Comments on: Facing reality – after the crisis in the SWP

By: Phil Thompson

Phil Thompson — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:17:53 +0000

Agreeing with John Palmer – the SWP is very much part of the left, trades union activists and so on. The average worker will not have heard of them but many will certainly identify with struggles against cuts and general left causes. The left would be a lot weaker without the SWP. Something they have done and which is more or less historically aknowledged is successful opposition to the far right on the streets. And also, perhaps, the Stop the War movement may not have got so quickly up and running without the usual SWP crew agitating in the peace movement.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:05:03 +0000

Used to go to SWP conferences in early seventies in London, then went to live in Spain in 1975. Hoped for more from the budding Eurocommunism of the early years of the transition & then just got on with my life. I now live in France & am a militant in the Front de Gauche, whose leader J.L. Mélenchon got 11% in the last presidential elections. The FdG is a broad coalition of 7 parties with two main ones. We are now trying to link up with the Ecologists on an informal basis & have adopted ecosocialism. Italy now has its own FdG & Izquierda Unida is making great strides in Spain. In the Basque Country EH Bildu (another coalition) might get in the next time. The focus within the Parti de Gauche which I belong to is that of Fronts or struggles. The idea of citizenship (working together on issues policies at a local level) holds sway here. It is not an exclusively French term, it was once a battle cry of the well-meaning British liberals in the 50s.

By: John Palmer

John Palmer — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 21:31:41 +0000

You miss my point Robboh. I think the strategies of the SWP, SP etc no longer have any real purchase with significant (even minority) class forces. But individual members of these organisation can and do very often play a very positive role in mobilising opposition to government cuts, in defence of trade unionism and in solidarity with those struggling for social justice and freedom across the world.

By: Robboh

Robboh — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:41:07 +0000

“That said, some of the finest socialists and militants are still to be found among members of parties like the SWP and the Socialist Party (SP). Without them, opposition to the vicious onslaught on the living standards and rights of working people unleashed as a result of the present economic crisis would have been even weaker and less effective than it has been.”

What planet are you living on??? what exactly have these people managed to stop so far? nothing. Ask the ordinary man on the street whether the SP or SWP has helped his condition in anyway. Nobody has ever heard of them. They are a complete irrelevancy to ordinary working class people. Come on please, lets watch our standards of journalism.

By: John

John — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 19:24:52 +0000

Follow up to my first post: I like all the comments people have added. Clearly there is not much enthusiasim in countries like Canada (where I live) or the UK for the SWP or the SWP model. I think a broad left movement like, for example, Quebec Solidaire (of which I am a big fan but not a member as I do not live in Quebec) makes room for fans of Marx and Lenin (like me) but operates along the lines of inclusivity and participatory democracy. That is the direction we should be going in. We (Marxists and Leninists) need to be very respectful of other left points of view and likewise other lefties need to involve us.

Also – if one is, in 2013, still a fan of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and other dead Russians, Poles and Germans (Engels, Rosa Luxemburg), one needs to take responsibility for the mistakes and consequences of these thinkers/ideas along the limitations of their philosophy in the 21st century.

One last thought: we should remember that Marx and Lenin are still popular in Latin America and parties like the PSUV along with many social movemetns remain growing and viberant political forces. Europe and North America are only one part of the world.

By: John Pennery

John Pennery — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 11:41:43 +0000

I joined the International Socialists in 1971, as a young student. I , like many other people coming to revolutionery politics for the first time inspired by the wave of post May 68 student and anti war radicalism that was sweeping the West at that time, found the IS to be remarkably attractive in its organisational and theoretical openness compared to the likes of the CP and SLL. Many posters comment negatively on the considerable “democratic centralist” organisational tightening up that occurred during the early to mid 1970′s, in the IS,as if this was an entirely unnecessary thing. I. however, well remember how innumerable tiny “entrist” sects made it their business to enter the only slightly larger IS, to cause extraordinary internal mayhem with their endless entirely negative internal wrangling – simply abusing the free intellectual environment in the IS. My branch, in Stockport, was reduced to chaos by two years, 72-73 of crazy factional infighting with one such entrist grouping when we should have been out fighting the Tories.

“Democratic Centralism” ,(with a real emphasis on “democratic”) regardless of its very negative past history, is unfortunately simply an essential requirement for a serious revolutionery socialist organisation – up against the organised might of the capitalist state. That the SWP fell eventually into beeing yet another claque-run political cult, has more to do with the failure of the radical political/industrial wave of the 1970′s, culminating in the historic class defeat of the miners in 1984, and the following 30 years of neo-liberalist dominance, than a fundamental problem with democratic centralism. No revolutionery socialist party could become other than a cult in this environment. Today, capitalism is once more on the rocks, the Radical Far Right are on the march everywhere. Only democratic socialist structured socialist political parties have any chance of organising on a mass basis within the working class (in its very broadest sense)to combat this crisis effectively. As the rise of the initially ramshackle Syriza Left coalition in Greece shows, the loose coalition is OK as a first step to a new radical Left political realignment, but as Syriza has found, eventually some form of democratic centralism has to be embraced, or the organisation simply isn’t coherent enough to take on the very highly organisded forces of the Right, and reformism too.

By: Andrew Coates

Andrew Coates — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:01:10 +0000

I’m glad that John Palmer goes into the way the SWP was created in the 1970s, and the adoption of Democratic centralism. I think this is extremely important, though the SWP’s apparent misogyny is now becoming an issue.

I was thinking of John’s comrade’s criticisms of the Bolshevik’ turn when I wrote this:

http://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/owen-jones-the-swp-and-networks/

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 17:18:30 +0000

OK but while the rape investigation (and in the absence of a criminal investigation we should still really be referring to alleged sexual violence) was flawed in principle and practice, I’m not really sure that the present divisions are the fundamental cause of the SWPs inadequacy as much as a symptom of the same. A bureaucratic caricature of Leninst organisation doesn’t suddenly become fit for purpose by correcting the line on women. It’s about the nature of illegitimate leadership, authority and power in social and political structures.

By: Alison

Alison — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:07:00 +0000

Yes, Steve, or one that is riddled with men oblivious/hostile to anything relating to feminism. All contributors – from John Palmer down the list of replies – are discussing, in Palmer’s opening words, ‘an explosive row over allegations of rape made against a leading member of the SWP’.

Not one of you has mentioned sexual violence in your comments.

Same old, same old.

By: DW

DW — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 14:05:34 +0000

Steve, the Socialist Party of Great Britain is an open (as in transparent) democratic socialist organisation that isn’t riven with splits.