====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
My real bone of contention with the SWP isn't the substance of its politics, but rather how they pursue those politics.... Engaging in valuable work from below in social movements and in "united fronts," but never really broaching idea of the unity of Marxists, as Marxists, in a Marxist party that would allow for permanent factions and freedom of discussion and debate and form the social base for a rejuvenated left. I remember during my first week of my first semester at college when I went to an anti-war rally and was bombarded with Socialist Workers, Revolution! newspapers, even a Workers' Vanguard or two, the PSL's paper, etc and I had no idea what to make of all these left-sects even though I knew my politics were vaguely socialist and I was familiar with the figure of Leon Trotsky (background I doubt most people have). What I see (from afar mind you) are a bunch of groups duplicating each others efforts, a bunch of competiting sects and no viable revolutionary left. Why couldn't SPEW, the SPW and the smaller groupings like the CPGB and Permanent Revolution be in the same party? Given freedom of discussion, I have no doubt that a principled line will win out. I guess this is the definition of a liquidationist stance, but is the alternative for groups like the SPW just hovering around the 5, 6 thousand mark until objective conditions allow for an explosion in their ranks? On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Richard Seymour < leninstombb...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > Well, Kevin Murphy is a scholar who has worked hard to arrive at his > understanding of Stalinism, not least with his /Revolution and > Counterrevolution: Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory/. I don't > think him at all batty, regardless of how uncivil he might have been to > you in the past. > ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com