ALB
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That's not entirely true. There are a number of benefits than can be obtained for workers even under capitalism (not just by trade union action), e.g. health & safety laws. repeal of anti-union laws, less restrictions on meetings and publications, voting against a war. If world socialists elected to office, locally or nationally, are going to abstain on such issues, what's the difference between that and the "Sinn Fein" tactic of not taking their seat?
I know there's another thread that's been started on this, but participating in an election without a candidate doesn't open doors to the press like participating with a candidate does. And in local elections there is no extra cost to standing, just some extra administrative work (form filling and accounting).
What about this motion, down for discussion at this year's Conference:
Quote:This Conference instructs the EC to ensure that all Party candidates for public office shall stand on the basis that, if elected, they shall refuse to take office and shall repudiate any associated salary or other benefits.Another option, but a bit of a departure from the position the Socialist Party has held since its foundation — as if would be to renounce bringing about some benefit for workers when in a position to do so.
Found it. It's on page 1163 of Trotsky's The History of the Russian Revolution, published by Gollanz in 1965 (in the chapter "The Congress of the Soviet Dictatorship"):
Quote:The capital awoke under a new power. The everyday people, the functionaries, the intellectuals, cut off from the arena of events, rushed for the papers early to find out to which shore the wave had tossed during the night.Also this (by someone we know):
Quote:On the morning of 7 November the workers of Petrograd woke up to find that in the night the Bolshevik Party had assumed power, the Bolsheviks had carried out a revolution while they were asleep.I remember reading something by Trotsky in which he said that the workers woke up the next morning to find out that during the night they had seized power, i.e that they had slept through their revolution, but can't find it at the moment. Trotsky should know as he was the person in charge of organising and carrying out the coup.
Overthrowing the Kerensky government, which wanted to continue the First World Slaughter, was one thing and had popular support beyond the Bolsheviks, but dissolving the Constituent Assembly, which Russian revolutionaries including the Bolsheviks had called for for years, was quite another. The Bolsheviks did it, not to defend the anti-Tsarist revolution but to defend the rule of their party.
It wasn't just the Bolsheviks who were for the overthrow of the Kerensky government. Some Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries were as well. Their criticism was that it was replaced by a Bolshevik government and not by a government of all the leftwing anti-Tsarist revolutionaries, i.e a genuine Soviet government. What they objected to was the Bolsheviks monopolising power. As we know the Bolsheviks just used the soviets as a cover for their coup. At an earlier point Lenin had wanted the Bolsheviks to seize power directly but Trotsky persuaded him to adopt this subterfuge instead.
We plan to have a stall and leaflet this demonstration. More details later under World Socialist Movement section.
Our answer to the question is No, it can't be. There's a basic exposition of our position on this here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1980s/1989/no-1020-august-1989/socialism-means-one-world
There's nothing wrong with workers forming makeshift representative bodies in politically backward countries like Russia was in 1917 where formal, elected, representative bodies don't exist. But where they do there's no need to re-invent the wheel.Of course if there really had been a world socialist revolution after WWI the history of the world would have been quite different and the "failure" of this to take place has resulted in two world wars, continuous lesser wars, famines, massacres, etc, etc. In theory there could have been one because the objective, material conditions for socialism did exist on the world scale. Unfortunately, the second condition — a desire on the part of the world's workers to establish socialism — did not, and it was an illusion of Lenin and the Bolsheviks that it did, as this article from 1922 had to point out:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1920s/1922/no-220-december-1922/book-review-will-bolsheviks-maintain-power
Thanks. Sounds an interesting meeting.
irwellian wrote:1917 was a seminal moment in world revolutionary proletarian historyNot sure about that. It was obviously an important event that had repercussions throughout the last century, but from a geopolitical rather than proletarian point of view. In fact it sidetracked the "proletarian" movement and nostalgia for it still does.
Quote:its failure, and the subsequent failure of revolutionary movements elsewhere were ultimately a failure of "socialism in one country" (or more accurately, state capitalism in one geographical location)Good point.
Quote:the workers councils (soviets) were a major contribution to revolutionary movements (although to be fair, the councils go back to 1905)Not sure about that either. What is the need to create representatives councils where these already exist? They are a sign of political backwards not the future.
Quote:The massive influence of the Russian revolution on the years between 1917 and now are unquestionable. It led to:the bolshevisation or leninisation of the more revolutionary wing of the international workers' movementthis bolshevisation/leninisation included revolutionary groups and movements of various tendencies (including anarchists)the dominance of the Comintern and Stalinist tyranny, etc, led to the deformation of revolutionary politics and has left concepts such as socialism or communism as tainted, damagedpro-revolutionary ideas, groups and movements are still recovering from thisAll good points. In other words, the outcome of the Russian Revolution has been a disaster for the movement for socialism.
Quote:the apparent death of class consciousness, the general lack of collective working class awareness and the dwindling of revolutionary groups and ideas is a probable repercussion of the failure of 1917 and afterI would have thought that this would only be a minor reason, if one at all, for this. It will have had more to do with, for instance, the decline in work in heavy industry and the mistake of considering industrial workers only as "working class".
Quote:the dire state of the world we see today is ultimately evidence of the failure of 1917Well over the top too.
twc wrote:Science deals exclusively with dynamical processes. It only considers static things—stasis—as (1) moments in a dynamical process or as (2) invariants that persist throughout these moments, and so characterise that changing dynamical process conceptually as a persistent conceptual “thing”.Science subsumes definitions—mere words—under the process they feature in. Its terminology is subservient to process. Definitions—words—remain stillborn without a process theory to vivify them.That's a good point. Genes, atoms, etc are not things that exist in themselves. They are descriptions of observed dynamic processes, not things that already exist and waiting to be discovered (as one caricature would have it). What scientists are doing (whether they recognise it or not) is describing these processes with a view to being able to predict more successfully how they will continue to work.I don't think we need as Socialists to get involved in the argument as to whether the unit of evolution is the organism or the gene, i.e to decide which is the better description. We can leave this to those who study the subject to argue amongst themselves, only intervening when they introduce arguments about capitalism and socialism. Interestingly or perhaps ironically, Dawkins himself took this view on last year's EU referendum, a view which will ruffle a few feathers:http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/eu-referendum-richard-dawkins-brexit-23rd-june-ignoramuses
Dave B wrote:Dawkins sort of modified his position in other ways shortly after his selfish gene book with another emerging idea he plagiarised as well.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Extended_PhenotypeExactly. Everything he has written since the publication of The Selfish Gene has been backtracking on what he wrote there. But the damage had been done since this is the most famous/notorious of his books.
