CWI and Ted Grant

On what grounds does CWI claim the Militant Tendency as its heritage, when it clearly disagrees with orientation of CWI?

To what extent does CWI reject the theoretical work of Ted Grant? To what degree does it accept it? Who are CWI's theoreticians currently?

I'm honestly asking. I was looking at both CWI and IMT, and chose IMT because of its theoretical clarity.

On what grounds does CWI claim the Militant Tendency as its heritage

Because we still carry out their tactics. In many countries we're still entrist in bigger formations for example.

when it clearly disagrees with orientation of CWI?

What do you mean?

To what extent does CWI reject the theoretical work of Ted Grant? To what degree does it accept it?

I'm not quite confident at answering this. Mainly because many direct references to the work of Ted Grant have been removed, on the other side we still sell books like "The Unbroken Thread".

Who are CWI's theoreticians currently?

Peter Taaffe (General-Secretary of the SPEW), Tony Saunois (General-Secretary of the CWI International Secretariat) and Lynn Walsh (Editor of Socialism Today) come to mind.

I'm honestly asking. I was looking at both CWI and IMT, and chose IMT because of its theoretical clarity.

What clarity did you find?

Simply put: on the grounds that these bourgeois parties don't offer any perspective for communists to work in. In this way we don't follow the "orientation of [The Militant]". Ergo, we think that in most cases times have changed.

In general we dumped Ted Grant in the same way as we dumped entryism in the parties we left. Not that this is of any worth. Basicly the divergence between CWI and IMT determined our attitude towards the ideas of Ted applied post-1990.

Q is my favourite CWI theoretician.

I didn't see more theoretical "clarity" in the IMT than in the CWI. Whoever I'm speaking or working with, my mind is equally troubled.

Good post there Rakunin.

Q is my favourite CWI theoretician.

Ha!

And you're mine

"Because we still carry out their tactics. In many countries we're still entrist in bigger formations for example."

Like where?

"I'm not quite confident at answering this. Mainly because many direct references to the work of Ted Grant have been removed, on the other side we still sell books like "The Unbroken Thread"."

Hmmm...

"What clarity did you find?"

Well the clarity over the entryist tactic. You oppose it and support it? On what grounds?

I was told by CWI people that IMT was dogmatic about entryism, but they are not in the US!


": on the grounds that these bourgeois parties don't offer any perspective for communists to work in. "

Can you please define bourgeois party?

I wont define bourgeois party because in general it's a party of, by and for the capitalist bourgeoisie. I want to express want it means to us:

the old workers parties start to develop Democrat-like organizational structures: rank and file membership becomes obsolete; socialism or social democracy is reduced to some sort of progressive or social liberalism (this also happens to be the case in public); etc.

A tightening of bureaucratic control (which results in all kinds of scandals): the party is run along the lines of an enterprise; factions happen to have one foot already outside the party in case they get expelled immediatly; active censorship; etc.

Social democracy suffers from severe electoral and ideological crises (due to the crisis, the triumph of neoliberalism, and the fact that there is no social-democratic, Keynesian policy possible on European level due to competition): the party is degutted; a turn to the left is always possible, but it does not involve the active participation of "the masses", yet it involves the active participation of the bureaucracy; etc.

All this makes entryism along the lines of Trotsky or the 3rd International impossible. Were possible we do open work instead. Were possible the CWI joins alternative projects: like Die Linke which offers (in some cases) more opportunities for marxists than the SPD.

Well the clarity over the entryist tactic. You oppose it and support it? On what grounds?

Well, we are in favour of entry into workingclass parties, even working class parties that might not intially have a rounded out socialist program. It is simply a matter of potential. The difference btween parties like Labour, PASOK or the SPD from where they were in the late sixties early seventies, when we chose the strategy of entryism is massive as to where they stand today. Sure the leadership of the parties in that day was too, more or less, right wing but the working class base and overall political potential was completely different. Speaking from my experience with the swedish socialdemocrats I would say the potential to work within them is zero, both in that they have been fundamnetally discreditet in the workingclass, but also that they lack any kind of base organization.
A guy I know who is in the socialdemocrats himself openly admitted to the party being empty, he had been an active union member for many years and had come to the conclusion that he needed tio get organized politically aswell for worker's rights. He found the party empty, but the few old people that were there were thrilled to give him all kinds of responsibility. Hopefully he will get out before he has become a part of the machinery.

I was told by CWI people that IMT was dogmatic about entryism, but they are not in the US!

I would think it needs more dogmatism to retain a view on entryism that is no longer valid in general and isn't even relevant to the US directly, but I might be wrong. How are they less dogmatic?

On what grounds does CWI claim the Militant Tendency as its heritage, when it clearly disagrees with orientation of CWI?

To what extent does CWI reject the theoretical work of Ted Grant? To what degree does it accept it? Who are CWI's theoreticians currently?

I'm honestly asking. I was looking at both CWI and IMT, and chose IMT because of its theoretical clarity.

We do not disagree with the Militant tendency, we disagree with entryism sue generis, which we would argue was never the line of CWI. As I hope I have been able to explain we don't regard our political motivations as in any way fundamentally different from those we had in the 1970's and 1980's. We however recognize that today is a different situation than those in the 70's and 80's. From that stems our change in tactics. The open turn documents are available on marxist.net if you are interested how the debate was then.

Ted Grant was a good theoretician, but unfortnately, in our opinion, he made dogma out of what was tactics, and thus accused us of "betraying 20 years of struggle" when we, a majority of the CWI, came to the conclusion that we had to change our tactics. There were also some disagreement on the nature of russia post-1991, which is symptomatic I believe, where the Grant-Woods group didn't accept Russias transition to capitalism until the late ninties. For us, the capitalist restoration represented the final pin in the coffin of the old worker's parties pretty much. The political backlash was immense and the traditional bourguise worker's parties didn't put up much of a fight. The 90's became much harder then we had expected though although we did make some gains. In sweden we won our first councillors already in 1991 and had a serious membership boost in the mid to late ninties coming up to about 800 members, never having numbered more than 300, or actually probably less, before.

Main theoreticians? Well, Marx, Lenin and Trotsky, I'd say. Of course we have many capable leading members. I am close to Per-Åke Westerlund myself.