[ALB]

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Resistance movements will have to look now at the long night of slavery, the decades of oppression in the Soviet Union and the curse of fascism for models. The goal will no longer be the possibility of reforming the system but of protecting truth, civility and culture from mass contamination. It will require the kind of schizophrenic lifestyle that characterizes all totalitarian societies.

Actually, this is the same conclusion as reached by the German section of the Trotskyist Fourth International in 1944 (there was only one 4th International then). They argued that capitalism was regressing to barbarism and that the immediate aim could only be to try to preserve whatever democratic and human values could be.Murray Bookchin was associated with this group for a while and wrote of them many years later:

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One of the earliest attempts to “dialectically” deal with social regression was the little-known “retrogression thesis,” undertaken by Josef Weber, the German Trotskyist theorist who was the exile leader of the Internationale Kommunisten Deutschlands (IKD). Weber authored the IKD’s program “Capitalist Barbarism and Socialism,” published in November 1944 in Max Schachtman’s New International during the bitterest days of the Second World War and posed the question that many thinking revolutionaries of that distant era faced: what forms would capitalism take if the proletariat failed to make a socialist revolution after the Second World War?

Fortunately, they were proved wrong, but this reflects an old argument we have had as to who was right in their prediction as to how capitalism would develop: George Orwell in 1984 or Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. I would have thought that it was Huxley. In fact Hedges's view seems to be that Huxley's vision has arrived and is just as bad as Orwell's. I'm not so sure that Huxley's is as bad. At least it doesn't feel like it, not like it must have been under Stalinism or fascism.

[ALB]

There's another, revealing interview here:http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/6562

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This year, seeing as we were running a city-wide election, our demand was $15 an hour minimum wage city-wide. The second was affordable housing and rent control. And the third was a millionaire tax to fund mass transit and education.

and

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How did people respond to the fact that you were openly a socialist?For most people what stood out was the fact that we were fighting for $15 an hour.

I wonder what their reaction would have been if she had replied that although socialists are all in favour of higher wages as long as capitalism lasts they stand for the abolition of the wages system, i.e. of most people having to work for a private or state employer.Clearly then she wasn't elected as even a nominal socialist. In fact Militant's US section seems to have gone further in electoral opportunism than their counterparts over here in TUSC — "a millionaire tax to fund mass transit and education". Nice if you could get it, but it's highly unlikely given that if you tax profits too much you'll provoke an economic crisis.To suggest that this sort of public works programe could work under capitalism is to encourage reformist illusions (which of course the Trotskyists are very good at).  In any event subsidised housing, education and transport is not socialism.I grant that the result does show that people in some parts of the US are no longer afraid of the mere word socialism and that that can't be a bad thing.

[ALB]

ALB wrote:

I'd like to know the outcome of the discussion they had on electoral strategy in the afternoon.

According to this report (by the AWL) this point on the agenda was not reached:http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2013/11/30/left-unity-conference-rejects-socialist-platformIt also reveals that the "Socialist Platform" was rejected by 216 to 122 votes with 28 abstentions.Logically, in view of their criticism of the "Left Party Platform" [LPP] that was carried they should now leave a party that has committed itself to "managing capitalism, not getting rid of it". As they put it in one of the printed documents entitled "Support the Socialist Platform" they were still circulating at the conference:

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Neither of the LPP documents gives any clear indication of what sort of party the LPP wants to set up. Will it be a party that tries to manage capitalism? Or will it be a party that breaks with capitalism? At different places the documents seem to point in different directions. Whilst there are references to socialism, it is unclear from the context what exactly is meant by the use of the word. It is this lack of clarity that detracts from both documents.There are references to renationalisation of the privatised industries, but no mention of the abolition of private ownership of the means of production more generally. The only conclusion one can draw is that the documents are calling for a 'mixed economy', an economy in which industry remains primarily in private hands, with some in state hands. This remains capitalism. The profit system will remain, the nationalised industries will service big business. Overall, the impression is conveyed that the LPP aims at a return to some sort of social democratic golden age, when the Labour Party was more leftwing. In so far as any clear aim can be discerned, it aims at managing capitalism, not getting rid of it.

We could hardly put it better ourselves.

[ALB]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

With TUSC not engaging in next years EU elections to let the NO2EU to once again stand, it will be interesting to see if LU forms an election pact or opposes them or they themselves stand down and don't participate. Perhaps they will concentrate on local elections to begin with as the relatively successful an earlier reincarnation of LU, the Independent Working Class Association.

I think that how they do electorally will be the key to the success (or, more likely, the failure) of the new party. If they want to be taken seriously as a party they've got to contest elections and do at least as well as the Green Party.I'd like to know the outcome of the discussion they had on electoral strategy in the afternoon. There was a motion calling for:

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opening discussions with the major players on the left, including the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), the CPB, Respect and the Alliance for Green Socialism to avoid electoral clashes and move towards electoral pacts.

My guess is that this won't have been carried (it was proposed by one of the "dalerk" groups linked to TUSC). I like the description of TUSC, the CPB and the AGS as "major players". If they are, we must be too. Actually, they are in the same division as us, i.e. the Third Division. In the Croydon North by-election last year the CPB got 119 votes (or 0.5%) and in the 2010 General Election the AGS got 1.1% and 1.3% in two Leeds constituencies it contested.I don't know of any area where the new party would be able to get a decent vote in local elections, let alone get a councillor elected. It's rumoured that the new party's founders have a grander scheme in mind: to be like the Left Party in France and the Lefts in Germany and to form an electoral alliance with them for the Euroelections next year.As Dave has said, rendez-vous this time next year or even in June after May's local and Euroelections.

[ALB]

Dave wrote:

it would be interesting to know what the makeup wasof those who attended in terms of age, gender and ethnicity. Were they people who had been around the block many times beofre.

From what I saw there was a disproportionate number of men near or after retirement age who had presumably been through the Labour Party or the Communist Party or the mill of one of the last century's Trotskyist groups. But there were also plenty of women (after all, it's got a militant feminist wing, not that all women are militant feminists, just ordinary ones like most men these days) and a number of younger people. I didn't see many black faces.

[ALB]

Père Duchêne wrote:

The Labour Club also contained a few members of the 'Socialist Labour Group', who are/were these ?

Personally, I'd never heard of them before, so I looked them up on wikipedia and see that one of those associated with them was Robin Blick. A former hierarch in the SLL/WRP he later abandoned all Leninism and Trotskyism and in 1993 wrote an excellent book The Seeds of Evil. Lenin & the Origins of Bolshevik Elitism.Its content can be seen from the blurb on the back:

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Did Stalin betray or embody Lenin's political legacy?The roots of Stalin's tyranny lay in Lenin's repudiation of the 'classical' Marxist tradition and his unambiguous enthusiasm for Jacobin terrorism and intrigue.

We bought up copies to re-sell to members and sympathisers. I see it's still available on the internet at a reasonable price. Good stuff well worth reading.

[ALB]

Isn't Marx saying here that socialism/communism will end not the division of labour, i.e there being different work tasks, but the "subordination of the individual" to it, i.e. someone having to perform the same task all the time? He would seem to be envisaging a rotation of work tasks. I can't see that he would have envisaged the impossible idea of abolishing different work tasks.

[ALB]

This is how the leaflet they (or rather he, as there was only one of them) handed out today began (in bold large type):

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"Safe space" PC censorship and Trotskyist hijacking "platforms" setting anti-Sovietism as a fundamental "principle" will ensure the new Left Unity is nothing but a sterile mule politically – or yet another of 57 varieties of fake-"leftism" which have poisoned the well of working class politics in the West for generations. Only opening up a total philosophical polemical examination of the Soviet Union's great triumphs and Stalinist mistakes will it tap the rising revolutionary sentiment driven by catastrophic crisis which Russell Brand's anarchist flurry has already demonstratedThe "Left Unity" launch will be as useless and as bankrupt as all other fake-"leftism" from ultra-Trotskyism, to Maoist mantras and Stalinist revisionism, unless it gives room for unrestrained revolutionary argument to be made and fought for.

Got the drift or do you want me to continue? 

[ALB]

Five of us were at the Royal National Hotel in central London to leaflet and talk to the delegates and observers at the founding conference of the new party. The three who turned up at 11am had to wait in the lobby for nearly two hours till the lunch break before we could do anything (one went home). Impressive turnout of 400 or so delegates and 50 or so observers. We didn't realise that we could have got in as observers and listened without joining. At least that's what a member of the Labour Party who did this told us afterwards.We met ex-comrade Stuart who was civil enough, even friendly. He told us that the "daleks" had been exterminated by which he meant that all the other platforms apart from the Left Unity one had been voted down. But they all still had their stalls at the back of the hall, at least Workers Power, "Socialist Resistance" and the "CPGB" did.The delegates voted to call the new party simply "Left Unity." (as opposed to "Left Party" and "Left Unity Party"). Good that they didn't include the word "socialist" in their name, not that, significantly, anyone was proposing this (too dalek-like for most delegates). Don't know yet what they decided their election strategy will be (that was discussed after we'd left), but they will be committed to registering as a party and contesting elections.Others giving out leaflets were the Alliance for Workers Liberty (who don't know whether or not to enter the new party; they seem to prefer Labour), a group advocating a breakaway Scottish Republic (I think they were one of Stuart's daleks), the "Economic & Philosophic Science Review" (not sure whether this is a Maoist sect or a Maoist cult), the Spartacists (of course and they're a cult if ever there was one) and 9/11 truthers. I don't think the hotel staff had seen anything like it before.

[ALB]

Just realised who the present descendants of the IMG are. They're "Socialist Resistance" who have decided to enter the new Left Unity party. Judging by one of the pamphlets they handed out at the founding conference of the new party today I can see why the other Trotskyist groups say they've abandoned Trotskyism. They say:

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The FI [Fourth International] decided some years ago that it would no longer present itself as the 'world party of revolution'.

That's a relief.

[ALB]

As the title of an article in the Socialist Standard once put it, charity begins at work.

[ALB]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25162946 Looks as if BTSomerset may be right. Just listened tothis on the 8 o'clock news on BBC Radio 4 which talks of a "Marxist commune" and have sent off this complaint

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25162946Just listened to this item on the 8 o'clock news and wish to officially complain about this being described here as a "Marxist commune" when clearly they had nothing to do with Marx but were followers of the Chinese dictator Mao.In any event I'd be interested in your justification for using the word "Marxist" rather than "Maoist". Is this BBC policy or just a mistake on the part of an unprofessional journalist?

JUst noticed that the word "Marxist" has since been changed to "Maoist". Didn't know I had such influence !Looks as if it was an incompetant sub-editor or news reader after all.

[ALB]

Just looked up an election address I have of the "Socialist Unity" candidate for Islington North, Michael Simpson, in the May 1979 general election (which brought the Madame Thatcher to power). It says:

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We should all have the right to decent housing, education and health services. An emergency programme of works would provide these and create jobs.This could be done without rocketing rates and taxes. They are rising mainly to pay interest charges on money borrowed. Socialist Unity would pay for more and better services by ending interest payments and nationalising the banks and finance houses without compensation.

What? Under capitalism? These Trotskyists don't change. They (e.g TUSC) still propose this today as a supposed way out of the crisis. Either they believe this. In which cases they are simple reformists. Or they don't. In which case they are cynical manipulators offering workers empty promises as bait for workers to follow them. Nothing special about the old IMG then. Same old story.

[ALB]

I remember them as just another common or garden Trotskyist group which took a particular interest in "anti-imperialist" struggles in the Third World.. They were the official group in Britain of one of the 4th Internationals, the one led by Ernst Mandel and held the orthodox Trotskyist view that Russia was neither a form of capitalism nor a new exploiting society but the absurd  view that it was some sort of "Workers State" even if a "degenerate" one while its satellites and China were "deformed Workers States" (subtle difference only discernable by experienced Trotwatchers: they couldn't be called "degenerate" as in their eyes they'd never been the real thing; they were born "deformed").In the 1979 General Election they put up a number of candidates under the name of "Socialist Unity" (often against other Trot groups such as the SWP and the WRP usually getting more votes than them — so much for "unity").I never knew what happened to them in the end but Tariq Ali and some of the others "entered" the Labour Party for a while in the 1980s. I think that they got overtaken as the biggest orthodox Trotskyist (i.e holding the above silly view of Russia and its satellites) group by Militant..

[ALB]

Not sure that nearly half the votes cast will have been postal votes. The figure on the council website for postal votes is that for the number of people sent ballot papers by post rather than the number returned. It will be true that 40% or more of these will have been returned, meaning that about a quarter of the votes cast will have been postal votes. It also means that in at least one of the four polling districts the turnout will have been less even than 19%.

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