imposs1904
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Jonathan Neale's resigned.Viv Smith's resigned.David Renton's resigned.Pete Gilliard's resigned.And, as previously mentioned, Ian Birchall's resigned.These were all prominent longstanding members of the SWP. Strange to watch it all unravel.
I tried to look for this thread last night but I couldn't find it, so cheers for resurrecting the thread.I don't have a direct link for this but I thought I'd cut and paste this resignation letter/email from an SWP member in Britstol that someone posted on Urban 75 earlier today. I just thought it was especially interesting because it once again confirmed what we've always known; of their being two classes of member in the SWP and all the other vanguardist organisations:"Dear Charlie,I am writing tonight to resign from the Socialist Workers Party. I am a revolutionary socialist who has viewed all the events since 2010 with alarm. It is not just the defence of rape by the upper echelons of the party, but also the very fact that their is an upper echelon in the SWP. As a blue collar worker without a university education I have always struggled to be accepted in the intellectualised atmosphere of the party. I do not think that anyone who joins should have to smash through a political/intellectual glass ceiling, but we do. In so many ways the SWP mirrors the society we aim to bring down. There is class and privilege in the party, that much was obvious to me from early on, I fought to smash it down, but like any other structure the hierarchy clings to power, at a national or local level.Time and again I approached the party to complain of poor comradeship, zero support and poor organisation in Bristol, at least four times I was fobbed off the rest ignored. Once at a meeting in my own home I and the Secretary of UAF in Bristol, were silenced in our criticism of comrades, as it was felt that important funds from the NUT would be held back. To our knowledge those funds never materialised. Our local campaigns were jeopardized for the sake of national money, to prop up National UAF. For all these years as a good comrade I kept my mouth shut, or had it shut for me.I can be brutal with language, I recognise Boss-like behaviour when I see it and I see it in the Party. You are the bosses, people like me, who trail around doing what we are instructed, are the workers; who are then smashed for showing a flicker of initiative. Worst of all are the unelected, self appointed, middle managers who have a position due to their seniority, a woeful parody of the bosses and managers we are trying to remove. I have a simple rule; anything that we resist at work, we should resist in our own organisation.This in turn brings me to the immediate events around Martin Smith. This whole series of events has been spread over three years, not one and we have long been aware of the allegations facing Martin Smith. Again as a trade union rep with experience of discipline and how workers are treated, abused and oppressed, it was stunning to see the same behaviour occurring in the SWP and from comrades who have also been long serving Trade Unionists. It goes with the territory to stand up for the oppressed, not to be the oppressor. I was shocked to hear how the Disputes Committee had harassed the woman comrade who had been abused, any half competent trade union official would have stopped a meeting like that and any half decent revolutionary would never conduct a meeting like that.I was proud to vote against the CC at the January 2013 conference and have paid the price in Bristol ever since. I believe in a revolutionary socialist party, your SWP is not it. You have had successes, yet as the Tories move further to the right and Labour clings to their coat tails and the Lib Dems face wipe-out the SWP is dragged further and further into the resulting vacuum. We need to resist all temptation, on the one hand to oppress other humans and on the other, to be drawn into the movement in the way you are doing through Unite the Resistance, amongst other campaigns. As revolutionaries we should always be firmly rooted in our place on the left and never over stretch into the movement. There are limits.I trust you can see that my reasons for resignation are not purely based on the exploits of Martin Smith. I feel too many concessions are made to movementism and there is a lack of understanding of how we operate in United Fronts. Too many comrades can talk the talk, yet when they walk the walk it is to the beat of the Labour Party drum.I have stayed in the SWP hoping that I could be a part of changing our structures from within. The democracy commission was a carve up and so too have been all the conferences and structures since. A former comrade in Bristol always used to tell me “Jaz, there are talkers and do-ers”, Charlie, I must report the talkers have won. The party is taking on the appearance of a retirement home where old bigoted ideals will be savoured as you talk over what would have been if those “upstart students and no good women hadn’t come along and spoilt it all”.I too hoped the latest conference would make a serious attempt to acknowledge and rectify the mistakes you and the CC made. I hoped you would have the guts to apologise sincerely to the women at the heart of your crisis and that we could all move forward in unity. That is not possible with a CC based on intransigence. That means I have to leave.I will end by quoting a comrade from Bristol who has tonight also resigned; “I remain a Revolutionary Socialist committed to liberation from oppression, but can not work within this organisation. I offer my solidarity to all my comrades.”Justin “Jaz” Thomas"
And some more additions to the blog. Again, courtesy of Graham in Denmark.Socialist Standard October 1923 Link: Jingo Communists by Edgar Hardcastle ('Hardy')Socialist Standard November 1923Link: Unemployment – cause and cure by Edgar Hardcastle ('Hardy')Socialist Standard September 1989Link: Economic Roots by IvanSocialist Standard March 1983Link: Historical Materialism by Steve ColemanWorld Socialist Journal Number 4 (Winter 1985-86)Link: Capitalism, socialism and ecology by Robin CoxSocialist Standard 1991Link: A Professor defends capitalism (David Marsland debates Steve Coleman)
Some more additions to the blog. All the credit for these go to Graham in Denmark who transcribed them a few years back:World Socialist Journal Number 5 (Summer 1986)Link: Capitalism as a world systemSocialist Standard August 1964Link: Economic causes of the Great WarSocialist Standard February 1988Link: The lunacy of left-wing nationalismSocialist Standard June 1993Link: Beyond CapitalismSocialist Standard April 1994Link: Do we need the market?Socialist Standard August 1990Link: Trotsky, the prophet debunked World Socialist Journal Number 4 (Winter 1985-86)Link: Sex in a free societySocialist Standard January 1996Link: The great minimum wage debate
There was a series of articles published in the Socialist Standard in the mid-seventies published under the title of 'How I Became A Socialist'. I'd like to eventually put them on the net but I have to hunt down the actual issues of the Socialist Standard first.The only one in the series currently on the the net is this fascinating piece by a Swedish socialist that was published in the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard:Link: How I became a Socialist
Anybody else listen to this?Despite at times thinking the speaker sounded like J.P. from Fresh Meat narrating the audio book of Gwyn Williams' Proletarian Order – excuse my inverted snobbery – I thought it was an interesting talk. It was shame that they didn't include the contributions from the floor in the podcast. I was curious about aspects of the talk and I was hoping that a recorded Q & A session would have answered some of the questions I had.
I always knew that Mattick had contributed book reviews to the Western Socialist – the former journal of the World Socialist Party of the United States – but I didn't realise how many. I just clicked through Mattick's Marxist Internet Archive page and between 1944-1958, he contributed about 19 or 20 (I lost count) separate reviews during that time.
Well, it's been a while since I tried to find out anything about the book and the author, but after posting the above comment I took a chance and searched again. It threw up this wee snippet from August of this year: "Pseudonym of an untraced author, though some circumstantial evidence points to a tentative identification. Grey Lynn, an inner-city district of Auckland, New Zealand, was the birthplace of Felix (Runcie) Kelly (1914-1994), an artist who moved in 1935 to the UK, where his work was espoused by Herbert Read, who commissioned him to illustrate the 1946 edition of his sf novel, The Green Child (1935), and who wrote an introduction for a volume of his paintings – Paintings by Felix Kelly (graph 1946). Earlier, Read had introduced the sole printing of The Return of Karl Marx (1941) as by Grey Lynn; it is possible that Kelly took the city of his birth for a pseudonym, as he was serving in the RAF at the time and it was not normal practice to publish under one's own name while in uniform. The Return of Karl Marx is an sf Satire featuring the Reincarnation of the philosopher from his grave by unexplained means; after viewing the Decadent UK of 1940 (> New Zealander) he returns, sadly, to his place of rest. [JC] – See more at: http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/lynn_grey#sthash.jOfeEd4j.dpuf" From this link.
There's actually a nice wee book entitled 'The Return of Karl Marx' by someone called Grey Lynn that dates from the 1941, and is a fictionalised imagining of Karl Marx waking up in war time London and encountering various individuals and left groups who speak in his name. There is a funny depiction of SPGB in the book, though they are not explicitly referred to as the SPGB . . . but it's definitely them/us.Despite looking around the internet, I've never been able to find out any information about Grey Lynn. For all I know, it's a pen name. Even the publisher of the book isn't that well known. However, the introduction was by the famous author and anarchist, Herbert Read, so maybe that's a clue to the background to the book.Worth reading if you get the chance but I note that the copies of the book that turn up secondhand on the net are really expensive for what is essentially a novella.
Just spotted that the CPGB/Weekly Worker group have uploaded an audio file of David Broder's talk:Link: Bordiga and BordigismI've not listened to it yet.
alanjjohnstone wrote:"I know from past, painful experience that I can too easily be a snotty wanker on the internet. And I always hate myself because of it after the fact."We never ever thought that anything like that…we only think you a wanker because of the team you support …On the same day 'my team' gets spanked 6-1 at the Nou Camp . . . and that's without Messi. Very cruel. 'Heartless', in fact . . . just like the Scottish Premier League next season. Will someone else explain that brilliant wee riposte to other readers on this thread. I'm too busy patting myself on the back.
What a cracking resource. Cheers for sharing. eta: And that's from someone who never liked Speakers Corner.
Nice. I miss myspace. Myspace tom is up against the wall come the revolution for fucking up myspace. I don't have the heart to try and do the same thing on facebook. I'll just do my wee bit in my wee corner on the blog.In retrospect, I'm glad you didn't too much offence at my reply because I know from past, painful experience that I can too easily be a snotty wanker on the internet. And I always hate myself because of it after the fact.cheers
DJP wrote:To be honest now that this exists:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/archiveI can't see the point of this blog. Why not just scan the articles in and email them over?Just would seem a waste of your work if the articles are not going up here as well?Erm,cheers for that really positive reply, comrade. point 1 – Of course, the whole point is that they go in the Socialist Standard archive. That's why I'm putting the shift in. You already knew they would be turning up on the archive because I replied to your previous comment in the same vein over on Facebook a few weeks back.point 2 – Please take this in the spirit that I took your comment. The archive is piss-poorly advertised/laid out on the website. I'm surprised anyone is actually aware of it. At any one time it only lists the latest 25 uploaded articles on the archive page and they're not dated or signposted. You have to go out of your way to find them. I'm currently posting 25 plus newly transcribed articles a week so that means if they were immediately uploaded those articles to the website there would be a rapid turnover of the 'recent additions' segement of the blog which would mean a missed opportunity of people discovering the other recently uploaded articles.I raised the matter in a previous thread of the website offering an email subscription option so people could be notified of recently uploaded articles to the website. I understand the Internet Dept is looking into the feasibility of this but it's not on the immediate horizon because there are other stuff that is also needed done, Blogger allows me to offer the email subscription option in the here and now. People have taken advantage of it. I'm not hiding the articles away. I'm in regular correspondence with another member of the Internet Dept. He's been kept abreast of my thoughts on this matter. They are there for the Internet Dept to place on the website any time they wish. However, I personally believe that if we don't get the email notification thing in place then we're simply not making best use of new archive material placed on the website.point 3 – Another advantage of the blog is that it's another place on the net where interested people can stumble across the SPGB, Socialist Standard, Moses Baritz, etc etc, I'm sure you get the drift via google searches, etc, and of course that means they will also be aware of the Party website. I'm long in the tooth with this internet business. I already know from past experience the random ways people have stumbled across the Party via the strangest of searches. Of course it should all eventually lead back to the Party website, but if they happen to find out about the Party via a parallel blog what's the problem with that?point 4 – I'm currently focusing on uploading Standard articles to the blog but I have in the past – and will in the future – be posting articles from other WSM journals. For that reason alone, the blog serves its purpose in my eyes.OK, I've posted a snottyish post to your – to my eyes – snotty post. Let's now call a truce and just accept that we're both on the same side, with the same goal of raising the profile of our politics on the net and also ensuring as much of our rich history is made available on the net. It's a win-win situation.Cheers.
