Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly
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To believe that socialist reforms are not possible due to the nature of capitalism, you'd have to believe that Marx's laws of capitalism are basically the same in nature as Newton's laws. I don't share this faith. To believe that it was the crisis itself that opened up the space for radical criticism is fair enough, but then again, someone had to move into that space – and the people who do that most energetically and successfully are probably those not burdened with beliefs in iron laws. It's people like that that will find the way out, if there is one.
Adam's 'workings of capitalism' had me immediately reaching for some EP Thompson as an antidote/ant-acid!I think the Greens have done well despite the awful pro-UKIP bias of the BBC. Encouraging for Left Unity and the SPGB that breakthroughs can happen with lots of hard work on the ground and with good use of social media.
Indeed, Jools, agreed. If anything shows the dangers inherent in not trying to organise a left unity opposition, in having no Owen Jones voice in the mainstream, it's the rise of UKIP.
Actually despite the media harping UKIPs percentage of the vote has actually fallen.http://www.libdemvoice.org/about-that-ukip-earthquake-farage-partys-national-voteshare-down-on-2013-40267.html
robbo203 wrote:You know, Ive heard this argument before about how the "climate of opinion" is rendered more "receptive" to socialist ideas by campagining reformist political parties and groups making political inroads. Its what they said about the Labour government in the immediate post war years. That was a time when the membership of the SPGB was at its highest – in four figures.How on earth does a party like the SPGB go from "four figures" membership numbers, to where it is today?I could understand it if the SPGB were another lefty party with a leadership and followers, internal power struggles are lethal for small political parties. However the SPGB has no leaders, but instead is made up of politically enlightened men and women who are passionate about wanting to build a better society for the worlds population.What happened?
There was no post-war slump and with more or less full employment in the 50s working class conditions improved compared with pre-war days, with workers acquiring household goods and even cars.
As Jools reminds again the Greens did rather well and once again i ask why LU does not practice what they preach and seek a merger with them rather than proposed electoral pacts. I fully acknowledge, Stuart, that you and other LU may vote Green. as I said in my previous post. "imagine what a thousand new enthusiastic members campaigning on the streets rather simply voting for the Green Party could have done, Stuart."My point was that simply falls short of unity and despite the link you earlier provided showing the differences, i think even you would ccept as much difference exists within sections of LU righ now. I can only conclude that despite the declarations to the contrary , the LU is yet another sectarian party but simply won't concede it After all, the CPGB recommended its members and supporters to vote for the SPGB so LU are not unique.It seems also Stuart (but perhaps i have this wrong) that you suggest we do need a high profile figure-head for a party, in your case , Owen Jones, for UKIP – Farage, to claim media attention. I have been thinking about this a lot and in regards to Eugene Debs standing for President in the US and achieving a remarkable result considering the franchise restrictions on the poor, immigrants and blacks he was the public face of the Socialist Party of America…but less known is that he did NOT hold any administrative or position of authority in the SPA, not even on its EC. Something to think about, at least.The Greens have Lucas, a MEP, but also separately have Bennett as party leader. And also Derek Wall as a writer, who is certainly alongside ourselves in his understanding and analysis of capitalism.We have to consider what our stance should be if a member gains similar as someone like Russell Brand's exposure to publicity. Would we make the most of it or try to discourage it? But lets get realistic…is the Guardian the thermometer of the working class because i would suspect in any opinion poll, Farage as a personality would far outshine Owen Jones (who?) in any opinion poll of voters.DJP i have only anecdotal evidence but lets admit that UKIP are doing well…but now they have several councillors as the BNP acquired and who were later revealed to be idle opportunists and pretty much idiots too, just how effective they are doing the job, will determine if they can maintain the rise. From what i gather UKIP as MEPS are parasitical and contribute little. If their local representatives prove the same we will see its decline.
stuartw2112 wrote:To believe thatsocialist reforms are not possible due to the nature of capitalism, you’d have to believe that Marx’s laws of capitalism are basically the same in nature as Newton’s laws.I don’t share this faith.To believe that it was the crisis itself that opened up the space for radical criticism is fair enough, but then again, someone had to move into that space – and the people who do that most energetically and successfully are probably those not burdened with beliefs in iron laws.It’s people like that that will find the way out, if there is one.Before you get carried away with advocacy of anti-scientific pre-SPGB possibilism…Clearly demonstrate one anti-scientific possibilist success story out of the hundreds of thousands of anti-scientific possibilist legislative promulgations, anti-scientific possibilist charitable acts, anti-scientific possibilist human-lives sacrificed, that was not totally hijacked by capital and so rendered scientifically impossible.Just one, from way back to 1904, from anywhere in the worldI’ve earmarked your anti-scientific possibilist claims for future discussion.It ill behoves you, in response, to parade your accustomed moralism, when your declared aim is to unburdon your moralism’s miserable demoralization upon the SPGB.
Are we going to spend our whole life in this forum arguing over the same topic ? We do know since 1903 that leftism is reformism, and it is an anti-socialist-communist current, and we do know that capitalism can not be reformed either, therefore, Why are we hammering over the same arguments all the times ? It is like an endless cycle, or like arguing with evangelicals.
Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, an open forum must deal with whatever lands in its lap.Rampant social demoralization that “nothing can be done” is the direct product of shattered faith in possibilism.The demoralized possibilist merely identifies his own actually demonstrated political impotence with the SPGB’s apparent political impotence, largely caused by the actual obstacle of possibilism.This is materialist proof of the SPGB’s stance.
stuartw2112 wrote:To believe that socialist reforms are not possible due to the nature of capitalism, you'd have to believe that Marx's laws of capitalism are basically the same in nature as Newton's laws.No, you don't. You just have to face the fact that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interest of the majority class of wage and salary workers and their dependants. The economic laws of capitalism (priority to profit-making) may not be as rigid as iron but they exist and do impose themselves on governments, even in the end of well-meaning reformist ones. Isn't that the lesson of the Labour Party's failure over the years?What do you and Jools think that "Marx's laws of capitalism" are? Just guidelines or a some code of practice that capitalist firms and government don't have to follow if they don't want to or can be forced not to follow by popular pressure?LU, Owen Jones, etc believe that the way out of the present slump and its accompanying austerity is government spending on housing, schools, etc., i.e a return to the failed and discredited doctrines of Keynes. Is this what EP Thompson meant? Perhaps I shouldn't have asked as he may well have done.
ALB wrote:There was no post-war slump and with more or less full employment in the 50s working class conditions improved compared with pre-war days, with workers acquiring household goods and even cars.I would be very wary of citing post war economic conditions as a reason for the decline in the SPGB´s membership from a four figure number to the few hundred it is today. It is a standard position on the Left that a revolutionary surge is predicated on the occurrence of a capitalist crisis. Marx and Engels at one time or another both argued that capitalist crises would get worse and worse and this was the underlying dynamic that would lead to socialist revolution. But the argument is wrong. Crises don't necessarily get worse and worse – the Great Depression in the early 30s was far worse than the 2008 crisis – and if anything crisis generate reactionary tendencies among workers e.g. the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. There is certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that economic downturn tends to make workers more conservative-minded and compliant in order to cling on to their jobs. I can cite research done in this area As far as the SPGB is concerned, if you are going to rely on an economic downturn for workers to become more militant and receptive to socialist ideas then the implication of such thinking is that you must brace yourself for a loss of membership when material conditions improve which is what you seem to be saying, Adam. How do you reconcile that with Marx´s view that there are no permanent crises, that every crisis is followed by an economic upturn leading to boom? The implications of what you are suggesting is that the SPGB will never be able to break out this parlous state of being a pitifully small party. Just as soon as its starts growing, an economic boom will come along and prune back all that growth it made under conditions of material austerity. I think such thinking is reductionist and there are numerous other factors involved that influence the growth of the Party. I still maintain that the small party syndrome is the primary or governing factor through which many other factors are refracted. The small party syndrome is a psychological factor that asserts that you lack credibility because you are small and because you lack credibility this keeps you small. It is only when you reach a critical threshold in terms of numbers that this factor begins to abate. Which is why every new member counts for far more now while the SPGB is well below this critical threshold than afterwards, when it has breached that threshold. I also still maintain that one of those factors that impedes the growth of the party, the effect of which is refracted through the small party syndrome , is the SPGB´s absurd policy on refusing membership to socialists who happen to hold religious views, irrespective of the form of these religious views. Comrades in the SPGB persistently misunderstand the argument that is presented here. Yesterday I stumbled across, for the first time, a YouTube talk given by Howard Moss back in 2008 on "Is Socialism a Faith". Howard´s talk was a very good one – a good example of the kind of nuanced approach to the question of religion that the Party ought to be evolving towards but I was less impressed with some of the comments from the audience. It is not the case that some ex-members of the Party are arguing that there are hundreds or thousands of potential recruits to the party out there just champing at the bit waiting to join but being unable to join because they hold certain religious views. What is being argued is quite different – that the accumulative or incremental effect of the policy on religion as refracted through the small party syndrome is that the Party is much smaller now than it might have been but for this policy on religion. The policy is absurd because it is totally unnecessary or redundant. If holding religious led one to support vanguardism, for example , then it is quite easy to expel a member advocating undemocratic vanguardist views for holding such views without reference to his or her religious views. The unwarranted assumption being made is that holding religious views necessarily leads to all sorts of anti socialist postions but that is bunkum . There is no necessity about it and, as so called "scientific socialists" , the SPGB should be more open to the emprical evidence that might contradict such dogmatic apriori assertions. Holding religious view does not necessarily conflict with being a socialist at all or indeed embracing a materialist conception of history. Nor does it necessarily take power away from human beings as agents of change and place it in the hands of some godlike entity. All that is sociological bunkum and the truth of the matter is that the Party has a very poor grasp of the sociology of religion. Its sweeping claims are based on a very particular narrow model of religion which is theistic and organisation or church-based and above all, Christian. Denying membership to socialists with religious views is as dumb as denying membership to socialists who hold atheist views just because the vast majority of atheists currently support capitalism. Its a pseudo-empiricist position But anyway enough about religion and my hobby horse about the Party´s policy on the matter! The point I'm making, really, is that there are numerous factors that influence the growth of a revolutionary socialist party. Some of these are internal , some external. Never mind the economic boom that supposedly decimated the ranks of the SPGB in the post war era – what about the devastating effect of the whole example of the Soviet Union on the socialist cause? Cumulatively, I would have thought that that was far more important as a factor. Also, of course, there was the experience of the "socialist" Atlee government as well. Workers having had a taste of "socialism" in action would probably have had good reason to turn away from any organisation that advocated "socialism". But thats "just my opinion", as the bloke from the Russia Today TV programme keeps saying
Sorry, Robbo, you got the wrong end of the stick. I wasn't saying that slump conditions are best for us. In fact I hold the opposite view (more workers turn to nasty nationalism as in the 30s and again now). What I was saying is that at the time many members did think this and dropped out when capitalism proved able to improve working class conditions, including their own, compared to the 30s.We also had our own "Revisionist" controversy which mirrored that started by Bernstein in the German Social Democratic Party at the turn of the century with some mermbers arguing that this development showed that a gradual evolution to socialism, e.g. more and more services becoming free, was possible (read the articles by Frank Evans in Forum and the arguments of Tony Turner). They and others left. We now know of course that it was the post-war boom that ended in the mid-70s that was exceptional not a standing pool of 5-6% unemployed that has existed since.
Relevant and surprisingly undogmatic article here from one of the Trotskyist groups within LU which reflects the arguments for reformism that Stuart and Jools seem to be putting forward:http://links.org.au/node/3858
I may be wrong but was there not a resurgency of membership in the 60s and 70s that had little to do with economism but more about lifestyles and personal expectations for the future.There was( if my memory isn't waning) a confidence that we were part of a growing socialist movement that was expressing itself culturally as well as simply politically. We viewed ourselves as part of something bigger than ourselves….alas, it was not to be and situations regressed…Not just for our party's individual fortunes but for general politics of the Left. Despite all the snide remarks about SPGB numbers, our rivals struggle to recruit…Robbo is right about a small politcal party syndrome but i hasten to add whether religious are included or excluded fails to remedy it…nor as being pointedd out to Stuart is the reformist everything for everybody approach successful.i'm always asking myself…Was there lessons we should have learned ?If our growth was related to social movements that were not always limited to politics is it the general disillusionment that womens, gay, black liberation successes have failed to liberate except individually and not collectively as assumed. Even the environment has become passe…the road campaigners …now the anti-fracking…seems to be more a disconnect with society rather than linking.Again i have to concede that Occupy did bring everybody under the same tent and why they temporarily succeeded and then faded back to single issues is something i need to think about more. It is here i think the question has an answer, whatever it is, for the party. We may have had disagreements with Stuart's take on it which i'm sure he himself admit isn't unchallengable but we didn't run away from the issue we simply differed in our understanding of it.We didn't know the answer because we don't know the question…42
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