for socialism or socialists

by lolly Tue Oct 08, 2002 18:37

not this one again

by ya Tue Oct 08, 2002 18:44

And then when they get into power they can start breaking away from each other.

by Justin Moran - Sinn Fein Tue Oct 08, 2002 18:53 maigh_nuad at yahoo dot com

I hope members of the SWP and the SP will contribute in full to this debate, laying out clearly and concisely their differences, their political disagreements, different stances on the issue of the day, plans for a possible merger, how they would unite the parties and why the other party is full of sectarian bastards who have betrayed or are about to betray the working class.

The entertainment this provides is most welcome on slow days.

by Irony is dead Tue Oct 08, 2002 21:13

C'mon Justin haven't you got better things to do like saving the junketts in the NI assembly?

by Kevin Wingfield Tue Oct 08, 2002 23:35 kevinwingfield at oceanfree dot net

This is how things look from the SWP perspective.

Why are there two parties? The two parties are part of two different international tendencies which have their origins in serious political disagreements in the Trotskyist movement after WWII.
In the 1930s and until his murder by Stalinist agents in 1940 Trotsky believed that Russia remained a workers’ state despite Stalinist reaction. He therefore believed that Russia was more progressive than the West and needed to be supported in any conflict.
He characterised the Stalinist bureaucracy as a “caste”, and used the analogy of the trade union bureaucrats – a conservative layer within the workers’ movement. Trotsky believed that not all the gains of the 1917 Revolution had been lost. He believed it was not necessary for there to be a rot and branch social revolution to return Russia to social development but simply a political revolution to restore workers’ democracy. He predicted that the Russian regime would not survive the war. He excluded the possibility that Russia might create more “socialist” states.
In the immediate aftermath of WW2 the situation was not as Trotsky had predicted. The Stalinist troops had set up clone states across Eastern Europe *without* workers’ evolution. But if these states were workers’ states then Revolution was not necessary to overthrow capitalism. This would mean that classical Marxism -- which claims that socialism is the self emancipation of the working class – would have been proved wrong. If as many of Trotsky followers initially insisted these states were.still capitalist (because there had been no workers’ revolutions in those countries), then Russia too would have to be judged capitalist because its social arrangement were essentially identical.
Confusion reigned within the Trotskyist movement. Several tendencies shifted to believing that Stalinism could become objectively revolutionary and moved closer to the Communist Parties.
The tendency that is represented by the SWP drew the conclusion that far from being socialist or a workers’ state Russia (and the clone states) were state-capitalist. We produced the catch phrase “Neither Washington Nor Moscow But International Socialism”.
If you believe in Socialism from Below; of the mass of workers taking power, then you cannot honestly describe a state that had existed for decades with no shadow of workers democracy as being either a workers’ state or socialism.
Those who continued to defend Trotsky’s “workers’ state” formulation were known as “orthodox Trotskyists” and it from this tendency that the SP has developed.

The question of Russia may not seem crucial today but the Cold War and the balance of nuclear terror dominated the world for half a century.When the Stalinist regimes were knocked over (and the former party bosses were reborn as free market entrepreneurs) we didn’t draw the conclusion that the Left had taken a big defeat. This opened up space for a rela socialist opposition to emerge.

Obviously to have a different outlook on what a workers state could look like meant big differences in political culture in the different tendencies. Secondary differences have grown up in this context. Overour attitude to politics in the North is one area where there exists serious differences. We in the SWP believe the Orange Order is an intimidatory, sectarian force and we do not believe they have a right to march through Catholic areas.
In trade union work we favour a strategy of building rank and file strength in the workplaces to counter the deadening weight of the officials rather than an approach which sees the main focus as replacing one set of union officials with another.

This is a very long post and I can only sketch some questions which are dealt with in our literature. Those who want to look deeper into these questions should visit our website www.swp.ie where there are links to Tony Cliff’s writings and other material in our tradition.

One last point. These differences are quite deep and of long standing. But in the context of the growth of the anti-capitalist movement, of Bush’s “War Without End”, and the re-emergence of a long run crisis of capitalism, past theoretical differences should not be allowed to determine the limits of how revolutionaries organise in changing circumstances. In particular, as I have argued here before, they should not shut the door on co-operation.

I hope this has been of some help.
Kevin Wingfield

by OK - SP Tue Oct 08, 2002 23:43

You're obviously new to the scene!

The SP and the SWP have our differences. For example on the National Question, on the nature of the USSR, and importantly on the methods of work.

I could develop these points more but I dont see the point in wasting my time going over the SWP-SP differences again and again on Indymedia!

As for the SSP. The SSP is far from a great success, however it succeded in atracting many active people into left wing politics. However their electoral sucess is largely due to a populist reformism. The ISM (International Socialist Movement, ex-CWI, Tommy Sheridan and leadership are in this group) and the SWP have dipped the banner of socialism.

In saying this we in the CWI believe that the SSP could develop into a mass workers' party and we are working within it.

PS to read the SP pamphlet "The Struggle for Socialism Today- A Reply to the politics of the SWP" go to www.syucd.cjb.net

by OK - SP Tue Oct 08, 2002 23:50

I'm not going to get into Russia at this point. All I'm going to say is that the USSR was clearly not capitalist. SWP are only organisation on the left (and the right for that matter!) that says it was.

We in the SP also believe that the Orange Order is a sectarian and bigoted organisation. However they are not fascist and should have the right to march. Any marches should be negotiated with the residents of the area.

We do not believe in simply replacing union officials! We want to build up rank-and-file unions in which ordinary members are in control. It's a complete lie to say otherwise.

by galactic capitalist theory Wed Oct 09, 2002 00:13

wise up Wingfield, the whole nutty idea of state capitalism is dead, nobody in any of the trotskist parties agrees with it except your sect. If your work in the anti globalist movement is so superior, why has Globalise Resistance refused to campaign or even call for a no vote in Nice?
Yes scotland does show the way forward if you can ditch the swp and join a new party free from baggage such as state capitalism.

by Kevin Wingfield - Socialist Workers Party Wed Oct 09, 2002 09:39 kevinwingfield at oceanfree dot net

I will try not to post at length as these issues are dealt with in links on our website which people can go to.

Both replies above seem to think it is a disgrace or mad or obviously wrong to hold a view which others on the left do not.

Whatever the minority of socialist activists might once have thought, huge numbes of people were not taken in by the idea of Stalinist Russia as some kind of workers' state.

In my experience, many ordinary people who thought and think of themselves as on the left instinctively understand that the USSR was not only not socialist but was in fact a kind of extremely centralised capitalism. They had good reason to think this way.

As all evidence demonstrated, the experience of workers in USSR and similar societies was essentially the same as that of workers in the "conventional" capitalist countries --

*Work as drudgery: with no control over the work process;

*Exploitation: Low wages and the constant drive by the boss for higher productivity causing greater intensity of work;

*No economic democracy: The party bosses and bureaucrats decided investment priorities and the direction of the economy

The ruling class were not free to decide how to direct the economy, of course. The arms race with the West forced investment in heavy industry, etc.

Competition -- economic, and military -- is of course the motor of exploitation in the West as well.

Those of us who saw the capitalism as a world system could therefore see how Russia was an integral part of this system, through the mechanism mentioned above.

After WW2 the majority of leftists thought Russia either socialist or well on the way. Those tendencies have in most cases declined. After all if Stalinist Russia was a workers state, workers need workers states?

The SWP and our co-thinkers in the International Socialist Tendency championed then -- and now -- the nnotion that socialism is about freedom and liberation from below.

The crucial test of any society is therefore *social relations of production* -- who's in charge, how are decions made, is the economy geared towards human need or the requirements of a ruling class.

Lots of people are not as puzzled by our views as the two defenders of "orthodox trotskyism" affect to be.

Kevin Wingfield

by Ray Wed Oct 09, 2002 10:29

-The SWP and our co-thinkers in the International Socialist Tendency championed then -- and now -- the nnotion that socialism is about freedom and liberation from below.

Unless, of course, its you giving the orders. Freedom and liberation from below is apparently all very well in principle, but apparently you can't run a party without a central committee to tell everyone else what to do. And freedom must be put to one side whenever the party decides its necessary. Stalin wasn't the first to imprison and execute other socialists, nor the first to overturn soviet elections, nor was he the one to introduce the militarisation of labour, abolish independent workers organisations, and yeah, while we're on the subject, massacre the workers of Kronstadt.

'Freedom and liberation' makes for nice rhetoric, pity your practice falls so very short.

by Irony is dead Wed Oct 09, 2002 10:46

galactic cahill capitalist theory says
" the whole nutty idea of state capitalism is dead, nobody in any of the trotskist parties agrees with it except your sect"

But all the 'Trotskyist parties' have vacillated in their understanding of the state capitalist econoomies. At the moment the SP is revising its theory of China being a deformed workers state - why, because reality impacts on the ludicrous idea that China represents something progressive.
Similarly when the Berlin wall came down there was no international defence by the 'trotskyist parties' called to defend the so called 'workers states'. 10 years later out pops such groups to say it was much better in the old days. Such parties CANNOT call China state capitalist - since to do so would call into question their theories on former Eastern bloc countries. Thats why they are silent on the nature of China.

by Andrew Wed Oct 09, 2002 11:43

Kevin Wingfield posted the following points as an illustration of why the USSR was state capitalist (a conclusion I broadly agree with). But the very system that these describe is that introduced by Lenin and Trotsky in the 1918-21 period. The introduction involved destroying workers democracy and killing, executing or exiling those who opposed thier program. His points again

Kevin - "Work as drudgery: with no control over the work process;"

Workers self-management was abolished under Lenin who wrote in 1918 "Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of the labour process...the revolution demands, in the interests of socialism, that the masses unquestioningly obey the single will of the leaders of the labour process"

Kevin - *Exploitation: Low wages and the constant drive by the boss for higher productivity causing greater intensity of work;

Also in 1918 Lenin wrote "..we must organise in Russia the study and teaching of the Talyor system" The Taylor system was essentially the idea of timing all the activities carried our by workers in the workforce in order to force a speed up of production.

But Kevins other hero Trotsky was worse. At the 9th Party Congress in 1920 he declared "the working class...must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded just like soldiers. Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps"
The congress itself declared "no trade union group should directly intervene in industrial management"

Kevin "*No economic democracy: The party bosses and bureaucrats decided investment priorities and the direction of the economy"

See above but also in 1919 Trotsky wrote "The unions should discipline the workers and teach them to place the interests of production above their own needs and demands". While Lenin in 1918 declared he had already "pointed out the necessity of recognising the dictatorial authority of single individuals for the purpose of carrying out the soviet idea".

by iosaf = o as if - lunatic fringe & RTS& Genome eh for peace Wed Oct 09, 2002 12:14 ispiphi23 at email dot com barcelona 0034679708674

Ye ken scots?
well it is entertaining.
just one of my little tucked away at the bottom of other people´s important debate comments:
Close Thorp.
so say
the people of
Cumbria
Leinster
Ulster
Scotland
Wales
England
Connaught
Munster
Gaeltacht
Cornwall
and
Man.
We also asked the peoples of Jersey and Guernsey.
so all peoples with representation at the almost forgotten strand of the Irish peace process,
which allowed for "pan-archipelago discussion" want Windscale/Sellafield/THORP closed.
We know we asked them.
In addition to the Welsh, English, Scottish, Irish, and Northern Irish, also are counted the Manx and further afield
France, Brittany, Belgium, Nederlands, Norway, Sweden, Iceland.
We have not forgotton that strand of the Irish peace process.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH

by Militant Mike Wed Oct 09, 2002 14:50

I find it interesting that Andrew attacks lenin and Trotsky for policy carried out under the civil war and not before

by Brian Cahill Wed Oct 09, 2002 15:03

There are not two different parties claiming to be socialist in Ireland. There are four. The Socialist Party, which is the socialist organisation with most support in working class communities and trade unions, the Workers Party, the SWP and the IRSP. The SWP is more visible in the South than the WP, but the WP certainly has more support than it. Justin will probably pop up now claiming that Sinn Fein is "socialist" too, at least when they aren't busy privatising schools and hospitals, voting for the bin charges and fighting against striking workers. I'll leave that discussion for another day.

Kevin Wingfield of the SWP takes a rather academic approach to discussing the differences between the Socialist Party and his own organisation. He devotes almost his entire post to talking about the class nature of the Soviet Union! Now the debate between the Trotskyist and "state capitalist" theories is interesting and important (well - maybe "interesting" is pushing it a bit), but if Kevin really thinks that the primary difference between the Socialist Party and the SWP is which hostile analysis of a dead state we favour then he is even further divorced from reality than I thought.

The differences between the Socialist Party and the SWP are much more basic than that.

The Socialist Party is an organisation composed almost entirely of working class people, along with a relatively small number of school and college students. Anyone who has encountered the SWP will see an immediate difference.

The Socialist Party takes its campaigning work seriously. We take up an issue in a working class community or in a trade union and we fight on it to win. The SWP, sadly, tends to see each campaign as little more than an opportunity to recruit and sell papers. When a shinier source of recruits or papers sales turns up, the SWP will often abandon other campaigns to chase the new issue. This kind of behaviour, along with their practice of taking over campaigns and setting up an endless list of pretend-organisations which they control, alienates other activists and makes it impossible to build any real trust.

The SWP is also prone to wavering between ultra-revolutionary posturing one minute(remember "Resist, Revolt, F**K Capitalism!" anyone?) and dropping all mention of socialism and
the working class the next (particularly when they are using one of their front names like "Globalise Resistance" or the ANL). Again these rapid shifts between hysterical shouting and liberal platitudes serve only to confuse.

Organisationally there are also major differences. The Socialist Party allows minority strands of opinion in the party to organise themselves to argue for their views. The SWP does not allow any such right, and minorities which try to organise themselves will be expelled for "factionalism". In less formal terms, you will go a long time in Ireland before meeting someone who has been expelled from the Socialist Party while people who have been kicked out of the SWP on some pretext or other are ten a penny.

Anyway there are a lot more differences, which have a much greater practical impact than our respective analyses of the Soviet Union, but I'll leave it at that for now, to save Justin from laughing himself to death.

by Ray Wed Oct 09, 2002 15:20

The simple truth is that Lenin and Trotsky's opinions on workers control, freedom and liberation didn't change much during the civil war - they were just as bad before the war started.

In Novemner 1917, Lenin's Draft Decree on Workers Control was issued, which said workers control was to be
"carried out by all the workers and employees in a given enterprise, either directly if the enterprise is small enough to permit it, or through delegates to be immediately elected at mass meetings. "

which sounds very nice, until you read further on and see that this control was to be subject to the state in
"all enterprises working for defence purposes, or in any way connected with the production of articles necessary for the existence of the masses of the population"
- in other words, everywhere. The same decree also said that the decisions of the workers could be overturned by meetings of the trade unions and congresses.

Even that draft was too liberal, however. The decree that was actually passed subjected local councils to regional councils, subject in turn to a national council appointed by the state.

Even that decree was too liberal. A month later (still 1917) the Bolsheviks set up a Supreme Economic Council to run the economy. Rather like Henry Ford's customers, the workers were in complete control as long as they wanted to do what the SEC told them.

The railways were taken under central management in March 1918.

Also by March 1918, the gains made in the army had been completely rolled back. As Trotsky said, "The elective basis is politically pointless and technically in expedient and has already been set aside by decree" (also reintroduced were saluting, officers privileges, and the death penalty for desertion)

In April 1918, the Cheka raid anarchist centres in Moscow, imprisoning hundreds.

Also in April, the 'Kommunist' faction of the Bolshevik party is ordered to liquidate itself.

Also in April, Lenin introduces Taylorism.

The Bolsheviks start May by closing down three anarchist papers.

Finally, at the end of May, the first clashes with White forces occur. This apparently justifies everything the Bolsheviks did before and after this point*. You know, the same way 'the war against terror' justifies Bush's attacks on basic freedoms in the US today.

Ray

*that is until Stalin takes over, at which point the excuse shifts from 'the civil war did it' to 'that nasty Georgian did it'.

by SF/FF merge now! Wed Oct 09, 2002 17:19

Justin, you seem to think that the SPand SWP should merge. The fact is that there are more differences between the SP and SWp than between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin. Why doesn't SF and FF merge then?

You are both 'Republican'.
You both are capitalist parties
You both have attacked schools and hospitals when in power
You both favour privitisation and bin tax.

by Kevin Wingfield - SWP Wed Oct 09, 2002 18:20

I don't have time just now to reply in depth just now to the anarchist criticism of the Bolsheviks.
I will just say that the Russian Revolution created the most democratic situation in Russia that it had ever seen before or has seen since.

Within weeks of the October seizure of power, full divorce and abortion rights, the separation of church and state and divorce on demand were established; masses of working class people were drawn into acturally running things; debate and argument about the way forward was everywhere as masses of working class people for the first time set about trying to build a free society.

In circumstances of mass starvation, civil war, fourteen invading foreign armies trying to smash the revolution and the dislocation of an extremely backward country following the First World War, the room for manoeuvre was extremely limited.

The failure of the revolution to spread to an industrial power like Germany meant the conflict between town and county, workers' state and peasantry was intensified. No understanding of the post revolutionary situation is possible without starting with this material situation.

It is in this context that Trotsky's argument for the militarisation of Labour which someone quoted has to be taken. Lenin repudiated Trotsky's proposals on this issue. He argued in the 1918-1919 period that the regime was a "workers a peasants state with bureaucratic deformations". All participants in this argument were dealing with a very dificult situation in the absense of the revolution spreading.

It should be noted,however, that contrary to myth, the regime at this time was not monlithic: These arguments and debates on policy were publicised and printed in great numbers to facilitate debate among wide numbers of people.

It is not a cheap swipe to say anarchists were split on whether to fight for or against the revolutionary regime. Some engaged in terrorist attacks (one shot Lenin). Some changed sides more than once.

For more on this visit our website and use the links there.

The starting point of this thread was someone asking about the differences between the SP and SWP. I took the questioner seriously and gave a political answer.

At root organisations and organisational practise are the tools of political principal. Therefore theoretical differences invariably underpin political differences. That is why I discussed the historical split in the Trotskyist movement and what the particpants thought was at issue. Of course the world is no longer as it was in 1945 but the relevance of the indispensible role of the working class self activity to the project of socialism is still key. Those arguemnts about Stalinist Russia have relevance for this question. And if theory is a guide to action, they have relevance for practise.

Typically I am afraid to say Brian Cahill of the SP doesn't offer a *political* explanation of the differences but the usual "more working class than thou" crowing and smears.

That approach is de-politicising and patronising to those who want political answers. Perhaps that too is a legacy of our long-standing political differences.

Kevin Wingfield
Socialist Workers Party

by For fuck sake Wed Oct 09, 2002 19:21

Does Commander Wingless have nothing better to do?

For fuck sake

by Ray Thu Oct 10, 2002 09:47

Kevin responds to my criticisms by bringing up the civil war. As I pointed out in my post above, the Bolsheviks started attacking workers power from the moment they took control, long before the civil war started.

Bush gets a lot of (deserved) criticism from the left for invoking the 'war against terrorism' to justify every attack on working people he wants to push through. As he famously said, "You are either with us or with the terrorists".

He must have known some Trotskyists in university.

They justify every repressive decree of the Bolsheviks by pointing to the civil war - even those that took place before or after the civil war. When anyone criticises the actions of the Bolsheviks, their reply is simple - "You are either with the Bolsheviks or are objectively counter-revolutionary"

by Andrew Thu Oct 10, 2002 10:44

Wingfields reply pulls the usual trick of claiming the gains of the October revolution for the Bolshevik party (ie the mass democracy was the creation of the working class in general and not of any party) and then blaming their suppression of this on the civil war.

As Ray has shown this is dishonest as the Bolshevik attacks on workers democracy happened before and after the civil war and not just during it. Leaving that aside though his party (SWP) follows Lenin in seeing Civil War as being essential to revolution Lenin himself acknowledged in 1917, "revolution . . ., in its development, would give rise to exceptionally complicated circumstances" and "revolution is the sharpest, most furious, desperate class war and civil war. Not a single great revolution in history has escaped civil war. No one who does not live in a shell could imagine that civil war is conceivable without exceptionally complicated circumstances."

In 1918 Lenin had argued that "those who believe that socialism will be built at a time of peace and tranquillity are profoundly mistaken: it will everywhere be built at a time of disruption, at a time of famine."

Finally this 'Civil War' excuse was not used at the time by the Bolsheviks. Rather at the height of the civil war they were saying that the introduction of one man management (rather then workers control) had been slowed down rather then speeded up (or made necessary) by the civil war.

Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it

by curious Thu Oct 10, 2002 13:22

"At root organisations and organisational practise are the tools of political principal. Therefore theoretical differences invariably underpin political differences. That is why I discussed the historical split in the Trotskyist movement and what the particpants thought was at issue. Of course the world is no longer as it was in 1945 but the relevance of the indispensible role of the working class self activity to the project of socialism is still key. Those arguemnts about Stalinist Russia have relevance for this question. And if theory is a guide to action, they have relevance for practise.

Typically I am afraid to say Brian Cahill of the SP doesn't offer a *political* explanation of the differences but the usual "more working class than thou" crowing and smears.
"

So the swp therefore means to be a student party,
and you intentionally only recruit students. do you see tudents as the vanguard as the madelites did in '68?

by Brian Cahill Thu Oct 10, 2002 14:09

Kevin's latest reply partly illustrates one of the reasons why most Trotskyist organisations have deserved their decades long isolation from the mainstream of labour movement politics. You can almost smell the pompous self-importance through the computer screen.

Someone asked what the differences between the Socialist Party and the SWP are. Kevin responded with a lecture on the class nature of the Soviet Union and details of a minor split in a small British Trotskyist organisation just after the second world war! Now call me a philistine, unable to comprehend the supreme importance of theory, if you like (Oh, you already have...), but this strikes me as an example of the kind of self-absorbed, self-defeating mentality which can make socialist politics impenetrable or even ridiculous to outsiders.

Does anyone really think that someone curious about why there are multiple organisations claiming to be socialist in Ireland needs to be confronted with this stuff as a starting point?

Stung, Kevin decides to reach for the theoretical high ground. The issues he raises are "political" while those I raise are merely organisational slurs, he sniffs. In other words, when chided for acting like a far left cliché, he responds with yet more far left cliché.

Now I'm about to slip into a socialist sterotype myself for a moment, so the rest of you will have to excuse me for a few sentences. Theory and practice cannot be seperated. Practice flows from theory, but theory is developed in the context of practice. There is no point in having a "perfect" theory if an organisation does nothing useful. There is also no point in blind activism.

The "high theory" differences between the Socialist Party and the SWP are important, but you will have to forgive me for failing to find regular repetitions of fifty year old debates entirely fascinating.

When someone asks what the difference between the Socialist Party and the SWP is, he or she will learn more from seeing an SWP apparatchik give a spittle-flecked rant about the "spirit of Genoa" to a bin charges meeting full of pensioners and from then seeing the Socialist Party carefully build a campaign of mass non-payment through slow, systematic knocking on doors in working class areas than he or she will learn from having some party hack tell them about a minor split in a small British Trotskyist group in the 1950s.

On the other extreme they might also benefit from listening to various SWPers with their outraged liberal heads on using some front name or other.

Now there are points of theory which underline those different methods. The SWP don't veer from hysteria to liberalism for no reason. An inability to consistently apply a transitional approach is certainly an issue of theory as well as practice. But how should socialists explain that difference to those who are not already well versed in left wing jargon? I rather suspect that Kevin's inclination would be to treat the unfortunate newcomer to a critique of "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" and its inappropriateness in the conditions of 1938. That would be more "political", wouldn't it? Well, it is if you follow Kevin in confusing being "political" with being abstract.

I've wasted enough time on Kevin for today, so I'll end by noting that Kevin claims that my criticisms of the SWP are "slurs" without actually trying to rebut any of them. Would he like to try to do so? We could take a few at a time, perhaps starting with some of those "minor" organisational matters.

Does he seriously dispute that minority strands of opinion have no right to organise themselves in the SWP? Perhaps we could get some of your former Rathmines members to give their opinion on the subject too?