What are the SWP up to?

'nuff said

30.08.2001 00:57

sometimes even our most boring enemies bore us
'nuff said -
let's just drop the subject 4 now and get on with it
love & light xxx

john

WHY BOTHER?

30.08.2001 07:41

The State sucks! Capitalism sucks! Anarchism sucks!
Life´s a bitch and then you die.....so why bother?

kkk
mail e-mail: kkk@h.com

Common enemy

30.08.2001 11:01

The common enemy is corporate globalisation. Wasting time and energy with in fighting is exactly that - a waste. My enemy's enemy is my friend. That's all that matters. The rest is just smalltalk.

Bill

Oh god help me, I don't want to keep this boring argument going, but sorry Bill, my enemy isn't just corporate globalisation but hierarchy in all its forms. That's why the SWP/GR can never be my friend (though of course I know most of their foot soldiers are genuine, caring people).

The difference is our banners say overthrow capitalism and replace it with something nicer. Theirs say overthrow capitalism and replace it with something worse.

jeepers h crackers

disagree

30.08.2001 11:42

No, the SWP want something completely different from us in the long term and in the short term their only involvement in the anti-capitalist movement is for the purpose of recruitment- as their internal bulletins occasionally demonstrate. Those I consider to form the radical direct-action, anti-capitalist movement stand for free, ecological, communities- for oraganisation now and in the future that is anarchist, communist and ecological. This is totally different from the SWPs MAchivellian attempts to sieze control of the state, form a new government led by (suprise, suprise) themselves, and then centrally plan the economy. I don't agree with "90%" of what these clowns say. Further, for all their talk of unity, they are an inherently sectarian organisation, for they believe they are the lone instrument of the revolution. THis is very dangerous thinking.
It is really boring and it would nice to be doing more positive things, but everyone in the real anti-capitalist movement should undertake to constantly oppose and expose these and similar parasites.
'Desist' was a great start.

bob the builder

M15

30.08.2001 12:33

WE her in M15 would like to agree with bob the builder that the most important thing to do is fight amongst yourselves.
Thanks bob, check is in the post

secret agent splitter
mail e-mail: splitter@M15.com

What we're up to

30.08.2001 12:46

What we're up to is, like loads of other groups and individuals, trying to build the anti-capitalist movement
in the way we think is best. We have no secrets. Check out our web site at www.swp.org.uk for more info or for more detailed positions on Russia, reform or revolution, anarchism, trade unions, the labour party etc theres a great archive at.

Much of the bile and slander from the trotbashers is a result of two or three decades of reaction poisoning once genuine activists and wearing them out. Now in the face of their own impotence within the rising movement they attack and lie about those who are putting their hearts and souls into building it.

They seem never to have their own worked out ideas about organisation, capitalism, building the movement or anything else, which leaves me wondering if at least some of them are motivated by a desire to present anti-capitalists as bitter, divided, and eccentric so that people are turned off all parts of the movement.

Now I'm off for the rest of the day to hand out anti-racist leaflets, put up posters for a palestinian solidarity meeting, visit a picket line with a petition and collection i took at my workplace and hopefully gat a bit of subvertising done on the way home with the can of spray paint i've got in my bag. If you think i or any of our other members are douing this because we want to take over the world then i suggest you see a doctor.

A swippie and proud.

Dave
mail e-mail: dlordan@hotmail.com

What we are up to

30.08.2001 13:07

is, along with thousands of other groups and individuals trying to build the anti-capitalist movement in the way we think is best. We have no secrets. it is all on our website at swp.org.uk or in our publications. For more detailed positions on revolution, the party, internal democracy, anarchism, russia, Jack Kerouac and wat hav u there is a great archive at

http://www.marxists.de/admin/contents.htm

I think most of the trotbashing is being done by individuals who have been around the left for a long time and were possibly once genuine activists but through no fault of their own - the eoghties and nineties were tough years for activists- suucumbed to the bitterness, weariness and internalism which results from having given up. Now impotent in the face of a rising movemnt they spew their accumalated bile at those of us who are putting our hearts and souls into building it. Also the tone of some of the contributions makes me wonder if at least a few are not motivated by a desire to weaken the whole movementby making us look divided and mad.

In all cases trotbashers rarely state where they are coming from themselves and what their ideas about the movemnt are anything else are, apart from vague generalities about non-hierarchical etc. I would like to know what precisely these terms mean and what they mean in practice.

I'm off now down to a picket line to show my solidarity and give the strikers a petition of support and a collection i got from my workmates. Later on i will be handing out anti- racist leaflets and then putting up posters for a palestinain solidarity meeting in a weeks time. ON my way home i'll hopefully get up to a bit of graffiti and subvertising. If you think i or any other member of the swp has been indoctrinated into doing things like this or we do them because we want to 'take over the state' then you are simply mirroring the shallowest and worst propaganda of the right wing. By the way we're for multi-tendency democracy in the revolution and we don't think we've got all the answers. Thats why we like working with other people so much.
We can all learn from each other. But i'm not going to be pontificated at by trotbashers for making the free choice as an indivual to join a revolutionary party of free willed individuals who believe that through co-operation and debate, democracy and action we move forward faster, together. Rember we have no time to spare.

swp member
mail e-mail: dlordan@hotmail.com

being objective about this...

30.08.2001 14:55

being totally objective about this, the SWP are all twats losers thugs and brainache morons. i even saw one try to eat a bundle of 'socialist worker' because he couldnt read it. ug.

ok, serious now. the swp is a bizarre hybrid of orthodox socialism circa 1900 and a misinterpretation of the last days of the fourth international, hinging around the nature of the USSR. arcane it certainly is, but trotsky always called for the regeneration of the USSR and for world revolution. however, the swp openly celebrated the collapse of the USSR in 1989-91 and by supporting the labour party, they also undertake to defend its imperialist projects. i use the word 'undertake' advisedly, for they really are a bunch of gravediggers. in a country such as britian, which hasnt had a revolutuion for about 350 years, we can hardly expect the swp to do much better. if they werent so cocky and conceited, they'd be pathetic.

magnificat

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30.08.2001 15:02

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Antonio Labriola

30.08.2001 17:33

Could I suggest that readers consult the works of Antonio LABRIOLA, a political philosopher whose work prefigures much of what Trotsky and Gramsci were to explore. He considers the problem of parties like the SWP. There is an online version on the Internet Marxist Library.

Now, When Dave chirpily talks about "building the anti-capitalist movement in the way he thinks best" he forgets to mention that the SWP were very tardy indeed in coming to the movement. When they finally did, they found themselves rebuffed by groups who knew the effect they have on radicals, a kind of neutralisation in favour of the labour party. So what did they do ? They took the view "if you cant join them, beat them" and created the frankenstein Globalise Resistance, a cobbled together mishmash of every creepy little "make-the-world-a-better-place-ish" NGO. Glob Res is a kind of "entryist" organization, but hardly according to what Trotsky had in mind ! Anyone can join GR, so long as you're at UCL, LSE, Oxon, Camb, or the SWP, (the latter as rent-a-thugs to deal with dissenters and critics).

C C

Me again

30.08.2001 17:46

Cant let this subject go. Hope I dont get too boring !
but next time you meet a socialist worker, ask him/ her about a few key concepts in Marxism, which they will deny.

"Aristocracy of Labor" The distressing tendency for workers in advanced industrial nations to ally, emulate, admire and support the ruling class. Marx noted it for definite, and there is much debate about what he actually meant. Was it concrete or a 'tendency' ? More research needs to be done on this concept, even after Trotsky, Sartre and Gramsci, but the SWP deny it even exists. Why ? Because it undermines their very support for the Labour party, the EPITOMEE of Labor Aristocracy.

"Workers State vis a vis State Capitalism". A debate held in the 1930s on the nature of the USSr. Arguments for Either can be found in the works of Trotsky and Lenin, but neither called for the collapse of the USSR, which the SWP did. They now call for the defeat of Red China, but is that so very wise ? We know what happened in Russia and Eastern Europe after 1989-91, so might any upset in China be as bad, and maybe much, much worse ?

C C

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

30.08.2001 19:47

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ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
mail e-mail: ZZZZZ@ZZZZZZZ.com

blah blah blah

30.08.2001 20:27

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dave
mail e-mail: dlordan@hotmail.com

SWP

30.08.2001 20:28

the SWP want to bolshevise the "anti-capitalist" movement, and channel as many radicals as possible into their organisation, through the many fronts that they operate. the SWP has used the recent rise of the far-right to try and gain political capital and will do anything to cause their numbers to increase. what the SWP stand for is a completely different matter they talk about revolution and then they talk about the ballot box, they are also followers of trotsky, need i say more. they are a bunch of fuckwits who should be fought, they might pretend to stand for equality, but they definitely don't stand for liberty, which is just as important as the other. does anyone here really think that state socialism works. marxism and fascism are just as bad as each other, and if anyone thinks that i'm wrong they can fucking prove it, if you're in a movement with a group that supported regimes that had killed people for supporting human freedom, and intend to create a similar one then infighting is justified. infighting within the anarchist movement is not and must stop. well that’s my opinion anyway, don’t let me be one to force it on you and kill you if you disagree. :)

p.s. this post is not meant to cause offence, only to the central committee of the SWP.

jimmer
mail e-mail: japoulte00@hushmail.com

question to SWP members

30.08.2001 22:34

just been reading the latest issue of Socialist Review (no 255) which is actually not bad.
BUT Chris Bambery has written an article on the "main players" in Genoa in which there is no mention of the anarchist groups involved, or the GSF for that matter.
can any SWP member explain why this is, and what they think of it?

Tom

socialist review

31.08.2001 10:18

mumia abu jamal, starhawk, monbiot, etc on genoa

http://www.swp.org.uk/SR/255/SR1.HTM

dave
mail e-mail: dlordan@hotmail.com

that's not the question

31.08.2001 11:13

I'm talking about the the specific article, written by a leading SWP member. why does it only consider communist/trotksyist groups to be "main players"?

Tom

the SWP on anarchism...

31.08.2001 11:29

As far as the SWP goes, they have consistently lied about anarchism. If you
visit the following webpage, you will discover replies to the various
disgraceful articles on anarchism they have produced:

www.infoshop.org/texts/iso.html

they also ignore anarchists as well. For example, they consistently fail
to mention that the Haymarket Martyrs were anarchists. In their recent
pamphlet on Genoa they fail to mention the anarchists and syndicalists
in their account of the factory occupations of 1920 (and it was they
who raised that tactic in the first place!). Indeed, they only mention
anarchists when they can attack or smear them.

The SWP are in the anti-globalisation movement for new members,
simple as that, and they will do what they have to (including lying
about anarchism) to do it. Their long term goals are the opposite
of most activists -- they seek a highly centralised state system in
which their party is in control (as per the Russian Revolution -- and
we know how successful that was).

Little wonder they are stressing the "unite against the common enemy"
line -- it stops people questioning their politics (not that it stops them
producing such lying and dishonest articles as Pat Stack's one on
anarchism last year).

That's the SWP for you -- they lie about anarchism and they call it
"discussion." Anarchists give an accurate account of Bolshevism and
we are called "sectarian."

form more on the anarchist critique of Leninism visit:

www.infoshop.org/texts/iso.html
www.infoshop.org/faq/append3.html
www.infoshop.orgfaq/secH5.html

anarcho
mail e-mail: anarcho@geocities.com
Homepage: www.anarchistfaq.org

Comradely advice

31.08.2001 15:01

Stop it. You're making anarchists look like boring, obsessive wankers.

Burny

suggestive reading

01.09.2001 02:36

here are a few bedtime books for budding leninists/trots (and boring, depressive, dismissive anarcho wankers):

Arshinov, Peter History of the Machnovist Movement.

available from freedom books. written by a man who was a bolshevik, joined makhno, went into exile, went back to russia to become a bolshevik again and got murdered in one of uncle joes great party bloodfests. a decent read.

the unknown revolution by Voline
published by Black Rose Books
ISBN 0-919618-25-1

the definative lowdown on what became of the anarchists in bolshevik russia.

the Bolshevik myth by Alexander Berkman
published by Pluto Press
ISBN 1-85305-032-6

more disillusionment. eyewitness acount of the russian revolution and where it went wrong.

the struggle against the state and other essays
by nestor makhno
published by AK Press
ISBN 1-873176-78-3

should speak for it's self.

not that you will ever read them, as they are not on the authorised party reading list. oh well, nevermind keep on chanting.

cur
mail e-mail: blag67@yahoo.co.uk
Homepage: http://www.thecur.da.ru/

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