Anarchist Bookfair London Saturday 19th October 2013
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The CWO are holding a meeting at the Anarchist Bookfair London 2013
Quote:Topic: Anarchism and MarxismMarxists and anarchist have always shared the view that the antithesis to capitalism is a classless, stateless society. What they have not shared is a clear outline of how this might come about. After the statist cul de sacs of social democracy, Stalinism and Trotskyism many marxists now recognise that the issue is not about replacing the state but destroying it. After the failure of the anarchists in Spain many anarchists recognise that revolution from below cannot just be a nice idea but has to have a deeper material basis. With capitalism now in obvious crisis is this not the time for a more fruitful exchange on revolution and the state than has been possible in the past? The Communist Workers' Organisation and the Commune have already successfully posed this in the Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair and invite you to take the discussion further. All welcome.
Saturday 19 October (precise time yet to be given)
The venue is Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS. See anarchistbookfair.org.uk for map and how to get there.
How come that the CWO, which favours political action by a vanguard party and envisages a transition period with a state, are admitted to the Anarchists Bookfairs while we are banned? Not that we are going to go begging to be allowed a stall there.
Quite! The Anarchist Bookfair policy for 2013 still seems to have a downer on political parties. The CWO don't seem to call themselves a party (nor do the Commune) which seems to be the loophole. There may be a way round this.
Is the meeting an 'official' bookfair one, or just organised to coincide/overlap, like a fringe meeting?In regard to ALB's comment "… that the CWO, which favours political action by a vanguard party …", here's how the C.W.O. see it -"Onorato Damen argued 65 years ago that 'the working class does not delegate its power to anyone – not even its class party', and that is our starting point. Class wide bodies not parties are the only form of rule in a socialist society."
I know that, unlike the Trotskyists, the CWO does not envisage a vanguard party winning state power and ruling in the name of the workers, but they still stand for a vanguard party. After all, until a few years ago the name of their international organisation was the "International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party" and before that in Italy they were the "Internationalist Communist Party".This article (taken from their website) on events in Argentina a few years ago gives a good idea of how they see their vanguard party operating:
Quote:One of international capitalism's weakest links has snapped and huge numbers of proletarians and the disinherited have been propelled into action by a single overriding need. Bourgeois reaction is doing its cowardly work. It is like a play already written and rehearsed a thousand times over but with two conspicuous absences: that of a real revival of the class struggle and a party capable of steering it.Absent from the sceneThe absence of these two elements allows the bourgeoisie to produce an alternative that confines itself to tinkering with its own political power set-up whilst the economic framework and relationships of exploitation remain firmly in place. The class content of a movement does not only derive from its sociological aspect, that is from the presence of proletarians, but above all from the political objectives contained and developing within it. First there must be an awareness of class antagonism, then the recognition of the conservative function of the trades unions and of the political left and the necessity for the violent overthrow of the whole capitalist economic and political frame. An indication of the second condition is the active presence of a revolutionary party that is well-rooted inside the proletariat as a whole. This alone can transform the anger, the determination to struggle and spontaneous rebellion into social revolution. Such a party will have clarified the terms of the revolutionary programme and its strategy. In the short term its task is to identify the class enemy and its accomplices on the Left in order to remove the political obstacles on the road to insurrection. In the medium term clarity is needed about what constitutes the new proletarian power and the economic programme stemming from it. In the long term, although a step towards its realisation must be made from the outset, there will have to be an international dimension to the struggle which, if it remains only a national experience, will inevitably end in defeat.In Argentina the devastation of the economic crisis has taken a strong and determined proletariat towards struggle and self organisation, making it capable of expressing a sense of the hostility between classes and of identifying its political enemy. However, the second condition, the one concerning the existence of a revolutionary party, is nowhere to be seen, for the simple reason that the vanguard of the revolution does not come into existence from one day to the next, nor is it the product of immediate events.Either the party will have to be worked for through time and for it to become rooted inside the proletarian masses, or the insurrectionary waves will always be dispersed and give way to defeat and a sense of impotence. The imperative for today's meagre revolutionary vanguards who are active internationally, if only in restricted circles, is to grow, to connect up, to accelerate the process of clarification of events in terms of the class struggle and of political perspectives, even if these are not immediate.Historical necessity imposes the immense effort of giving life to political organisations capable of absorbing the advanced proletarians who are part of these spontaneous movements, so that the next outburst, wherever it happens to be, does not remain without an alternative class strategy.Against the bourgeoisie in whatever guise it presents itself. Against trade union traps. For the organisation of the proletariat in Latin America. For the construction of the world party of the proletariat.I hope for their sake that the organisers of the Anarchist Bookfair don't follow discussions on this forum !
ALB wrote:I hope for their sake that the organisers of the Anarchist Bookfair don't follow discussions on this forum !I think we should draw the organisers' attention to this thread. Fuck 'em!
Charming. It would also feed the delusion about organised political parties constituting some sort of threat, not something the SPGB should be doing.
What are the interesting meetings to go to this Saturday?http://anarchistbookfair.org.uk/whatson.htmlI'm thinking11Spreading Organised AnarchismWe are the 99%12German AutonomistsChomsky's politicsPrivate Property (Wine & Cheese)1Don't Read Marx with Harvey (Wine & Cheese)2Anarchism and Marxism (CWO)Anarchist Print Media3Paid OrganisersAnarchist Research3:30Riot from Wrong (Film)4Class and Class ConsciousnessPrimitive Communism
This is tomorrow (October 19th) – please support our stall…http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/event/literature-stall-anarchist-bookfair-east-london-1100am
Posted elsewhere on this forum too, but here are some reports from the Anarchist Bookfairhttp://libcom.org/forums/announcements/london-anarchist-bookfair-19th-oct-07102013andhttp://www.urban75.net/forums/threads/anarchist-bookfair-2013-october-19th.315271/andhttp://samambreen.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/there-is-no-anarchism-without-feminism/andhttp://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/10/513250.html?c=on#c297248
Quote:The crowd around us got bigger, comrades very much on our side and the others, men who seemed utterly heartbroken (pissed off) that we were chanting “kill all men”. One well-meaning chap explained how his mum was a feminist and how he had support for women but he felt alienated by phrases such as the one we were using.I bet he was and the rest of the male working class too.On my way to the fair I passed a woman in a burqa. I would have thought that the energies of these people would be better directed at those who force "their" women to do this. Wouldn't like to see what happens, though, when they shout "Kill All Men" in this context.
Private Eyes cartoon on the bookfairhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/107147535@N04/10576658216/sizes/h/in/photostream/
ALB wrote:How come that the CWO, which favours political action by a vanguard party and envisages a transition period with a state, are admitted to the Anarchists Bookfairs while we are banned? Not that we are going to go begging to be allowed a stall there.This is a lie, though, isn't it? The SPGB was not 'banned' from having a stall this year, or for several years in the past. Is hasn't asked to have a stall, has it? And is 'asking' what you refer to as begging? What has actually happened is that the SPGB has given up asking, which is the primary reason it did not have a stall, and the CWO has not given up asking, which is why it did. It may be that the organisers would not have allowed the SPGB to have a stall – it's been pointed out (quite reasonably I think) that as it's an Anarchist bookfair there's no requirement to let Marxist groups in – but the CWO was allowed to have a stall after they put in a request, and were then contacted by the organisers to provide further information, which they did, after which the organisers accepted that they had a sufficient relationship with Anarchism to be given a stall – this year. Next year, things might be different of course. Perhaps the differences that the organisers might see between the SPGB and the CWO (were the SPGB actually to make an application of course) would include the fact that the CWO doesn't claim to be a party, unlike the SPGB; that the CWO doesn't see the class party taking state power, unlike the SPGB; that the CWO doesn't stand in elections, unlike the SPGB; and that the CWO is strongly in favour of workers' councils, unlike ther SPGB. All of these factors would put the CWO much closer to most Anarchists (whether they call themselves Anarcho-syndicalists or Anarchist-Communists or not) than the SPGB, which still somewhat bizarrely claims to be 'the parliamentary wing of the Anarchist movement'. But, whether the organisers would, or would not, have accepted the SPGB's application is a secondary question, because the SPGB did not request a stall. I think saying that the SPGB has been 'banned' or prevented from having or 'not allowed' to have a stall is a straight-out lie. It might have had a request for a stall turned down in the past. But for the last few years at least it hasn't even asked. Do you intend to make this clear to all your members and readers, many of whom have no doubt been left with the impression that this year the organisers decided to admit the CWO but not the SPGB?
I don't recall us ever describing ourselves as the "Parliamentary wing of the anarchist movement", and it wouldn't be true, we're not anarchists. Which will also the the reason we dopn't ask to have a stall in the Anarchist Bookfair (If in the past people have asked, and we've been repeatedly turned down, it might also be reasonable to conclude that it's not worth asking again).I hope we don't, though, issue any clarification.
I don't know what's provoked this vituperative attack. The statement criticised is not a lie. We have been turned down on a number of occasions in the past and, as you rightly assume, have given up applying on the natural assumption that we are not welcome, "banned" if you like. It was not a reference just to this year's bookfair.More interesting is this:
slothjabber wrote:the CWO was allowed to have a stall after they put in a request, and were then contacted by the organisers to provide further information, which they did, after which the organisers accepted that they had a sufficient relationship with Anarchism to be given a stall – this year.What "further information" did they ask and what further information did you supply that convinced them that you were sufficiently anarchist?We readily concede that your anti-election stance puts you closer to Bakunin and the anarchists than to Marx.We have of course never claimed to be "the parliamentary wing of the anarchist movement". That's something others have said about us. In any event this niche is filled by Ian Bone and Class War (see the separate thread on this in the General Discussion section).
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