[ALB]

emily_chalmers wrote:

I am conducting some research into attitudes towards the Soviet Union. Having questioned some Stalinists already, I am now trying to get the other side of the story. I would be very grateful if anyone could answer the following questions: When did you decide you were a communist? What turned you against the Soviet Union?

This suggests that you are assuming that "communism" existed in Russia, but as far as we're concerned it never did. As a Party and most of us as individuals we never were "for" the Soviet Union. Having said this, we will have some members who were in the so-called Communist Party or its youth section, the YCL, before they became socialists. I don't know if there are any of them here who could answer this part of your questionnaire.

[ALB]

gnome wrote:

Seriously though, the use of a photo would contravene an instructed Conference resolution….."That this Conference instructs the EC to ensure that in future no photograph of the candidate appears on the election material."  (1989)

That resolution has always been interpreted as applying to the election material we put out ourselves. It arose from Swansea branch putting the photo of a candidate on their manifesto (that manifesto is now a collector's piece as it's the one and only time it has happened). We have long supplied photos to the local press when they ask. It's a way of giving the fact that we have a candidate more prominence than a mere footnote would. I wouldn't have thought that it makes a difference either way to the number of votes a candidate gets. I  agree, though, that it's a bit of an innovation the council doing it. Anyway, what about this? Should it have only been an audio recording!http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/big-smoke-interview-danny-lambert

[ALB]

This discussion of the views expressed and the attitudes displayed in the third SWP pre-Conference document in last week's Weekly Worker shows just how far anti-democratic sentiments and practices are entrenched in the SWP:http://cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/942/internal-bulletins-crazy-contortions-of-swp-central-committeeIn particular, the slate system of electing (in effect co-opting) the "leadership". This was the practice of Communist Parties everywhere, including those in power. As far as I know, it is still practised in China, Cuba and North Korea.The thing is of course that for the SWP this would still continue after "the revolution", a recipe for the sort of state capitalism they rightly criticise in the old USSR. But then they always did support state capitalism in Russia under Lenin and up until Trotsky was exiled in 1928.

[ALB]

Two more items to add to the file.First, there was an article in yesterday's London Evening Standard by Anthony Hilton entitled "Peer-to-peer lending is here to stay" which opens:

Quote:

Travel agents put people who want to go on holiday in touch with tour operators and airlines who will take them there. Insurance brokers take people with vehicles they have to insure and find them companies willing to take the risk. Banks gather up the savings of individuals and lend their money to people or businesses who want loans. All three are intermediaries, and they come into existence because individuals could not easily learn about or get access to the services they needed other than by going through them and paying them a commission.

Peer-to-peer lending is not lords lending to each other. It's people with savings lending directly to people or businesses who want money without going through the intermediary of a bank. Note the way Hilton automatically assumes that banks are intermediaries that lend other people's savings.Second, is a report in today's Metro on a study by the New Economics Foundation which claims that the lower interest rates at which the Big Four banks can borrow money because they are considered as too big to fail (and so will be bailed out by the government) amounts to a subsidy of £34bn from "taxpayers". Actually, this is not really a subsidy but a notional figure based on what these banks would have to pay in higher interest on what they borrow if they were not considered too big to fail. Coming from the NEF (which has published a booklet Where Does Money Come From? which endorses the view thar banks can create credit out of nothing by a mere keyboard stroke), one of the criticisms they make of this is curious as well as revealing. Metro reported:

Quote:

Lylia Prieg, a researcher for the Foundation, said the figures hughlighted the 'privileged position' of the big banks. 'There is no good economic rationale for allowing over-sized banks to benefit from subsidised borrowing costs, as this encourages reliance of short-term and more risky funding instead of funding their activities with customer deposit,' she said.

So, when it comes down to it, the NEF accept that banks do need to borrow the money they lend, whether short-term from the more risky money market or from customer deposits. They can't have it both ways: arguing that banks can create money to lend from nothing and arguing that they have a privileged access to the funding they need for their loans.

[ALB]

According to comrade Keith Scholey's pamphlet on The Communist Club, there was another condition for joining the Communist League:

Quote:

… in the summer of 1850, that Wilhelm Liebknecht, the founder of the German Social Democratic Party, met Marx. The latter commented to him that membership of the League depended on a thorough examination by the group's phrenologist (bump reader), Karl Pfaender. (p. 10)

Another piece of information that will help you score in pub quizzes is that Victoria Beckham is said to be a direct descendant of Karl Pfaender:http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/565243/Victoria-Beckham-is-descendant-of-comrade-of-Marx

[ALB]

Mike Ballard who was associated with Subversion confirms that the change of title from "The End of Anarchism?" to "The End of Anarcho-Syndicalism?" was not made by Subversion and was not in the original. So, it was made by the Anarchist Federation, a bit out of order I'd have thought. He also says that the author was Mark Shipway, author of Anti-Parliamentary Communism and of the chapter on "Council Communism" in Non-Market Socialism in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[ALB]

There was a rumour that the LibDem candidate might be clown and former MP Lembit Opik, who lives in Lambeth, but that turned out not to be true. Pity in a way as that would have raised the profile of the election

[ALB]

International Review was not edited by Paul Mattick (he just wrote the occasional article for them) nor could it be described as "council communist". It was basically more "anti-Bolshevik Marxist" and published the first English translations of Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution and Martov's The State and the Socialist Revolution.There's another good article on Spain here that was first published in Wildcat in 1986:http://www.af-north.org/Subversion/subversion_18.htm#spainIt was originally published under the title "Spain '36; The End of Anarchism?" This version republished in Subversion and put on the internet by the Anarchist Federation (ex Anarchist Communist Federation) has the title to "Spain 36, the End of Anarcho-Syndicalism?" I don't know whether it was Subversion or the AF who changed the title (probably the AF). From our point of view of course the original title was better.It's been translated into French (in issue No 30 of our then French-language publication Socialisme Mondial) and Portuguese so we already have a ready-to-hand introduction in these languages to our criticism of "self-managed capitalism" (revived today by such groups as Michael Albert's Parecon).

[ALB]

I see things haven't changed since we published our educational document on the SWP in 1995. Here's an extract on Conference Procedure from section III:

Quote:

The main item on the agenda is a report by the Central Committee on the political “perspectives” which is usually a document of pamphlet-length. The Central Committee also submits other reports – on work in special areas of activity (industry, students, women), internal organisation, finance – for the Conference to discuss. In the SWP, branches still have the formal right to submit motions, but they are strongly discouraged from doing so. As an explanatory note intended for new members, accompanying documents submitted for the party’s 1983 Conference put it:“Branches can submit resolutions if they wish and these may [sic] be voted on. But in recent years the practice of sending resolutions to conference has virtually ceased” (Socialist Review, September 1983).What this means is that it is the Central Committee – the leadership – which quite literally sets the agenda for the Conference. The branch delegates meet, therefore, to discuss only what is put before them by the Central Committee. Not that the delegates are delegates in the proper sense of the term as instructed representatives of the branches sending them:“Delegates should not be mandated . . . Mandating is a trade union practice, with no place in a revolutionary party”.Since voting on motions submitted by branches is dismissed as a “trade union practice”, another procedure, more open to manipulation by the leadership, is operated:“At the end of each session of conference commissions are elected to draw up a report on the session detailing the points made. In the event of disagreement two or more commissions can be elected by the opposing delegates. The reports are submitted to conference and delegates then vote in favour of one of the commissions. The advantage of this procedure is that conference does not have to proceed by resolution like a trade union conference”.No branch motions, no mandated delegates, what else? No ballots of the entire membership either. In the first volume of his political biography of Lenin, Cliff records in shocked terms that “in January 1907 Lenin went so far as to argue for the institution of a referendum of all party members on the issues facing the party”, commenting “certainly a suggestion which ran counter to the whole idea of democratic centralism” (Lenin, Building the Party, p. 280)In fact no official of the SWP above branch level is directly elected by a vote of the members. One power that the branches do retain is the right to nominate members for election, by the Conference delegates, to the National Committee, but, as over presenting motions, they are discouraged from nominating people who do not accept the “perspectives” espoused by the Central Committee. So elections do take place to the National Committee but on the basis of personalities rather than politics. However, it is the way that the Central Committee is elected that is really novel: the nominations for election to new central committee are proposed not by branches but . . . by the outgoing central committee! Once again, in theory, branches can present other names but they never do.It is easy to see how this means that the central committee – the supreme leadership of the organisation – is a self-perpetuating body renewal in effect only by co-optation. This is justified on the grounds of continuity and efficiency – it takes time to gain the experience necessary to become a good leader, so that it would be a waste of the experienced gained if some leader were to be voted off by the vagaries of a democratic vote. Choosing the leadership by a competitive vote is evidently something else “with no place in a revolutionary party” any more than in an army.

This, incidentally, is how the Politburo was (s)elected in the USSR which the SWP admits was state-capitalism.

[ALB]

I don't think that the difference between us and the Leninists is over the diagnosis that at the moment the working class does not want or understand socialism. It's about what to do in these circumstances.They say that the working class can never come to a socialist understanding under capitalism and that therefore socialists (in the broadest sense) should organise as a vanguard that seeks to win a working class following on the basis of what they think the workers can understand, i.e reforms and improvements within capitalism.We say that workers can come to want and understand socialism (after all, we have and there's nothing particularly special about us) and that socialists should therefore concentrate on explaining capitalism and socialism (how capitalism can never be made to work in their interests and why common ownership and democratic control of the means of production is the only framework within which the problems workers face can be solved) rather than offering reforms of capitalism.The Leninists end up taking the same practical position as open reformists of the Old Labour type — offering reforms of capitalism to attract working class support — except that they disagree as to who should be doing the offering: a Leninist vanguard or Labour candidates and MPs? Both seek a following and both see the other as rivals to lead of the working class.

[ALB]

What they say about Duncan may well be true, but the people saying it seem to be some sort of front for the likes of the BNP.

[ALB]

Here's another example of the Leninists of the SWP thinking that the working class are too thick to understand the straight socialist case and therefore need a party "to fight for the best possible deal for working people within the present system". It's from the Sunderland Echo of 2 November 2006:

Quote:

Revolution laterIn his slightly separatist letter (Oct 10), Steve Colborn tells us that the "only way forward" is socialism, but that the Respect Party is not the way to achieve it. Well of course it isn't. Steve knows as well as I do that the only way to real socialism is through revolution and smashing of the capitalist system and all its machinery. As a member of the revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party I would like nothing more than to see this happen. Unfortunately though, a mass uprising just isn’t on the cards right now. Yes, many people are dissatisfied with mainstream politics, but how many are clued-up on the system and are ready and willing to fight for the alternative in the way that is necessary? It is a sad fact, but the masses are doped with materialism and entertainment, and while Corrie is on the telly and there's a lager and pizza in the fridge we are not going to see revolution. Therefore, there is a need for the next best thing, Parliamentary reform. The Respect Party aims to fight for the best possible deal for working people within the present system. And it's essential such a party exists, even if only as a fringe party, to prevent the rich from being all-powerful. I sincerely hope Steve manages to stir the masses and wake them from their slumber. Till then though, all we have is our vote. Gary Duncan, Respect Party, Hylton Castle, Sunderland. [http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/revolution-later.html ]

This was before Galloway kicked the SWP out of Respect. I think that since then Gary Duncan, who was the SWP's main man in Sunderland, has also left the SWP. Perhaps one of the comrades from the North East can confirm this. But at the time he was nevertheless expounding the SWP view.

[ALB]

No objection to calling it "communism" (or anything else) as long as it's clear that we're referring to a classless, stateless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production where money, wages, etc will have become redundant. We call it "socialism" for historical reasons.I think the link between "vanguardism" and "reformism" (as advocating reforms within capitalism) springs from the Leninists' basic assumption that, left to themselves, workers are capable of acquiring only a trade-union consciousness (in the broadest sense, to include Labour Party type politics). It follows from this that, in its everyday political activity, the vanguard has to "lower" itself to the workers' level and offer slogans and reforms suitable to their perceived capacity to understand. Which means of course offering a programme of reforms to be achieved within capitalism.Here's an example, from an exchange I had on the Kingston Anti-Cuts Facebook page. Kingston Anti-Cuts is dominated by the SWP. They produced a draft leaflet which just attacked cuts and the bankers. I asked::

Quote:

Hope I'm not being dogmatic but this suggests that we can have a better future without getting rid of capitalism. What's wrong with using the C-word? Everybody else is.

One of them replied:

Quote:

Well you can, but you bring people into talking about capitalism not through united front leaflets but through conversations, interventions in meetings, helping to improve material conditions through the unions (I know the SPGB are unique in thinking that trade unions and socialism have nothing to do with one another but well, it's wrong). Something purely descriptive as the extent of austerity currently is fine, connects with people more easily than a broader talk of capitalism which most people feel too disempowered to be convinced by via a leaflet.

So they don't think that workers can understand even the concept of capitalism !

[ALB]

There's also this from the Publications/Study Guides section of this site, about the SWP (up until 1995):http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/education/study-guides/where-swp-comingAnd chapter 5 on "The Mythology of the Left" in our pamphlet The Market System Must Go. This was based on a brilliant article written by David Ramsay Steele in the 60s or 70s entitled "Officers Looking for Infantry", whose title says it all.

[ALB]

Of course it doesn't and isn't, but the reformism he advocates is. He is not a socialist but a leftwing French nationalist who wants a stronger role for the state (and what politician wouldn't say they didn't stand for the general interests of humanity?). In other words, he stands for a French national state capitalism.  But at least in France the word "socialism" is still in general use, which gives us a way in even if only to explain what it's not, as used to be the case when the USSR still existed.

[Author]

Posts