The Solidarity Palestine Needs

by 16th Internationalist Sun Apr 21, 2002 16:51

Just what Ireland needs, yet another 'Socialist' off-split proclaiming superiority over all the rest.

So tell us then who the IS are, how many members, where you're active and what your vision is. Your website sheds no light.

by Colm Breathnach Sun Apr 21, 2002 17:48 breathc at tcd dot ie

As an individual heavily involved in the Ireland Palestine Solidarirty Campaign I am in a position to respond in a personal capacity to the message from the member of the International Socialists. Firstly he is completely mistaken in his view that the IPSC is dominated by Sinn Fein. To my knowledge none of those involved in setting up or directing the work of the IPSC are members of SF. Members of SF, SWP, Soc. Party, Communist Party, Greens etc were very involved in preparing for and organising the large demo on Palestine held in Dublin in cooperation with the IPSC. At no stage has SF, SWP or any other political body dictated to or controled the IPSC and long may that continue!

The assertion that the IPSC has nothing but a vague position on Palestine is also incorrect. The IPSC calls for an immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces from the Occupied Territories as a first step towards the peace and justice in Palestine.

Personally I agree with the writers critique of the Oslo accords and with the view that in the long term the achivement of a united secular state where where people of all religions could live in equality is desirable. But surely that has cant be achieved overnight and there would have to be steps along the road to such a goal, including a period in which two states existed?

Finally can I suggest to the members of the International Socialists that the best way to work for the cause of Palestine at the moment and to put forward their particular position on the issue is to work with the IPSC rather than engaging in what appears to be fairly ill-informed commentary from the side-lines.

by 28th Internationalist Sun Apr 21, 2002 18:06

Are members of the IS active on the IPSC?

by Really Thick Sun Apr 21, 2002 18:54

This is their website description: Documents and information by this group of former members of the Socialist Workers Party (Ireland) who argue that the International Socialist tendency is undemocratic.

If they are International Socialists, are they undemocractic? Are they from the Say It Loud Say It Proud school?

by Oliver O'Driscoll Sun Apr 21, 2002 20:07

Is it really true that Gerry Adams has said that SF stand in the tradition of Begin? While I have political differences with the republican movement, I find that very difficult to believie

by Brian Cahill Sun Apr 21, 2002 21:17 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

The International Socialists are some people in Belfast who used to be in the SWP but were expelled or forced out or whatever. Most of the 57 varieties of sect on the British left came from SWP purges so it shouldn't be all that surprising to see it happen here too sometimes (the magazine "Red Banner" has its origins in similar expulsions a few years back and some of the older people on indymedia may have encountered the now defunct Irish Workers Group.)

I don't know too much about them but I think that I can answer some of the questions raised:

Their points about the lack of democracy in the "International Socialists tendency" are criticisms of the "official" tendency made up of the British SWP and its various offspring. As far as I can gather the International Socialists want to build a nicer, more democratic version of the SWP.

I'm not sure about their membership, but I would be very surprised if it is in double figures.

The fact that they are only organised in Belfast may explain some of the stuff about Sinn Fein. Does anyone know if Sinn Fein take part in the IPSC in the North?

by d lordan - swp Sun Apr 21, 2002 22:35 www.swp.ie

some of these geniuses should be in the running for
a professorship of loony leftism.
My bet for the job is brian. he so enjoys getting a good dig
in at any of his socialist party rials.
By the way the erstwhile millys of Joe higgins
who he follows are split into hundreds of splinter
groups. Splinter groups are a feature of groups on
left right or middle who are rapidly rising or else
in decay. On the left splits by one or two people
like
the aboe mentioned red banner and the all new
international socialists are ten a penny and
not worth talking about,usually centred on a couple of
disaffected egotists, full of bitterness against
and bluster about the
undemoratic nature of the organisation they
hae just left and within whih they failed to win
anybody else to their ideas. For a more
interesting split i would look at the former
hardcore milly's who mow form the leadership of
the SSP (Tommy Sheridan and others). By breaking
with their sectarian past the ssp leadership were
able to build a large organisation with a
signifant and growing following within the
working class. An organisation within which many
different tendencies work together while arguing
their own line. An organisation which has taken
the lead in workers struggles, anti-racism,
cannabis legalisation, anti- capitalism and a host
of other issues in scotland. Surely such unity
of is what we need in ireland, not another group
prolaiming themseles the real left and the likes
of brian gloating on the disunity of his comradess
and his class.
www.istendency.org

by mojo - is tendeny Sun Apr 21, 2002 22:48

Duncan Hallas

Towards a Revolutionary Socialist
Party

(1971)

First published in Cliff et al., Party and Class, Pluto Press, London 1971.
File translated from TEX by TTH, version 2.20 on 3 Mar 2001, 18:48 by Tim Vanhoof.
Marked up by Tim Vanhoof and Einde O’Callaghan for REDS – Die Roten.

The events of the last 40 years largely isolated the revolutionary socialist tradition from the working classes of the West. The first problem is to reintegrate
them. The many partial and localised struggles on wages, conditions, housing, rents, education, health and so on have to be co-ordinated and unified into a
coherent forward movement based on a strategy for the transformation of society.

In human terms, an organised layer of thousands of workers, by hand and by brain, firmly rooted amongst their fellow workers and with a shared
consciousness of the necessity for socialism and the way to achieve it, has to be created. Or rather it has to be recreated. For such a layer existed in the
twenties in Britain and internationally. Its disintegration, initially by Stalinism and then by the complex interactions of Stalinism, Fascism and
neo-reformism, reduced the authentic socialist tradition in the advanced capitalist countries to the status of a fringe belief. As it re-emerges from that
status, old disputes take on new life. The nature of the socialist organisation is again an issue.

That an organisation of socialist militants is necessary is common ground on the left, a few anarchist purists apart. But what kind of organisation?
One view, widespread amongst newly radicalised students and young workers, is that of the libertarians. In the nature of the case this is something of a
blanket term covering a number of distinct tendencies. The essence of what they have in common is hostility to centralised, co-ordinated activity and
profound suspicion of anything smacking of “leadership”. On this view nothing more than a loose federation of working groups is necessary or desirable.
The underlying assumptions are that centralised organisations inevitably undergo bureaucratic degeneration and that the spontaneous activities of working
people are the sole and sufficient basis for the achievement of socialism.

The evidence for the first assumption is, on the face of it, impressive. The classic social-democratic parties of the early 20th century are a text-book
example. It was the German social-democracy that furnished Robert Michels with the material from which he formulated the “iron law of oligarchy”. The
communist parties, founded in the first place to wrest the politically conscious workers from the influence of conservative social-democratic bureaucracies,
became in time bureaucratised and authoritarian to a degree previously undreamt of in working class parties. Moreover, the basic mass organisations, the
trade unions, have everywhere become a byword for bureaucratisation and this, apparently, irrespective of the political complexion of their leadership.

From this sort of evidence some libertarians draw the conclusion that a revolutionary socialist party is a contradiction in terms. This is, of course, the
traditional anarcho-syndicalist position. More commonly it is conceded that a party may, in favourable circumstances, avoid succumbing to the embraces
of the establishment. However, the argument goes, such a party, bureaucratised by definition, inevitably contains within its structure the embryo of a new
ruling group and will, if successful, create a new exploitative society. The experience of Stalinist parties in power is advanced as evidence here.

Much of the plausibility of views of this sort derives from their highly abstract and therefore universal character. It would be unfair to equate them
with the currently fashionable “naked apery” but there is certainly some similarity in their psychological appeal. Writers like Morris and Ardrey dispense
with the difficult and complicated job of analysing actual societies and actual conflicts in order to deduce from an allegedly unchanging human (or
animal) nature the “inevitability” of this or that. In the same way much libertarian thinking proceeds from very general ideas about the evils of formal
organisation to highly specific conclusions without much effort to investigate the actual course of events. Thus Stalinism is seen as the “inevitable”
consequence of Lenin’s predilection for a centralised party. A few general notions, a few supposed “universal truths” which are easily mastered in half an
hour, become the substitute for serious theoretical equipment. Since the real world is a very complicated place it is highly reassuring to have at one’s
disposal the ingredients for an instant social wisdom. Unfortunately it is also highly misleading.

The equation “centralised organisation equals bureaucracy equals degeneration” is in fact a secularised version of the original sin myth. Like its
prototype it leads to profoundly reactionary conclusions. For what is really being implied is that working people are incapable of collective democratic
control of their own organisations. Granted that in many cases this has proved to be true; to argue that it is necessarily, inevitably true is to argue that
socialism is impossible because democracy, in the literal sense, is impossible.

This is precisely the conclusion that was drawn by the “neo-Machiavellian” social theorists of the early 20th century and which is deeply embedded in
modern academic sociology. It lies at the root of modern social democratic theory, such as it is. Of course, libertarian socialists will have none of this. The
essence of their position is rejection of the tired old cliché that there must always be élites and masses, leaders and led, rulers and ruled. Nevertheless the
opposite conclusion is implicit in their approach to organisational questions for the simple reason that formal organisations are an essential feature of any
complex society.

In fact, useful argument about the problems of socialist organisation is impossible at the level of “universal” generalisations. Organisations do not
exist in a vacuum. They are composed of actual people in specific historical situations, attempting to solve real problems with a limited number of options
open to them. Failure to take adequate account of these rather obvious considerations vitiates discussion. This is particularly clear in the disputes about the
origins of Stalinism.

That Bolshevism was the father of Stalinism is an article of faith with most libertarians. It is also the view of the great majority of social-democratic,
liberal and conservative writers and, of course, in the purely formal sense that the Stalinist bureaucracy emerged from the Bolshevik party, it is
incontestable. But this does not get us very far. By the same reasoning Jesus Christ was the father of the Spanish Inquisition and Abraham Lincoln the
father of United States imperialism, but nobody, one hopes, imagines that statements of this type lead to any useful conclusion. The question is how and
why Stalinism emerged and what role, if any, the structure of the Bolshevik party played in the process.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s treatment of the matter in his book Obsolete Communism is instructive. He sets out to show that “far from leading the
Russian Revolution forwards, the Bolsheviks were responsible for holding back the struggle of the masses between February and October 1917, and later
for turning the revolution into a bureaucratic counterrevolution – in both cases because of the party’s very nature, structure and ideology”.

The first point is not relevant here and will be discussed later. The second is developed by means of quotations, suitably selected to establish the
calculated malevolence of Lenin and Trotsky. It is shown, correctly, that in 1917 Lenin favoured management of enterprises by elected committees of
workers and that in 1918 he came out strongly for one-man management, that Trotsky in 1920 called for the militarisation of labour and that the
suppression of the Kronstadt revolt in 1921 was an important turning point in the process by which the Russian workers lost power. What is really
astonishing about Cohn-Bendit’s account of these events is his complete omission of any consideration of the circumstances in which they took place. The
ravages of war and civil war, the ruin of Russian industry, the actual disintegration of the Russian working class; all this, apparently, has no bearing on the
outcome. True it is conceded in passing that Russia was a backward country and was isolated by the failure of the German revolution but, we are told,
“these general factors can in no way explain the specific turn it (the revolution) took”.

Now it is usually supposed that there is some sort of connection between the type and level of the production of the necessities of life and the kinds of
social organisation that are possible at any stage. No doubt it is very unfortunate that this should be so. Otherwise mankind might have leapt straight from
the old stone-age to socialism.

If, however, it is conceded that one of the preconditions for socialism is a fairly highly developed industry with a high productivity of labour then
some of the “general factors”, so casually dismissed by Cohn-Bendit, assume a certain importance. Russia at the time of the revolution was not just a
backward country. By the standards of the developed capitalist countries of the time it was very backward indeed. 80% of the total population was still
engaged in agriculture; the comparable figure for Britain was 4.5% of the work force. The economist Colin Clark estimated the real income per head per
occupied person in Russia in 1913 as 306 units; the comparable figure for Britain was 1,071 units. Indeed on Clark’s calculations, the figure for Britain as
early as 1688, some 370 units, was higher than that for Russia in 1913. All such assessments contain a large margin of error no doubt, but even if the
maximum allowance is made for this the prospects for an immediate transition to a non-coercive society in early 20th century Russia were very slender
indeed. True, man does not live by bread alone, the cultural heritage is also important. And the cultural heritage of Russia was Tsarist barbarism. Not
surprisingly there was no tendency whatever in the pre-revolutionary Russian Marxist movement that believed that socialism was on the agenda for an
isolated Russia, though this illusion had, it is true, been entertained by the Narodniks.

Yet the economic level of 1913, miserable as it was, represented affluence compared to what was to come. War, revolution, civil war and foreign
intervention shattered the productive apparatus. By May 1919 Russian industry was reduced to 10% of its normal fuel supply. [1] By the end of that year
79% of the total railway track mileage was out of action-and this in a huge country where motor transport was practically non-existent. By the end of 1920
the output of all manufactured goods had fallen to 12.9% of the 1913 level.

The effect on the working class was catastrophic. As early as December 1918 the number of workers in Petrograd had fallen to half the level of two
years earlier. By December 1920 that city had lost 57.5% of its total population. In the same three years Moscow lost 44.5%.

The number of industrial workers proper was over three million in 1917. In 1921 it had fallen to one and a quarter million. The Russian working class
was disappearing into the countryside to avoid literal starvation. And what a countryside! War, famine, typhus, forced requisitioning by red and white
alike, the disappearance of even such manufactured goods as matches, paraffin and thread-this was the reality in the Russia of 1920-21. According to
Trotsky even cannibalism was reported from several provinces.

In these desperate conditions the Bolshevik party came to substitute its own rule for that of a decimated, exhausted working class that was itself a
small fraction of the population, and within the party the growing apparatus increasingly edged the membership from control. All this is incontestable, but
it seems reasonable to suppose that the actual situation had rather more influence on these developments than the “very nature, structure and ideology” of
the party. As a matter of fact the party regime was astonishingly liberal in this period.

The most balanced summary of the matter is that of Victor Serge, himself a communist with strong libertarian leanings, an eye-witness and a
participant, “It is often said that ‘the germ of all Stalinism was in Bolshevism at its beginning’. Well, I have no objection. Only, Bolshevism also contained
many other germs-a mass of other germs-and those who lived through the enthusiasm of the first years of the first victorious revolution ought not to
forget it. To judge the living man by the death germs which the autopsy reveals in a corpse – and which he may have carried in him since his birth – is this
very sensible?” Given the backwardness of Russia, which germs flourished and which stagnated, which of the several potential outcomes actually
materialised, depended above all on the international situation.

The Bolshevik seizure of power took place in the context of a European revolution. The revolutionary movements proved strong enough to overthrow
the German Kaiser, the Austrian Emperor and the Turkish Sultan as well as the Russian Tsar. They proved strong enough to prevent a foreign intervention
sufficiently massive and sustained to overthrow the Soviet regime, assisted of course by the conflicts between the remaining great powers. But they were
aborted or crushed before the critical transition, the establishment of working class power in one or two advanced countries, was reached. The failure of the
German revolution in 1918-19 to pass beyond the stage of the capitalist-democratic republic seems, in retrospect, to have been decisive. The defeat of the
Spartacists sealed the fate of working class rule in Russia, for only substantial economic aid from an advanced economy, in practice from a socialist
Germany, could have reversed the disintegration of the Russian working class.

The actual outcome, the transformation of what Lenin, in 1921, called a “workers’ and peasants’ State which is bureaucratically deformed” into a
totalitarian State capitalism, was itself complex and lengthy. The point that is relevant to this discussion is that an essential part of that process was the
destruction of all the wings and tendencies of the Bolshevik party. It was not sufficient for the counter-revolution to liquidate the various oppositions of left
and right. So little was the party suitable as an instrument “for turning the revolution into a bureaucratic counter-revolution” that most of the original
Stalinist cadre too had to be eliminated before the new ruling class stabilised its position.

By 1934, the year of the 17th Party Congress, all open opposition in the party had long been suppressed. The fate of the delegates to that Congress,
Stalinists almost to a man, was revealed by Khruschev in 1956. “Of the 1,966 delegates, 1,108 were arrested ... Of the 139 members and candidates of the
party’s central committee elected at the Congress 98, i.e. 70%, were arrested and shot.” In short, the vast majority of those who had any roots in the
Bolshevik past – 80% of the 17th Congress delegates had joined by 1921 – were liquidated and replaced by new personnel “uncontaminated” by even the
most tenuous ties with the working class movement.

These events, which have had such profound and lasting consequences, are facts of an altogether different order of magnitude from the deficiencies,
real or alleged, of Bolshevik organisational practice. To suppose otherwise is to fall into that extreme voluntarism which many libertarians share with the
Maoists.

It does not follow that the last word in organisational wisdom is to be found in the Bolshevik model. In the very different conditions of late 20th
century capitalism arguments for or against Lenin’s position of 1903 are not so much right or wrong as irrelevant. The “vanguard partyism” of some of the
Maoist and Trotskyist sects is the obverse of the libertarian coin. Both alike are based on a highly abstract and misleading view of reality.

What is in dispute here is in part the usefulness of the analogy. It is clear that any substantial revolutionary socialist party is necessarily, in one sense,
a “vanguard”. But there is no substance in the argument that the concept is elitist. The essence of elitism is the assertion that the observable differences in
abilities, consciousness and experience are rooted in unalterable genetic or social conditions and that the mass of the people are incapable of
self-government now or in the future. Rejection of the elitist position implies that the observed differences are wholly or partly attributable to causes that
can be changed. It does not mean denial of the differences themselves.

The real objection to the emphasis on the “vanguard party” is that it is often part of an obsolete world outlook that directs attention away from
contemporary problems and leads, in extreme cases, to a systematic false consciousness, an ideology in the strict Marxian sense of that term.

A vanguard implies a main body, marching in roughly the same direction and imbued with some sort of common outlook and shared aspiration.

When, for example, Trotsky described the German Communist Party of the 1920s and early thirties as the vanguard of the German working class,
the characterisation was apt. Not only did the party itself include, amongst its quarter of a million or so members, the most enlightened, energetic and
self-confident of the German workers; it operated in a working class which, in its vast majority, had absorbed some of the basic elements of Marxist
thought and which was confronted, especially after 1929, with a deepening social crisis which could not be resolved within the framework of the Weimar
Republic.

In that situation the actions of the party were of decisive importance. What it did, or failed to do, influenced the whole subsequent course of European
and world history. The sharp polemics about the details of tactics, history and theory, which were the staple output of the oppositional communist groups
of the period, were entirely justified and necessary. In the given circumstances the vanguard was decisive. In Trotsky’s striking metaphor, switching the
points could change the direction of the whole heavy train of the German workers’ movement.

Today the circumstances are quite different. There is no train. A new generation of capable and energetic workers exists but they are no longer part of
a cohesive movement and they no longer work in a milieu where basic Marxist ideas are widespread. We are back at our starting point. Not only has the
vanguard, in the real sense of a considerable layer of organised revolutionary workers and intellectuals, been destroyed. So too has the environment, the
tradition, that gave it influence. In Britain that tradition was never so extensive and influential as in Germany or France but it was real enough in the early
years of the Communist Party.

The crux of the matter is how to develop the process, now begun, of recreating it. It may be true, as Gramsci said, that it is harder to create generals
than to create an army. It is certainly true that generals without an army, are entirely useless; even if it is supposed that they can be created in a vacuum.
In fact, “vanguardism”, in its extreme forms, is an idealist perversion of Marxism, which leads to a moralistic view of the class struggle. Workers are seen
as straining at the leash, always ready and eager to fight but always betrayed by corrupt and reactionary leaders. Especially pernicious are the “left” leaders
whose radical phraseology conceals a fixed determination to sell the pass at the first opportunity.

Such things certainly happen of course. Corruption in the literal sense is not unknown in the British labour movement and in its more subtle
manifestations it is widespread. But it is grotesquely one-sided to suppose that, for example, the history of Britain since the war, can be explained in terms
of “betrayals” and it is idiotic to imagine that all that is necessary is to “build a new leadership” around some sect or other and then offer it as an alternative
to the waiting workers.

The reality is much more complex. The elements of a working class leadership already exist. The activists and militants who actually maintain the
shop floor and working class organisations from day to day are the leadership in practical terms. That they are, typically, more or less under the influence
of reformist or Stalinist ideas or ideas more reactionary still, is not to be explained in terms of betrayal. It is to be explained both in terms of their own
experience and in terms of the absence of a socialist tendency seen as credible and realistic.

The first point has been crucial. Reformist policies have been successful in the advanced economies in the last 20-odd years. Not always or for
everyone but for enough people enough of the time to create a widespread belief in reformism as a viable proposition.

As conditions change the second point becomes increasingly important and excessive emphasis on the vanguard concept can become a real barrier to
the process of fusing the tradition and the activists.

One of the negative features of the leadership/betrayal syndrome is the assumption that the answers to all problems are known in advance. They are
contained in a programme which is definitive and final. To safeguard the purity of the programme is seen as one of the main tasks of the selected few. That
there may be new problems which require new solutions, that it is necessary to learn from one’s fellow workers as well as to teach, are unwelcome ideas.
And yet they are fundamental. Omniscience is no more granted to organisations than to individuals. A certain amount of modesty, of flexibility, of
awareness of limitations is necessary.

It is, on the face of it, rather unlikely that a programme written in, let us say, 1938, contains the complete solution to the questions of the 1970s. It is
certainly the case that in the process of recreating a considerable socialist movement many old concepts will have to be modified. Ideas, at least useful,
operative ideas, have some sort of relationship to facts and it is a platitude that the world in which we work is changing at an unparalleled rate.

As a matter of fact the development of a programme, in the sense of a detailed statement of partial and transitional aims and tactics in all important
fields, is inseparable from the development of the movement itself. It presupposes the participation of a large number of people who are themselves actively
engaged in those fields. The job of socialists is to connect their theory and aims with the problems and experiences of militants in such a way as to achieve
a synthesis that is both a practical guide to action and a springboard for further advance. Such a synthesis is meaningful to the extent that it actually
guides the activities of participants and is modified in the light of practice and that change in circumstances which it itself produces. This is the real
meaning of the “struggle for a programme” that is so often turned into a fetish.

Similar considerations apply to internationalism. Internationalism, the recognition of the long-run common interests of workers everywhere and of
the priority of this interest over all sectional and national considerations is basic to socialism. Today, with the increasing weight and influence of great
international big business concerns, this is more obvious than ever. There cannot be a purely national socialist organisation. It is one of the merits of the
Trotskyist groupings to have consistently emphasised this fundamental truth.

Yet the conclusion often drawn from it: “one must start with the International” is another example of the distorting influence of overconcentration
on “leadership”. An “International” which consists of no more than a grouping of sects in various countries is a fiction. It is a harmful fiction because, as
experience has shown, it leads to delusions of grandeur and hence to evasion of the real problems. The ludicrous situation in which no less than three
bodies exist, each claiming to be the Fourth International and exchanging mutual anathemas like rival mediaeval popes, is a sufficient indication of the
bankruptcy of ultravanguardism in the international field.

To develop a real current of internationalism – and without such a current all talk of an International is self-deception – it is necessary to start by
linking the concrete struggles of workers in one country with those of others; of Ford workers in Britain and Germany for example, of dockers in London
and Rotterdam and so on. This means starting where such workers actually exist, namely in the various countries. It means putting aside grandiose ideas
of “International leadership”, “World Congresses” and the like, in favour of the humdrum tasks of propaganda and agitation in one’s own country together
with the development of international links which, however limited at first, are meaningful to advanced workers outside the sectarian milieu.

Meetings and discussions between socialist grouplets in the various countries are essential, theoretical discussion is essential but above all the creation
of real links between groups of workers is essential. Only after this has been done on a considerable scale will the preconditions for the recreation of the
International be achieved. In the existing situation the analogy of Marx and the First International is in some ways more relevant than that of Lenin and
the Third. Neither provides a blueprint that can be followed mechanically.

Of course, after all the dross is discarded, there is an important grain of truth in the “vanguard” analogy. It lies in the recognition of the extreme
unevenness of the working people in consciousness, confidence, experience and activity. A rather small and constantly changing fraction of the working
class is actually involved, to any extent, in the activities of the existing mass organisations. A larger fraction is episodically involved and the vast majority
are drawn into activity only in exceptional circumstances. Moreover even when largish numbers of workers are engaged in actions, in strikes or rent
struggles, etc, these actions are typically sectional and limited in their objectives, The only major exception which occurs more or less regularly, the act of
voting for a party seen as, in some sense, the working man’s party, is itself increasingly ritualistic in character. And even at this level it has to be
remembered that at every election since the war something like one-third of the working class has voted Tory.

To state these well-known facts is sometimes regarded as something of a betrayal, a slander against the working class. And yet it is merely a
statement, not only of what exists, but also of what must exist for capitalist class society in its “democratic” form to continue at all. Once large numbers of
people actually act directly, collectively and continuously to change their conditions they not only change themselves; they undermine the whole basis of
capitalism. The relevance of a party is, firstly, that it can give the real vanguard, the more advanced and conscious minority of workers and not the sects or
self-proclaimed leaders, the confidence and the cohesion necessary to carry the mass with them. It follows that there can be no talk of a party that does not
include this minority as one of its major components.

The problem of apathy has to be seen in this context. As has often been pointed out, the essence of apathy is the feeling of powerlessness, of inability
to change the course of events in more than a marginal way, if that. The growth of apathy, the increase in “privatisation”, in turning one’s back on the
world, is naturally closely connected with t

by Brian Cahill Mon Apr 22, 2002 01:39 nigel_irritable at yahoo dot com

Hi Dave,

I'm glad to see that your sweet and reasonable nature is in evidence today. I hope that you are getting plenty of fibre in your diet.

If you want to discuss any of the issues you were ranting about without the speeches and the vitriol ("disaffected egotists"?), that's fine. I spent part of last year as an activist in the SSP and I am aware of its strengths as well as its undeniable weaknesses. I am also aware of the irony in being lectured about the need for different tendencies to be able to work together democratically within a party by a member of the SWP.

by Aine Fox - IPSC member. Mon Apr 22, 2002 11:25 foxyaine at hotmail dot com

As a member if the IPSC I did actually comtemplate on being insulted and/or annoyed at the cowardly decision of someone who defines themselves as being part of the international socialists - (who apparently would also have us believe they are intelligent reasonably educated individuals) anonymously write a critic of a campaign they know absolutely nothing about.

The IPSC does not have the sectarianism that is evidently held by the writer, illustrated by his/her own disclosures. I wish to state also that the IPSC not only consist of a multitude of persons each sharing a diversity of political and personal values but also those like myself who have no allegiance to any party politics at all, and it is an insult to my own intelligence to be linked with either SWP or SF - and no offence meant to either.

If the international Socialists have such opposition > were is the work the are pro active in engaging in that is of actual relevance to the world beyond their own egos.

I look forward to the writer of " Palestine needs Soldarity " placing their identity beside what they write, after all thats only adult or was it a juvenile mud slinging situation they were aiming at????

by Oliver O'Driscoll Mon Apr 22, 2002 19:34 olodr at eircom dot net

I will co-operate with anyone if we are all agreed on a specific issue. The situation in Palestine is too tragic for secterian sniping.

Incidentally, I am still waiting for a reply to the email I sent to IPSC recently.

Oliver

by Jon Anderson - IS Belfast Wed Apr 24, 2002 20:05 isireland at yahoo dot co dot uk

As one of the few members of the International Socialists (we don't inflate our importance) I think I can shed some light here.

Nice to hear from Dave Lordan and nice to see his manners are still intact. Disaffected egotists indeed! I don't propose to discuss how democratic the SWP is or the mind-bending properties of Alex Callinicos Thought here. If you want to argue the toss Dave, you know where to find me.

The issue of the character of the IPSC is an important one though. My position is that I'm perfectly prepared to take part in any actions I consider useful. After all Dave, I've worked with your comrades in the anti-war movement for the last 6 months. But we won't give blanket endorsement to the IPSC, at least in the form we find it in the North.

It may be that things are better in Dublin than Belfast, but I can confirm that the IPSC in the North is essentially Ogra Shinn Fein and whoever they've managed to pull along with them. That includes the remnants of the Belfast SWP who as per usual are covering the Provos' left flank. What the hell is the point in having socialists in the movement if they don't argue socialist politics?

There seems to be an idea about that to criticise the politics of a movement is sectarian. The SWP has a unique version of that whereby to criticise the SWP is sectarian but SWP members can slander anybody else on the left. I don't hold with that. If you think the IPSC is founded on a dishonest basis, that SF are a bunch of unprincipled chancers, that the SWP are a megalomaniacal cult or that I'm talking out my ass, say so. To keep silent on issues of principle is pure opportunism.

And yes, Adams did draw the Begin parallel. According to the Irish News, he told a New York audience that the Provos stand in the tradition of Washington, Mandela and Begin. I'm only surprised he didn't mention Garibaldi. What do SF's collaborators in the IPSC make of that?

With communist greetings, JA