Left Unity.org / People’s Assembly

[Young Master Smeet]

I'm in the middle of organising our works Winterval Dinner.  We are united around going for dinner (except those who don't actually want to go).  Some want to go to an Indian restaurant, some want to go to Thai, but we are all part of Dinner Unity.  We are united in Dinner Unity, and we can work together, despite wanting to go to different restaurants.  We believe in Dinner.  Just don't ask us to define it (some think it has to include meat, others don't).  But we want to go to each restaurant we want to go to by different routes.  But we are still Dinner Unity.  Some people think that we don't need to set a time for arrival, so long as we travel together, and while dinner is nice in principle, we have to eat lots of unhealthy snacks in the meantime as a lesser evil.  Some think that the restuaraunt is inimportant, and it is the journey that matters.  But we are still Dinner Unity.  Oh, and we all hate each other, and are sneaking behind each other's backs to try and undermine each other, and impose our choices of Restaurant, route and time on each other.  But we are still Dinner Unity.Now, I have a ballot to re-run using the Condorcet count.

[ALB]

stuartw2112 wrote:

With your silly mudslinging and sectarianism, you are, as usual, missing a trick.

It was your sneering in your first post in this exchange that invited replies in kind:

stuartw2112 wrote:

we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.

If you want a serious discussion on which way forward, you need to stop doing this.

[stuartw2112]

Actually, Bill, the atmosphere in Left Unity is far less poisonous than it is in the SPGB. If everyone hates each other, they're remarkably good at hiding it. Like everyone else, you looks and you sees what you want to see. (There's more to life than the internet.)As for dinner, you try telling someone who's hungry that unhealthy snacks are a diversion from the glorious Michelin starred restaurant that awaits us at the end of a 40 year journey. I'll hold their coat while they smack you about the head.

[stuartw2112]

ALB wrote:

stuartw2112 wrote:

With your silly mudslinging and sectarianism, you are, as usual, missing a trick.

It was your sneering in your first post in this exchange that invited replies in kind:

stuartw2112 wrote:

we've already come further than you have – and you've had a 110 year head start.

If you want a serious discussion on which way forward, you need to stop doing this.

I thought I was just joining in with the joking and the banter, with the kind of language that seemed appropriate. If I misread everyone's intentions, then I apologise.

[ALB]

Fair enough. The trouble is that joking and banter don't come over well on the internet. They work best in face-to-face situations.Anyway, back to substance of the argument. I think your position is summed in this part of your reply to YMS:

stuart2112 wrote:

As for dinner, you try telling someone who's hungry that unhealthy snacks are a diversion from the glorious Michelin starred restaurant that awaits us at the end of a 40 year journey.

This seems to be the classic "possibilist" argument that we should go for what reforms are or seem to be possible rather than for some long-term and possibly unachievable goal — an argument for rejecting which we were dubbed "impossibilists". Or that what we should go for is not the whole loaf but only for a few crumbs.The trouble is that this begs the question by assuming that incremental reforms are possible and/or can be maintained while the experience of capital shows otherwise. In fact, isn't the whole LU programme a call for a return to the reforms of the post-war Labour government that have since been whittled away by the normal operation of capitalism of profits first?

[stuartw2112]

I'd say the opposite: the sleep of reformism brings forth monsters. If "experience" shows anything, it is surely that the defeat of the workers' movement from the 70s on has led to the present situation – which is a colossal disaster for workers, who are getting less and less of the crumbs, and are facing a return to 19th century capitalism. It seems Marx was right: that if you allow capitalism to work as it "should", the result will be an ever-worsening disaster for workers. Left Unity does not yet have a programme, nor has it advocated any reforms. If there is a zeitgeist in the organisation, however, it is that what is needed is as big a movement as possible to resist austerity (the destruction of the welfare state and the impoverishment of workers and the poor generall) – the People's Assembly – and a political party to represent the unrepresented, organise the unorganised – Left Unity. And that this new party may or may not be many things – to be determined – but that it will be open, inclusive, democratic, socialist, environmentalist, feminist, anti-racist. You may say these things aren't possible. But if nott, neither is socialism. Marx and Engels argued along much the same lines. Though whether they did or not doesn't much interest me. If anything, my current position is "the movement is everything, the goal nothing". Without the movement, we ain't going nowhere.Cheers

[stuartw2112]

I realise of course that I'm handing you a stick to beat me with here, but this is the best summary I know of the kind of "programme" I support:http://www.leninology.com/2013/10/theses-on-austerity-and-how-to-fight-it.html

[alanjjohnstone]

If a movement is all you want , Stuart – take a laxative. Seems like you are rather full of it today.

[jpodcaster]

stuartw2112 wrote:

By the way, everyone I've talked to in Left Unity rather likes the SPGB. Andrew Burgin says he likes you, a member of my branch reguarly talks about "the abolition of money", another demanded to know where he could buy a copy of the Socialist Standard, others take it seriously even if they don't agree with it. With your silly mudslinging and sectarianism, you are, as usual, missing a trick.

And there we have the real epitath of the SPGB: "Missing a trick since 1904." (copyright John Crump)

[stuartw2112]

Alan, Adam and I agreed a ceasefire on the banter. Care to join us?!

[stuartw2112]

Jools: John Crump? That sounds like the kind of thing that should be reprinted and circulated?

[stuartw2112]

PS I'd like an answer to two points raised above if anyone's interested in continuing the discussion.The first is the dismissal of Left Unity as a non-socialist organisation. I posted a statement from the Left Party Platform – the statement of aims that will probably (in my opinion) win the day at the founding conference. It contains a definition of socialism and a commitment to attaining it that I can't see any socialist objecting to. So, LU will be a socialist party when it is founded (the rival aims statements are no less clear in their definitions and commitment).The second was my attempt at humour regarding the SPGB's founding conference. I was joking but trying to make a serious point. All the criticisms levelled at Left Unity, and considered to be witheringly damning, could easily have been levelled at the SPGB founding conference. So what's the difference? Why does the SPGB not instead welcome LU and send it fraternal greetings, as I believe it did the Second International? (Not that I think it a foregone conclusion that we'll be that significant, of course, but it's surely not completely beyond the bounds of possibility either.)Cheers

[jpodcaster]

Oh go on then. My favourite bit:"The result of this is that socialism is projected as an ideal (and usually) remote system of society. Only a half-hearted effort is made to connect it with the actual problems which confront the working class and what is more important is that scarcely any attempt at all is made to relate the concept of socialism to the ideas circulating among workers which have been thrown up as they grapple with these problems and search for answers to them. No one doubts the good intentions of the utopians when they declare that “Socialists put forward the case for a new world of common ownership and democratic control, trying to get workers to see their problems from this stand point (Socialist Standard, June 1966 p83). Any objective examination of their methods, however, can only reveal their total inability to form bridges between what workers are thinking now and what the utopians hope they start thinking in the future. Even when a virtually tailor-made issue such as “free transport” presents itself the utopians are incapable of recognising the opportunities it offers. For them it is just another aspect of the “the passing show” so that the suggestion that it could be used in order to encourage some workers to think beyond the ideas of abolishing certain prices, which has already aroused their interest, in the direction of a society of completely free access to all products is met with blank incomprehension."http://libcom.org/library/resignation-letter-1973-john-crump

stuartw2112 wrote:

Jools: John Crump? That sounds like the kind of thing that should be reprinted and circulated?

[jpodcaster]

Welcome to politics Bill – its a messy business. Alternatively you could always establish a central dinner committee to tell everyone where they'll be going?

Young Master Smeet wrote:

I'm in the middle of organising our works Winterval Dinner.  We are united around going for dinner (except those who don't actually want to go).  Some want to go to an Indian restaurant, some want to go to Thai, but we are all part of Dinner Unity.  We are united in Dinner Unity, and we can work together, despite wanting to go to different restaurants.  We believe in Dinner.  Just don't ask us to define it (some think it has to include meat, others don't).  But we want to go to each restaurant we want to go to by different routes.  But we are still Dinner Unity.  Some people think that we don't need to set a time for arrival, so long as we travel together, and while dinner is nice in principle, we have to eat lots of unhealthy snacks in the meantime as a lesser evil.  Some think that the restuaraunt is inimportant, and it is the journey that matters.  But we are still Dinner Unity.  Oh, and we all hate each other, and are sneaking behind each other's backs to try and undermine each other, and impose our choices of Restaurant, route and time on each other.  But we are still Dinner Unity.Now, I have a ballot to re-run using the Condorcet count.

[Ed]

stuartw2112 wrote:

PS I'd like an answer to two points raised above if anyone's interested in continuing the discussion.The first is the dismissal of Left Unity as a non-socialist organisation. I posted a statement from the Left Party Platform – the statement of aims that will probably (in my opinion) win the day at the founding conference. It contains a definition of socialism and a commitment to attaining it that I can't see any socialist objecting to. So, LU will be a socialist party when it is founded (the rival aims statements are no less clear in their definitions and commitment).The second was my attempt at humour regarding the SPGB's founding conference. I was joking but trying to make a serious point. All the criticisms levelled at Left Unity, and considered to be witheringly damning, could easily have been levelled at the SPGB founding conference. So what's the difference? Why does the SPGB not instead welcome LU and send it fraternal greetings, as I believe it did the Second International? (Not that I think it a foregone conclusion that we'll be that significant, of course, but it's surely not completely beyond the bounds of possibility either.)Cheers

I find your second paragraph intriguing. You seem to have given up already. I thought the goal for left unity was to do for the left what UKIP has done for the right. Isn't that who you are trying to emulate? Has your defeatism set in already? Where will you go when you get tired of waiting for left unity to have any success, how long will it take? I don't think the founding of the SPGB is analogous at all. Much better would be the founding of the SDF. The first Left Unity project. What seems to happen to any genuine revolutionaries in these broad church left groupings is that they will be marginalized. They then have two choices, split as the founding members of this party did or remain and become ever more insignificant voices as they did in France. You're going down an already well trodden path filled with bitter disappointments, Perhaps this socialist platform will discover that in time and take the same decision as the founding members of the SPGB did and split.

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