The last supporters of democratic centralism – the Rees/German Counterfire lot – are struggling desperately to show they were democrats all the time they were running the SWP – THE UTTER FUCKING GALL of it. Here’s a flavour of the debate between German and a supporterr of ‘the opposition in the Swp led by richard seymour:
[Lindsey German] What bad faith?
[Seymour fan] Rebranding oneself as a “feminist” after decades of opposing the idea without any detailed self-criticism; rebranding oneself as a supporter of organisational democracy after years of having opposed its actualisation in the SWP without the slightest self-criticism or reflexivity. How about that for starters?
[Lindsey German] Better than defending a catastrophically worse still regime until the very last moment….Do send me your list of publications that spell out the Marxist position on women’s oppression.
[Seymour fan] I am not defending anyone Lindsey German – I support the opposition and Richard Seymour. However, decency if not deontology should dictate that you and John engage in a bout of explicit and searching self-criticism about your roles in creating the bureaucratism in the organisation for many years, before offering commentary or proposing yourselves as an alternative to the dissident members. If such an exercise were carried out in good faith, perhaps you could be taken more seriously in your current forms of appearance…
History repeats etc.!
Who could forget Sheila Torrence’s screams as the WRP Flighing Fortress was shot down over Clapham….
Today Comrades…I will be whatever I wasn’t yesterday! You want a Rosa? I can be Rosa!
There does seem some willingness from the ex-SWP leaders to recognise that we are in a new era and move a bit with the times, you don’t have to sell newspapers in their groups and the departed lot seem to be far more interested in the sector of precarious workers as a constituency than the SWPs safety blanket of public sector trade unionists -
For example, John Rees
“1968 is over. That is, the project of workers revolution is still what defines our age, but the specific forms of organisation that came out of the rebirth of the revolutionary left in 1968 are outmoded. Lenin said we have to create an organised network of revolutionary militants, and that this network has to engage in an organised way with the rest of the class and seek to influence its level of combativity and consciousness. He did not say we must always have a branch meeting on a Wednesday night, that we must always sell a tabloid paper with 16 pages on a Saturday from 12 till 1pm, and that there can be no significant deviation from this pattern over decades!
There are certain times when forms of political organisation interact with revolutions in communication technology. The Levellers of the 1640s organised just at a moment when print technology (though invented in the then current form 100 years earlier) was becoming available for use in printing petitions, pamphlets and newspapers. The Levellers seized on this and they would have been a much lesser organisation had they not done so. Similarly mass circulation newspapers preceded by decades the rise of the Chartists and by many decades the rise of mass social democratic parties. But the Chartists Northern Star and the papers of the parties of the Second International (including Vorwarts and Pravda) transformed the relationship between those organisations and their supporters. There is a similar challenge facing the left today. It can only meet it by embracing and developing the new means of communication for its own purposes”
Or Chris Bambery who in a series of pieces has acknowledge that the left is ‘left-behind’ at the moment and the current politicisation is passing the old left groups by –
“So we have to fight for unity but that is not helped by those in the left who reduce the working class to those in trade unions, overwhelmingly in the public sector. That means turning your back on swathes of working class people who feel no-one speaks for them.
It also means questioning accepted ways of operating. A newspaper is no longer a way of organising as it was in the 1970s or in Lenin’s time. In truth they are a way of organising the party apparatus, not the class. Few of those in the room at the weekend buy or read newspapers, news is found online. Selling a paper on the streets makes no sense to them.
If the left wants to be relevant it needs to shift from old ideas, old practices and just “defending the tradition.” Marxism is relevant to today but only if it’s applied”
http://internationalsocialist.org.uk/index.php/blog/the-future/
Surely the point and value of “selling the paper” is also a functional one…to the party?
As the promised revolution is delayed yet again…”leaves on the Lenin up-line, Comrades”, it provides the membership with an designated activity, something to do, to demonstrate their worth or to just fill time, or…well, a bit like sewing mailbags. We dont want idle hands, do we.
Of course, in the new 2013 dawn, they could all now blog? Slogan : “We have nothing to lose but our keyboards…”