jondwhite
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I always thought our case was about using elections to parliament as did the impossibilist elected to a legislature in Canada – not actually participating in parliamentary governance. At least when Sinn Fein won electoral support, they refused to go along with parliamentary protocol of swearing an oath of allegiance to the Queen.If you think open primaries are a form of state assimilation although you don't seem to have pressed that point perhaps regretting it, wait until you get on your first select committee.
SocialistPunk wrote:jondwhite wrote:What else is the answer to charges of sectarianism? Or the charges put by George Walford herehttp://gwiep.net/wp/?p=387As you can imagine, it takes a good deal to leave me speechless. But that did, the first time I heard it. The blind, unthinking conceit of that answer! If you disagree with the Socialist Party that shows you don’t understand them. They have nothing to learn from anybody. There is no possibility of anybody knowing more than they do and no possibility of them being wrong.Hi JDWDo you or anyone in the Party know if this challenge was ever answered?
I don't think so, though they did reply to Walsby (search for Mugwump and Moonshine https://libcom.org/library/spgb-utopian-or-scientific-fallacy-overwhelming-minority), but for a reply to Walford you're probably better off looking at gwiep website through the archives of Ideological Commentary journal. Here's a link to get you startedhttp://gwiep.net/wp/?tag=socialism
Young Master Smeet wrote:We don't idolise Marx & Engels,the above is a tactical suggestion, we've chosen different tactics, we are decidedly partyists, in preference to the tyranny of structurlessness and also our specific focus upon the conscious acceptance of socialist ideas.Sorry but the Communist Manifesto is decidedly partyist, not in favour of structurelessness and focused on the conscious acceptance of socialist ideas. I don't think it is idolising Marx to challenge some of your comments in your above statement about the passage from Chapter 2.You' might be focusing on 'The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.' whereas you should be looking at it in the context of the preceding statement 'In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?'.In what relation do you think the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? Or is there no relation? Is the party on its own plane of existence?
What do you think the opening of Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto means? Or warns against? Or was this an error of Young Marx.
Quote:In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.I'm not sure why open primaries are a form of state assimilation or what the state or a bureaucratic elite has to do with them. Unless this is the way they operate in the US? In the SPGB, our ballot committee regulates votes to committees.What better way to members are not voting in the interests of members alone at the expense of non-members than to have open primaries to elect committee members?As for 'spoiler votes', I'm not sure what the point is. The only candidates for commitees are (and would be) members volunteering so why are members deemed good enough to vote (indeed the only ones good enough to vote), but 'terrible' volunteer members not good enough to be subject to a vote to serve on a committee?Or to put it another way, why should non-members be allowed to sit and speak in any party meeting but not elect committee members from party members volunteering?
Not really keen to derail this thread but what do you (LBird) think about the effect of Open Primaries on parties, members and non-members?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_election#Types
What specific organisational features would a party in favour of proletarian democracy that was not a sect look like? How would it treat non-members?
What else is the answer to charges of sectarianism? Or the charges put by George Walford herehttp://gwiep.net/wp/?p=387As you can imagine, it takes a good deal to leave me speechless. But that did, the first time I heard it. The blind, unthinking conceit of that answer! If you disagree with the Socialist Party that shows you don’t understand them. They have nothing to learn from anybody. There is no possibility of anybody knowing more than they do and no possibility of them being wrong.
It would be voting on candidates who are already members for work within the party, not voting on issues.
I'd say there is a massive problem with non-members commenting on party issues, that they don't do it enough and aren't taken as seriously as members. Even including that non-members are unable to vote on matters. Unless the party is a sect sitting pretty watching "the passing show", the party is supposed to be the class struggle party of the working-class not an exclusive members social club. In the meagre democracy of the USA, big political parties register their supporters and hold open primaries to elect candidates. The Socialist Party can do the same and see off the sect label completely. Policy of the party will be ultimately voted upon by members who have demonstrated understanding of the party policy but the party is not going to be making revolution, non-members are. The party is not sectarian and denying non-members any input is the approach of a sect.
At best, they belong to the current historically known as "democratic socialism" with the likes of GDH Cole.
ALB wrote:Trouble is that since the first space flight cosmonauts noticed that longitude lines could not be seen from spaceI prefer to see them, not as longitudunal lines but a kind of cage in which the world is shackled, until workers realise they have nothing to lose but their chains.
Hello Fuzzy83.I read your 14 year journey.Your interest in communes is interesting and shared with a number of socialists and always interesting to discuss. In fact commune type organisations is where some of the earliest socialist thought was focused in the 19th Century. Commune type organisations were popular then and existed for a number of years and are popular now. What happened in the 19th Century was the scientific socialism departed in a number of ways from the dream of self-sustaining communes into a philosophy where the history of society is the history of class struggle and the point is to change the wage-labour relationship in order to remove the ruling-class status.You'll no doubt encounter those stuck in the self-sustaining small commune (or co-operative) mindset some even calling themselves socialist. Fascism as you no doubt have discovered, also toys with self-sustaining commune and co-operative thought, despite some socialists attempts to deny this. This is possibly in the erroneous belief that interest in communes and co-operatives is a credit to fascism, it is not.Many find themselves at odds with Unite Against Fascism / the Socialist Workers Party and Trade Unions for many good reasons, so this isn't really an indicator of anything.Dalliances with Conservatives and migrant patriots don't tell us much either. You found the Conservatives a dead-end politically, calling them 'vermin' and described them as 'loathing', whereas you 'became good friends' and 'got on really well' with migrants. You even find some looking back to be 'painful'. It's not unusual for fascism or even conservative views to be highly emotive and based on personal experience whereas socialist inclinations to be more based in a different less-emotive sort of reasoning (and often more reading). A theory called Systematic Ideology might touch on this, the different psychologies of adherents of political philosophies, if you're interested.Back on topic, I'd disagree that Britishness is a description of which collective of people you want to be with.The British Labour Party has formed eight majority governments since universal suffrage in 1918. Not once have they waged anything other than class-war in the interests of the ruling-class. The idea that the British Labour Party are the only thing stopping the Tories waging class war is preposterous.And no, neither Tories nor Labour is the 'forces of evil' (which is use of more highly emotionally charged terminology), they represent the forces of capital whether in corporate form or national form, neither being the interests of the working-class which only the Socialist Party represents. On your other replies, solidarity or unity with movements is easy enough, just be solidly aligned and united to every movement going.As for a revolution in the UK, real socialists aim higher. Canary Wharf being the centre of finance capital in the UK is no more corrupt than the Confederation of British Industry which represents industrial capital in Britain. The focus on financial capital (and globalisation) and kid gloves on industrial capital (especially domestic capital) is one of the traits of fascist 'anti-capitalism'.Nations are a fiction, completely, the effects of this fiction are very real alright when it comes to war or dividing the working-class in other ways, but modern nation states with their false patriotism are an invention of the Victorian era. Benedict Anderson called them Imagined Communities in his seminal work's title. The UAF is a conveyor belt for the SWP. It is the single most successful source of recruitment. Who doesn't consider themselves anti-racist? Especially new students at universities? The SWP will not drop the UAF or play down the threat they perceive from fascism or UKIP as they use now. They will not ever accept that it is anything less than mortally dangerous. As such, they feel free to scream racism and persecute their selected opponents. Its highly emotionally charged appeal to the mob. Not authentic street working-class politics, but divisive and exclusive. This isn't to try and swing their opponents around, oh no, they've written them off. This stupidity isn't a socialist point of view. Alex Miles was prominent member of the BUF who left to become a 'real socialist'. Ricky Tomlinson had a fling with the National Front before claiming to espouse a more left-wing 'socialism'. It is not useful analysis to say Britain is in danger of becoming a Nazi state. The term Nazi is an emotionally-charged term used today for a long-bygone party. The far right in Britain is in a worse state than it has been for ages. UKIP's soft nationalism have stolen the nationalist thunder. Millions of people have this sort of soft nationalism, UKIP represent it and they win support. One of our jobs is to change this thinking.Hope this has been helpful.
As a nostalgia fundamentalist, we've actually had a logo for decades and used it for decades. It was designed by F.C. Watts in the Edwardian era and used on almost all our pamphlets. It has our name and also a space for a slogan, not something subsequent ones have managed to do.
The BBC are reporting Griffin has been expelled.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29453341
