tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39317995828160876522023-11-15T14:56:23.921+00:00The Fault LinesFault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-25509629649381299792013-06-12T18:41:00.000+01:002013-06-13T05:23:29.430+01:00The Newspaper and Form<div class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.35em; text-align: right;">
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>This is a guest post by Procne</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">This piece is intended as a set of reflections on the future of ‘the paper’.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">Walter Benja</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">min once wrote that the newspaper is the ‘scene of the limitless debasement of the word’. Taken seriously, this insight poses a problem for those who wish to use the newspaper – or, say, a blog – as a tool of political organisation and intervention. Leon Trotsky suggested one possible problem with the form in an article on ‘The Newspaper and its Readers’ published in</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">Pravda </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; text-align: justify;">in 1923. He complained that ‘in some of our newspapers [plural], you get the impression that when the comrades in charge of this department submit fresh cables […], they have completely forgotten what they put in yesterday. […] Each wire looks like some sort of chance fragment.’ Far from being a means to achieve a holistic, or total, analysis of the political conjuncture, the unmediated, disjointed nature of the news-items (‘information’) and their usurpation of older forms of narration, such as storytelling, constitute a reification of experience. This is why, for Benjamin, the newspaper represents the ‘increasing atrophy’ of experience: ‘[t]he principles of journalistic information (newness, brevity, clarity, and, above all, lack of connection between the individual news items) contribute as much to this as does the layout of the pages and the style of writing.’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Without wanting to sound otiose, I have sometimes wondered whether current or past editors of a newspaper such as</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">have ever seriously grappled with the problem of the</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">form</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">of the newspaper. It is not enough simply to keep churning out articles, treating form as an empty vessel. Form imposes certain serious restrictions and limitations, not only on what can be said, but on how it can be said. This is important because propaganda must be persuasive if it is to be effective. Producing</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">effective</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">propaganda, one might conclude, will require at least some basic familiarity with linguistic matters such as rhetoric, style and idiom, even before the ostensibly weightier matters of content and ‘substance’ enter the frame. Someone will doubtless soon pipe up to the effect that the relationship between form and content is dialectical, rather than simply dualistic, but this must be</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">shown</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, rather than simply told.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">What has been most notable about the proliferation of blogs and online commentary in the recent months is that it has become impossible not to relinquish the illusion of monolithic central authority. There is not one line; instead, there are many voices. This is why Charlie Kimber always manifests what might be dubbed a Chinese sneer whenever he is obliged to mention ‘the blogs’. One might recall Mikhail Bakhtin’s writings on the novelistic discourse which mobilise the concept of polyglossia by way of a subterranean riposte to the monoglossia of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The blogosphere is undeniably polyglossic. One blog leads to another, which leads to another. The conversation is many-sided and multi-faceted. A total picture of the situation begins to emerge only in the corner of one’s eye, amidst a kaleidoscopic array of paragraphs which cascade one on top of the other in a waterfall of prose (some of which is stylish, some of which is not).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">I hope, then, that I may be forgiven a brief digression before returning to more serious analysis. Emmanuel Kazakevich is a mostly forgotten Soviet novelist. In his 1961 short story,</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The Blue Notebook </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">(1961), he offers a fictional reconstruction of Lenin’s experience of exile on the Karelian isthmus, situated between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in north-western Russia. Hiding in a rural barn, guarded by a comrade, Lenin requests that his comrade’s sons make frequent visits to a nearby town in order to collect a large number of different newspapers. Kazakevich goes to the trouble of elucidating:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Each of the boys had his regular list. Sasha bought the Socialist-Revolutionary and Menshevik papers:</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Rabochaya Gazeta</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Izvestia Petrogradskogo Sovieta</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Novaya Zhizn</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Volya Naroda</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Yedinstvo</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Zemlya I Volya</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Izvestia Vserossiiskogo Sovieta Krestyanskikh Deputatov </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">and</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Dyelo Naroda</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">. It was Kondraty’s job to buy the Bolshevik papers and magazines:</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Proletarskoye Dyelo</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, the Moscow</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Sotsial</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">-</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Demokrat</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Rabotnitsa </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">and whatever else he could find. Seryozha bought the Black-Hundreds’ and ‘yellow’ press:</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Zhivoye Slovo</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Novoye Vremya</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Novaya Rus</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Purishkevich’s Narodny Tribun</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, and others. In addition, Kondraty had to buy the bourgeois papers: the Petrograd</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Rech</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Dyen</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Russkaya Volga </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">and</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Birzheviye Vedomosti </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">and the Moscow newspapers</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Utro Rossii</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Russkiye Vedomosti </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">and</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Russkoye Slovo</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">There is a lot to read here, week by week, and Lenin, of course, reads all of this wordy stuff with a voracious appetite. He gobbles it up, unafraid and undaunted. Lenin is the antithesis of Oblomov – the anti-hero of Ivan Goncharov’s eponymous novel – who is utterly withdrawn from the sphere of immediacy epitomised by the newspaper. Oblomov responds to his friend Stolz’s encouragement to take a more active interest in the world as follows: ‘Do you expect me to load myself every day with a fresh supply of world news and then to shout about it all week till it runs out?’ Oblomov, being a fine specimen of mid-nineteenth-century Russia’s dissolute aristocracy, would rather lounge around in bed for most of the morning, perhaps considering the possibility of breakfast at about midday. He is a finely drawn individual specimen of a more general type – the proverbial lazy-bones, whom we have all encountered, perhaps embodied, at one time or another. (George Osborne might like to take note that there was no welfare state in nineteenth-century Russia). Lenin polemicised relentlessly against the Oblomovs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Now, if you have ever made bold to hawk a newspaper such as</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">in one of the main streets of the town where you live, you will not have failed to notice that many hundreds of people walk past you as if you were a ghost. They see you as having loaded yourself with a fresh supply of world news and they note, with varying degrees of interest and indifference that you are shouting about it for at least part of the week. The Oblomovian response to this type of activity is not an uncommon one. It is not just that these people are lazy, or busy, or that they have other things on their mind. Some may be lazy, or busy, or just engrossed in the marathon of conspicuous consumption, but many others will walk past because</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">they already know</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, without having to take the trouble to read it,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">precisely what the newspaper will contain</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">. The actual content will change from week to week, but it is the same basic, wordy stuff. Can you honestly claim to remember the detail of what was printed in</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">in the third week of May in 1999 in the same way that you might recall a particular moment in a novel, say, or a poem? One wonders whether the stalwarts of the Central Committee have spent much time reading novels. I suspect not. So we are back to Benjamin again: the newspaper is the scene of the limitless debasement of the word. The propaganda is ineffective because it fails to provoke the curiosity of its intended readership.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Yes, yes, yes, I know what you will say, thou staunch loyalist thou. Of course, there are people who</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">buy</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">it. It's a brave old world out there, so we don't need to talk about all this internal shit. We shouldn't pause for thought or reflection because we must march onwards, ever onwards, into the radiant future of struggle. Of course, there are empirically verifiable exceptions which could be cited with wild gesturing arms in order to refute the</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">general line</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">of my argument. We have the statistical reminders that 50 papers were sold on Friday in the Potemkin village near Glaisdale, whilst an even more impressive 75 papers were sold in the space of an hour by the multi-storey car-park in Slough: ‘Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!/ It isn’t fit for humans now.’ The number-crunchers hope to be able to measure the effectiveness of our propaganda with reference to a set of figures, as if the number of papers sold on a demonstration were some kind of revolutionary dipstick. There is a grain of truth in this, for sure, but a relentless focus on this kind of bad positivism becomes a fetish which only serves to avoid the real questions and problems. The trees conceal the woods and ‘life is dragged along on the triumphal automobile of the united statisticians’, whose myopia is truly pitiable.</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">t is true: the revolutionary newspaper can indeed invoke the fleeting curiosity of a not-insignificant portion of the population – and this is important because it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is important to persist with the form (even as particular ‘brands’ may come and go). The problem is that this curiosity is far more ephemeral than it should be, given the moral, ethical, political and social issues to which the said paper sets out to address itself. So who are these fleeting readers? To where do these people go? To what houses, flats, cubicles and cottages? How is their curiosity to be not only excited, but sustained and turned into a more durable kind of political commitment? Perhaps, just perhaps, the answer might lie with the kind of language that is used. I am not sure the editors of</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">have answers to these questions, because I doubt very much whether they are questions that have ever been seriously considered, except fleetingly and ephemerally.</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">This problem exists just as much for the editors of and contributors to newspapers like</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The Socialist</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Resistance</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The Weekly Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Appeal</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">,</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Solidarity</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, or whichever socialist newspaper you care to name. As I have mentioned at the outset, the problem is with the</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">form</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">of the newspaper, rather than with any particular instance of the form. But let’s be ‘concrete’ for a moment: if you have ever sold</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, you can perhaps engage in quick thought experiment: imagine the attitude that you assume when you pass by one of those lonely doppelgangers in, let us say, the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, or the Socialist Party. The paper s/he is selling is not a saleable commodity in your eyes, nor, indeed, is it something you would touch with a proverbial barge-pole. This, then, is the attitude assumed by the vast majority of passers-by when they see you selling</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">. Perhaps, if you can begin properly to empathise with the experience of such a passer-by we might begin collectively to address the problem of how we, as an historically situated gathering of revolutionary militants, might actually go about relating to the contemporary working class. Therein lies the distance between a vanguard of a few thousand revolutionaries and a mass party.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Curioser and curioser: so why did Lenin read all those newspapers? and have the cadres of the SWP been trained in a similar fashion?</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Socialist Worker</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, in the colloquial idiom of the party rank-and-file, takes the definite article: it is not a paper, one amongst many; it is</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">Paper. ‘Do you want a copy of the paper?’ This phrase must have become so ubiquitous on demonstrations and picket-lines that, eventually, it spawned a parody. Radicalised students at one of the London universities began printing and distributing a news-bulletin wittily entitled</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">The Paper</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">, in an ironic tribute to the panoply of socialist organs, each of which makes its own claim to exclusivity and uniqueness. But ideological hegemony is a difficult thing to achieve, even in the small world of the revolutionary left in Britain. Very few members of the SWP will take the trouble to consult the newspaper of other left-wing organisations; some will consult the bourgeois and pro=capitalist press; a handful might make the effort to read the publications of the BNP and its splinter-groups, as well as those of the EDL and the NF. Many more will simply take the line from the paper. After all, there is only so much time in the day: some hours must be spent in labour, eating and sleeping. But this is no way to train a cadre, and so we are back to Oblomov. The paper’s readers are deaf to the polyglossic, which is a problem, because the world is infinitely more complex than the paper allows for. One sometimes wonders whether socialists can truly learn that dialectics necessitates antagonism, polemic and the forcing through of contradictions, if their print-culture produces nothing but a relentless monotone.</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">So, where do we go from here? Let us start by taking </span><span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">a</span><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;"> </span><a href="http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/7237/what-is-to-be-done_the-website-as-an-organizer" target="_blank">lesson</a> <span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">fro</span></span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px;">m one of our Egyptian co-thinkers.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Procne</b></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-86285066871079564382013-05-28T19:10:00.000+01:002013-05-28T19:10:17.360+01:00On theory<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>This is a guest post by J. R. Hartley</i></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">The recent developments<a href="" name="_GoBack"></a>
of the SWP and <i>Socialist Worker</i>
websites have been mixed blessings for those of us who have long been critical
of the party’s online presence,. For years we have argued that we need to up
our game in terms of the internet, pushing for more resources, calling for the
formation of commissions to make best use of the undoubted and untapped talents
of so many comrades. Time and again we have been not only denied but denounced:
traduced as cyber utopians who sought to abolish the paper and forgo true
revolutionary activity. So three cheers for progress, I guess. </span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The makeover of the <i>SW</i> site is remarkable for the simple fact that it now appears to be
worse than before – no mean feat given how it looked previously. While some
neat touches have been added (such as the ‘tag’ and ‘popular’ tabs on the
right-hand sidebar) the website looks half-baked, as though a beta version had
been launched long before the finished version was ready to launch. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Far more interesting is the newly expanded
“Theory” part of the main party website. After years of apparently randomly
selected articles being highlighted in a decidedly haphazard fashion – almost
as though my nan had wandered onto the site and absent-mindedly left them
around with no rhyme or reason – the section finally adopted a systematic and
organised approach. Clicking on the tab takes you to links for 246 books,
articles and pamphlets, split into 38 categories such as “Economic Theory”,
“Religion”, “Culture” and “The Fight Against Fascism”. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In many ways it is a highly useful resource
even if it does duplicate links that are available in other places – most
notably the monumental labour of love that is the Marxist Internet Archive. Treated
as a suggested reading list it will doubtless be of value to anyone stumbling
across revolutionary politics for the first time and experienced comrades
alike, and collates some of the finest pieces of Marxist writing from the past
150 years or more.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But the “Theory” section, as initially
launched, perhaps reveals more about the state of the party than one might
expect. Not least it adds to the feeling that the party is old, reliant on the
political capital of theories that were once indispensable, but now less
relevant. Before I raise these points, however, I feel it’s necessary to state
that I see the reading of Lenin, Trotsky, Cliff, Harman et al as being of huge
importance. Let me say from the outset: I actively encourage comrades, old and
young alike, to read (and re-read) the classics from the Marxist tradition.
These are not only works with invaluable analysis and insight – the best
examples also show how to effectively communicate the ideas of socialism and
revolution to a mass audience. Any list of theoretical resources must carry
these works. It is just a sad sign of the times that anyone raising concerns
and criticisms feels the need to pre-empt the inevitable, unthinking rebuttals
that pass for debate inside the organisation these days.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On social media some have already pointed
out some of the notable omissions, for instance the comparative lack of Paul
Foot; the complete absence of Widgery and Sedgewick. As S Wells said in this <a href="http://the-faultlines.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/losing-aura-of-competence.html">post</a>:
“There is no danger of any reader inadvertently being guided to the
publications of the party’s more libertarian (and livelier) past.” No doubt some
of you have already compiled mental lists of works you feel deserving of
inclusion. Comrades, I would suggest, should be contacting the centre with
recommendations at every opportunity. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Others might point to the relatively small
amount of debate that gets flagged up. Only rarely do we stumble across
articles written as replies to other people in the tradition: the debate between
Harman and Kidron from the late-1970s, Choonara and Davidson discussing
permanent revolution, the three way argument around the question of art and
alienation. More links to debates would be most helpful. Surprisingly, given
the questions raised recently, the debate from the mid-1980s on the question of
whether working class men benefit from the oppression of working class women
for instance is missing. Re-reading the theoretical disagreements between Harman,
Callinicos and Hallas on the issue of base and superstructure makes you realise
how important open debate is to our political tradition. Far from being staid
and unchanging it becomes a constantly evolving theory, reacting and
developing, growing through constant discussion.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet what strikes me most about the new
Theory section is how many of the links take you to pieces written before 2000.
Of the 246 pieces only 81 – less than a third - were written in the last
thirteen years. Much of these are to be
commended (sections on disability, Latin America); some are specific to recent
events (austerity, Arab spring). But there is not one single article written
since the start of the new millennium listed in the sections on the Labour
Party and Reformism, Leninism and the Party, The State, Trotsky(ism), or Alienation.
Only one post-2000 article is linked to in the each of the following sections:
The Working Class, Trade Unions and Strikes, Revolutionary Lives, Imperialism,
or Students.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can this be? Is there nothing that can
be added to our understanding of the Labour Party after the years of Blair and
Brown? Or did we fail to produce a piece that was of sufficient quality so as
to be included in our section of must-see theoretical articles? However good
John Molyneux’s <i>Marxism and the Party </i>may
be, are we really to believe that the arguments it contains are beyond
re-appraisal? In the context of sustained neo-liberal assaults, how can it be
that Chris Harman’s article, <i>Workers of
the World</i>, written in 2002 is the most recent piece we link to in the
section entitled ‘The Working Class’?</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Obviously the recommended pieces within the
‘Theory’ section do not exhaust the contributions made by party members to
theoretical debate, historical investigation or revolutionary activity. They
are, rather, the select and chosen few. And that they were chosen, while others
were left on the shelf, says a lot about our organisation. Looking through that
theory section one is left inspired by what the IS legacy represents but also
increasingly, painfully aware that the world moved on. Has the living,
breathing tradition of the International Socialists really so little to say on
these matters since the start of the new millennium, or are we so certain to
the point of complacency in our belief that all such questions were resolved
long ago, never more to be the subject of enquiry, discussion and, where
necessary, revision?</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>J. R. Hartley</b></span></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-3029834261353813392013-05-26T18:00:00.000+01:002013-05-26T18:00:00.683+01:00A response from a “passionate”<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: #444444;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3931799582816087652" name="_GoBack"></a>This is a guest post by Hebe</i></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The crisis in the SWP has left comrades in
an impossible situation. The faction fight polarised the party, split it into
two camps and has now driven at least 400 out of the organisation. For some this has raised fundamental
questions about the party very suddenly, for others it has been a much longer
process. The situation is not ideal and there is no solution not fraught with
difficulties. This article is an attempt to address questions that have been
put to those who believe it is not possible to win back the SWP. </span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What
do we want?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Comrades on all sides of the argument in
the SWP in theory share one aim – the need for a mass revolutionary party
capable of seizing power. It is perhaps
worth setting out what our vision of that party would be. It must be committed
to the idea of socialism from below, understand the centrality of the working
class and have an uncompromising stand against oppression. It must be
explicitly revolutionary socialist and open to discussion about how its ideas
can be renewed - in its publications, relationship with those around it and
internal life. Importantly it must be able to face up to and analyse the
changing world around it. These are prerequisites to being truly democratic
centralist in more than name only.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The crisis has posed many questions that
different comrades are trying to address and answer. What is the shape of the
working class today? What is the role of a revolutionary organisation today?
How do we apply democratic centralism today? How do we understand the radical
left and united fronts? How can we update our politics on oppression? All of
these questions should be debated out as openly as possible in the party, its
publications and within the wider left.
This is not about abandoning the IS tradition but applying it to a
changing world and synthesizing the best new insights into our view of the
world and how to change it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can
these debates be resolved in the SWP?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A majority of comrades in and around IDOOP
shared these questions and a sense that together we could develop answers. The faction meetings demonstrated a depth of
politics and debate and gave many faith the SWP could be renewed. For those isolated in their localities it was
a breath of fresh air and sustained them through a rough time in the party’s
recent history. But we also saw the opposing
side of the SWP mobilised around an abstract loyalty to the leadership. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This section of the party aimed to resolve
the crisis not through political discussion but through appeals to loyalty. Any
criticism was treated as a threat by those that had broken from or did not
understand our tradition. Mike Gonzales’ recent article, ‘Who will teach the
teachers?’ addresses the resonance this found with a layer of card carrying
members who bolstered the most conservative elements of the party. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The question of whether any of these
debates could be resolved at this conference should now be clear. We lost the
faction fight not simply because of undemocratic manoeuvring but because we did
not hold a majority in the organisation. The manner in which the “pro-Comrade
Delta” faction asserted its victory sealed that defeat and in doing so closed
down any chance of recovery. IDOOP comrades were not drawn back into the party
but marginalised. The promised space for debates we hoped to have never
materialised, replaced with an attempt to consolidate a distorted version of
our tradition. Their side has hardened while ours has been devastated.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the NC it was reported that at least 350
people had left the party. Contact work suggests the real figure is higher. Those
left are largely holding on for lack of an alternative and few seriously
believe we would be given a hearing in a future party debate. The consequence
is that any process of clarification will not spread beyond those who were
supportive of IDOOP, and the few remaining branches we have sway in. A serious
analysis must see any faction fight further dividing the organisation on a
terrain the opposition can’t hope to win.
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To change the direction of the party in
future would require one of three things: 1) An opposition large enough to lead
a credible fight. 2) A figure like Cliff or Harman with the personal standing
to recognise and argue for a turn. 3) A section of those currently loyal to the
CC to respond to events and challenge the leadership. 1 and 2 no longer exist and the third is
unlikely for reasons I explore below.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How
did were reach this point?<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The strongest argument for remaining is
that future events could force the party to turn outwards and revive the chance
of rebuilding the SWP. For that to happen
the SWP would have to become part of a serious new struggle and win a generation
of activists to its ranks. To do so would require a sharp turn away from the
practices we are currently institutionalising.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For many in the organisation the crisis did
not begin with the revelations of conference. The party’s response to it, while
appalling, reflected a deeper malaise.
Comrades were called on to back the CC and disputes verdict not on its
own grounds but because to challenge it meant challenging the authority of the
leadership. This flew in the face of
good sense, but evasions and half-truths provided enough cover. The comrades mobilised
were neither “rape apologists” nor part of a cover up - the rallying call was
to defend “our tradition” and “our party” against all challengers.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those that led the charge (on and off the
CC) were in effect a faction lead to defend Comrade Delta but also a particular
model of the party – one heavily shaped by the experience of the 1980s. Those
in IDOOP were characterised as being soft on the movements by comrades with a
model of the Party developed to survive the downturn. This resonated with a layer of comrades
caderised in the 80s who wished to see the party survive but had reduced their
day to day relationship with it. Many also had roles in the public sector
unions that have been at the centre of our recent perspectives. This layer was able to pull behind it others
with a substitutionist notion of party building and more who simply wished the
crisis would blow over. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the centre of this faction were comrades
who had been mobilised to defeat the left platform a few years previously. That
had been a faction fight that united them with younger elements in the party.
However, they now moved to pressure a weak leadership into moving decisively
against a section of the party shaped by the recent crisis of capitalism. This
faction now reinforces the most sectarian elements of the leadership and is
adjusting the party’s politics to justify a rapid sectarian turn. Their
permanent war footing has created a self-fulfilling prophesy that those in
IDOOP are on a route out of the party. Elements of the CC that recognised this
were either not confident, or unable, to challenge the dynamic or those on the
CC who encouraged it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some examples of this sectarianism include
a one-sided hostile attitude to a revival of the Labour left; a failure to
recognise the role revolutionaries could play within the People’s Assembly (in
drawing out its real contradictions); a persistence with UtR despite its
existence as a front group; a refusal to acknowledge that public sector strikes
have not been a central site of struggle since the December sell out; turning
necessities – such as the lack of speakers for Marxism – into virtues; a
willingness to smash our student work to destroy the faction; a distortion of
our politics on women’s liberation – I could go on.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All of this goes unchallenged as the CC and
cadre need to keep things going after isolating many of those who have built
the party over the past decade. Having reactivated a layer of comrades around a
sectarian vision of the party they have now become trapped by it. The scale of
the People’s Assembly demonstrates a centrality of politics and broad desire to
mobilise that we set in opposition to abstract calls for a general strike. Left
Unity demonstrates (in an ephemeral way) a desire for left of labour
organisation that we are absent from.
Counterfire steal the best speakers associated with our summer festival
and we down scale Marxism. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given all this it is unlikely that the
majority will be willing to undergo the far more destabilising debate that a
re-analysis of the shape of the working class today or the role of the
revolutionary left in the current period would entail. The party has entrenched
an internal culture of heresy-hunting where such arguments are a means of
exposing comrades, not trying to understand changes in the world around us.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of this is intended to paint a one-sided
picture of the SWP. It will remain the largest group on the far left for years and
continue to do much good work. To say the SWP is unlikely to be able to relate
to new bursts of struggle is not to deny the positive role it will continue to
play in many campaigns and unions, or its role in promoting basic socialist
ideas and fighting fascism. It is to say that if you are committed to building
the revolutionary left this is not enough. A genuinely revolutionary group has
to seek to win over the most dynamic elements to the fight for socialism from
below. It has to engage in a dialogue that attempts to understand new ideas and
relate to them. It has to have a searching analysis of the balance of forces,
its own resources and relationship to the struggle. On these three counts the
SWP has failed.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The recent fight has accelerated a dynamic
that has long existed. In doing so it has calcified distortions left over from
the downturn and years of low struggle, as well as severing links with a
generation shaped by the biggest crisis of capitalism in living memory. This
generation had represented the best chance of renewing our organisation in
years.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What
now? <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our immediate task has to be to wage an
open fight for ideas in the party. The
central question is the role of a revolutionary organisation and an assessment
of the period we face. Many other
questions relate to this and comrades thinking and writing should be encouraged
to put them into the public domain. The run up to Marxism provides a sense of
urgency. Comrades questioning the role
of the party need to be armed with the viewpoints of others to enable a genuine
debate to be tested. If we can’t contest the current orthodoxy at the SWP’s
most important gathering than starting later will be untenable.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We also need to think whether a new
organisation is needed. Politics does not
reward good intentions but ideas, organisation and timing. To sleep walk into a split is a recipe for
being blown to the four winds. Those who
call for political clarity are correct but this call obscures a more
fundamental question. This is not a debate about when to break from the party
but whether the party can be saved. A faction
fight might be desirable but to fight on the important questions would
inevitably see us carved out. The pro-CC faction will not allow us a fair
hearing and will divide and isolate the faction – a process which has already
begun. To charge into such a fight
without clear aims will mean losing further waves of comrades to inactivity and
demoralisation.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our real debate is over the role of
revolutionaries today. Our discussions across the country reveal a greater
convergence then comrades might expect.
We are developing a vision of what a revolutionary party should look
like based on the insights from the IS tradition and the experience of
collective debate. To discuss what the SWP should be throws its degeneration into
stark relief.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Comrades in the opposition hold a range of
positions on what we should do. All of
them need to be subjected to a deeper analysis. One factor to look at is the
current relationship we have with the party. How many oppositionists are still
engaged enough with the party to participate in a credible faction fight? If we
are to wait for an upturn in struggle where does that leave the majority of our
support? Is it credible to think we can divide a weak CC that is trying to hold
the party together? Most seriously, what is our assessment of the period and the
future prospects of the SWP? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: #444444;">Hebe</b></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-78830951218858915712013-05-26T09:00:00.000+01:002013-05-26T09:00:00.427+01:00Gold Dust<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Dedicated to a Comrade having a hard
time, politically and otherwise – you aren’t the only one.</span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The SWP has reached an
impasse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Members of the SWP now
reject or question the accepted truths and commands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The sense of forward
advance that was once felt has now disappeared.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hundreds now dissolved
away by frustration anger and doubt, yes, more importantly however political
differences and principles.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stranded at a stand
still, as the organisation galls down a dark, quite and solemn pace towards erasing
the last 8 months of revolutionary despair which will have gripped, with an
encompassing and stone cold blitz feeling felt among the many. The new, old,
young, and experienced.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The disconnection,
unfortunately, is almost now permanent. As the branches sway, panic and
scramble onwards. The busy-like nature
of the weekly meeting, things to build, stalls to do, busy like, even more than
ever - <em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">a quick
succession of busy nothings.<o:p></o:p></span></em></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the irremovable
glint in each’s eye, of the horrible scaring, of the entire integrity of that
soul – politically, physical and mentally.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Withering of the strongest
of the strong. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No brave face can mask
it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An open wound which refuses
to heal. No matter time’s passing. The concomitant of the feeling remains; how
could this have happened?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Searching for the determination;
the root. Able to transcend from one to the next generation of fighters – the
methods, the training, the thinking, the acting, the relating.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b><i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Virus of Culture<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A Virus - all soured,
corrupted, mechanical, inadequate, unemotional, inhuman, and systematic. <b><i><o:p></o:p></i></b></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is what infects a
comrade, the circles, the philosophy, the atmosphere, the living & then the
breathing organ in which it paints us with its colours, strengths and
vibrancies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A culture must be
constantly nurtured, paid meticulous attention to when sick, fostered, guided.
- given the chance to lead – the opportunity to build – the ability to develop
and evolve living revolutionary ideas, by looking on those that have come to
past, and those who decay to their death.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time is short, amplifying
the most precious questions and prominent crisis which confronts us. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Questions, which are
often visited. Chipped away at by the old comrade, who comes up against the
metaphorical and physically gigantic concrete wall; too high to climb or
destroy, by the efforts of a sole. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rebounding the cycle
of your own efforts, its own echo - no answer, no reply, nothing – despair,
frustration, sorrow, confusion, anger, bitterness, isolation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Death of the idea, and
the hope which came with it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To change something,
anything, at this point, the worst point.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consigned to the
graveyard of once living ideas, one in which sorted to amass inspiration and
militancy of those here, and yet to come. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A choking culture,
selectivity, breeding animosity between those closest. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The questions, why
them, not I, not us, not all?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fostering of new
comrades in preparation to join the circles of thought and the warring bands
that shuffle, jostle and scuffle for weight, influence – and ultimately power.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is a deep rooted
problem. Engrained & inbuilt, a way of ‘things’ - Greying gold dust<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As those pushed to the
front, or proped up, often with little total understanding of their use in another’s
means to the ends.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A percentile effect;
of those of a generation, the many left to fall in between the gaps of the
organisation, and the cracks in which spring from its virused culture: Lost
revolutionaries, and with them; lost potential, a lost far future, but near. –
Lost Gold Dust<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The unappreciated, fighting
to grow, completing the ‘dogs-work’, acting as the main mechanical cog, buried
beneath the shiner, but smaller cogs, that overlap, overplaced and overlay it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet never the time to
spare or interest and encouragement given, to develop beyond your practical
perfections, you’re fighting, for the sake of fighting strong, time passes and
you’ve grown tired, as revolutionary enthusiasm stagnates, from the lack of
care placed under you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The same is no longer
the same; it’s lost its meaning, as you repeat, repeat, and repeat, repeat. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The disconnection
growing at each stroke of disarray and crisis – Exhausted Gold Dust<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The excited, ever
charged, with vigour and zeal to build the organ, they truly want and feel to
succeed with every fibre, every thought, every feeling. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But bound to wonder
for an answer, a sign – nothing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Left to explore and
wonder, search new possibilities, but alone. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As the organ
stagnates, reclines, its pulse slowing, its tone fading, its resonance
breaking.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If only, you dream.
The organ was next to you, engaging, renewing, growing and living- off this new
potential. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead rusting, squeaking,
if not completely silent in all but words and symbols. As if an error, an incompatibility-
Frustrated Gold Dust<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Constantly fighting to
remedy the immediate problems in the organ, to make a dent, but it regrows even
thornier. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At what point will one
be able to build as where one’s ambitions truly lay or seek?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not Deviation, Marxism;
living and growing<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Relating and learning
from people, who struggle to survive or live today. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Against replication,
skewing and stretching past struggles to apply now. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The past, always
important and a part of, but never the same, never inevitable, never
guaranteed, never inherent- No blueprints. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Agency evolves, composition
composites’ and compresses, relations react, feelings fester, tensions sinuating.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Many gone now, the
organ in failure, decaying – now lays still; and will remain still, but
still-borne cannot be what is made from its death.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A real culture
different to before. Forged in genuine truth, encouragement, development,
trust, confidence, freedom and thought, while free from slant, bias, personal
benefit, factioneering and manoeuvre.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A real want for a
culture which is breathing of the class, yet instead compromising for a simple
plinth listings the organs norms, constructs, its policy – The extent of
relations with the Gold Dust.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This must be and can
only be created through the process of fighting through real democracy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To free the embryonic
potential inside of each and every separate particle of Gold Dust – Actualised
Gold Dust<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This culture must be
fostered and encouraged through and for a <i>maximum
living Marxism</i>. A culture of permanent inclusivity, flexibility and depthful
discussion and debate and so much more – as to achieve a real vision, an organ that
intertwines with class struggle, in practise, and further to liberate the
successes and failures of prospects in which it is engaged in, openly and
honestly. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As is an essential of vanguard’s
memory. A memory of not purely words, but of reality – The class cannot be
fooled, we can only fool ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The memory learns from
the experiences of <i>all</i>. Managing, filtering
and disrupting this process forms cracks, gaps and seizures in this memory. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The infection grows.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #cccccc;"><span style="color: red; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Angel Jackson - FL Editor</b></span></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-9500773495597867082013-05-24T18:00:00.000+01:002013-05-24T18:00:01.547+01:00The Impact of their Actions<div style="padding: 0px; text-align: right;">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: #444444;">This is a guest post by AB, PB, H, S and BJ</i></span></div>
<div style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana; font-size: 12px; padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Central Committee are in denial, willingly ignoring an exodus of 200-300 members, deluding themselves eternally with membership figures of 6000 whilst refusing to acknowledge a crisis tearing our party apart. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/21/challenging-sexism-heart-swp-work" target="_blank">Julie Sherry’s article in the Guardian</a> blissfully pronounces the party’s excellence in handling the now infamous disputes case. In reality the opposite is true. The CC’s dogmatism in its success has led to a spiralling crisis of their own making, meaning the SWP is rapidly degenerating at a crucial moment in the reinvigoration of the fight back against austerity.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The advent of the Bedroom Tax has sparked widespread anger against the Tory government, demonstrations have spread the length of the country and the campaign continues to grow. The Bedroom Tax could potentially be the catalyst for a wider movement to topple Cameron. Alongside this, the occupation of Sussex University against privatization on campus lasted over a month and included a demonstration of over 1,000 students and workers. Our intervention in both campaigns is now marred; on a Bedroom Tax demo in Glasgow a member of the party was heckled with chants of “rape apologists” from demonstrators when speaking. These women were visibly seen to be pushed by members of SWP stewarding the demo. At Sussex the SWSS group, </span><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">historically the biggest in the country,</span><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> was the first to disband. This news was met with loud cheers from inside the occupation. The CC remains oblivious, pretending their actions have no repercussions in the class.</span></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The CC is failing to offer any leadership to its members, leaving its loyal supporters pedalling the line of the downturn, battening down the hatches and defending the party at all costs - this line bears no relation to the upturn we see in the outside world. The Left is also realigning itself; Ken Loach’s call for Left Unity has seen thousands sign up to the appeal, The International Socialist Network has begun opening a wide scoping debate on the direction of the revolutionary left. Again, the CC will not present answers as to how we relate to this changing milieu of the left and a continued sectarianism to all but “our comrades” (including those responsible for building the organisation who have now left).</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The farcical National Student Meeting offered another insight to the party’s lack of direction, offering no coherent strategy in how to move forward as an organisation and no way of operating at the National Union of Students conference which was to take place within a month. SWSS's record of operating in NUS had been something we prided ourselves in, particularly in 2012 winning the most number of block votes in both higher and further education, winning votes for a national demo and a national FE walkout.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This year was, sadly, very different. Our relationships on the National Executive Committee had become strained in the light of the revelations regarding comrade delta meaning the Labour (NOLS) lackies, who have for so long run the NUS, were more hostile than they had been the year before. As well as this our opposition around the no platforming of George Galloway was now being used against us. Our relationships with other left groups, namely National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts and Student Broad Left, had also changed; while SBL were very much on side with the opposition and supported our candidate, (even for the sake of comradeship supporting the party’s apologist to an extent) some members of NCAFC chose to make it clear they disagreed with oppositionist members decisions to stay. As well as a lack of support within the mechanics itself, the membership of NUS voted fairly resoundingly against of delegation to conference to the extent that our delegation was a third of its size compared to 2012 and were all known oppositionists. Adding to this the CC’s decision to withdraw a comrade who may very well have won the position due to their opinion of - and position in - the faction fight made an almost indefensible position completely so.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was to no surprise the NUS’s opinion of the loyalists and opposition was reflected in their share of votes; the loyalists received 0.02% of the vote, the oppositionists 26%. More remarkably was the way in which the NOLS used the crisis to attack the left. Overtly, they organised a walkout during the loyalist’s speech which resulted in around 200 people walking out. Covertly, they moved on a divided and weak left to push through one of the most right-wing executives and policies seen for years. </span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Comrades, we must be clear that when we are weak, the left is. We did not ‘punch above our weight’ because the CC said so, but because we were respected as activists and as principled individuals who would never surrender in argument. NUS conference showed that when we lack conviction in the line, we lose that.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps one of the saddest things to come out of the SWP’s self-immolation is the fate of Marxism. The jewel in the party’s previously bright crown is not condemned to be the SWP talking to the SWP in a slightly bigger room. Such a travesty must not be accepted. Marxism’s establishment as the left’s biggest festival has meant a sustained respect, even outside the Marxist left, for the SWP. With incidents like John McDonnell’s refusal to even acknowledge the party, instead opting to announce his withdrawal from the festival through Twitter, it shows the contempt with which the party is now treated with.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If we are to drag ourselves out of this crisis the decisive action must be taken now, waiting until January is not an option and if we continue to do so we will win only a shadow of our former organisation. Now is the time for people to openly dissent against the CC. They are destroying our organization. If you are not willing to take the fight now then it is time for us to leave as soon as possible, letting the party become the sect it will inevitably will be, if they carry on the current course.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, if the position we outline here is incorrect and the leadership's actions are completely defensible to the class, pulling people towards our ideas, then it is the CC’s job to prove it. If comrade delta is an exonerated member of the party, then surely the comrade should be doing regular meetings and should certainly be down to do a meeting at Marxism (they are after all a talented orator). Yet the CC shies away from this, a blatant contradiction between their words and their actions, showing their critics that they are not confident in defending their actions</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The SWP will continue deteriorating as long as the leadership’s arrogant ignorance persists.</span></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="padding: 0px;">
<span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: #444444;">Annoyed Badger, Proletarian Bagel, Howard, Steerpike and Bleeding Jug.</b></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-35409662640724817772013-05-21T18:48:00.000+01:002013-05-21T18:59:46.429+01:00Losing the aura of competence<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: #444444;">This is a guest post by S Wells</i></span></div>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since special conference, the sense has grown that the present leadership would </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">be incapable of organising a demonstration, a union meeting, a t-shirt stall... if it did </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">not have the notes left to it by others who had done the job better over the past 60 </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">years. An obvious starting point is the publicity for this year’s Marxism festival, with </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the prominence it gives to such “highlights” as talks by Suzanne Jeffery, Joseph </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Choonara and Jane Hardy. The website takes what has been for years one of the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">best events on the left, and makes it feel old and unexciting.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The party now has a “theory” section on its website for which the primary criterion </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">appears to have been the length of time the author has spent on the CC. There are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">24 books and articles by Cliff, and 12 by Callinicos but a mere 2 by Paul Foot, 2 by </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Michael Kidron and 1 by Nigel Harris. There is no danger of any reader inadvertently </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">being guided to the publications of the party’s more libertarian (and livelier) past. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then we have the troubles at Socialist Worker; beginning with an article in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">December calling for a vote for Labour against Respect’s Lee Jasper, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">culminating in <a href="http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/33248/Dont+let+Ukip+set+the+tune+for+political+debate" target="_blank">May’s attack</a> on Owen Jones for supporting a referendum on the EU </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(a referendum which, as recently as this March, <a href="http://socialistworker.co.uk/art/29880/Bosses+EU+club+is+not+for+us" target="_blank">SW too had publicly supported</a>). </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The paper has not always been especially lively; Chris Harman in particular was </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">criminally ill-used as its editor, only blossoming again when he was allowed to edit </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the ISJ. But one thing Chris knew as a certainty was the importance of checking your </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">articles, and only running a piece if you were sure.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Owen Jones has been an important ally of the SWP in recent years. When he </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">speaks on platforms of UAF, UtR, anti-cuts groups, etc, he boosts the size of a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">meeting that would otherwise bring just 50 people, to three times that number or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">more. He is the shared megaphone of the left. In politics, it is perfectly legitimate to </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">antagonise your former allies (Marx in particular spent decades doing it). But if you’re </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">going to annoy them, do so for a reason, to get some benefit. What has the party </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">gained? We have been made to look like a collective of cross toddlers, still irking at </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jones’ snubbing of Marxism. Our pettiness has won us no friends at all. </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you look at the rump party’s present leadership; the question that recurs is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“why was he, or she, promoted?” I doubt there are many people outside our ranks </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who grasp quite how weak we now are. To put it as bluntly as I can; the second </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">longest serving member of our central committee is Michael Bradley, our industrial </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">organiser. Really, what seasoned union activist, finding themselves suddenly in a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hard-spot, would phone Bradley for his advice?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At Tony Cliff’s 80t</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">h birthday celebration, Paul Foot imagined out loud the conversation that might have taken place between Cliff and the immigration officer </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who would have met him off the boat from Palestine. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You see officer, in fifty years’ </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">time, I will have my own organisation, with about 100 people working for me, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">something like 10,000 members.” (Imagine Foot’s parody of Cliff’s heavy, Jewish </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">accent)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">“An organisation, you say?” (Foot, in Blimp-mode)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Yes, a left-wing political </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">party.” </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">“Ah, but we’ve got one of those already, the Labour Party.” </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No officer, to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">left of Labour.”</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here, Foot paused, acting out the officer racking his brain. “I think I’ve h</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">eard of them, the C-C-Comm-unists?” </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No officer, because I say Russia is…”, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">room was in guffaws long before Foot got to his “state capitalist” punchline.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We laughed, because the joke played to the party’s sense that we were the largest </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">force on the far-left in Britain, and growing quickly. It was all of a piece with Chris </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Bambery, explaining to the party conference three years earlier, a phone call he </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">had made to the Labour Party asking how well they were recruiting. “Not as fast </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as the bloody Trots”, he claimed to have been told. Or Charlie Kimber boasting in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">print of the “incredible statistic” that the Labour Party’s average age had ascended </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to the shocking figure of 48. The implied comparison was of course with ourselves; </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">an organisation large often to threaten the Labour Party’s dominance, but with an </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">average age (then) about 20 years lower. The future belonged to us, didn’t it?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fast forward 20 years and it is a painful exercise to ask how much of Kimber’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">polemic now applies to us: “Nor is the party just older. Its class base has shifted. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A party which was once composed largely of workers is now dominated by wellintentioned members of the new middle class. They are committed to Labour ideas, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but they are not in the main rooted in the workplaces and housing where most </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">working class people, and most Labour voters, spend their time. Just one in four </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">members are manual workers. Only 17 percent live in council houses compared </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with 25 percent of the whole population and 39 percent of Labour voters. There are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">as many Labour members in the lecturers’ union NATFHE (membership 70,000) as </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">there are members in the public employees’ NUPE section of the UNISON union </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(membership 580,000)…” (<a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1993/isj2-061/kimber.htm" target="_blank">http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1993/</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj2/1993/isj2-061/kimber.htm" target="_blank">isj2-061/kimber.htm</a>)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The SWP is not merely older than it was; it is also smaller. For those of us in the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">faction this was perhaps the most shocking of our recent experiences. When </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">finally we managed to get hold of the membership lists (which once were issued, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">routinely, to all branch activists), we learned what a very long tail of non-members </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the party is carrying. In 1995, if a person had not paid subs within 2 years, they </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">were removed from the membership lists. In 2013, a large majority of the party’s </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">claimed membership had not paid anything for more than 2 years. We found entry </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">after entry reading something like, “last subs: August 2001 £5.” A party with a </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">paper membership of around 7,000 turned out to have had just 2,300 subs paying </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">members (and this was before the 350 resignations this March alone).</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A party which cannot administer its own records is, by definition, a party on the verge </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of its demise. Because if you can’t say (even in private) what the real income is and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">what the real expenditure is, how on earth can you decide whether the party has too </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">many journalists, organisers or (dare I ask) too many … managers?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: #eeeeee;">S Wells</span></b></span>Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-67563982700265575822013-05-19T18:30:00.000+01:002013-05-19T18:30:00.543+01:00A reply to Mike Gonzalez<br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>This is a guest post by Comrade Layla</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><b><span style="color: #eeeeee;">[This is a reply to 'Who Will Teach The Teachers?' by Mike Gonzalez. We did approach the author to reproduce the piece on this blog but we did not receive final confirmation. It has been shared in the public domain and can be found <span id="goog_1259130620"></span><a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/141977026/Who-Will-Teach-the-Teachers-2?secret_password=2ecnhcy9zk0z2fgp8x8s" target="_blank">HERE</a><span id="goog_1259130621"></span> - The Fault Lines editors</span></b><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><b>]</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The piece should be welcomed by comrades inside and outside of the party.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My thoughts are the following:</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issue of unevenness in class consciousness is an important issue. We have to come to terms with it. If you re-read Molyneux’s book he actually holds a very conservative line which amounts to the following: <i>The unevenness inside of the class is replicated inside of the revolutionary party at a higher level</i>. John’s recent piece on party and class illuminates that he reduces everything to the question of the party. No mention of class whatsoever.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Gonzales points toward something quite unique. So-called unevenness in class consciousness is solely based on informational discrepancies. In other words, CC member X knows a left bureaucrat, CC member Y knew Cliff personally, MG knows about Latin America. Several hundred members do not have access to this information. This is a bureaucratic way of seeing ‘class consciousness’. Instead it should be based on the concrete experiences of struggle. The lack thereof creates a situation in which information substitutes for real revolutionary experiences.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In my opinion, this added to such a rapid breakdown of trust inside of the organisation. If you build a leadership on providing activists with superior information (but no strategy) and suddenly don’t feed these activists with the information about what’s happening inside of their own party you will pay a price for it. <i>Political weakness will never be forgiven!</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The issue of class consciousness is also important in regard to the question of students and youth. Of course, students will carry all kinds of ideas into the party. Of course, they will be a far more volatile group given their relationship to the labour process and their dependency on the institutions of social reproduction. However, they are also the only group of people in British society today who have engaged in a month-long battle involving street battles, occupations, smashing up the leading party’s headquarters. This is the exception to a norm of one-day bureaucratically staged strikes.<i> What does this mean for class consciousness in Britain?</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another interesting aspect that MG illuminates is the fact that the party has replaced ‘class’ with ‘party’, and ‘party’ with ‘leadership’. This is not the result of some reading of Lukacs or Lenin as some comrades outside/inside the party have started to argue. Its material roots can be traced back to the low level of class struggle, a neoliberal offensive and a party cadre which sees the party as ‘theirs’ and ‘their’ party as a revolving door rather than a home for the revolutionary left.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have come to the conclusions that a revolutionary party such as the SWP can no longer base itself on the mantra of state capitalism (as important as it is to me). Even when we have people who agree with us on state capitalism (Rees, German etc) we split with them. So it burns down to a question of perspectives, revolutionary trust and the tenet of socialism from below. That said, we will have some fluxions ahead with splits, re-alignments and mergers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; line-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As MG rightly points out the CC’s insists on defining itself by <i>difference</i>. In doing so, it has made the fatal mistake already Marx warned about in the <i>Manifesto</i>. “They [The Communists] have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole. They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><b>Comrade Layla</b></span></span></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-57976255439818791182013-05-19T08:00:00.000+01:002013-05-19T08:00:02.874+01:00The Fault Lines - Update<br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This should be read alongside our original <a href="http://the-faultlines.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-fault-lines-statement_14.html">statement</a>.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Since this
blog went up a few days ago we have generated interest, questions and
criticism. Here we would like to explain
a little more about the blog and touch on a few topics raised. Before that though, we would like to thank
all those who have sent and posted messages of solidarity and support to the
blog. It was not an easy decision for us
to make but we feel it was the correct decision.</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Editors</u></span></span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This has thrown open accusations that we are stooges. For the record, the editors of this blog are members of the SWP and one comrade who left the party after the recent special conference. Until we post under our names you will have to give us benefit of the doubt.</span><br />
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Anonymity</u></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The editors
of this blog have decided for the moment to remain anonymous; the likelihood of
immediate expulsion hangs over us if we weren’t.</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ideally we would like this not to be the case,
we hope to be able to use our names in the near future.</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is unfortunate that this is the case but
represents the current state of a party that emphasises discipline over debate.</span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u>Blog</u></span></span></b><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our motive is not to sabotage the SWP, to get people to leave or to try and form a faction around The Fault Lines blog. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are disagreements within the organisation around many issues, including the leadership, the political culture and the general direction of the party. So if there is a difference of opinion, how do we hear it? How do comrades go about telling people they are unhappy without being frozen out of their branches? What happens if they’re isolated in a branch away from any locale of ‘opposition’, who do they talk to? Are we expected to keep quiet until October and then, like a jack-in-a-box, spring up with fully formed arguments and perspectives?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We want to open up debate and arguments to the wider membership of the party. After special conference 2013 we were promised to have a space to discuss and debate the differences of opinion within the party. This has failed to happen in any workable sense. The ISJ</span><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> has been ‘opened up’ to have the arguments but the timeframe and nature of this debate deems them unfit for <i>this</i> purpose. We need to openly have these discussions</span></span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> now</i>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This is why we created the blog. There are questions being raised within the SWP. The Fault Lines is a place where everyone can hear and participate in the debates.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The editors
of this blog are united in their opposition to the way the leadership have
handled the crisis and the direction the party is heading. We also believe that without quick, serious change the SWP will no longer be any vehicle for working class struggle.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However we don’t necessarily agree in totality
how we go forwards, or our individual analysis of what went so badly wrong. We want to replicate this in the submissions to
the blog. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is important to note that
guest posts do not necessarily represent the position of the blog and its editors; this blog is a space for comrades to submit
articles which we feel are important or add to the debate. We also welcome submissions as replies to
posts that have been published. We
encourage comrades to use their names rather than pseudonyms although until we
are also open about who we are, we understand the need for anonymity.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We would also like to encourage use of the comments section under each post. This would be a great place for comrades to discuss articles and bring their own thoughts to the subject.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We hope that
The Fault Lines serves a purpose in opening up the debate to all comrades, no matter your location or contacts. There
is no reason to keep quiet.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-65162380655419889742013-05-16T19:30:00.000+01:002013-05-19T01:20:24.169+01:00Building in FE – What we did wrong<br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: #444444;">This is a guest post by Baaria13</i></span></div>
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<i><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*References
to location of colleges, universities and names have been redacted so as to
protect privacy and a backlash from the leadership*<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hope this blog can be a discussion of
political perspectives and wider ideological questions on topics the CC would
rather avoid debate on. However organisational matters are important too
because it’s become increasingly clear that there were serious flaws in student
strategy and general approach to young comrades<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3931799582816087652" name="_GoBack"></a> in the
recent period, it’s positive that a discussion is opening up but absent from
that has been a reflection of the issues outside HE. Here I’ll be focusing specifically
on FE, I’ll be reflecting what the problems of recent party strategy in the SWP
have been, focusing largely on the failure to recognise FE as having different conditions
to HE and therefore the absence of a separate plan to tackle that, the party’s
dismissive attitude to FE is <a href="http://www.swp.org.uk/replies-to-attacks/student-work" target="_blank">symbolised in the CC IB submission</a> on student work
that includes absolutely no mention of FE. This
piece is based on my own experiences of organising at my college. Other FE
comrades or activists may have had different experiences and different ideas to
bring; I hope this piece can open up a discussion amongst all concerned with
youth work.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span lang="EN-GB">The
HE formula doesn’t work in FE</span></b><span lang="EN-GB">. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Party strategy on FE included almost solely
of ‘set up a group, have meetings’. The nature of HE is that students all live
within a proximity of each other (either on campus or near enough) making holding
a meeting much more practically convenient.
Whereas FE students at larger colleges tend to come from far and wide, it’s
not unusual that at big colleges only a tiny number of activists live near the
centre of the town/college, all others are likely to come from outlying
villages, neighbouring towns and estates that require two buses or more buses
to reach. Therefore meaning holding a meeting outside school hours is virtually
impossible and holding them in school hours is difficult as short lunch breaks
are the only time available.</span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Furthermore, this is just trying to impose
the HE formula without looking at the specific nature of FE. Namely that FE is
shorter than university (a whole year less) meaning even if a successful branch
is built, those at the heart of it have left college just as it gets off the
ground, leaving less experienced first years (if there are any in said group)
to take full lead. The biggest and most important SWSS groups today (including
the ones that have been driven out) are lead by experienced comrades in those
universities with high ideological levels and years in the party. The idea that
running those groups be left to new recruits from the first year with a still
developing level of politics is completely unrealistic, yet this is what was expected
at FE. </span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No
real Strategy for raising the political level specifically in FE </span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Universities are naturally more
ideologically charged places and new recruits to SWSS are often familiar with
much of our ideological positions and in a position to contribute<b> </b>from the off. Whereas in FE, those
we’re seeking to reach out to are likely to be newly radicalised and coming to
politics for the first time due to the age differentials. For example, at the local
HE SWSS group, the recruits from freshers (that I know of) were two comrades
that had long been involved in struggles and activism in their respective areas.
Both were familiar with Marxism and social movements more generally. Whereas at
my college, all the recruits were new to activism and had no grounding in
Marxist theory. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This isn’t a problem so long as there’s a clear discussion
about how we can raise the political level of new comrades that acknowledges
the lower starting point in comparison to those in HE. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any
acknowledgement of this issue by the leadership and it has meant the petering
out of SWSS groups in FE. <b><o:p></o:p></b></span></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A
flawed strategy of how to reach out to FE i.e. placing the emphasis on branch <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A decision was taken last year to scrap the
role of a national FE organiser because of the difficulty of working separate
to SWSS more generally, this was largely the right decision but the leaderships
alternative has proved disastrous. The
alternative was to place the burden of building in FE on local branches. This
has been the wrong approach firstly, because branch comrades that work have
little time in their day to reach out to FE students on top of their other
political work. Secondly because even if they try then how can they relate to
the experiences of 17 year olds? They can try but surely other young people
would be better placed to do that? A senior comrade in my local branch
thankfully ignored this stupid plan and instead encouraged me to introduce FE
students to the local SWSS meetings at the local uni rather than branch
meetings in town. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All in all, writing this critique of SWP
strategy in FE would’ve been a lot easier had there been a strategy at all, the
truth is that our ‘interventionist party’ has no plan whatsoever of how to
intervene in FE beyond telling older branch comrades to give out leaflets
emailed in party notes outside local colleges (ignoring of course that these
people have jobs to go to, or that 17 year olds aren’t likely to jump with
revolutionary fervour after being given a flyer by a 50 year old they’ve never
met). For all the rhetoric about
‘punching above our weight’, the reality is that the leadership hasn’t bothered
punching at all in FE presumably because they simply don’t care, that’s the
main criticism of the SWP view of FE. </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Baaria13</b></span></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-7633403709806974932013-05-15T20:45:00.000+01:002013-05-16T05:35:39.680+01:00Rape Culture and Mythology<br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i style="background-color: #444444;">This is a guest post by Sam Malcolm</i></span><br />
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: #444444;">(edited at the request of author)</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB"><b><u>Rape Culture and Mythology</u></b></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“Over half
(56%) of those surveyed think that there are some circumstances where a person
should accept responsibility [for rape]”. [<a href="http://www.thehavens.co.uk/docs/Havens_Wake_Up_To_Rape_Report_Summary.pdf" target="_blank">1</a>] This is numbing.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444; font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;">In 2012
Judge Derek Johnson claimed “I’m not a gynaecologist, but I can tell you
something, if someone doesn't want to have sexual intercourse, the
body shuts down.” [<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-judge-prompts-outrage-after-saying-if-she-didnt-want-sex-her-body-should-have-just-shut-down-in-rape-case-and-reducing-sentence-of-attacker-by-ten-years-8414674.html" target="_blank">2</a>] The implication being that if a survivor’s body fails to
‘shut down’ sex was consensual and rape did not occur. The idea that rape is
easily or naturally preventable is not new. In 1890 the authors of <i>Medical
Jurisprudence, Forensic Medicine, and Toxicology</i> wrote: “a fully matured
woman, in full possession of her faculties cannot be raped, contrary to her
desire, by a single man.” Judge Johnson, on the basis of his understanding of
rape, sentenced the rapist in question to 10 fewer years than the recommended
sentence. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Feminists
call reactionary untruths about rape 'rape <i>myths'</i>. The word ‘myth’ is
important here. As Joanna Bourke writes in <i>Rape, A History</i>: </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“the term
[myth] does not simply connote untruth. Rather, the use of the word ‘myth’ is a
shorthand way of referring to a structure of meaning permeating a particular
culture.” When feminists talk about rape mythology they are pointing out the
structural, ubiquitous way in which specific ideas shape the discourse around
and meaning of rape. It is from this identification of a systematic problem
with how we discuss rape that the term rape <i>culture</i> derives. Rape
culture aims to move away from the second wave axiom that the ‘personal is
political’. This notion individualised and obscured the aims of second wave
feminism by presenting individual men as the problem, with no reference to a
broader system that shapes men’s behaviour. Rape culture is a move beyond this;
it aims to identify the institutional nature of reactionary ideas. For this
reason it should be embraced as a useful concept. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-language: TA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">However,
what does rape culture <i>mean</i>? The concept is broad; too broad some argue.
On the ground within feminist circles, rape culture is used to describe any
behaviour or idea that belittles, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">e</span><span lang="EN-GB">xcuses,
justifies, celebrates or enables rape. Examples of rape culture in practice
provide the best way of understanding what the term aims to describe. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 2012 a judge told a rapist that though he took
advantage of the survivor, “she let herself down badly. She consumed far too
much alcohol and took drugs but she also had the misfortune of meeting you.”
[<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-20732156" target="_blank">3</a>] An 11 year old girl who was gang-raped by several men was told by the
defence that she was like a “spider” who lured men into her web. [<a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Lawyer-likens-gang-rape-victim-to-a-spider-luring-4071735.php#photo-3451930" target="_blank">4</a>]</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Todd Akin suggested that a woman’s body has a way
of shutting down “legitimate rape”; thus defining rape where a woman’s body
does not ‘shut down’ out of existence. George Galloway caused controversy when
he claimed that having sex with a woman when she was asleep was simply “bad
sexual etiquette” as previous consent implies future consent. The story of
Amherst College student Angie Epifano went viral last year when she described
how staff at Amhurst college admitted her to a psychiatric ward and attempted
to refuse to let her back on campus when she reported her rape. [<a href="http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college" target="_blank">5</a>]</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">This is rape culture: when we shift responsibility for abuse from the decisions of perpetrators to the behaviour of victims. It is when children are portrayed as seductresses who should have been cautious of switching on the uncontrollable sexual desires of a group of adult men. It is when politicians deny the experiences od survivors by defining certain types of rape as consensual sex. It is when women are questioned on their past sexual history and drinking habits; as if either of these bears any relation to whether consent was sought and got.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><span lang="EN-GB"><b>The Political Significance of Smashing Rape Culture</b></span></u><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">It would be a mistake, however, to see challenging
rape culture through the prism of moral liberalism; smashing rape mythology is
of immediate and significant political importance to all those fighting for a world without women's opression.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Take, for example, victim blaming; where victims
are told that their behaviour enticed their rapist. Women are most at risk of
rape when they are around men they know and trust and are in a home
environment. By the logic of victim blaming, we should be telling women never
to share a home with a man, be in a relationship with a man or otherwise trust
men. This is the politics of separatism and as such should be thoroughly
rejected. Women get raped when they are drinking, sober, by strangers, by
acquaintances, in clubs, in homes, in bikinis, in burkas. Women do not get
raped when rapists do not rape. The true cause of rape is an exploitative,
alienated oppressive capitalist regime within which some men deny the
subjecthood of women. Rape culture clouds this by locating the cause of rape in
the behaviour of women. Therefore, any understanding of rape tarred by rape
mythology means we are unequipped to adequately locate how we fight against
rape in the here and now.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Furthermore, a central part of the fighting for
liberation is the dismantling of the ruling ideology that often ties people to
a false consciousness and divides the forces of the working class. As
Marx writes in <i>The German Ideology</i>: “The ideas of the ruling class are
in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material
force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” [<a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm" target="_blank">6</a>] This
is particularly important on the question of women. Victim blaming implies that
men have ferocious sexual desires that can be ignited by something as menial as
a short skirt baring nice legs. This notion buttresses the reactionary idea
that masculinity is innately defined by lustfulness and sexual desire. Desires,
of course, it is the natural the role of women to satisfy. Victim blaming
therefore both reflects and reinforces gender stereotypes that have their
origin in the institution of the family. This only benefits the ruling class,
who have an interest in privatising reproduction and welfare by tying us to the ideology of the family.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Rape myths often crystallise around recommendations
that women should alter their behaviour in order to avoid "getting
rape" (the very use of the word ‘getting’ is telling: we speak about rape
as if it is something you go out and get, as opposed to something that is done <i>to
</i>you). Women have fought for centuries for the right to be able to express
their rights and move through the world freely and autonomously and should not
have to compromise this freedom in order to avoid "getting raped".
Let us be clear: women do <i>not </i>"get raped". They are raped <i>by
someone</i>. Challenging rape culture, then, goes hand in hand with
defending the gains women have made in the last 120 years.</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">Moreover, BPP law school have
suggested that "rape myth attitudes" are also likely to be held by victims
which shapes the way they respond to their assault and their decision to report
it. Smashing rape myths, then, is also about giving women the confidence to
come forward with cases of assault, speak about their experiences and challenge
their oppression. [<a href="http://www.bpp.com/carbon-content-1.0-SNAPSHOT/resources/ECMDocument?contentName=Rape_myths_Dec_2012" target="_blank">7</a>]</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB">This is why any questioning of a woman’s past
sexual history, drinking habits or behaviour in general represents the politic
of reaction. It is always inexcusable. Never defensible. It reflects but,
importantly, helps to maintain an age old but dangerous-as-ever discourse around rape.
A discourse I, for one, will never defend. </span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-GB" style="background-color: #444444;"><b>Sam Malcolm</b></span></span></div>
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<ol>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.thehavens.co.uk/docs/Havens_Wake_Up_To_Rape_Report_Summary.pdf">http://www.thehavens.co.uk/docs/Havens_Wake_Up_To_Rape_Report_Summary.pdf</a></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-judge-prompts-outrage-after-saying-if-she-didnt-want-sex-her-body-should-have-just-shut-down-in-rape-case-and-reducing-sentence-of-attacker-by-ten-years-8414674.html">http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-judge-prompts-outrage-after-saying-if-she-didnt-want-sex-her-body-should-have-just-shut-down-in-rape-case-and-reducing-sentence-of-attacker-by-ten-years-8414674.html</a></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-20732156">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-20732156</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Lawyer-likens-gang-rape-victim-to-a-spider-luring-4071735.php#photo-3451930">http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Lawyer-likens-gang-rape-victim-to-a-spider-luring-4071735.php#photo-3451930</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college">http://amherststudent.amherst.edu/?q=article%2F2012%2F10%2F17%2Faccount-sexual-assault-amherst-college</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; text-indent: -18pt;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><a href="http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm">http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm</a></span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: #444444; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: -18pt;"><a href="http://www.bpp.com/carbon-content-1.0-SNAPSHOT/resources/ECMDocument?contentName=Rape_myths_Dec_2012">http://www.bpp.com/carbon-content-1.0-SNAPSHOT/resources/ECMDocument?contentName=Rape_myths_Dec_2012</a></span></li>
</ol>
<br />Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-51747347023492296732013-05-14T22:05:00.000+01:002013-05-15T18:30:42.777+01:00A letter to those who are passionate<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: yellow; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>This is a guest post by Senex</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In so many ways you are right. Things are far worse than they were in March. Habits of lying, which were once occasional, have become general. “Delta has been removed from the payroll”. No he hasn’t; he works full-time in a job funded, controlled, and set up for him by our leadership. “A commission is investigating the disputes procedures.” A commission has indeed been chosen, but every one of its members had signed the CC statement. Not one of them believed in January that our disputes procedures required reform. Why should we expect them in May or July to do anything other than provide the old system with their fresh support?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">The bullying has been every bit as bad as it ever was. Dissident comrades have been spat at in pubs by members of the party loyal to the CC. Other dissidents, waiting for the CC to decide their complaints against loyalists who treated them abysmally during the recent faction fight, might as well wait till hell itself freezes over. “An amnesty has been declared; the DC will not investigate any complaints against any comrades subject to complaints between the two conferences.” But there is an exception to the general amnesty: if the accusation is that you spoke against the leadership, then you should expect disciplinary action to be taken. For some, it has already been taken. This supposed amnesty turns out to be for one side only.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">When it comes to the urgent crises of the present, the rise of an old racism in new clothes, the party’s publications have nothing to say. There is a reason for the paper’s vacuity; its sole focus is on preparing an ageing, narrow cadre for the next stage of their faction fight against us. This is the revolution comrades; composite 1 rather than composite 2, public sector strikes without any ideas as to how they might be different from the last, unsuccessful round of public sector strikes, and in the faint, long-distant future (whisper it quietly), the possibility that we rather than the Socialist Party might provide the next General Secretary of one of the teaching unions.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">The SWP represents a small packet of historical potential, the genius of a few insights, the memory of some extraordinary people. Its credit is almost exhausted. Give it a few more months like the last two and the residue will be gone. “The party crisis is silent”, a supporter of the leadership announces. Another comrade, of five decades standing, whispers at the back of the room: “it is the silence of the grave.”</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">You are right to be passionate. And yet ... history is full of examples of people who by acting too soon jeopardised the very campaigns which meant the most to them. We think of Rosa Luxemburg as a lifelong champion of spontaneous action. Her last, fatal campaign was a failed attempt to stop her young comrades launching an insurrection too soon. Wouldn’t Trotsky have done better to put off his plans for military conscription, tested them on a few friends, rather than rush to publishing a programme which for a decade afterwards the Stalinists were able to throw back at him: “you’re against military labour discipline? It was your idea!” There is of course no need to be grandiose; we do not have 150 Trotskys, nor 100 Luxemburgs (and nor are </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">they</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"> a disciplined army of 500 Lenins). Any activist after more than a few months’ campaigning will have seen for themselves the difference between an idea that was right but the timing was wrong, and one whose moment had come.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">One vice of the opposition, from its inception, has been our shared failure to address the consequences of the difference between its student members and those who work. The former inhabit a different universe, politics happens more quickly. Other people’s mistakes haunt you faster. The need to justify your positions is more urgent. If what you say in one part of your activity is demonstrably contradicted by your activity in the rest of your life, you have an audience. At meetings, or when you sell the paper, people know. They point out the contradiction to you.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">For comrades who work, it is different. A few years activism in your union and you will have built up a certain credit. The legacy of what you’ve got right previously protects you against other people’s errors. You may absolutely well know that this has been the biggest political crisis of your entire life, and the leadership has been unequivocally on the wrong side. The thought must be there; if they could get something this simple, so badly wrong, how could you trust them not to be this bad again in any other crisis?</span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"> </i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">But one moment’s conviction leads inexorably to a second of caution. The temptation is always to withdraw back to what you know best.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Student timescales encourage talk of resolving a crisis before the autumn; few people in work face the same urgency. The pressure will be to delay as long as is possible. You have to recall what ten years of crisis leadership has done to the age-profile of the organisation: after the students, the next silvers of comrades are in their early 30s, and then around 40. The real numbers of SWP members do not kick in until you get to the 1980s generation in their early 50s. People who have been in an organisation for almost all their adult lives will not rush to leave.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Even on the campuses, we should not exaggerate the difficulty of winning new members to “a reform SWP” perspective. The votes at NUS conference, where less than one in 30 delegates were members of the SWP (i.e. the votes were decided not by the party, but by our potential audience) showed clearly that people outside our ranks understand the moral difference between the comrades who fought against the leadership, and those who sided with oppression: 189 votes for a fighter, and 15 votes for the stooge. On paper, they were both members of the same organisation. Outside the party’s ranks, everyone could see the difference.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">A party of 200 or 300 students would be infinitely more fragile that a group of 100 workers. The best student networks are based on intense circles of friendship; the end of the three years of a degree course breaks this up. The best activists, usually in the second or final year of their studies, have by definition just 8 or 20 months of university life left. Countless generations of radical students have been lost to the movement not through a lack of will, but because of the extraordinary discipline that is needed to adjust from the relatively-political atmosphere on campus, to the depoliticised atmosphere in most workplaces. And that is before you think how difficult it has become for any ex-student to find a job anymore which has a recognised union, and any sort of political atmosphere, even a diminished one.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">This is why the brief period, from October to January, is so significant. In our strange, indefensible calendar of 3 months of relative democracy and 9 months of silence, it is the only occasion when the majority of comrades are confronted with the extraordinary gap there is between how we think about our politics, and how our politics looks to everyone in our audience. The black mirror of the internet gives a distorting image, but it is nevertheless a mirror. It shows us something of how other people see us. Other people know that this is our calendar; that everything builds up to a conference where the old leadership will either be replaced in its entirety, or it will not, and (if not) the party’s last chance of renewal will be gone.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">There is a logic to what I am saying; that people will have to start preparing now for the battles in the autumn. We should not be planning on the basis of “set piece” articles published in waves to coincide with the internal bulletins. We need to duplicate rather the internal culture of last year, in which a very large number of people were writing, using every outlet available to them. There would be good reasons to be setting aside now articles, arguments, ideas for publication in the autumn. There are a range of positions where the party’s thinking has become outdated: on class, on oppression, on democracy, on the nature of neo-liberalism… We need to show the practicality of next January’s central argument: that the present leadership is running the organisation into the ground but that there is an alternative leadership in waiting and that the narrow leadership faction does not know best. It will not be easy, the maths make victory almost impossible. Without some significant movement of the middle ground, which is so unlikely as to be almost impossible, our best chance is very heavy defeat. And yet what have socialists ever done in circumstances of isolation but to argue and to fight? We plan to defeat capitalism don’t we: and in that battle, what forces can we presently call on?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">In the branches, when comrades who identify with the leadership try to pick on you; respond with politics. “We need a Leninist party”. Aye, but I am a Cliffite, and I remember how much he wrote about Lenin and how little about Leninism. “There are five big meetings coming up over the summer, we need to build them.” Good, and when we have built them what, </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">really</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">, do we will hope they will produce? “The district organiser has appointed a branch committee, and the branch committee has decided what tasks you are required to carry out.” Yes, but I believe in this revolutionary idea, you may have heard of it, it is called socialism from below. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">Argue for different meeting titles. Argue for a wider set of speakers. Make the first half of the meetings longer, and force the old guard for the first time in decades to read: Duncan Hallas, Paul Foot, Dave Widgery… Tell them what you have been reading, and how much livelier it is than the ideas now in </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">SW</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">We need to cohere as many people as possible. “It is so difficult”, comrades say, “there are barely a couple of hundred of us left. Yes, but 200 people in an organisation of 2000 is a serious number. Get to January, fight, and if we lose, we leave. To be 200 people then, in a population of 60 million. </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">That</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"> is isolation.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">It is May now. Those outside are no longer watching us so closely. And they matter more than we do. The goal is not to reunite the fragments of the Socialist Workers Party. The goal is not to make a party hospitable enough for the ISO to be able to resume fraternal greetings. The goal is not to get “one over” our former comrades in the IS Network. The goal is a mass party, which a decent leavening of the best comrades carrying into that organisation something of the IS tradition. The large majority of the potential members of the party are neither in the SWP right now, nor in any other organisation. And yet, all the time, they are watching us.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">How could we explain to anyone we might hope to rally to our banner: “in March 2012, the party made a decision that was indefensible.” “Ok, why, then did you leave months later? If it was right to stay in March but wrong in the summer, what had changed in the interim?” “Well, nothing had changed, but …” There couldn’t be an explanation, or no good one that I can think of. “I did not want to stay to fight it out one last time, because I was not finding the party hospitable.” Of course it’s not. There was a faction fight; and, we lost. More is to play for than our personal comfort. What is at stake is whether any fragment of the present, decaying SWP will have the moral authority to play </span><i style="color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;">any</i><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-indent: 36pt;"> part in the left realignments of the future. I still believe that there is enough good left in the party so that we deserve to be heard, but we must earn the right to speak. And that means staying a little longer...</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><b>Senex</b></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3931799582816087652.post-1980693834745909622013-05-14T18:55:00.000+01:002013-05-15T18:26:57.961+01:00The Fault Lines - Statement<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">We are a group of comrades in the Socialist Workers Party who opposed the leadership's handling of the crisis that enveloped the organisation.</span><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">It was the experience of being part of the opposition that kept many of us as members. We were energised by the comradely spirit, inspired by the debate and discussion, welcomed as people who could make valuable contributions regardless of length of time spent in the party. It felt like an organisation we wanted to be part of.</span><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The current leadership's handling of an allegation of rape was a catalyst in bringing to the surface questions comrades had; questions of oppression, the strategy around our student work, what the working class looks like today, the issue of left re-alignment and electoral work, the internal democratic life of the party. All of these questions and so many more were being debated as if for the first time. Why after five years of the worst recession in 80 years, we asked, has the anti-austerity work stalled so badly? Yet those horizontal lines of communication which had developed – buzzing with creativity, energy, and political insight - disappeared once the faction dissolved. </span><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">For those of us in branches neither based in London or with the ear of a comrade in the know, the result was isolation. Many of us felt as though we couldn’t return to our branches, where CC loyalists fulminated with indignation and resentment. The space available for discussion and debate inevitably closed and we are left with a choice of wait in silence or quietly leave the organisation. We intend to do neither.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /></span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #eeeeee;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">A culture of dogmatism and defensiveness has presided over the organisation in recent times; they are no tools for revolutionary Marxists who must look hard reality in the face. In order to think through the faultlines of the crisis in the party, we are opening up a space to begin to re-conceive the possibilities of revolutionary organisation true to the name of tribune of the oppressed.</span><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">The aim of this blog is simple, to provide a space where comrades can explore and discuss the range of issues with which we are now faced. The questions that were raised in the opposition need to be answered. What can we learn from contemporary feminism? What is our strategy for building rank and file groups? What should a revolutionary organisation look like?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b><span style="background-color: #444444; color: red;">Over the next few weeks we will be posting pieces on a n</span><span style="background-color: #444444; color: red;">umber of issues. We make an appeal for contributions from people who consider themselves members of the International Socialist tradition, of any length, on any topic. Please send your submissions to the email address below; If you prefer us not to use your name then please add a pseudonym for us to use.</span></b><span style="background-color: #444444; color: #222222;"> </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b><span style="color: #eeeeee;">This blog doesn't proclaim to hold answers to the questions raised but we hope that by opening up the debate to comrades across the country, we get closer to answering them. We hope to inspire comrades to write and take these ideas to their branches to form a party-wide debate.</span></b></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: #444444;"><br style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /></span><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: #eeeeee;"><span style="background-color: #444444;">We have wasted too much time on the promise that something would be done. The severity of the crisis dictates that silence is not an option. We deeply value the International Socialist tradition, a tradition that lives and breathes, that constantly develops, that learns from both theory and practice. This blog upholds that tradition.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b><span style="color: red;">The Fault Lines editors</span></b></span></h4>
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<span style="background-color: #444444; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><b><span style="color: red;"><a href="mailto:thefaultlinesblog@gmail.com" rel="nofollow">submissions.thefaultlines@gmail.com</a></span></b></span></div>
Fault Lineshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239823418281504387noreply@blogger.com