Our London Assembly Election Campaign
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That letter in last week’s Weekly Worker has provoked a full page reply to it and another letter:
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1492/minimal-symmetrical-errors/
Apparently SPEW’s reform programme was not the pre-WW1 Social Democrats’ “minimum programme” but was supposed to be Trotsky’s “transitional programme”. However, the author (Mike McNair) realises that “in practice, what is ‘transitional’ turns out to be merely what is currently popular – “attractive-sounding reforms”.”
Like we said. SPEW have been advocating these sorts of reforms for so long that they have come to really believe that they could be achieved under capitalism and is in practice a common or garden reformist party.
McNair goes on to argue that by “minimum programme” the pre-WW1 Social Democrats meant a more complete (or less incomplete) political democracy. No doubt they did stand for this but I think it wasn’t just this but did include social measures to be achieved within capitalism as well. In any event, it was these that got them electoral support and made them prisoners of their reform-minded voters and led to them eventually becoming ordinary reformist parties.
Two letters from us in this week’s Weekly Worker in reply to Mike McNair’s article:
Excellent letters from Adam Buick (2) and Robin Cox (1) in Weekly Worker issues 1491 (AB) and 1493 (RC/AB).
Today is Thursday and there should be a new WW. Let’s hope someone will feel provoked into responding to them.
We do indeed get a mention in the letters column of this week’s Weekly Worker in a letter from “Jack Conrad” himself.
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1494/letters/
He comments on the programme of a group in Manchester called “Communist Future” which is standing a candidate in Manchester Central in the general election.
He writes that their programme (see https://communistfuture.com/manifesto/)
“is vague, parochial and politically pointless. Empty phrases are piled upon empty phrases. Capitalism is counterposed to communism in a manner reminiscent of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. In other words, we have soggy abstractions and pious wishes. Of course, this is just the flipside of the usual broad-frontist approach that sees disorientated leftwingers advocate unity around the lowest-common-denominator politics of tailism and economism.”
What reminds him of us is that the group puts forward “communism” (by which they mean, as far as we can see, more or less the same as we do by “socialism”) as its main aim. However, this doesn’t prevent them having a programme of immediate demands as well. Some of them, apparently, are former members of his group.
He has a point about “disoriented leftwingers” advocating “lowest-common denominator politics” but ends his letter by saying
“Vote left where you can (and that includes the few left Labourites who are being allowed to stand), vote Labour where you must (ie, mainstream Labour).”
There’s some interesting gossip in the letters column about the new “Revolutionary Communist Party” standing a candidate in Stratford and Bow as an independent and about the Spartacist League trying to enter TUSC to recruit members. Talk about little fleas having lesser fleas upon their backs to bite them.
Actually, we should probably have a separate thread under General Discussion to discuss these groups attitude to the Labour Party in the election.
“Actually, we should probably have a separate thread under General Discussion to discuss these groups attitude to the Labour Party in the election.”
There should be a new thread (or threads) for the Election.
The debate in the Weekly Worker letter column between us and them continues in this week’s issue:
For the record, they are still discussing in the letters column of the Weekly Worker the question of whether or not a socialist party should have a programme of immediate demands which we raised after the GLA elections, with our approach still being mentioned.
Strangely we are still getting people using the QR from our GLA emection campaign leaflet. 30 in fact since the election day of 2 May. Which compares with the 42 up to that date.
Taken together that’s about 1 for every 200 leaflets distributed (14,500).
I am looking forward to seeing in the Weekly Worker a more SPGB-orthodox reply to Mike Macnair (re SPGB / ‘petty-proprietor classes’ / ‘forced collectivation’) than what is provided in this week’s issue by by SPGB-sympathiser Louis Shawcross of County Down.
If it were just semi-Turnerist (?) it would be one thing, but then he had to go on to: ‘externally generated frequencies that have been developing since at least the 1950s, which can plant thoughts and perceptions in the minds of people (see the work of Neil Sanders, to give but one)’.
In this week’s edition of the Weekly Worker Robin Cox accedes to ZJW’s request above.
There is also a letter from our philosophical friend from Liverpool which is not bad.
Meanwhile the others are still disputing on what is a minimum programme. We have certainly put the cat amongst the pidgeons there, an unintended bonus of our decision to contest the GLA elections.
Another letter from a member in this week’s Weekly Worker:
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