Carlo Giuliani's Mother speaking in London

by Tutti Clandestini - revolution del basso Thu Apr 04, 2002 20:17

GenoaJustice.Org will show you proof of the unwarranted police brutality against innocent protestors of many nationalities during the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, 19-22 July 2001, particularly the beatings of those present at the Genoa Social Forum and Independent Media Centre when these official buildings were stormed by the police. We have a multitude of written statements and video evidence to support our case not only from the UK but from many parts of the world.

During the raid, around midnight on 21/22 July 2001, sleeping protestors in the Diaz School building were attacked and brutalised by the police. Although the police met with no resistance, over sixty of the ninety-three protesters in this building required hospital treatment, some for life-threatening injuries.

The aim of the Genoa Justice Campaign is to demand justice for the five UK citizens and one New Zealand citizen staying at the Diaz School, and to invite other survivors of this and other police brutality in Genoa to join our campaign, no matter what their nationality.

The six were among those imprisoned, brutalised, tortured and denied their basic rights. They were then deported and banned from Italy for 5 years, even though they were not charged with any offence. This campaign exists to support these people, to highlight their appalling treatment, and to seek justice and compensation for their ordeal.

The experience of protestors in Genoa represents an attack on our fundamental democratic right to protest and the criminalisation of dissent by the G8 governments and their corporate backers. Our campaign aims to expose and oppose this in order to strengthen the fight for social justice around the globe.

The Genoa Justice Campaign needs your support . We will be holding fund raising events, please spread the word and bring along as many people as possible. We have prepared Motions for community/tenants' groups or union branches to pass in support of the campaign and to make a donation. Please contact us to let us know if your group has passed a motion in support of the campaign.

We need financial support in order to fund the legal challenges, and if you are not a member of a group or union we would still welcome your donation .

Browse our site and we'll show you the evidence which proves all that we have said above, in words photos and videos. Click the link below.

by hydrarchist - slash.autonomedia.org Fri Apr 05, 2002 05:06

I actually didn't believe that the SWP would sink so low in their attempts to co-opt what exists of a movement. Now I know.

Behind the corpse of a dead radical, there's the trot trying to sell papers and recruit the naive.

by dave lordan - swp Sun Apr 07, 2002 09:33

Carlo Giulianis parents spoke at the 2million march in Rome a couple of weeks ago. By the logic of the above that makes the organisers of that march necrophiliacs. As it would anybody who organises a commemoration of the victims of state injustice anywhere. So on Easter Sunday their were hundreds of necrophiliac marches in Ireland. But trying to make logical points to someone like the above is, i fear, a waste of time.
Since they refuse to leave their real name i can only assume thay are members of a political faction whose contribution to the movement is zilch other than to undermine the efforts of the rest of us by trying to sow suspicion and division. Their are more sinister possibilities, of course. Everyone knows the indymedia sites are under surveillance and everyone knows that the secret police have infiltrated sections of the movement and are actively attempting to wreck it.
The Irish left in the 1970s were so wrecked by sectarian emnity and state infiltartion that the did the states job for them and shot each other.
I would like to see the indymedia site used for news and serious political debate. It is a pity , when their is so much to be organised (Palestinan solidarity, anti-racist work, a general election etc etc etc) that i have to waste my time replying to this person of no name who attacks the left with the same kind of rhetoric Faiana Failers and Fianna Gaelers do. Perhaps they could give us an idea of what they are doing to help build the movement if they decide to reply.

by Dave Lordan - swp Sun Apr 07, 2002 09:43

Heres an article on sectarianism by naive trot paper seller duncan hallas who led a mutiny in a tank regiment of the british army in Egypt in 1945. It's from www.marxists.de which contains an archive of articles by socialists on a range of subjects.

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The term sectarianism is used so loosely that it may be as well to start by clarifying what it does not mean. It is sometimes asserted that it is sectarian to try to build your own organisation in the course of intervention in various struggles. This is nonsense. If you believe that your organisation’s politics are correct, or at least more correct than those of others, you will naturally want it to grow and will try to build it. Otherwise you are not politically serious.

Of course, this may sometimes be attempted in an arrogant or insensitive fashion (not, I hope, by SWP members, or not very often), but that is not so much sectarianism as stupidity.

Sectarianism refers exclusively to erroneous attitudes to the class struggle.

“By directing socialism towards a fusion with the working class movement,” wrote Lenin, “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did their greatest service: they created a revolutionary theory that explained the necessity for this fusion and gave socialists the task of organising the class struggle of the proletariat.”

Fusion, in this context, does not mean the dissolution of a revolutionary organisation into a non-revolutionary one. Lenin was totally committed to building a revolutionary organisation and broke ruthlessly with those, including many of his former collaborators, who wavered on this central point. The key words are “the class struggle of the proletariat”. It is with this that socialists must “fuse”.

The notion goes back to the Communist Manifesto. Sectarians, for Marx and Engels, were those who created “utopias”, abstract schemes derived from supposed general principles, to which people were to be won by persuasion and example – co-operative “islands of socialism” and suchlike – as opposed to the Marxist emphasis on the real movement’, the actual class struggle. It was with this in mind that Marx wrote: “The sect sees the justification for its existence and its point of honour not in what it has in common with the class movement but in the particular shibboleth which distinguishes it from the movement.” (The emphasis is Marx’s own.)

Class movement is meant literally. It is not a matter, or not primarily a matter, of this or that working class institution but of the course of development of the real class struggle and the development of class consciousness. Marx was a revolutionary. For him revolution was not a “particular shibboleth”, but a necessary stage in the struggle for socialism which, in turn, can only be based on the class struggle, regardless, as he wrote, of “what this or that proletarian, or even the whole of the proletariat at the moment considers as its aim”.

However, sectarianism is not necessarily avoided by formal acceptance of the centrality of the class struggle. As early as the 1880s Engels was ridiculing the German Marxist emigrés in the USA for turning Marxism into “a kind of ‘only-salvation’ dogma and [keeping] aloof from any movement which did not accept that dogma”. Engels had in mind the Knights of Labour, a considerable, although confused, attempt at working class organisation, which, he argued (vainly, as far as the German-American Marxists were concerned) “ought not to be pooh-poohed from without but revolutionised from within”.

The argument applies generally. So, in the early years of the Communist International, a good number of genuine revolutionaries, mainly in Germany but not only there, were opposed to systematic work in the existing unions. Their argument was that these unions were bureaucratised and conservative, if not downright reactionary. It was broadly true. It was also true that these unions organised millions of workers and, however bureaucratised and reactionary their leadership, they were class organisations which necessarily played a role (a bad one) in the class struggle and could not simply be bypassed. As Lenin wrote:

We are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social- chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet this is the very absurdity that the German “Left Communists” perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counterrevolutionary character of the trade unions’ top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that – we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie.

The common thread between this mistake by the (for the most part) active and revolutionary “lefts” and all other forms of sectarianism is failure to relate to the concrete struggles of workers, however difficult it may be to do so, and to set up utopian schemes as alternatives.

Thus, the propagandistic forms of sectarianism, very different at first sight, have this same root. There is a rich (if that is the appropriate word) experience of this in Britain. We may call them “the pure selected few” sectarians after a verse by the late Tommy Jackson, referring to the British Socialist Labour Party:

We are the pure selected few
And all the rest are damned
There’s room enough in hell for you
We don’t want heaven crammed.

The SLP, although by no means the worst of its kind, placed excessive emphasis on propaganda and a very high level of formal (Marxist) training as a condition of membership. Not so surprisingly, it also believed in separate “red unions” and had a rule forbidding members to hold union office, although they were allowed to be card holders where “job necessity” (that is, the closed shop) required it.

An obsession with “high quality” members, and fear of “dilution” by “raw workers” also came to characterise some of the Trotskyist groups (though not all) and their offshoots. Why is this attitude sectarian? Again we come back to the class struggle as the heart of the matter. And that cuts both ways.

As Trotsky himself wrote: “Coming from the opportunists the accusation of sectarianism is most often a compliment.” True enough, but this in no way alters the fact that sectarian deviations can be a real danger. Trotsky explained the emergence of sectarianism amongst some of his followers by the circumstances of their origin.

Every working class party, every faction, during its initial stages, passes through a period of pure propaganda ... The period of existence as a Marxist circle invariably grafts habits of an abstract approach onto the workers’ movement. Whoever is unable to step in time over the confines of this circumscribed existence becomes transformed into a conservative sectarian. The sectarian looks upon life as a great school with himself as a teacher there ... Though he may swear by Marxism in every sentence the sectarian is the direct negation of dialectical materialism, which takes experience as its point of departure and always returns to it ... The sectarian lives in a sphere of ready-made formulae ... Discord with reality engenders in the sectarian the need to constantly render his formula more precise. This goes under the name of discussion. To a Marxist. discussion is an important but functional instrument of the class struggle. To the sectarian discussion is a goal in itself. However, the more he discusses, the more the actual tasks escape him. He is like a man who satisfies his thirst with salt water; the more he drinks, the thirstier he becomes.

Fortunately this variety of sectarianism is less common now than it was even a few years ago. many of the erstwhile sectarians of this stamp having been absorbed by the Labour Party.

But doesn’t everything that has been said point to the conclusion that revolutionaries ought to intervene in the Labour Party and, to do so more effectively, join it? Isn’t it sectarian, as Militant argue, to stay outside?

Certainly the question cannot be solved by ready-made formulae. The essence of sectarianism is abstentionism, on whatever pretext, from the actual class struggle. Does the class struggle take place, mainly or partly, in or through the Labour Party? Obviously it does not take place directly in the Labour Party. And so far as there is a certain feedback from inner Labour Party struggles, we must seek to influence them – by supporting the left, critically where need be, but still supporting them, against the right.

However, it is not at all the same thing as saying that the SWP ought to dissolve itself into the Labour Party (or to appear to do so whilst secretly maintaining its own organisation). There are three reasons why this would be wrong.

First, the main struggle is in the workplaces and, secondarily, in the unions. A revolutionary organisation must, if at all possible, be organised so as to most effectively intervene in them, with its own publication and open presence. There is a qualitative difference between the unions, which organise on a job or industry basis, and the Labour Party which is based on a political idea – reformism, which we reject. And this remains true no matter how reformist or reactionary the union leaders are. Thus, Lenin, in the article quoted above, did not dream of arguing that his supporters should join the Social Democratic Party, although most of the union leaders were Social Democrats.

Secondly. even when the struggle in the workplaces is at a very low ebb, it is still the case that to stand aside from all involvement in the unions would be sectarian. At the lowest points of struggle they retain an organic, even if distant, connection to the class struggle. The Labour Party wards are not remotely comparable in this case.

Thirdly, precisely from the point of view of influencing left-wingers in the Labour Party, revolutionary socialists are far better placed as an open organisation arguing our political ideas because we are not involved in conflicts over positions, the selection of candidates, and such like.

by Dave Lordan - swp Sun Apr 07, 2002 09:47 www.swp.ie

Here is the last chapter of David Mcnally's socialism from below. The rest can be found at www.marxists.de.

SOCIALISM FROM BELOW

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TODAY IN THE PERIOD after World War II, revolutionary socialism was everywhere in retreat. What passed itself off as 'socialism' was generally an elitist and authoritarian doctrine strongly resembling the anti-democratic visions of socialism from above. There were, of course, major national liberation struggles, such as those in China and Cuba, which freed colonial nations from the oppressive grip of a major world power. As victories against imperialism, these movements were justly deserving of support. But the claims of the Chinese and Cuban regimes to be 'socialist' have stained the image of genuine socialism everywhere.

The national liberation movement in China was led by a guerrilla army that had no base among the organised working class. When Mao's army rolled into China's major cities, workers were told to stay at work and obey the orders of their managers. At most, some owners and managers were replaced by officials of the new government. In no sense was there a working class reshaping of society from below. In Cuba, a small band of guerrillas were fortunate enough to confront a regime so weak and corrupt that it fell under the first assault. Again, workers played no serious role in the Cuban revolution of 1959. By no stretch of the imagination can either the Chinese or Cuban revolutions be said to represent working class movements for self-emancipation.

What's more, in both China and Cuba, the new regime modelled themselves on the totalitarian state capitalist structure of Russia. A one-party state was created in which all elections were a meaningless ritual. Opposition parties -- workers' parties included--were outlawed. Trade unions were put under rigorous state control. Strict press censorship was introduced. Left-wing critics were thrown in jail. All of industry and finance was put into state hands. No organs of democratic social control were encouraged or tolerated. The fact that these state capitalist dictatorships passed themselves off as 'socialist' was an enormous blight against the most democratic and revolutionary movement ever created.

Fortunately, workers soon began to put the lie to the socialist pretensions of the Stalinist regimes. Beginning in East Germany in 1953, continuing through Hungary and Poland in 1956, China in 1967, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Poland again in 1970, 1976 and 1980, the spectre of workers' power has returned to haunt the ghost of Stalin. What's more, young dissidents have come increasingly to recognise the true nature of the state capitalist regimes in which they live--and to affirm the perspective of socialism from below.

Such an approach was presented most clearly in the open letter to the Polish Communist Party written in 1964 by two young rebels Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski. Kuron and Modzelewski argued persuasively that the Polish working class is exploited by 'central political bureaucracy' that controls the economy in the interests of state competition:

... all means of production and maintenance have
become or centralised national 'capital'. The
material power of the bureaucracy, the scope of
its authority over production, its international
position (very important for a class organised as
a group identifying itself with the state) all
this depends on the size of the national capital.

Consequently, the bureaucracy wants to increase
capital, to enlarge the producing apparatus,
to accumulate.
And Kuron and Modzelewski knew that, if this situation was to be changed and genuine socialism created, the conclusion was inescapable:

The revolution that will overthrow the
bureaucratic system will be a proletarian revolution.
In Eastern Europe, then, working class action has exposed the lies and hypocrisy of the 'socialist' states. At the same time, western capitalism has exposed its violent, militaristic, inhuman face. Military madness has re-emerged on a terrifying scale. The world is now spending $1.3 million per minute on the means of destroying human life. The United States is in the midst of the biggest peacetime arms build-up in history--and Russia is scrambling frantically to catch up. With each such escalation in the arms race, the threat of war--global nuclear war- -looms larger.

At the same time, the world capitalist system is sliding once more into depression. In the major capitalist countries, this economic crisis means massive unemployment, particularly for young people; it means a life of poverty and despair for millions. In the underdeveloped nations, the crisis means death--on a horrifying scale. According to the World Bank, some 800 million people now live in a state of 'absolute poverty'. Every day hunger and hunger-related diseases kill 41,000 human beings. That's 28 victims of hunger per minute--two-thirds of them children-- while more than a million dollars per minute is spent on armaments.

So none of this has to be. The means exist to banish forever hunger, poverty and starvation. The wealth devoted annually to producing weapons of destruction could easily solve the problem of food production. The problem is not a material one, it is social in nature; it is a result of the barbaric priorities of a system founded on economic and military competition.

The same goes for the multitude of other problems that threaten lives, that distort and mutilate human existence. Whether it is the alarming rise in industrial accidents and diseases, the terrifying spread of nuclear power, or the near-catastrophic destruction of our natural environment, the cause--the capitalist organisation of world society-- remains the same.

The solution also remains the same. The democratic and socialist restructuring of society remains, as it was in Marx's day, the most pressing task confronting humanity. And such a reordering of society can only take place on the basis of the principles of socialism from below. Now more than ever, the liberation of humanity depends upon the self- emancipation of the world working class. And the transition to a new society of freedom and abundance depends upon the construction of a world federation of workers' states, each based on the principles of workers' democracy.

The vital task confronting all those who desire the creation of such a new society is to raise up the banner of socialism from below, to establish once again in the popular consciousness the inextricable connection between socialism and democracy. The challenge is to restore to socialism its democratic essence, its passionate concern with human freedom.

And the socialism with which we meet the battles of the future must not only build upon the heroic struggles of the past. It must also incorporate the fresh initiatives of contemporary struggle to break the chains of oppression. Socialist emancipation in the modern world must also be women's liberation. It must embrace struggle of women to free themselves from a second-class existence, from the ties that bind them to the endless drudgery of housework, from the images and ideology that try to reduce them to mindless sex-objects. Socialist emancipation must be black liberation. It must centrally involve the battles of black people against institutionalised discrimination and injustice; against racial harassment and ghetto existence. Socialist emancipation must also be gay liberation. It must include the struggles of gay men a women to live their lives free to love those whom they choose, free from the fear of harassment and victimisation.

Once again there are signs that the international working class is flexing its muscles and making its power felt. Perhaps on a small scale but whether it be Solidarity in Poland, a general strike against the military in Chile, miners' strikes in South Africa or Britain, workers testing their strength in North America or Australia, the workers of the world are again moving towards the centre of stage of world history. In the crisis-ridden decade of the 1980s, are confronted once again with the choice presented over sixty years ago by Rosa Luxemburg: socialism or barbarism.

Last time humanity entered a similar period of crisis, during the 1930s, the result was fascism in Europe and the immeasurable suffering and barbarism of a world war that saw the explosion the first nuclear bomb. Yet there is an alternative. WorkersS democracy, an end to poverty and oppression--these are the prospects held out by an advance towards international socialism.

That vision, that dream of a new world of freedom is more the just an idle daydream. As William Morris wrote a century ago

Ours is no dream. Men and women have died for it,
not in ancient days, but in our own time; they
lie in prisons for it, work in mines, are exiled,
are ruined for it; believe me when such things;
suffered for dreams, the dreams come true at last.
We are international socialists, and, linked with revolutionary socialist groups in other parts of the world, we are dedicated bringing that dream into being, to realising the principles socialism from below. We are as yet small. But our vision is big. We have the opportunity of building a movement that can change the world. Won't you join us? After all, we have a world to win.

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Sun Apr 07, 2002 15:56 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

I wouldn't have bothered to reply to that attack, to be honest, Dave. There is legitimate criticism and then there is pointless bile. Replying to the first is a good idea. Replying to the second is probable a waste of time.

To those of you who despise the SWP, and to some of those who don't despise them but do disagree with their approach very sharply (and I number myself amongst the second category), is it really that difficult to comprehend that serious criticism carries more weight when it isn't lost in a pile of abusive rants? Do you also realise that constant hysteria about them (a) makes their organisation, which in reality has no support outside of its ranks, look much more significant than it really is, and (b) gives it the opportunity to look reasonable by comparison? Even if some of you really are misguided enough to think that damaging the SWP is an overriding goal, surely you can see that screaming at them is counterproductive?

I don't like the SWP's "sell the paper and recruit" approach to campaigns. I don't like their lack of internal democracy. I don't like the way in which they leap from shouting "one solution, revolution" and "rebel, resist, fuck capitalism" one minute to dropping all mention of socialism or the working class the next. I don't like their dishonest front building approach. I don't like the fact that many of their political attitudes reek of students and the middle classes rather than workers. Or their preference for avoiding serious discussion to do a bit more leafleting. The list goes on, and when dealing with the SWP I am not slow to raise any of it. But all of that has to be tempered by an acceptance that nobody joins the SWP to screw up campaigns or to wind up other activists. People join the SWP for the same reasons as those who join the Socialist Party, the WSM, Workers Party or whatever: a desire to challenge capitalism and replace it with a better system.

On the subject of Duncan Hallas, I hear that he passed away recently. That is a loss for all of us. He was a clear, interesting and sometimes amusing writer and a dedicated activist. The particular piece which Dave posted was fascinating - although obviously dated. It's approach to the issue of sectarianism strikes me as having a valid core.

The most dated part of it was, of course, the section on the Labour Party. The Labour or Social Democratic Parties (in Britain and Ireland and elsewhere) were once mass parties of the working class, for all their reformism. While they belonged to the working class, it was indeed sectarian to stay unneccessarily outside of them. The excuses put forward by Hallas for the latter day SWP's approach towards them seem to me to be flimsy, relying on the short memories of the readers - particularly given that the SWP itself was once organised inside the British Labour Party and now organises inside the reformist Scottish Socialist Party.

But most of that is a point of historical interest at this stage. The Labour Parties are no longer in any sense working class parties. Their mass membership has disappeared, replaced with the middle classes and careerists. Their leaders no longer espouse even the mildest of reforms, instead embracing the crassest neo-liberalism. Socialists have been purged. Their internal life has been reduced to a sham, with no possibility of a leftist or working class swing. That particular argument is over for the moment.

Anyway, congratulations to everybody who was on the Israel/Palestine march, good luck to the various working class candidates in the general election and I hope that the Mayday activities go well.

by Andrew Mon Apr 08, 2002 17:09

Actually there is a serious political point to the criticism posted here. After all after Genoa the SWP in Britain* spents a lot of column inches attacking the black bloc often by simply repeating the trash the reformists had come out with. (ie they were all cops, football hooligans, fascists etc). This wasn't 'political' criticism but sectarain criticism in the worst sense of the word, consisting of little more then slinging as much mud as possible.

Now when Carlo was shot he was looking and behaving like a typical Black blocer. And from what we know of him in the period before his death he lived a lifestyle associated with a particular BB supporting section of the anarchist movement. There is a whiff of something nasty in the SWP making capital out of his corpse now while in the aftermath of Genoa they joined in the general frenzy of attacks on his comrades. If he lived they would have labelled him a cop* or a fascist.

Mind you the SWP have always had a problem where their secterian diatribes are 'principled political debate' whereas even the most calm and fact based criticism of them is simply secterianism. Sects it appears is a label always applied to others rather then to a political behaviour.

---

* I recognise there was a significant difference in post Genoa coverage of the BB between the Irish and British SWP's. The Irish stuff was a lot more reasoned

** yes the BB was infiltrated but
1. So was every other faction in Genoa, the cops boasted of this afterwards
2. There is a difference between saying it was infiltrated and saying it was entirely composed of cops/fascists etc

Detailed report of one of the Genoa BB's at
http://www.struggle.ws/wsm/news/2001/genoa.html

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Mon Apr 08, 2002 18:22 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

There is a difference between the criticism you raised, Andrew, and the abuse that hydrarchist was throwing. A difference both of style and content.

One of the points I was trying to make can be illustrated by that difference: If you start a contribution by calling people "necrophiliacs" and then claim that they are using corpses to sell papers you only succeed in making yourself look vicious and unreasonable.

As far as it goes, I can agree that it appears little opportunist for the SWP to use the memory of a Black Blocker as a draw, given the tone of some of their anti-BB complaints - but on the other handwould you object to them inviting the parents of a murdered Stalinist or Social Democrat to speak?

On the subject of the Black Block more generally, there has indeed been a lot of hysteria and part of that is down to confusion.

I am completely opposed to Black Block tactics as far as the adventurist destruction of symbolic (or more often just any old) property is concerned. I am also opposed to violent attacks on the police. Those tactics help the media and our rulers to more credibly portray all activists as dangerous and violent and most importantly they drive a massive wedge between the working class and anti-capitalist demonstrators. The issue of infiltration and police provacateurs is to me of less significance, and though you are right to say that it is a problem for all parts of the movement mask wearing doesn't help.

At the same time there seems to be a lack of understanding that anarchist does not equal Black Block and neither equals direct action.

Many anarchists disagree with the Black Block and many people who take part in Black Blocks are not anarchists.

I don't want to give the impression that I oppose either self defence against police attacks or various other forms of direct action. More precise use of terms across the board would probably help.

by Andrew Tue Apr 09, 2002 10:24

Hi Brian,

I'm not actually objecting to them asking his mother to speak, just pointing out that there was a legtimacy to the criticism raised. My own opion on the BB is close to that of the article linked in the URL.

I think blanket condemnations of attacks on police or property are almost as silly as the blanket advocacy of such tactics and I don't just mean in the context of self defence. In Prague for instance the disciplined attack on the police lines protecting the WB/IMF conference was essential to the collapse of that meeting. Which is not to say the same tactics are now viable, Genoa demonstrated that once the state is prepared it is quite capable of resisting those tactics.

BTW the SP would seem a lot less opportunist on this question were it not for your use of Che as a recruiting tool. Given his own adventurist methods its rather obvious he would not have agreed with you on this question. The tendency of the left to claim the corpses of those that would not have agreed with when alive was where this thread started.

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Tue Apr 09, 2002 15:17 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

I don't accept your point about the "tactical" use of violence at demonstrations.

The state will always win a fight at a demonstration or direct action. The state will often want a fight at a demonstration or direct action as it helps them to marginalise dissent. For a self-selecting elite of well meaning adventurists to help them start one is absolute idiocy.

Let's be clear about this. There is nothing "revolutionary" about burning a bank or a car. All it achieves is to (a) make our adventurist contingent feel that they are the true revolutionaries (b) to make it easier for the state to physically assualt everyone else (c) to make it easier for the state and the media to portray us all as violent and dangerous and (d) to more effectively drive a wedge between workers and anti-capitalist activists than anything else I can think of.

I am glad to see that you at least seem to accept that Black Block tactics are ill advised now that the state is better prepared.

On the subject of Socialist Youth's use of the image of Che Guevara, there is nothing opportunist about it at all. We make it perfectly clear that we don't agree with all of Guevara's ideas and actions and in fact on the SY website you can find prominently displayed links to a lengthy article explaining our attitude towards him. There is a lot to admire in Guevara, but we don't hide our differences.

As a last point, are you inferring that Guevara would have supported Black Block strategies? The man would have laughed.

by Andrew Tue Apr 09, 2002 16:06

Hi Brain,

The state lost in Prague. The IMF/WB meeting was abandoned. This happened for a unique set of reasons but it is still what happened. The police riot and mass arrests in the evening represented a punishment for the defeat (they arrested nearly 10% of the number on the demonstration!) but it doesn't take away from the fact they were defeated. Theories you know are only good till they get disproved.

Also the reaction of the working class in general to political violence is far more complex then the pacifism you protray. This was the mistake your organisation made after the Poll Tax riots when they offerered to name names of those 'responsible' for the trouble only to find that over one third of the population actually found the riots justified. It's also rather clear that the massive expansion of the globalisation movement in 1999 was at least partly due to the (sometimes violent) militancy of J18 and Seattle.

The confrontations in the Red Zone in Quebe actually attracted rather then repelled sections of the organised working class there, notably the UAW and the Steelworkers who broke away from the passive union march to join the conflict. These examples all suggest things are never black and white on this question, especially when it is compared with the ineffective marching in a circle that preceeded the emergence of the movement. Again an argument for a tactical approach rather then an insistence that one or the other strategy applies to all circumstances. As I already said I think the state has now worked out how to deal with the situation in any case.

Your right that there is nothing necessarly revolutionary about burning a bank. But it's equally true that there is nothing necessarly revolutionary about selling a paper or going to a meeting. It is the context these actions take place in that determines their political content. And this context is a seperate question from whether we think they are a good or bad idea.

So I can recognise that the intention of an SP member selling the voice is to perform a revolutionary act of sorts. Likewise with some BBer engaging in bank burning. They also theorise that their actions are 'revolutionary'. (Unless of course your using 'revolutionary act' to mean the moment when the revolution is actually made in which cases both actions are irrelevant).

Finally Che is just a marketing strategy for the SP, the only 'critical' Che T-Shirt I've ever seen is the one sold by AK press that reads 'not bad for a Marxist' underneath the image. Saying you have a critique of him on your web site doesn't change your use of him as a marketing strategy to attract the yuf.

Not having any way to commune with the dead I cannot say with any certainity what Che would have made of the Black Bloc. But I can say the 'strategy' behind it is no more laughable then Che's adventures in the Congo or Bolivia. In fact both would seem to share very similar flaws.

related link is a long account of events in Prague

by Brian Cahill - Socialist Party Tue Apr 09, 2002 17:01 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

Hi Andrew,

With the best will in the world, I find some of your arguments here specious.

Your defence of provoking violent confrontation with the state on a "tactical" basis makes a fetish of "shutting down" meetings of our rulers.

Which brings us to a serious point: Is the real goal of demonstrating and acting against such meetings to make some Ministers take their luch early or arrange their squalid deals over the phone instead?

You are factually correct to point out that violence in the early stages of the anti-capitalist movement managed that on a couple of occasions - and that it is totally incapable of doing so now that the state is prepared. But do you really think that such "victories" are worth seriously alienating the overwhelming bulk of the working class?

It comes down to a serious issue: Why demonstrate? To show our strength. To show our numbers. To get our point to as many people as possible. If a form of direct action helps us do that at a demonstration, use it. If it doesn't, don't.

Which brings us to a second serious point: the self-selecting "warrior" elite seriously endangers the well being of other protestors. Your example of the Poll Tax riot is apt. Hundreds of thousands of people went on a demonstration. The police attacked it. It was nothing short of miraculous that dozens of people weren't killed.

It is indisputable that a few hundred morons went on the march looking to prove their
r-r-r-r-revolutionary credentials by starting a riot - giving the police both an excuse and a cover for their indiscriminate assault. If people has been killed primary responsability would have lain with the police - but it is inescapable that the proto-black-block cretins would have shared a portion of that blame.

Using the undoubted mistakes which Tommy made in that interview as a weapon is usually the province of either those who wish to excuse the morons who wanted a riot or of those sectarians who played no role in the poll tax movement (ie anarchists in the first case, the likes of the SWP in the second). The anti-poll tax movement was one of the biggest protest movements Britain has ever seen. 18 million non-payers, hundreds of thousands in the anti-poll tax federations and Militant (now the Socialist Party) played the leading role in building that - not the would be rioters. The mass campaign of non-payment beat the tax and brought down Thatcher. The riot was a dangerous and adventurist side issue which had the capacity to get people killed and damage the movement.

Anyway, I'm getting side tracked here. The well meaning adventurists of the black block cost us all support and put us all in physical danger. As far as I'm concerned those are all the reasons I need to oppose their methods.

You seem to take a more indulgent view of them though I suppose it's harder to take a firm line on their antics in anarchist circles than in socialist ones.

On the Che Guevara issue, not only do we have an in depth article examining our disagreements and agreements with him on our website, Socialist Youth also distribute a pamphlet on all of their stalls dealing with the same issues. So yes, we use his face to get a hearing from some young people (and there is nothing wrong with that), but we never hide our opinions of him.

As to the parrallels you draw between his ill-judged guerrilla campaigns in Bolivia and Congo and burning cars or banks on demonsrations, they are tenuous at best. Guevara's expeditions were foolish but they were serious attempts to apply what he (incorrectly) saw as the lessons of the Cuban revolution to creating revolutions elsewhere. Setting fire to stuff on demonstrations is in no way comparable - except in so far as both are incorrect tactics.

I liked your report of the Palestine demonstration, by the way. It's nice to see a report attempt to engage with some of the more complex issues raised, rather than just saying "It was really BIG and GREAT so lets get leafleting for the next one". As a last aside, you slightly misrepresented the position of the Socialist Party when comparing it to the slightly ridiculous posturing of the SWP. We also support the intifada - the uprising of the Palestinian masses - though we oppose the suicide bomber tactic.

by Andrew Wed Apr 10, 2002 10:48

Seeing as no one is reading this far back inthe archive except us at this point I'll make it brief.

1. I don't advocate going to demo to stat trouble, I advocate taking effective action. If sometimes this involves violence then so be it, providing this is done in a non-manipulative way. The idea that the most effective way to protest is to march around in circles in the same manner year after year have been proved untrue by the globalisation movement. The 'diversity of tactics' is one of the major reasons large numbers were attracted to play an active role in this movement

Did the CWI use the slogan 'shut down the IMF' for Prague (or similar for Genoa)? If so how did you expect it to be shut down (given that in both cases it was self contained and so could not have been shut down by a passive blockade, no matter how big).

2. Your are simply wrong on the question of anarchist involvement in building anti-poll tax groups in comparing it with the SWP boycott of such groups. I suggest you read Danny Burns 'The Poll Tax Rebellion' (sold by AK press) to get a more accurate picture.

3. You ignore my point on this anyway which was that the Poll Tax is an example of 'violence' that turned out to be popular. The working class is not pacifist (witness the 80-90% support in the US for Bush's war as a negative example). The SP claim for this pacifism is more related to your politics (the need for a stage army) then anything else.

4. The infitada is now the suicide bombers, like it or not. It is no longer a question of kids being shot while stoning soldiers. We might wish this was not the way it developed but it has.