Comments on: report on lrc conference

By: paul m

paul m — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:28:08 +0000

Experience in labour movement struggles is relevant to making judgements about political slogans, demands and so on, so it is not an irrelevant point.

By: josfen

josfen — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:02:58 +0000

”Indeed, and people on this thread ‘regurgitate’ because you’ve not spelt it out. You’re all over the place and people are trying to pin you down.”

What do you want him to do? Draw up a blueprint?

By: Chris Kane

Chris Kane — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 07:34:31 +0000

So who are you claiming has no “real experience in the labour movement”? Or did you just throw that in for the sake of it? Why dont you concentrate on the subject and avoide irrelevency.

By: paul m

paul m — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:44:32 +0000

If that amounts to defamation and abuse, then god help you.

Unless you mean Stuart isn’t honest…..

By: Chris Kane

Chris Kane — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:06:45 +0000

I mean the statement that “It seems you’re getting the run around from an honest ultra leftist like Stuart, who at least has some grasp of programmatic issues, orientation to workers struggles and real experience in the labour movement.”

By: paul m

paul m — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:48:03 +0000

Chris Kane said, “Paul, what about the groundless defamation and abuse?”

What do you mean by this exactly?

By: Marcus Bent

Marcus Bent — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:13:29 +0000

David B: “militia is an organ of repressing the bourgeoisie/counter revolution”. Urm, yep. But a local militia is inadequate when facing, for example, an invasion.
“The question seriously posed is what we want to create and, tied to that, how we think it should come about.” Indeed, and people on this thread ‘regurgitate’ because you’ve not spelt it out. You’re all over the place and people are trying to pin you down.
The point that the workers’ state is a semi-state in the sense that it is in the process of withering away, shouldn’t be used to ditch the whole thing. Baby, bathwater.

By: internationalcommunist

internationalcommunist — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:53:00 +0000

This discussion is extremely inane, Marcus has joined half way through and is just regurgitating the same stuff again and again.

The question seriously posed is what we want to create and, tied to that, how we think it should come about.

Those who insist that we need a workers’ state, simultaneously arguing that Stalinist states are in some form “workers’ states” are not merely mouthing abstractions but risk repeating so many past errors.

This approach to politics – determining what we should do not through the prism of the real activity of the working class but rather through vehemently insisting on the value of old dogmas and hand-me-down theories – is shown in its full logic by the idea of supporting the Iranian régime in a war against the USA/Israel. That just has no connection with practical politics or the tasks of the workers’ movement. It is unreal.

By: Chris Kane

Chris Kane — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:23:48 +0000

Yet again here is Engels wrote with whom I agree:

“The whole talk about the state should be dropped, especially since the Commune, which was no longer a state in the proper sense of the word.”
and again
” We would therefore propose replacing the state everywhere by Gemeinwesen, a good old German word which can very well take the place of the French word commune.”

Marcus, what point to you think Engels is making, what advice do you think he trying to give our movement? Read the words for what they say not what you want them to say.

By: David Broder

David Broder — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 22:58:25 +0000

“David Broder asks, “Is a workers’ militia a state?”
“Is a factory committee/workplace committee a state?”
Does anyone apart from David not know the answer? David, I’m slightly embarrassed: no they’re not. With all due respect, your views seem a little undercooked…”

Quite obviously the questions were rhetorical, quite obviously these things are not states… sorry you didn’t get the message.

Yet a militia is an organ of repressing the bourgeoisie/counter revolution, and a workplace/factory committee can be an organ of working-class authority and power. So what does it mean to insist that workers need a “state” to exercise these functions?…

(Nor do I accept that a soviet representing such functions is in any meaningful sense a state… although, I said earlier, I would estimate from other things you say that you believe that Stalinist states are “workers’ states”.)