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Left Unity have now published the motions for their Conference in November. Those on elections are interesting. 3 call for an alliance with TUSC, one with the National Health Action Party, another says LU should call for a Labour vote where no credible left candidate is standing. Another implies that they should not stand at all. And there's a mad feminist one.http://leftunity.org/motions-for-left-unity-conferenceHere's the one on the NHA party:

Quote:

Left Unity shall approach the NHA party (National Health Action Party) to seek an arrangement where members who are both Left Unity and NHA party members can run on a joint election platform as Left Unity – NHA candidates or NHA – Left Unity candidates. Left Unity and the NHA both have strong views to protect the Universal Health system throughout the whole of the UK and should seek to work together and run joint candidates based on these mutual agreements where a person is a member of both parties. This arrangement should not be binding in the same way as Labour – Co-op party relations are, i.e. the Co-op party does not run its own candidates nor operate as an independent party.

So, they allow dual membership with the NHA party?And the opening of the one on the Labour Party:

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In the 2015 UK General Election, in every constituency where we do not stand Left Unity candidates, or where there are no explicitly working class and socialist candidates with real roots in local struggles which LU has decided to support, Left Unity will call for a vote for Labour.This is because of the party’s continued connections to the six million-strong trade unions and the organised labour movement in Britain, and the feeling that millions of working class people still hope that by supporting the party they will get a better life and protection from the Tories.We will not call for a vote for capitalist parties like the SNP, or for the middle class Greens, who do not have these structural connections to organised workers.

I still think most LU members will vote Green rather than Labour (and logically should  since their policies are more or less the same). I don't suppose that their members will be disciplined enough to vote as decided unless, that is, the vote is to give members a free hand to vote for whoever they want.Be interesting to see what they decide.

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I thought some here might be interesting in the debate that took place in Militant in 1996 when they decided to try to usurp our name:http://www.marxist.net/namechange/mainframe.htmIt's heavy going, even heavier than this thread.

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Vin Maratty wrote:

How are branch minutes 'freely available' if they are not published online?

By writing to the branch secretary asking to see a copy or come to the next branch meeting. There's a Conference resolution stating that all our records are open to public inspection except the membership lists. Some members do not want their names published all over the internet for debt collectors, the tax authorities, their employer or ex-wife seeking alimony to see and follow up. No point in making it easy for them.

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Once there's a socialist majority the game is up for capitalism and the capitalist class. A "slaveholders rebellion" (such as Marx expected after the workers won control of political power via the ballot paper) would only delay things a while, but in the end the majority would get its way.For a start, the armed forces would be split without some, perhaps a majority, refusing to join the rebellion so its effectiveness would be considerably weakened. There would mutinies while at the same time workers would be refusing to supply the rebel units with food, electricity and other resources.Even under capitalism an isolated minority can't hold on to power for long in the face of majority opposition or non-support. Otherwise why has any dictatorship come to an end?You're being too pessimistic !

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This is another example of resolution creep ! That resolution does not require branches to publish their minutes online, only to make them freely available, as those of branches that don't do this are and always have been.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

Adam, I was hoping you or someone else would be able to explain how a socialist majority in parliament goes from there to taking control of The State?The coercive elements of the State can only be dismantled if actually under control of the socialist majority in the first place, it is why I mentioned the need to remove the military hierarchy in the first place. 

Much as a capitalist parliamentary majority does now. A socialist majority in parliament (reflecting of course a democratically self-organised majority outside parliament) will control the executive and the executive will continue to control the coercive powers of the state, including the armed forces.  I can't predict the future any more than anyone else can but I can't see a socialist majority, on winning control of political power, not completely democratising it (by lopping off its bureaucratic and military excrescences) before using it. Many members of the armed forces and civil service will of course be socialists themselves and so prepared to go along with and implement this. Or are you asking if the executive (today and tomorrow) does not or would not control the armed forces?. 

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JW:I'll put my two penny worth in. If it's not broke why fix it! The SPGB carries a lot of historical and ideological meaning. There are examples of other organisations carrying out a form of symbolic suicide by engaging in name change, for the process entails more than a change of name, as can be witnessed by the demise of the old Communist Party of Great Britain. The change to the Democratic Left .was in effect an act of political hari kari. The Italian Communist Party committed the same error and suffered the same fate: political irrelevancy.   I counsel caution. Don't deface 'The Monument'(with apologies to Robert Barltrop)

Exactly my view !

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Another article (short and not difficult to follow) by Kliman aguing against those who see "neoliberalism" rather than capitalism as the problem:http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2014/10/09/falling-profits-rather-than-increasing-financial-investment-led-to-decreasing-rates-of-capital-accumulation-by-american-companies/Actually, the title is a little misleading as the two of them are not arguing that continuously falling, not even slowly, profits are responsible but only low profits. It might have been better called "Fallen profits rather than …"

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alanjjohnstone wrote:

Care to c and p the full Times article as it is behind a pay-wall

OK.

Quote:

Johnny Rotten still seeks revolution— but now he takes a more conventional approach, writes Jack MalvernAs Johnny Rotten he cultivated a reputation as an agitator for an anarchist revolution, declaiming that he was the Antichrist who wished to "destroy passers by".As John Lydon, speaking 38 years later to a crowd at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, he urged people dissatisfied with politics to take their grievances to their town hall.The lead singer of the Sex Pistols said that people such as the comedian Russell Brand who refuse to vote as a form of protest were "bumholes" who misunderstood the nature of power. He declined to say which political party he supported. "I'm very wary of tagging my name on to supporting any of those phoney b***ds, but don't be like like Russell Brand," he said at the festival, which is sponsored by The Times and The Sunday Times."If you don't vote, you don't count. It's only a century ago that none of us had the right to vote and we don't want to go back to that route."Brand argued last year that refusing to vote was his way of renouncing the political system. He cited Lydon's experience at state school, which he said "seemed to primarily be the installation of a belief system that placed his generation and class at the bottom of an immovable hierarchical structure". Lydon said that people who wanted change should engage with politics, not reject it. "Go to town hall meetings and give them f***ing hell," he said. "I'm not being flippant. If you don't start locally you're not going to change the world."He asked people to shout the name of the party they support, prompting several cries of support for Ukip. "What is the UK [Independence Party] about? I've been away a bit and all of a sudden it's a bunch of aw-haw-haws. They look like a real bunch of rejects from the other [Conservative] party."

He's right about UKIP. 

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Steve, since we had no website in 1988 that resolution and party poll was not concerned with it. But there was in 2008 so it's that new resolution which governs it. So even if the Constitutional Court overturns the 2008 resolution that part will stand. It's the fascia and the front cover of the Socialist Standard that are problematic and open to possible challenge as attempting to over-rule a Party Poll result. The trouble is nobody challenged it at the time, probably because the voters would be the same and so presumably the result.There is, however, an anomaly since we changed the voting procedure at Conference. Under the old system the vote was announced at Conference. Which meant that delegates could decide there and then to call a Party Poll if the issue was highly contentious and the result close. Now the result of the vote on Conference Resolutions is only announced 6 or weeks later, when Conference is no longer in session.So what has happened is that Party Polls are now only called on very special occasions. The last two in fact have been called to rescind previous decisions, one by the EC, the other by Conference. Both rescindments were carried. So democracy in the Party still works.

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SocialistPunk wrote:

A good enough point regarding the possibility of needing the armed forces to put down a minority capitalist uprising. However I think on another thread you said that it would be highly unlikely a defeated capitalist minority would to go head to head with a socialist majority of the people

But the State is not just the armed forces. It's the whole "public power of coercion", i.e laws, law courts, police, prisons, etc. The socialist revolution will be the socialist majority enforcing their will on the capitalist minority. Winning control of the State will give the workers (the socialist majority) the upper hand as it will mean that the public power of coercion will no longer be used to uphold and enforce capitalist property rights. Instead it will be there to enforce the will of the socialist majority.Most anarchists (the exceptions being the anarcho-capitalists and the anarcho-pacifists) accept that the capitalist class will have to be forced to give up their ownership. Only they envisage using workers militias or whatever to do this. A bit suicidal if you leave, as they propose, the State in the hands of the pro-capitalists.There is also the point that the State is the centre of social control as well as the public power of coercion and so could be usefully used to co-ordinate the socialist revolution. In fact, once the socialist revolution is over this is all that will remain of its present functions. The centre of social control will be an unarmed, democratically controlled administrative body. Not having coercive powers it won't be a State.

SocialistPunk wrote:

I would say that deposing the existing hierarchy of the military would be a wise move to avoid any potential co-ordinated international military coup. That in effect would leave a leaderless military.

Well, yes, the first thing the working class will need to do when it wins control of the State is to lop off its undemocratic features (the monarchy and the House of Lords as well)

SocialistPunk wrote:

Regarding my earlier question. If The State were not immediately dismantled, but kept in place just in case, how and who would manage The State during the period leading up to its eventual abolition?

The people through re-inforced democratic control. But we're not talking about a lengthy period. It's actually (if I dare say so) the period Marx (somewhat misleadingly) called "the dictatorship of the proletariat",or, better, the period of the revolutionary transformation by political means of capitalist society into socialist/communist society.

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Here's Johnny Rotten's contribution to this thread:http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/cheltenham-festival/article4234792.ece

Quote:

The lead singer of the Sex Pistols said that people such as the comedian Russell Brand who refuse to vote as a form of protest were “bumholes” who misunderstood the nature of power.

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jondwhite wrote:

Was a conference resolution even necessary on this?

It was considered necessary at the time (1984) because one member had committed the Party to "the gradual decline of the State" which would have put us in the same camp as all Leninist and Trotskyist groups and their view that the State could persist for decades after they had won control of it. This mistake needed to be repudiated.Unfortunately, the resolution to repudiate it was badly drafted and committed the Party to the opposite mistake of "the immediate abolition of the State". It should have spoken rather of something like "the rapid abolition of the State".Those were the days when Party conferences discussed politics and political theory rather than as today internal procedures and rule changes.

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One reason for not abolishing the State immediately is the possibility, however remote, of an uprising by a pro-capitalist recalcitrant minority. It would be foolish of the working class to disband the armed forces until they were certain that this was not going to happen. In fact the coercive powers of the State other than the armed forces will need to be used to impose the will of the majority to dispossess the capitalist class and make the means of wealth production the common property of society. even if there's no armed resistance to it by a pro-capitalist recalcitrant minority. I can think of other reasons too for not abolishing the state immediately, to do with the working class not winning control of all the states in the world on exactly the same day.It will of course depend on the circumstances at the time which we can't predict now, but I can't see under what circumstances "immediate abolition" would be a realistic or likely option.

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I remember voting against that resolution in 1984 (too anarchistic) and was pleased to vote for its repeal 20 years later and replacement by something more realistic:

Quote:

That the 1984 Conference Resolution, 'This Conference affirms that socialism will entail the immediate abolition and not the gradual decline of the State', be rescinded and replaced with: 'That as the State is an expression of and enforcer of class society, the capture of political power by the working class and the subsequent conversion of the means of living into common property will necessarily lead to the abolition of the state, as its function as the custodian of class rule will have ended. Those intrinsically useful functions of the state machine in capitalism will be retained by socialist society but re-organised and democratised to meet the needs of a society based on production for use'. (2004).

 

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