[Campaignforrealdemocracy] Fwd: Key Responses to Laurie Penny / SWP..... ?

[Mark Barrett]

   This is the mail I just sent to the various student, education worker and
uni occupier groups. Thoughts ?

With apologies for cross posting.

Below this mail are two very recent responses to Laurie Penny's recent NS
pieces, the first A. from the excellent blog "The Great Unrest" and the
second B. from Alex Callinicos, yesterday on Facebook. But first, three
related points:

(1) I believe we need to refute Callinicos two linked assertions (see below,
with reference to Nineham article) that the consensus model of decision
making and the European Alter-Globalisation movement is dead. This is untrue
and we should demonstrate this with both words and practices.

(2) A reminder that the SWP front the Right to Work Campaign has opened up
the possibility of a collective ie democratic organisation of their Feb12th
London conference, so there is a real opportunity there for students and
education worker organisers to start leading the many TU groups and other
members of the organised left affiliated with SWP/RtW and to encourage
consensus decision making to evolve out of the process. See info at
http://righttowork.org.uk/2010/11/peoples-convention/ (Basically: if you or
your organisation would like to be involved in organising the 12 February
conference please email 12febconference at gmail.com  and let's go from
there... !!!!!)

(3) About the Socialist Worker Again, see below about this topic. I am no
expert on the way that SW gets produced but clearly at this time (of 2.0)
there must be room for this to be transformed. Why not campaign for / open
it up to collective, democratic (blog driven?) "movement ownership" ?
"Clause 4" and an interest in a genuine and inclusive under class control,
of the means of production, may never been so apt or technologically
possible.

For me, these processes, engaged with carefully could help to bring about
the synthesis of ideology (a free and emancipatory ediucation for all and
the democratisation of all sphere of life!) and genuine and inclusive bottom
up democratic practices (as are now already being developed in the student
movement by (some of) the occupations, and the ongoing process of
non-sectarian Peoples Assembly building) that must finally be honoured from
within the established 'old' left.

(1) http://thegreatunrest.wordpress.com/ Dec 25 entry:
*A further contribution to the debate: ideology and the movement* "i must
admit to feeling uneasy reading Laurie Penny’s recent contribution in the
Guardian<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/24/student-protests-young-politics-voices?showallcomments=true#end-of-comments>on
the ‘old politics.’ Although I have no real time for several of the
organisations mentioned there seemed to me to be in the piece a conflation
of ideology and organisation (‘ideological bureaucracy of the old
left’)  and a premature rejection of both.  I will not address the topic of
organisation in great depth because I have not yet formulated my thoughts on
the topic, save to say that yes- parliamentary democracy has become utterly
discredited in the eyes of many members of our generation.  This is not just
because of the betrayal of the Liberal Democrats over tuition fees but is a
consequence of the decade or more of ideological triangulation, of which the
coalition government is perhaps the logical conclusion...

... No one would deny that endless meetings characterised by stale
rehearsals of well-worn arguments are exhausting and often pointless.
Nevertheless, in my experience of the Cambridge occupation the balance
almost tipped too far, with practical concerns consuming most of our time at
the expense of political debate, and the whole endeavour at risk of becoming
a circular end in itself.  It was Bernstein who wrote that ‘The final goal,
whatever it may be, is nothing to me: the movement is everything.’   This
formula was a license for, at best, a rudderless empiricism which saw the
Second International put off answering how they hoped to achieve Socialism
until it dropped the question altogether.  At worst it was a carte blanche
for brazen opportunism.  There are lessons to be drawn from that
experience." Read whole art at
http://thegreatunrest.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/a-further-contribution-to-the-debate/
(2) From Alex Callinicos yesterday on FB: I hadn’t intended to respond to
Laurie Penny’s reply
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny/2010/12/deregulating-resistanceto
my piece on Comment is Free
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/26/student-protests-laurie-penny?showallcomments=true#comment-8939439,
which in turn was a response to her original *Guardian* article, which
appeared on Christmas Eve
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/24/student-protests-young-politics-voices.
But there has been such a flurry of criticism and support all over Facebook
(and no doubt elsewhere) that I felt I couldn’t stay silent.

Let me emphasize that I see this as a friendly discussion among people who
are on the same side. So the answer Laurie’s concluding question – ‘are you
prepared to stand with the tens of thousands on the street and stop
injustice in its tracks?’ – is: Of course, and more than that – we have been
part of the tens of thousands from the start of this movement. Indeed, the
argument is largely about the terms on which the SWP participates in this
movement.

It’s unfortunate that Laurie should have ignored the old adage ‘When you’re
in a hole stop digging’, and devoted so much of her reply to *Socialist
Worker*. This explains the anger in some of the comments. I can assure
Elliott Eisenberg that there has been no conspiratorial effort,
‘coordinated’ by the SWP Central Committee, to ‘gang up’ on Laurie.

I accept that her original comparison of *Socialist Worker* sellers to
cockroaches was intended as a witticism – a *bon mot* that was best left in
the pub, and shouldn’t have been perpetuated online or in newsprint
(particularly in the *Guardian* editorial pages, surrounded by apologies for
New Labour and even the coalition). But SWP members took it as an insult,
and reacted spontaneously. It’s interesting that many of the angriest are
young women activists who have been involved in the student movement –
people, in other words, very like Laurie.

Laurie criticizes us for continuing to produce and sell a weekly newspaper.
I agree that no organizational practice is sacred, and how we communicate
has changed in recent years: thus we now put a lot into our website, though
no doubt we should do a lot more. But *Socialist Worker* allows us to have
an organized weekly dialogue with thousands of other activists. One of its
advantages is precisely that it doesn’t just exist in cyberspace but is a
physical product that has to be sold in a specific time and space – this
particular neighbourhood or workplace or picket-line or demonstration – and
that involves face-to-face interaction. This allows us to develop continuing
relationships with other activists that, we believe, strengths both us and
the broader struggle.

Laurie also seems to regard the presence of *Socialist Worker* sellers on
student protests as a claim to ‘own’ and dictate to the movement. This is
absolutely not so. We understand that to defeat the coalition, let alone to
overthrow capitalism, will require a mass movement of millions, far deeper
and broader than the biggest revolutionary party. In this, we are acting on
our understanding of the Marxist tradition, at the heart of which is the
self-emancipation of the working class. So when Laurie says: ‘Nobody can own
this revolution: not the unions, not the far left, not the Labour Party and
not the students. It’s far bigger than that,’ of course we agree; we never
imagined anything different

But we also believe that we are entitled to consider ourselves as an organic
part of the movement, not alien outsiders. As Laurie acknowledges, activists
from the revolutionary left (not just the SWP) have been involved in
building the protests from the start. The Education Activist Network, which
brings together students and workers in higher and further education, and
which the SWP helped to initiate at the beginning of the year, has played an
important role. One of the movement’s most prominent spokespeople, Mark
Bergfeld, is a member of the SWP. None of this implies that we think we have
the right to lead. Influence has to be earned and is best exercised in
dialogue and cooperation with others.

In any case, *Socialist Worker* is a side issue. As they said in 1968, this
movement is just a beginning. Laurie and I agree that to succeed it has to
get much broader and, in particular, to fuse with the world of labour. The
question, to repeat what I said in my CiF piece, is how to do it – and
without the great carthorse of the trade-union bureaucracy snuffing out the
students’ militancy and imagination. This requires a much wider discussion
than is possible here.

I simply want to say that the cult of novelty isn’t particularly helpful in
addressing this question. Sure, things have changed since the 1980s, let
alone 1917. But we still confront all too solid structures of class power.
Demos, however creative and inclusive, won’t be enough to crack them. So we
have to address problems of strategy. And this raises all sorts of
questions: for example, how does the Labour Party (with which Laurie’s
original piece began) fit in? If it doesn’t, is there a place for a
different kind of party organization? Or is that ‘somehow not 2.0 enough for
us’?

I don’t have much patience with this rhetoric of newness partly because we
have been through the recent experience of the movement for another
globalization. Exactly the same rhetoric was used about it – down with the
anachronistic ‘old left’, the Internet can replace traditional forms of
organizing, and consensus-based democracy will do the rest. But, certainly
in Europe, that movement is more or less dead – partly because it was unable
to address some tough political questions, partly because consensual
decision-making proved a recipe for paralysis, conflict, and manipulation:
see Chris Nineham’s and my article at http://www.isj.org.uk/?id=337.

Ali Alizadeh has written the best comment on my own piece: 'For me the piece
is about the necessity of mediating between and providing the platform for
joining the forces (if not synthesizing) of two forms of politics, with two
sets of temporality (student movement with its openness of future and lack
of history and trade unions with too much experience of the past and slower
pace) in order to produce an actual viable force against the coalition. '

The meeting point of these two temporalities lies in the dimension of
politics. As Daniel Bensaïd (the first anniversary of whose death we will
soon be remembering) showed so well, it is here that social contradictions
are both concentrated and displaced according to a specific logic
irreducible to these contradictions. Intervening in this domain requires
more that talk of novelty and creativity. It requires strategic analysis,
methodological organization, cunning, patience, and the readiness to leap
into an unforeseen turn in events. This is the art of revolution. It also
demands the ability to listen. This is one reason why I regard this
discussion with Laurie as fruitful.
*Alex Callinicos, 28 December 2010*
**
  **
**

On 29 December 2010 00:24, Mark Barrett <marknbarrett at googlemail.com> wrote:

>
> [image: LauriePenny] Laurie Penny<http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny>
>
> Pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist
> <http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny>
>
> Follow:  <http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/laurie-penny>[image: Laurie
> Penny] RSS <http://www.newstatesman.com/feeds/blogs/laurie-penny.rss>   |
>  [image: Laurie Penny] Twitter <http://twitter.com/NewStatesman>
>
>
>
>
>
> A response to Alex Callinicos
>
> Posted by Laurie Penny <http://www.newstatesman.com/writers/laurie_penny> -
> 27 December 2010 13:18
>
> Deregulating resistance will mean deregulating the organisations that
> control resistance.
>
> Student protesters march against government plans to raise university
> tuition fees earlier this month. Photograph: Getty Images.
>
> Let me say right from the start that I know I shouldn't do this. Arguing
> strategy with revolutionary leftist parties in a public forum is a little
> like discussing venereal disease at a children's birthday party: half the
> people there won't know or care what you're on about, and the other half
> will start trying frantically to shush you in case you inadvertently reveal
> some oozing detail that relegates you to pariah status. Last week, however,
> I wrote an article<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/24/student-protests-young-politics-voices> for
> the *Guardian* which appears to have got me into trouble with the
> Socialist Workers' Party, and I'd like to respond to the ensuing brouhaha.
>
> In the article, I wrote that the old organisational structures of
> revolution - far-left parties, unions and splinter groups - are increasingly
> irelevant to the movement that is building across Europe. The organisational
> structures, not the organisations themselves. The fact that there remains,
> in most communities in Britain, a small but dedicated group of left-wing
> activists with gloriously unreconstructed socialist sentiments and an
> inexhaustible energy for leafleting, is just one more thing that makes me
> proud to live on this bitter little island. Some of their ideas, like the
> notion that one can truly change the world by standing on the corner of
> every demonstration selling copies of the party newspaper, are a little
> antique, but the essential idea of revolution and resistance is never going
> out of style. When students and young people say that the unions and far
> left parties will have to follow our energy rather than seeking to lead and
> control it, we're not saying that the notion of a people's revolution isn't
> trendy anymore because it's somehow not 2.0 enough for us.
>
> Alex Callinicos is right<http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/26/student-protests-laurie-penny?showallcomments=true#comment-8939439>:
> students can't do it alone. Of course they can't. Nor can schoolkids, or
> workers, or people who are unemployed. That's what class solidarity is all
> about, and solidarity has been the watchword of these protests. The
> structures of labour and power and information distribution have changed
> irrevocably since the 1980s, however, which is why the structures of
> solidarity and revolution have to change too. The power of organised labour
> was undercut across the world by building in higher structural unemployment
> and holding down wages, by atomising workers, outsourcing and globalising
> production whilst keeping working people tied to increasingly divided and
> suspicious communities. Thatcher, Reagan and Blair deregulated oppression.
> In order to be properly effective, rebels have to deregulate resistance.
>
> Deregulating resistance will mean deregulating the organisations that
> control resistance, making them more anarchic, more inclusive and more
> creative. The function of the SWP over the course of these protests is an
> important example of how this can work. SWP activists are the street
> fighting men and women of the far left, and their energy and skillsets are
> vitally useful - they have, accordingly, been involved in many of the high
> profile actions that have taken place this winter, but they have not been
> leading from the front. SWP members have been most effective in conjunction
> with school pupils, anarchists, students and unaffiliated members who adapt
> their organic techniques to the changing nature of the whole. They have been
> least useful when trying to sell copies of the Socialist Worker to children
> running away from horses.
>
> The question of the paper is fantastically indicative. The notion of a
> communistic worker's revolution developed smack in the middle of the golden
> age of newspapers, which is why Lenin's ideas about the function of a party
> paper - that it ought to be a key organising tool produced for the
> edification of the masses by an influential vanguard of radicals - were and
> remain so important to many radicals who see themselves as the inheritors of
> Marx and Lenin. At the time, Lenin was advocating revolution that utilised
> the structures of the most cutting-edge technology anyone had available to
> them. This new wave of unrest is happening at a similar turning point in the
> history of communications technology. New groups can exchange information
> and change plans via twitter and text message in the middle of
> demonstrations. It's no longer about edicts delivered by an elite cadre and
> distributed to the masses, or policy voted on at national meetings and
> handed down by delegates. It's not the technology itself so much as the
> mentality fostered by that technology that is opening up new possibilities
> for resistance.
>
> The Socialist Workers Party and other far left organisations do not have a
> monopoly on class consciousness. Many organisers of this year's student
> revolutions have a background in far left agitation, and many more do not -
> but nearly all of us know precisely what's at stake. If any one group tries
> to claim ownership or exert control over this new movement, they will have
> missed the point entirely. Nobody can own this revolution: not the unions,
> not the far left, not the Labour Party and not the students. It's far bigger
> than that.
>
> As the sun went down over the Whitehall kettle and the icy winter wind
> began to bite, an extraordinary thing happened somewhere behind the police
> lines. I was huddled with a group of school kids and stiff, bewildered
> protesters around a dying fire made from exercise books and ripped-up bits
> of placard. We had hours yet before the police would let us free, and
> nothing left to burn, and as we watched the embers fade away with mounting
> panic, a young man approached and asked if any of us would like to buy a
> copy of the *Socialist Worker*.
>
> We rounded on him in desperation. None of us had any money, but we were all
> freezing, and we needed paper - not to read, but to burn. We begged him to
> give us even one paper, and join us at the fire. A slew of emotions chased
> across the SWP seller's face as he considered this dilemma. Finally, he
> agreed to give us two copies, if, and only if, any of us could sing at least
> two verses of the Internationale. So we did - me, some NEETs and schoolkids
> from the slums of London - our voices shaking a little from the chill. He
> handed over the papers with a smile and shuffled into the circle to warm up.
>
> Ultimately I'm not interested in whether you're a Leninist or a Liberal or
> a Blairite or a Brownite or an Anarchist or a concerned member of the public
> with no time for ideological flim-flammery. I'm interested in whether or not
> you're going to join me at the fire. I want to know if you're up for a
> fight. I want to know if you are prepared to put your body on the line to
> battle social oppression and fight the machinations of a dissembling
> government working to protect profit at the expense of the people. Because
> this is the future, not some cultish Petrograd-enactment society where we
> all dress up as revolutionaries and shout at each other for hours and then
> go home before anyone gets hurt. This is the future, it's happening now, and
> innocent people have already been hurt. The question is, are you prepared to
> stand with the tens of thousands on the street and stop injustice in its
> tracks?
>
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/democracyvillage?hl=en.
>
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