A little local revolutionary difficulty

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

I always feel left out of these sort of discussions and I think that it is because I am so under-read on left wing political ideology. Indeed, I was reluctant to call myself a socialist for many years due to the possibility of people saying "You're not. You haven't read Marx's Manifesto" (I still haven't). Indeed, if anyone better versed than I challenged me now, I would defer to them

Anyway, I grew up with the completely unsubstantiated idea that members of the SWP were the people that would pour scorn on me for the reasons above. I then went onto an equally unsubstantiated idea that they were behind moves to hijack perfectly good demos and marches in order to have a pop at coppers.

Anyway, my point is that, at a time when I am wondering where to hang my political hat in these times, I was starting to consider that the SWP might not be so bad. This story has obviously disabused me of this notion but has, to an extent, strengthened the idea, as suggested previously, that the left do tear themselves apart on matters Leninist/Marxist/Trotskyist/Bolshevik/Tankies (whatever that latter is) whereas the Right, aside from the in or out of Europe question is concerned, don't seem to have the same internecine in-fighting on matters Keynesian/Friedman/Hayek (or whoever).

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Depends, Bored. If you're pontificating on theoretical questions which have been studied and debated long and hard and you haven't bothered to look at those longstanding debates, I think a bit of scorn here and there is a bit kinda deserved.

On the other hand, in everyday work, on yer picket lines and the like, I think it's awfully unlikely - and would be shameful - if there was any scorn off that nature.

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Well, as I say, it was all unsubstantiated so I am glad to hear and, certainly, I wouldn't expect it in picket lines or work anyway.

As, I hope, is obvious, I rarely pontificate on theoretical political questions which have been studied and debated long and hard as I am not well-read enough on it. You would have to speak to my brother about that. Also, I am more the practical than the theoretical.

Funnily enough, in discussions about the management of the school I am in, someone said to me "You're going to be the union representative in any school you are in, aren't you?". I was quite pleased as it is something I would like to get involved in. I am not going to be asked questions about Trotsky though, am I?

On a slightly related note, have I plugged Socialist R & B band Thee Faction on here yet? A bit too trusting of the Labour party for my liking but good rabble rousing stuff nonetheless

[hobbes]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

TonTon wrote: Well, "Leninism" isn't Lenin, although obviously it is to an extent imbued with the authority of the leader of the only victorious workers' revolution.

How are you using the term "victorious" there?

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

I'm not sure about them. They seem a bit tankie for me.

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

What the fuck is "tankie"? I subtly suggested that I needed a definition

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

hobbes wrote:

Well, "Leninism" isn't Lenin, although obviously it is to an extent imbued with the authority of the leader of the only victorious workers' revolution.

How are you using the term "victorious" there?

Conquering state power, I suppose.

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Bored of Education wrote: What the fuck is "tankie"? I subtly suggested that I needed a definition

Haha.

Tankie

Tankie was a pejorative term referring to those members of the Communist Party of Great Britain that followed the Kremlin line, agreeing with the crushing of revolts in Hungary and later Czechoslovakia by Soviet tanks; or more broadly, those who followed a traditional pro-Soviet position.[18] As the term has entered reasonably widespread use within the British left, it has also been used more loosely to indicate people with traditional and rigid hard left views.[27]
The term originated as a phrase for British hardline members of the Communist Party. Journalist Peter Paterson asked Engineering Union official Reg Birch about his election to the CPGB Executive after the Hungarian invasion:
"When I asked him how he could possibly have sided with the 'tankies', so called because of the use of Russian tanks to quell the revolt, he said 'they wanted a trade unionist who could stomach Hungary, and I fitted the bill'."[28][29]
The support of the invasions was disastrous for the party's credibility.[18]

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Ah, that actually makes more sense. I had a feeling it may be based on actual, you know, tanks but, as I say, I am light on ideology and thought it may be an acronym or something

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

So yeah, so there's a National Committee meeting on Sunday, then there's gonna be a purge. Should be fun.

[Wyatt Earp]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Trotsky-Abominating Nomenklatura-Kowtowers In England?

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Very good.

[NHH]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

By secular religiosity, I mean political engagement which for all intents and purposes have the same dynamic as religious observance; off the top of my head:

- Elevation of the existence and survival of institution as an end in itself, beyond the specific aims of the institution

- Some kind of moral code which is at variance to the social norms

- A subservient role to mass of followers, which some pseudo-theological post-hoc arguments to justify this exercise of power (infallibility, revolutionary discipline)

- Use of loyalty (and accompanying trope of betrayal) to elevate tactical and operational issues to status of existential tests

- Invocation of authority from fidelity to previous generations, especially texts by now dead luminaries

- Use of language which forms a signal of group belonging, that identifies the users as the same as each other, and different to everyone else.

These characteristics aren't confined to the fringes of political action obv*, but they do seem pretty universal there. As much as the parties see themselves as politico-ideological agents, they seem to be far more worthwhile for study by anthropologists.

* I'd include the co-operartive movement in this too; the people who are true believers are a minority of the whole; essentially, they're a priestly caste who are tolerated by the real decision-makers as they are sometimes useful mythmakers for the standard exercise of power and distribution of reward.

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

It seems to be somewhat question-begging. Some of what you point to are reasonable challenges to some parts of the practice of some of the SWP. I'm not sure how making up this category helps, except to annoy.

Not that annoying your political opponents is always a bad thing.

[Wyatt Earp]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

TonTon wrote:
I can do both. And I do. Obviously for those who have a completely different idea of how society works and can be changed, the labels we use for some of our ideas aren't going to be important.

"secular religiosity" is just one of those deliberate wind-up phrases that works. I don't actually follow your point though, NHH. Could you try it another way?

Sure, and I wasn't meaning to imply that discussing Leninism and discussing decency and justice were mutually exclusive. It's just that the fact that an alleged rape drives the discussion along the former lines rather than the latter does suggest that Leninism is, for some members, a strikingly totalising narrative: a lens through which literally everything must be viewed. It's in this respect that it resembles religion, at least to the outsider.

It would be as if, confronted with the same issue, I strove for an authentically Darwinian response to it, or something. I mean, that just obviously seems like the wrong level of description--though there are certainly swivel-eyed Ev Psych types who you'd back to try to think about it in those terms.

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

I expect the opposite version is more along the lines of the news referring to what 'the markets' reaction is to such an incident.

[Wyatt Earp]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

I remember when Maxwell died, there's was an interview with one of his sons in which he talked about how this was obviously a very difficult time. For the shareholders.

[Tubby Isaacs]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

TonTon, how is Lutfur Rahman regarded?

I'm waging a one-man fight back against Gilligan, but there's still some stuff that sounds bad. Close allies convicted of benefit fraud, serving fake wine, an advert calling Helal Abbas a wife beater.

[Benjm]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Tubby Isaacs wrote:
I'm waging a one-man fight back against Gilligan

By any means necessary.

[E10 Rifle]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Bored, the right has plenty of form for internecine warfare - see the current petty squabbles in the Tory party, despite its current ideological successes and onslaughts; and as for the far right, they kick off with each other - frequently literally - more than the far left do.

What the right has on its side though, at the moment particularly, is power. It has loads of it, and represents others who do, so it can ride out the things that tear the left apart that much more easily.

[Tubby Isaacs]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Bored, the right has plenty of form for internecine warfare - see the current petty squabbles in the Tory party, despite its current ideological successes and onslaughts; and as for the far right, they kick off with each other - frequently literally - more than the far left do.

They wouldn't be in the same party if they were like the far left.

As you say, power makes it worthwhile not splitting.

[NHH]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

The Far right's a different matter, with as many internecine splits as the left, and various tendencies supposedly differentiated in very important ideological ways which also happen to be represented by pre-eminent figures; for Cliff, Healy and Grant, read Tyndall, Jordan, more latterly Griffin.

[Brandenburger Toro]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

TonTon wrote:
(Thing is, the SWP isn't just Britain's tallest dwarf, it's Britain's only dwarf, in reality. Or would you make that "only remaining dwarf"?)

"A moderately short solipsist."

[DCI Harry Batt]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

The dwarf thing - is there another avowedly revolutionary organisation on the left in Britain with more than a handful of members?

[Bored Of Education]

A little local revolutionary difficulty

Isn't that the point about the "tallest dwarf" reference?