alanjjohnstone
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Our African blog, Socialist Banner got there first with the Georgetown speech http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/2013/07/praise-be-plutocrats.html Other posts bout his hypocrisy can be found here http://socialistbanner.blogspot.com/search?q=bono
Our own blog comments on Keir Hardie's anti-migrant attitude.http://www.socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/08/same-old-labour-party-story.html The trade union leader Ben Tillet also has a record of attacking workers from abroad. The blog refers to the positive side of the unions eventually dropping their anti-immigrant position and actively going to recruit foreign workers My own blog re-published a statement by Jewish trade unionists made to the TUC conference back in the 1890s, the document being circulated wider by Eleanor Marx.http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/04/voice-from-aliens.html We cannot of course expect Labourites to advocate class struggle to end xenophobia. i believe the SPGB had to formally disassociate itself with anti-Chinese sentiments expressed by some members of the Socialist Party of Canada back in the early part of the 20th C.
Do you think we scared off the original poster, Sotionov ? If he is still reading the thread, i wonder if he has had his questions answered to his satisfaction.
Ed wrote:Although he does espouse a couple of conspiracy theories of his own when speaking of Bradley Manning and Julien Assange.Can you elaborate on just why you consider Hedges and these legal cases are conspiracies theories ?
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." – Groucho Marx If we can't get your membership, will still gladly take your money !!!
Our pamphlet gives a fairly concise view of our approach. “This is not to say that the socialist majority only needs to organise itself politically. It does need to organise politically so as to be able to win control of political power. But it also needs to organise economically to take over and keep production going immediately after the winning of political control. We can’t anticipate how such socialist workplace organisations will emerge, whether from the reform of the existing trade unions, from breakaways from them or from the formation of completely new organisations. All we can say now is that such workplace organisations will arise and that they too, like the socialist political party, will have to organise themselves on a democratic basis, with mandated delegates instead of leaders. With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.” But also to quote another failed revolutionary, James Connolly, during the deletion of the political action clause of the IWW, his response was …just try and stop the working class from entering the electoral field of battle…(to paraphrase). Nor did Luxemburg dismiss participating in the German elections or agree with the dismissal of the Russian Constituent Assembly “Our participation in the elections is necessary not in order to collaborate with the bourgeoisie and its shield-bearers in making laws, but to cast out the bourgeoisie and its shield-bearers from the temple, to storm the fortress of the counter-revolution, and to raise above it the victorious banner of the proletarian revolution…” An echo of our position and William Morris, to enter parliament as rebels, to ensure the capitalist class can no longer use the state as its coercive weapon against the workers and to legitimise the revolution. Not 100% Luxemburg but perhaps a bit closer to her attitude than Lenin. An ever present part of the SPGB case is the necessity of socialists for the establishment of socialism, so LBird i guess you are correct about consciouness being an objective requirement for ourselves.
This may be of interest http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/19/big-science-little-minds/ 'science fears that if it were more honest (and humble) about such matters it would lose its social authority. They don’t want that and the people who employ them, the government and corporations, do not want that… …"Buddhism argues that reality is a matter of “dependent co-origination.” We say there are galaxies, but there is no galaxy, there is only a co-dependent arrangement of things that are not galaxies." Without bothering to check out, i am sure Dietzgen went on about naming and labelling things as core of reality as reflected in that quote.
As i said when i began the thread , my purpose was to use a criticism of an ex-member of the ICC who share a certain amount of similarity to ourselves as an organisation and it was intended to be more an inward looking thread. Some of his references to his own organisation simply just struck a chord with me , not necessarily as something already prevalent in the SPGB but the possible potential of them developing. But discussion list threads take on a life of their own. Therefore i will let those who know more about the IWW theories explore their differences but i hope they will also bring to light points of agreement. Nor do i really want to re-visit the Russian Revolution yet again having already previously discussed this on Libcom with ICC (and other) in the past.
No longer having Dave Perrin's history available to check but i think i recall he mentions the party expected a post-WW2 slump that never occurred. But that is more a technical mistake , not something based on prcatice or principle, isn't it? There was also the early explanations of crises that were in error until it was agreed that it was disequilibrium. But again more a technical than fundamental. I'm guessing most members are members because of the party's strengths. Some will be aware that my personal view is that the hostility clause was often targeted at some groups who were possible potential allies and the differences that existed between us and them should be comradely divergence of views, in spite of their own attitude towards ourselves, at times. If Left Unity have an issue with innumerable micro-grouplets, then the anarcho-communist, non-market, non-state sector shares the exact same problem. To a certain degree the attitude towards non-SPGBers has been clarified saying our hostility clause is not the reason for our opposition towards those who may have a variant view of the means and methods towards socialism ie the old SLP and current AF. In the end it will be th working class who will determine the tactics and strategies dependent on the circumstances and situation the working class face and makes me reticient to make outright condemnation of Stuart, (or Bill when he went off on his Co-op explorations) The class war is after all a series of battles and not always on the same field of battle.
Call me a cynic if you want but i agree with you, Adam. There is no way that the Greens will dissolve and the best the LU will do is have an electoral pact dividing up which seats they both will contest without splitting the vote. I also note the TUSC and LU are in talks of reaching some agreement of sorts. Again to be totally sceptical, Stuart cautions against the multitude of Left parties but ignores the fact that LU has already been entered by SWP breakaways who appear to wish to apply the Stop the War Campaign strategies to it. While the STWC can claim some measure of success, its tactics can scarcely be transferred to a political party. If TUSC become involved then it also comes with the full baggage of SPEW and SWP. Something that Stuart is rightly wary of but how can it be avoided. The existence of the alternative platform , the "Socialist" Platform demonstrate, that as a unified party it will always be divided and once up and going just how much energy will be spent on internal rivalry than reaching out. to the non-partisan that Stuart appears to wish it to do. The last time we had real serious unity discussions was 1920 with the formation of the Communist Party and back then we had the elephant in the room of Moscow's vested interests and Comintern directing its development, at least, this is not the case now…There is a feel of LU being a more organic growth than an artificial one. I genuinely hope it does manage to overcome what i suggest are unsurmountable challenges since we are as workers in need of a more determined and aggressive trade union response, supported by a more intransigient principled mass "workers" party, which the Labour Party isn't . It won't bring us socialism but it may bring us off our knees…. But again the Doubting Thomas in me is too strong….
From the Left Unity website “If we’re going to demand that people agree with us before they can even join, then what is the point of having a new party at all?” Stuart replies to this – “Well, that’s that argument nailed, for me anyway.” He also comments:- “The Left Party platform was criticised because it was something everyone who thinks of themselves as basically left or socialist can agree with. Well, exactly, that’s the whole point! It can therefore be a basis for uniting, not just the small left groups (a pointless exercise), but all those who already are or who could easily be won to a left outlook (an exercise that couldn’t be more urgent). If we could achieve that (a big ask), well, then we might be in a position to get somewhere. Maybe, who knows, even to socialism!” In another comment he explains what socialism means to him:- “I think this is a good statement and I support it. What is it saying in a nutshell? That, in the very near term, we oppose austerity, the attacks on the working class, and the destruction of the welfare state, and will support efforts to halt or ameliorate or reverse these. In the medium term, we stand for the reversal of the privatisation of essential services and utilities, and to bring them back into public ownership. In the medium to long term, we stand for the democratisation of all the social, political and economic institutions of society. Is it, and are we, socialist? Well, all that is exactly what socialism means as far as I’m concerned, whether you choose to call it that or not.” I wish him and them the best of luck because we all want an effective resistance to the capitalist class and who knows, perhaps, their route to socialism is the way, even if i am still to be convinced of their road-map.
“Now a top-down project’? Science always has been”” Hmm….in the time of the domination of the church?..And what about the resurrectionists digging up graves? …Wasn’t there a time scientists were rebels? “But these researchers are ‘scientists’. “Or glorified technicians and lab workers splicing DNA but that may be unkind and philistine, and insulting to all those support staff. Being an expert in one field does not make you an authority in others. And as you say, knowingly permitting your research to be used for political reasons outside its parameters and scope makes it ideological – bad science – or unscientific…But the comment was getting at specialisation which you later refer to We can unify natural science and social science into one truly ‘scientific’ method As for democratic control question.perhaps in the field of pharmaceutics and medicine rather than everybody having a say, the patients are involved. Isn’t that the case now to a certain degree with the various charities financing and directing certain research. No need for tom dick and harry to be involved. We will maybe have users groups involved in the aspects of production and i see no reason why they won’t be participating in medical science. Even astronomy and the “hard science” have their amateurs and enthusiastic non-professional lay followers. Sometimes they are involved in sky observations but few have an actual say, simply volunteering…perhaps opening up all these academic societies to the public may result in more democratic input into science. As with everything they will have to make their case for resources from the general community through procedures to be determined just as means of oversight will require developing. I’m just guessing.
