The SPGB’s ‘utopian electoralism’

Appears very sympathetic sounding but actually when we have "friends" like this , who really needs enemies. His summary against our approach is 

One – What is the greater distraction…supporting reformism and expending energy and time into reform campaigns that are acknowledged not to be solutions but in the hope that it may "encourage" consciousness through direct action. Over and over again we are counselled that there are more pressing tasks…but  according to SolFed we must re-invent the wheel of work-place organisation and make existing unions and not the capitalist employers as our primary enemy. (surprisingly they have much in common with the Socialist Equality Party's animousity to trade unions)Two – As a syndicalist why does he not take aim at his own tradition. The whole theory of the general strike, otherwise known as the theory of folded arms- was to be a peaceful alternative to insurrection so does he consider his his ideological antecedents to be spouting nonsense? The proponents of industrial unionism certain believe their alternative of using industrial muscle would avoid bloodshed. Three – We have already built a system of recallable delegates…within our own structure as a political party, which is the first step of transferring the principle into the broader electoral process. Too often appreciation of ourselves as a fully democratic party that for over a hundred years has never been properly given the respect it deserves. And over these years we have adapted and not stood still despite the claimed we are a monument. Otherwise, i don't think i would have rejoined. I was going to post these comments on the website, but to be truthful, it wasn't such a long time ago that i engaged in a similar discussion there. But i do take the authors point that the coordination between parlimentarian activity and extra-parliamentarian action can be more fully explored and no doubt will be closer the time. We too have antecedents to refer to for experience of the snags and conflicts that may arise and it is from the relationship with  SPC and the OBU. I certainly accept we have a gap in our literature about how we connect and combine inside and outside parliament. We will face the question of how we defend our immediate interests as a class with our aspirations and aims for socialism itself …and it won't be smooth sailing and may well result in repeats of past debates as in the case of the SLP v. SPA, and IWW v. Politics. We should be preparing now for a new synthesis and fusion of our strategy. So far we have limited ourselves to general and very brief remarks about it. Ideas have to be transposed into actual action to become effective. What we have done is not totally excluded one avenue on principle. The pragmatic and supposed practical reasons, IMHO, against political action in concert with industrial and , of course, community action simply have not been demonstrated sufficently to go solely down one road as argued on Libcom.  

I'm surprised to hear you say that Vin.  I would have thought saying one stands for a stateless, moneyless, wageless society is precisely what distinguishes socialists from the reformists.Taking control of the state and using it against the capitalists begins to sound like that claptrap advanced by the Leninists of all hues – the so called "dictatorship of the proletariat",  an oxymoron if there ever was oneI've got nothing against the idea of taking control of the state but the very act of doing so entails ipso facto the complete dissolution of the state.  Anything short of this leads us into the quagmire of Leninist politics and inevitably the retention of capitalism in its statist form

 To be pedantic, Alan, I can't see how this can be case…  I think the confusion arises from how one defines the state itself which is something separate from the machinery of the state i.e the bureaucratic apparatus.  I can certainly foresee the latter continuing to exist and to be adapted after the capture of state power but not the state qua state.  To say the state continues to exist albeit for an allegedly "brief period" is tantamount to saying that class ownership of the means of production continues to exist when the whole point of taking over the state is to abolish class ownership!  In other words it is a symbolic act marking the switchover point to a classless (and therefore stateless) society Which is why logically speaking and in terms of Marxian discourse itself, taking over the state must mean exactly the same thing as the dissolution of the state

By the way, my history aint very good but I do believe 1917 had nothing to do with consious democratic control of the state, so there is no comparison.

What use will the state machinery be in a socialist society?Surely the "state" is not a reference to the social production of services such as education and health provision. The state is a restricting political force that limits social productive services to those that are necessary for the continuation of the status quo, ie the pursuit of profit.The state is a governing force.For example in Britain the NHS is essentially a self regulating body. It is hampered by state interference in the form of rationing of financial resources. Once freed from financial restriction it would be free to develop into a suitable health provider for the people of this island.  The same goes for education, transport, road maintenance, utility provision, they are all self regulating.For socialism to work a mass movement would need to arise. The people creating that movement  would know what is involved in creating a socialist society. As has been pointed out the SPGB/WSM already has a fully democratic leaderless structure.The way I see it, the gaining control of the existing parliamentary democratic structures is simply a formality of removing the ability of capitalists to control the coercive elements of the state.

 I'm not advancing an anarchist position,  Vin.  Like I said, i have no problem with the democratic capture of state power but I see this democratic act as tantamount to signifying the complete disappearance of the state.  This is why a minority will not be able to re-capture the state from the socialist majority – there will be no state to recapture!  In the event of such a minority trying to forcibly reinstate capitalist ownership of the the means of production it wont be a "state" that  will forcibly rebuff such action. It will be a the citizens of a classless stateless communist society that will be doing that! Your mistake, Vin, is to equate the use of force (should be necessary) with the actions of a state. It is not.  There are stateless egalitarian societies where force is quite clearly in evidence such as the Nuer, the subject of  Evan Pritchard's ethnography  (http://classes.yale.edu/03-04/anth500b/projects/project_sites/00_Busbee/500b_evans-pritchard.html) I don't see why in principle a future socialist society might not be able to resort to force, if called upon to do so, without resorting to a state 

But cant you see that this implies the continuation of the class relationships of capitalism if you advocate the dictatorship of the working class?  The existence of a working class implies the existence of a capitalist class and insofar as you allow the latter to continue to exist what actually has changed in substantive terms?  Nothing! The socialist revolution will STILL not yet have happened – by definition.  All that will have happened is that you are allowing capitalism to continue and therefore conspiring in the continuing exploitation of workers by the capitalists. THIS is why any talk of the DOTP is so dangerous from a revolutionary socialist point of view since it lends itself to a Leninist position where a minority come to claim to represent the majority  in the transitional period but in practice come to oppose the interests of the majority just as the Bolsheviks did. It is just not realistic to suppose that a militant socialist movement having become a majority and having captured state power by democratic means will allow capitalism and the state to continue one second longer.  On what grounds must workers wait and refrain from abolishing their exploited status for the duration? I cant think of a single plausible reason why they should.  Saying the capitalists (or rather ex capitalists) might use force against them is not a reason at all because such an attempt can clearly be opposed by the non statist use of force if necessary  

 The capitalist class may or may not voluntarily give its privileged position but it won't be a state that it will have to deal with but rather the militant organisation of a classless stateless communist society.  It is the latter that will resist any attempt to forcibly reintroduce capitalism. In one sense  this argument is a semantic one but it is important to be consistent here in your usage of terms.  A state is an instrument of class oppression in Marxian terms. Consequently the very existence of a state implies the existence of classes and therefore the absence of classless communism/socialism.  If there is no classless communism after the socialist majority has captured power then I put it to you that no socialist revolution has yet taken place and that whoever controls the state in these circumstances will end up being not that much different from, say, the early Labour government and we all know how that panned out in the end!  After all capitalism can only be run in the interests of capital and against the workers.  So who is going to take the blame for continuing to administer a system that operates against the interests of workers in the face of a majority of those workers  who want to end that system forthwith only to be told that they must wait a while longer? It makes no sense