Trotskyist parties and Internationals

  1. BobKKKindle$ - 19th January 2008, 04:02
    Major Trotskyist Parties

    The Socialist Workers Party

    The Socialist Workers Party offers a unique analysis of the Soviet Union, and the other countries which comprised the former Soviet Bloc. This theory is known as State-Capitalism. Tony Cliff argued that, despite the absence of private property, the Soviet Union was still a class society, based on a form of capitalism under which the state assumes total control of the economy. This differs from the standard Trotskyist view of degenerated workers' states. Cliff partly based his arguments on changes in the British economy following the Second world war, most notably the British government's decision to nationalise key sections of the economy, as part of a general increase in the level of government intervention in the economy, which showed that state ownership did not make a country a workers' state if the workers did not have full control of the state apparatus. In addition to the theory of State Capitalism, members of the SWP also played an important role in developing the theory of the Permanent Arms Economy which offered an explanation for the long period of strong economic growth and rising living standards, following the war, and deflected permanent revolution, which extended on Trotsky's original theory and applies to countries in which the petty-bourgeoisie was able to seize power and establish state-capitalist governments, many of which used socialism as an ideology to gain popular support, as in the case of Nasser's Egypt.

    The SWP rose to prominence during the 1970s, when party members formed the Anti-Nazi League, and, in co-operation with various other groups, prevented the National Front from attaining further electoral success and building support in working class communities. More recently, the SWP has participated in the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and has contested elections as part of RESPECT, a party formed in response to NEw Labour acceptance of market economics and the absence of a left-wing alternative.

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/clif...xx/permrev.htm - Deflected Permanent Revolution (Cliff)

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/clif...ecap/index.htm - State Capitalism in Russia (Cliff)

    http://www.marxists.org/archive/kidr...x/permarms.htm - A Permanent Arms Economy (Kidron)

    Internationally, the SWP is part of the International Socialist Tendency, which is composed of parties which also accept the state-capitalist analysis. The SWP's main publications are:

    Socialist Worker, a weekly newspaper www.socialistworker.co.uk
    Socialist Review, a monthly magazine www.socialistreview.org.uk
    and ISJ, a quarterly journal www.isj.org.uk
  2. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 20th January 2008, 00:30
    you do realise this is going to be a massive list!

    Check this out:

    http://www.broadleft.org/trotskyi.htm

    But, I will sticky this for you.
  3. bloody_capitalist_sham
    bloody_capitalist_sham - 20th January 2008, 10:47
    We could have a discussion of why our parties are so small and whether there are some fundamental things we're accepting that we need to reevaluate in the light of this.
  4. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 20th January 2008, 14:13
    OK, BCS -- but start a different thread if you want to discuss that.
  5. Random Precision - 20th January 2008, 18:02
    Okay, here's mine:

    The International Socialist Organization (United States) follows the British Socialist Workers Party in the important aspects of its ideology, including the state capitalism thesis and theory of deflected permanent revolution, as developed by the late Tony Cliff.

    The ISO originated in 1977 when members of the International Socialists criticized the group's leadership for abandoning its strategy of rank-and-file organizing. After they were expelled from IS, the "Left Faction" of the group took on the name International Socialist Organization and began publishing the newspaper Socialist Worker as an organizing tool. It based its politics off of theories developed by the British Socialist Workers Party.

    During the conservative eighties, the ISO found that its strategy of rank-and-file organizing was unsustainable and began to orient itself toward campus activism. It grew steadily throughout the nineties through mobilizing campaigns against the First Gulf War and other US interventions, as well as anti-death penalty and anti-globalization efforts.

    In 2000, the ISO was expelled from the International Socialist Tendency by the impetus of the British SWP after a clash between the ISO's Steering Committee and the IST over the nature of its anti-globalization efforts. Since then, it has established relationships with Socialist Alternative in Australia and the International Workers Left in Greece, among other groups.

    In recent years, the ISO has focused its activism on campaigns for abortion rights, ending the death penalty, and against the continued war in Iraq. It is a member of nationwide coalitions like the Campaign to End the Death Penalty and the Campus Antiwar Network. It has also been very active in supporting the Iraqi Veterans Against the War. During the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, it lent critical support to Ralph Nader's campaign, as well as local and state efforts by the Green Party.

    The two main publications of the ISO are the weekly newspaper Socialist Worker, and the bimonthly journal International Socialist Review, which includes articles on the theory of revolutionary Marxism and analysis of both historical and current events. The ISO also distributes books through its publishing house, Haymarket Books.
  6. Guest1 - 21st January 2008, 17:14
    We should get a neat-looking page, which will be closed, before we sticky it. So use this thread to discuss the internationals, and I will copy/paste and format a new thread to sticky when we're ready.
  7. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 21st January 2008, 19:38
    Fair enough.
  8. Hit The North
    Hit The North - 21st January 2008, 22:51
    you do realise this is going to be a massive list!

    Check this out:

    http://www.broadleft.org/trotskyi.htm

    But, I will sticky this for you.
    I get quite embarrassed, looking at that list.
  9. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 21st January 2008, 23:00
    Well, Z, I have been trying to tell you this for well over a year, and that I could explain it.

    But your head was so deeply inserted in the sand, you had in fact O'd-ed on silicates, and could not think straight.

    Indeed, you'd have been aware of it August 2006 --, for I posted that link (and others that exposed the highly fragmented state of every other Marxist tradition, too) in one of my essays published then -- had you bothered to read it.

    [FONT=Times New Roman][FONT='Times New Roman']http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/Why%20I%20Oppose%20DM.htm[/FONT][/FONT]

    Still, you know best...
  10. Guest1
    Guest1 - 21st January 2008, 23:41
    Oh come on... can we keep the idealist crap out of here please, rosa?

    You can't blame the failures of parties solely on a philosophy that emphasizes explosive change as the result of a quantitative build-up.
  11. Hit The North
    Hit The North - 22nd January 2008, 00:04
    R:
    But your head was so deeply inserted in the sand, you had in fact O'd-ed on silicates, and could not think straight.
    Have you been talking to my dealer?

    CyM:
    You can't blame the failures of parties solely on a philosophy that emphasizes explosive change as the result of a quantitative build-up.
    Hear hear.
  12. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 22nd January 2008, 01:04
    Z:

    Have you been talking to my dealer?
    No, his head was inserted even deeper.

    CYM:

    Oh come on... can we keep the idealist crap out of here please, rosa?
    I really don't think you should talk about the sacred dialectic this way, Che. Show some respect.

    But, it is nice to know that, deep down, you see this 'theory' as inessential to Trotskyism, so that it should be kept out of a thread about our deep divisions. Truth no longer tested in practice, eh?

    Just as it is nice to see a Cliffite and an Orthodox Trotskyist see eye-to-eye on this 'theory' (given that you both derive mutually inconsistent conclusions from it vis-a-vis the class nature of the former USSR, for instance).

    Now, how on earth could that have happened?

    You can't blame the failures of parties solely on a philosophy that emphasizes explosive change as the result of a quantitative build-up.
    This shows how much attention you have been paying -- I have never blamed our long-term lack of success solely on this 'theory'.

    One thing for certain: you can't explain it at all.

    Welcome to another 100 years of going nowhere slowly...
  13. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 22nd January 2008, 02:31
    Oops, here is Rob Sewell (shock, hooror!) mentioning that idealist theory in a thread CYM himself started:

    The theory of State Capitalism had been sharply criticized by Trotsky, particularly in his books Revolution Betrayed and In Defence of Marxism. Trotsky's last struggle before his death was in fact against a petit-bourgeois opposition in the American SWP [the then US section of the Fourth International] which rejected the defence of the USSR against imperialism, as well as the whole method of Marxism, dialectical materialism, both of which were inseparable. For a full criticism of this false theory, see Ted Grant's Russia from revolution to counter-revolution, Part Four: The Nature of Stalinism (available online)....

    Cliff stated (in his pamphlet ‘Trotskyism after Trotsky') that it was "necessary to defend the spirit of Trotskyism while rejecting some of his words." The problem was that Cliff was not merely rejecting a few out-of-date words, but Trotsky's whole dialectical method, the very basis of Marxism.

    Engels could have been writing about the SWP when he said, "What these gentlemen lack is dialectics... As far as they are concerned Hegel never existed..." Trotsky's contribution to the understanding of Stalinism, which he developed over nearly 20 years, was one of his outstanding contributions to the theory of Marxism, and not some incidental extras. It is grounded in the method of Marxism. But, to paraphrase Engels, "As far as they are concerned Trotsky never existed..."
    Oops squared!

    Comrades will note that Sewell, unlike CYM, thinks dialectics is inseparable from Marxism.

    Just as they will note that Cliff made the same comments about dialectics, but drew the opposite conclusion.

    Oops cubed!

    So, Che, are you going to trash your own thread on the grounds that Rob Sewell hijacked it?

    http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.p...61&postcount=1
  14. Guest1
    Guest1 - 22nd January 2008, 03:53
    Rosa, I will be counting how many posts you can make in this forum without dragging a thread into the muck. Please don't destroy something good we've got going here.
  15. BOZG
    BOZG - 22nd January 2008, 19:38
    We should get a neat-looking page, which will be closed, before we sticky it. So use this thread to discuss the internationals, and I will copy/paste and format a new thread to sticky when we're ready.
    Agreed. Information threads should be tidy and easy to find information from.
  16. Winter
    Winter - 23rd January 2008, 05:37
    you do realise this is going to be a massive list!

    Check this out:

    http://www.broadleft.org/trotskyi.htm

    But, I will sticky this for you.

    Very informative! Thanks for posting this.
  17. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 23rd January 2008, 14:50
    CYM, if this new section is so 'good, then why did you ruin it by beating the sectarian drum right at the start by posting an article attacking the SWP, which also contained references to the theory I am not supposed to mention, and which said it was integral to Marxism?

    But it mystifies me how comrades like you can in one breath say that this theory is integral to all you do and think, but in the next refiuse to even consider whether it has been so much as partially repsonsible for our long-term lack of success, or our tendency to split.

    That is the last I will say about it here -- unless someone else brings it up.
  18. Rosa Lichtenstein
    Rosa Lichtenstein - 23rd January 2008, 14:54