Anti-Capitalist Initiative
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Some of those involved in the new Anti-Capitalist Initiative have written to Weekly Worker about parties, sects, class, organisation and Marxism at the following link
Also this article for the Weekly Worker perspectivehttp://cpgb.org.uk/article.php?article_id=1004833
There’s a story behind this group. They are a breakaway from Workers Power, the Trot group that stood against us in Vauxhall in the last general election in May 2010 (and got less votes than us). The Green Party candidate who stood against us, Joseph Healy, has also resigned from his party.It would be nice to think that both these were fall-outs from our election campaign but they are more likely to be reformists falling out amongst themselves.
jondwhite wrote:I wonder what faction of Workers Power Jeremy Drinkall went with.He’s still with the main faction (self-styled British section of the League for the Fifth International) along with such people as Richard Brenner.More on those who resigned here:-http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/statement-resignations-british-section-league
Some more people (in Manchester) have left CPGB for ACI as reported in the latest Weekly Worker.End the cycle of splits
DJP wrote:They may have joined the peoples front of judea for all I care.Im not sure i agree that should casually dismiss all this. There has been a problem for the Left and they are struggling to come to terms with changes in recent politics like the relationship to the Occupy Movement. The Weekly Worker also reports a split in Die Linke in Germany as more people commit to the Pirate Party. It also discusses the rise of the Greek anti-austerity alliance Syriza who are refusing to use their 17% of the general election vote to enter a coalition government so it is not a parochial issue. This mix of a general malaise of the Left has create a sort of vacuum with all sorts are trying to fill it and existing parties having to re-define themselves. John Crump criticised the party for being slow to appreciate a change in the 50s and 60s and viewed it as a missed opportunity. He points out it took 4 years before the party got out a Labour Party pamphlet after they got elected in 1964. And as1968 and the New Left sprung forth, the anti-Lenin pamphlet of Martov was deemed of limited appeal for the party to publish. His critique is available in files section of Spopen or Spintcom, forget which. And here we are with all the advantages of our own capable technology still slow to produce any substantive responses to developments since the 2007 recession began, last years Occupy movement began and all manner of splits and re-alignments in the left-wing. Perhaps, we should be quicker off the mark this time around to tap into a dissatisfaction within those who have already crossed the line as they see it and call themselves as socialist or anti-capitalist. That just may involve raising our own profile with specific literature addressing specific concerns of those activists who disparage a politcal party such as ours, usually based on misconceptions and myths . As previously suggested elsewhere by me, we should be issuing invitations for debate, offering speakers and lecturers, and as i have said here putting out themed pamphlets in printed and on-line forms. I know little of the ACI but just how much do they really know about us. i went to their web-site and discovered the word socialism does not appear anywhere until i used the search engine that led to a Pham Binh article supporting its non-use. When this split first came to our notice, we should have contacted and been in communication with them, even if there was little hope or expectation that they would respond. But our approach would nevertheless been a challenge to their own orthodoxy which appears all a bit old hat and pure rhetoric,imho . But the price if we already had the relevant literature, zero for an e-mail , a stamp for snail-mail. We should have been more positive to the less rigid and more receptive, if also more nebulous, Occupy Movement. We have our own hall for public meetings. Surely, invitations and overtures could have been made to Occupy activists to visit and address ourselves (and hear our views garnered from decades of history and experience). How many local people would have been interested to attend No.52 to listen first hand to spoke-persons from Occupy at the height of their publicity and in the process hear our attitude. If we wished to evoke and express the hostility clause, we could have withdrawn the customary free tea and biscuit !!! As Crump says , missed opportunities…and as others say – we often move at a glacial speed
I agree that we should keep in touch with developments in the what might be called “the anti-capitalist milieu” and while the split from Workers Power was a step in the right direction as a step away from building the vanguard party this report is very disappointing as it shows the usual suspects jumping on the bandwagon: the Internationalist Bolshevik Tendency, Permanent Revolution, Workers Power, etc. These are the smaller Trotskyist grouplets looking for a wider audience to recruit from. Unless Leninist/Trotskyism dies out these pests will ruin any attempt to get something going. The Occupy Movement, on the other hand, is more interesting, precisely because it doesn’t carry this vanguardist baggage.
I don’t think we should ignore any current. But we should also be aiming our attentions to where the people are. And that is largely outside the ‘left’ and the various ‘activist’ groups.
“But we should also be aiming our attentions to where the people are. And that is largely outside the ‘left’ and the various ‘activist’ groups.” This is obviously true. We all have family members, friends, neighbours, work colleagues, whom we are in almost daily direct contact with yet we fail even to convince those nearest and dearest and closest to us of the case for socialism and joining the party. I’m not waving a magic wand and suggesting a miracle cure to the problem. But what i think is that people are largely ouside the left and activist groups it is because they choose to be, since they are not convinced of the possibility of realistic success of any opposition to the status quo except in term of the switch of personalities and a few limited policy changes. Something encouraged by the manner that the media reports politics.People’s priorities in their use of time is family life /personal relationships, work, leisure and recreation. Changing the world is rather low in the list except when it is a part of their lifestyle or their hobby, such as the Black Bloc where the fashion statement becomes more important than the political statement.Geez, how many times i have met some dread-locked dope smoker into being one with Nature, eager to be at every protest and live an alternative way of life, tuning into the Universe’s energy, who end up having the most close mind i have encountered when it came to discussing politics yet some Proddy bigot or as i used to call them, orange-reds, who i have worked alongside with and been on picket-lines with who do seek reasons and answers to social problems and perceived inequities of the world and who are able to distinquish between James Connolly the IWW socialist trade unionist and the1916 Irish nationalist James Connolly. But no matter who we target our propaganda, we have to do it effectively and expediently. We just don’t do that. We have no rapid response teams with press statements, leaflets, pamphlets. When we find an audience we are taken by surprise…such as the election video, which was not even done by ourselves but so easily could have been, but it proved to be a winner on the internet. Kids Stuff too. I remember one time suggesting a series of flash animations…simple photos, with captions, with background music…a cheap easily done alternative. If we cannot do things technically, we should out-source and pay to have it done, especially when members have their own lives to lead and cannot sacrifice all their time to the party as unpaid volunteers. We’re human too with our personal needs. I also just think what we do has more impact when it is done in the name of the party by the party rather than individual members acting on their own initiative. I rarely witness the EC minutes report discussion on politics or see them issuing formal statements on current events and developments. Do we always have to wait for a declaration of war before they do that? Nor would the General Secretary be overstepping his remit, either, by writing letters to the media or other organisations in his official capacity, which i would think would make the post more interesting for applicants rather than what at times seems to be an unpopular office and a punishment. It is deciding new policy positions that has had limits imposed upon the EC and Gen. Sec. by the membership – they have not had restrictions place on them concerning expressions already party-held policy. Branches are also free to engage more independently as representatives of the party without prompting or approval from 52 Clapham and their branch secretaries can be instructed to contact local press and local groups relaying branch resolutions or whatever in the name of the party. This is how i think we should reach out and in the process make party meetings actual real concrete activity that stimulates members rather than bore them with tedious house-keeping business (sure i know thats important, too, and cannot be cast aside). Nor would i be averse to some controversy and arguments within the party. The Conference proceedings made very dull reading. We are all grown-up and been around long enough to have thick skins, so animousity and acrimony should never be a result of differing opinion and espousing them. A comradely pint afterwards always defuses a situation, so we should also not ignore the “social-party” aspect of being a socialist party. (have i said that before?…i think i have) Its why day and weekend schools are so important apart from the educational value. We have to publicise our existence and what we stand for and then explain why that is important in relation to what is going on in the world. An easy enough task some would say, but, oh brother, do we make heavy weather of it !!!!
One of those leaving the CPGB for the ACI writes of his experience herewhich way forward for the revolutionary left?
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