Swp/sp

[Pogue]

These groups are revolutionary but adovcate parliament and work with reformists such as RESPECT (or whatever the fuck thats ended up as now) and Stop The War coalition which has many elements who aren't socialist at all. How is this justified?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

This should be in politics, I think.

[Holden Caulfield]

the SP advocate a seperate worker platform and a new workers party, as reformists in Labour have time and again thwarted progressive struggles from within (i.e. Militant). We say a new workers party rather than saying we are the new workers party as we have a grasp on political reality and do not think that by naming ourselves to be messiahs we will be that, unlike the Respect debacle.

the StWC, and UAF are popular fronts and are both the SWP, however the SP have time and again stressed (such as on the million strong StWC march) that these movements should not be single issue movements but be instead the launch pad of a new workers movement.

Respect was fucked die to Galloways ego and the top down way of operating that occurred, and one could say Respect was too a single issue 'communalist' or 'islam-centric' party.

the IMT, if i may bring there is, are what you say as well (unlike the SP who arent, the SWP who are something beyond my comprehension but not quite as you said) and are even if they gain mass support, in my ignorant view, doomed to repeat the failures/failings of Militant or to a lesser degree the 2nd intenrational.

[Tower of Bebel]

I'll comment on this later, but I'll give some quotations:
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

For now I only give you a short example of the SPEW's justification for struggling towards a new mass workers' party (Campaign for a New Workers' Party (CNWP)):


CNWP

The Campaign for a New Workers' Party in England and Wales has been in existence for almost a year, co-launched by the Socialist Party, but on as broad a base as possible, and supported by a large number of prominent trade union activists.

Dave Griffiths, a Socialist Party delegate, explained that there is a relatively low level of industrial struggle in Britain at present, and union leaders who seldom inspire their members. However, workers often agree one hundred per cent with the arguments for a new party, whether or not they are ready to get involved in building it themselves at this stage.

Hannah Sell, Socialist Party and CWI executive member, outlined the history of the CNWP, and said that as fresh layers of workers move into struggle to defend their living standards, they would be increasingly receptive to political action and socialist ideas.

Hannah explained that a new party with a basic programme against privatisation, cuts, the anti-trade union laws etc could be a significant step forward, but the Socialist Party will also argue for a clause stating the need for socialism.

There is not yet a well-known national figurehead who has become involved in building a new party in England and Wales. By contrast Angelika Teweleit, a visitor from SAV in Germany, outlined how the involvement of former leading Social Democratic Party member Oskar Lafontaine had given the WASG a profile that made it a credible force.

Unfortunately Lafontaine's insistence that the WASG should merge with the former ruling communist party of East Germany, the LPDS (which has a record of cuts and attacks on local government services), will undoubtedly damage the new party.

In Belgium, although at an earlier stage, some ex-trade union leaders and a former social democrat MP are assisting the development of the newly formed CAP ('committee for another kind of politics').

The support of fighting, left-leaning trade unions can also give a boost to the creation of new parties. A Polish speaker outlined how the most left trade union federation in the country had set up a new party and how, following active support for striking tram workers and victimised miners, CWI supporters in Poland had been approached to join the new party, and had made a formal agreement with it on joint working arrangements.
SPEW (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/campaign/CNWP/2094)

As we have explained on many previous occasions, if an individual or organisation with sufficient social weight was to launch a new workers' party with a fighting programme it would very quickly gain the support of tens of thousands.
SPEW (2) (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/campaign/CNWP/3926)
Fighting for a workers' platform in parliament has always been a tactic for many communist currents.

[Yehuda Stern]

There's nothing wrong with revolutionaries working in the parliament or in united fronts with other groups. It is wrong, however, when supposed Marxists enter political alliances with other groups that are not tactical in nature. This is exactly what the SWP did with Respect and SWC. But then, that's a longtime tradition of the SWP and pseudo-Marxists in general.

[BobKKKindle$]

Participating in elections for legislative positions is an acceptable strategy for revolutionary organizations, because if candidates are able to win a seat on a legislative body they can use their position to propagate socialist ideas to a much larger audience, and can also expose the failure of the capitalist political system to meet the needs of the working population. Even if candidates do not win a seat, sometimes the process of running for election and debating the political issues of the day can also be used a platform for socialist politics, as candidates are often invited to discussion forums where they can share their views with the public and argue with the other candidates - the recent US Presidency debates being the most obvious example of this.

As for groups such as RESPECT (which split into two separate factions, one of which was closely tied to George Galloway and still campaigns under the name RESPECT) and StWC, these groups were organized in accordance with the united front strategy, as explained by Trotsky. A united front is a coalition which encompasses multiple groups, all of which reflect the demands of the working class, even if they are not all revolutionary. This strategy allows each group to maintain their own political independence and continue to put forward their own demands, as long as they agree to uphold a program which is acceptable to all participating organizations. The united front can be used to pursue immediate objectives which require unity across a broad ideological spectrum because the revolutionary left is not strong enough to meet these objectives on its own without the involvement of other groups (for example, stopping the war, or defeating fascism) or to develop an electoral project with the intention of winning over members of the reformist organizations to a revolutionary perspective. This article gives a good explanation of this concept, and how it has been applied:

http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=397&issue=117


should not be single issue movements but be instead the launch pad of a new workers movement. This is exactly what the SWP tried to do by initiating RESPECT, instead of just talking about the need for a new workers party. The SP was invited to join RESPECT, members of the SP attended the founding conference, and they would have been guaranteed places on the executive committee if they had become part of the project, but the SP ultimately declined. If the SP had chosen to join the project, the RESPECT would have been able to grow and develop stronger links with the trade union movement, as the SP currently has several members on the executive boards of multiple unions, including the PCS, as well as Unison. By contrast, the SWP was part of the Socialist Alliance, which collapsed when the SP left it in 2001.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'll comment on this later, but I'll give some quotations:

For now I only give you a short example of the SPEW's justification for struggling towards a new mass workers' party (Campaign for a New Workers' Party (CNWP)):

SPEW (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/campaign/CNWP/2094)

SPEW (2) (http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/campaign/CNWP/3926)
Fighting for a workers' platform in parliament has always been a tactic for many communist currents.

Comrade, I prefer a cross between the CNWP and the CMP. The CPGB has been justifiably critical of the "left-Labourite" (still with a bureaucratic mentality, still infected with economism that is below the "broad economism" criticized by the CPGB, etc.) elements of the CNWP.

That statement by Marx in the Manifesto really needs a modern interpretation:

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties [that are politically and ideologically independent].

[...]

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould [a politically and ideologically independent] proletarian movement.

Too many would consider demands for extreme participatory democracy (which unfortunately is NOT spontaneously raised by a labour movement that is politically and ideologically captured by the tred-iunionisty) to be "sectarian." :(

[BobKKKindle$]

The CPGB has been justifiably critical of the "left-Labourite" (still with a bureaucratic mentality, still infected with economism that is below the "broad economism" criticized by the CPGB, etc.) elements of the CNWP.You describe yourself as a "sympathizer" of the CPGB and yet you have clearly never done any work with them and have probably never met one of their members in real life, because if you knew what they were really like you would not be so quick to affiliate yourself with them. At the beginning of this month several left-wing groups held a conference entitled "Another Education is Possible" which involved delegates from more than 170 universities around the UK and was set up to focus the attention of students on issues of mutual concern, such as university fees, the quality of education, as well as broader international issues such as the situation in Palestine and the militarism of the New Labour government. The conference was generally a success but at the closing session when delegates were drawing up and voting on a set of demands the CPGB insisted that the movement should be classified as a "Marxist" movement. When it was pointed out by the SP and the SWP that this would alienate large numbers of students, including many of those who were attending the conference, who did not see themselves as Marxists, the CPGB delegation gave a patronizing response by suggesting that "ordinary" students would realize the validity of Marxism later on, and so the enlightened few should still define the movement as "Marxist". Is this really a party you support?


tred-iunionistyThis is not a word. Try again.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Yes it is a word - a Russian word:

http://books.google.com/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&pg=PA713&lpg=PA713&dq=tred-iunionisty&source=bl&ots=5i2u9rBOVl&sig=MDGFmKi8EnG2feDUTqV_2_Rp4MA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result


Very often, the economic struggle of the workers is tied (although not inextricably) to a bourgeois politics, to a clerical politics and so on, as we have seen. The positions of Rabochee delo are true, if we understand by "politics" a tred-iunionist politics - the general striving of all workers to obtain from the government that or that measure aimed against the misfortunes inherent in their position but not as yet aimed at eliminating that position, that is, not at annihilating the subordination of labour to capital. This striving is indeed common to the English tred-iunionisty who are hostile toward socialism, to the Catholic workers, to the "Zubanov" workers and so forth.

(Lenin)


You describe yourself as a "sympathizer" of the CPGB and yet you have clearly never done any work with them and have probably never met one of their members in real life

That's because I'm not in the UK at all.


because if you knew what they were really like you would not be so quick to affiliate yourself with them.

I've read plenty of their articles, and they (besides the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the IRSP) are the only group in the British Isles that aren't infected with broad economism.


At the beginning of this month several left-wing groups held a conference entitled "Another Education is Possible" which involved delegates from more than 170 universities around the UK and was set up to focus the attention of students on issues of mutual concern, such as university fees, the quality of education, as well as broader international issues such as the situation in Palestine and the militarism of the New Labour government. The conference was generally a success but at the closing session when delegates were drawing up and voting on a set of demands the CPGB insisted that the movement should be classified as a "Marxist" movement. When it was pointed out by the SP and the SWP that this would alienate large numbers of students, including many of those who were attending the conference, who did not see themselves as Marxists, the CPGB delegation gave a patronizing response by suggesting that "ordinary" students would realize the validity of Marxism later on, and so the enlightened few should still define the movement as "Marxist". Is this really a party you support?

That's a mere packaging issue, like the "communist" label (I will admit I have problems with the way they present nonetheless correct ideas). Being for the political and ideological independence of the working class (apart from class-collaborationists and typical class-collaborationist frontism a la RESPECT), for radical democracy, and for strict internationalism (as opposed to fig-leaf "internationalism") are the key points.

"University fees" and "the quality of education" reek too much of narrow economism, while "the militarism of the New Labour government" reeks too much of broad economism (an emphasis on the DEFENSIVE, as opposed to the OFFENSIVE).

[Tower of Bebel]

This is exactly what the SWP tried to do by initiating RESPECT, instead of just talking about the need for a new workers party. The SP was invited to join RESPECT, members of the SP attended the founding conference, and they would have been guaranteed places on the executive committee if they had become part of the project, but the SP ultimately declined. If the SP had chosen to join the project, the RESPECT would have been able to grow and develop stronger links with the trade union movement, as the SP currently has several members on the executive boards of multiple unions, including the PCS, as well as Unison. By contrast, the SWP was part of the Socialist Alliance, which collapsed when the SP left it in 2001.It reminds me of the split orientation of SAV in Die Linke when it got confronted with the stalinist PDS.

I prefer a cross between the CNWP and the CMP. The CPGB has been justifiably critical of the "left-Labourite" (still with a bureaucratic mentality, still infected with economism that is below the "broad economism" criticized by the CPGB, etc.) elements of the CNWP.
And that would be ...? A CMP program with the CNWP's "package"?

[Holden Caulfield]

This is exactly what the SWP tried to do by initiating RESPECT...etc
Socialist Alliance ring any bells, i can understand why we were not keen to join in, especially with the George Galloway's Islamic Party Of RESPECT regardless of other factors.



This is not a word. Try again.
:laugh:



You describe yourself as a "sympathizer" of the CPGB and yet you have clearly never done any work with them and have probably never met one of their members in real life, because if you knew what they were really like you would not be so quick to affiliate yourself with them.
university Bob is a badass, :lol:, the irony is not lost on you i hope, FRFI/RCG remember Bob

[Devrim]

I've read plenty of their articles, and they (besides the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the IRSP) are the only group in the British Isles that aren't infected with broad economism.

Doesn't this group believe that Britain hasn't had a bourgeois revolution and that workers should fight for democratic demands including (until recently I presume) the abolition of the licensing laws?

Do you actually know anything about this group (for example how big they are, their publications, their members)?

Devrim

[Tower of Bebel]

Doesn't this group believe that Britain hasn't had a bourgeois revolution and that workers should fight for democratic demands including (until recently I presume) the abolition of the licensing laws?

Do you actually know anything about this group (for example how big they are, their publications, their members)?

Devrim
No and yes.

It fights for bourgeois democracy and its extensions: proletarian democracy (the minimum program). Their democratic revolution is not a bourgeois revolution.

And yes I think it wants to see the licensing laws abolished.

[Devrim]

No and yes.

It fights for bourgeois democracy and its extensions: proletarian democracy (the minimum program). Their democratic revolution is not a bourgeois revolution.

And yes I think it wants to see the licensing laws abolished.

I know them. It is Yes, and Yes. I was asking Jacob if he knew them.

Devrim

[BobKKKindle$]

That's a mere packaging issue, like the "communist" labelIt is not a "packaging" issue, it reveals something fundamentally flawed about their approach. "Another Education is Possible" was never intended to be a Marxist or even a left-wing event, rather it was set up to give students who are dissatisfied with the way they've been treated by the union which is supposed to fight for their demands (the NUS) a space to discuss how the student movement should respond to the economic crisis, and the involvement of students in political activism. True, several delegates were on the radical left, but the vast majority were not dedicated socialists. In light of the purpose of the event, and the political composition of the participants, it was absurd for the CPGB to try and force the term "Marxist" on the final set of demands. Consciousness does not suddenly jump from widespread disillusionment with political activism, to people calling for the overthrow of capitalism and the struggle for a classless society - and so in this context the CPGB's actions were ultra-leftist and indicate a failure to grasp the importance of political circumstances.


Yes it is a word - a Russian word

Given that none (to my knowledge) of the members on this board speak Russian, and given that the rest of your tirade is written in English, how is the use of a Russian word helpful in any way?

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Bob, the word tred-iunionizm should be straightforward to most RevLefters here, at least in both implying "trade unionism" in English and in implying that the usage of the Russian word means something other than "trade unionism" (work in trade unions) in commonspeak.


It reminds me of the split orientation of SAV in Die Linke when it got confronted with the stalinist PDS.
And that would be ...? A CMP program with the CNWP's "package"?

More or less: no explicit reference to Marx, but an acknowledgement of LTV and a more explicit acknowledgement of class struggle, economic socialism as a goal, political and ideological class independence in the here and now, explicit trasnationalism, and the need for a class party (with "the democracy question" addresssed right afterwards). If a certain programmatic template can state these adequately, why can't the CNWP?


Doesn't this group believe that Britain hasn't had a bourgeois revolution and that workers should fight for democratic demands including (until recently I presume) the abolition of the licensing laws?

Do you actually know anything about this group (for example how big they are, their publications, their members)?

Devrim

Yes I do, and they've got a decent "immediate" program on which I based "The Democracy Question" (merely extending what they said in key areas further, such as sortition):

http://www.rdg.org.uk/programme/documents/RDGPRG96_Part_3.htm

[BobKKKindle$]

the word tred-iunionizm should be straightforward to most RevLefters here, at least in both implying "trade unionism" in English and in implying that the usage of the Russian word means something other than "trade unionism" (work in trade unions) in commonspeak.

If "tred-iunionizm" does not have the same meaning as "trade unionism" in English, why do you bother using the term at all, given that it would lead people to assume that they mean exactly the same thing because they sound the same? That the two terms mean different things is not immediately apparent, and so why not try and simply explain the concept you are trying to get at in simple English instead of using a Russian term just for the sake of it?

[Tower of Bebel]

If "tred-iunionizm" does not have the same meaning as "trade unionism" in English, why do you bother using the term at all, given that it would lead people to assume that they mean exactly the same thing because they sound the same? That the two terms mean different things is not immediately apparent, and so why not try and simply explain the concept you are trying to get at in simple English instead of using a Russian term just for the sake of it?
It's from WITBD... Lenin's important work that struggled against economism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ And the common interpretation is that Lenin was against trade unionism and spontaneity (as opposed to tred-iunionizm and stikhiinost).

That's the beauty of Lars Lih's work, so beautiful that it formed the basis of my current Article Submission. :)

[PRC-UTE]

I've read plenty of their articles, and they (besides the Revolutionary Democratic Group and the IRSP) are the only group in the British Isles that aren't infected with broad economism.



Check out the Revolutionary Communist Group, too. They publish Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism and definitely aren't economistic. I know several members of that group personally and they're sound.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Isn't that Vanguard1917's ultra-industrialist group, though? :confused:

[PRC-UTE]

^^^ Isn't that Vanguard1917's ultra-industrialist group, though? :confused:

No. His group is the former party that publishes Spiked, I believe

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/

[Devrim]

Check out the Revolutionary Communist Group, too. They publish Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism and definitely aren't economistic. I know several members of that group personally and they're sound.

They are completely anti-working class Stalinist who believe that the working class in the West can't make revolution. They have uncritical support for whatever third world nationalists you can imagine. They are a sort of 'Euro-Trotskyism crossed with Maoism'.


No. His group is the former party that publishes Spiked, I believe

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/

This group was the Revolutionary Communist Party.

They both come from the same source, a group called the Revolutionary Communist Tendency which split from the SWP in the early 70s.

A bit old, but here is John Sullivan's view on the two groups. The first from 1981, and the second from 1986:


Revolutionary Communist Group

The Agonies of Being English

THE RCG are generally to be found heckling meetings on Ireland or racism.
They are a group which split from the SWP (then IS) in 1972 on the grounds that the IS’s militant syndicalism ignored the struggle for a Marxist programme. The RCG’s guru is an academic, David Yaffe, who has done sterling work on the velocity of the falling rate of profit, and has almost got it down to the nearest foot per second.
The RCG moves from a quite competent study of economics to a sub-CSE [1] (http://marxists.architexturez.net/history/etol/critiques/sullivan/fourth1.html#n1) political theory. Their ideas are simple:


Imperialism has savagely oppressed colonial peoples. The British working class has acquiesced in this oppression. We can’t get anywhere until this oppression is ended. As beneficiaries of this oppression, neither the British working class nor the left groups have the right to tell the anti-imperialists what to do. On the contrary, the RCG on principle refuses to criticise nationalist movements. If Mugabe, for example, wants to break strikes, that’s his privilege.
Left groups are castigated for their criticism, however timid, of the Provos, Mugabe, etc. This exemption from criticism is also granted to bourgeois representatives of immigrant groups. The RCG competed with the Home Office for the allegiance of the Southall Youth Movement. The RCG claims to have won the argument, and alleges that the Home Office’s final winning ploy (a £20,000 cheque) constituted foul play. Most fair-minded people would surely agree with them.
Capitalism causes racism, unemployment, etc. Therefore a movement such as the ANL which attempts to combat racism by attacking the NF is reactionary in that it tries to pretend that there can be a non-racist capitalism. (For an earlier, more consistent form of this argument, see the section on the SPGB.)
Attempts to create movements around limited trade union struggles by raising demands which will carry the struggle forward, fall into reformism if the full socialist programme is not advocated. The attempt at a transitional programme is therefore deplored.

The RCG can be seen as a cross between the SPGB and an old-style Stalinist party, combining as it does maximalist positions with worship of anti-working-class forces. It does also have some interesting eccentricities of its own.
Members will insist on using aliases in surroundings where they are well known, and will complain bitterly when people inadvertently muddle their real and false names.
They make a great point of declaring loudly that they maintain secrecy about where they live and work. This must make them a secret policeman’s dream. The RCG appeals to dedicated, serious and not very bright young people. Their speakers have the air of someone repeating a lesson by rote.
If your memory goes back as far as the 1960s, you will recognise the RCG’s line as a ‘Marxist’ version of the ‘white skin privilege’ theories which were popular at the time.
RCG members feel terribly guilty about their privileges. There they are – young, white, beautiful and enjoying a student grant paid for by the exploitation of black or Irish people. Surely such good fortune can’t be deserved.
Strength: about 40 members
Papers: Hands Off Ireland, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism, Revolutionary Communist
Prospects: For survival, good, although they probably won’t grow much. The combination of the possession of an esoteric economic theory, an extremely crude political formula, the thrill of secrecy and the sense of importance of belonging to an élite group, should ensure it a small share of the radical student market.

Revolutionary Communist Party

Formerly the Revolutionary Communist Tendency

THE RCT was expelled from its parent, the RCG, for challenging that group’s grovelling before the Communist Party and the Anti-Apartheid Movement on its way towards becoming a consistent defender of anti-working-class regimes.
The RCG was then conducting entry work in Anti-Apartheid. The people who became the RCT wanted to criticise the African National Congress. The RCT’s interpretation of the group’s propagandist orientation was that at a certain point once forces had been built up it would begin agitational work. Yaffe’s response, predictably, was brutal and the RCT was expelled. In reaction to the RCG’s prostration before bourgeois dictators, the RCT has quite a sharply critical attitude to Mugabe, etc. (Logically they should extend this to criticism of the Irish Nationalists, but realise that this would make their product unmarketable.)
Rebounding from the RCG’s passivity, the RCT decided to become the vanguard and substitute themselves for the working-class movement. They have formed a couple of anti-racist front groups, ELWAR and SPTAC, and have taken to dressing up in jump suits and making rather violent verbal contributions to meetings. I rather like them.
Prospects: There is a fair market for a group like the RCT for young people bored with the SWP’s illiteracy and the sub-reformism of the IMG.
Strength: around 70
Journal: The Next Step


Revolutionary Communist Group

Such a congenital terror of adopting a political line was incomprehensible to Doctor Yaffe, as he delicately adjusted the controls of his velocitometer. He and his followers, mainly earnest postgraduate students, plunged into theoretical work to remedy the appalling empiricism of the British left. The RCG was the concentrated expression of purely student politics, and it quickly shook off the residual influence which the working class exercised on its parent group, describing the manifestations of this as syndicalist deviations. The RCG soon adopted a Stalinist ideology, an early example of what was to become a common tendency as former student revolutionaries abandoned the libertarian and anti-bureaucratic spirit of 1968.
The RCG’s Stalinism brought it no closer to the British Communist Party, which it saw as just as incurably syndicalist as the Trotskyists. The working class was denounced as beneficiaries of imperialism, and enemies of its real revolutionary victims, the Irish, Blacks and Third World dictators. All of which was familiar stuff among liberals and Maoists, but the RCG has some peculiarities of its own which delight the connoisseur of sectariana. Its members insist on using pseudonyms, after first making sure that everyone knows their correct names. They publicly announce that they keep their address a secret. What police agents make of such ostentatious secrecy, God only knows. Given the RCG’s world view, its main focus of activity has to be on solidarity with struggles abroad and with the immigrants who are seen as the emissaries of the Third World here. In its early days, the group devoted much effort to wooing middle-class immigrant associations, but lost out to competition from government-funded agencies. It complained bitterly when its associates in the Southall Youth Movement defected on receipt of a cheque for £20,000, and most taxpayers would agree that our money should not be allowed to distort the normal working of the political market.
Realising that trying to compete with the Home Office was fighting above his weight, Yaffe turned towards Anti-Apartheid as the strongest representative Third World force in Britain. As he proclaims that no British groups or persons, because they are personally guilty of the crimes of imperialism, have any right to criticise imperialism’s victims, Yaffe’s only possible tactic was to bid for the British franchise from the African National Congress. It was a bold attempt from a young and small group, but the ANC leaders, rightly or wrongly, decided to leave the Communist Party in charge. The RCG then took over the City of London Anti-Apartheid as a base to harass the national leadership of the organisation. That group is far more active than all the others, and mounts a permanent vigil outside South Africa House in Trafalgar Square. The national Anti-Apartheid have instituted fairly draconian measures to fight off the RCG, thereby transforming a loose solidarity movement into a doctrinally orthodox organisation. What help all of that is to the workers facing the South African bosses, armed police and goon squads is a matter of opinion.
The RCG’s lack of interest in the topics which have generally occupied Marxists is demonstrated by the title of its journal Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism. The group is interested in manifestations of capitalism rather than the thing itself. It has also made a bid for the Provo franchise, but the Provos have so far refused to hand over the British solidarity work to it. It would seem that one of the RCG’s problems is that it is attempting to do too much in serving the interests of all anti-imperialist leaderships. A small organisation should perhaps seek out one or two clients, rather than do too much. The RCG takes its anti-workerism to greater extremes than anyone, with the possible exception of the London Labour Left. Black workers in the now-independent countries are behaving in an objectively imperialist way when they demand trade union rights, and deserve all they get from the anti-imperialist leaders who have them jailed or shot. Any white leftist who supports solidarity action for such reprobates is playing the imperialist game. The RCG has painted itself into a corner in its struggle for control of Anti-Apartheid. Its dogma that anti-imperialist leaderships cannot be criticised must include the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and surely they are entitled to appoint whoever they please to head Anti-Apartheid in Britain. The only way out for the RCG would be to extend its criticism of the Anti-Apartheid leadership to include the ANC. That would be an abuse of their white-skin privilege and would be objectively imperialist and a denial of the group’s whole evolution, so the RCG’s prospects are bleak.

Revolutionary Communist Party

Yaffe’s plunge into full-fledged Stalinism, combined with a disagreement over the mathematics in Capital with his chief lieutenant Frank Richards, produced a split, which eventually became the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). The new group declared itself anti-Stalinist, and took several steps sideways in an attempt to differentiate its product. The ancestral curse of all the Tearsites still dogged it, as it too found difficulty in defining a suitable mix of slogans and demands to attract custom in an already overcrowded market. The group dropped Yaffe’s hostility to the working class, and adopted an agnostic attitude to the historic divide between Stalinism and Trotskyism. At first sight, it is a much less repellent group than its parent, but its essential eclecticism has landed it in some strange company. Opponents translate the initials RCP as the Ray Chadwick Party, after the leader of the breakaway Union of Democratic Miners, because of the group’s support for a ballot during the miners’ strike.
The RCP cobbled together a programme from various pieces of ultra-leftism and Third Period Stalinism without worrying too much that the various pieces did not fit together well. It dates the degeneration of the world communist movement from the Popular Fronts of the 1930s rather than the ultra-left period which helped Hitler to come to power. Yet while indulging in a typically British pragmatism, it constantly stresses its theoretical credentials. The theory is student theory, as the faint link between orthodox Trotskyist groups and the working-class movement never existed for either the RCG or RCP. Its rehabilitation of the working class from the purgatory which Yaffe had consigned it also has not given it any specific interest in the actual labour movement. This comes across strongly in its weekly journal The Next Step, which is a kind of left-wing answer to Marxism Today, sharing that journal’s eclecticism. The RCP speaks of the working class in tones which seem similar to those of traditional Marxists, but that is deceptive, as the class is seen as a collection of groups which are all part of the revolutionary project, while hardly being a class for itself. When the group took to standing in parliamentary elections in 1986-87 it formed the Red Front, which like most fronts had nothing behind them except for the tiny Revolutionary Democratic Group (RDG) and the Squaddists of Red Action. The front’s electoral programme consisted of a minimalist series of demands, which did not attack the capitalist system, nor advocate serious reforms, very similar to the programmes which the SWP used to present when it indulged in such antics. We doubt if the RCP’s style and vigour will be enough to carry it through the tough times ahead.
What then gives the RCP’s eclectic mishmash the appeal which made it the fastest growing group of the 1980s, with a dynamism notably absent from both the RCG and the Discussion Group? The answer is style. The group is part of the harder aggressive, post-punk move away from peace and love, and the average RCPer looks very different from the grotty SWPers. They have been described as ‘the SWP with hair gel’, and many a parent, pleased at the improvement in their child’s appearance, have welcomed the move from one to another. Alas! The mind remains just as untidy. Whatever the RCP’s problems, they are nothing to that of its political cousins. Fellow members of the Labour Party continue to believe that the Discussion Group is just a collection of drinking mates, held together by age/peer group loyalty and sexism. As for Doctor Yaffe, he fiddles aimlessly with his fantastic machine which sits gathering dust in the laboratory, having proved incapable of producing a formula for the South African revolution. The laboratory technicians like it better than the squat Japanese electronic devices which are currently fashionable. Psychologists will, no doubt, explain some of the behaviour of these three political cousins by the traumatic affect of being part of an undeclared faction, ashamed of having no valid reason to exist. Yet the vast majority of members of two of the groups were never in the SWP and know little of their group’s origin.


Devrim

[PRC-UTE]

They are completely anti-working class Stalinist who believe that the working class in the West can't make revolution. They have uncritical support for whatever third world nationalists you can imagine. They are a sort of 'Euro-Trotskyism crossed with Maoism'.

Devrim

so even when they are campaigning for workers rights and engaged in the class struggle, they are anti-working class?

I thought what counted to left communists was fighting on the class terrain, not ideology.

[Devrim]

so even when they are campaigning for workers rights and engaged in the class struggle, they are anti-working class?

I thought what counted to left communists was fighting on the class terrain, not ideology.

As far as I remember them from when I lived in the UK, they don't get involved in the class struggle at all. They support foreign nationalist movements. That is their activity. In those days it was centred around the ANC.

I would say that as an organisation they are anti-working class in that their function is to try to get workers to line up behind different bourgeois nationalist factions.

Devrim

[PRC-UTE]

As far as I remember them from when I lived in the UK, they don't get involved in the class struggle at all. They support foreign nationalist movements. That is their activity. In those days it was centred around the ANC.

I would say that as an organisation they are anti-working class in that their function is to try to get workers to line up behind different bourgeois nationalist factions.

Devrim

I've known them personally to be active in the class struggle.

Could you answer this question:

so even when they are campaigning for workers rights and engaged in the class struggle, they are anti-working class?

I thought what counted to left communists was fighting on the class terrain, not ideology.

[Devrim]

I've known them personally to be active in the class struggle.

As an organisation? Can you give an example? To me the phrase '...so even when they are campaigning for workers rights' sounds pretty nebulous.


so even when they are campaigning for workers rights and engaged in the class struggle, they are anti-working class?

As an organisation I would say they are anti-working class, but I don't believe that they are fighting the class struggle. That is not to say that none of them are workers, who don't struggle in their work. Of course, they are. But you could say the same about any political organisation including the fascists.


I thought what counted to left communists was fighting on the class terrain, not ideology.

I can't imagine them as an organisation being on a class terrain.

Devrim

[PRC-UTE]

As an organisation? Can you give an example? To me the phrase '...so even when they are campaigning for workers rights' sounds pretty nebulous.

campaigning for asylum seekers/immigrant workers and workplace organising. And other activities I couldn't well discuss here so

[BobKKKindle$]

They are a sort of 'Euro-Trotskyism crossed with Maoism'.What exactly is "Euro-Trotskyism" and how does this differ from the "standard" variety of Trotskyism?

I haven't encountered the FRFI much during my brief period of political activism in the UK but they always have some good material in their paper, particularly on the origins of the financial crisis and how the crisis is going to affect the imperialist powers, in terms of their willingness to intervene abroad, and the importance of imperialism in providing profitable outlets for capital which cannot be invested in the imperialist core. They do not hold a "third-worldist" position, as although they do acknowledge that there is a labour aristocracy in the imperialist core which lives off the exploitation of the developing world, this is something that was originally put forward by Marx (especially when he was discussing the privileged position of craft workers and the role of craft unions during the 19th century) and was then further elaborated by Lenin in 'Imperialism', and has also been supported by empirical evidence such as the success of reformist parties amongst certain strata of the working population, and so every communist should accept this theory anyway. FRFI did some impressive work with the immigrant community during the 1980s, especially in Southhall, and they always participate in protests against the Campsfield detainment center.


As an organisation?See above. Can you give a recent example of the ICC or any other left-communist tendency (or a section thereof) getting involved in the class struggle as an organisation? How much work was the Australian section of the ICC doing before he broke away?

[Devrim]

See above. Can you give a recent example of the ICC or any other left-communist tendency (or a section thereof) getting involved in the class struggle as an organisation? How much work was the Australian section of the ICC doing before he broke away?

The ICC never had an Australian section. They had one member there (which obviously doesn't make a section), who went religious. You lose some. I don't know much about it.

The most recent example of us intervening as an organisation would be the Türk Telekom strike.


What exactly is "Euro-Trotskyism" and how does this differ from the "standard" variety of Trotskyism?

It is not a real term. I was trying to give the impression of Euro-communism crossed with Stalinism.


They do not hold a "third-worldist" position, as although they do acknowledge that there is a labour aristocracy in the imperialist core which lives off the exploitation of the developing world,...

They hate the working class.


campaigning for asylum seekers/immigrant workers and workplace organising. And other activities I couldn't well discuss here so

I can imagine what they are doing here, and I wouldn't think it is on, what we would call, a class basis at all.

Devrim

[PRC-UTE]

They hate the working class.

:laugh:



I can imagine what they are doing here, and I wouldn't think it is on, what we would call, a class basis at all.

Devrim

LOL, I doubt it's as dramatic as what you're thinking. nothing with balaclavas, quite mild stuff

[BobKKKindle$]

The most recent example of us intervening as an organisation would be the Türk Telekom strike.

Which, according to a quick survey of news articles on the topic, happened in October 2007, meaning that more than a year has passed since your organization intervened in workers struggle. Do you see anything wrong with that kind of situation?

[Devrim]

Which, according to a quick survey of news articles on the topic, happened in October 2007, meaning that more than a year has passed since your organization intervened in workers struggle. Do you see anything wrong with that kind of situation?

Actually, I forgot, we did stuff around the general strikes too. They were quite small things compared to Telekom though. You can't intervene in workers struggles when they are not happening.

Devrim

[Devrim]

LOL, I doubt it's as dramatic as what you're thinking. nothing with balaclavas, quite mild stuff

I don't know what you think I am imagining. I imagine them picketing offices, boycotting companies, and writing letters of complaint.

Devrim

[PRC-UTE]

I don't know what you think I am imagining. I imagine them picketing offices, boycotting companies, and writing letters of complaint.

Devrim

:lol: good man yourself :tt1: