United Kingdom local elections, 2014 - London - SPGB campaign

[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.

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/s...-food%E2%80%99). April 2014 mentions poverty and ill health (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...014/voice-back). March 2014 condemns pogroms against immigrants (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...%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/s...ean-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/s...rcent%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). April 2014 mentions poverty and ill health (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...014/voice-back). March 2014 condemns pogroms against immigrants (http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/s...%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).

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) '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", 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".


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.