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Discussion 11 June 2009
In reply to G[B]'s 'What is it all for...', I think that all would agree that because of Marxist/Communist(all brands)/militant Trade Unionism that the ruling class were forced to give ground on many of the social and economic benefits we enjoy today. What does worry me today is the lack of a mass political party, now that Labour has proved itself unfit for purpose, representing and carrying forward the aspirations of working people. Strikes me the capitalist class have already noticed this and are actively slicing away at these hard won rights. This is something the ruling class always do under cover of an economic 'crisis', wage cutting, pension rights, playing worker off against worker, private is good public is bad, you all know the words to this song.....With a weakened, low in numbers, not even reformist, trade union movement, led by mainly careerist suits, the usual segmenting and bickering on the hard left, there is no social democratic movement left in this country and that cannot bode well for the future.Say what you like about pre no clause 4 Labour they did offer a (slightly) social democratic alternative to the Bullingdon & Eton Chums Club types. Before Blair there was also a modicum of democracy in the party as shown by the ability of the CPGB/left T.U. and later the Militant Tendency to get left policies adopted at national level.
Hi
B[E] has sent an interesting piece in reply to my comments soon after our last meeting. Many older comrades could offer a similar kind of background with a history of work that made the trade union movement a major power in Britain up until the 1984 – 5 miners strike and has maintained much of its power since. Comrades continually worked and risked a lot. They were the ones who seemed to be at the head of the redundancy queue, who were not taken on when it was clear that work was available and so on. A living movement has been built on sacrifice.
His comments on other groups reflect (not entirely consistently) the views of the CPGB before it broke up. I can recall decades ago being told that the CP built the movement while the others merely talked. It was certainly the case that on the whole the others were more interested in ideas than a lot of CP members. However, the Trots industrial record should not go without a more positive comment. They were far fewer in number than the CP and this has to be remembered. But in the 1950s as the CPGB was losing its hold on the Electrical Trade Union and resorted to ballot rigging to cling on they faced a substantial attack from the left from Trotskyist electricians.
In the 1960s the Communist Party was the dominant force in the main Birmingham car plant (various names but British Leyland is probably the best remembered). Meanwhile in Oxford car workers were largely led by the Trotskyist Alan Thornett. The unions in London docks tended to be dominated by the CP but Liverpool docks were often under the leadership of Trotskyists.
Certainly meetings I went to of the WRP always included a good number of workers in manual jobs and a lot of them were active in their unions. The SWP also has had periods when it has had large numbers of workers in membership. The Militant’s dominance of Liverpool City Council in the 1980s was not solely based on pen pushers.
None of this saved any of the groups from decline. In all of them (including the CP) this activity had mixed results.
What is it all for? One positive thing about the ICC is that it raises this core question. The point of our activity is to help to prepare the way for a distinctly different kind of society. We can live as communities on the basis of social co-operation and without the market madness capitalism imposes on us. The way forward is for millions of working people to develop ways to break up the existing mode of life and replace it with one based on social co-operation. The great development that Marx made was to see that the logic of the position of the great majority would help to give us the insight into seeing the way forward to a new society. The working class lives social co-operation every day at work. However, it often does not seem like it. We are pushed into conflict by capital and our work is turned either into something fulfilling bureaucratic needs or giving a boss profit. The practice we carry out in the conflict is vital to change us and develop our capacities to transform society.
It seems to me that our role is to participate in all the struggles at all levels. My difference with the ICC is that it seems to judge each struggle to see if it reaches a standard it has set. Most struggles never quite make it. So the activity consists of propagandising about the wrong headedness of those who do the work. No doubt this is done with great energy. However, it misses the whole point of what Marx was about. He was concerned with how what we do changes us. Socialism lives in experience not in ‘parties’ dreaming.
I hope that this stirs a response.
Best wishes
GB
For once I have to entirely agree with GB,anybody can participate in a strike, political campaign/movement, organising and running one from scratch is a different kettle of fish. That is why I always congratulate M... and L... of the SWP (most of you know what I think of the SWP especially after their antics in trying to destroy the Exeter Socialist Alliance!) on the huge amount of time, work, organisation and effort they put into putting together a very large and cross party anti-war movement in Exeter, not easy when you are working full time and have two small children.
As a long time member of the CPGB (now CPB), except when I lived abroad where I was involved with other revolutionary groups, I know the sacrifice that has to be made, Communism was a way of life, not something you spout word perfect from text books. As an activist in the then NUSeamen (now RMT), one of the worst and most rightwing Unions in history, if you wanted to partake in AgitProp then you had to be in London or other big ports, if you were away at sea working on a ship you could only reach the 10 or 15 members on that ship when in reality you needed to reach thousands of members who voted in elections- remember in the late 60's, 70's this was a Union with over 70.000 members. Also if you are away getting pissed on some beach in Brazil, you are not attending Branch Meetings where the full time officials would ram through policies and motions often with only 'ghost' members present. I remember one bastard speaking against a motion to support/help refugees from Pinochet's coup in Chile, thats how bad it was. So if you wanted to be active, you had to be ashore, unemployed, one of the reasons I still live in rented accomdation, I never had any money to put a deposit on my own place, in fact I used to sleep on friends floors or if I could afford it, stay at Seaman's Missions although I did get banned from a couple of those for organising meetings and then slagging the priest/reverend when they tried to stop me.
In all those years of struggle I never once met anyone from the ICC either at sea or campaigning around the shipping federation offices or sailors pubs nearby. The only non CPGB I ever saw was a guy from the WRP who used to go paper selling and agitating outside the Princess of Prussia in Prescot St, E1 but only at the time there was a NUS dispute going on. When I asked him he told me he had never worked on a ship in his life, which I immediately announced to the 40 or 50 so NUS members in the pub, upon which he remembered he had an appointment somewhere else and disapeared never to be seen at the pub or next door shipping offices again.
The first I heard of the ICC was last year when a couple turned up at one of our meetings and were extremely rude and condescending to a few students that had taken the trouble to investigate us, probably put them off left wing politics for life. Until then if asked I would have said it was a cricket club.
I was never a 'theoryist' I left that to the educated intellectuals of the Party, I was just a soldier motivated by an economic and social system that I felt was entirely evil, I hated the bastards and I still do.
However I do know that revolution, especially in one of the least revolutionary countries in the world will not come out of a textbook or one day to the next, nor in the way that Lenin and the Bolshies did it in 1917, it needs total dedication and years of serious AgitProp within the workplace and in the communities. Quoting Marx and Lenin will win you about one convert in a million, people need to be led and organised having their latent power demonstrated to them in practical ways, they have to trust you, initialy they may not agree with but if you lead them to a couple of minor victories and I do not mean only strikes, then they will trust you and your leadership when the big one comes around. One of the reasons I went the CP route was because of their organisation in the workplace, built up over over decades, the CP operated from within where as for most of the time at least until the 1980's the trots just stood on the sideline screaming 'revolution now' and criticising everybody else, especially other trot groups and the CP. On the basically self destruction of the CP in the 80's over the Euro Communist debate some of the larger trot groups did run a couple of decent campaigns, poll tax and stop the war springing to mind. However nobody has filled the void left by the CPGB, I would suggest because that no other Party has the working class membership that constituted a vast majority of members, other groups on the left always seemed to be top heavy with students and middle class intellectuals, not workers.
Anyway,this purely a personal opinion and I'm sure many will criticise and try to pull the above to bits, but G[B] did ask for contributions.........
All the best points for a meeting are made on the way home. I was thinking about Thursday’s meeting and the discussion towards the end.
I argued that the ICC did not actively engage in struggles. I was quickly corrected by J[X] saying that it had made a number of interventions in various countries. I know nothing about this and I asked about work here in Exeter. J[X] pointed to the way in which papers were sold and leaflets distributed during various campaigns.
It all left me thinking that I had a point which I had not communicated well.
On reflection I think there is a point here. What J[X] did not show was how the ICC had participated in the organisation of the various battles fought. The work of running strikes, preparing for marches, etc. is really the point.
In undertaking these actions the class learns how to organise, speak, write, negotiate, convince the hesitant, etc. It may be that many of us think that the struggles are limited but that is how the dynamics of conflict take place and how we learn.
The Exeter Socialists and many others on the left, like the SWP, the Socialist Party and the various communist parties engage in this work. I think that this is where one of the real differences is.
It is important because it is central to the different ideas we have of the global road to socialism. It touches on what it is to become a socialist.
I hope that this helps to take the discussion forward and I would very much welcome a response.
Cheers
GB
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