imposs1904
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alanjjohnstone wrote:i thought it looked like an older version of you !!
Well, he's bald, without a beard and he's wearing a shirt. Mmm, spitting image. Uncanny.
I thought this had already spotted. I saw it at the time on facebook. I thought it was a funny cartoon – one of many – but I wish the 'SPGBer' didn't look like a cartoon version of Peter Taaffe. That kind of spoiled it for me.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Surely the Sparts must win the most boring.The Sparts are many things. They are never boring.
jondwhite wrote:Funny how the SPGB is always left out, while organisations much smaller (AWL, Workers Power, CPGB-ML, AMM, SR, ISN-Nelson, ISN-Seymour, Counterfire etc.) always get name checked.Be careful what you wish for.We were recently referred to on facebook as the most boring socialist organisation in the world. The bloke who wrote it is a public school trot prick but it still stung.
gnome wrote:imposs1904 wrote:alanjjohnstone wrote:Darren, you are doing a great job and there has been quite a few gems in what you have posted. I hope you can keep the momentum going and don't burn yourself out.Of course I will burn out and fade away. Just enjoy it while it's here.
Before that time comes would you like to join the Internet Committee?
Thanks for the kind offer of the posioned chalice but I'll have to politely decline.
alanjjohnstone wrote:Darren, you are doing a great job and there has been quite a few gems in what you have posted. I hope you can keep the momentum going and don't burn yourself out.Of course I will burn out and fade away. Just enjoy it while it's here.
Some more recent addtions to the blog. Thanks to Graham and ALB for the scans: Socialist Standard September 1954Link: The Sterility of Labourism by Ted WilmottSocialist Standard January 1996Link: Ecology & SocialismSocialist Standard February 1996Link: Ecology and ScienceSocialist Standard March 1980Link: Book Review about the average soldier in World War One.Socialist Standard September 1954Link: Those were the daysSocialist Standard December 1968Link: Book Review Marxism in the USASocialist Standard March 1919Link: Labour unrest by Jack FitzgeraldSocialist Standard January 1996Link: They say, we saySocialist Standard December 1968Link: Book Review Middle Class RadicalsWorld Socialist Number 2 (1985)Link: State capitalism in Russia
More additions to the blog. Once again, cheers to Graham in Denmark for all the hard graft: Socialist Standard July 1988Link: Review of a biography of the famous ILPer James MaxtonSocialist Standard June 1928Link: An editorial on the aforementioned James MaxtonSocialist Standard November 1983Link: A bourgeoisie in waitingSocialist Standard February 1929Link: The Family Allowances fraudSocialist Standard November 1980Link: Labour's power struggleWorld Socialist Winter 1985-6 issueLink: D. H. Lawrence and the abolition of moneyWorld Socialist Winter 1984 issueLink: Spanish Social Democracy – how it became reformistWorld Socialist '69Link: Primitive Communism reassessedSocialist Standard April 1980Link: The economics of capitalismSocialist Standard February 1982Link: Selling the Standard
Jonathan Neale's resigned.Viv Smith's resigned.David Renton's resigned.Pete Gilliard's resigned.And, as previously mentioned, Ian Birchall's resigned.These were all prominent longstanding members of the SWP. Strange to watch it all unravel.
I tried to look for this thread last night but I couldn't find it, so cheers for resurrecting the thread.I don't have a direct link for this but I thought I'd cut and paste this resignation letter/email from an SWP member in Britstol that someone posted on Urban 75 earlier today. I just thought it was especially interesting because it once again confirmed what we've always known; of their being two classes of member in the SWP and all the other vanguardist organisations:"Dear Charlie,I am writing tonight to resign from the Socialist Workers Party. I am a revolutionary socialist who has viewed all the events since 2010 with alarm. It is not just the defence of rape by the upper echelons of the party, but also the very fact that their is an upper echelon in the SWP. As a blue collar worker without a university education I have always struggled to be accepted in the intellectualised atmosphere of the party. I do not think that anyone who joins should have to smash through a political/intellectual glass ceiling, but we do. In so many ways the SWP mirrors the society we aim to bring down. There is class and privilege in the party, that much was obvious to me from early on, I fought to smash it down, but like any other structure the hierarchy clings to power, at a national or local level.Time and again I approached the party to complain of poor comradeship, zero support and poor organisation in Bristol, at least four times I was fobbed off the rest ignored. Once at a meeting in my own home I and the Secretary of UAF in Bristol, were silenced in our criticism of comrades, as it was felt that important funds from the NUT would be held back. To our knowledge those funds never materialised. Our local campaigns were jeopardized for the sake of national money, to prop up National UAF. For all these years as a good comrade I kept my mouth shut, or had it shut for me.I can be brutal with language, I recognise Boss-like behaviour when I see it and I see it in the Party. You are the bosses, people like me, who trail around doing what we are instructed, are the workers; who are then smashed for showing a flicker of initiative. Worst of all are the unelected, self appointed, middle managers who have a position due to their seniority, a woeful parody of the bosses and managers we are trying to remove. I have a simple rule; anything that we resist at work, we should resist in our own organisation.This in turn brings me to the immediate events around Martin Smith. This whole series of events has been spread over three years, not one and we have long been aware of the allegations facing Martin Smith. Again as a trade union rep with experience of discipline and how workers are treated, abused and oppressed, it was stunning to see the same behaviour occurring in the SWP and from comrades who have also been long serving Trade Unionists. It goes with the territory to stand up for the oppressed, not to be the oppressor. I was shocked to hear how the Disputes Committee had harassed the woman comrade who had been abused, any half competent trade union official would have stopped a meeting like that and any half decent revolutionary would never conduct a meeting like that.I was proud to vote against the CC at the January 2013 conference and have paid the price in Bristol ever since. I believe in a revolutionary socialist party, your SWP is not it. You have had successes, yet as the Tories move further to the right and Labour clings to their coat tails and the Lib Dems face wipe-out the SWP is dragged further and further into the resulting vacuum. We need to resist all temptation, on the one hand to oppress other humans and on the other, to be drawn into the movement in the way you are doing through Unite the Resistance, amongst other campaigns. As revolutionaries we should always be firmly rooted in our place on the left and never over stretch into the movement. There are limits.I trust you can see that my reasons for resignation are not purely based on the exploits of Martin Smith. I feel too many concessions are made to movementism and there is a lack of understanding of how we operate in United Fronts. Too many comrades can talk the talk, yet when they walk the walk it is to the beat of the Labour Party drum.I have stayed in the SWP hoping that I could be a part of changing our structures from within. The democracy commission was a carve up and so too have been all the conferences and structures since. A former comrade in Bristol always used to tell me “Jaz, there are talkers and do-ers”, Charlie, I must report the talkers have won. The party is taking on the appearance of a retirement home where old bigoted ideals will be savoured as you talk over what would have been if those “upstart students and no good women hadn’t come along and spoilt it all”.I too hoped the latest conference would make a serious attempt to acknowledge and rectify the mistakes you and the CC made. I hoped you would have the guts to apologise sincerely to the women at the heart of your crisis and that we could all move forward in unity. That is not possible with a CC based on intransigence. That means I have to leave.I will end by quoting a comrade from Bristol who has tonight also resigned; “I remain a Revolutionary Socialist committed to liberation from oppression, but can not work within this organisation. I offer my solidarity to all my comrades.”Justin “Jaz” Thomas"
And some more additions to the blog. Again, courtesy of Graham in Denmark.Socialist Standard October 1923 Link: Jingo Communists by Edgar Hardcastle ('Hardy')Socialist Standard November 1923Link: Unemployment – cause and cure by Edgar Hardcastle ('Hardy')Socialist Standard September 1989Link: Economic Roots by IvanSocialist Standard March 1983Link: Historical Materialism by Steve ColemanWorld Socialist Journal Number 4 (Winter 1985-86)Link: Capitalism, socialism and ecology by Robin CoxSocialist Standard 1991Link: A Professor defends capitalism (David Marsland debates Steve Coleman)
Some more additions to the blog. All the credit for these go to Graham in Denmark who transcribed them a few years back:World Socialist Journal Number 5 (Summer 1986)Link: Capitalism as a world systemSocialist Standard August 1964Link: Economic causes of the Great WarSocialist Standard February 1988Link: The lunacy of left-wing nationalismSocialist Standard June 1993Link: Beyond CapitalismSocialist Standard April 1994Link: Do we need the market?Socialist Standard August 1990Link: Trotsky, the prophet debunked World Socialist Journal Number 4 (Winter 1985-86)Link: Sex in a free societySocialist Standard January 1996Link: The great minimum wage debate
There was a series of articles published in the Socialist Standard in the mid-seventies published under the title of 'How I Became A Socialist'. I'd like to eventually put them on the net but I have to hunt down the actual issues of the Socialist Standard first.The only one in the series currently on the the net is this fascinating piece by a Swedish socialist that was published in the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard:Link: How I became a Socialist
Anybody else listen to this?Despite at times thinking the speaker sounded like J.P. from Fresh Meat narrating the audio book of Gwyn Williams' Proletarian Order – excuse my inverted snobbery – I thought it was an interesting talk. It was shame that they didn't include the contributions from the floor in the podcast. I was curious about aspects of the talk and I was hoping that a recorded Q & A session would have answered some of the questions I had.
