Monentum: Trots at it again
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Apparently various Trotskyist sects are trying to take over Corbyn's grass roots support group, Momentum:
Par for the course of course. Their tactics are well described by David Aaronovitch (ok, I know he's supported the Iraq War and all that) in today's Times:
Quote:This next statement is just a fact: the revolutionary far-left believes as a condition of its existence that it must build the revolutionary vanguard party. This is exhausting and lonely work and if you have to do it from first principles — creating a party called something like The Revolutionary Socialist Party — obviously futile. But if someone else sets up something much bigger and you can take it over, together with its existing membership, then that's much less clearly pointless.ALB wrote:Apparently various Trotskyist sects are trying to take over Corbyn's grass roots support group, Momentum:https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/05/trotskyist-factions-seeking-to-take-over-momentum-member-claimsI stuck my two bits into the comments.https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/05/trotskyist-factions-seeking-to-take-over-momentum-member-claims#comment-89069686
Owen Jones nails ithttps://www.theguardian.com/global/commentisfree/2016/dec/07/momentum-hope-saved-saboteurs-sectarian-labourThe delegate democracy over OMOV really exposes their hidden agenda and their contempt for ordinary members.
Ironically, Joseph Stalin knew the real definition of socialism, and Trostky never defined it properly. Extract of Stalin Anarchism or Socialism ? There can be no doubt that future society will be built on an entirely different basis.Future society will be socialist society. This means primarily, that there will be no classes in that society; there will be neither capitalists nor proletarians and, consequently, there will be no exploitation. In that society there will be only workers engaged in collective labour.Future society will be socialist society. This means also that, with the abolition of exploitation commodity production and buying and selling will also be abolished and, therefore, there will be no room for buyers and sellers of labour power, for employers and employed— there will be only free workers.Future society will be socialist society. This means, lastly, that in that society the abolition of wage-labour will be accompanied by the complete abolition of the private ownership of the instruments and means of production; there will be neither poor proletarians nor rich capitalists—there will be only workers who collectively own all the land and minerals, all the forests, all the factories and mills, all the railways, etc.As you see, the main purpose of production in the future will be to satisfy the needs of society and not to produce goods for sale in order to increase the profits of the capitalists. Where there will be no room for commodity production, struggle for profits, etc.It is also clear that future production will be socialistically organised, highly developed production, which will take into account the needs of society and will produce as much as society needs. Here there will be no room whether for scattered production, competition, crises, or unemployment.Where there are no classes, where there are neither rich nor poor, there is no need for a state, there is no need either for political power, which oppresses the poor and protects the rich. Consequently, in socialist society there will be no need for the existence of political power.
The definition of socialism by Trotsky was even worst than Lenin. This is an extract of an article written by the SPGB: [/quote]In exile Trotsky played the role of "loyal opposition" to the Stalin regime in Russia. He was very critical of the political aspects of this regime (at least some of them, since he too stood for a one-party dictatorship in Russia), but to his dying day defended the view that the Russian revolution had established a "Workers State" in Russia (whatever that might be) and that this represented a gain for the working class both of Russia and of the whole world.His view that Russia under Stalin was a Workers State, not a perfect one, certainly, but a Workers State nevertheless, was set out in his book The Revolution Betrayed first published in 1936. This is the origin of the Trotskyist dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State" in which a bureaucracy had usurped political power from the working class but without changing the social basis (nationalisation and planning).This view is so absurd as to be hardly worth considering seriously: how could the adjective "workers" be applied to a regime where workers could be sent to a labour camp for turning up late for work and shot for going on strike? Trotsky was only able to sustain his point of view by making the completely unmarxist assumption that capitalist distribution relations (the privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy) could exist on the basis of socialist production relations. Marx, by contrast, had concluded, from a study of past and present societies, that the mode of distribution was entirely determined by the mode of production. Thus the existence of privileged distribution relations in Russia should itself have been sufficient proof that Russia had nothing to do with socialism.Trotsky rejected the view that Russia was state capitalist on the flimsiest of grounds: the absence of a private capitalist class, of private shareholders and bondholders who could inherit and bequeath their property. He failed to see that what made Russia capitalist was the existence there of wage-labour and capital accumulation not the nature and mode of recruitment of its ruling class.Trotsky's view that Russia under Stalin was still some sort of "Workers State" was so absurd that it soon aroused criticism within the ranks of the Trotskyist movement itself which, since 1938, had been organised as the Fourth International. Two alternative views emerged. One was that Russia was neither capitalist nor a Workers State but some new kind of exploiting class society. The other was that Russia was state capitalist. The most easily accessible example of the first view is James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution and of the second Tony Cliff's Russia: A Marxist Analysis. Both books are well worth reading, though in fact neither Burnham nor Cliff could claim to be the originators of the theories they put forward. The majority of Trotskyists, however, remain committed to the dogma that Russia is a "degenerate Workers State".
'Stalinists' threatening 'Trotskyists' in Momentumhttp://www.workersliberty.org/node/31261Ever wonder why current Tories don't divide themselves into Churchill-ists versus Chamberlain-ists?On the other hand (my emphasis)
Quote:In the middle of the general election campaign, after months of inactivity, a slim majority of the defunct Momentum Youth and Student committee voted in a snap email ballot to expel committee members purged from Labour by the party’s Compliance Unit and to ban members of “democratic centralist”, i.e. Trotskyist, groups from future MYS events.
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