A new mutation - from LM to GM
Ken MacLeod
'The IoI's origins lie, however, deep in a Seventies Trotskyite splinter
group called the Revolutionary Communist Party and in its organ, Living
Marxism. When the RCP abolished itself in 1996, Fox relaunched the
magazine as the glossier, trendier LM. It was a minor publishing
phenomenon until March 2000 when ITN forced its closure by winning a
court case against it for an article that claimed it had misrepresented
footage of an emaciated Bosnian Muslim at a Serbian internment camp.
Some then accused Fox or being a pro-Serb 'tanky'. The complaint now is
different: that the IoI has mutated in a sinister fashion into a front
organization for the far Right.'
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-515993,00.html
--
Ken MacLeod
Roger
Has Justin Flude mutated as well? At least he doesn't post here any more.
Roger
Ken MacLeod
3.deletespamfreeserve.co.uk> writes
Quiet, init?
The oddest thing in that interview is that Claire Fox is reported as
saying that she still opposes capitalism, but stopped believing in
revolution when the Berlin Wall fell. I think many of the now GM'd ex-LM
lot came to a similar conclusion. This is startling, given that they had
long since stopped saying the GDR etc were even deformed workers'
states. I could understand your average dozy Pab or numbskull tankie
being a bit put out, but not a bunch of anti-Soviet ultralefts.
What I've never understood, and have never received any satisfactory
explanation for from these people - and I've asked them, as have other
people I know better placed to get answers - is what line of argument
led them from what might loosely be called a sectarian version of
Marxism to their present positions. It isn't even as if the shock-the-
Guardian-reader libertarian or technophile bullet points are in
themselves incompatible with socialist politics. Marx had not a good
word to say about censorship, or gun control, or protectionism, or
nationalisation for that matter. The New Zealand journal 'revolution',
and individuals and groups here and there, have taken positions as
controversial as those of LM and its offshoots without (at least in
their own minds) breaking with Marxism.
So what actually explains their evolution? Is it the sheer opportunism
of bright, smart, lippy folks who have given up on the working class and
saw a niche for gadflies?
--
Ken MacLeod 'This charismatic cult leader used science fiction as her most
effective recruiting tool for new converts.'
Jim F.
he is a Marxist, and indeed he has often defended
economic views derived from the work of Paul Mattick.
Jim F.
"Ken MacLeod" <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:7yjSTBAH...@libertaria.demon.co.uk...
Chris Williams
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I remember arguing with some of them around 1994ish, and predicting
that they would end in US-style anarchocap libertarianism. I think
that the first stage in their degenerate was formally quasi-Marxist,
and built around the idea that the growth of social-democracy was
holding back the productive forces from growing to the extent where
they could provide for world socialism. Thus, assaulting the
'anti-risk culture' was the way to go. Then they got stuck in
thatniche and began to do it for its own sake. After all, it's a good
way to sell glossy magazines to early-20s upwardly mobile students
with no dependents.
>So what actually explains their evolution? Is it the sheer opportunism
>of bright, smart, lippy folks who have given up on the working class and
>saw a niche for gadflies?
Sounds about right. Many many other trots have also cashed in on their
organising skills and sold out, it's just that they've largely done so
for less money.
Chris Williams
--
"This correspondence has become tedious and must end here. To allow reply
and replication, til all misstatements and perversions are explained, and
all the new matters and personalities that might be introduced, discussed
at full, would make it endless.'
- Robert Leader applies Brooks's Law, Dec 25th, 1841.
Louis Proyect
>of bright, smart, lippy folks who have given up on the working class and
>saw a niche for gadflies?
I think that there is enormous pressure on the Anglo-American left.
Look at the evolution of the Eurocommunists who went to work for
Blair. Or the retreat into thumb-sucking academic obscurantism at the
New Left Review. Or the redbaiting from Nation Magazine editors.
Honestly, the one thing I don't get about Mick Hume and company is why
they would even want to rub shoulders with the people they keep
inviting to these glitzy conferences. I went to their thing at the New
School a year or so ago and was struck by how pedantic all the
participants were, from the ex-LM'ers to some doddering (sorry,
Werner) old fool from U. Cal-Berkeley who rhapsodized about the
wonders of modern food additives, etc.
No matter how old I get, the biggest pleasure is knowing and working
with young radicals who have absolutely no interest in or commitment
to the privileged classes. Over on Marxmail, I get to correspond with
and occasionally meet in person the kinds of activists who want to
wipe capitalism off the face of the earth, including the foundations
and corporate sponsors who make Claire Fox's gabfests possible. May
they prosper.
Louis Proyect, ln...@panix.com
The Marxism mailing list: www.marxmail.org
NIgel Irritable
> So what actually explains their evolution? Is it the sheer opportunism
> of bright, smart, lippy folks who have given up on the working class and
> saw a niche for gadflies?
On a similar note, I'm curious about what happened to the rest of the
RCP. Some of their leaders (Furedi/Fox/Hume and a few others) have
succesfully made the switch from party functionaries to media types.
But where are all the others?
As I understand it the RCP was a fairly big organisation by the
standards of the far left - much smaller than the likes of Militant or
the SWP, but bigger than Socialist Organiser or the varied remnants of
the IMG etc. How did they manage to avoid leaving a disgruntled rump
of some sort behind? Did all of their activists just fade away?
Is mise le meas
Brian Cahill
Ken MacLeod
Irritable <nigel_i...@yahoo.com> writes>news:<7yjSTBAHzhA+Ew1J
>@libertaria.demon.co.uk>...
>
>
>> So what actually explains their evolution? Is it the sheer opportunism
>> of bright, smart, lippy folks who have given up on the working class and
>> saw a niche for gadflies?
>
>On a similar note, I'm curious about what happened to the rest of the
>RCP. Some of their leaders (Furedi/Fox/Hume and a few others) have
>succesfully made the switch from party functionaries to media types.
>But where are all the others?
>
A large number of the cadre have gone on to be quite successful in
various professions.
>As I understand it the RCP was a fairly big organisation by the
>standards of the far left - much smaller than the likes of Militant or
>the SWP, but bigger than Socialist Organiser or the varied remnants of
>the IMG etc. How did they manage to avoid leaving a disgruntled rump
>of some sort behind? Did all of their activists just fade away?
>
There is still some kind of 'project' that run by some of the ex-RCP
(through the IoI and spiked-online.com), but its younger supporters seem
to be a new generation. They wear black and talk about freedom and
individualism, always in the same way.
It's surprising that the idea of a 'Continuity RCP' or 'Real RCP' never
became more than a joke by one or two disgruntled ex-members. I suspect
there was, let's say, an unusual degree of ideological homogeneity in
the original group.
--
Ken MacLeod 'Courage, friend! Christmas comes but once a year,
and is soon over.'
George Bernard Shaw
Jim F.
> In article <bf96d35.02121...@posting.google.com>, NIgel
> Irritable <nigel_i...@yahoo.com> writes
> >Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> >news:<7yjSTBAHzhA+Ew1J
> >@libertaria.demon.co.uk>...
> There is still some kind of 'project' that run by some of the ex-RCP
> (through the IoI and spiked-online.com), but its younger supporters seem
> to be a new generation. They wear black and talk about freedom and
> individualism, always in the same way.
>
In other words they are a "herd of independent minds."
Jim F.
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
Going back to Ken's original question seeking an explanation of the
abrupt rightward movement, it seems likely to me that a major factor was
the failure of any significant segment of the left to defend the RCP (or
whatever its incarnation then called itself) against repression. (I
assume I don't need to _argue_ here for characterizing a civil suit
against a leftist party as a form of repression by the state.)
Very speculatively, I would interpret the reference by a former leader
to the falling of the Berlin wall as his political turning point to
reflect his perception of the similarity between the RCP's lack of
allies on the left and the left's desertion of the cause of the German
workers state. (That the RCP didn't defend the workers state either is
beside the point.) Just as almost no one defended the RCP, leftists
generally sided with the bourgeoisie against the Berlin wall. The
Lambertistes can be cited as a particularly disappointing example; they
cheered the destruction of the wall, proclaiming a new unity of the
German proletariat. The U.S. SWP, which Louis Proyect helped build,
generalized this trend, proclaiming *all* of the defeats of the
Stalinist bureaucracies _victories_ for the working class.
Being essentially a radical petty bourgeois tendency, the RCP did what
is typical of its class--it recoiled at this display of weakness in the
left.
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
>
<snip>
>
> Going back to Ken's original question seeking an explanation of the
> abrupt rightward movement, it seems likely to me that a major factor was
> the failure of any significant segment of the left to defend the RCP (or
> whatever its incarnation then called itself) against repression. (I
> assume I don't need to _argue_ here for characterizing a civil suit
> against a leftist party as a form of repression by the state.)
>
and are just speculating - but then that's nothing new. Even before 1989
the RCP had already moved radically to the right on many issues. The
reluctance of the left to defend LM - it had transformed itself from
"Living Marxism" to what many mockingly called "Lifestyle Magazine" and
the RCP was already ancient history - had more to do with the fact that
LM's politics were already so far off in the libertarian individualist
stratosphere that nobody considered it a left-wing magazine anymore.
Einde O'Callaghan
Jim F.
"Einde O'Callaghan" <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote in message
news:3E057251...@planet-interkom.de...
True, but the left still made a mistake in not coming to LM's defense
since LM was under assault not for its libertarian politics but because
it was still defending a progressive line on Yugoslavia, and was
charging one of Britain's largest media companies with having
dissimulated on that issue.
Jim F.
>
> Einde O'Callaghan
>
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>
>Going back to Ken's original question seeking an explanation of the
>abrupt rightward movement, it seems likely to me that a major factor was
>the failure of any significant segment of the left to defend the RCP (or
>whatever its incarnation then called itself) against repression. (I
>assume I don't need to _argue_ here for characterizing a civil suit
>against a leftist party as a form of repression by the state.)
>
Re the original question, this review does seem to relate their current
position to their former Marxism:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D9BB.htm
--
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond
Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> This is utter bullshit. You know nothing about the history of the RCP
> and are just speculating - but then that's nothing new. Even before 1989
> the RCP had already moved radically to the right on many issues. The
> reluctance of the left to defend LM - it had transformed itself from
> "Living Marxism" to what many mockingly called "Lifestyle Magazine" and
> the RCP was already ancient history - had more to do with the fact that
> LM's politics were already so far off in the libertarian individualist
> stratosphere that nobody considered it a left-wing magazine anymore.
What you are saying simply is that you agree with the despicable conduct
of the rest of the left.
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
much to do with socialism as the British Liberal Party, indeed they were
more right wing on many issues.
For me they went went overboard during the British Miners' Strike in
1984 when they opposed the spontaneous strike of the rank and file
miners and said the miners should have waited until there had been a
ballot (as dictated by the Conservatives anti-union laws).
Their credibility went further downhill when they attributed AIDS not to
the HIV virus, whose existence they denied, but to the lifestyle of gays
(but of course you probably agreed with them there) - try telling that
to the millions of Africans dying of AIDS due to heterosexual sex. They
also opposed safe sex practices, which they said were a capitulation to
anti-sex morality - although the British Conservatives were just as
opposed to providing any publicity to safe sex practices and tried to
use AIDS to frighten people back to a 1950s-style sexual morality.
For me LM in its final phases had just about as much to do with
socialism as the Scientologists or Lyndon LaRouche's Schiller
Foundation. I treated its demise with supreme indifference. they opted
to go for a market approach to their ideas - wrap them in a stylish
cover, provoke a bit of controversy to get publicity - their big problem
was that in their provocative approach they bit off more than they could
chew and got hammered by the British libel courts.
Several socialist papers and magazines (not least Socialist Worker) have
been hammered by the libel courts (SW several times), but have survived.
why? Because they had a basisi, hwoever small, in the real movement. LM
abandoned the real movement for lifestyle politics and then went down
the pan - tough shit as far as I'm concerned.
I knew several founder members of the group - good socialist
intellectuals. But over teh years the group got more and more sect-like
- what else can you call a group with no more than a couple of hundred
members that calls its annual theoretical jamboree "Preparing for
Power".
To keep up their profile they made incredible demands on their members.
One founder member was expelled for lack of dedication to the cause
after his partner, a non-member, had a baby. He offered to work for the
organisation five evenings a week and Saturday mornings, although he had
a demanding job. They said this simply wasn't enough ... What more can
you say? Even the Healyites weren't this crazy.
They also had a propensity for violence. I witnessed several nasty
confrontations at paper sales in various parts of London. They used to
turn up at patches that had been worked for years by other groups
slightly earlier than the usual group. when the comrades turned up for
their paper sale they discovered that their patch had been occupied by
the RCP.
When comrades tried, nevertheless, to carry out their paper sale RCP
members would interrupt discussions with potential buyers and harassed
people who had bought the paper. This led to angry exchanges with the
RCPers which sometimes ended in pushing and shoving - and occasionally
punches were thrown (by both sides). Unfortunately for the RCPers, their
members came mainly from a student milieu and they had difficulties when
manual workers reacted to a thrown punch with a swift uppercut.
This sort of thing happened at several Socialist Worker paper sales I
participated in but comrades from other groups confirmed that they had
had similar experiences. I can't say that the demise of the RCP
surprised me or that I felt that it was in any way a loss to the left.
Einde O'Callaghan
Stephen Diamond
Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> Stephen Diamond wrote:
> >
> > In article <3E057251...@planet-interkom.de>,
> > Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> >
> > > This is utter bullshit. You know nothing about the history of the RCP
> > > and are just speculating - but then that's nothing new. Even before 1989
> > > the RCP had already moved radically to the right on many issues. The
> > > reluctance of the left to defend LM - it had transformed itself from
> > > "Living Marxism" to what many mockingly called "Lifestyle Magazine" and
> > > the RCP was already ancient history - had more to do with the fact that
> > > LM's politics were already so far off in the libertarian individualist
> > > stratosphere that nobody considered it a left-wing magazine anymore.
> >
> > What you are saying simply is that you agree with the despicable conduct
> > of the rest of the left.
> >
> For me the RCP and LM were simply a right-wing sect. They had about as
> much to do with socialism as the British Liberal Party, indeed they were
> more right wing on many issues.
>
> For me they went went overboard during the British Miners' Strike in
> 1984 when they opposed the spontaneous strike of the rank and file
> miners and said the miners should have waited until there had been a
> ballot (as dictated by the Conservatives anti-union laws).
>
> Their credibility went further downhill when they attributed AIDS not to
> the HIV virus, whose existence they denied, but to the lifestyle of gays
> (but of course you probably agreed with them there)
Hardly. To humor you in your wish that I post something "homophobic," I
will give you this token against which you can vent your rage: What has
to strike the objective observer as most remarkable about the spread of
AIDS in the U.S. (NOT in Africa) is the apparent indifference of "gays"
to contracting the disease. With all the warnings about "safe sex,"
millions of "gays" failed to take heed. I don't wish AIDS even on a
"gay," (and I am unconcerned about their sexual practices--my
"homophobia" goes to their character, not to their sexual conduct), the
"gay" response to AIDS bespeaks _obvious_ self-destructiveness, which of
course is part and parcel of the "gay" character structure.
I'll comment on the rest later. The Lakers are back on. For now, let me
say, however, that you argue the RCP was not a socialist tendency, but
you pay no attention to the applicable criteria. Of course this
methodological innocence is the hallmark of Cliffism. Interestingly,
however, the fact is that the RCP analysis of the workers states is the
same analysis as yours, couched in a more rigorous if also more
far-fetched language.
You then ignore the question raised by JimF, which is that the duty to
defend flows from the cause and basis of the repression, not simply the
class character of the defendant tendency.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> > For me LM in its final phases had just about as much to do with
> > socialism as the Scientologists or Lyndon LaRouche's Schiller
> > Foundation. I treated its demise with supreme indifference. they opted
> > to go for a market approach to their ideas - wrap them in a stylish
> > cover, provoke a bit of controversy to get publicity - their big problem
> > was that in their provocative approach they bit off more than they could
> > chew and got hammered by the British libel courts.
Refresh my memory; what were the Cliffite positions on the issues the
imperialist intervention in Yugoslavia injected into the debate among
socialists? In particular, what were the Cliffite positions on the
issues the bourgeoisie forced the post-RCP to contest in their courts?
> >
> > Several socialist papers and magazines (not least Socialist Worker) have
> > been hammered by the libel courts (SW several times), but have survived.
> > why? Because they had a basisi, hwoever small, in the real movement. LM
> > abandoned the real movement for lifestyle politics and then went down
> > the pan - tough shit as far as I'm concerned.
BY what criteria do the Cliffites judge whether a tendency is part of
the working class movement? By whether it has a "base in the working
class," as the Progressive Labor Party likes to claim. Or is it in the
"real movement" that they must be based. There is no doubt circularity
in your attribution of reality to only certain tendencies.
I have always understood it as fundamental that a party can owe its
working class character to one of two sources: either it is based on the
mass organizations of the working class and/or it is based on socialist
ideology, meaning it espouses socialism and claims its practical
activity is designed at least in part to realizing socialism.
Viewed objectively along these truistic lines, the RCP was a socialist
tendency espousing and bizarre stage theory. It so happens that their
first stage is an alliance with the non-fascist right, not an alliance
with the liberal bourgeoisie as preached by stage theorists who behave
like nice proper British stage theorists, who Cliffite types might find
it comfortable to, in turn, ally with.
> >
> > I knew several founder members of the group - good socialist
> > intellectuals. But over teh years the group got more and more sect-like
> > - what else can you call a group with no more than a couple of hundred
> > members that calls its annual theoretical jamboree "Preparing for
> > Power".
> >
> > To keep up their profile they made incredible demands on their members.
> > One founder member was expelled for lack of dedication to the cause
> > after his partner, a non-member, had a baby. He offered to work for the
> > organisation five evenings a week and Saturday mornings, although he had
> > a demanding job. They said this simply wasn't enough ... What more can
> > you say? Even the Healyites weren't this crazy.
Frankly, I don't see what is _particularly_ crazy about finding
objection in a member assuming family responsibilities that will
necessarily reduce his political time and reduce his titheable income. I
wondered, whilst a Healyite, why reproduction was sacrosanct. The party
could direct you to quit your job if necessary so that you could attend
a 2-week summer camp with Healy. But it would never presume to interfere
with one's reproductive plans. Since I was interested in keeping my job,
but had no inclination to reproduce, it seemed a bit unfair. In any
event, it certainly isn't _unfair_ to require the leadership to
subordinate its reproductive plans to the political struggle if it
requires that it let politics run all the _rest_ of that person's life.
> >
> > They also had a propensity for violence. I witnessed several nasty
> > confrontations at paper sales in various parts of London. They used to
> > turn up at patches that had been worked for years by other groups
> > slightly earlier than the usual group. when the comrades turned up for
> > their paper sale they discovered that their patch had been occupied by
> > the RCP.
> >
> > When comrades tried, nevertheless, to carry out their paper sale RCP
> > members would interrupt discussions with potential buyers and harassed
> > people who had bought the paper. This led to angry exchanges with the
> > RCPers which sometimes ended in pushing and shoving - and occasionally
> > punches were thrown (by both sides). Unfortunately for the RCPers, their
> > members came mainly from a student milieu and they had difficulties when
> > manual workers reacted to a thrown punch with a swift uppercut.
> >
> > This sort of thing happened at several Socialist Worker paper sales I
> > participated in but comrades from other groups confirmed that they had
> > had similar experiences. I can't say that the demise of the RCP
> > surprised me or that I felt that it was in any way a loss to the left.
Your American co-thinkers charge that the Spartacists instigate
violence. Do you endorse their allegations, and if so, do you read them
out of the socialist movement too?
srd
> >
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> Picking up where I left off--
>
>
> Refresh my memory; what were the Cliffite positions on the issues the
> imperialist intervention in Yugoslavia injected into the debate among
> socialists? In particular, what were the Cliffite positions on the
> issues the bourgeoisie forced the post-RCP to contest in their courts?
We opposed the imperialist intervention - in both Britain and Germany we
played a major role in building the anti-war movement - whilst having no
illusions that the state was in anyway a workers' state. Indeed the FI's
somersaults on the Yugoslavia in 1948 played an important role in the
crystallisation of our tendency.
> > >
> > > Several socialist papers and magazines (not least Socialist Worker) have
> > > been hammered by the libel courts (SW several times), but have survived.
> > > why? Because they had a basisi, hwoever small, in the real movement. LM
> > > abandoned the real movement for lifestyle politics and then went down
> > > the pan - tough shit as far as I'm concerned.
>
> BY what criteria do the Cliffites judge whether a tendency is part of
> the working class movement? By whether it has a "base in the working
> class," as the Progressive Labor Party likes to claim. Or is it in the
> "real movement" that they must be based. There is no doubt circularity
> in your attribution of reality to only certain tendencies.
>
> I have always understood it as fundamental that a party can owe its
> working class character to one of two sources: either it is based on the
> mass organizations of the working class and/or it is based on socialist
> ideology, meaning it espouses socialism and claims its practical
> activity is designed at least in part to realizing socialism.
>
By neither of these criteria could the RCP be described as socialist in
the latter phases of its evolution. The nearest American equivalent
would be the LaRouchites. It's "Marxism" had very little to do with Marx
and a lot to do with the latest fashionable post-modernist ideas.
> Viewed objectively along these truistic lines, the RCP was a socialist
> tendency espousing and bizarre stage theory. It so happens that their
> first stage is an alliance with the non-fascist right, not an alliance
> with the liberal bourgeoisie as preached by stage theorists who behave
> like nice proper British stage theorists, who Cliffite types might find
> it comfortable to, in turn, ally with.
This is so nonsensical that it doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
<snip>
>
> Frankly, I don't see what is _particularly_ crazy about finding
> objection in a member assuming family responsibilities that will
> necessarily reduce his political time and reduce his titheable income.
What elitist bullshit. If this kind of attitude was prevalent in the
socialist movement there would be few if any workers in the movement -
only a self-selecting elite of baby-haters would be allowed to join the
movement. Indeed Marx, Trotsky and even the great and glorious Gerry
Healy himself would be excluded because they chose to reproduce.
Of course, it's very easy for you to pontificate about the level of
commitment that a revolutionary activist should be prepared to make. You
haven't been in a political organisation for about 30 years and don't do
anything other than play with your computer and preach what others
should believe or do.
> In any
> event, it certainly isn't _unfair_ to require the leadership to
> subordinate its reproductive plans to the political struggle if it
> requires that it let politics run all the _rest_ of that person's life.
But a Bolshevik organisation if it is to be a mass working-class
organisation can't exclude members with children, since they make up the
mass of the working class.
And I wasn't talking about a leader of the group but a talented founder
member who had spent over a decade working more or less every day for
the organisation.
<snip>
>
> Your American co-thinkers charge that the Spartacists instigate
> violence. Do you endorse their allegations, and if so, do you read them
> out of the socialist movement too?
>
I have also witnessed the Sparts' tendency to provoke violence and then
scream about "violence in the workers' movement". I've sometimes
wondered if provocateurs might not be using such organisations to
disrupt the socialist movement. I've never experienced the Sparts in the
US, but some of my friends joined the Sparts after they split the
Workers Socialist League in the mid-70s. They were put under
considerable to provide detailed reports on their politically active
friends in other organisations (I call this spying and potentially a
goldmine for the forces of the state). So if they weren't a cop
organisation as the ISO alleges they certainly acted like one.
Einde o'Callaghan
Ken MacLeod
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> writes
[The RCP/LM]
>Their credibility went further downhill when they attributed AIDS not to
>the HIV virus, whose existence they denied, but to the lifestyle of gays
This is complete nonsense, as anyone can see who bothers to look at what
the RCP wrote at the time. Their pamphlet The Truth About the AIDS
Panic, by Michael Fitzpatrick and Don Milligan, 1987, clearly attributes
AIDS to infection with the HIV virus.
>(but of course you probably agreed with them there) - try telling that
>to the millions of Africans dying of AIDS due to heterosexual sex.
Try telling the millions of Europeans and Americans not dying of AIDS
due to heterosexual sex that they are all equally at risk.
> They
>also opposed safe sex practices, which they said were a capitulation to
>anti-sex morality - although the British Conservatives were just as
>opposed to providing any publicity to safe sex practices and tried to
>use AIDS to frighten people back to a 1950s-style sexual morality.
This is not complete nonsense, but a caricature, as anyone can see who
bothers to look at what the RCP wrote at the time, and what the same
people write now:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000054CD.htm
--
Ken MacLeod
Einde O'Callaghan
of arguments I had with RCPers at the time. They sometimes got quite
heated and it may be that the caricatures generated in the heat of the
moment have coloured my memories.
Anyway, regardless of this issue, I'd written off the RECP as a serious
intellectual force after their attitude during the miners' strike, even
though some of my old university friends were still members of the
organisation.
Einde o'callaghan
Louis Proyect
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>Frankly, I don't see what is _particularly_ crazy about finding
>objection in a member assuming family responsibilities that will
>necessarily reduce his political time and reduce his titheable income.
Of course not. Your time in the radical movement, which amounted to a
blink of the eye 30 years ago, was spent as college student when you
had no family obligations. This kind of super-activism will not only
drive any real workers out of the group but create a repellent image
for any potential recruits. That is one of the reason the groups you
admire remain so tiny. We, on the other hand, prefer large groups that
carry social weight rather than strident bizarre little sects handing
out leaflets in 8 point type railing against the rest of the left.
Louis Proyect
Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
Roger
> Frankly, I don't see what is _particularly_ crazy about finding
> objection in a member assuming family responsibilities that will
> necessarily reduce his political time and reduce his titheable income. I
> wondered, whilst a Healyite, why reproduction was sacrosanct. The party
> could direct you to quit your job if necessary so that you could attend
> a 2-week summer camp with Healy. But it would never presume to interfere
> with one's reproductive plans. Since I was interested in keeping my job,
> but had no inclination to reproduce, it seemed a bit unfair. In any
> event, it certainly isn't _unfair_ to require the leadership to
> subordinate its reproductive plans to the political struggle if it
> requires that it let politics run all the _rest_ of that person's life.
There are some things that are more important than the struggle for
socialism and one of them is the continuation of the human species. When
the scandal emerged about Healy and young female party members Alex Mitchell
once made the famous remark 'history is not made in bed'. What he omitted
to say however is that although history itself is not made in bed the people
who make history very often are. Any party that does not allow its members
family responsibilities is not truly representative of the working class and
will not reflect the problems of the class as a whole which is essential for
a revolutionary party. A lot of what you mention here remains a problem for
any revolutionary party. Many advanced workers refuse to join political
organisations that demand all their time and try to run their life for them.
Is that a surprise? Until so-called revolutionaries ditch their elitist
illusions this will remain a serious problem.
Roger
Karl Burg
in response to SRD:
>Of course not. Your time in the radical movement, which amounted to a
>blink of the eye 30 years ago, was spent as college student when you
>had no family obligations. This kind of super-activism will not only
>drive any real workers out of the group but create a repellent image
>for any potential recruits. That is one of the reason the groups you
>admire remain so tiny. We, on the other hand, prefer large groups that
>carry social weight rather than strident bizarre little sects handing
>out leaflets in 8 point type railing against the rest of the left.
>
In times where even normal workers are pushed around in their
countries in the name of flexibility and with the threat of getting
fired if they insist on a normal family life and where job and city
hoppers for career reasons are very common its sounds a little old
fashioned to accuse small leftist organisations to demand much too
from their members. And one of the main reasons for running around
comparably more than bigger organisations is the handicap of still
being to small to be everywhere where new opportunities arise. Believe
me, most small groups rather like it becoming bigger, but this does
not come free. And then even the small point sizes (that are 10 point
in most cases anyway, as in practically every publication these days -
long live Times New Roman!) may become bigger to please older eyes
like yours. And in the meantime its not wiser to mimikry the social
life of your national big refomist enemies than to copy their
politics.
Karl
Roger
> In times where even normal workers are pushed around in their
> countries in the name of flexibility and with the threat of getting
> fired if they insist on a normal family life and where job and city
> hoppers for career reasons are very common its sounds a little old
> fashioned to accuse small leftist organisations to demand much too
> from their members.
You create the tools of criticism of your own viewpoint. It is precisely
because workers are continually being pushed around by their employers and
have to fight tooth and nail to defend their conditions and family life that
they don't want to be pushed around by their political organisations either.
It is a real dilemma that cannot be ignored. Workers have to balance,
career, family life and trade union and political activity and that isn't
always easy. Parties that just issue ultimatums to their membership (as did
the RCP) simply lose members and eventually fold altogether. A large youth
membership is one way of dealing with this problem as most youth don't have
all the work and family commitments of many older workers. However, older
workers should not be frowned upon in the party just because they cannot
engage in as much practical activity (and this happens a lot). A genuine
revolutionary party encompasses both the strengths and weaknesses of the
working class and is a vanguard rather than an elite. If weaknesses are
simply excluded from the party then there can be no theoretical grasp of the
problems to be solved in the working class in its struggle for power. We
know that Diamond is an elitist and certainly not a Marxist by any stretch
of the imagination (read the archives and find him opposing Marx's political
economy for an example). The question is do you share Diamond's outlook on
these issues?
Roger
Stephen Diamond
"Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.deletespamfreeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> There are some things that are more important than the struggle for
> socialism and one of them is the continuation of the human species.
I rather think that the struggle for socialism is more important for the
preservation of the species than is party leaders procreating.
When Healy thougt, circe 1970, that the coming decade would see world
revolution, it would not seem unreasonable (bracketing the
reasonableness of the analysis itself) to ask party leaders to hold off
on family responsibilities for a few years.
srd
Stephen Diamond
"Roger" <rog...@blackwell23.deletespamfreeserve.co.uk> wrote:
> We
> know that Diamond is an elitist and certainly not a Marxist by any stretch
> of the imagination (read the archives and find him opposing Marx's political
> economy for an example).
Only fundamentamentalists like yourself, who would really feel more
comfortable in a church than a political party, if only the religions
could get around to seeing God as a Proletarian, think that every
comment made to apst represents a finished position and is not subject
to change.
The point of apst is to test ideas, not to repeat them ad nauseum.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> > I have always understood it as fundamental that a party can owe its
> > working class character to one of two sources: either it is based on the
> > mass organizations of the working class and/or it is based on socialist
> > ideology, meaning it espouses socialism and claims its practical
> > activity is designed at least in part to realizing socialism.
> >
> By neither of these criteria could the RCP be described as socialist in
> the latter phases of its evolution. The nearest American equivalent
> would be the LaRouchites. It's "Marxism" had very little to do with Marx
> and a lot to do with the latest fashionable post-modernist ideas.
>
The RCP and "Living Marxism" supported socialism as the goal. The
problem, as they saw it, was that irrationalism had come to permeate
mass consciousness to such a degree that they had to make common cause
with other forces standing for rationality, on the left or the right,
before an actual struggle for socialism could be launched.
Substitute democracy or national liberation or some such for
rationality, and you will take my meaning.
srd
Ken MacLeod
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> writes
>Ken MacLeod wrote:
>>
>> In article <3E061D87...@planet-interkom.de>, Einde O'Callaghan
>> <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> writes
>>
>> [The RCP/LM]
>>
>> >Their credibility went further downhill when they attributed AIDS not to
>> >the HIV virus, whose existence they denied, but to the lifestyle of gays
>>
>> This is complete nonsense, as anyone can see who bothers to look at what
>> the RCP wrote at the time. Their pamphlet The Truth About the AIDS
>> Panic, by Michael Fitzpatrick and Don Milligan, 1987, clearly attributes
>> AIDS to infection with the HIV virus.
>>
[chomp]
>>
>It's a long time since I read the stuff, but my most striking memories
>of arguments I had with RCPers at the time. They sometimes got quite
>heated and it may be that the caricatures generated in the heat of the
>moment have coloured my memories.
>
Yeah, OK, fair enough, we all do that. I just get tired of canards that
get passed endlessly from hand to hand, like cases of Marlboro in
Vietnam.
>Anyway, regardless of this issue, I'd written off the RECP as a serious
>intellectual force after their attitude during the miners' strike, even
>though some of my old university friends were still members of the
>organisation.
>
Again, fair enough, I was in much the same position. I just wish someone
would come up with a critique of what that lot are (quite influentially)
saying now, rather than the aforementioned canards and/or a succession
of bullet points to shock the delicate sensibilities of the Guardian
reader.
Roger
"Roger" wrote:
>
> > There are some things that are more important than the struggle for
> > socialism and one of them is the continuation of the human species.
>
> I rather think that the struggle for socialism is more important for the
> preservation of the species than is party leaders procreating.
>
> When Healy thougt, circe 1970, that the coming decade would see world
> revolution, it would not seem unreasonable (bracketing the
> reasonableness of the analysis itself) to ask party leaders to hold off
> on family responsibilities for a few years.
You love to turnaround what people actually write but that aside I'll get to
the main point. Basically, you don't know the difference between a vanguard
party and an elite. That may be a result of your early training in the
Workers' League or, what is more likely, your distorted reflection of that
training. This thread is about the RCP and what happened to it and maybe
even what lessons can be learned from the demise of the RCP.
Any self-proclaimed revolutionary party can go through a process of training
and selection and find itself completely divorced from the working class.
The process of training and selection is designed to create a vanguard party
not an elite. When the latter is mistaken for the former then the party
loses touch, first with the class, and then with objective reality itself.
This happened to the RCP.
Dialectical materialism is not a formula, it is based on how the objective
world is reflected in human thought. For a revolutionary party to develop
dialectically it has to have deep roots in the working class itself. If a
party expels too many 'slackers' without getting to the roots of the
problem, or, conversely, promotes too many impatient petty bourgeois types
then it runs the risk of becoming divorced from the working class. It can
then only shout slogans and policies at the class from afar and gets treated
by most workers like 'aliens' from Mars. This is what happened to the RCP.
It takes a lot of patient work to build up trust in the working class for a
revolutionary party. And workers also like to see that it is physically
possible for themselves to join such a party without destroying their family
or losing their jobs. This means using time efficiently rather than
demanding that workers sacrifice everything. Of course, some leaders will
give up more time for the party but it should not be demanded of every
worker. That will only alienate most workers who have a lot of commitments.
All this is pretty basic but as Diamond hasn't been a member of a party for
over 30 years I thought it worth pointing out.
Roger
Karl Burg
<rog...@blackwell23.deletespamfreeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>You create the tools of criticism of your own viewpoint. It is precisely
>because workers are continually being pushed around by their employers and
>have to fight tooth and nail to defend their conditions and family life that
>they don't want to be pushed around by their political organisations either.
>It is a real dilemma that cannot be ignored.
It is indeed. On a spectrum of only cardbearing members of a social
democratic election machine to a leninist party of profesional
revolutionaries, the demands are different in scope and size. Given
the urgency of the task to solve the problem of leadership of the
worldwide proletariat its seems that most so to say "hardcore"
leninist organisations have a tendency to overstretch their personal
resources. Not knowing the RCP in any way, I simply wanted to defend
the general approach of more demanding smaller leninist organisations
that struggle to overcome their actual isolation, lack of influence
and geographical distribution.
>Workers have to balance,
>career, family life and trade union and political activity and that isn't
>always easy. Parties that just issue ultimatums to their membership (as did
>the RCP) simply lose members and eventually fold altogether.
This is obviously true. Everybody can give examples probably. But I
think that the successes or more exact the lack of success also has a
lot to do with the loss of membership of those orgs that drove or
drive their memberships too long too hard.
> A large youth
>membership is one way of dealing with this problem as most youth don't have
>all the work and family commitments of many older workers. However, older
>workers should not be frowned upon in the party just because they cannot
>engage in as much practical activity (and this happens a lot). A genuine
>revolutionary party encompasses both the strengths and weaknesses of the
>working class and is a vanguard rather than an elite. If weaknesses are
>simply excluded from the party then there can be no theoretical grasp of the
>problems to be solved in the working class in its struggle for power.
Of course it helps if you can recruit youth. Both of us were roaming
around when we were young and don't do it anymore these days. This is
typical. But what to do if opportunities seem to lurk around the
corner or unsurmountable problems come up in a local and you don't
have the appropriate youth at hand? Making choices in most cases means
giving up something to gain something different. If you take an
experienced comparably older worker, if you are lucky even an
established trade union activist out of his work place to transfer him
or her somewhere else, than you know that this costs something. To the
party as well as to the member. Whether its was worth while, you only
see much later. Mindless swapping around does nobody any good but as
you said yourself, one has to balance career, family life and trade
union and political activity. To quite a degree it literally depends
on the wheight you put on each side of this equation.
> The question is do you share Diamond's outlook on
>these issues?
It is somewhat funny to see Diamond still defending some of the (at
least for me) worst aspects of healyist org practice when he himself
opted for the way out for quite some time, as everybody likes to
emphasize. And of course I myself are in no better position to argue
for more demanding membership responsibilities either. But even when I
personally will not live the political live that I lived 20 years ago
a second time, I still will not make a programm out of my private life
either.
Karl
Louis Proyect
<k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Again, fair enough, I was in much the same position. I just wish someone
>would come up with a critique of what that lot are (quite influentially)
>saying now, rather than the aforementioned canards and/or a succession
>of bullet points to shock the delicate sensibilities of the Guardian
>reader.
Speaking as somebody who waged warfare against Justin Flude on apst
and against James Heartfield on various email lists, I frankly don't
think it is worth my time to try to answer a group that has openly
acknowledged its breach with Marxism. Most of the fury of the polemics
of yore was traceable to differences over whose interpretation of Marx
was more accurate. Heartfield, for instance, had found every single
snippet in Marx that was hostile to the American Indian so as to
bolster his case that forced assimilation, land theft, etc. were
necessary as a kind of bourgeois revolution against precapitalist
remnants. I said at the time and still say that this is a travesty.
But who would bother to answer spiked-online? If you do a search on
"Marx", you will find a scant 8 articles and this is a fairly typical
reference:
"But while know-nothing contemporary anti-capitalists might be shocked
to learn how much Marx admired capitalism, there are no great insights
for anybody who knows the history and is vaguely familiar with the
early literature on capitalism."
While it is utter nonsense to claim that Marx admired capitalism, the
more important point is that this written not from the standpoint of
Marxism but as some kind of neutral observer.
If the radical movement felt the need to answer spiked-online or the
Institute for Ideas, there would be no compelling need as there was in
the past when Furedi's sect was vying for market share on the left. I
check in on them from time to time, but only if there is something of
relevance to my own interests, like an interview with the execrable
Zizek. I might get around to the review of Heartfield's new book when
I get the chance, however.
Stephen Diamond
Karl Burg <Karl...@gmx.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 23 Dec 2002 21:32:54 -0000, "Roger"
> <rog...@blackwell23.deletespamfreeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >You create the tools of criticism of your own viewpoint. It is precisely
> >because workers are continually being pushed around by their employers and
> >have to fight tooth and nail to defend their conditions and family life that
> >they don't want to be pushed around by their political organisations either.
> >It is a real dilemma that cannot be ignored.
>
> It is indeed.
I beg to differ.
It is Marxist abc that the working class is the revolutionary class
because, among other reasons, workers have been disciplined by the
factory system and in consequence can accept the discipline of the
revolutionary party. You and Blackwell project your individualism to the
working class. In the long run the workers will accept *only* a party
which effectively regiments their lives. The working class instinctively
understands that the leverage of discipline and regimentation wielded by
the bourgeoisie in production must be deployed by the workers themselves
in politics.
> > The question is do you share Diamond's outlook on
> >these issues?
>
> It is somewhat funny to see Diamond still defending some of the (at
> least for me) worst aspects of healyist org practice when he himself
> opted for the way out for quite some time, as everybody likes to
> emphasize.
Which is preferable: to recognize one's limitations and opt out, or to
rationalize one's opting out by criticizing the "regime" and by
supporting tendencies whose laxness suits one subjectively?
However, I'm not sure I know which aspects of Healyite organization you
are referring to, or why you think Blackwell means to refer to Healyite
practices when criticizing my outlook. This is the Blackwell who defends
the Healyite slander campaigns. Not that the connection Blackwell draws
between my outlook and these organizational questions is transparent.
I don't have personal knowledge of how the WRP functioned when Healy was
alive. As to organizational matters, I would criticize the Wohlforthite
regime, which I personally experienced, mainly for the absence of any
formal democratic structure. I don't think the party had any written
rules. For example, candidate members became full members without any
conscious decision by anyone, and at some vague point in time. There
were no written procedures for election to the national committee. Come
to think of it, the Wohlforthites implemented party democracy in the
manner Proyect claims Castro instituted workers democracy--without he
benefit of democratic institutions.
And of course I myself are in no better position to argue
> for more demanding membership responsibilities either. But even when I
> personally will not live the political live that I lived 20 years ago
> a second time, I still will not make a programm out of my private life
> either.
>
> Karl
>
srd
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> I just wish someone
> would come up with a critique of what that lot are (quite influentially)
> saying now, rather than the aforementioned canards and/or a succession
> of bullet points to shock the delicate sensibilities of the Guardian
> reader.
Do you mean a critique or an analysis? You initiated this thread by
asking for an _explanation_ of the rightward plunge of the former RCP.
Some of us predicted this development. Marxism simply is not consistent
with libertarianism, and LM's effort to reconcile them couldn't succeed.
srd
redflag
Stephen Diamond, who is a proto-Stalinist, wrote:
> It is Marxist abc that the working class is the revolutionary class
> because, among other reasons, workers have been disciplined by the
> factory system and in consequence can accept the discipline of the
> revolutionary party.
The "abc" as spelled out by whom? Joseph Stalin? This idea that
the "revolutionary party" will impose its discipline on the working
class assumes that the working class is a docile group of idiots
just waiting for the chance to change riders.
> You and Blackwell project your individualism to the
> working class. In the long run the workers will accept *only* a party
> which effectively regiments their lives.
More reason to reject your perverted notion of socialism. You view
the working class as some pliable mass awaiting the dictates of
a party composed of pseudo intellectuals like yourself. The working
class must be a conscious agent of its own emancipation.
> The working class instinctively
> understands that the leverage of discipline and regimentation wielded by
> the bourgeoisie in production must be deployed by the workers themselves
> in politics.
"Instinctively"! Animals act on instinct. Instinct belongs to the realm
of the unconscious. The working class cannot be unconscious about where
it is being led. De Leon pointed out that the working class is no
"dumb driven herd" to be manipulated unconsciously to its liberation.
But, consistent with your notions of intellectual superiority, notions
which Leninism agravates, you view the working class as little more
than animals.
The discipline that you claim to advocate for the working class
cannot be imparted by the party of socialism, much less by a party
of self-appointed professional revolutionaries. The discipline needed
by the working class can only be aquired within the Industrial
Union whose purpose it is to take, hold and operate the machinery
of production, the real source of all social power.
"It one of the missions of the Trades Union to drill its class
into the discipline that civilization demands."
--De Leon, "The Mission of the Trades Unions"
Of course, Leninism, incapable of resolving satisfactorily the
question of unionism views the party as the only agent of
proletarian emancipation. This was Lenin's error, and it led to
Stalinism because Lenin never worked out how it was that the rule
of this party of professional revolutionaries would take the
working class to the point of self-rule.
"The 'Intellectual' cannot grasp the importance of Unionism.
It is a case of material interests and moral make-up combining.
For bona-fide Unionism the 'Intellectual' has the feelings that
a scalded cat has for water; to bogus Unionism he takes like a
duck does to a mill-pond;--in short, the question of Unionism is
a test that assays the 'Intellectual,' and proves him dross."
Daily People, Vol.V, No.262. Sunday, March 19, 1905.
--
"Nowadays, atheism is itself *culpa levis*, as compared
with criticism of existing property relations."
"All history is nothing but a continuous transformation
of human nature."
You can access THE PEOPLE on-line by visting
our web page at http://www.slp.org
Karl Burg
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>It is Marxist abc that the working class is the revolutionary class
>because, among other reasons, workers have been disciplined by the
>factory system and in consequence can accept the discipline of the
>revolutionary party. You and Blackwell project your individualism to the
>working class.
Yes and no. One the one hand its obvious that the fact that both of us
have stayed at the same place for decades shows that we at least dont
like roaming around doing something different every other year. And
everybody has a tendency to see his individual life as a role model.
And it is not the sheer individualism of a hardened petty bourgeois
life per se. More important probably is the fact that both of us are
no card bearing members for a considerable time. The obvious mistrust
in the revolutionary credentials of ones favorite party leeds to an
unwillingness to follow whatever actual priorities may be put on the
political agenda by it.
> In the long run the workers will accept *only* a party
>which effectively regiments their lives. The working class instinctively
>understands that the leverage of discipline and regimentation wielded by
>the bourgeoisie in production must be deployed by the workers themselves
>in politics.
Discipline in the long run can only flow from conscious consent with
the political aims and methods of the organisation that one belongs
to. Otherwise its pure commandism. And the emphasis will be on consent
rather than on discipline. (A true consense can even lead to a lesser
degree of discipline and still be more effective: The armies of the
early french revolution were able to brake up the rigid discipline of
the armies of the seven year war because the officers could afford a
looser formation and had no fear of soldiers running away as the Old
Fritz always had) So far the concrete difference between a party of
real democratic centralism and a party that regiments first its
members and secondly broader layers of the advanced working class
still is unclear to me. What is "effective regimentataion" of the
"lives" of workers?
>Which is preferable: to recognize one's limitations and opt out, or to
>rationalize one's opting out by criticizing the "regime" and by
>supporting tendencies whose laxness suits one subjectively?
In general I dont like preaching to others some behavioural norms
that I do not like to follow myself. On the other side I hesitate too
to critisize hard bolshevist orgs for propagating harsh and demanding
organisational rules simply because I have opted out. I think this is
a real dilemma and one that has meaning for others too.
>However, I'm not sure I know which aspects of Healyite organization you
>are referring to, or why you think Blackwell means to refer to Healyite
>practices when criticizing my outlook. This is the Blackwell who defends
>the Healyite slander campaigns. Not that the connection Blackwell draws
>between my outlook and these organizational questions is transparent.
I know that R. Blackwell is a dyed in the wool Healyite who in a not
so very sophisticated way defends the sordid political past of his
party. I agree that the connection between your "oulook" and and these
organizational questions is not very transparent. Anyway the arguments
of R.B. are typical for quite a layer of organized and not or no more
organized leftists.
>I don't have personal knowledge of how the WRP functioned when Healy was
>alive. As to organizational matters, I would criticize the Wohlforthite
>regime, which I personally experienced, mainly for the absence of any
>formal democratic structure. I don't think the party had any written
>rules. For example, candidate members became full members without any
>conscious decision by anyone, and at some vague point in time. There
>were no written procedures for election to the national committee. Come
>to think of it, the Wohlforthites implemented party democracy in the
>manner Proyect claims Castro instituted workers democracy--without he
>benefit of democratic institutions.
The SL/U.S. and the iSt and henceforth the ICL has worked out at least
"Organizational Rules and Guidelines" (Spartacist, English edition Nr.
54, Spring 1998)
Karl
Stephen Diamond
Karl Burg <Karl...@gmx.net> wrote:
> In general I dont like preaching to others some behavioural norms
> that I do not like to follow myself.
If you look at the norms I advocate more generally, there is no
inconsistency. The norm is, "Accept the discipline of the vanguard party
(bracketing exactly which party that might be, if any) OR (at least)
don't become an obstacle by advocating practices for subjective reasons."
If the norm in the disjunctive sounds artificial, consider what you
might expect of a moderately class conscious worker in a revolutionary
period. You would expect, would you not, that such a worker would demand
of a party to which he or she gives allegiance that it impose on its
members rules adequate to the party's tasks, despite declining to submit
to those requirements. The same would hold true for intellectuals (or
even pseudo-intellectuals such as I) who support Trotskyism but lack the
dedication to affiliate with the party.
srd
Karl Burg
<steph...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>If you look at the norms I advocate more generally, there is no
>inconsistency. The norm is, "Accept the discipline of the vanguard party
>(bracketing exactly which party that might be, if any) OR (at least)
>don't become an obstacle by advocating practices for subjective reasons."
The center of the discussion was not whether a worker (or an
intellectual) should accept the discipline of the vanguard party, of
course he should. The question is, what concrete demands should be
labelled proper and what amounts to a regiment that not only backward
workers would abhor from. And of course the amount of "hardship" a
revolutionary is willing to endure has something to do with at least
the perception of the urgency of the undertaking on the agenda.
With crisis mongering or overestimating the gains to be made if those
concrete "hardships" are accepted you can do quite a lot, as several
examples of hardworking subjectively leninist organizations have
shown. But if you overdrive too many of your members too long without
the meriting successes, the whole operations collapses even for the
Healys (or Wolforths) and their ilk.
Karl
Stephen Diamond
Karl Burg <Karl...@gmx.net> wrote:
As is my wont, I addressed only a tangent that I found interesting, the
tangent being the ethical position of critics who advocate discipline
but refuse to submit to it. You at least implied that you are uneasy
about such a stance, that there is a measure of hypocrisy in it. That is
all to which I actually answered. I am concerned with taking issue with
the moralism I see as implicit in your meta-critique.
As to _your_ issue, whether to use crisis mongering to drive the
membership, I doubt anyone would disagree. The party's job is to asses
conditions objectively, not based on small-minded pragmatics. Perhaps
Healy was as cynical as some say, but he certainly didn't _defend_ his
crisis mongering as useful for party-building; of course, he argued that
the crisis really was as sharp as he claimed. The party members believed
him, or at least said they did.
Perhaps the only place our interests meet on this thread concerns which
of these possible discussions is the important one. <g>
srd
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>In article <6Q5y7DAn...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>,
> Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> I just wish someone
>> would come up with a critique of what that lot are (quite influentially)
>> saying now, rather than the aforementioned canards and/or a succession
>> of bullet points to shock the delicate sensibilities of the Guardian
>> reader.
>
>Do you mean a critique or an analysis? You initiated this thread by
>asking for an _explanation_ of the rightward plunge of the former RCP.
>
I began by asking what *line of argument* connects their past and
present positions.
>Some of us predicted this development. Marxism simply is not consistent
>with libertarianism, and LM's effort to reconcile them couldn't succeed.
>
But they're not libertarian!
(Except in a very loose sense, which several groups have found
compatible with an *avowal* of Marxism.)
They are not theoretically libertarian, in either the right-wing
(property rights) or left-wing (anarchistic) sense. They have never to
my knowledge made a theoretical critique of Marxism. All they've said
is, in effect: 'The class struggle is over, because the common ruin of
the contending classes *has happened*. What now?'
--
Ken MacLeod
Bert Byfield
>> because, among other reasons, workers have been disciplined by the
>> factory system and in consequence can accept the discipline of the
>> revolutionary party.
Furthermore, The People as a whole did not approve of the Bolsheviks, so
it was necessary for Lenin to pick a "special class" of people he could
count on, and ignore the great majority of Russians who voted Social
Revolutionary instead. Sort of like only letting Democrats vote in
Chicago.
> The "abc" as spelled out by whom? Joseph Stalin? This idea that
Lenin did it.
> the "revolutionary party" will impose its discipline on the working
> class assumes that the working class is a docile group of idiots
> just waiting for the chance to change riders.
Exactly. That's what Lenin assumed. It's called "Marxism-Leninism."
>> You and Blackwell project your individualism to the
>> working class. In the long run the workers will accept *only* a party
>> which effectively regiments their lives.
This is the General Line.
> More reason to reject your perverted notion of socialism. You view
> the working class as some pliable mass awaiting the dictates of
> a party composed of pseudo intellectuals like yourself. The working
> class must be a conscious agent of its own emancipation.
Quick! Get him! It's a Menshevik! Lenin kicked them all out of the
Bolsheviks. "Better fewer but better," he said about that.
Sayan Bhattacharyya
>
>They are not theoretically libertarian, in either the right-wing
>(property rights) or left-wing (anarchistic) sense. They have never to
>my knowledge made a theoretical critique of Marxism. All they've said
>is, in effect: 'The class struggle is over, because the common ruin of
>the contending classes *has happened*. What now?'
>
I don't get this -- the former LM think that the common ruin of
the contending classes *has happened* ? You mean, they think that
the bourgeoisie has already been ruined? This does not seem to make
any sense. On what basis do they say this?
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> But they're not libertarian!
>
> (Except in a very loose sense, which several groups have found
> compatible with an *avowal* of Marxism.)
>
> They are not theoretically libertarian, in either the right-wing
> (property rights) or left-wing (anarchistic) sense.
I'll read the documents which you had earlier referenced within the next
few days. For now, let me respond to the above, at least to correct an
error in my emphasis.
It isn't primarily their embrace of any right-wing libertarian doctrine
that caused their political instability, but their pursuit of an
alliance with the libertarian (and conservative) right around trying to
create a rational capitalism. Just as the Social Democrats eventually
internalized liberal *attitudes* as a result of their pursuit of a bloc
with the liberals, but without exactly becoming liberals, LM underwent
an analogous transformation. With this difference. Where liberalism is
an attempt to compromise with socialism on the part of a section of the
bourgeoisie, libertarianism is a radical repudiation of everything
socialist. The contradictions were correspondingly sharper, and the
transformation more rapid.
srd
Ken MacLeod
<bhat...@engin.umich.edu> writes
The phrase from the Communist Manifesto is a chapter heading in
Heartfield's recent book _The 'Death of the Subject' Explained_ (which
I've not read). I *think* what he's referring to is a mutual destruction
at the level of consciousness; or to put it more conventionally, that
the ideologies of the Right and of the Left destroyed each other (and
themselves) in the Cold War. The hope of progress that sustained
liberalism and socialism is gone. The institutions of bourgeois society
are as hollowed-out and lacking in self-confidence as the institutions
of the (as they would have it) former working-class movement. That does
not make them less destructive, just more capricious.
There's an element of truth in this. Take any current bourgeois guru and
they seem remarkably shallow compared with - let's not even say Herbert
Spencer and John Stuart Mill, but Milton Friedman and John Kenneth
Galbraith. And Tony Blair makes almost any past Labour Prime Minister
look like a titan. Etc.
Meanwhile, of course, US imperialism is gearing up for world hegemony,
and the ex-LM crowd criticise the inadequacies of the anti-war movements
without doing anything to change it, which they used to say was the
point.
Oh, and welcome back.
--
Ken MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>In article <zFugOCA9...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>,
> Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> But they're not libertarian!
>>
>> (Except in a very loose sense, which several groups have found
>> compatible with an *avowal* of Marxism.)
>>
>> They are not theoretically libertarian, in either the right-wing
>> (property rights) or left-wing (anarchistic) sense.
>
>
>I'll read the documents which you had earlier referenced within the next
>few days. For now, let me respond to the above, at least to correct an
>error in my emphasis.
>
>It isn't primarily their embrace of any right-wing libertarian doctrine
>that caused their political instability, but their pursuit of an
>alliance with the libertarian (and conservative) right around trying to
>create a rational capitalism.
I think this is giving them too much credit (in a sense) in that they
pursued no such alliance, and have no such project.
>Just as the Social Democrats eventually
>internalized liberal *attitudes* as a result of their pursuit of a bloc
>with the liberals, but without exactly becoming liberals, LM underwent
>an analogous transformation. With this difference. Where liberalism is
>an attempt to compromise with socialism on the part of a section of the
>bourgeoisie, libertarianism is a radical repudiation of everything
>socialist. The contradictions were correspondingly sharper, and the
>transformation more rapid.
>
Real left-libertarians and social libertarians and civil libertarians
have on occasion worked with free-market libertarians without picking up
right-wing cooties, and I assure you that the lefties find LM as odd as
do the conservatives.
This is idle, I know, but even out of idle curiosity, I wish I could put
my finger on what their project *is*. As I've said, people who know them
better than I do have the same itch.
--
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
I read the review of Heartfield's book. I think it confirms my
perceptions.
Apparently Heartfield thinks traditional conservative catchwords have
now obtained progressive content. Essentially, Heartfield seems to pick
up the conservative critique of the welfare state: it is 1) excessively
risk-averse; and 2) reflects and encourages a victim mentality. They
dress it Hegelian style with talk of "the role of the subject." One can
actually detect its link to Trotskyism: the emphasis on the subjective
factor (become objective conditions are deemed ripe, Proyect
notwithstanding), is retained, but turned into something altogether
different.
Every tendency that is not a completely hopeless sect (such as, say, the
Socialist Labor Party in the U.S.) seeks to intersect some actual
movement in the working class. Tendencies differ in strategy based on
which movements they analyze as most fundamentally anti-capitalist. They
differ in principle based on which movements they locate in the working
class and which they locate in the bourgeoisie. For example, I have
defended Radek's turn toward the proletarian elements among the rank and
file Nazi supporters. Prianikov has disagreed on strategic grounds: they
Communists lost more among the Social Democratically aligned workers
than they could gain among the Nazi sympathizers. If I'm not mistaken,
Proyect disagrees on grounds of principle, although the astonishing
character of a Proyection stance so based should chasten me.
Proyect has oriented toward the Naderites, but at the same time has been
highly critical of Nader. Although his position comes close to the line
between principle and strategy, it probably derives foremost from a
false strategic analysis of the movement of the working class. True to
this role as snitch, Kaufman clearly closes the class line.
LM's progeny (LM+, hereafter) oriented to the conservatives and
right-liberians as the more relatively progressive political force.
There is nothing conspiratorial about this. You have to orient toward
something, but LM picked a current with nothing in common with the
working class. Ultimately, the choice of strategic orientation rests
substantially on political intuition. So, to answer the question of why
LM+ chose to orient toward conservative political currents, one should
inquire intoww what shaped (or should we say warped) the political
intuition of their ideologists and supporters? Perhaps their unusually
strong careerist aspirations, I would guess. No matter how talented one
is, you don't succeed in the bourgeois world without bending substantial
effort in that direction.
srd
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>
>I read the review of Heartfield's book. I think it confirms my
>perceptions.
>
I assume you mean this review:
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D9BB.htm
>Apparently Heartfield thinks traditional conservative catchwords have
>now obtained progressive content. Essentially, Heartfield seems to pick
>up the conservative critique of the welfare state: it is 1) excessively
>risk-averse; and 2) reflects and encourages a victim mentality.
In the review I see no critique or even mention of the welfare state as
such, but of the culture, which is indeed excessively risk-averse and
does reflect and encourage a victim mentality. If this become
institutionalised through the welfare state it's still a problem of the
culture, not of the welfare state. LM+ (as you neatly style this
current) have never to my knowledge called for dismantling or reducing
the welfare state.
[snip]
>
>LM's progeny (LM+, hereafter) oriented to the conservatives and
>right-liberians as the more relatively progressive political force.
Once more, I don't think this is the case. Most of their attention seems
to be aimed squarely at the mainstream. The two LM+ events at which I've
spoken, some years ago, were the 'Culture Wars' conference in London and
a related panel discussion (one of a series) at the Edinburgh Book
Festival. At neither of these were conservatives or right-libertarians
predominant or even prominent among the speakers, let alone the
audience.
Elements of a left-wing critique being taken up by the libertarian
right, and vice versa, long predate LM. Gabriel Kolko's _The Triumph of
Conservatism_ was enthusiastically promoted by the Libertarians, and
Thomas Szasz's _The Myth of Mental Illness_ by the left.
--
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> In article <stephend15-2455F...@nnrp03.earthlink.net>,
> Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
> >
> >I read the review of Heartfield's book. I think it confirms my
> >perceptions.
> >
>
> I assume you mean this review:
>
> http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006D9BB.htm
>
> >Apparently Heartfield thinks traditional conservative catchwords have
> >now obtained progressive content. Essentially, Heartfield seems to pick
> >up the conservative critique of the welfare state: it is 1) excessively
> >risk-averse; and 2) reflects and encourages a victim mentality.
>
> In the review I see no critique or even mention of the welfare state as
> such, but of the culture, which is indeed excessively risk-averse and
> does reflect and encourage a victim mentality. If this become
> institutionalised through the welfare state it's still a problem of the
> culture, not of the welfare state.
If the welfare state institutionalizes the risk aversion that supposedly
permeates the culture, then those who think risk aversion is a probably
ought to favor dismantling the welfare state. If they actually spelled
out the logic, they wouldn't be adapting to libertarianism/conservatism,
they would actually _be_ of that persuasion.
LM+ (as you neatly style this
> current) have never to my knowledge called for dismantling or reducing
> the welfare state.
>
> [snip]
>
> >
> >LM's progeny (LM+, hereafter) oriented to the conservatives and
> >right-liberians as the more relatively progressive political force.
>
>
> Once more, I don't think this is the case. Most of their attention seems
> to be aimed squarely at the mainstream. The two LM+ events at which I've
> spoken, some years ago, were the 'Culture Wars' conference in London and
> a related panel discussion (one of a series) at the Edinburgh Book
> Festival. At neither of these were conservatives or right-libertarians
> predominant or even prominent among the speakers, let alone the
> audience.
Leaders of LM+ have stated openly that there is often more rationality
on the right than the left.
Consider LM+'s attitude toward the liberal/pacifist movement against war
with Iraq--but first consider the attitude of various leftist
tendencies. The latter range from adulation (the Cliffites) to critical
support (Proyect) to intervention without support (the British
Healyites) to abstention, from the liberal/pacifist parades, not from
the fight against the war (which is, I suppose, my position). LM+
opposes the war, but claims that the (liberal/pacifist) opponents of the
war are *worse* than the war's supporters, because their anti-war
position, among other defects, springs from risk aversion and from an
opposition to *any* intervention in foreign affairs. (One wonders what
they have in mind.) If this isn't an attempt to meet the right halfway,
I don't know what would be.
If I recall accurately (my memory for fiction is even worse than my
memory for fact) in one of your novels the environmentalists represented
reaction, and arrayed against them were a broad spectrum of relatively
progressive forces, from Trots to pro-capitalists. What you saw as a
fictitious possibility in the rather distant future, LM+ sees in the
here and now.
You share with them the cultural critique centering on risk aversion,
with the difference that it does not appear to be *central* to your
analysis, as it is to LM+'s. I have flirted with the concept myself.
But, I don't think it stands scrutiny. It appeals to elements of the
middle class (such as I) who feel stifled by the dead weight of the
secured positions of those higher in the capitalist hierarchy. But, it
is the result of a myopic focus. Modern capitalism is NOT risk averse;
it is actually reckless in its acceptance of absurd risks.
Without even considering the imperialist adventures on which it has
embarked and is prepared to again, consider such things as:
1. The willingness of leading capitalist business executives to risk
prison terms in the hope of windfall profits (Enron, etc.)
or
2. The willingness of the bourgeoisie to accept the ridiculous risks of
driving on American freeways as opposed no supplying satisfactory public
transportation.
With respect to the second issue, LM took the position that the
automobile is capitalism's greatest gift of liberty to the proletariat.
Here you can perhaps see how their views are designed to ingratiate them
with the right. Who but a right libertarian would sing the praises of
the internal combustion engine in today's world?
What do you see as the expressions of the risk aversion in contemporary
capitalist culture?
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
>
<snip>
>
> Consider LM+'s attitude toward the liberal/pacifist movement against war
> with Iraq--but first consider the attitude of various leftist
> tendencies. The latter range from adulation (the Cliffites)
What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Or do you just think thorugh
your asshole?
Einde O'Callaghan
redflag
Diamond's contribution to dialectics.
Ken MacLeod
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> writes
He's accusing you of adulation of the anti-war movement, not of the war.
--
Ken MacLeod
Einde O'Callaghan
his own admission, he does about as much to build as LM+. I doubt if
he'll even get round to producing his own version of that wonderful
sectarian classic of his political "tradition", "Why the SLL isn't
marching".
Einde O'Callaghan
Stephen Diamond
As one of your number - don't ask me which - explained on apst recently,
the Cliffites realize that their approach to the anti-war movement does
not seek to draw a line against pacifism. As he explained (not in these
words, I admit), you Cliffites are entirely happy with the fact that the
pacifists can find common cause with your actions.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
So that's what that was about. I guess he stopped reading at the point
where he clipped the sentence, having gone almost apoplectic with rage.
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
to see how degenerate the Healyite tradition can become.
You remind me of an idiot in another mailing list who is very proud of
his academic qualifications and seriously believes that Healy, your
erstwhile mentor, was on the verge of leading a workers' revolution in
Britain in 1974. In other words, I find your pathetic contributions to
"Marxist" "debate" mildly amusing but nothing to take seriously.
Einde O'Callaghan
Karl Burg
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote answering SRD:
>Stephen Diamond wrote:
>> > >> Consider LM+'s attitude toward the liberal/pacifist movement against war
>> > >> with Iraq--but first consider the attitude of various leftist
>> > >> tendencies. The latter range from adulation (the Cliffites)
>> > >What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Or do you just think thorugh
>> > >your asshole?
>You don't interest me enough to affect my temper. I just read your stuff
>to see how degenerate the Healyite tradition can become.
>
>You remind me of an idiot in another mailing list who is very proud of
>his academic qualifications and seriously believes that Healy, your
>erstwhile mentor, was on the verge of leading a workers' revolution in
>Britain in 1974. In other words, I find your pathetic contributions to
>"Marxist" "debate" mildly amusing but nothing to take seriously.
>
>Einde O'Callaghan
On the one hand it is interesting to see, how thin-skinned a staunch
defender of Cliffite politics can react, when one of the tendencies
flagship enterprises does not get the praise that he obviously takes
for granted. Obviously he is not "mildly amused" bat rather upset.
Because either this post CND "anti war movement" is the best thing
since sliced bread, than who should care about those funnies on the
sidelines who either have critics or - greatest sin on earth - don't
participate with everything en vouge.
Or after the war that now seems on the agenda within only a few weeks,
one would have indeed to admit that the biggest demo in London since
I dont know when unfortunately/unexpectedly did not stop this war or
war in general.
The critic of SRD's healyite past and their "revolution is round the
corner" hysteria also is not very convincing coming from a supporter
of a tendency that tried to sell quite a bunch of outright reactionary
movements of the last decades as revolutionary. To name only the
glorious "revolution" in Iran and Lech Walesa's Solidarnosc.
Karl
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> On Sat, 04 Jan 2003 06:59:53 +0100, Einde O'Callaghan
> <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote answering SRD:
>
> >Stephen Diamond wrote:
>
> >> > >> Consider LM+'s attitude toward the liberal/pacifist movement against war
> >> > >> with Iraq--but first consider the attitude of various leftist
> >> > >> tendencies. The latter range from adulation (the Cliffites)
>
> >> > >What the fuck is this supposed to mean? Or do you just think thorugh
> >> > >your asshole?
>
> >You don't interest me enough to affect my temper. I just read your stuff
> >to see how degenerate the Healyite tradition can become.
> >
> >You remind me of an idiot in another mailing list who is very proud of
> >his academic qualifications and seriously believes that Healy, your
> >erstwhile mentor, was on the verge of leading a workers' revolution in
> >Britain in 1974. In other words, I find your pathetic contributions to
> >"Marxist" "debate" mildly amusing but nothing to take seriously.
> >
> >Einde O'Callaghan
>
> On the one hand it is interesting to see, how thin-skinned a staunch
> defender of Cliffite politics can react, when one of the tendencies
> flagship enterprises does not get the praise that he obviously takes
> for granted. Obviously he is not "mildly amused" bat rather upset.
Dream on - I don't come to this sectarian bear-pit expecting praise for
my organisation.
> Because either this post CND "anti war movement" is the best thing
> since sliced bread, than who should care about those funnies on the
> sidelines who either have critics or - greatest sin on earth - don't
> participate with everything en vouge.
>
Marxism is a theory for changing the world. Sitting on the sidelines
refusing to get your hands dirty in teh real movement has nothing to do
with marxism - and any movement that refuses to take up the major issues
of teh day won't be - and doesn't deserve to be - taken seriously.
And nobody takes Diamond seriously here anyway. He's a pathetic
know-nothing and do-nothing, as he has shown repeatedly over the years.
He had his 15 minutes of radicalism three decades ago and presumes on
the basis of this ancient and not very noteworthy experience to
pontificate to others. he's actually a typical modern example of those
Marx dismissed in the Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach.
> Or after the war that now seems on the agenda within only a few weeks,
> one would have indeed to admit that the biggest demo in London since
> I dont know when unfortunately/unexpectedly did not stop this war or
> war in general.
>
And who expects one demonstration to stop a war? - But mass opposition
can put a spoke in the wheels of the war drive - as indeed it did - and
prepare the ground for a larger and more powerful movement for the next
war by Bush and Blair - and after Iraq there are many other targets in
line - until the imperialists over-reach themselves - as they did in
Vietnam.
That may not have ended in the overthrow of capitalism, but the
imperialists were forced to draw in their claws for a whole generation
after that defeat, and even now the American generals are shit-scared of
commiting ground troops to a prolonged campaign.
<snip the rest>
Einde O'Callaghan
Stephen Diamond
Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> Dream on - I don't come to this sectarian bear-pit expecting praise for
> my organisation.
>
<snip>
> And nobody takes Diamond seriously here anyway.
And, nobody expects _consistency_ from the political representatives of
the petty bourgeoisie. O'Cannaghan vituperates against apst, but
nevertheless finds solace in his imaginings of what people "here" reject.
srd
Karl Burg
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
>> On the one hand it is interesting to see, how thin-skinned a staunch
>> defender of Cliffite politics can react, when one of the tendencies
>> flagship enterprises does not get the praise that he obviously takes
>> for granted. Obviously he is not "mildly amused" bat rather upset.
>
>Dream on - I don't come to this sectarian bear-pit expecting praise for
>my organisation.
That you are no personal or political friend of Diamond is even known
to me. My point was not pointing to that obvious difference in
political assesment of the current scene in Britain. I wandered why
you, as someone who is able to carefully word what you have to say,
got angry over a mild criticicism, at least mild for Diamond's kind of
verdicts.
>> Because either this post CND "anti war movement" is the best thing
>> since sliced bread, than who should care about those funnies on the
>> sidelines who either have critics or - greatest sin on earth - don't
>> participate with everything en vouge.
As you may not have noticed, the reference to "those funny on the
sidelines" was a somewhat shorthand ironical version of the worn out
attempt of main stream leftists like you, who are engaged in the "big
mass movements" (whatever that meant over the last few decades), to
ward off every critic from the left.
>Marxism is a theory for changing the world. Sitting on the sidelines
>refusing to get your hands dirty in teh real movement has nothing to do
>with marxism - and any movement that refuses to take up the major issues
>of teh day won't be - and doesn't deserve to be - taken seriously.
"Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden _interpretiert_, es
kömmt darauf an, sie zu _verändern_,"MEW, Bd. 3, S. 5-7
This is indeed true. But is was never true and will not be, that any
kind of low key running around is the concrete revolutionary praxis,
that Marx called for 1845.
...
>> Or after the war that now seems on the agenda within only a few weeks,
>> one would have indeed to admit that the biggest demo in London since
>> I dont know when unfortunately/unexpectedly did not stop this war or
>> war in general.
>>
>And who expects one demonstration to stop a war? - But mass opposition
>can put a spoke in the wheels of the war drive - as indeed it did - and
>prepare the ground for a larger and more powerful movement for the next
>war by Bush and Blair - and after Iraq there are many other targets in
>line - until the imperialists over-reach themselves - as they did in
>Vietnam.
>
>That may not have ended in the overthrow of capitalism, but the
>imperialists were forced to draw in their claws for a whole generation
>after that defeat, and even now the American generals are shit-scared of
>commiting ground troops to a prolonged campaign.
>
At least you admit, that this gorgeous thing going on in Britain will
not prevent this upcoming war. But it sounds rather like a preacher's
sermon than political forsight based on a correct political analysis
of the class relations and a programm that can win, if you dream of
those vague "more powerful movements" ot the future.
And regarding Vietnam. I belong to those old fashioned leftists that
uphold the position that this war, as most wars to my knowlegde, was
won on the ground, in this case in Vietnam. But you are probably
correct in equating the current "peace"movent in Britain to the class
collaborationist appeal to the more peaceloving McGoverns or what of
the 70ies in the US.
Karl
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> On Sat, 04 Jan 2003 20:54:28 +0100, Einde O'Callaghan
> <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
>
> >> On the one hand it is interesting to see, how thin-skinned a staunch
> >> defender of Cliffite politics can react, when one of the tendencies
> >> flagship enterprises does not get the praise that he obviously takes
> >> for granted. Obviously he is not "mildly amused" bat rather upset.
> >
> >Dream on - I don't come to this sectarian bear-pit expecting praise for
> >my organisation.
>
> That you are no personal or political friend of Diamond is even known
> to me. My point was not pointing to that obvious difference in
> political assesment of the current scene in Britain. I wandered why
> you, as someone who is able to carefully word what you have to say,
> got angry over a mild criticicism, at least mild for Diamond's kind of
> verdicts.
>
on teh basis of personal knowledge. Reading anger into my swearing when
addressing Diamond is going way over the top.
I wanted him to clarify what he meant - he still hasn't.
<snip>
> And regarding Vietnam. I belong to those old fashioned leftists that
> uphold the position that this war, as most wars to my knowlegde, was
> won on the ground, in this case in Vietnam.
Actually I think it was more complicated than that. There was a
relationship between the mass anti-war movement at home and the
resistance within the army. The latter wouldn't have existed - at least
not in the same form - without the former.
This is clearly brought home in Jonathan Neale's recent book on the war,
"The American War: Vietnam 1960-1975".
Einde O'Callaghan
Stephen Diamond
Karl Burg <Karl...@gmx.net> wrote, responding to O'Callaghan:
> >> Or after the war that now seems on the agenda within only a few weeks,
> >> one would have indeed to admit that the biggest demo in London since
> >> I dont know when unfortunately/unexpectedly did not stop this war or
> >> war in general.
> >>
> >And who expects one demonstration to stop a war? - But mass opposition
> >can put a spoke in the wheels of the war drive - as indeed it did - and
> >prepare the ground for a larger and more powerful movement for the next
> >war by Bush and Blair - and after Iraq there are many other targets in
> >line - until the imperialists over-reach themselves - as they did in
> >Vietnam.
> >
> >That may not have ended in the overthrow of capitalism, but the
> >imperialists were forced to draw in their claws for a whole generation
> >after that defeat, and even now the American generals are shit-scared of
> >commiting ground troops to a prolonged campaign.
The British SWP defending the anti-war campagin of the U.S. SWP; there
is more in common than the name.
They are scared because they learned that Americans don't have the
stomach for prolonged war. The shield of the oceans proves in the end to
be more like a double edged sword. The law of uneven and combined
development, if you like.
Stalinists used to speak of the "People," in hostility to a class
analysis. Yesterday and today the SWP/SWP axis likes to speak of "mass"
actions, to ignore the class composition of the "mass" and to pretend
that the petty bourgeoisie has the social weight to even throw a good
scare into the bourgeoisie.
The fruit of the original SWP's anti-war movement is the SWP of today.
That is its measure. It could hardly have prepared the "masses" to
resist imperialism when it couldn't save itself from the real class
content of its marches, not only in composition but in perspective and
program. To the extent that those like O'Callaghan successfully preach
that peaful, legal, "democratic" protest movement succeeded in
influencing policy for the better, to that extent the experience of the
anti-war movement setback political consciousness by reinforcing the
illusion that it is possible to "work within the system."
The marches were not counterposed to supporting the parties of
capitalism. Quite the opposite. Marching in protest without a fight for
the understanding that protest will NOT influence the bourgeoisie no
less expresses a democratic illusion than voting for the Democrats or
Republicans. The concept that the mere exercise of a constitutionally
protected liberty to express outrage will stop the bourgeoisie TO ANY
DEGREE is of the essence of parliamentaristic illusions, and those
illusion are an obstacle to ending the next war, not a means.
> >
>
> At least you admit, that this gorgeous thing going on in Britain will
> not prevent this upcoming war. But it sounds rather like a preacher's
> sermon than political forsight based on a correct political analysis
> of the class relations and a programm that can win, if you dream of
> those vague "more powerful movements" ot the future.
>
> And regarding Vietnam. I belong to those old fashioned leftists that
> uphold the position that this war, as most wars to my knowlegde, was
> won on the ground, in this case in Vietnam. But you are probably
> correct in equating the current "peace"movent in Britain to the class
> collaborationist appeal to the more peaceloving McGoverns or what of
> the 70ies in the US.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Einde O'Callaghan <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
> Actually I think it was more complicated than that. There was a
> relationship between the mass anti-war movement at home and the
> resistance within the army. The latter wouldn't have existed - at least
> not in the same form - without the former.
This is the method of the reformists. It is why Healy reached some of us
when he put method at the center of the ideological struggle, and
Wohlforth when he inveighed against pragmatism.
O'Callaghan comes so close to getting it, when he qualifies his
assertion with "at least not in the same form." But, it would be no use
explaining it to him; he is too tied to concrete and immediate forms of
intellection.
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
front, soldiers' resistance to the war would probably have taken the
form of individual protests, e.g. deliberate maiming of themselves in
order to be sent home, as was the case with Russian troops in
Afghanistan. It would not have become a mass movement which effectively
destroyed the American military as an effective fighting force for the
best part of a generation.
All successful anti-war movements involve a dialectical relationshiop
between the home front and the army whcih undermines the power of the
army to fight because the soldiers don't want to fight and they have the
support of a large part of the population at home, i.e. their own
families and friends.
In most wars, i.e. in non-revolutionary wars, most soldiers don't really
want to fight - it's dangerous, you could get hurt or even killed - but
are kept in line by the fact that if they don't fight it'll be defined
as desertion in the face of the enemy - usually a certain death sentence
- whereas if they do fight they may survive. Only when this terror,
which is known as discipline, breaks down is it possible to mobilise
soldiers on a mass scale - and this breakdown in the military always
reflects and never precedes the development of a strong anti-war mood on
the home front.
This is the lesson of the Russian and German revolutions, which between
them brought the First World War to an end. But it is also the lesson of
the French wars in Vietnam and Algeria, the British wars in Russia
(1919-20), Ireland (1919-21), Cyprus, Kenya, Malaya and elsewhere.
Although both the British and American armies are now no longer
conscript armies, the majority of "volunteers" don't join the army
because they're gung-ho patriots ready to die for their country. Mostly
they come form the poorer sections of society, often from rundown
working-class areas with high unemployment. They are attracted to the
army by promises of training and perhaps later educational benefits.
I see it happening all the time here in eastern Gemany where youth
unemployment is high and many young men from poorer backgrounds,
particularly those who don't get a proper training place or who do badly
in their school-leaving exams, join up for 10 years on the basis of a
promise that they will get a chance to go to university on army
scholarships later after they finish their military service.
This "economic conscription" is the weak point of all modern so-called
"volunteer" armies, and certainly the strong anti-war mood here in
Germany - mobilised by people like us among others - has contributed to
the fact that the government is unable as yet to commit any real forces
to the Bush/Blair expeditionary force.
If we adopted the Burg-Diamond approach we wouldn't even be aware that
the majority of the population is opposed to this war, a position that
was confirmed to me yet again by our experience in the main shopping
area here this morning - not one person advocated war and only one of
the dozens and dozens of people we spoke to half-heartedly repeated the
Bush/Blair mantra about Saddam's threat to world peace. Despite
continuous snowfall a large number of people stopped to discuss the
issues with us and to hear about our future activities.
Meanwhile Diamond, burg and their ilk just sit on their arses and
maintain their "revolutionary" purity by refusing to engage with the
real world. This wasn't how Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Liebknecht,
Maclean et al. acted. teh ywent out and engaged in the real debates in
society and the movement about the way forward, linking the political
and economic arguments and actually organising a current within the
anti-war movement. I'm proud to stand in this tradition.
Einde O'Callaghan
Karl Burg
so embarrassed by a mild critic of the SWP's "anti-war"-politics, if
its on the winners street?
The attempt to push him aside with a reference to the healyite past
isn't convincing either: Why is it a telling story that Healy saw a
revolution imminent in 1974, when the SWP - and a whole bunch of other
pseudo-trotskyists too to the meager excuse of the SWP - could/would
not see a real reactionary movement gaining the upper hand as in the
case of Iran or a real counterrevolutionary movement as in the case of
Yelzins garbage in 1991?
And of course Einde knows too, that not only hapless philosophers (or
apst writers) try to convince leftists in Britain and elsewhere, that
running after pacifist/nationalist forces will not gain anything for
the working class. Diamond may not be in the best position to
formulate this kind of critic, but its not invalidated per se by its
personal habits
Karl.
Einde O'Callaghan
>
> Still I notice, that Einde does not answer my starting point: why are
> so embarrassed by a mild critic of the SWP's "anti-war"-politics, if
> its on the winners street?
>
authority on Marxism and Trotskyism on the basis of a brief flirtation
with a rather discreditable section of the movement more than a
generation ago.
At least some of the others like Werner Cohn who hausnt this newsgroup
don't make any pretence to be Marxists.
I wanted a clarification of what he meant and am stil waiting.
> The attempt to push him aside with a reference to the healyite past
> isn't convincing either: Why is it a telling story that Healy saw a
> revolution imminent in 1974, when the SWP - and a whole bunch of other
> pseudo-trotskyists too to the meager excuse of the SWP - could/would
> not see a real reactionary movement gaining the upper hand as in the
> case of Iran or a real counterrevolutionary movement as in the case of
> Yelzins garbage in 1991?
>
As to Iran in brief: Khomeini's movement wasn't the only aspect of the
overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Options were open for a period, then the
Iranian left - most specifically the Stalinists (both Tudeh and
Fedayeen) fucked things up by tailing the Islamists and ignoring the
revolutionary workers movement in for example, the Shoras.
As for Yeltsin - the counter-revolution (in teh sense of the overthrow
of the dictatorship of the proletariat) was already ancient history in
Russia when Yeltsin was born. 1991 and the subsequent economic disaster
is fairly typical of what happens when the working class is unable to
resolve a profound political and economic crisis in its favour. similar
things happened in wide parts of teh world in teh 1930s, and are
currently taking place in places like Indonesia and Argentina. The
situation in Russia is by no means unique under capitalism. What is
unique is the way some people try in retrospect to portray the previous
regime as being in some way a workers' paradise, whereas the workers of
Russia showed their true attitude to the previous regime by refusing in
the slightest to defend the so-called "worker' state", whether deformed,
degenerated or whatever.
> And of course Einde knows too, that not only hapless philosophers (or
> apst writers) try to convince leftists in Britain and elsewhere, that
> running after pacifist/nationalist forces will not gain anything for
> the working class.
If we are going to infoluence the people mobilised by a movement we have
to be part of that movement, not pontificate on the sidelines where
nobody is listening. This doesn't mean accepting the analysis of all
leading figures in the movement - indeed a truly broad movement will
contain many different, sometimes even contradictory tendencies -, but
it does mean being part of the movement presenting your own analysis and
seeking to build a revolutionary pole within it.
> Diamond may not be in the best position to
> formulate this kind of critic, but its not invalidated per se by its
> personal habits
>
That Diamond is a know-nothing and do-nothing does tend to invalidate
his right to present his views as being in some way a Marxist analysis.
Einde O'Callaghan
Karl Burg
<einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
>Karl Burg wrote:
>>
>> Still I notice, that Einde does not answer my starting point: why are
>> so embarrassed by a mild critic of the SWP's "anti-war"-politics, if
>> its on the winners street?
>>
>Diamond irritates me full stop - because he pontificates here a an
>authority on Marxism and Trotskyism on the basis of a brief flirtation
>with a rather discreditable section of the movement more than a
>generation ago.
Well, regarding pontification as an authority on Marxism and
(sometimes) Trotskyism, this is no peculiarity of Diamond. You
yourself are a comparable example. And why not. Every serious marxist
after a few decades is entilteld to think that he really has
something to say.
>At least some of the others like Werner Cohn who hausnt this newsgroup
>don't make any pretence to be Marxists.
As there are far more non-marxists these days than self avowed
marxists, not to say trotskyists, you may think its wiser to fight the
Cohns. I personally don't. The attempt to win the more traditional
conservative layers instead the most advanced ones historically has
led nowhere. In so far I especially dislike the flirtation of Diamond
with the nazi-influenced layers, his ex-post Radek glorification.
>I wanted a clarification of what he meant and am stil waiting.
>
>> The attempt to push him aside with a reference to the healyite past
>> isn't convincing either: Why is it a telling story that Healy saw a
>> revolution imminent in 1974, when the SWP - and a whole bunch of other
>> pseudo-trotskyists too to the meager excuse of the SWP - could/would
>> not see a real reactionary movement gaining the upper hand as in the
>> case of Iran or a real counterrevolutionary movement as in the case of
>> Yelzins garbage in 1991?
>>
>As to Iran in brief: Khomeini's movement wasn't the only aspect of the
>overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Options were open for a period, then the
>Iranian left - most specifically the Stalinists (both Tudeh and
>Fedayeen) fucked things up by tailing the Islamists and ignoring the
>revolutionary workers movement in for example, the Shoras.
On this level your analysis is correct. But it was the iSt that had
the slogan "Down with the shah! Down with the mullahs! For a workers
revolution" And it was the IMG's Grogan for example, if I remember it
correctly who joined the" Allah akbar!" chants. What the approach of
the Cliffites was, I can't remember, but presumably on the same level.
>As for Yeltsin - the counter-revolution (in teh sense of the overthrow
>of the dictatorship of the proletariat) was already ancient history in
>Russia when Yeltsin was born. 1991 and the subsequent economic disaster
>is fairly typical of what happens when the working class is unable to
>resolve a profound political and economic crisis in its favour. similar
>things happened in wide parts of teh world in teh 1930s, and are
>currently taking place in places like Indonesia and Argentina. The
>situation in Russia is by no means unique under capitalism. What is
>unique is the way some people try in retrospect to portray the previous
>regime as being in some way a workers' paradise, whereas the workers of
>Russia showed their true attitude to the previous regime by refusing in
>the slightest to defend the so-called "worker' state", whether deformed,
>degenerated or whatever.
The Russion question was the central cutting edge in the left movement
since 1917 in general and in the trotskyist movement since the
Shachtman/Burnham fight. As is known, the Cliffites started in the
early fifties with the defection from the trotskyist defense of the
deformed workers state over Korea. The fights about this fills
volumes.
But I especially dislike, that you hide your defacto yelzinism with an
argument that the workers in the Soviet Union were correct in their
refusal of the in my view neccessary defense of the endangered gains
that despite decades of stalinist betrayal, mismanagement and
atomizising of the working class had remained. It was the same false
argument in Poland, where 10 million Solidarnosc workers supposedly
could not be wrong. Unfortunately there, as everywhere else, they
could. This is why a revolutionary party is neccessary.
>> And of course Einde knows too, that not only hapless philosophers (or
>> apst writers) try to convince leftists in Britain and elsewhere, that
>> running after pacifist/nationalist forces will not gain anything for
>> the working class.
>
>If we are going to infoluence the people mobilised by a movement we have
>to be part of that movement, not pontificate on the sidelines where
>nobody is listening. This doesn't mean accepting the analysis of all
>leading figures in the movement - indeed a truly broad movement will
>contain many different, sometimes even contradictory tendencies -, but
>it does mean being part of the movement presenting your own analysis and
>seeking to build a revolutionary pole within it.
First of all, it is not about abstract "people", but what really
counts is how to politically arm the working class. Basically I really
dont care about church circles and their ilk, just to name one.
Secondly its about programm and slogans not about standing on the side
lines versus beeing part of whatever flows, especially regarding war
and peace. It is interesting, that you even admit, that your "truely
broad movement" will embrace "contradictory tendencies". Class
collaboration this is normally called. And it does the working class
no good, marching together or for bourgeois aims helps only the
bourgeosie. Much luck going on with Livingston or Schröder as antiwar
war mongers.
Karl
Stephen Diamond
Karl Burg <Karl...@gmx.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 05 Jan 2003 10:50:50 +0100, Einde O'Callaghan
> <einde.oc...@planet-interkom.de> wrote:
>
> >Karl Burg wrote:
> >>
> >> Still I notice, that Einde does not answer my starting point: why are
> >> so embarrassed by a mild critic of the SWP's "anti-war"-politics, if
> >> its on the winners street?
> >>
> >Diamond irritates me full stop - because he pontificates here a an
> >authority on Marxism and Trotskyism on the basis of a brief flirtation
> >with a rather discreditable section of the movement more than a
> >generation ago.
>
> Well, regarding pontification as an authority on Marxism and
> (sometimes) Trotskyism, this is no peculiarity of Diamond. You
> yourself are a comparable example. And why not. Every serious marxist
> after a few decades is entilteld to think that he really has
> something to say.
I have never argued "on the basis of" my political history. But, since
O'Callaghan insists on making an issue of it, I will say this much:
during the late 60's and early 70's political radicalization in the
United States reached its highest point since the 30's, and has not
approached that point since. Just as Trotsky said years of political
experience can be compressed into a few insurrectionary days, so, the
political experience of participating close to the leadership of a
Trotskyist tendency during that period is worth many years of
oollaborating with the pacifists to put together peace crawls, in
nostalgia for a period and a country O'Callghan and most of his apst
cohorts neither lived through nor lived in, respectively.
I guess there is no way of avoiding reiterating the abc of Healyism:
O'Callghan's method is what is signficant about this round of apoplectic
vituperation. (Note how cavalierly Einde shifts from his claim of
reading my posts for laughs to being irritated by me through them "full
stop." Who can believe him?)
The point on method is the analogous crude empiricism that he uses to
evaluate the effectiveness of political activity, on the one hand, and
political experience on the other. In the first the assessment consists
of counting up bodies at peace crawls; in the second of counting up
years in a nominally Leninist party.
O'Callaghan lacks originality in his slurs. He echoes Proyect word for
word. He is a parrot, repeating after his master, Louis Proyect. The
British SWP apes the U.S. SWP of the late 60's. It members apparently
have become so enamored of the model that it apes its past practitioners
in manner of speech, much as WL cadres all used the word "bloody" over
and over, because the Brits did. In his incoherent critique of my
participation on apst he ignores the fact that everyone here
"pontificates," and many if not most of the pontificators have spent not
a day in a cadres porty, at least not that they have told apst about.
I like to try to discern what logic there is in a position. The sense I
make out of Einde's critique of me is that others have the right to
pontificate because they advance the line of a tendency, past (Proyect)
or current (say, Malecki, as an uncontroversias example-perhaps you, to
be a bit more controversial). What I think strikes him as unbearably
arrogant about my stance is that I reach conclusions in the course of an
actual argument, and those conclusions often match the positions of no
tendency, past or present, although I can point to precursors, e.g.
Radek). This strikes him as presumptuous, because who am I to think I'm
right in a vacuum, and threatening, because his party has not had the
opportunity to program him on the subject.
I can't help him with the second, but as to the first, presumptuousness,
I think there would be some merit in his critique if there existed a
mass revolutionary party, whose political theory has been proven in
practice. But let us not liken respect for a party that has proven its
mettle by winning the advanced layers of the workingl class, to awe for
aa party like the SWP in Britain, because its cadres have functioned
successfully as gophers for the pacifists, nationalists, and liberals. I
would go so far as to say that this kind of political experience merits
no particular intellectual respect. The latest guru of the IST is not
entitled to any special deference.
>
> >At least some of the others like Werner Cohn who hausnt this newsgroup
> >don't make any pretence to be Marxists.
>
> As there are far more non-marxists these days than self avowed
> marxists, not to say trotskyists, you may think its wiser to fight the
> Cohns. I personally don't. The attempt to win the more traditional
> conservative layers instead the most advanced ones historically has
> led nowhere. In so far I especially dislike the flirtation of Diamond
> with the nazi-influenced layers, his ex-post Radek glorification.
Where has it been tried? The only instance of which I am aware was
Radek's turn, on which the historical verdict is anything but clear. As
far as I can tell, there is more reason to think it _was_ successful
than that it wasn't.
Don't you think the law of uneven and combined development applies to
political consciousness as much as economic power?
>
> >I wanted a clarification of what he meant and am stil waiting.
> >
> >> The attempt to push him aside with a reference to the healyite past
> >> isn't convincing either: Why is it a telling story that Healy saw a
> >> revolution imminent in 1974, when the SWP - and a whole bunch of other
> >> pseudo-trotskyists too to the meager excuse of the SWP - could/would
> >> not see a real reactionary movement gaining the upper hand as in the
> >> case of Iran or a real counterrevolutionary movement as in the case of
> >> Yelzins garbage in 1991?
> >>
> >As to Iran in brief: Khomeini's movement wasn't the only aspect of the
> >overthrow of the Shah in 1979. Options were open for a period, then the
> >Iranian left - most specifically the Stalinists (both Tudeh and
> >Fedayeen) fucked things up by tailing the Islamists and ignoring the
> >revolutionary workers movement in for example, the Shoras.
>
> On this level your analysis is correct. But it was the iSt that had
> the slogan "Down with the shah! Down with the mullahs! For a workers
> revolution" And it was the IMG's Grogan for example, if I remember it
> correctly who joined the" Allah akbar!" chants. What the approach of
> the Cliffites was, I can't remember, but presumably on the same level.
Very few tendencies in GB and the U.S. abstained from providing at least
critical political support for Khomeini. If memory serves, the Cliffites
were hailing Khoemeint with the rest.
What I find odd, again if memory serves, is that no party (that I can
recall) argued for a military bloc with Khomeini with angular political
opposition to him. As I think about it, the reason is probably that the
position would have seemed untenable in practice. Khomeini's hegemony
over the masses was not effected through democratic norms. There would
be no way to avoid fighting Khomeini if one sought to organized against
him politically. Despite the vast differences in the regimes involved,
the situation from a practical standpoint matches the position in which
Trotskyists in, say, Viet Nam, would have faced, had they not been
exterminated by the Stalinists. Or that would have faced Trotskyists in
Russia had civil war broken out. Or would face Trotkyists seeking to
militarily bloc with the Resistance. In each of these cases the
political experience was cut short.
>
srd
Einde O'Callaghan
>
<snip>
> nostalgia for a period and a country O'Callghan and most of his apst
> cohorts neither lived through nor lived in, respectively.
>
As someone who participated actively in the campaign against the Vietnam
War I think I can remember the issues. And to describe our attitude to
the SWP(US) in that period as uncritical is simply teh result of
ignorance. In teh document explaining the split between the SWP(GB) and
teh ISO there is a lengthy critique of the failure of teh SWP(US)
> I guess there is no way of avoiding reiterating the abc of Healyism:
> O'Callghan's method is what is signficant about this round of apoplectic
> vituperation. (Note how cavalierly Einde shifts from his claim of
> reading my posts for laughs to being irritated by me through them "full
> stop." Who can believe him?)
>
I read you for laughs because to be frank many of your arguments are
absurd, but I also find you irritating, mainly because you try to
present your arguments as being in some way marxist, whereas they aren't
since they don't even get past the first hurdle, cf. the 11th Thesis on
Feuerbach.
<snip>
>
> O'Callaghan lacks originality in his slurs. He echoes Proyect word for
> word. He is a parrot, repeating after his master, Louis Proyect.
ROTFLMAO
> I like to try to discern what logic there is in a position. The sense I
> make out of Einde's critique of me is that others have the right to
> pontificate because they advance the line of a tendency, past (Proyect)
> or current (say, Malecki, as an uncontroversias example-perhaps you, to
> be a bit more controversial). What I think strikes him as unbearably
> arrogant about my stance is that I reach conclusions in the course of an
> actual argument, and those conclusions often match the positions of no
> tendency, past or present, although I can point to precursors, e.g.
> Radek). This strikes him as presumptuous, because who am I to think I'm
> right in a vacuum, and threatening, because his party has not had the
> opportunity to program him on the subject.
>
I'm quite capable of making my own decisions without waiting for a
"line" to be worked out by the leadership. Diamond is basing his reading
of how my organisation works on his own Healyite experience. I know how
that worked since I also burned my fingers in the healyite organisation,
but unlike Diamond I remained politically active.
> I can't help him with the second, but as to the first, presumptuousness,
> I think there would be some merit in his critique if there existed a
> mass revolutionary party, whose political theory has been proven in
> practice. But let us not liken respect for a party that has proven its
> mettle by winning the advanced layers of the workingl class, to awe for
> aa party like the SWP in Britain, because its cadres have functioned
> successfully as gophers for the pacifists, nationalists, and liberals. I
> would go so far as to say that this kind of political experience merits
> no particular intellectual respect. The latest guru of the IST is not
> entitled to any special deference.
this is just political abuse, devoid of all analytical content.
> >
> > >At least some of the others like Werner Cohn who hausnt this newsgroup
> > >don't make any pretence to be Marxists.
> >
> > As there are far more non-marxists these days than self avowed
> > marxists, not to say trotskyists, you may think its wiser to fight the
> > Cohns. I personally don't. The attempt to win the more traditional
> > conservative layers instead the most advanced ones historically has
> > led nowhere. In so far I especially dislike the flirtation of Diamond
> > with the nazi-influenced layers, his ex-post Radek glorification.
>
> Where has it been tried? The only instance of which I am aware was
> Radek's turn, on which the historical verdict is anything but clear. As
> far as I can tell, there is more reason to think it _was_ successful
> than that it wasn't.
>
You think, but you have no basis in reality for drawing this conclusion.
As a matter of fact Radek's Schlageter campaign wasn't particularly
successful and succeeded in alienating more Social Democratic workers
than it did in winning Nazi activists for a communist programme.
> Don't you think the law of uneven and combined development applies to
> political consciousness as much as economic power?
So what? You use theoretical constructs to speculate, but you make no
attempt to test the validity of your speculations against the the
historical reality.
<snip>
> >
> > On this level your analysis is correct. But it was the iSt that had
> > the slogan "Down with the shah! Down with the mullahs! For a workers
> > revolution" And it was the IMG's Grogan for example, if I remember it
> > correctly who joined the" Allah akbar!" chants. What the approach of
> > the Cliffites was, I can't remember, but presumably on the same level.
>
> Very few tendencies in GB and the U.S. abstained from providing at least
> critical political support for Khomeini. If memory serves, the Cliffites
> were hailing Khoemeint with the rest.
>
As somebody who was deeply involved in the Iranian solidarity movement,
I can categoirically state taht the SWP was critical of the uncritical
attitude of large sections of the left towards Khomeini. Again diamond's
method is based on assumptions and speculations and not on any concern
for reality.
Einde O'Callaghan
rent@mob
even progressive parties have for some time been unable to adapt
themselves to the new situation and have repeated slogans which had
formerly been correct but had now lost all meaning - lost it as
"suddenly" as the sharp turn in history was "sudden" " - Lenin, 1917.
It is plainly vulgar to dismiss the RCP's tradition by ad hominem
claims (not prole enough / too careerist / were a religious cabal of
right-wing-CIA-Serbian backed conspirators ... etc), just as any
resort to slander ("they denied HIV") suggests that the accuser is
indulging in self-justification, not political clarification. From
what I know of LM, Ken's closest to capturing what went on.
The meat of the issue is how to answer Lukac's question about the
proper 'form of mediation between theory and practice' in this new,
post-Cold War historical epoch: does the old form of mediation -
Party, preferably democratic-centralist - still offer the clearest
praxis possible? The RCP, which was nothing if not fanatical about
praxis, univocally decided that the answer to this question was 'no'.
Most critics here presumably take the answer to be 'yes'. Discussion
of *this* disagreement would therefore seem relevant.
Ken MacLeod
Stephen Diamond <steph...@mindspring.com> writes
>In article <sI83JBAl...@libertaria.demon.co.uk>,
> Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
[James Heartfield et al]
>>
>> In the review I see no critique or even mention of the welfare state as
>> such, but of the culture, which is indeed excessively risk-averse and
>> does reflect and encourage a victim mentality. If this become
>> institutionalised through the welfare state it's still a problem of the
>> culture, not of the welfare state.
>
>If the welfare state institutionalizes the risk aversion that supposedly
>permeates the culture, then those who think risk aversion is a probably
>ought to favor dismantling the welfare state. If they actually spelled
>out the logic, they wouldn't be adapting to libertarianism/conservatism,
>they would actually _be_ of that persuasion.
>
To call it 'risk aversion' and 'victim mentality' is really to talk
about symptoms of the (purported) underlying problem, which is that
post-counter-revolution people are unwilling or unable to stand up for
themselves individually *or collectively*. The dismantling of the
welfare state as a form of collective universal social provision is
going hand in hand with increasing nannying and nagging by the
authorities.
>
>Consider LM+'s attitude toward the liberal/pacifist movement against war
>with Iraq--but first consider the attitude of various leftist
>tendencies. The latter range from adulation (the Cliffites) to critical
>support (Proyect) to intervention without support (the British
>Healyites) to abstention, from the liberal/pacifist parades, not from
>the fight against the war (which is, I suppose, my position). LM+
>opposes the war, but claims that the (liberal/pacifist) opponents of the
>war are *worse* than the war's supporters, because their anti-war
>position, among other defects, springs from risk aversion and from an
>opposition to *any* intervention in foreign affairs. (One wonders what
>they have in mind.) If this isn't an attempt to meet the right halfway,
>I don't know what would be.
>
Don't get me wrong, I despise the whole method of interviewing assorted
stragglers at demos and discovering that they have confused views.
Without going through the immeasurable tedium of actually re-reading the
stuff, my take on Mick Hume's and Brendan O'Neill's gripes about the
anti-war movement is that it's all about finding a hole and pulling it
in after you. (Not that I agree with that assessment.) Another point
they make, which does have some validity, is that even people who
believe in the war are not signing up for it. This is good if it means
people don't believe the imperialist rhetoric, but not if it means
people believe it but are too wimpish to act on it.
--
Ken MacLeod 'Don't bomb what
you can't spell.' http://www.antiwar.com/
Ken MacLeod
<re...@mob.co.uk> writes
>"Too often it has happened that, when history has taken a sharp turn,
>even progressive parties have for some time been unable to adapt
>themselves to the new situation and have repeated slogans which had
>formerly been correct but had now lost all meaning - lost it as
>"suddenly" as the sharp turn in history was "sudden" " - Lenin, 1917.
>
>It is plainly vulgar to dismiss the RCP's tradition by ad hominem
>claims (not prole enough / too careerist / were a religious cabal of
>right-wing-CIA-Serbian backed conspirators ... etc), just as any
>resort to slander ("they denied HIV") suggests that the accuser is
>indulging in self-justification, not political clarification. From
>what I know of LM, Ken's closest to capturing what went on.
OK.
>
>The meat of the issue is how to answer Lukac's question about the
>proper 'form of mediation between theory and practice' in this new,
>post-Cold War historical epoch: does the old form of mediation -
>Party, preferably democratic-centralist - still offer the clearest
>praxis possible? The RCP, which was nothing if not fanatical about
>praxis, univocally decided that the answer to this question was 'no'.
>Most critics here presumably take the answer to be 'yes'. Discussion
>of *this* disagreement would therefore seem relevant.
Not to me. What I would like to know is what LM's successors are trying
to accomplish. Yes, it would be good if people stopped acting like
whipped curs. Suppose they do. Suppose, even, that the interventions of
the Institute of Ideas, spiked-online et al play some part in this. What
then?
Phil Mullan has argued that the law of the falling rate of profit no
longer applies because capitalists are unwilling to invest, and workers
are unwilling to challenge their employers. (Fill in the blanks.) So is
the idea that by getting everyone to raise their sights and lift their
game, capitalist society can be got back on track and the class struggle
will cough back into life?
This is all very reminiscent of the imaginary chap Marx lampooned at the
beginning of The German Ideology, who went around trying to argue people
out of their *belief in gravity*, the dire consequences of which were
daily confirmed by the fatal accident statistics.
--
Ken MacLeod
rent@mob
> longer applies because capitalists are unwilling to invest, and workers
> are unwilling to challenge their employers. (Fill in the blanks.) So is
> the idea that by getting everyone to raise their sights and lift their
> game, capitalist society can be got back on track and the class struggle
> will cough back into life?
I'm not conversant with Phil Mullan's argument there, but the general
trajectory has always been obvious in LM: that the New World Order is
characterised by constraint in the accumulation process, ie on
progress; that the battle lines have been redrawn deep inside
territory progressives previously held; that the immediate task of
revolutionaries is no longer to argue about how best to deliver
progress, but a defence of the value of progress itself, against the
many bourgeois apologias (environmentalism, postmodernism, cynicism
re: science, risk, victimhood, the equation of humans with animals,
evolutionary psychology, etc) for the feudal miserabilism of the new
political period.
So I doubt that Mullan's objective is to turn around the entire
pessimistic trend of the international bourgeoisie AND international
working class ... but, in recognition of the rout that continues
against a shattered working class, to mount a rearguard action
defending some basic philosophical gains of the Enlightenment
(roughly, the immense value of human progress). I would guess that the
diminished importance of rate-of-profit dynamics is noted primarily to
telegraph just how deeply the conditions of revolutionary struggle
have changed.
rent@mob
rent@mob
topic, the 'how' of it is also important.
The RCP seems to have decided that the 'how' of it required that
habitual forms of organisation be discarded - the political costs of
operating a party were judged to be a barrier to best praxis. I can't
tell to what extent this was an internal issue (such as the political
drag from untrained supporters and candidate members) or an external
one (eg, the concept of a party becoming a barrier to others), though
I guess the 1st was considered most important.
I raise this side of things because each political tradition has to
fight for and win its own political capital, so considering and
evaluating methodology - the how - is much more likely to be
constructive than comparing results - the what - which will
obstinately differ according to different praxis experiences. If the
RCP's *praxis* lead it to believe that (a) history had taken a
profound turn and (b) that organisational changes were therefore
necessary, it seems to me that the praxis is the point at which to
start. Perhaps that's just me.
rent@mob
Ken MacLeod
[snip]
> the general
>trajectory has always been obvious in LM: that the New World Order is
>characterised by constraint in the accumulation process, ie on
>progress; that the battle lines have been redrawn deep inside
>territory progressives previously held; that the immediate task of
>revolutionaries is no longer to argue about how best to deliver
>progress, but a defence of the value of progress itself, against the
>many bourgeois apologias (environmentalism, postmodernism, cynicism
>re: science, risk, victimhood, the equation of humans with animals,
>evolutionary psychology, etc) for the feudal miserabilism of the new
>political period.
>
We know that, thank you. There's a lot that could be debated here, such
as how novel and prevalent these currents actually are. But you still
haven't answered my question: what are your perspectives? What I mean by
this is clarified below.
>So I doubt that Mullan's objective is to turn around the entire
>pessimistic trend of the international bourgeoisie AND international
>working class ... but, in recognition of the rout that continues
>against a shattered working class, to mount a rearguard action
>defending some basic philosophical gains of the Enlightenment
>(roughly, the immense value of human progress). I would guess that the
>diminished importance of rate-of-profit dynamics is noted primarily to
>telegraph just how deeply the conditions of revolutionary struggle
>have changed.
>
What are the stakes? If a battle of ideas can turn society around, or a
rearguard action can succeed, what then? Can we expect the launch of
Socialism Version 2.0? And if it doesn't, can we expect Barbarism 2.0?
--
Ken MacLeod
Louis Proyect
>I'm not conversant with Phil Mullan's argument there, but the general
>trajectory has always been obvious in LM: that the New World Order is
>characterised by constraint in the accumulation process, ie on
>progress;
Do you believe this crap yourself? That there is something progressive
about the "accumulation process". This is not Marxism, but Walt Rostow
of course.
>So I doubt that Mullan's objective is to turn around the entire
>pessimistic trend of the international bourgeoisie AND international
>working class ... but, in recognition of the rout that continues
>against a shattered working class, to mount a rearguard action
>defending some basic philosophical gains of the Enlightenment
>(roughly, the immense value of human progress).
Right, that's what the world is waiting for: going to the barricades
for Leibniz.
Louis Proyect
Marxism list: http://www.marxmail.org
redflag
Louis Proyect wrote:
>
> Right, that's what the world is waiting for: going to the barricades
> for Leibniz.
Hey, don't knock it; Kaufman did it.
--
"Nowadays, atheism is itself *culpa levis*, as compared
with criticism of existing property relations."
"All history is nothing but a continuous transformation
of human nature."
You can access THE PEOPLE on-line by visting
our web page at http://www.slp.org
rent@mob
> What are the stakes? If a battle of ideas can turn society around, or a
> rearguard action can succeed, what then? Can we expect the launch of
> Socialism Version 2.0? And if it doesn't, can we expect Barbarism 2.0?
I would expect the answer to be something more like 'in the course of
that struggle the appropriate new forms will emerge". I would be very
surprised if the goals included a straight rehash of former practice.
Proyect objects to the elision of the accumulation process with
progress. There's nothing controversial there – Marx posits a
transhistorical, liberatory relation M:L, of which capitalist c:v is
just the local manifestation. His fundamental critique of c:v is that
it strangles the fullest development of M:L, through its own formal
limitations (ie, in property relations). In previous phases of
accumulation, for all its flaws, capitalism has definitely developed
the means of production, within constraints and setbacks Marxists know
to be vile and unnecessary. But for all that we applaud the gains to
our species, over feudalism, and should reject any bourgeois attempt
to restrain the dynamic further. As the latest New Labour catchphrase
puts it, 'It's not rocket science'.
rent@mob
Louis Proyect
>to be vile and unnecessary. But for all that we applaud the gains to
>our species, over feudalism, and should reject any bourgeois attempt
>to restrain the dynamic further. As the latest New Labour catchphrase
>puts it, 'It's not rocket science'.
Oh right. There is evidence all around us that the bourgeoisie is
trying to restrain the accumulation process. As a matter of fact, the
NY Times has been running a series of articles on exactly that
phenomenon:
DANGEROUS BUSINESS | PART THREE
Deaths on the Job, Slaps on the Wrist
By DAVID BARSTOW and LOWELL BERGMAN
ELMIRA, N.Y. — After all the search warrants, witness interviews and
forensic tests, a team of veteran prosecutors and investigators came
to an overwhelming conclusion about the death of Frank Wagner. The
industrial explosion that killed him, they agreed, was the result of
reckless criminal conduct by his employer, McWane Inc., the Alabama
conglomerate that owns a cast-iron foundry here in upstate New York.
"The evidence compels us to act," the prosecution team wrote in a
confidential memorandum to the state attorney general, Dennis C.
Vacco, in 1996. The team urged him to ask a grand jury to indict
McWane and its managers on manslaughter and other charges. A grand
jury inquiry, senior investigators believed, could have taken them up
the corporate ladder.
But Mr. Vacco never sought an indictment against McWane for any crime.
Only after an unusual intervention by the United States attorney in
Buffalo, who threatened federal charges, did McWane agree to plead
guilty to a state felony and pay $500,000. But as the company and Mr.
Wagner's widow are quick to note, that charge, a hazardous-waste
violation, specifically did not hold McWane accountable for Mr.
Wagner's death.
Looking back in bitterness, many of the investigators view the
devolution of the Wagner case as the result of a hardball campaign of
political interference orchestrated by McWane, one of the world's
largest makers of cast-iron sewer and water pipes.
"It was a reckless act on the part of certain individuals in that
company that caused the death of that person. I'll believe that till
the day I die," said Donald Snell, who supervised the state
environmental agency's investigation. "The ends of justice were not
met."
Still, what is most remarkable about the two-and-a-half-year
investigation of Mr. Wagner's death is that it happened at all.
McWane is one of the most enduring violators of worker-safety and
environmental laws, according to government records and regulators. In
interviews, exasperated regulators who have tangled with the company
use words like "lawless" and "renegade" to describe McWane.
The responsibility for that record, though, is hardly McWane's alone.
McWane has persisted largely unchecked by taking full advantage of a
regulatory system that has often proven itself incapable of thwarting
flagrant and continual safety and environmental violations by major
corporations, according to a nine-month examination by The New York
Times, the PBS television program "Frontline" and the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation program "The Fifth Estate."
In plant after plant, year after year, McWane workers have been
maimed, burned, sickened and killed by the same safety and health
failures. Flammable materials are mishandled; respirators are not
provided; machines are missing safety guards; employees are not
trained. The evidence spills forth from hundreds of regulatory files
scattered in government offices around the country — more than 400
safety violations and 450 environmental violations since 1995 alone.
Yet regulators and law enforcement officials have never joined forces
to piece this record together, never taken a coordinated approach to
end patterns of transgression. Their responses, piecemeal and
disjointed, bring into sharp relief weaknesses in government's ability
to take on corporations with operations spread far and wide.
"The current law is inadequate to deal with serious violators,
repetitive violators, situations where people are put at risk day
after day," said Charles N. Jeffress, who headed the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration in the late 1990's.
Nine workers have been killed in McWane plants since 1995. OSHA
investigators concluded that three of those deaths resulted directly
from McWane's deliberate violations of federal safety standards,
records show. Safety lapses at least contributed to five other deaths,
investigators found.
Yet those deaths rarely received more than cursory attention from
state and local law enforcement authorities. The police often did
little more than photograph the body and call the coroner. Local
district attorneys, if they were informed, generally deferred to OSHA.
For its part, OSHA referred only one of the deaths to the Justice
Department for possible federal prosecution. That case ended with a
single misdemeanor plea; no executive was charged.
Referrals are "considered a waste of time," said Patrick Tyson, an
OSHA director in the Reagan administration.
Indeed, under federal law, causing the death of a worker by willfully
violating safety rules — a misdemeanor with a six-month maximum prison
term — is a less serious crime than harassing a wild burro on federal
lands, which is punishable by a year in prison.
A close look at McWane's recent history, and especially at the Wagner
case and deaths in McWane plants in New Jersey, Texas and Alabama,
illustrates how the company has been able to evade, beat back and
often outlast government scrutiny. The examination was based on
thousands of government and company documents and hundreds of
interviews with current and former McWane employees, including senior
managers, safety and environmental supervisors, personnel directors
and production superintendents.
McWane, current and former managers said, viewed the burden of
regulatory fines as far less onerous than the cost of fully complying
with safety and environmental rules. At the time of Mr. Wagner's
death, company budget documents show, McWane calculated down to the
penny per ton the cost of OSHA and environmental fines, along with raw
materials. Since Mr. Wagner's death at the Kennedy Valve plant here,
85 miles southeast of Rochester, the company has paid less than $10
million in fines and penalties for its safety and environmental
violations and three criminal convictions — less than 1 percent of its
annual revenues.
In a written statement, the company's president, G. Ruffner Page, said
it was company policy to obey the law.
"In organizations made up of human beings we must deal with human
errors that sometimes have tragic consequences," Mr. Page wrote. "In
those situations where we have not been successful in preventing
violations of our policies, we have taken concrete steps to prevent
future occurrences, including management changes, increased focus on
safety and the institution of more rigorous compliance programs."
Mr. Page asserted that McWane "recently reached an agreement" with
OSHA "to begin a cooperative effort to further improve safety." No
such agreement exists. On Jan. 3, OSHA notified McWane that it did not
qualify as an "OSHA partner" because the company had not yet shown
sufficient commitment to workplace safety.
"Clearly they have a serious record with us, and we need to do
something different," said the current OSHA administrator, John L.
Henshaw.
After Frank Wagner's death, the desperation of fellow workers found
expression in a bumper sticker that began showing up on pickups in the
parking lot of the plant on the edge of town: "Pray for me. I work at
Kennedy Valve."
full:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/10/national/10PIPE.html?pagewanted=all&position=top
Louis Proyect, ln...@panix.com
The Marxism mailing list: www.marxmail.org
rent@mob
person to claim that the bourgeoisie is worthy of our trust and
approval, or that capitalist exploitation is a cosy experience. That's
all marxism 101, and I have no interest in revising it.
The substance of the issue between us here is only this - the extent
to which new constraints, beyond our well-understood formulae (such as
the tendency of the rate of profit to fall), are directing the
evolution of the relation M:L. That the bourgeoisie is still eager to
treat workers like muck is not relevant - what is relevant is the
extent to which their own ideological exhaustion prevents them from
taking a lead.
rent@mob
Louis Proyect
>Louis, I think you're off at a tangent a bit, there. I'd be the last
>person to claim that the bourgeoisie is worthy of our trust and
>approval, or that capitalist exploitation is a cosy experience. That's
>all marxism 101, and I have no interest in revising it.
If you read the entire series of articles, you'd discover that the
corporation under consideration is not only typical of the sort of
rapaciousness found during the "heroic days" of capitalism circa 1840,
but totally in the driver's seat with the Bush administration. In
fact, it was just about the same under Clinton, who made his way to
the presidency through the largesse of a poultry firm that had
converted Arkansas's rivers and lakes into a cesspool. The Furedi
analysis was that a kind of moral torpor of the sort described in
"Atlas Shrugged" had prevented dynamic growth despite all evidence to
the contrary. With the shoddy attention paid to the facts on questions
like nuclear danger, etc., his gang gave the impression of being an
extension of the PR department of Dow Chemical et al.
>The substance of the issue between us here is only this - the extent
>to which new constraints, beyond our well-understood formulae (such as
>the tendency of the rate of profit to fall), are directing the
>evolution of the relation M:L. That the bourgeoisie is still eager to
>treat workers like muck is not relevant - what is relevant is the
>extent to which their own ideological exhaustion prevents them from
>taking a lead.
The bourgeoisie is not ideologically exhausted. Its victory over
communism gives it the sense of victory that Hitler enjoyed in the
early 1940s. That is why the world is so dangerous right now.
Stephen Diamond
re...@mob.co.uk (rent@mob) wrote:
> It is plainly vulgar to dismiss the RCP's tradition by ad hominem
> claims (not prole enough / too careerist /
Do you apply this stricture to Trotsky's critique of the petty bourgeois
opposition in the SWP? Was Trotsky in this instance "vulgar" or "ad
hominem." Funny thing, that was exactly how Shachtman characterized
Trotsky's analysis.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> The meat of the issue is how to answer Lukac's question about the
> proper 'form of mediation between theory and practice' in this new,
> post-Cold War historical epoch: does the old form of mediation -
> Party, preferably democratic-centralist - still offer the clearest
> praxis possible? The RCP, which was nothing if not fanatical about
> praxis, univocally decided that the answer to this question was 'no'.
> Most critics here presumably take the answer to be 'yes'. Discussion
> of *this* disagreement would therefore seem relevant.
You are saying that the RCP defected from Trotskyism because it opposed
democratic centralism? If so, it surely was not the centralist aspect it
rejected. LM functioned as a disciplined tendency, or at least that's
how it looked to me.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> Phil Mullan has argued that the law of the falling rate of profit no
> longer applies because capitalists are unwilling to invest, and workers
> are unwilling to challenge their employers. (Fill in the blanks.) So is
> the idea that by getting everyone to raise their sights and lift their
> game, capitalist society can be got back on track and the class struggle
> will cough back into life?
I think that's an accurate statement of their guiding doctrine,
discernible with the benefit of Justin Flude's intervention in apst.
That is pretty much a verbatim account summary of the analysis Flude
purveyed, and Flude was too stupid to come up with his own ideas, but
not so stupid as to miss the entire point of his tendency.
What I don't understand is why this isn't a clear case of a stage
theory, in which class collaborationism is justified as a stage in the
development of the struggle.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> The RCP seems to have decided that the 'how' of it required that
> habitual forms of organisation be discarded - the political costs of
> operating a party were judged to be a barrier to best praxis. I can't
> tell to what extent this was an internal issue (such as the political
> drag from untrained supporters and candidate members) or an external
> one (eg, the concept of a party becoming a barrier to others), though
> I guess the 1st was considered most important.
I did not detect a repudiation of party discipline. Instead, the
activity of the tendency changed. You don't need a party to fight a
"culture war." But you might need a disciplined cadres nonetheless. LM
seemed to think so.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Ken MacLeod <k...@libertaria.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> What are the stakes? If a battle of ideas can turn society around, or a
> rearguard action can succeed, what then? Can we expect the launch of
> Socialism Version 2.0? And if it doesn't, can we expect Barbarism 2.0?
For some reason I have no serious doubt this is exactly what they had
(have) in mind. We had the advantage here of the opportunity to
interrogate Flude. You can't expect them to blare this message from the
rooftops. First, they would not claim to be able to foresee the exact
contours of Socialism Version 2.0 Second, to announce this analysis
vociferously would impede the formation of the necessary alliances in
the present stage, for the same reason that parties participating in
popular fronts don't talk a lot about socialism, even though the
doctrine is that eventually the struggle for socialism will come to the
fore.
There is the question of what leverage they think their tendency could
possibly have in reversing the described cultural impasse, assuming its
existence. Then there is the prior question of whether it exists. The
popular front against fascism at least had the virtue of naming a real
enemy.
srd
Stephen Diamond
re...@mob.co.uk (rent@mob) wrote:
> That the bourgeoisie is still eager to
> treat workers like muck is not relevant - what is relevant is the
> extent to which their own ideological exhaustion prevents them from
> taking a lead.
Take the lead in WHAT? In developing the forces of production? They
would if they could.
srd
Stephen Diamond
Louis Proyect <ln...@panix.com> wrote:
> The Furedi
> analysis was that a kind of moral torpor of the sort described in
> "Atlas Shrugged" had prevented dynamic growth despite all evidence to
> the contrary. With the shoddy attention paid to the facts on questions
> like nuclear danger, etc., his gang gave the impression of being an
> extension of the PR department of Dow Chemical et al.
And, it may be recalled that Flude had words of praise for the
reactionary hack who wrote that preachy novel.
The class forces that produced Rand a generation ago are represented
today by LM+; upwardly mobile petty bourgeois and parvenu. Their message
is the same. New capital says the old leaders are exhausted. What's new
here?
srd
rent@mob
> The bourgeoisie is not ideologically exhausted. Its victory over
> communism gives it the sense of victory that Hitler enjoyed in
> the early 1940s.
srd:
> possibly have in reversing the described cultural impasse, assuming its
> existence. Then there is the prior question of whether it exists.
[me]
>> - what is relevant is the extent to which their own ideological
>> exhaustion prevents them from taking a lead.
> Take the lead in WHAT?
These three points address my (a) Is there a serious turn in history?
question. For Proyect the answer is 'yes - it's just like the heydays
of the Third Reich' (wtf?!). For Diamond the answer is, perhaps, 'no',
or 'nothing significant enough to affect our basic terms of
reference'? For the RCP the answer was 'yes' - marked at the most
basic level by (1) the exhaustion of the soviet alternative, and its
labour movement corollary in the West and (2) a concomitant loss of
direction among the bourgoisie.
In answer to srd's last point, above, take the lead *in society* - eg,
offer a vision, provide a common goal, anything, in fact, to create a
centripetal force in the absence of an organised working class. If
this was indeed like 1940s Germany, they'd have that vision sold
already. But no! There is not one single uncompromised bourgeois ideal
left, so the best they can do is claim this to be the least shite of
all possible worlds. Not quite the 1,000-year Reich, now, is it?
srd:
> You are saying that the RCP defected from Trotskyism because it
> opposed democratic centralism?
srd:
> class collaborationism is justified as a stage in the development
> of the struggle.
Talk about 'defecting' or 'collaborating' seems a bit grandiose - as
if those terms could apply in a world where no honest revolutionary
can claim to enjoy mass support, let alone be tempted to sell it out
to the highest bidder. I was saying neither of these things - rather
that the RCP decided that the political landscape had fundamentally
changed, and its cadres set off on (what it judged to be) an
appropriately adjusted course, with only philosophy, not history, as a
guide.
Which brings me to the 'Socialism 2.0' critique - Of all the things to
criticise the RCP for after it tore up its rulebook, 'being too
formulaic' is almost Freudian in its irony. The problem with the RCP
is that it disappeared off our 'Trotskyism' maps, and we're left
arguing over where it's aiming to pop up again - will it be over there
with the 'XXXistas' or down there with the revanchist 'XXXovites'? To
take them at all seriously, however, you have to entertain the
possibility that these maps are obsolete - they only name things which
have ceased to exist.
rent@mob
Louis Proyect
>These three points address my (a) Is there a serious turn in history?
>question. For Proyect the answer is 'yes - it's just like the heydays
>of the Third Reich' (wtf?!).
I have no idea what you mean by a "serious turn in history". But my
comparison with Nazi Germany is strictly limited to one key point. The
US ruling class accomplished what Hitler could not, the demise of
"Bolshevism". Any bourgeoisie that has removed its chief rival from
the planet will feel a sense of vindication rather than the kind of
torpor and rudderlessness you describe.
>In answer to srd's last point, above, take the lead *in society* - eg,
>offer a vision, provide a common goal, anything, in fact, to create a
>centripetal force in the absence of an organised working class. If
>this was indeed like 1940s Germany, they'd have that vision sold
>already. But no! There is not one single uncompromised bourgeois ideal
>left, so the best they can do is claim this to be the least shite of
>all possible worlds. Not quite the 1,000-year Reich, now, is it?
What are you blathering about? The bourgeoisie has virtually the same
ideals it had throughout its history: the sanctity of private property
as the guarantee of freedom. It is exactly these ideals that the dregs
of the RCP now embrace, as indicated by their friendliness with
libertarian ideologues like Virginia Postrel. When I attended a
conference in NYC cosponsored by the Institute for Ideas and her
libertarian Reason Foundation, you could not really distinguish
between the two.
>Talk about 'defecting' or 'collaborating' seems a bit grandiose - as
>if those terms could apply in a world where no honest revolutionary
>can claim to enjoy mass support, let alone be tempted to sell it out
>to the highest bidder. I was saying neither of these things - rather
>that the RCP decided that the political landscape had fundamentally
>changed, and its cadres set off on (what it judged to be) an
>appropriately adjusted course, with only philosophy, not history, as a
>guide.
I'll stick with history and leave philosophy to those who want to turn
the clock back to the 18th century.
>Which brings me to the 'Socialism 2.0' critique - Of all the things to
>criticise the RCP for after it tore up its rulebook, 'being too
>formulaic' is almost Freudian in its irony. The problem with the RCP
>is that it disappeared off our 'Trotskyism' maps, and we're left
>arguing over where it's aiming to pop up again - will it be over there
>with the 'XXXistas' or down there with the revanchist 'XXXovites'? To
>take them at all seriously, however, you have to entertain the
>possibility that these maps are obsolete - they only name things which
>have ceased to exist.
This used to be the case when Justin Flude argued for their radical
credentials. Nowadays nobody feels that they are part of the left,
least of all figures like the oily Mick Hume.
Ken MacLeod
<re...@mob.co.uk> writes
>
>Which brings me to the 'Socialism 2.0' critique - Of all the things to
>criticise the RCP for after it tore up its rulebook, 'being too
>formulaic' is almost Freudian in its irony. The problem with the RCP
>is that it disappeared off our 'Trotskyism' maps, and we're left
>arguing over where it's aiming to pop up again - will it be over there
>with the 'XXXistas' or down there with the revanchist 'XXXovites'? To
>take them at all seriously, however, you have to entertain the
>possibility that these maps are obsolete - they only name things which
>have ceased to exist.
>
'Socialism 2.0' wasn't part of a critique, it was part of a question.
The question was not what part of the sectarian map LM+ can be expected
to pop up in, but whether it still regards its project as part of the
socialist project, broadly conceived as, say, a political practice aimed
at facilitating the birth of a successor civilization superior to
capitalism.
--
Ken MacLeod
rent@mob
Somewhere along the line (srd?), the suggestion became that the RCP
cooked up some barmy scheme to kick off class war 2.0 by exhorting the
capitalists to exploit workers harder. I just wanted to point out here
that there is every indication that the RCP was discarding all such
formula solutions, not cooking up new ones.
> The question was not what part of the sectarian map LM+ can be
> expected to pop up in, but whether it still regards its project as part of
> the socialist project, broadly conceived as, say, a political practice
> aimed at facilitating the birth of a successor civilization superior to
> capitalism.
What else could it be? All those disciplined democratic centralists
suddenly voted at once to throw in the towel in favour of fiddling
while Rome burns? C'mon!
Louis:
> I have no idea what you mean by a "serious turn in history".
That's basically my point, sweets. You have shown no sign of being
willing or able to conceive of such a thing, let alone its
implications for marxist praxis. My first intervention on this
discussion began with a quote from Lenin, in which he explains that
events lasting one week around the beginning of June, 1917,
represented a serious enough turn of events that the slogan 'All Power
to the Soviets' had gone from being a revolutionary battle-cry to a
reactionary one. That's what I would call a turn in history - the
more serious, the deeper the ramifications for praxis.
Louis:
> Any bourgeoisie that has removed its chief rival from
> the planet will feel a sense of vindication rather than the kind of
> torpor and rudderlessness you describe.
A striking formulation this - 'Any' bourgeoise 'will' feel x given y
[historical circumstances notwithstanding]. Who needs empirical
evidence when such profound Marxian truths can be deduced from first
principles?
Louis, there are one or two variables your neat calculus may not have
admitted – for example, that anti-communism has been the only common
project the bourgeoisie has had for a century; or, eg, that the
reformist labour movement was a vital organ in their system of class
rule; or, indeed, that the bourgeoisie is not entirely coherent or
conscious as a class, and perceives developments through its own
limiting lens. But there's also a teeny tiny methodological problem
with your approach, here.
Louis:
> What are you blathering about? The bourgeoisie has virtually the same
> ideals it had throughout its history: the sanctity of private property
> as the guarantee of freedom.
Much easier to see how that 'Any x will y given z' method works,
when, as Louis claims, nothing has changed in the last 150 years. I
personally doubt that a capitalist of the days of the Great Exhibition
would recognise the ideals of a capitalist of the days of the Dome.
But if you cannot distinguish the two, there you go.
>> the RCP decided that the political landscape had fundamentally
>> changed, and its cadres set off on (what it judged to be) an
>> appropriately adjusted course, with only philosophy, not history,
as a
>> guide.
> I'll stick with history and leave philosophy to those who want to turn
> the clock back to the 18th century.
So you shall, Germinal, so you shall. Which leaves it to the rest of
us to take the battle to those recidivists.
My point here is not that history should be scrapped, but that, with
the changes to the political landscape, it no longer offers a ready
guide to the forces at play in the 21st century. By philosophy, I
meant to say, the tradition needs an injection of more contemporary
praxis, using the marxian scientific method, and less reliance on the
results of past efforts. Our ideological opponents have moved on, and
appear to be able to run rings around marxian claims - some of us need
to move on, too, in order to hit back.
rent@mob
Louis Proyect
>Louis:
>> I have no idea what you mean by a "serious turn in history".
>
>That's basically my point, sweets. You have shown no sign of being
>willing or able to conceive of such a thing, let alone its
>implications for marxist praxis. My first intervention on this
>discussion began with a quote from Lenin, in which he explains that
>events lasting one week around the beginning of June, 1917,
>represented a serious enough turn of events that the slogan 'All Power
>to the Soviets' had gone from being a revolutionary battle-cry to a
>reactionary one. That's what I would call a turn in history - the
>more serious, the deeper the ramifications for praxis.
I know what I mean by a serious turn in history: 1914, 1917, 1929,
1940, 1968, 1990, etc. My problem is what *you* mean. "Moral panics"
involving child pornography and the right to smoke in restaurants has
little to do with serious turns in history.
>Much easier to see how that 'Any x will y given z' method works,
>when, as Louis claims, nothing has changed in the last 150 years. I
>personally doubt that a capitalist of the days of the Great Exhibition
>would recognise the ideals of a capitalist of the days of the Dome.
>But if you cannot distinguish the two, there you go.
History is not determined by ideas. It matters little what viewpoints
individual capitalists have about Great Exhibitions, etc. History is
driven by the class struggle, something that the Furedi-ites are bored
with evidently:
---
A friend of mine sent me a copy of November 2000 issue of the
University of Kent Newsletter. On the back is a diary item by Frank
Füredi about the run-up to his appearance on the wireless. It reads in
part:
'Tuesday: I am in a quiet state of agitation. The headlines are
dominated by the outbreak of violence in the Middle East and no matter
how hard I try, I cannot remember the name of the right-wing Israeli
politician, whose visit to the Muslim shrine (whose name I can also
not recall), sparked the whole thing off.
'Wednesday: More violence in Israel. But things are looking up -- the
debate on sex education is in the news. That's more my kind of issue.
Now if only there was another nice controversy about something with a
sociological edge.
'Thursday: I am feeling depressed. The violence in the Middle East
dominates the news. The media have dropped the sex education debate.'
What can one say? A case of lowered expectations, I suppose.
Ken MacLeod
<re...@mob.co.uk> writes
>
>> The question was not what part of the sectarian map LM+ can be
>> expected to pop up in, but whether it still regards its project as part of
>> the socialist project, broadly conceived as, say, a political practice
>> aimed at facilitating the birth of a successor civilization superior to
>> capitalism.
>
>What else could it be? All those disciplined democratic centralists
>suddenly voted at once to throw in the towel in favour of fiddling
>while Rome burns? C'mon!
>
Whadda ya mean, c'mon? They have never said that's what they're about,
even in such abstract and guarded terms as above.
--
Ken MacLeod
Hunter Watson
> >So I doubt that Mullan's objective is to turn around the entire
> >pessimistic trend of the international bourgeoisie AND international
> >working class ... but, in recognition of the rout that continues
> >against a shattered working class, to mount a rearguard action
> >defending some basic philosophical gains of the Enlightenment
> >(roughly, the immense value of human progress). I would guess that the
> >diminished importance of rate-of-profit dynamics is noted primarily to
> >telegraph just how deeply the conditions of revolutionary struggle
> >have changed.
It's so elementary as a matter of history ONE MUST PRESUME Marxists
know better, that their continued conceits about "a shattered working
class" constitute conscious deception and cynicism. The "shattered
class" in the aftermath of the collapse of Communist regimes world
wide is the one which actually held power, radical left
Marxist/Leninist intellectuals. Of course that can't be admitted
openly. You have to continue the pretense and lie that your
ascendency to power will be workers' power in fact. It is very
difficult to do so now that the truth is available to most everyone
outside of North Korea.
> What are the stakes? If a battle of ideas can turn society around, or a
> rearguard action can succeed, what then?
Of course a battle of ideas can turn society around, viz.., the
triumph of National Socialism in 1933 and Maoism in the 1940s.
Can we expect the launch of
> Socialism Version 2.0? And if it doesn't, can we expect Barbarism 2.0?
But the simplistic juxtaposition you pose, that the only alternative
to more of the same is barbarism, demonstrates your unwillingness to
learn from experience and history.
Hunter Watson
REMEMBER THE TERROR!
Hunter Watson
> Ken wrote:
> > What are the stakes? If a battle of ideas can turn society around, or a
> > rearguard action can succeed, what then? Can we expect the launch > > Socialism Version 2.0? And if it doesn't, can we expect Barbarism 2.0?
> I would expect the answer to be something more like "in the course of
> that struggle the appropriate new forms will emerge". I would be very
> surprised if the goals included a straight rehash of former practice.
Ha Ha. The goals have to be the same and accordingly the former
practice is inevitable. If you depart from the goals of Marx and
Lenin you depart from Marxism/Leninism, obviously. You depart from the
dictatorship of the proletariat. The iron law of totalitarianism is
that with such goals you will never have a choice but to rehash
former practice. Listen to Bert. Absent the ultimate dressage the
"people" won't obey. The rest of us now know it. The truth is out,
gentlemen. You will never again have substantial followings. Your
capacity to lie about what your system entails is destroyed forever.
rent@mob
> > that struggle the appropriate new forms will emerge". I would be very
> > surprised if the goals included a straight rehash of former practice.
>
> Ha Ha. The goals have to be the same and accordingly the former
> practice is inevitable.
Great, Nelson Muntz gets on the case. Hunter, you assume too much,
here. There is no guarantee that LM+'s goals are in any sense 'the
same', so the rest of your rant is yet more irrelevant than usual.
rent@mob
rent@mob
> 1940, 1968, 1990, etc. My problem is what *you* mean.
That problem might begin to be addressed if Proyect were prepared to
engage with the parts of the discussion he currently skips over - eg:
> for example, that anti-communism has been the only common
> project the bourgeoisie has had for a century; or, eg, that the
> reformist labour movement was a vital organ in their system of class
> rule; or, indeed, that the bourgeoisie is not entirely coherent or
> conscious as a class, and perceives developments through its own
> limiting lens.
Nothing about smoking in restaurants, I assure him.
> History is not determined by ideas. It matters little what viewpoints
> individual capitalists have about Great Exhibitions, etc.
Noble, lofty, and irrelevant words. Proyect's claim was a value
judgement about ideals, which I countered. To dismiss the whole
discussion looks like hand-waving.
> History is
> driven by the class struggle, something that the Furedi-ites are bored
> with evidently:
And if it is meaningful to claim that the warring parties have
disabled each other, what then? History ceases? The descent to
barbarism begins? Or is the possibility ruled entirely beyond
discussion because Marx&co don't specifically predict it?
rent@mob
[Proyect's embarrassing confession re: stalking Furedi snipped]
Louis Proyect
>And if it is meaningful to claim that the warring parties have
>disabled each other, what then?
It is stupid to claim that the warring parties have disabled each
other. The trade unions and the welfare state have been smashed
throughout the industrial world; the USSR has ceased to exist; China
is rapidly moving to consolidate private ownership of the means of
production; concessions to the 3rd world are no longer made by the
imperialists since the threat of Communism no longer exists. With
capitalism triumphant, it should come as no surprise that privileged
leftists like Mick Hume, Frank Furedi and the assorted physicians and
hi-tech entrepreneurs of the ex-RCP would line up with the conquerors.
>[Proyect's embarrassing confession re: stalking Furedi snipped]
Embarrassing to you, but not to anybody else who is trying to pump up
the credibility of a bizarre libertarian network like Spiked-Online, I
of I et al.
Stephen Diamond
re...@mob.co.uk (rent@mob) wrote:
> > Any bourgeoisie that has removed its chief rival from
> > the planet will feel a sense of vindication rather than the kind of
> > torpor and rudderlessness you describe.
>
> A striking formulation this - 'Any' bourgeoise 'will' feel x given y
> [historical circumstances notwithstanding]. Who needs empirical
> evidence when such profound Marxian truths can be deduced from first
> principles?
It is unusual for the empiricist Proyect to advert to first principles.
Of course, I would generalize further; where Proyect writes "any
bourgeoisie" I would put "any dominant class of exploiters."
How do you propose to evaluate the mood of a class "empirically." By
something other than the deeds of the class, such as its preparations to
invade Iraq and North Korea? In short, let us hear some of your
"evidence."
srd
Stephen Diamond
> > > I would expect the answer to be something more like "in the course of
> > > that struggle the appropriate new forms will emerge". I would be very
> > > surprised if the goals included a straight rehash of former practice.
> >
> > Ha Ha. The goals have to be the same and accordingly the former
> > practice is inevitable.
>
> Great, Nelson Muntz gets on the case.
And here I thought it was Marge.
srd
Stephen Diamond
> And if it is meaningful to claim that the warring parties have
> disabled each other, what then? History ceases? The descent to
> barbarism begins? Or is the possibility ruled entirely beyond
> discussion because Marx&co don't specifically predict it?
It isn't that Marx didn't predict it. Closer to the mark, Marx
affirmatively precluded such an outcome. The economically dominant class
will ALWAYS be socially and politically dominant.
What is your evidence that the classes have disarmed each other? What
historical precedent can you cite for such an outcome of ANY class
struggle?
You haven't spoken to a few critical points, if we are to get beyond
grand abstraction. What does LM+'s praise of, say, the automobile as the
mark of freedom have to do with any other than an attempt ot ally with a
section of the bourgeoisie in keeping with a stage theory of socialist
revolution? If the classes have exhausted themselves, to what social
forces does LM+ hope to appeal?
srd