bourgeois or 'workers') can wither away. Trots have been spectacularly bad at building the revolutionary workers' party and in militant unions.

[Hit The North]

Again, the myth is repeated. How does aiming at capturing political power including by contesting elections to legislatures count as passive propaganda? It doesn't. How does contesting elections prove no strategy? It doesn't.


No, the myth-making is yours and is contained in the sentence, "How does aiming at capturing political power including by contesting elections to legislatures count as passive propaganda?"

The SPGB does not aim at capturing political power. How can it, when it fields such a small number of candidates (1? 2? 3?) in general elections? It is clear that the SPGB's electoral strategy is merely symbolic rather than a serious attempt to contest power. It is, as its critics lament, abstract propaganda. The SPGB never wages serious political campaigns but, rather, pride themselves on stepping back from such grubby affairs.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Posting two topics about two campaigns in two major nationwide (or continent-wide) elections to parliamentary legislatures is not excessive, same goes for CWI campaigns such as Sawant in elections. Elections are not necessarily a bad thing, there are plenty of topics about very small protests and small strikes. Why should election campaigns be any different?

Because strikes and protests - some forms of protests at least - are examples of proletarian militancy, which election campaigns, by themselves, are decidedly not. I have been just as critical of people who post threads about nonsense like liberal-led marches, or hashtags trending on Twitter.


Again, the myth is repeated. How does aiming at capturing political power including by contesting elections to legislatures count as passive propaganda? It doesn't.

This is, interestingly, the second time you insinuate that the SPGB aims to capture political power through legislature, which is somewhat at variance with the usual pious SPGB line about using parliament merely to safeguard the spontaneous uprising that will coincide with the SPGB winning an election.

Anyway, it isn't the commitment to winning elections - as bizarre as it is for an ostensibly socialist party to adhere to the parliamentary road after the events in postwar Germany etc. - that makes the SPGB propaganda passive and sterile, it's the SPGB approach to the dissemination of the propaganda - election campaigns and debates - and the content of the propaganda (which, to be honest, often sounds like a used car salesman trying to sell a particularly dubious vehicle).


How does contesting elections prove no strategy? It doesn't.

Again, I don't claim that the SPGB have no strategy because they contest elections, I claim they have no strategy because, well, they have never outlined any sort of strategy for the seizure of power beyond "winning an election", unless you count the fact that they sometimes make vague noises about some sort of uprising - in fact they don't call it an uprising, that would probably turn off many SPGB supporters (uprisings are usually violent affairs, with people getting shot and bayoneted, and we can't have that, no?) - that would coincide with an SPGB victory. Which is a more polite equivalent of saying "it's going to happen, but fuck it, we have no idea how it's going to happen".


Also could you point out where the SPGB have been in favour of 'immediate transition to the higher phase of the communist society'?

Perhaps tomorrow - I don't feel like going through the somewhat broken SPGB site now. It really doesn't matter either way. The SPGB can proclaim themselves in favour of immediately abolishing money and giving everyone free ponies and throwing all accountants into the sun, the reality of the situation is that, in the unlikely event that the SPGB won an election, they would have to manage capitalism.


Your assumptions are completely incorrect. I'm not talking about that Communist League which started in 1990, I'm talking about the Communist League which started in 1988 and which stood in general elections in 2010 and 2012.

Ah, so as an example of orthodox Trotskyism (hey, it's a pretentious name, but don't blame us, that's how third-campists and others call us), you give... the British affiliate (or rather, clone) of a party that renounced Trotskyism.

Fair enough.

The point was, of course, that the failure of the Communist League in the elections doesn't mean that the workers rejected their deluded Castroism, but that the voters did. Voters and workers aren't the same group.


I'm not proud, but bricolage was saying the SPGB claimed beating TUSC was a success. I'm saying in terms of a first past the post election, success is winning the election, losing candidates are degrees of unsuccessfulness.

In fact bricolage claimed that certain SPGB members considered beating TUSC a success, an impression you have done nothing to dispel.


What makes the SPGB distinct is the SPGB strategy is building the revolutionary socialist party [...]

No, the SPGB strategy is building the SPGB, as one of the parties participating in the bourgeois democracy, not a workers' party as the political, revolutionary organisation of the class-conscious elements of the class.


agitating for trade unions to represent their members best interests in respect of wages and conditions

I think you're deluding yourself. Even the erstwhile WRP had more of an industrial base, including after the departure of the WSL, than the SPGB. In fact the industrial fraction of the SPGB numbers precisely zero people.


fighting against illusions in futile reforms from a revolutionary perspective

But, as per all of the above, no group can be called revolutionary that calls for working through the bourgeois state, instead of smashing it. The SPGB doesn't fight against reformist illusions, it engenders them by insisting that any fight for reforms is reformist - and conversely that reformists are the only ones that fight for meaningful reforms. In fact the SPGB presents a picture of sterile, academic, semi-religious socialism, with nothing to offer to either the proletariat or those minorities that are the natural allies of the proletariat, that would send any sane man running to the reformist camp.


immediately capturing political power so that the state (bourgeois or 'workers') can wither away.

That one sentence alone shows how loose the SPGB's grasp of Marxist theory is. You equate the bourgeois state with the proletarian one and then suggest that it will wither away because the SPGB won an election. This is no longer idealism, this is sheer lunacy, or rather, dishonesty.


Trots have been spectacularly bad at building the revolutionary workers' party and in militant unions.

The British Trots, who never made a serious study of the French Turn and who still follow the suicidal policy of Healy's The Club group, haven't. Things were different in e.g. Ceylon or Vietnam.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

As Engels put it 'in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work that we are now pursuing, '.

This doesn't answer the question. As you yourself have said, the SPGB has admitted that its current strategy has failed. Why are they continuing with it? An out-of-context quote from a 150 year old dead guy doesn't change anything!

There's a phrase people use sometimes: 'practice makes perfect'. But by itself it's not necessarily true. Rather, 'perfect practice makes perfect'. Continuing to practice the same strategy for hundreds of years makes it no more likely to succeed if it is the wrong strategy, which the SPGBs strategy clear is, as it admits itself.


Are you criticising voting, elections, parliamentary elections or measuring SPGB support on any of these here, I'm not sure?

I'm criticising the way in which the SPGB interacts with parliamentary elections. Elections are an opportunity for exposure of our propaganda, they are not some sort of ends in themselves, nor are bourgeois elections a genuine measure of support, so it is wholly idealistic to expect a country like Britain to ever be in a position where anywhere near a majority of workers vote for a revolutionary party.


It's a shame workers don't support socialism, but the SPGB is one of the biggest parties describing itself as Marxist and working hard (particularly in the simultaneous Euro elections) in the hope that other workers will join the SPGB and help.

This just won't do. It's not 'a shame workers don't support socialism'. That's no analysis. We can't just shrug our shoulders and say 'oh, it's a shame'. There are material and organisational reasons socialism isn't a popular idea; material insofar as capitalism is still able to buy off a critical mass of the working class in developed countries (and to adequately control and dampen the political instincts of those who it cannot buy off), and organisational insofar as the revolutionary aspects of the 'left' lack size, credence, and skills learned from experience.

That the SPGB is one of the bigger parts of this lumpen aspect of revolutionary politics is not really a positive. Indeed, the SPGB has existed for over a century now and, honestly, is it any less irrelevant than when it came into existence?

[RedWorker]

This looks like a case of useless irrelevant criticism by what are probably arm-chair so-called revolutionaries.

The SPGB has a few hundred supporters, and they're trying to do something. There's no need to throw these useless arguments of but nobody likes them, they're not successful, or whatever at them.

I suppose I'm going to get some angry reply of how you guys are so involved in politics and raising class conciousness. :laugh::laugh::laugh:

If you guys have a better method of achieving socialism, then by all means support it, but I'm sure that the SPGB is being much more successful in supporting socialism than you currently are. It's one of the few parties which are still truly socialist and don't just devolve into some state capitalist or pseudo-communist party.

[Red Deathy]

If workers aren't prepared to do something as little as (waste their) vote for socialism, how can we expect them to do something more onerous? Elections provide an excellent information gathering resource, so the social forces in play can test one anothers strength. I think it was Otto Neurath who defined democracy between enemies as being like an encounter between military forces where they count up one anothers guns, and decide the biggest side would win anyway.

The fact that the working class don't give their voting support to socialism is as valuable to know as finding the numbers who will. Any movement/idea/organisation that refuses to avail itself of this simple information gathering device is frankly foolish, and even more frankly seems to be more about avoiding having delusions protected by ignorance rather than upholding any significant strategic or ideological principle. It's easier to believe in silent majorities than to realise that radicals and socialists are utterly outgunned by the working class' rock solid support for capitalism.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

This looks like a case of useless irrelevant criticism by what are probably arm-chair so-called revolutionaries.

The SPGB has a few hundred supporters, and they're trying to do something. There's no need to throw these useless arguments of but nobody likes them, they're not successful, or whatever at them.

I suppose I'm going to get some angry reply of how you guys are so involved in politics and raising class conciousness. :laugh::laugh::laugh:

No, because this topic is about the SPGB, not about Vladimir Innit Lenin, Vincent West, Hit the North and others. Quite frankly, we might all be shit, but that doesn't mean the SPGB are not shit. Or that they are even socialist.

And who said that nobody likes the SPGB? In fact this seems to be the case, probably due to their immense arrogance, but no one has used this as an argument against the SPGB. It might have been the case that they have excellent politics, and that nobody likes them. However, what seems to be the case is that nobody likes them, and that their politics are a confused adaptation to Little England bourgeois-democratic piety.


If you guys have a better method of achieving socialism, then by all means support it, but I'm sure that the SPGB is being much more successful in supporting socialism than you currently are. It's one of the few parties which are still truly socialist and don't just devolve into some state capitalist or pseudo-communist party.

Ha, and what is a "state capitalist" party? Some people think they can avoid serious analysis by just shouting "state capitalism!" at every conceivable opportunity.


If workers aren't prepared to do something as little as (waste their) vote for socialism, how can we expect them to do something more onerous?

More onerous actions have, or should have, an actual positive effect in the long term, unlike the dead-end strategy of placing SPGB representatives in the parliament. And any class-conscious worker is an inveterate enemy of any party that aims to capture the bourgeois state instead of smashing it.

[The Feral Underclass]

What's your position on anti-fascism?

[Red Deathy]

More onerous actions have, or should have, an actual positive effect in the long term, unlike the dead-end strategy of placing SPGB representatives in the parliament. And any class-conscious worker is an inveterate enemy of any party that aims to capture the bourgeois state instead of smashing it.That's as may be, but how can we expect anyone to carry through such onerous actions (and, please, do name three) if they aren't even prepared to vote? Mightn't they be emboldened to know there are ten thousand fellow socialists in their town, instead of thinking it's just them in their workplace/campaign? Isn't knowledge a teensie bit more useful than vapid sloganising? I mean, just a little? one iota? Maybe?

Anyway, I'd suggest that subordinating the burgey-wah state to the direct democracy of the workers movement is the surest way to efficiently smash it. But what would I know....

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

That's as may be, but how can we expect anyone to carry through such onerous actions (and, please, do name three) if they aren't even prepared to vote? Mightn't they be emboldened to know there are ten thousand fellow socialists in their town, instead of thinking it's just them in their workplace/campaign? Isn't knowledge a teensie bit more useful than vapid sloganising? I mean, just a little? one iota? Maybe?

Three kinds of actions that are more productive than voting? I could name pretty much anything, given what a dead end voting is, but alright, strikes, workplace occupations, hot-cargoing. See, that wasn't difficult.

Also, good grief, workers "aren't even prepared to vote"? Workers aren't obliged to vote for your sect. The arrogance of this is astounding - and apparently you think that the best way of gauging support for socialism is to ask people to vote for you. Ha! Perhaps you should find some way of data-collection that doesn't have the potential to leave your group in power in the bourgeois state.


Anyway, I'd suggest that subordinating the burgey-wah state to the direct democracy of the workers movement is the surest way to efficiently smash it. But what would I know....

Apparently nothing about Bernstein, Hilferding and other social-democrats in the modern sense who promised to do just that. Oh, and what direct democracy? The one in the Parliament?

[The Idler]

No, the myth-making is yours and is contained in the sentence, "How does aiming at capturing political power including by contesting elections to legislatures count as passive propaganda?"

The SPGB does not aim at capturing political power. How can it, when it fields such a small number of candidates (1? 2? 3?) in general elections? It is clear that the SPGB's electoral strategy is merely symbolic rather than a serious attempt to contest power. It is, as its critics lament, abstract propaganda. The SPGB never wages serious political campaigns but, rather, pride themselves on stepping back from such grubby affairs.
In the South East England region constituency alone, the SPGB are looking at getting the message for socialism out to a million people.

Because strikes and protests - some forms of protests at least - are examples of proletarian militancy, which election campaigns, by themselves, are decidedly not. I have been just as critical of people who post threads about nonsense like liberal-led marches, or hashtags trending on Twitter.The SPGB are not engaging in election campaigns, by itself.




This is, interestingly, the second time you insinuate that the SPGB aims to capture political power through legislature, which is somewhat at variance with the usual pious SPGB line about using parliament merely to safeguard the spontaneous uprising that will coincide with the SPGB winning an election.
Contesting elections to legislatures is part of the strategy to safeguard revolutionary socialism and capturing political power. I said it includes contesting elections, not that is amounts to capturing political power, it clearly doesn't by itself.

Anyway, it isn't the commitment to winning elections - as bizarre as it is for an ostensibly socialist party to adhere to the parliamentary road after the events in postwar Germany etc. - that makes the SPGB propaganda passive and sterile, it's the SPGB approach to the dissemination of the propaganda - election campaigns and debates - and the content of the propaganda (which, to be honest, often sounds like a used car salesman trying to sell a particularly dubious vehicle).What's more analogous to a used car being hawked is historical failures implemented in the 20th Century, being tried to sell on again. Probably a Lada Riva would be appropriate.




Again, I don't claim that the SPGB have no strategy because they contest elections, I claim they have no strategy because, well, they have never outlined any sort of strategy for the seizure of power beyond "winning an election", unless you count the fact that they sometimes make vague noises about some sort of uprising - in fact they don't call it an uprising, that would probably turn off many SPGB supporters (uprisings are usually violent affairs, with people getting shot and bayoneted, and we can't have that, no?) - that would coincide with an SPGB victory. Which is a more polite equivalent of saying "it's going to happen, but fuck it, we have no idea how it's going to happen".Have you ever been shot or bayoneted? It's not exactly something to celebrate. Anyway, the SPGB has always rejected pacifism, but endeavoured to hasten a revolution for socialism whilst minimising harm to workers. The armchair fans of Eisenstein might not understand this but they can just go back to the menu and press play again.



Ah, so as an example of orthodox Trotskyism (hey, it's a pretentious name, but don't blame us, that's how third-campists and others call us), you give... the British affiliate (or rather, clone) of a party that renounced Trotskyism.

Fair enough.

The point was, of course, that the failure of the Communist League in the elections doesn't mean that the workers rejected their deluded Castroism, but that the voters did. Voters and workers aren't the same group. If I'm mistaken on Communist League (1988) and Trotsky, fair enough.



In fact bricolage claimed that certain SPGB members considered beating TUSC a success, an impression you have done nothing to dispel.
I'm not 'certain SPGB members'. Beating TUSC but losing the election is not a success in electoral terms.



No, the SPGB strategy is building the SPGB, as one of the parties participating in the bourgeois democracy, not a workers' party as the political, revolutionary organisation of the class-conscious elements of the class.
The SPGB is composed of workers but is a revolutionary socialist party not something as vague as a 'workers party'.



I think you're deluding yourself. Even the erstwhile WRP had more of an industrial base, including after the departure of the WSL, than the SPGB. In fact the industrial fraction of the SPGB numbers precisely zero people.
And your evidence for this is what?



But, as per all of the above, no group can be called revolutionary that calls for working through the bourgeois state, instead of smashing it. The SPGB doesn't fight against reformist illusions, it engenders them by insisting that any fight for reforms is reformist - and conversely that reformists are the only ones that fight for meaningful reforms. In fact the SPGB presents a picture of sterile, academic, semi-religious socialism, with nothing to offer to either the proletariat or those minorities that are the natural allies of the proletariat, that would send any sane man running to the reformist camp.Particular minorities being natural allies of the proletariat? The opportunism of this statement stinks.
You're arguing revolutionaries can fight for reforms but election candidates cannot fight for revolution or revolutionaries cannot participate in elections. Can you see the contradiction here?





That one sentence alone shows how loose the SPGB's grasp of Marxist theory is. You equate the bourgeois state with the proletarian one and then suggest that it will wither away because the SPGB won an election. This is no longer idealism, this is sheer lunacy, or rather, dishonesty.A socialist (you use the term proletarian) state with socialist prisons, a socialist army, navy and air force, socialist taxes is an oxymoron. There can be no such thing, its a contradiction in terms. This is too statist and yet criticising is being done of the SPGB for participating in elections.




This doesn't answer the question. As you yourself have said, the SPGB has admitted that its current strategy has failed. Why are they continuing with it? An out-of-context quote from a 150 year old dead guy doesn't change anything!

There's a phrase people use sometimes: 'practice makes perfect'. But by itself it's not necessarily true. Rather, 'perfect practice makes perfect'. Continuing to practice the same strategy for hundreds of years makes it no more likely to succeed if it is the wrong strategy, which the SPGBs strategy clear is, as it admits itself.

Every strategy for socialism has been unsuccessful but the SPGB pursue the least worst strategy.


I'm criticising the way in which the SPGB interacts with parliamentary elections. Elections are an opportunity for exposure of our propaganda, they are not some sort of ends in themselves, nor are bourgeois elections a genuine measure of support, so it is wholly idealistic to expect a country like Britain to ever be in a position where anywhere near a majority of workers vote for a revolutionary party.

The SPGB do not regard elections even successful ones as an end in themselves.


This just won't do. It's not 'a shame workers don't support socialism'. That's no analysis. We can't just shrug our shoulders and say 'oh, it's a shame'. There are material and organisational reasons socialism isn't a popular idea; material insofar as capitalism is still able to buy off a critical mass of the working class in developed countries (and to adequately control and dampen the political instincts of those who it cannot buy off), and organisational insofar as the revolutionary aspects of the 'left' lack size, credence, and skills learned from experience.

That the SPGB is one of the bigger parts of this lumpen aspect of revolutionary politics is not really a positive. Indeed, the SPGB has existed for over a century now and, honestly, is it any less irrelevant than when it came into existence?
I expect a country like Britain to be in a position where a a majority of workers vote for a revolutionary party. The SPGB are campaigning on this basis. They are not putting forward the defeatist notions about revolutionaries lacking size, credence and skills being put forward here.

[The Idler]

What's your position on anti-fascism?
This has been covered before but the SPGB aren't some self-appointed left-wing police force stamping out anyone they deem fascist from moving or speaking. The SPGB do however, pursue the most effective way at undermining fascist ideology by politically challenging it with socialism where tactically useful to do so (e.g. not debating one-man-band fascists). Many members in their capacities as workers would include in the very short-term forcibly resisting unwelcome physical encroachment of an organised fascist force. The SPGB have not self-appointed revolutionary socialists to police communities, or police speech or thought, the SPGB is not aspiring to be all of society. Anti-fascism does not distinguish socialists from other political currents, it is not unique to socialists. The above represents my position.

[The Feral Underclass]

I think I'll vote for the Labour party in that case.

[The Idler]

I think I'll vote for the Labour party in that case.
Yes, Labour are much more likely to form a government to further remove trade union and workers rights, curtail civil liberties, deploy troops in conflicts, break strikes whilst privatising welfare and playing nationalist cards (see Blue Labour, One Nation etc.) than a tiny handful of disorganised fascists. But at least Ed Milliband refused to debate Nigel Farage, eh.

[Red Deathy]

Three kinds of actions that are more productive than voting? I could name pretty much anything, given what a dead end voting is, but alright, strikes, workplace occupations, hot-cargoing. See, that wasn't difficult.

Also, good grief, workers "aren't even prepared to vote"? Workers aren't obliged to vote for your sect. The arrogance of this is astounding - and apparently you think that the best way of gauging support for socialism is to ask people to vote for you. Ha! Perhaps you should find some way of data-collection that doesn't have the potential to leave your group in power in the bourgeois state.I didn't say vote for The Socialist Party, but whatever organisation/movement is organising all those wonderful direct actions, to show their support, if only in a Sinn Fein manner and refusing to take their seats (coz voting was such a dead end for Sinn Fein, wasn't it?) If all those wonderful direct actions were happening, wouldn't they be strengthened by the expressed support of workers and elected officials (like in the St. Louis Commune? or even the Paris Commune?).

But they're not happening. Maybe if workers thought they weren't isolated they'd be prepared to take bolder action, but for that they need information. No other method is as comprehensive or effective.


Apparently nothing about Bernstein, Hilferding and other social-democrats in the modern sense who promised to do just that. Oh, and what direct democracy? The one in the Parliament?No, the one in the workers movement that controls the delegates in Parliament.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The SPGB are not engaging in election campaigns, by itself.

No, they also debate fascists and print their unreadable central organ (not that most "socialist" press is readable...). Of course, they do so in order to get more votes. And in any case, neither are examples of proletarian militancy.


Contesting elections to legislatures is part of the strategy to safeguard revolutionary socialism and capturing political power. I said it includes contesting elections, not that is amounts to capturing political power, it clearly doesn't by itself.

The point was, and let me just say that you have a remarkable talent for missing the point, whether on purpose or not, is that winning an election means assuming the task of administering the affairs of the bourgeois state. If that is part of your strategy for capturing state power (and what other parts are there? an uprising that you think will spontaneously happen because the SPGB won an election?), then for all your r-r-revolutionary rhetoric, you are Bernsteinians.


What's more analogous to a used car being hawked is historical failures implemented in the 20th Century, being tried to sell on again. Probably a Lada Riva would be appropriate.

Amusingly enough, the Lada was an alright car. Not as good as the equivalent Fiat models, true, but a decent enough vehicle. Of course, I suspect you don't actually know anyone who drove a Lada. Next thing you know you're going to criticise Democratic Germany because "they didn't have bananas".

Of course, the SPGB views the October Revolution as a failure - people got shot and bayoneted, no? The sacred Constituent Assembly was dissolved. Pogromist, whiteguards, interventionists and bandits were smashed and, horror of horrors, the industry was nationalised. But the problem is in the SPGB's schematic, semi-religious notion of socialism, not in the October Revolution.


Have you ever been shot or bayoneted? It's not exactly something to celebrate. Anyway, the SPGB has always rejected pacifism, but endeavoured to hasten a revolution for socialism whilst minimising harm to workers. The armchair fans of Eisenstein might not understand this but they can just go back to the menu and press play again.

I'd instruct you to do the same with your recordings of Question Time, but given how strong the SPGB fetish for parliaments is, I don't think that's a good idea, it'd just encourage you.

Of course being shot or bayoneted is unpleasant, but so is starving to death, dying of easily-preventable diseases, being beaten because you're Roma or gay etc. Yet the SPGB doesn't really give a toss about any of that. They assume some supra-class standpoint and cry crocodile tears every time a fascist gets their head bashed in or a bourgeois lackey gets shot. Communists, on the other hand, take the side of the proletariat. If the revolution means lining up every bourgeois and shooting them, so be it.


If I'm mistaken on Communist League (1988) and Trotsky, fair enough.

Once again, you manage to miss the point. Voters are not the same group as workers. Of course, as I recall it, you have this bizarre notion that workers make up something like 90% of the population in Britain, but that just shows that you've jumped off the bottom of the slippery slope, and have abandoned any sort of class analysis.


The SPGB is composed of workers but is a revolutionary socialist party not something as vague as a 'workers party'.

Except the notion of the workers' party is by no means vague. The workers' party is the political organisation of the conscious elements of the proletariat. It isn't a party in the bourgeois sense, as the SPGB is, but a political force for smashing class society. Honestly, this is pretty much part of the ABC of Marxism, but then again, so is a rejection of parliamentarianism.


And your evidence for this is what?

Apart from the fact that I know quite a few socialists from Britain, none of the public documents of the SPGB mention an industrial fraction.


Particular minorities being natural allies of the proletariat? The opportunism of this statement stinks.

There really is something surreal about being accused of opportunism by a supporter of a party that kisses up to anti-abortion bigots.

Now, those of us whose analysis of the class society isn't stuck in the Edwardian era - or indeed, those who read Engels's "On the Origin..." - realise that the oppression of women, and consequently of gay people etc. is the result of class society, so these minorities have an objective material interest in the overthrow of class society. Likewise with national minorities.

Not that I expect anyone who supports the SPGB's statements about women and lesbians to understand that.


You're arguing revolutionaries can fight for reforms but election candidates cannot fight for revolution or revolutionaries cannot participate in elections. Can you see the contradiction here?

I never said revolutionaries can't participate in election, although that is strategically unsound in the current period, but that no revolutionary can participate in elections in order to seize power over the bourgeois state, administering it instead of smashing it.

Revolutionaries fight for the bourgeois parliament to be smashed and destroyed, which would probably send the SPGB into hysterical fits.


A socialist (you use the term proletarian) state with socialist prisons, a socialist army, navy and air force, socialist taxes is an oxymoron. There can be no such thing, its a contradiction in terms. This is too statist and yet criticising is being done of the SPGB for participating in elections.

Except the proletarian state is not the same as a "socialist" state, whatever that means. Good grief, at least browse through the Critique of the Gotha Programme before calling yourself a Marxist, it's not a long work.


I didn't say vote for The Socialist Party, but whatever organisation/movement is organising all those wonderful direct actions, to show their support, if only in a Sinn Fein manner and refusing to take their seats (coz voting was such a dead end for Sinn Fein, wasn't it?) If all those wonderful direct actions were happening, wouldn't they be strengthened by the expressed support of workers and elected officials (like in the St. Louis Commune? or even the Paris Commune?).

Sinn Fein was, is, and will remain, a bourgeois party. The fact that you compare bourgeois parties like Sinn Fein with a workers' party - and your earlier reference to the social-democrat Neurath - really speak volumes.


But they're not happening. Maybe if workers thought they weren't isolated they'd be prepared to take bolder action, but for that they need information. No other method is as comprehensive or effective.

That must be why the election of sewer socialists in America resulted in a massive spike in militant working-class action, and why the recent election of Sawant has put America on the brink of a revolutionary situation.


No, the one in the workers movement that controls the delegates in Parliament.

How?

[Red Deathy]

Sinn Fein was, is, and will remain, a bourgeois party. The fact that you compare bourgeois parties like Sinn Fein with a workers' party - and your earlier reference to the social-democrat Neurath - really speak volumes.Last I checked, borgy-way parties used bullets and bayonets too, so they must be out as revolutionary tools? I take it if Neurath said the sky is blue you'd automatically start denying that because he was a social democrat? There is a difference between the annunciator of a statement and its truth, something that has been known since it was discovered that all Yorkshiremen are liars.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Last I checked, borgy-way parties used bullets and bayonets too, so they must be out as revolutionary tools?

You're missing the point. Parliamentary methods worked for Sinn Fein because Sinn Fein wants to administer the capitalist system in a specific way. Is that what the SPGB wants? Ostensibly not. So you can't point at Sinn Fein as an example of successful parliamentarianism.


I take it if Neurath said the sky is blue you'd automatically start denying that because he was a social democrat? There is a difference between the annunciator of a statement and its truth, something that has been known since it was discovered that all Yorkshiremen are liars.

What an incredibly schematic, idealist conception of discourse. I can't say that I'm surprised. Of course, when it comes to the colour of the sky, I have no particular reason to distrust Neurath. But when it comes to politics, I fully expect that Neurath's political and class standpoint will be reflected in his ideas. Ultimately, if you're absorbing ideas from social democrats etc., that is indicative of deep problems with your politics.

[Comrade Jacob]

Will you be running in Stirlingshire?

[Red Deathy]

You're missing the point. Parliamentary methods worked for Sinn Fein because Sinn Fein wants to administer the capitalist system in a specific way. Is that what the SPGB wants? Ostensibly not. So you can't point at Sinn Fein as an example of successful parliamentarianism.But that's the point, and the difference, the SP is not standing to administer capitalism, ballots and bullets are just means. But Sinn Fein did not take over a state as they found it, they used the ballot to dissolve the old political order.


What an incredibly schematic, idealist conception of discourse. I can't say that I'm surprised. Of course, when it comes to the colour of the sky, I have no particular reason to distrust Neurath. But when it comes to politics, I fully expect that Neurath's political and class standpoint will be reflected in his ideas. Ultimately, if you're absorbing ideas from social democrats etc., that is indicative of deep problems with your politics.I'm not sure if the Minister of PLanning in the Bavarian Soviet is an exemplar of burgerlike legality, but that's an aside (and also he was an advocate of barrack socialism, so, I don't consider him to be really close top me politically: but his discussion of the difference of democracy between friends and democracy between enemies I think holds weight in it's own right. That, is, incidentally, a thoroughly materialist approach to ideas and concepts).

[The Idler]

No, they also debate fascists and print their unreadable central organ (not that most "socialist" press is readable...). Of course, they do so in order to get more votes. And in any case, neither are examples of proletarian militancy.
Proletarian militancy in itself is not socialist. I've read other 'socialist' press and the SPGB mag is certainly quite readable. It doesn't come across like a parody of itself like Proletarian Democracy (http://proletariandemocracy.wordpress.com/) which you would probably prefer as it contains more proletarian militancy. The circulation of the SPGB mag, especially compared to others, bears this out. The SPGB activities are not to get more votes. Why do you think the SPGB is the only party who says 'if you don't understand and want what we want, then do not vote for us'?



The point was, and let me just say that you have a remarkable talent for missing the point, whether on purpose or not, is that winning an election means assuming the task of administering the affairs of the bourgeois state. If that is part of your strategy for capturing state power (and what other parts are there? an uprising that you think will spontaneously happen because the SPGB won an election?), then for all your r-r-revolutionary rhetoric, you are Bernsteinians.
William Morris said we will use Parliament as dung heap if we want. This is the attitude shared by many SPGB members to parliamentarism. This was the same attitude that french impossibilist Jules Guesde (who formed the French Workers Party with help from Marx) held even after he was elected and criticised Jean Jaures for his parliamentarism and participation in the 'bourgeois state'.




Of course, the SPGB views the October Revolution as a failure - people got shot and bayoneted, no? The sacred Constituent Assembly was dissolved. Pogromist, whiteguards, interventionists and bandits were smashed and, horror of horrors, the industry was nationalised. But the problem is in the SPGB's schematic, semi-religious notion of socialism, not in the October Revolution.

A failure at what? Industrialising a feudal country? Getting rid of a monarchical ruling class? Ending serfdom and introducing wage labour? Growing the economy? Making English translations of Marx widely available? Withdrawal from the futility of World War I? I'd say it was pretty successful on those terms and the SPGB thought so to being the only British socialist publication to carry the Bolshevik statement on World War I. The SPGB have always rejected a scheme for socialism. Being shot at or bayoneted may be unavoidable but only the foolhardy keyboard warrior would be coy about stating being shot or bayoneted is a bad thing and should be minimised or avoided if at all possible.


I'd instruct you to do the same with your recordings of Question Time, but given how strong the SPGB fetish for parliaments is, I don't think that's a good idea, it'd just encourage you.

Of course being shot or bayoneted is unpleasant, but so is starving to death, dying of easily-preventable diseases, being beaten because you're Roma or gay etc. Yet the SPGB doesn't really give a toss about any of that. They assume some supra-class standpoint and cry crocodile tears every time a fascist gets their head bashed in or a bourgeois lackey gets shot. Communists, on the other hand, take the side of the proletariat. If the revolution means lining up every bourgeois and shooting them, so be it.
By unreadable did you mean unread, because if you bothered to look at the latest issue, the May 2014 issue has an article about starvation (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1317-may-2014/rant-about-%E2%80%98right-food%E2%80%99). April 2014 mentions poverty and ill health (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/voice-back). March 2014 condemns pogroms against immigrants (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1315-march-2014/%E2%80%98immigrants%E2%80%99-voice-past).
The cursory glance at what SPGB material you have read alone should discredit what you say.
If you could be bothered to actually read what you are criticising you could even read April 2014 issue's 'What do we mean by revolution' (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/what-do-we-mean-revolution).



Once again, you manage to miss the point. Voters are not the same group as workers. Of course, as I recall it, you have this bizarre notion that workers make up something like 90% of the population in Britain, but that just shows that you've jumped off the bottom of the slippery slope, and have abandoned any sort of class analysis.
Obviously its not that bizarre since "we are the 99%" was adopted quite widely.
The SPGB (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1288-december-2011/cooking-books-%E2%80%9Cwe-are-99-percent%E2%80%9D) 'define the working class as everyone who, owning no means or instruments of production, is obliged by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary to live or, otherwise, to depend on state handouts. In a developed part of the world such as Britain this amounts to about 90 percent of households and this is the group we look to end capitalism because they have a material interest in doing so. The other 10 percent is made up of the 1 percent of capitalists and 7-9 percent of “self-employed” (not that we’ve anything against most of them as they don’t exploit the working class). The trouble is “We Are The 93 percent” is not quite so snappy a slogan.'



Except the notion of the workers' party is by no means vague. The workers' party is the political organisation of the conscious elements of the proletariat. It isn't a party in the bourgeois sense, as the SPGB is, but a political force for smashing class society. Honestly, this is pretty much part of the ABC of Marxism, but then again, so is a rejection of parliamentarianism.
This is just workerism and rhetoric about 'smashing' things. Unlike 'workers' parties, the SPGB is for revolutionary socialism and says so explicitly. It organises on this basis in the same way all working-class organisations and socialist parties have done so historically. In fact unlike others, the SPGB take decisions in the same way trade unions historically have done. Not parliamentarism.



Apart from the fact that I know quite a few socialists from Britain, none of the public documents of the SPGB mention an industrial fraction.
There is a qualitative difference between members in trade unions and an industrial fraction. Next thing you will be calling for s-s-s-trikes you know to be unwinnable to teach the workers through experience. Thankfully the SPGB aren't arrogant enough to entertain such patronising nonsense as this teaching workers on unwinnable strikes through experience.



There really is something surreal about being accused of opportunism by a supporter of a party that kisses up to anti-abortion bigots.
Never has this been the SPGB case.

Now, those of us whose analysis of the class society isn't stuck in the Edwardian era - or indeed, those who read Engels's "On the Origin..." - realise that the oppression of women, and consequently of gay people etc. is the result of class society, so these minorities have an objective material interest in the overthrow of class society. Likewise with national minorities. Workers everywhere have an objective interest in overthrowing class society. Minorities may be workers but whether they want to overthrow class society is dependent on whether they want to support socialism.


Not that I expect anyone who supports the SPGB's statements about women and lesbians to understand that.
You're reading into the SPGB what you want to think about the SPGB and its inaccurate and incorrect.



I never said revolutionaries can't participate in election, although that is strategically unsound in the current period, but that no revolutionary can participate in elections in order to seize power over the bourgeois state, administering it instead of smashing it.

Revolutionaries fight for the bourgeois parliament to be smashed and destroyed, which would probably send the SPGB into hysterical fits.The SPGB wish to do away with the state not administer it. 'Smashing' the state, without sufficient support (workers bothering even something as simple and easy as to vote might be a good indicator in the current period) will end up with those attempting to 'smash' the state, being 'smashed' by the state itself. Think the Paris Commune.




Except the proletarian state is not the same as a "socialist" state, whatever that means. Good grief, at least browse through the Critique of the Gotha Programme before calling yourself a Marxist, it's not a long work.
Now who's being schematic and semi-religious? And this scheme from 1875 not even the Edwardian era.






That must be why the election of sewer socialists in America resulted in a massive spike in militant working-class action, and why the recent election of Sawant has put America on the brink of a revolutionary situation.


Militant working-class action does not equate to a socialist revolutionary situation. This is idealist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

This looks like a case of useless irrelevant criticism by what are probably arm-chair so-called revolutionaries.

One can only assume that your presumption that anybody who disagrees with mindless, unsuccessful activism is an 'armchair revolutionary' is merely projecting their own perceived failings onto those they wish to criticise.

The notion that every politically conscious, revolutionary worker is either a paper-seller/full-time party bureaucrat, or else an armchair revolutionary, is null and void as a critique or analysis, and is bound to the tired, old politics of the revolutionary party made up of a caste of supposedly enlightened professional revolutionaries.


The SPGB has a few hundred supporters, and they're trying to do something.

Well as long as they're trying. Cos, y'know, i'm actually not trying at all. Definitely not.


There's no need to throw these useless arguments of but nobody likes them, they're not successful, or whatever at them.

I would have thought that popularity and success are two of the more important attributes for a political party.



If you guys have a better method of achieving socialism, then by all means support it, but I'm sure that the SPGB is being much more successful in supporting socialism than you currently are.

I believe in this thread we have been discussing the failure of the SPGB to make even the slightest imprint on the political consciousness of the working class, so no, they have not been even the slightest bit successful in 'supporting socialism'.


It's one of the few parties which are still truly socialist and don't just devolve into some state capitalist or pseudo-communist party.

But the point isn't about maintaining socialist purity, it's about transforming society towards being a communist one. So well done on the SPGB for not supporting dictatorship and baby-eating, i'm sure they're one of the nice guys in terms of sticking to their principles, but sadly they have shown absolutely no capabilities for actually being a useful, ruthless, and organised group that will have any sort of noticeable impact on the development of political consciousness amongst the wider working class. A few hundred existing supporters does not change this.

[The Idler]

Will you be running in Stirlingshire?
No but the Glasgow Day School of the SPGB is next weekend.

One can only assume that your presumption that anybody who disagrees with mindless, unsuccessful activism is an 'armchair revolutionary' is merely projecting their own perceived failings onto those they wish to criticise.
Well the first replies included 'Because it worked so well last time around...' (bricolage), 'I don't know what a better way might be, maybe posting another five threads about these sub-reformist election campaigns, maybe one for each borough of the United Kingdom.' Vincent West and 'I don't have an answer on 'capturing political power for socialism' at the moment but neither do SPGB, however I'm not repeating the same tactic that has failed for the last 100+ years' (bricolage).
I think it's fair to say this criticism is fairly useless and not exactly constructive.

The notion that every politically conscious, revolutionary worker is either a paper-seller/full-time party bureaucrat, or else an armchair revolutionary, is null and void as a critique or analysis, and is bound to the tired, old politics of the revolutionary party made up of a caste of supposedly enlightened professional revolutionaries.
I don't think RedWorker is counterposing armchair keyboard critics with full-time professional revolutionary bureaucrats, of which there are none in the SPGB anyway.



Well as long as they're trying. Cos, y'know, i'm actually not trying at all. Definitely not.
I think it's fair to say many ostensibly revolutionary groups are trying, but the SPGB are one of the larger of these groups and contesting elections on explicitly revolutionary socialist platforms and getting criticised for valid tactics which are the same as some groups and different to others.




I would have thought that popularity and success are two of the more important attributes for a political party.

Like you said earlier the question is what are the material reasons, that the support of various parties is at the levels that it is?



I believe in this thread we have been discussing the failure of the SPGB to make even the slightest imprint on the political consciousness of the working class, so no, they have not been even the slightest bit successful in 'supporting socialism'.

Without comparison to politics and history generally, it is all a bit abstract.


But the point isn't about maintaining socialist purity, it's about transforming society towards being a communist one. So well done on the SPGB for not supporting dictatorship and baby-eating, i'm sure they're one of the nice guys in terms of sticking to their principles, but sadly they have shown absolutely no capabilities for actually being a useful, ruthless, and organised group that will have any sort of noticeable impact on the development of political consciousness amongst the wider working class. A few hundred existing supporters does not change this.
Some useful questions might be why have the SPGB persisted so long, and why are they contesting elections, where a myriad of other much smaller groups are not. Why are SPGB contesting major elections, when you and I are sitting at our keyboards?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Proletarian militancy in itself is not socialist.

No, but socialism is necessarily based on proletarian militancy.


I've read other 'socialist' press and the SPGB mag is certainly quite readable. It doesn't come across like a parody of itself like Proletarian Democracy (http://proletariandemocracy.wordpress.com/) which you would probably prefer as it contains more proletarian militancy.

I hate to burst your bubble, but that site is a, very bad, parody. For a moment I thought you were talking about Revolutionary Democracy, the Indian Hoxhaist periodical. I like Revolutionary Democracy - whenever I am faced with problems I turn to the poetry pages of Revolutionary Democracy and realise that there are people with even worse problems, although as a rule they are not aware of them. That said, the Hoxhaists might be far from what I would term consistent socialism, but the pious liberal nonsense of the SPGB is far, far worse.

That, however, has nothing to do with the readability of the Socialist Standard, which is bad regardless of the politics of the SPGB.


William Morris said we will use Parliament as dung heap if we want. This is the attitude shared by many SPGB members to parliamentarism. This was the same attitude that french impossibilist Jules Guesde (who formed the French Workers Party with help from Marx) held even after he was elected and criticised Jean Jaures for his parliamentarism and participation in the 'bourgeois state'.

Good grief, it's like you people can't help yourself. Perhaps keeping quiet about Guesde, who was roundly criticised by Marx for failing to see the importance of struggle for reform, would have been more prudent for you. In any case, Guesde and the "Guesdists" stood in elections, not in order to win them and win the right to administer the bourgeois state for four years, as the SPGB does, but in order to use bourgeois parliaments as tribunes for socialist propaganda. As, for that matter, did the Bolsheviks.

And why 'bourgeois state'? Why has another basic Marxist term found itself in inverted commas? The SPGB acts as if the state is not an expression of class contradictions, a class dictatorship - as their laughable obsession with "legitimacy" attests to - but usually they don't state so openly.


A failure at what? Industrialising a feudal country? Getting rid of a monarchical ruling class? Ending serfdom and introducing wage labour? Growing the economy? Making English translations of Marx widely available? Withdrawal from the futility of World War I? I'd say it was pretty successful on those terms and the SPGB thought so to being the only British socialist publication to carry the Bolshevik statement on World War I.

That one incident doesn't lessen the significance of the Menshevik, whiteguard and pogromist literature the SPGB has printed or quoted approvingly. The point is that in Russia, the bourgeois state had been smashed. The SPGB refuses to recognise this, instead hanging onto the rotten corpse of the Russian bourgeois democracy, the Constituent Assembly.


The SPGB have always rejected a scheme for socialism.

That's unfortunate, given that their understanding of socialism is nothing more than a scheme.


Being shot at or bayoneted may be unavoidable but only the foolhardy keyboard warrior would be coy about stating being shot or bayoneted is a bad thing and should be minimised or avoided if at all possible.

First of all, you have absolutely no idea who I am, so the "keyboard warrior" insult is just daft, on several levels. Second, yes, indeed getting shot is rather annoying, and the proletariat should be shot as little as is possible.

However, anyone who thinks that we can have a "nice" revolution without anyone being shot, is either a well-meaning idiot, or a liberal who has no real desire for a revolution.

And notice that I said that the proletariat should be shot as little as possible. In most cases this means that, for a period, the bourgeoisie and their supporters should be shot as much as possible, as swiftly as possible, and as overwhelmingly as possible. Socialists are not some party "of the entire people", we are the party of the proletariat - the bourgeoisie are our enemies.


By unreadable did you mean unread, because if you bothered to look at the latest issue, the May 2014 issue has an article about starvation (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...-food%E2%80%99 (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1317-may-2014/rant-about-%E2%80%98right-food%E2%80%99)). April 2014 mentions poverty and ill health (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...014/voice-back (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/voice-back)). March 2014 condemns pogroms against immigrants (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...%99-voice-past (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1315-march-2014/%E2%80%98immigrants%E2%80%99-voice-past)).
The cursory glance at what SPGB material you have read alone should discredit what you say.

In fact I don't regularly read the SS, I am insane, but not quite to that extent. As for the articles you cite, however, one devotes a full sixth of a miscellaneous article to the observation that sometimes (!) being a proletarian impacts one's health negatively, one is an admitted rant about a fairly obscure UN report, "democratic choice" and, of course, e-e-evil corporations with their "chemically-rich" (what does the author propose we put in food, quark-gluon plasma?) food articles, and one mentions the pogroms against the Jews... in the nineteenth century. Not exactly encouraging. And in fact the last article clearly demonstrates how little the SPGB understands modern capitalism when it proclaims that:

"The employers pay as much as they have to pay, in order to carry out their profit-making enterprises. The employers pay scant attention to the cost of living, much less its quality. They pay for their workers what they have to on the open market. They do not care whether you are of 100 percent Anglo-Saxon stock, related to the best families in the land or just another ‘damned foreigner.’"

But in fact, the bourgeoisie pay the "damned foreigners" much less than "native" workers, which is one of the major structural causes of racism in the modern world. The SPGB probably thinks that racism is the result of people thinking bad thoughts, and has nothing to do with the class nature of society.

And, again, you've managed to miss the point. The SPGB can write pious nonsense about the lot of the poor, but when confronted with a movement that smashed the bourgeoisie, ended Russia's participation in an imperialist war, smashed the pogromists everywhere and gave the maximum possible autonomy to national minorities, secured the supply of cities with food etc., the SPGB... takes the side of the Mensheviks, of the whiteguards, of the interventionists.


If you could be bothered to actually read what you are criticising you could even read April 2014 issue's 'What do we mean by revolution' (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...ean-revolution (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2014/no-1316-april-2014/what-do-we-mean-revolution)).

So, from that article:

"In a politically and economically advanced capitalist country like Britain and most of Europe, a socialist majority can win control of the ‘executive power’ via elections."

This is nothing less than Bernsteinism, almost chemically pure Bernsteinism in fact. Bernstein himself didn't go as far as this at first!


Obviously its not that bizarre since "we are the 99%" was adopted quite widely.

Right, adopted by petit-bourgeois movements all over the world. Once again I can only smile as you make my case for me.


The SPGB (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...rcent%E2%80%9D (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1288-december-2011/cooking-books-%E2%80%9Cwe-are-99-percent%E2%80%9D)) 'define the working class as everyone who, owning no means or instruments of production, is obliged by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary to live or, otherwise, to depend on state handouts. In a developed part of the world such as Britain this amounts to about 90 percent of households and this is the group we look to end capitalism because they have a material interest in doing so. The other 10 percent is made up of the 1 percent of capitalists and 7-9 percent of “self-employed” (not that we’ve anything against most of them as they don’t exploit the working class). The trouble is “We Are The 93 percent” is not quite so snappy a slogan.'

I think even the writer of that article got bored by the end, and didn't even bother with the algebra, somehow getting 93% by subtracting 8-10% from 100%. Now, two things need to be said. First of all, where did the SPGB get these numbers? As I recall it in Britain, which is among the most developed capitalist countries, the number of the self-employed is on the order of 10%. Worldwide, I would be surprised if the number of proletarians exceeds 50%.

Second, the SPGB notion of the proletariat is obviously inadequate, since it includes not only the police etc., but managers, executives and even many ministers. This is why I said the SPGB had a schematic approach to socialism - instead of trying to understand the material phenomena that make up society on their own terms, in their complexity, they force the material realities of society into simple schema. So we end up with the nonsensical notion that the "vast majority" of people around the world are proletarian.

The statement that the SPGB "doesn't have anything against" the petite bourgeoisie speaks volumes.


This is just workerism and rhetoric about 'smashing' things. Unlike 'workers' parties, the SPGB is for revolutionary socialism and says so explicitly. It organises on this basis in the same way all working-class organisations and socialist parties have done so historically. In fact unlike others, the SPGB take decisions in the same way trade unions historically have done. Not parliamentarism.

You don't seem to understand what workerism is. Workerism is tailing the consciousness of the most reactionary strata of the proletariat, something that the SPGB, as I will show below, does copiously. Obviously this has nothing to do with the notion of the communists as the party of the proletariat - a workers' party which is not the same as bourgeois parties or socialist groups, even if they are called the Workers' Party or Labour Party or Party of Labour or whatever. It seems that the SPGB would rather that people forget that socialism is not some sort of ideology for the whole of humanity, but the ideology of the revolutionary proletariat.


There is a qualitative difference between members in trade unions and an industrial fraction.

Which was precisely my point. The SPGB doesn't have an industrial fraction.


Never has this been the SPGB case.

Except that, when your own R. Montague penned an article, amusingly called "Pro-life hypocrites" (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2002/no-1172-april-2002/%E2%80%9Cpro-life%E2%80%9D-hypocrites), he said:

"Socialists can respect the views of people motivated by the idea of protecting all forms of human life out of regard for the supremacy of humanity. That after all is what Socialism is about."

That might be what the liberalism of the SPGB is about, but it certainly has nothing to do with socialism. And for good measure, if anyone thinks the quote was some sort of fluke, Montague writes:

"Abortion is a very serious issue and should not be viewed as an extension of the means of contraception. Today, these latter means are generally readily available. This writer feels that, where a sexually-active couple wants to avoid what is a traumatic experience, especially for the female partner, then there is a responsibility to avail of suitable means of contraception."

I don't think anything needs to be said, particularly, we've all heard this sort of "pro-choice but with moralistic posturing and qualifications that end up restricting women just as much as openly anti-choice attitudes" nonsense.

Nowhere is the slogan of free abortion on demand at any point of the pregnancy raised. Do you support this slogan, The Idler? Does the SPGB? If yes, why don't they ever mention it?


Workers everywhere have an objective interest in overthrowing class society. Minorities may be workers but whether they want to overthrow class society is dependent on whether they want to support socialism.

Minorities have a clear objective interest in overthrowing capitalism, except for the bourgeois section of these minorities, even if they are not proletarians. Again, this should be part of the Marxist ABC - Engels deals with it in the "Origin...". But I wonder if anyone in the SPGB has even read that work.


You're reading into the SPGB what you want to think about the SPGB and its inaccurate and incorrect.

Ahem:

"vi) An end to discrimination against lesbians

This would mean a great deal to the individuals concerned. However, it is a very limited aim. Socialists seek to bring about a society in which no group receives unequal treatment as a result of their gender or sexual preference. To call for the end of discrimination against minority groups within capitalism will not and cannot bring about emancipation in its broadest sense, that is, the means for each individual to live a worthwhile life as defined by themselves."


From a pamphlet simply entitled "Women and Socialism" (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/women-and-socialism).


In other words, the SPGB refuses to call for an end of discrimination against gays and lesbians. "Bugger of and wait for us to win a majority in Parliament." - that's the SPGB line. Quite frankly, anyone who thinks the quoted statement is appropriate has no business calling themselves a socialist, and they can roll their party program and do very heterosexual things with it.



The SPGB wish to do away with the state not administer it. 'Smashing' the state, without sufficient support (workers bothering even something as simple and easy as to vote might be a good indicator in the current period) will end up with those attempting to 'smash' the state, being 'smashed' by the state itself. Think the Paris Commune.


"Bothering even [sic] something as simple and easy as to vote" - for the last time, workers are not obliged to vote, not for you, not for anyone. They aren't obliged to bang their heads against a wall because you like the feel of bare brick on your scalp. In fact, the more militant the workers, the less likely they are to participate in the spectacle of bourgeois democracy.



The Paris Commune was crushed due to a combination of factors - the inexperience of the leadership being extremely prominent.




Now who's being schematic and semi-religious? And this scheme from 1875 not even the Edwardian era.

The thing is, the notion of the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat is not a scheme - it's the consequence of certain basic Marxist assumptions, as Marx himself points out. Obviously you can reject them - as e.g. Poulantzas rejected the notion that states are class dictatorships - but then state so.



Militant working-class action does not equate to a socialist revolutionary situation. This is idealist.

So once again you reply to my posts with something that has nothing to do with their content, or anything for that matter. The claim was that a lot of people voting for a "socialist" candidate would somehow embolden the class. Pretty much the opposite has happened.



But that's the point, and the difference, the SP is not standing to administer capitalism, ballots and bullets are just means. But Sinn Fein did not take over a state as they found it, they used the ballot to dissolve the old political order.

They changed the details of the administration of capitalism, but both Ireland and Northern Ireland are still capitalist states. Your argument is equivalent to claiming that knives must treat the common cold because they cut through steak so well.



I'm not sure if the Minister of PLanning in the Bavarian Soviet is an exemplar of burgerlike legality, but that's an aside (and also he was an advocate of barrack socialism, so, I don't consider him to be really close top me politically: but his discussion of the difference of democracy between friends and democracy between enemies I think holds weight in it's own right. That, is, incidentally, a thoroughly materialist approach to ideas and concepts).

What is materialist about it? Where is the discussion of the class basis of these social phenomena? Is democracy some sort of supra-class form? It's all fairly nonsensical.


The participant in the USPD-led Bavarian Soviet Republic had become a Viennese social-democrat by the time he wrote the work you're referring to. You might as well say that Plekhanov was once the leader of the struggle against petit-bourgeois idealism of the Narodniks, so absorbing his later patriotic ideas is OK.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Well the first replies included 'Because it worked so well last time around...' (bricolage), 'I don't know what a better way might be, maybe posting another five threads about these sub-reformist election campaigns, maybe one for each borough of the United Kingdom.' Vincent West and 'I don't have an answer on 'capturing political power for socialism' at the moment but neither do SPGB, however I'm not repeating the same tactic that has failed for the last 100+ years' (bricolage).
I think it's fair to say this criticism is fairly useless and not exactly constructive.

If people are feeling disdain for the failed strategy of the SPGB, then it is constructive to air that in a thread on the party in question, so that we/they can start to formulate a better strategy. Or is it more constructive to not criticise something that is worth criticising?


I don't think RedWorker is counterposing armchair keyboard critics with full-time professional revolutionary bureaucrats, of which there are none in the SPGB anyway.

Perhaps I was being harsh in using the phrase bureaucrats. I don't think it's for either of us to put words in RedWorker's mouth, but there certainly seemed to be condescension in their attitude towards the non-paper sellers amongst us. It's a baseless criticism, since history has shown that putting blind faith in activism tends to lead us towards some undesirable ends.


I think it's fair to say many ostensibly revolutionary groups are trying, but the SPGB are one of the larger of these groups and contesting elections on explicitly revolutionary socialist platforms and getting criticised for valid tactics which are the same as some groups and different to others.

But their tactics are not valid, since the overall strategy has failed. Tactics form part of a strategy. If the strategy has failed, you don't just keep going with same said tactics. That is madness, and farce.

I also don't know why you and others keep mentioning the SPGB supposedly being larger than many other socialist groupings. At the level of support amongst the various left sects we are talking about, the numbers are moot. They generally do not change year-on-year, and are more reflective of historical ties and membership than they are of current trends in support. I'd be willing to bet that the number of genuinely new members attracted to the SPGB (and other left parties) is almost non-existent and has been for some time.


Like you said earlier the question is what are the material reasons, that the support of various parties is at the levels that it is?

We live in a rich county that can still afford to buy off the working class. Or rather, we live in a rich country whose current replication of the social system, capitalism, relies on an economy fuelled by debt; capitalism can 'afford' to buy off the working class simply by expanding its debt, essentially.

Adding into that the lack of a particularly attractive alternative to capitalism and I think the two make for a pretty resounding defeat for the left, currently.


Why are SPGB contesting major elections, when you and I are sitting at our keyboards?

Belief and resolution and nothing more. If I had £500 (which I could probably get from my overdraft, or selling all my possession) I could say I was contesting a general election. It would say nothing of my organisation, my position within the organised and non-organised sections of the working class etc.

The SPGB are 'contesting' major elections only insofar as they are standing candidates. In reality, the vast majority of electors will have little to no knowledge of the SPGB, and this will be reflected in support both formally at the ballot box, and informally in the election campaign on the streets and amongst media, both of the bourgeois and the independent leftist type.

And in this last criticism i'm most certainly not singling the SPGB out. They have probably done a less bad job in the running of their organisation than many of the other left-sects over the past century, but let's face it the SPGB are about as irrelevant as they come. To this end, they have failed to do anything other than survive within their own consciousness. They have never, do not, and will never, have any sort of meaningful imprint upon the political consciousness of the wider working class.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Perhaps I was being harsh in using the phrase bureaucrats. I don't think it's for either of us to put words in RedWorker's mouth, but there certainly seemed to be condescension in their attitude towards the non-paper sellers amongst us.

The really sad thing is that I do sell papers, although saying that might be a bit of a stretch because no one is buying them. But I don't talk about it like that makes me better than other people because I'm Doing Something (TM); in fact Doing Something just to do something is the worst thing you can do.

By the way, want to buy some Workers' Vanguard from Croatia? It'll only cost you a ton of postage fees.

[Red Deathy]

Actually, knives could treat the common cold: it'd be a bit drastic, but death is a cure of sorts.

Anyway, to get back on track: the reasonm I mentioned Sinn Fein was that they contestedf elections, but didn't take their seats. Would you agree (absent the issue of nationalism) that this could be a valid course for a revolutionary socialist movement?

I can't remember where I picked up the Neurath point, I just remembered it as standing out and sounmding like a useful definition.

Democracy has existed in many different class formations, from the village commune to the capitalist firm,l it is not tied to any one class formation. Hopwever, enough sidetracking, the point remains that is uis useful to know how many guns you have, and to let the otehr side know they are outmatched.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Anyway, to get back on track: the reasonm I mentioned Sinn Fein was that they contestedf elections, but didn't take their seats. Would you agree (absent the issue of nationalism) that this could be a valid course for a revolutionary socialist movement?

"Valid" in the sense that it is not necessarily reformist, perhaps, but not valid in the sense that it is a good idea. What's the point? The resources of the group, and the energy of the members (WRP in particular used to grind people down by making them participate in endless election campaigns; anyone can see for themselves how much good it did them), are being wasted on something that offers no benefit, not even a tribune for propaganda.


I can't remember where I picked up the Neurath point, I just remembered it as standing out and sounmding like a useful definition.

Democracy has existed in many different class formations, from the village commune to the capitalist firm,l it is not tied to any one class formation. Hopwever, enough sidetracking, the point remains that is uis useful to know how many guns you have, and to let the otehr side know they are outmatched.

But "democracy" isn't one thing; democracy in the Greek slaveowning polis was different from the semi-feudal democracy of early America, and both differ from modern bourgeois democracy. The same goes for "the state" - the state is not some kind of timeless form that transcends the concrete details of class society. The bourgeois state (a term your comrade-in-arms places in inverted commas) is not the same thing as a feudal or Asiatic state etc.

Since you mentioned Ireland, though, how many people are currently voting for the Workers' Party who would under no circumstances pick up a weapon and fight for the stickies? Voting does not demonstrate any sort of commitment, for armed struggle or otherwise (I realise "guns" are metaphors in your post, but the revolution will include armed struggle, something many people don't have the nerves or stomach for - not to mention the distinctly unpleasant possibility of being cured of the cold by an enemy bullet). And being "outgunned" does not necessarily lead to defeat - in the later periods of the Civil War, the Bolshevik authorities had the support of only a minority of the population, but were able to project power as needed and crushed the opposing forces.

[The Idler]

Your last post is too long to quote with the quote function here giving me a blank post.


You assert


'Guesde ... was roundly criticised by Marx for failing to see the importance of struggle for reform '


From an article from the Socialist Standard (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1980/no-909-may-1980/karl-marx’s-declaration-principles) you regard as unreadable.


In 1880 four men met in the study of Marx's house in North London: Marx himself, Engels, Paul Lafargue (who was then still living in London) and Jules Guesde, who had come over specially from France. Marx dictated to Lafargue, who acted as secretary of the meeting, the preamble to a list of immediate demands which had been prepared by Guesde for the elections of 1881.


Marx was not involved in drawing up this programme and was in fact critical of certain parts of it, especially the demand for a legal minimum wage, though he did not contest the desirability of the party adding such a programme of reforms to its socialist objective (one of the points on which we say he was in error).


All the currently available French versions of this preamble differ from the version published in L'Egalité (and various other French journals) in June 1880. One of these differences is important: the inclusion after "means of production" in the second clause of "(land, factories, ships, banks, credit, etc)". The Pelican translation does not contain this but Aaron Noland, in his The Founding or the French Socialist Party (p.7), quotes this phrase as if it had been in the draft dictated by Marx.


Engels quotes Marx as saying 'if they [Lafargue and Guesde] are Marxists, then] I am not [a] Marxist'. The most logical interpretation of this is that Marx was not aiming to create a large-scale, systematic movement that looked to his theories and writings. Exactly the trap you seem to have fallen for in citing Marx against Guesde.


Engels elaborates further which parts Marx may have objected to in 1883 letter to Bernstein (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/letters/81_10_25.htm) 'how little Guesde was the mouthpiece of Marx appears from Guesde’s insistence on putting in his foolish minimum wage demand, and since not we but the French must take the responsibility for this we finally let him have his way although he admitted that theoretically it was nonsense. '


and in a letter in 1890 to Laura Lafargue (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_05_10.htm) 'Paul spoke very well — a slight indication of the universal strike dream in it, which nonsense Guesde has retained from his anarchist days — (whenever we are in a position to try the universal strike, we shall be able to get what we want for the mere asking for it, without the roundabout way of the universal strike). '


or what you might call 'proletarian militancy'!


The legal minimum wage is clause 3 of the economic section, or what Bolsheviks might call the minimum demands, seems to have half of it implemented under capitalism.


You also claim
'Guesde and the "Guesdists" stood in elections, not in order to win them and win the right to administer the bourgeois state for four years, as the SPGB does, but in order to use bourgeois parliaments as tribunes for socialist propaganda. As, for that matter, did the Bolsheviks.'


As few impossibilists have been elected to parliament, they have used it as a tribune for spreading socialist propaganda. When the Bolsheviks captured political power they administered the state. Who has an obsession with capturing political power of the state conferring 'legitimacy' here? Certainly not the SPGB contrary to your claims. As one dead Russian stated about 'legitimacy';


'The demand for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly was a perfectly legitimate part of the programme of revolutionary Social-Democracy, because in a bourgeois republic the Constituent Assembly represents the highest form of democracy'.


Menshevik? No. Whiteguard? No. Pogromist? Well, this was a quote from the great man of history himself, Lenin.


As for 'Menshevik, whiteguard and pogromist literature the SPGB has printed or quoted approvingly', I'm not sure any whiteguard or pogromist literature has been printed or quoted by the SPGB approvingly, and certainly not in support of whiteguard or pogromist aims. This seems to be attempt at guilt by association, and a highly sectarian one at that, by implying the Mensheviks were not socialists.


I have no idea why who you are are would make keyboard warrior a daft insult, but I am glad you think the proletariat should be shot as little as possible. You do however think the SPGB are some sort of pacifists, when they are not. It's not pacifist to argue against 'In most cases this means that, for a period, the bourgeoisie and their supporters should be shot as much as possible, as swiftly as possible, and as overwhelmingly as possible.'. The SPGB don't argue for a blueprint or program, but if this is the Trot program (is this the minimum demands, the transitional or the maximum?), then they're in more trouble than I thought.


Since, you might not 'give a toss' about reading the Socialist Standard regularly, perhaps it interferes with cleaning your proletarian rifle, I will give some more examples from other than the last three issues which disproved your claim. Food, starvation and hunger has been covered recently in July 2013, January 2012, August 2010, December 2009, April 2009 etc. Disease and ill-health has been covered recently in March 2012, May 2011, October 2009 etc. Immigrants, racism and discrimination has been covered recently in January 2014, October 2013, March 2012 etc.


I'm afraid it is you who misses the point in the 'What do we mean by revolution' article, which is trying to explain revolution (and debunk racism) not the causes of racism. What's pious is the attempt to paint the SPGB as naïve about racism. The SPGB pamphlet on Racism (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlets/racism) states ' it presents racism as an idea with social roots, to be related to and explained by the economic anarchy of capitalism. Its fault is that it is only a partial explanation, encouraging the delusion that racism can be eliminated by ironing out the humps and troughs of capitalism's economic cycle, perhaps through some skilful juggling by clever politicians and “experts”. But the roots of racism, as this pamphlet has attempted to show, go deeper than that.'


The SPGB does not take sides, not with the Mensheviks, the whiteguards or the interventionists. The SPGB is resolutely and consistently politically independent and refuses to take sides. Accusing the SPGB of Bernsteinism is another smear, since you omit the immediately following paragraph which states 'Of course, establishing socialism is not just a question of voting for a socialist candidate and waiting for a majority of socialist MPs to vote it in (much as people do today who vote for a party which promises some reform of capitalism). People have to have organised themselves outside parliament into a mass democratic socialist party, into trade unions and other workplace organisations, into neighbourhood councils and the like.'
If your case that the SPGB notion of class composition is 'bizarre', then you are conceding here that it is not 'bizarre'. Your claim that 'I would be surprised if the number of proletarians exceeds 50%' is workerist. Not the Leninist disorted definition of 'workerism' but 'workerism' nonetheless.

[poppleton]

TUSC are standing over 550 candidates in the upcoming elections. Are the SPGB standing candidates in the same wards? It seems a lot of posts on this forum are very negative about TUSC. I have nothing against the SPGB and wish them to succeed in their campaign.
I get frustrated by all the sectarianism on the left. All this talk of 'smashing capitalism' seems, to me to be deeply misguided. Power can only ever be taken but history tells us that there has to be a mass broad based movement from the general population to achieve any concrete victory for workers in the ongoing class war.
It seems as though any attempts at building this movement, such as left unity or TUSC will be attacked by others 'on the left' with a clear critique of their agendas. The main argument against them appears to be that they will only be token reformist organisations to left of The Labour Party and wish to maintain a moderate form of capitalism. None of the activists that I know who are standing have any such ideology or agenda and are solid comrades committed to achieving a socialist planet.
There are lots of discussions about political theory and who has the most knowledge of Das Kapital. I believe that theory is important and ideological differences may be irreconcilable however it is critical to tap into the consciousness of the masses. I think Marx has written quite extensively about this himself. Just try having a discussion about the tendency of the rate of profit to fall or the age of consent being a capitalist constraint with your colleagues at work. Gauge the confused looks on their faces. Then discuss with them how their bills and rent are going up, wages are going down, their jobs are at threat, public services are being cut, the NHS is being privatised and the system is rigged and corrupt and that they have absolutely no say in the decision making process and you will get them engaged, get them active and organised.
If you really need to go into theory that deeply then you will discover that we don't even live in a capitalist system anyway. Adam Smith himself said labor had to have free movement and capital had to be fixed for free markets to exist. The ruling class wouldn't allow capitalism to exist for a second. Profits are privatised and losses are socialised. Corporate welfare for the multinationals and neo-liberalism for the general population. So if you do have to define socialism in it's purest theoretical confines then please stop using the word capitalism to describe the current economic system.
Anyway, divided we are weak and atomised but united we are a force that can achieve real, concrete victories for our class.
Kindest regards and Solidarity