i think my lengthy posts did
i think my lengthy posts did address your questions directly and specifically , Hch. I can only conclude that they were too long for you to read through. Militant changing its name and stealing another organisation’s title, that i think , is the height of sectarianism. What is wrong witht them calling themselves the CWI. What are they scared of? Apart from exposing the truth of the matter. Committee of the Workers International even Socialist Party of England and Wales (SPEW) would be more honest since you think re-branding your Scottish members Socialist Party Scotland after jettisoning unity with the Scottish Socialist Party and seeking alliance with Sheridan’s personality cult Solidarity fair-dos. (of course, your differences with the SSP are nothing like the division you have with fellow Trots in the SWP and the collapse of the Socialist Alliance confirmed what i said in an earlier post about sham unity) HCH you claim that “the Socialist Party (the old Militant, CWI) which participated in TUSC has the same goals as you: common ownership with workers democratic control, production for need, international socialism, party democracy etc etc. They condem old the bureacratic and totalitarian Soviet types regimes” Okay, link me to those claims on your SPS website. I read the “ABOUT US” – nothing about common ownership but plenty about state ownership ie the old bureucratic soviet type model ! i go to your homepage “how a socialist economy would work” and i read about the wonders of state capitalism and the glorification of the Bolshevik Party. No HCH , we do not share the same goals, nor do we have a shared understanding of the past. We are and nor are the working class fooled by rhetoric of a re-hash of transitional programme. Nor are we taken in by the your claims of party democracy, one that is based upon Leninist “democratic centralist” lines in which the executive committee are the policy-making leadership, upon a hierarchy where each layer of leadership has power over the levels below it, with the party’s national leadership – the members of its central committee – at the top. Power in the hands of the leaders and in practice reduces the rank-and-file members to a mere consultative role. The welfare state – most particularly its health service component – originally represented an advance for many workers, though it was certainly not introduced with benevolence in mind. We have never said that all reforms are doomed to failure and do not really make a difference to workers’ lives? There are many examples of ‘successful’ reforms in such fields as education, housing, child employment, conditions of work and social security. The Socialist Party does not oppose all reforms as such, only the futile and dangerous attempt to seek power to administer capitalism on the basis of a reform programme – reformism. The Socialist Standard wrote “It seems unlikely that the working class and its organisations are strong enough to stop these austerity measures being imposed, let alone imposing their own demands. But we must start from where we are. David Cameron and the new government will be expecting that you’ll just take whatever’s coming to you. We must try to prove them wrong…where socialists have their most vital contribution to make – a clear idea about alternatives is not mere utopianism, but an important ingredient in inspiring successful struggle. An upturn in class war, such as we’re seeing in Greece, and may perhaps soon be seeing in this country too, is the only basis on which socialism can begin to make sense and seem like a credible and possible alternative to capitalism for the working class as a whole.”Another Socialist Standard said “We welcome any upsurge in the militancy and resistance and organisation of our class. But we also know, from bitter experience, that work of an altogether quieter, patient, more political kind is also needed. The skirmishes in the class war must be fought if we are not to be reduced to beasts of burden. But as human animals capable of rational thought and long-term planning, we must also seek to stop the skirmishes by winning the class war, and thereby ending it. ..” As revolutionaries, we do not advocate reforms, that is, changes in the way capitalism runs, such as alterations to immigration policy or the health service or the tax system. Reforms, however ‘radical’, can never make capitalism run in the interests of the workers. Nor should supporting reforms be some kind of tactic pursued by Socialists to gain support from workers, for workers who joined a Socialist Party because they admired its reformist tactics would turn it into a reformist organisation pure and simple. To attract support on the basis of reformist policies but really aim at revolution would be quite dishonest to get workers’ support on the basis of saying one thing while really wanting something quite different. History showed us the fate of the social democratic parties , which despite a formal commitment to socialism as an “ultimate goal” , admitted the non-socialist to their ranks and sought non-socialist support for a reform programme of capitalism rather than a socialist programme. In order to maintain their non-socialist support , they were themselves forced to drop all talk of socialism and become even more openly reformist . Today the social democratic parties are firmly committed to capitalism in theory and in practice. We say that this was the inevitable result of the admission of non-socialists and advocating reforms of capitalism. That is why we have always advocated socialism and never called for the reform of capitalism. We are not saying that all reforms are anti – working class, but as a socialist party advocating reforms , it would be its first step towards its transformation into a reformist party. Regardless of why or how the reforms are advocated, the result is the same: confusion in the minds of the working class instead of growth of socialist consciousness. I will re-iterate the stategy of the Socialist Party. The institution of government does not feel threatened by appeals to it to act on single issues – even if those appeals take the form of mass public protests. On the contrary, government only feels a sense of power and security in the knowledge that the protesters recognise it as the supreme authority to which all appeals must be made. As long as people are only protesting over single issues they are remaining committed to supporting the system as a whole. But government will take quite a different view when large numbers of people confront it not to plead from a position of weakness for this or that change or addition to the statute book, but to challenge the whole basis of the way we live – in other words to question the inevitability of buying and selling and production for profit, and to actively work from a position of political strength for its replacement by the socialist alternative. In such circumstances, the governments aim will be to buy off the growing socialist consciousness of workers. In other words, reforms will be much more readily granted to a large and growing socialist movement than to reformers campaigning over individual issues within the present system. Not of course that the growing movement will be content with the reforms the old system hands out. To those who still say that, while they ultimately want socialism, it is a long way off and we must have reforms in the meantime, we would reply that socialism need not be a long way off and there need not be a meantime. If all the immense dedication and energy that have been channelled into reform activity over the past 200 years had been directed towards achieving socialism, then socialism would have been established long ago and the problems the reformists are still grappling with (income inequality, unemployment, health, housing, education, war. etc.) would all be history. It is only when people leave reformism behind altogether that socialism will begin to appear to them not as a vague distant prospect, something for others to achieve, but as a clear, immediate alternative which they themselves can – and must – help to bring about.