I didn’t see much wrong with Dave Flynn’s personal comments on Occupy. It could just as easily have come from an SPGB member as from an ex-member.
Quote:
It provides an open door policy to the public, and a space where ideas can be discussed on an ad hoc basis or in more detail if you prefer. It provides educational facilities including the use of “expert” guest speakers (often mavericks from the banking/corporate world itself), and offers the maxim “anyone can teach, anyone can learn”. This is thoroughly inspiring stuff by any standards, but what of the content?Banks would have to be prevented from the corrupt practice of creating money and debt from nothing, so the idea of currency reform was an overriding concern. Contempt for modern banking seemed to go hand-in-hand with empathy for industrial capital which was characterised as being fleeced by the financiers. The overall impression seemed to be that we do not live in a globalised system of capitalism, but a form of banking landlordism, and insofar as we have capitalism at all it is not proper free market capitalism, but a form of crony capitalism. As one Speaker said “Not the capitalism that Adam Smith fought for”. It is worth pointing out that this particular gentleman had previously published for the Adam Smith Institute and also rather gingerly paid homage to Frederick Von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. There were a few communist interventions which were well received by some people but the prevailing viewpoints were as described above.The interesting thing about the relationship between the form and content is that even though many libertarian communist boxes are ticked, such people appear trapped in a petit bourgeois worldview reminiscent of nineteenth century Proudhonism, and it was precisely this which I found most frustrating.
I was with Dave at that meeting and was just as frustrated as him that Occupy had organised a meeting at which some (in fact most) of the speakers were openly pro-capitalist. What I don’t understand are those who imply that we should give such people a free run and not say what we think, on the grounds that this would be telling the movement what to do. Dave didn’t agree with this as he was one of the two “communist interventions” saying that it was the capitalist system, not the banks, that had caused the problem and that it was communism, not banking reform that was the solution.
Quote:
Even if we believe that “socialism” or “libertarian communism” is the answer, we are still no further forward. Aspiration alone will not be enough to advance the revolutionary process, no matter how much we talk about class struggle, workers councils or even the SPGB’s revolutionary use of parliament. If we are indeed in the early stages of a revolutionary period, it would be arrogant in the extreme to claim we know exactly how things should be played out. Existing political theories and practices may well preserve knowledge from the moments that have gone before, but it is reasonable to assume in our modern age that new forms and practices will come into play.
I imagine that this is the passage that Stuart likes but what is it actually saying beyond that we shouldn’t predict or dictate to the future? In any event, it is still thinking in terms of a revolution to end capitalism and replace it by socialism. Just like us. Or are we to assume that advocating socialism is also dictating the future?
