Guest post by Bilbo and Robbo…
With Marxism 2013 not that far away, rumours have reached Grumpy Central that the SWP have invited the lovely Peter Hain to speak. We were assured, on making a quick call to their Vauxhall bunker, that this was most certainly not a sign of desperation. No, not at all. So there…
This is a fantastic blog from Kate Belgrave:
She describes it as “…mainly a collection of interviews with people who rely on public services and who have fought as their services have been privatised and eroded.” She’s being modest – it’s a great website and resource that deserves wide circulation and support!
Thanks to HarpyMarx for the link.
Probably the best Trotskyist joke ever:
He runs over and says: “Stop. Don’t do it.”
“Why shouldn’t I?” he asks.
“Well, there’s so much to live for!”
“I’m just so depressed, I’ve been a communist all my life and the revolution seems as far away as ever”
“You’re a communist?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I am as well!! Did you originally join the Communist Party USA?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too! Did you join the pro-Trotsky Communist League of America in 1928, which later merged with the American Workers Party to form the Workers Party of America in 1934?”
“Yeah.”
“Spooky, Me too! After the WPA was expelled from the Socialist Party of America in 1936 did you then go on to join the Socialist Workers Party USA and the Fourth International?”
“I did actually…”
“Me too! In the 1940 dispute did you side with Cannon or Shachtman?”
“Cannon.”
“Me too! In 1962 did you join Robertson’s opposition caucus, the Revolutionary Tendency?”
“Yep.”
” Holy shit! And of course like me you were expelled and went on to join the International Communist League (Spartacist).”
“Well … that goes without saying!”
“In 1985 did you join the International Bolshevik Tendency who claimed that the Sparts have degenerated into an ‘obedience cult’?”
“No way!”
“Nah, me neither. In 1998 did you join the Internationalist Group after the Permanent Revolution Faction were expelled from the ICL?”
“Yeah! I can’t believe this! Maybe I won’t …”
“Die, counterrevolutionary scum!” his erstwhile saviour screams, and pushes him off the bridge.
Sad news just in. According to his Facebook page, Lord Acton has been forced to cancel his planned trip to India. Let’s hope the costs he’s incurred will be covered by his travel insurance.
LETTER TO ORGANIZING COMMITTEE OF HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE, DELHI
25 March 2013
Dear Organizing Committee,
I was very surprised to receive your communication. You ask me ‘to withdraw [my] decision to attend’. But I only made that decision in response to an invitation to participate in your conference. So what you are in fact doing is withdrawing your invitation, as is indicated by the fact that you have already deleted me from the conference programme. I think you should take full responsibility for the decision you are actually taking.
I understand of course how important the issue of rape and sexual violence is in India, especially after last December’s gang rape and murder in Delhi. It is also a very important question in Britain, and for me personally, as it is for the Socialist Workers Party. We are strongly committed to women’s liberation. We took the rape allegations against a leading member extremely seriously; the controversy over how the party handled these allegations is indicative of that seriousness. The special conference that we recently held to resolve this controversy has set up a committee to review our procedures, and we intend to use this to reinforce our efforts to combat the oppression of women.
It is not for me to judge how grave the danger of disruption to your conference is. But an appeal circulated by an academic at JNU does not reflect well intellectually or morally on those agitating against my presence at the conference. This document is a farrago of nonsense that treats allegations as proven fact, cites tendentious opinion pieces as ‘reports’, and includes the laughable assertion that ‘the journal Historical Materialism is allied, and … is known to be principally operated by Socialist Workers Party members and supporters’.
Since this is a conference sponsored by Historical Materialism, let me remind you that I am a longstanding supporter of the journal and, along with Marxist intellectuals of many political tendencies, a member of its International Advisory Board. I have tried to support HM’s development both in Britain and internationally. Your decision damages HM’s commitment to promote Marxist theoretical development independently of organized political alignments.
So I regret your decision – not just for this reason, but also because I value my long-standing connections with the Marxist intellectual left in India. In taking this decision, based directly or indirectly on interested misrepresentations of debates inside the SWP, you run the risk of compromising your own intellectual and political integrity.
This is to say nothing of the personal inconvenience and expense you are exposing me to by withdrawing your invitation a week after you had circulated a programme that included me as chairing one session and speaking at another, and barely a week before I was due to fly to India. This is quite unacceptable in what is meant to be an academic conference, and it is also not how socialists should behave towards one another.
In comradeship,
Alex Callinicos
By Jay Blackwood
We are going through a period of profound change in the way that people organise and fight back. For socialists of my generation, particularly those of us who for many years have followed a particular tradition, this can be disorienting and sometimes disheartening. The old certainties are disappearing, and in their place we face the influx of new ideas and strategies that are largely untested. External events like the sharp anti-austerity struggles in Greece and Spain, or the phenomenon of Latin American socialism around Chavez, have had a huge impact on the Left in this country, not least on young people who are coming into activism for the first time.
The sub-text to recent events in the SWP is one example of this seismic shift in the landscape of Left politics. Let’s leave aside for now the rights and wrongs of the ‘Comrade Delta’ case. Readers will have their own views on this, and anyone who has followed my blog will know where I stand. But it seems to me that behind the flurry of accusations and counter-accusations something of more lasting interest and import is taking place. The real sting in the tail of this affair, I suspect, lies not so much in the details of the case as in the terrain over which the resulting conflict has been fought.
The expulsion of the ‘Facebook Four’ was one of the defining moments of the Delta Affair. However it’s dressed up by party loyalists, the fact is that four experienced SWP cadres were kicked out of the party for holding a closed Facebook discussion about whether or not to form a faction. The question of whether this in itself constituted ‘secret factionalism’ can, for the purposes of this argument, be set aside. The most striking aspect of the expulsions (which of course were subsequently ratified) is that they were made in response to party members using social media that have become ubiquitous in modern life, and that most people use without a second thought. This rendered the CC’s decision, particularly in the eyes of younger party members, every bit as comical as it was sinister. Suddenly the drive to keep discussion within certain pre-set limits (imposed or agreed, depending on your perspective on the SWP’s internal structure) seemed more than anything else to be simply absurd.
As details of the SWP’s internal crisis went viral, it became increasingly clear that the earlier parameters within which factional struggles could take place had been completely superceded by the opportunities for the dissemination of information and debate provided by the internet. Whereas even ten years ago a group like the SWP could have hoped to mount a damage limitation operation with some degree of success, this was no longer a possibility. Gone were the days when the German, US or Zimbabwean group might split from the IST without the party’s UK membership even getting to hear about it. Gone were the days when an internal scandal could be ring-fenced through a combination of moral and organisational pressure on the members to ‘keep it to themselves’. The scale of the shift from the old situation to the new soon became apparent.
In this respect at least there can be little argument that the CC and its most loyal supporters struggled to manage the crisis. Every comment by the likes of Alex Callinicos about ‘the dark side of the internet’, or Pat Stack’s characterisation of ‘anti-party’ bloggers as ‘filth’, only made the SWP appear even more antediluvian and – frankly – comical. The more the discussion about Comrade Delta spread, the more desperate were the attempts to close off that discussion. I know I’m not the only critic of the party who was assigned a couple of ‘minders’ on Facebook – old friends, utterly loyal to the CC line, who were apparently taking it in turns to monitor my posts and replying to them within seconds of them being uploaded. The trouble with this tactic is that it was both over-the-top and also painfully obvious. It only deepened the widespread unease about the SWP’s methods, and the feeling that the organisation was still living in a pre-digital era.
Every development in the Comrade Delta affair, and similar cases that are gradually coming to light, has been leaked onto the internet. Details of discussions at conference, party bulletins, even Central Committee meetings, have all popped up on a blog or a Facebook page or a tweet. The attempts of the SWP’s CC and its supporters to stem the flood has exacerbated the problem precisely because each intervention has simply provided more material for dissemination.
The implications of all this for the way socialists organise is now becoming clearer. The old methods – strict internal party discipline, secret caucuses and fractions, ‘burn after reading’ internal documents and so on – have now become completely obsolete. It is not that the ideas in the heads of socialists have changed – in many cases they haven’t, as we’ve seen all too clearly in recent weeks. It is rather that the material basis of the exchange and circulation of information itself has changed; and it has changed in such a profound way that the old methods have become not only redundant but actually risible.
We cannot go on in the old way. Secretive revolutionary sects have become unsustainable as well as irrelevant. Full transparency and full democratic debate are not just aspirations – they are actually prescribed by the material conditions in which socialists now operate. The only conceivable exception would be tiny Blanquist groupuscules, whose need for absolute secrecy would limit their size to a handful of individuals, fit only for the most absurd substitutionist strategies.
For the rest of us, the choice is a clear one. We either view the internet and all its offshoots as a hydra against which we must continue to struggle, taking our cue from the leadership of the SWP, or we embrace the new possibilities and allow daylight to flood in where before there was only darkness and secrecy. In truth, only one of those two options makes any sense at all.
