[Saeko]

Give me a single example of a leftist party that has advanced the interests of American workers one iota in the last 50 years. This is the "scam" I was referring to. Most people who join a leftist organization or party quickly figure out that nothing will actually get done and why. The leadership of these parties and organizations is all about keeping their heads down and their hands clean while the rank and file recruit the next wave of tools who will pay party dues and donate their time to recruit even more people and so on.

Haha you're talking about a party that is international lambasted for its trailing of the Democrats. Sam Webb, nor his party, are Communists. They are relics of the hippie generation. Once we are finally rid of their generation it will be easier to get rid of the young ones.

Exactly.

[Goldberk]

It depends what saeko is describing as a party, as dagoth points out parties (in the liberal definition) don't exist serve their members, so even if they are called socialist one should not expect them to.

However their are many socialist organizations that work at a grass roots level, protecting communities from police occupation, organising workplaces, and evangelizing bout socialism.

This thread began by accusing middle class leftists of beige what is wrong with the western left, a nonsense accusation, what is wrong with the western left is it lost the capacity, language and channels to communicate an anti-liberal, socialist narrative to the working class. We should work together to address that not attack each other for the type of cheese we like.

[Decky]

It might be best just to ignore the far rightists criticising the centre right and blaming it on the left and just talk amount ourselves, they are either illiterate or trolling at this point, they are fully aware all the things they are moaning about are things that we are against and have been against for the entire time our movement had existed and half of the "new right" positions they are taking credit for are actually orthodox Marxists ones.

Let them bitch, if necessary see if Carter would remove anything not relevant to problems on the left as off topic. Moaning about the centre right liberals has nothing to do with this thread, it is about problems on the left. We moan about the centre right on the entire rest of the forum after all.

Not to go back to where the thread was before we were dragged off topic.

If you start a group and explicit call in a socialist group in the west you will immediately be flooded with people who are not socialists who inexplicably want to join the party, middle class identity politics wankers who have never been in a union you know the sort of people I mean. Why is this and what can be done about it?

It in indisputable that is a massive problem, you can't be a socialist party without socialist you just end up being on the centre right like the Labour party and no working class person with any self respect is going to share a party with the kind of scum I have mention above.

[Piccolo]

If you start a group and explicit call in a socialist group in the west you will immediately be flooded with people who are not socialists who inexplicably want to join the party, middle class identity politics wankers who have never been in a union you know the sort of people I mean. Why is this and what can be done about it?

It in indisputable that is a massive problem, you can't be a socialist party without socialist you just end up being on the centre right like the Labour party and no working class person with any self respect is going to share a party with the kind of scum I have mention above.

This is a tough question. The only thing I can think of is avoiding the temptation to be a "big tent" organization which nearly always brings in professional activists and NGO liberal/progressive types. Sometimes you just have to reject some people.

Also, I favor organizing in workplaces as opposed to college campuses. Organizing in the workplace keeps the emphasis on the economic aspect of the struggle, which is really the core of the socialist project and its most attractive selling point.

A lot of people hate their jobs but don't really understand why. They just blame their misery on having a crappy boss or some other individualized problem. They don't see that it is really the nature of the wage system that creates many of the absurdities and injustices of the world of work.

The Left needs to pay less attention to electoral politics and academia and concentrate more on the workplace. The Western Left has long put too much emphasis on parliamentarianism. The old Guild Socialists of Britain criticized parliamentarianism because it is always going to be the capitalist's territory. They run the state, they (largely) pay for campaigns, and they make the electoral rules that politicians must abide by.

I don't think the Left should give up electoral politics completely but it should be secondary to the struggle within workplaces where real class consciousness is formed.

[quetzalcoatl]

I don't think the Left should give up electoral politics completely but it should be secondary to the struggle within workplaces where real class consciousness is formed.

I was a union member for 45 years (until I retired). For a number of those years I was involved in organizing efforts. Never once in those 45 years did I see hide or hair of any leftist, just the usual Democratic party suspects. If there were any actual leftists, they may as well not have existed as far workers were concerned.

Not saying that's a bad idea, mind you, but where the heck were you guys?

[Goldberk]

I agree about being more active in workplaces especially to counter the rightwing unions we have now. However decky's point about having the 'right' people in the party is problematic, fine exclude people because they don't follow a certain ideology, but don't exclude people because of lifestyle choices

[Decky]

If I wanted to be taking orders from some rich Toff, I would join Labour/UKIP/ the Tories/ the Lib Dems. The whole point of the left is that we are meant to an alternative, something for the working class and something of the working class.

London toffs already have every other political party, they have the businesses, they have the media, they even have some of the trade union position these days. Why do people like you want them to have the socialist parties too? Are us plebeians incapable of running our own parties?

If you want a political party that claims to be a workers party but is full of middle class London types like yourself, congratulations it already exists, go and join it.

[Goldberk]

There is an inconsistency in your argument, you talk of rich toffs and the middle class as if they are the same thing, and as carter previously pointed out the middle-class is part of the proletariat.

What do you even define as middle class anyway?

[Decky]

Miliband the millionaire would spring to mind.

[KlassWar]

Give me a single example of a leftist party that has advanced the interests of American workers one iota in the last 50 years.

Socialist Alternative and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

[Goldberk]

Miliband the millionaire would spring to mind.

Lets accept that Milliband is middle class, is he typical of the middle class, is he typical of teachers? doctors? architects? academics? managers? No he's not, the middle class are wage slaves as much as the working class, both are members of the proletariat, they may have different accents, prefer different cultural activities, eat different foods, watch different TV but they are of the proletariat and are just as essential to a revolutionary movement as the working class you feel is vital, indeed many of your middle class wouldn't even define themselves as middle class.

[Piccolo]

Lets accept that Milliband is middle class, is he typical of the middle class, is he typical of teachers? doctors? architects? academics? managers? No he's not, the middle class are wage slaves as much as the working class, both are members of the proletariat, they may have different accents, prefer different cultural activities, eat different foods, watch different TV but they are of the proletariat and are just as essential to a revolutionary movement as the working class you feel is vital, indeed many of your middle class wouldn't even define themselves as middle class.

I think I understand what you are saying, but I can also see Decky's position. Affluent people (including affluent workers) who do have progressive sympathies are the ones who often take over left-wing movements and move them to the Right on economic matters (supporting weak reformism) while their main interests are your typical identity politics distractions. This is one of he reasons why the US Democratic Party is so useless on economic issues. As American political writer Michael Lind mentioned in a recent article on the Democratic Party:

The New Politics Democrats, in class terms, are an “hourglass party,” uniting the disproportionately nonwhite working poor with affluent whites who are drawn to the Democrats by non-economic issues like environmentalism and feminism and gay rights, not the bread-and-butter issues of the older Rooseveltian New Dealers. While the New Dealers preferred universal jobs programs and universal social programs like Social Security and Medicare to means-tested “welfare,” all of the social insurance programs pushed by the New Politics Democrats since the 1970s — SCHIP, the earned income tax credit, Obamacare — have been means-tested welfare programs targeted at the working poor, not at the better-paid but still struggling working class or middle class.

And on the issue of immigration:

To protect the working class from wage-lowering immigrant competition, the New Deal Democrats abolished the Bracero program (a Mexican guest-worker program). The Hesburgh and Jordan commissions, appointed by President Carter and President Clinton, respectively, reflected this older pro-labor emphasis by calling for reductions in low-wage immigration. Today’s orthodox Democratic position favors not only an amnesty for undocumented immigrants already here, but also more legal immigration and fewer penalties for “illegal” immigration. This was, and still is, the position of Republican business elites, who want to use immigration policy to create a buyer’s market in labor.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/09/democra ... prise_you/

You can see why the Democrats have lost the support of the American white working class. Even though they are getting screwed over by the Republicans, at least the Republicans "speak their language" even if it is all lies. I assume this is also why so many people in countries like Britain and France are now voting for parties like UKIP and the National Front.

[SolarCross]

If I wanted to be taking orders from some rich Toff, I would join Labour/UKIP/ the Tories/ the Lib Dems. The whole point of the left is that we are meant to an alternative, something for the working class and something of the working class.

London toffs already have every other political party, they have the businesses, they have the media, they even have some of the trade union position these days. Why do people like you want them to have the socialist parties too? Are us plebeians incapable of running our own parties?

If you want a political party that claims to be a workers party but is full of middle class London types like yourself, congratulations it already exists, go and join it.

Decky, I bolded the bit where you are within spitting distance of a solution. A political party is nothing in itself if it does not sit on a pile of real economic institutions and interests. The socialist working class needs to build a movement the way the liberal capitalists did, by first building up a business and media portfolio and then using those assets for political influence. You don't need to go through blood and horror to take those economic institutions from someone else just build your own that are better suited to your requirements.

When your movement has its own factories, shops, schools, hospitals, radio stations etc then for one the problem you want to solve is already solved and for another you have a reason to have a political party and the resources to keep it ideologically on track.

[Rei Murasame]

Let's talk about the real British Left, then.

Starting here:

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left party in Britain. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977.[1] The party considers itself to be Trotskyist, and Cliff and his followers criticized the former USSR, and its satellites, calling them "state capitalist", rather than socialist countries.

Over the decades, the SWP has used a number of 'fronts', such as the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s[2] and from 2001, the Stop the War Coalition. It also formed an alliance with George Galloway and Respect; this alignment's eventual dissolution in 2007 caused an internal crisis in the SWP. A more serious internal issue emerged publicly at the beginning of 2013 as allegations of rape and sexual assault had made against a (now former)[3] leading member of the party,[4] The SWP's handling of these accusations against an individual known as 'Comrade Delta' led to a significant decline in the party's membership.[5]

On the international level, the SWP is part of the International Socialist Tendency.

[...]

Following the perceived success of the 13 August mobilisation in Lewisham, the SWP launched the Anti Nazi League in the Autumn of 1977 with a series of celebrity-endorsed adverts published in the press. Although it was portrayed as a broad initiative supported by the SWP along with wide swathes of the Labour Left and figures from popular culture (singers, musicians, actors etc.), the ANL was seen by many on the left as a self-serving unilateral SWP initiative to seize the leadership of the Anti-Racist Movement and was regarded with suspicion by many Anti-Racist/Anti-Fascist activists.

[...]

By 1982 the SWP was refocused completely to a propagandist approach, with geographical branches as the main unit of the party, a focus on Marxist theory and an abandonment of perspective of building a rank and file movement. The rank and file organisations were wound down as was the women's organisation Women's Voice and the paper for ethnic minorities Flame. The closure of Women's Voice in 1982, reputedly because it tried to inject feminist thinking into SWP theoretical practice rather than gaining women members for the party,[35] was a bitterly disputed action made by the leadership,[36] a sharp debate taking place between those who believed the result would be to ignore the specificities of women's oppression, and those who believed that feminist theories were in danger of losing contact with the united interests of men and women workers.

[...]

In 1997, despite being highly opposed to Tony Blair's policies, they called for a vote for the Labour Party, with the belief that there would rapidly be a crisis of expectations in Labour which would lead New Labour voters to question their allegiances and open up opportunities and space for organisation and activity to the left of Labour that are traditionally occupied by Labour when it is in opposition.

[...]

In the aftermath of 9/11 the SWP approached other groups, such as the Muslim Association of Britain and the Communist Party of Britain.[45] and with them launched the Stop the War Coalition, although the SWP, "old hands" at controlling popular fronts according to the comedian and activist Mark Thomas,[46] was the dominant organisation,[47] The Coalition's aims were to oppose to the invasion of Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq and to campaign against attacks on Muslims.

[...]

The SWP described the Iraqi insurgency as a "resistance" movement against military occupation[50] and endorsed George Galloway's support of Hezbollah, who they described as "the resistance".[51][52] In addition, the Muslim Association of Britain was accused of being a conservative Islamist body[53][54] sharing only anti-western sentiments with groups like the SWP and Respect.[55] Former Socialist Alliance and Stop the War activist and press officer Anna Chen saw Lindsey German's identification of left-wing "shibboleths" (gay rights),[49][56] which were considered to hinder the new alliance, as the party's equivalent of Labour's revision of 'Clause IV'.[57]

[...]

In October 2009, the SWP's then National Secretary Martin Smith was charged with assaulting a police officer at the Unite Against Fascism (UAF) demonstration against BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on the BBC's Question Time programme. Smith was found guilty of the assault at South Western Magistrates' Court, London, on 7 September 2010. He was sentenced to a 12-month community order, with 80 hours' unpaid work, and was fined £450 pending an appeal.[77] (Smith was arrested again in July 2012 at a UAF demonstration against the EDL in Bristol.)[78][third-party source needed]Following a UAF demonstration against the English Defence League (EDL) in Bolton on 20 March 2010, SWP Central Committee member Weyman Bennett was charged with conspiracy to incite violent disorder but the charge was dropped in November 2010.[79][80]

[...]

So, you can see how they've retreated into the laps of the Islamists. The UAF connection actually takes them to Bangladesh:

Azad Ali is a British Islamist who is a spokesman for the fundamentalist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE). He was founding chair of the Muslim Safety Forum, and is Vice-Chair of Unite Against Fascism (UAF). He has also been employed as an IT worker and civil servant for the Treasury.

Muslim Safety Forum

Ali was founding-chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum from 2006.[1] While in that post, he became a "key member" of the Metropolitan Police's 'Communities Together Strategic Group', chaired by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick, which met fortnightly to "oversee and review community reassurance and engagement measures" involving the Muslim community. Ali was also a member of the Kratos Review Group, to examine the Met's response to suicide bombings.[2]

Ali left the post of chairman in 2008, then resigned entirely from MSF in 2009 after publicity over his extremist comments. In July 2010, he was reinstated as MSF’s chairman.[1]

Links to al-Qaeda

Ali has stated that he has attended talks with Abu Qatada of al-Qaeda.[3] In a 2008 IFE blog, Ali called al-Qaeda's Anwar Al-Awlaki "one of my favourite scholars and speakers".[4] Ali has denied that the 2008 Mumbai attacks were terrorism.[5]

Comments on British soldiers

In 2009, Ali was suspended as a civil servant in the Treasury after he praised Abdullah Yusuf Azzam, Osama bin Laden's key mentor, and wrote approvingly on his blog of Azzam's son saying that as a Muslim he is religiously obliged to kill British soldiers in Iraq.[2] In the blog he also criticised the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband after the minister had condemned the Palestinian Muslim militant organisation Hamas for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians.[6] The exposé was by The Mail on Sunday, whom Ali unsuccessfully sued in 2010.[7][2] Later that year, the Labour Party were accused by the opposition Conservatives of appearing with Ali to gain Muslim votes, after two Labour ministers, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband, spoke at a campaign event with Ali. He used his speech to praise the Muslim militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.[7]

Dispatches exposé

When a documentary on the Islamic Forum of Europe was made by the Channel 4 programme Dispatches in 2010, an undercover reporter filmed Ali saying "Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia, of course no one agrees with that."[1][8] Ali later attacked the undercover reporter on the IFE's official radio station, saying: "We've got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We've tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I've just said into a threat, that's their fault, innit?"[1] Andrew Gilligan, who produced the documentary, has labelled Ali as an "Islamic fascist".[9]

Let's look at the Islamic Forum of Europe, which that same man participates in:

IFE was founded in 1988 as a British Bangladeshi professional group, by Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin among others.[4] Its first president was Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari who later became chairman of the East London Mosque,[5] succeeded by Musleh Faradhi as President since 2005.[6]

It was reportedly founded by former members of the Jamaat-e-Islami-affiliated group Dawatul Islam, with whom it came into conflict over management of the East London Mosque "throughout the late 1980s"[7] resulting in "two High Court injunctions" in 1990 in "response to violence" at the mosque.[8] Dawat'ul Islam is now based at another mosque, Jamiatul Ummah Bigland Street.[2]

The group has been described as part of a movement of Bangladeshi immigrants in London away from secular left politics towards Islamist politics.[9]

IFE is also reported as the group which runs the East London Mosque, which is located close to its offices.[10][11] IFE and the mosque have hosted many famous scholars and religious leaders including Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, Saud Al-Shuraim, Salah Al Budair and Allama Delwar Hossain Sayeedi. [12] [13]

For those of you who somehow don't know the significance of this, one only needs to make one hop to find out what that connection is:

Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (Bengali: বাংলাদেশ জামায়াতে ইসলামী), previously known as Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, and Jamaat for short,[1] is the largest[2] Islamist political party in Bangladesh.[3][4] On 1 August 2013 the Bangladesh Supreme Court declared the registration of the Jamaat-e-Islami illegal ruling that the party is unfit to contest national polls.[5][6][7][8]

In 1971, the predecessor of the party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan took a stance against the independence of Bangladesh and opposed the break-up of Pakistan. It collaborated with the Pakistani Army in its operations against Bengali nationalists and pro-liberation intellectuals. Many of its leaders and activists participated in paramilitary forces[9] that were implicated in war crimes, such as mass murder, especially of Hindus, rape and forced conversions of Hindus to Islam.[10][11][12][13] Jamaat-e-Islami members led the formation of the Shanti Committee, and the Razakar and Al-Badr paramilitary forces.[9][14][15]

Upon the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the new [left-nationalist] government banned Jamaat-e-Islami from political participation and its leaders went into exile in Pakistan. Following the assassination of the first president and the military coup that brought Maj. Gen. Ziaur Rahman to power in Bangladesh in 1975, the ban on the Jamaat was lifted and the new party Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh was formed. Its leaders were allowed to return. The Jamaat agenda is the creation of an "Islamic state" with the Shariat legal system, and outlawing "un-Islamic" practices and laws.

This is why the British Left has no credibility.

The British left is with:

• Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh's ragtag Islamist remnants in exile
• Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan's ragtag Islamist remnants in exile

And the British left is against:

• Bangladeshi left-nationalists
• Communist Party of India (Marxist)*
• Communist Party of Bangladesh

You all should be able to understand how in the UK which is full of people from South Asia, that choice is fucking retarded. The British left is standing with Islamists and against actual South Asian leftists.

It's also 500x times more retarded in Leicester city, given that the Communist Party of India (Marxist) actually contests elections here under the name "Party for Peace and Socialism", it's a pretty decent party overall and it has Indian trade union backing, but the British left entirely ignores this party, which is why it gets only 0.2% of the votes. I guess the CPI(M) is ignored by the left because it is non-Muslim and you don't get bonus tolerance points when you vote for non-Muslims.

So long as you keep licking the feet of Muslims and ignoring everyone else in the UK, you will never have 'a credible left'.

The fact that CPI(M) had to set up a front group in the UK to show Britons how to be secular leftists, 7000 miles away, shows just how bad the British left is.

So when you see me laughing at the British left all the time, this is why. It's because the British left actually fucking sucks, and all they care about is loving Muslims, cuddling Muslims, and appeasing Muslims, even the ones that are designated as Islamist war criminals.

*NB: The CPI(M) sent people to find and kill Jamaat-e-Islami members as well as fight against the Pakistani army, back in the day.

[Goldberk]

Rei talks about one trot party hated by pretty much the rest of the left in the UK and claims that it represents the left, more nonsense from the forums main neo-liberal advocate.

The British left is with:
Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh's ragtag Islamist remnants in exile
Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan's ragtag Islamist remnants in exile

And the British left is against:
Bangladeshi left-nationalists
Communist Party of India (Marxist)*
Communist Party of Bangladesh

This should all read: the SWP not the British left.

[fuser]

SWP is a joke and frankly an embarrassment but that is to be expected from a trotskiyaite party.

[Rei Murasame]

Okay, so long as you all completely repudiate the SWP, then I won't laugh directly at you on PoFo, since it means that we are all in agreement here that the SWP is a total joke.

the forums main neo-liberal advocate.

You accuse me of being 'the main neoliberal advocate', but I'm the only person in this thread who actually was able to follow through on finding a credible leftist party and voting for it at the previous Council and City Mayor elections on 05 May 2011 in Leicester.

I voted for 'Unity for Peace and Socialism', which was headed by Mohinder Farma, and was basically the CPI(M) front group, because their manifesto impressed me, and because I like the CPI(M)'s history, and also because any party that Lakshmi Sahgal saw fit to join cannot be bad.

So I actually voted for a socialist party.

[fuser]

No one likes (at least on PoFo) SWP, people on SN-RF were hoping for death of SWP for good after that rape allegation fiasco.

Lakshmi Sahgal

She passed away recently.

Her joining of CPM was a big event as Indian communists had always opposed INA's stand in ww2 but to her it was always a tactical decision and she never did denounced SC Bose while maintaining that both (INA and SC Bose) were part of larger left.

[Rei Murasame]

I assume it was a big controversial event because the INA's stand was basically with Axis? It's one of those "life can be really funny sometimes" kind of things.

Also, yes, Sahgal is one of those people who I wish could have lived longer than she did, it's unfortunate that soon no one from that generation will be alive anymore.

[Decky]

Yea the SWP have long been hated by the rest of the British left, I was a member for a while and left very fucking quickly. The central committee banned local branches from having meetings in pubs in case it put off potential Muslim members. I mean for fucks sake a party claiming to be a working class party banning members from meetings in pubs?

Trots belong against a fucking wall.