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thespaceinvader posted:Again, you say 'they won't have internal sabotage', which is undeniably positive. This gets to the heart of reform versus revolution socialism though. You can have a completely unified enthusiastic motivated communist party with a history of siding with the people against all kinds of oppression (except scummy opposition to LGBT rights) and you get the Greek KKE, polling from 8 to 13% each election. Liberal democracy is inherently stifling to socialist politics because it's designed to and participation can make some wins and changes within the system but at absolute most it can only help create the conditions for socialist revolution, not lead the revolution itself. So there's an absolute limit to what can be accomplished and so it's important that all leftists proportion their interests and activity on those lines, not constantly throwing themselves 100% into a system which is designed to thwart their aims when the answer is to circumvent it. namesake fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 21:12
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Panacea sounds like an Italian meat dish.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:16
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Purely from a left electoral strategy point of view its clear that any actual left wing Labour party will face the full might of the capitalist state and be crushed one way or another. Attlee only won because of the combination of having been in government during WWII and getting to commission the Beveridge report, and the massive radicalising event of the war itself. If the left *isn't* in power in Labour their options are extremely limited, and I think history shows that there's not a lot of benefit to it. I don't doubt that PR has a lot of flaws, but one concrete fact is that its just a lot easier for the conservatives to win elections under FPTP, and Britain has had one of the highest levels of conservative rule in Europe in modern history.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:18
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I think you also have to have enough time and money to really pursue politics which is why you often find lawyers and landlords running for council seats
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Jul 18, 2020 21:21
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namesake posted:You can't just tweak the voting system to somehow get a better result because the capitalist state in a capitalist society will always return a capitalist government. so your proposed solution is...what exactly? sit there and twiddle your thumbs while waiting for capitalism to spontaneously explode?
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Jul 18, 2020 21:23
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Guavanaut posted:Panacea sounds like an Italian meat dish. A minor greek goddess, daughter of asclepius if I remember right, so basically the same thing.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:26
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Julio Cruz posted:so your proposed solution is...what exactly? sit there and twiddle your thumbs while waiting for capitalism to spontaneously explode? No you build working class power through organisations like trade unions to defend workers rights and get workers into the mindset of who their allies are, engage with non-parliamentary political campaigns like climate activism or anti-racism or migrant solidarity, build community organisations like renters unions to push back against abuses. All these put power into the hands of the working class to get what they want without having to mediate through electoral channels. Eventually you get so powerful in your own right it doesn't matter who is in government because you either can make or break a candidate through your influence over the electorate or ideally it doesn't even matter who is in government because they're powerless to override your organisations wishes when they tackle the problem directly. At some point the mantle of state power is then taken by this group through outright revolutionary action to replace the tools of the old state and build new ones from the mechanisms based around the working class being in control, either because the state challenged them and lost or failed on its own terms and these organisations were there to fill the void rather than the far right.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:33
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seems like having a socialist voice in Parliament while you're doing all that could even help with getting your message out I'd jump at the chance for a perennial ~10% of seats belonging to a socialist party as opposed to the *checks notes* 0% that we currently have
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Jul 18, 2020 21:44
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We need the UKMT voting system, where the thread poll decides the government each month. All the options are full communism
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Jul 18, 2020 21:49
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Julio Cruz posted:seems like having a socialist voice in Parliament while you're doing all that could even help with getting your message out Except for while you can pursue both routes there are hard limits on what people can actually spend their time doing, no one can be in two places at once. So it's really really important to stress the limitations of electoralism rather than let people spend their lives on tweaking a system or seeing it as a hail mary solution when it is inherently going to thwart their plans no matter what tweaks they do - it's a site of working class struggle yes but sometimes there are battlefields not worth fighting on where there are better uses of your forces. My attitude is that staying in Labour is better than falling into total inactivity but it's surprisingly easy to find some particular organisation or cause to spend your time on instead. That doesn't mean whatever else you do is easier than yelling at people at your CLP but it's out there for everyone. Even if a socialist party holds a minority % of seats, what do you do with it? Hope their questions in parliament get shown in the rightwing press? Being in parliament isn't power, being in government is only a limited form of power, being able to dictate how society operates is power and that exists in society itself, not a government building far away. namesake fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 21:53
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Here's what will actually happen under PR: Tory-UKIP-Lib Drm coalitions until the end of time. Possibly tory-lab if the labour split produces a big enough centrist party that doesn't just merge with the lib dems immediately. Now I'm not saying PR is bad. I grew up with it in Israel, and having an actual socialist party with socialist ideas saying as much is a good thing, but you have to understand that short term it'll cause a rightward shift in the Overton window because insane ukipers will be legitimised by government and will drag the tories to the right on a bunch of social issues that the tories just can't be assed dealing with right now.
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Jul 18, 2020 21:54
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Guavanaut posted:Panacea sounds like an Italian meat dish. That's Pancetta you are thinking of. Possibly mixed with Panna Cotta. Incidentally never mix Panna Cotta with Pancetta.
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Jul 18, 2020 22:10
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namesake posted:Except for while you can pursue both routes there are hard limits on what people can actually spend their time doing, no one can be in two places at once. So it's really really important to stress the limitations of electoralism rather than let people spend their lives on tweaking a system or seeing it as a hail mary solution when it is inherently going to thwart their plans no matter what tweaks they do - it's a site of working class struggle yes but sometimes there are battlefields not worth fighting on where there are better uses of your forces. why do you seem to believe that the political value of an event or campaign is completely neutralised once someone wearing a rosette becomes involved?
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Jul 18, 2020 22:14
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Julio Cruz posted:why do you seem to believe that the political value of an event or campaign is completely neutralised once someone wearing a rosette becomes involved? It isn't but it has limits and so acting like sorting out the voting system and having an ideologically sound team is how you get a large majority is wrong and even if it were true it isn't a solution to the question 'How do we get socialism?'. I'm arguing for people to get a realistic expectation of what their proposed solutions centred around electoral politics will achieve and adapt their behaviour towards actual success.
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Jul 18, 2020 22:19
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namesake posted:It isn't but it has limits and so acting like sorting out the voting system and having an ideologically sound team is how you get a large majority is wrong and even if it were true it isn't a solution to the question 'How do we get socialism?'. I'm arguing for people to get a realistic expectation of what their proposed solutions centred around electoral politics will achieve and adapt their behaviour towards actual success. literally no-one is arguing that PR is going to immediately cause permanent socialism, though what people are saying is that it gives us more of a path towards socialism than what FPTP currently offers
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Jul 18, 2020 22:22
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Miftan posted:Here's what will actually happen under PR: Tory-UKIP-Lib Drm coalitions until the end of time. Possibly tory-lab if the labour split produces a big enough centrist party that doesn't just merge with the lib dems immediately. I'm nto saying this is wrong, but this is exactly what is going to happen and is currently happening anyway. It's not like the Tories aren't running screaming rightwards on basically every social issue just as a result of existing in a world where america did it first.
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Jul 18, 2020 22:23
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Julio Cruz posted:literally no-one is arguing that PR is going to immediately cause permanent socialism, though And I say it won't because the number of socialist MPs probably won't change very much even if they now get to be members of Socialist Party, they won't ever get to be in a government coalition because of the nature of bourgeois politics and they won't actually do anything more in terms of creating working class power. The only way they get to be influential is if there is an extra-parliamentary working class power which these candidates ally themselves with and that's what forces them to power. Electoral success is a consequence of, not a source of, working class power. Trade unions and their Congress came long before the Labour Party.
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Jul 18, 2020 22:30
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Miftan posted:Here's what will actually happen under PR: Tory-UKIP-Lib Drm coalitions until the end of time. Possibly tory-lab if the labour split produces a big enough centrist party that doesn't just merge with the lib dems immediately. This is sort of what has happened in Wales: By the time all the 2nd, 3rd etc preferences are sorted out, UKIP get seats while being the first choice of few. I'm not sure of the ins and outs but I have been told this is the case by various people much more into the minutiae of elections to the senedd than me. (Ed: actually I think Ruth Jones told me this - she's the Labour MP for Newport West - Paul Flynn's old seat. But it might not have been her.) Jaeluni Asjil fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 22:33
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MikeCrotch posted:A lot of the soft left would be *extremely* unhappy with PR because it means they can no longer hold the left's votes hostage Honest question does 'certain leftists' refer to any particular grouping or demographic? Because even in the UKMT we had people saying 'give Kier a chance', a lot of people that voted for Corbyn twice were then traumatised enough to vote for Starmer or just not vote and most importantly on social positions the left and liberals are extremely close and actively have been working together to get things done since the start of New Labour at least. 2017 showed us the winning coalition of voters is right there, it's doable, what we need is the left, young voters, BAME voters, traditionally Labour white working class voters and some liberals. Lefties maybe shorten 'neolibs' to 'libs' for owning purposes a bit too quickly but I've never seen anyone seriously argue that good-faith liberals are The Enemy in some way. The problem now honestly isn't getting the libs, it's getting the trad-lab brexiters back on side after Starmer pissed on their heads in 2019. namesake posted:Except for while you can pursue both routes there are hard limits on what people can actually spend their time doing, no one can be in two places at once. So it's really really important to stress the limitations of electoralism rather than let people spend their lives on tweaking a system or seeing it as a hail mary solution when it is inherently going to thwart their plans no matter what tweaks they do - it's a site of working class struggle yes but sometimes there are battlefields not worth fighting on where there are better uses of your forces. I'd argue that 'can't be in two places at once so do the 67% productive activity not the 61% productive activity during your dedicated praxis hours' is kind of a fake idea, it's not how humans work. Electoralism gives a broader framework that helps people actually do things, you must have seen that in the run up to campaigns we have (awesome btw) people here posting 'first time doing canvassing, bit nervous but gonna do it!' stuff? Those people didn't suddenly magically coincidentally start wanting the world to be better in that month, they feel it consistently, but because electoralism has inherent legitimacy, is accessible, is time-limited to get us in fight mode and has easily visible concrete results it's not a surprise that it's a motivator, even if electoralism was genuinely actually hopeless it would still a vector valuable to the left because it's a way for people to dip their toes in activism and not just tune out of politics. You haven't disagreed with that broad sentiment just wanted to point out that functionally electoralism isn't just 'x minority of seats so what lol?'
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Jul 18, 2020 22:35
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namesake posted:The only way they get to be influential is if there is an extra-parliamentary working class power which these candidates ally themselves with and that's what forces them to power. why does it have to be extra-parliamentary? again you seem to be arguing that if something is parliamentary it's inherently useless for promoting socialism, seemingly without any logical reason for doing so if you have two identical movements and one is spearheaded by an MP and one is spearheaded by a guy off the street I'm really not seeing how the first one is inferior
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Jul 18, 2020 22:36
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anyway, there's no meaningfully extraparliamentary revolutionary potential when the prospective organisations - trade unions, lobby groups, tenant's unions being mentioned - are intimately dependent on powers granted to them by statute in order to meet their short-term, proximate goals for their stakeholders, rather than by accessing powers granted to them by their social role in the means of production mocking electoralism for its inability to unilaterally Realize Socialism from the backbenches applies equally here in full force. What's your fiery left-controlled trade union supposed to do when it does something illegal and is promptly stripped of access to funds? Is there any actual scenario where "being able to dictate how society operates" is reckoned to be on the table? Is that scenario more or less plausible than being a kingmaker niche party in a PR legislature? if one tacitly accepts that organized labour today engages in strikes in a largely symbolic fashion, to gain public support rather than in any serious expectation of holding productive output hostage, then what makes it substantively different from electoralism, save perhaps the target audience? ronya fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 22:47
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winegums posted:when are next orders? will millionaire shotdead be reprised? The Billionaires is on temporary hiatus, but will be back later in the year; I try and mix things up a bit with the specialist flavours.  And I’ll be opening up for sales in the next week or two- right now things are moving fast with trying to move and it’s a bit hectic so can’t be more accurate. Also, great catte
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Jul 18, 2020 22:52
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ronya posted:anyway, there's no meaningfully extraparliamentary revolutionary potential when the prospective organisations - trade unions, lobby groups, tenant's unions being mentioned- are intimately dependent on powers granted to them by statute in order to meet their short-term, proximate goals for their stakeholders, rather than by accessing powers granted to them by their social role in the means of production I think it's easier to return to the days where striking union members start throwing cinder blocks through bus windows transporting scabs to work and move up from there rather than recapture the Labour Party leadership and all the other organs of the Labour Party and then try to convince the public that the Labour Party will protect their jobs.
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Jul 18, 2020 22:54
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Is anyone else surprised there hasn't been any eco terrorism? Not necessarily big scale stuff like blowing oil refineries up or whatever but I guess what happend at Charlie hebdo for BP? Like I could believe it's because the security services are in fact extremely good at catching and stopping it when they mostly don't care about the rest
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Jul 18, 2020 23:08
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namesake posted:I think it's easier to return to the days where striking union members start throwing cinder blocks through bus windows transporting scabs to work and move up from there rather than recapture the Labour Party leadership and all the other organs of the Labour Party and then try to convince the public that the Labour Party will protect their jobs. I mean, David Wilkie is part of actually-existing labour relations history, so this isn't hypothetical. And the actually-observed consequence was that even the most militant trade unions hastily memory-holed any suggestion that they might have advocated violence on scabs: never intended to harm a hair on their heads, no sir, just wanted to scare them a little, how dare anyone suggest otherwise. Only a malicious Tory could possibly accuse us of such danger to people rather than property, etc etc. Strikes being largely performative was already a feature, even then. Flying pickets of five or so workers were not actually capable of stopping coal trucks by force. Most confrontations were not Orgreave. The goal was to be seen with bloodied noses, not to bloody noses. I don't think the taste for casual violence has increased since... "the route to Socialism is through throwing cinder blocks through bus windows" sounds like a pretty good way to render Socialism unattractive to a political culture sensitive to allegations of intimidation and hostile environments and verbal harassment, never mind actual bricks through windows ronya fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 18, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 23:11
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Jose posted:Is anyone else surprised there hasn't been any eco terrorism? Not necessarily big scale stuff like blowing oil refineries up or whatever but I guess what happend at Charlie hebdo for BP? Oh, and groups that decide to do an eco terrorism by attacking one of our safest sources of power.
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Jul 18, 2020 23:13
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ronya posted:I mean, David Wilkie is part of actually-existing labour relations history, so this isn't hypothetical. And the actually-observed consequence was that even the most militant trade unions hastily memory-holed any suggestion that they might have advocated violence on scabs: never intended to harm a hair on their heads, no sir, just wanted to scare them a little, how dare anyone suggest otherwise. Only a malicious Tory could possibly accuse us of such danger to people rather than property, etc etc. We live in increasingly violent and desperate times, only it's happening to minorities and leftwingers so the press doesn't talk about it and pretends our politics is sensitive to intimidation while complaining about being cancelled for being openly bigoted. gently caress them, we'll organise the victims and defend ourselves. Actually gently caress you for using the phrase 'hostile environment' as some abstract horror when it's government policy at this exact moment.
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Jul 18, 2020 23:30
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Jose posted:Is anyone else surprised there hasn't been any eco terrorism? Not necessarily big scale stuff like blowing oil refineries up or whatever but I guess what happend at Charlie hebdo for BP? Environmental groups are typically left-wing. The security forces will be all over them. Remember that list from The Guardian a few years ago showing which groups had been infiltrated by undercover police? Loads of eco-campaign groups. The only way the Government will take their eye off them is if there's a group that believes in white power and solar power.
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Jul 18, 2020 23:36
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namesake posted:We live in increasingly violent and desperate times, only it's happening to minorities and leftwingers so the press doesn't talk about it and pretends our politics is sensitive to intimidation while complaining about being cancelled for being openly bigoted. gently caress them, we'll organise the victims and defend ourselves. When it comes to actual physical violence... no? The use of physical violence to oppress people on all fronts is lower than it's ever been, and even non-political violence is rarer now then it's ever been. Doesn't mean trans people don't get beat up, but it's a hell of lot less than say the 70s. People don't want to defend themselves from violence with violence anymore, they want the state to come and sort it out and protect them from violence/ inflict legal violence on the perpetrators. A government 'hostile enviroment' involves lots of checks of paperwork and presumptions of guilt at the moment, rather than government paramilitary thugs in the streets being up people for looking the wrong colour to scare them into fleeing the country.
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Jul 18, 2020 23:43
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Nothingtoseehere posted:When it comes to actual physical violence... no? The use of physical violence to oppress people on all fronts is lower than it's ever been, and even non-political violence is rarer now then it's ever been. Doesn't mean trans people don't get beat up, but it's a hell of lot less than say the 70s. People don't want to defend themselves from violence with violence anymore, they want the state to come and sort it out and protect them from violence/ inflict legal violence on the perpetrators. A government 'hostile enviroment' involves lots of checks of paperwork and presumptions of guilt at the moment, rather than government paramilitary thugs in the streets being up people for looking the wrong colour to scare them into fleeing the country. Why would you ignore police and state violence when measuring how violent a society is? Good to know all the detention centres are actually empty apparently. Edit: Hey I just googled and apparently they have been emptied a lot since COVID 19. lol
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Jul 18, 2020 23:45
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No, like, hostile environments in the workplace. Being regularly undermined or slighted at meetings, say. Well below your colleagues launching cinderblocks at you through your window. (which May would later appropriate as a phrase for her signature Home policy, but that's not the main use of the term)
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Jul 18, 2020 23:45
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I inadvertently followed a centrist on twitter, it gives an interesting insight into how their minds work. This weekend they've been patting each other on the back for subscribing to the guardian. I had to triple check to make sure they weren't having a laugh. Just concerned their brainworms might infect me...
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Jul 18, 2020 23:46
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I gave the guardian ten quid a couple of months ago, feels good man
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Jul 18, 2020 23:50
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https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1284622296775307265?s=19
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Jul 18, 2020 23:57
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ronya posted:No, like, hostile environments in the workplace. Being regularly undermined or slighted at meetings, say. Well below your colleagues launching cinderblocks at you through your window. Actually I get what you were going for now. But I think that's irrelevant, existing in a society where we have higher standards of expected respect for minorities and women doesn't somehow make us weaker or less conflict adverse. Frankly the opposite if they get transgressed. You organise the workers and defend them and their interests and that means getting people out onto the streets in opposition to power. Most of the time the power of numbers does the job but pretending police won't attack strikers or protesters is flatly wrong and you don't build a sense of power by shouting 'Let's get our heads kicked in for the sympathy vote everyone!'. Conflict aversion is due to weak class politics and organisation meaning most people don't know how to fight and win, not that they don't want to win. namesake fucked around with this message at 00:22 on Jul 19, 2020 |
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Jul 18, 2020 23:59
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Lady Demelza posted:Environmental groups are typically left-wing. The security forces will be all over them. Remember that list from The Guardian a few years ago showing which groups had been infiltrated by undercover police? Loads of eco-campaign groups. Keep the Arctic White!
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Jul 19, 2020 00:03
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A bunch of that is UC working as intended - you have to prove you're looking for work so low level jobs get hundreds of applicants. My CLP secretary had to deal with her work hiring a new secretary because they had over 900 applicants for 1 job.
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Jul 19, 2020 00:12
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Vitamin P posted:Honest question does 'certain leftists' refer to any particular grouping or demographic? Because even in the UKMT we had people saying 'give Kier a chance', a lot of people that voted for Corbyn twice were then traumatised enough to vote for Starmer or just not vote and most importantly on social positions the left and liberals are extremely close and actively have been working together to get things done since the start of New Labour at least. I'm talking about the "orthodox left" wing of Labour, based on Jeremy Gilberts analysis of the party consisting of 4 wings; Blairites/the Right: e.g. Jess Phillips, Wes Streeting Soft-Left: Ed Miliband, Thangam Debbonaire Orthodox Left: Len McCluskey (and the rest of Unite), Ian Lavery Radical Left: Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome UKMT in general would mostly fit in the "radical" left position - more concerned with environmental issues, more socially progressive and remain aligned and more willing to go for things like PR, direct action and working with outside groups. By comparison the "orthodox" left more follow the "labourist" tradition, which is that only the Labour party and trade unions can be trusted as forces for good in the UK and look back on 1945 as the example to aim for. They also tend to be more comfortable with brexit and leave politics and less comfortable with some of the more socially progressive positions, in particular trans rights and immigration. As for winning over the ex-industrial towns, this has been a battle Labour has been losing on and off for 40 years at thus point so there are no quick fixes. Its possible the left could have rebuilt the 2017 coalition once brexit was out of the way but the centrists and media would never allow the left another chance so it's moot.
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Jul 19, 2020 00:29
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The way that party politics works in every political party in the UK - i.e. nepotism first, old-boys-network second - I'm not convinced that within half a dozen years of a sparkling new socialist political party coming to prominence that it wouldn't be staffed entirely by Durham-graduates and third-sons of financial donors. I maintain that it's the unelected part of the party that poses the greatest problem going forward. Unless you've got mechanisms set up to get rid of people who've exhausted their usefulness to the cause, it's hard to effect any real change because they'll block you either overtly or internally with "but what if..." questions.
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Jul 19, 2020 00:42
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kingturnip posted:The way that party politics works in every political party in the UK - i.e. nepotism first, old-boys-network second - I'm not convinced that within half a dozen years of a sparkling new socialist political party coming to prominence that it wouldn't be staffed entirely by Durham-graduates and third-sons of financial donors. That's why any socialist party needs to be about the ground game first and aim to represent itself in parliament second.
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Jul 19, 2020 01:43
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