Aurelian, you brought up the question of stupidity, and I will not accuse you of being stupid, but your ignorance is… admirable, when you talk about a left you where too busy being an obedient cog in the machinery for career advancement reasons to be a part of.
Yes, there where some maoists and they were mostly students (often from a work…
Aurelian, you brought up the question of stupidity, and I will not accuse you of being stupid, but your ignorance is… admirable, when you talk about a left you where too busy being an obedient cog in the machinery for career advancement reasons to be a part of.
Yes, there where some maoists and they were mostly students (often from a working class background), and they liked theory (imagine the horror) but when confronted with the fact that Europe in the 1970ies didn’t offer any prospects for their peasant war the groups quickly dissolved. If it wasn’t for haters like you they would be forgotten by now.
The trots where mostly outside universities (france is an exception) working in unions and grassroot organisations. We did NOT dismiss mass parties, in fact the largest group on the continent, The Militant, was a current organising inside the Labour Party.
And you are totally wrong about what the leninist distinction between agitation and propaganda was.
Agitation is a call to action: “strike for 15 pounds now!”
Propaganda is information: what is a strike, how do you organise one, what is the role of outside support, what would 15 pounds mean for the workers, what would it mean for the company, the economy?
Then there were those debates you seem anxious about. They were seldom about theory but most often about strategy and tactics. Should we stay in the Labour Party? Is now a good time to strike or will we just be beaten?
But it was all out in the open for everyone to read or listen to. We would sometimes even stand on the street on a rainy October morning and literally put it in your hand. We opened bookstores so that people could buy and read our books. There was no inparty/outparty distinction, in fact we WANTED the most people possible to get our material.
Mr disgruntled establishment: what we live with now is the heritage of your generation. I tried to fight it, and admittedly I lost. But exactly how did you earn your right to rant? In practice, very concretely now: what did you DO?
We are all influenced by our experience. In my case what I saw at first-hand and one remove in the 1970s and 1980s, and the former activists I came across who swiftly went to vote for right-wing parties as they got older. I'm not ranting, I hope, but putting forward an analysis of why I think things have gone wrong, based on fifty-odd years of direct and indirect observation.
My sympathies have been with the traditional Left all my life, and I'm not planning on changing them. But the balance in the sixties between genuinely populist parties and a predominantly middle-class leadership was lost long ago, and, as I have often argued, parties of the Notional Left have turned into boutique organisations practising the kind of politics I knew at university.
So basically you base your analysis on your personal encounters with the focault-agogo sellouts?
That makes it a rant, because they were neither revolutionary nor Marxists to begin with. As typical establishment youth they went with what was hip, and when teaming up with your crowd became the thing to do they did that instead. And naturally they adapted to the discourse of your circles, probably being no more sincere than when they were placard-bearing members of the new left.
I try to find an analogy from every day life to what you are doing, but it so far out I can’t. Since we are both men of science: do you think that there could be a problem of bias in your sample?
And now that we have established that you didn’t try to prevent what happened from happening, could you please stop attacking those of us who did? Or at least have the decency to do some research before you sit down to write?
(That some former boutique revolutionaries played a role in turning the former worker parties into boutique radical parties is obvious, but those parties had already cut their ties to the community, so they didn’t cause the rightward drift, they just dressed it up in nice clothes.)
I have met both kinds of 70s lefties, both university elitists and trade union elitists. And of course non-elitists too. I suppose they as people are/were as diverse as people in general.
But we should not speak of people here, but organizations. Even political partylets behave in an organized fashion where the whole is bigger than the parts. In that way they are, I would say, like government offices – they have routines that can cause lots of havoc with no ill intention.
My friend trade union activist Frances Tuuloskorpi tells about a big unionist meeting, for once not under central control, in the late 80s where people on the floor were about to discuss how to counter the neoliberal currents that began to grow then. And one after another of the lefties held their premeditated speeches against eachother, and most of the others who were not organized in leftist groups thought the meeting was at top-down as if it had been led by the chairman of the Swedish Trade Union Central. There wasn't any sequel. The lefties had killed a promising anti-neo-liberal resistance with their know-it-all attitudes.
Perhaps they are more sensitive today – but I'm not sure. I have friends active in the World Social Forum who tell me about how the traditional lefties, mostly trots, do what they can to prevent meetings to take decisions about further action. They prefer talkshops, so that they can keep as much control as possible themselves. All very understandable – who doesn't want control? – but nevertheless destructive.
Well Jan, you met me more than once, so you get to write a review of the work that I used to do trust pilot if you like to, while Aurelian doesn’t. :-)))
And I knew Frances (give her my best if you talk to her). One of the deciding factors in me breaking with what was left of the new left actually was when she and her fellow workers occupied the factory. I was on the inside, of course writing about it but also trying to organise solidarity from the outside. It didn’t work because we could only scramble together a few grassroot trade unionists, most of them ex trots of the USFI brand. The left groups weren’t interested, but mind you: neither was the Social Forum crowd.
And speaking of the devils, Frances is the only one that I know that still claims to be a maoist, and that takes ‘serve the people’ seriously.
The trots suffer from the delusion that we live in a permanent revolutionary or pre revolutionary situation, quoting Lenins four thesis on the objective factors, forgetting his three points on the subjective factors, not even mentioning Trotskys theory of dual power… When the illusion brakes they then suffer from a confusion that they have no idea how to handle.
And they often suffer from vanguardism, not understanding that what marx and lenin referred to as the revolutionary vanguard was a crystallisation of the most politically advanced layer of the working class hardened in the class struggle, not a tiny group of people that had read a few books.
And you may well be right about the WSF today, but I was in Porto Alegre in 2003 and the forum had already been lost to the NGOs. Being there was a powerful emotional experience, but already by then it seemed clear to me that the process would not be a vanguard (if you pardon the expression) but a sideshow. That was confirmed by my travels through most of the continent meeting with people who were in real struggles: nobody referred to the WSF, it simply wasn’t a thing.
So I have no problem with people who criticise the new left, but it should be done from a position of first hand experience or second hand knowledge and with a clear understanding of what we were trying to do. And that’s where Aurelian fails when he goes on his reoccurring rants.
You are right about the WSF – but much of the blame goes to the leftists that can't permit others than parties to take on the whole society, so they have to keep the WSF a talkshop, or a buffet of good ideas. Well-funded NGOs must of course also take a lot of blame for that, but in this case it is just what one could expect from their interest in keeping their paid jobs.
It's just recently – last year – less well-funded, member-governed organizations escaped from the trap and could start discuss about priorities and common programs. Of course I don't know if it will last.
And you are dead right about the vanguardism, of course. I have nothing against vanguardism meaning "let's do this" (somebody must take the initiative, whoever it is, and if nobody else...) – but the posturing of "I know it all but you are an amateur because you are not a member of the Party" really makes me sick. It ruined the budding campaign against neoliberalism in Sweden about 1986 (according to Frances), and according to Marcela López Levy: We are millions, 2004, it also ruined the anti-neoliberal movement in Argentina in 2000. To most people it looks like freemasonry.
It's probably irritating to Aurelien also, that's why he writes as he does.
A polemic is fact based, a rant is emotional. So what A went on a rant (I point to the factual lapses in my post), while my answer was harsh but polemic.
I earned my right to be polemic, to even sometimes mock disgruntled former establishment figures, by being a 24/7 revolutionary Marxist activist for 20 years, earning just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, constantly trying to get the word out about what was happening and trying to organise grassroot resistance.
In no way am I attempting to hide the fact that we failed. Miserably. But at least we tried to stop this bullshit while the bull still was shitting. Did you?
Aurelian, you brought up the question of stupidity, and I will not accuse you of being stupid, but your ignorance is… admirable, when you talk about a left you where too busy being an obedient cog in the machinery for career advancement reasons to be a part of.
Yes, there where some maoists and they were mostly students (often from a working class background), and they liked theory (imagine the horror) but when confronted with the fact that Europe in the 1970ies didn’t offer any prospects for their peasant war the groups quickly dissolved. If it wasn’t for haters like you they would be forgotten by now.
The trots where mostly outside universities (france is an exception) working in unions and grassroot organisations. We did NOT dismiss mass parties, in fact the largest group on the continent, The Militant, was a current organising inside the Labour Party.
And you are totally wrong about what the leninist distinction between agitation and propaganda was.
Agitation is a call to action: “strike for 15 pounds now!”
Propaganda is information: what is a strike, how do you organise one, what is the role of outside support, what would 15 pounds mean for the workers, what would it mean for the company, the economy?
Then there were those debates you seem anxious about. They were seldom about theory but most often about strategy and tactics. Should we stay in the Labour Party? Is now a good time to strike or will we just be beaten?
But it was all out in the open for everyone to read or listen to. We would sometimes even stand on the street on a rainy October morning and literally put it in your hand. We opened bookstores so that people could buy and read our books. There was no inparty/outparty distinction, in fact we WANTED the most people possible to get our material.
Mr disgruntled establishment: what we live with now is the heritage of your generation. I tried to fight it, and admittedly I lost. But exactly how did you earn your right to rant? In practice, very concretely now: what did you DO?
We are all influenced by our experience. In my case what I saw at first-hand and one remove in the 1970s and 1980s, and the former activists I came across who swiftly went to vote for right-wing parties as they got older. I'm not ranting, I hope, but putting forward an analysis of why I think things have gone wrong, based on fifty-odd years of direct and indirect observation.
My sympathies have been with the traditional Left all my life, and I'm not planning on changing them. But the balance in the sixties between genuinely populist parties and a predominantly middle-class leadership was lost long ago, and, as I have often argued, parties of the Notional Left have turned into boutique organisations practising the kind of politics I knew at university.
So basically you base your analysis on your personal encounters with the focault-agogo sellouts?
That makes it a rant, because they were neither revolutionary nor Marxists to begin with. As typical establishment youth they went with what was hip, and when teaming up with your crowd became the thing to do they did that instead. And naturally they adapted to the discourse of your circles, probably being no more sincere than when they were placard-bearing members of the new left.
I try to find an analogy from every day life to what you are doing, but it so far out I can’t. Since we are both men of science: do you think that there could be a problem of bias in your sample?
And now that we have established that you didn’t try to prevent what happened from happening, could you please stop attacking those of us who did? Or at least have the decency to do some research before you sit down to write?
(That some former boutique revolutionaries played a role in turning the former worker parties into boutique radical parties is obvious, but those parties had already cut their ties to the community, so they didn’t cause the rightward drift, they just dressed it up in nice clothes.)
I have met both kinds of 70s lefties, both university elitists and trade union elitists. And of course non-elitists too. I suppose they as people are/were as diverse as people in general.
But we should not speak of people here, but organizations. Even political partylets behave in an organized fashion where the whole is bigger than the parts. In that way they are, I would say, like government offices – they have routines that can cause lots of havoc with no ill intention.
My friend trade union activist Frances Tuuloskorpi tells about a big unionist meeting, for once not under central control, in the late 80s where people on the floor were about to discuss how to counter the neoliberal currents that began to grow then. And one after another of the lefties held their premeditated speeches against eachother, and most of the others who were not organized in leftist groups thought the meeting was at top-down as if it had been led by the chairman of the Swedish Trade Union Central. There wasn't any sequel. The lefties had killed a promising anti-neo-liberal resistance with their know-it-all attitudes.
Perhaps they are more sensitive today – but I'm not sure. I have friends active in the World Social Forum who tell me about how the traditional lefties, mostly trots, do what they can to prevent meetings to take decisions about further action. They prefer talkshops, so that they can keep as much control as possible themselves. All very understandable – who doesn't want control? – but nevertheless destructive.
Well Jan, you met me more than once, so you get to write a review of the work that I used to do trust pilot if you like to, while Aurelian doesn’t. :-)))
And I knew Frances (give her my best if you talk to her). One of the deciding factors in me breaking with what was left of the new left actually was when she and her fellow workers occupied the factory. I was on the inside, of course writing about it but also trying to organise solidarity from the outside. It didn’t work because we could only scramble together a few grassroot trade unionists, most of them ex trots of the USFI brand. The left groups weren’t interested, but mind you: neither was the Social Forum crowd.
And speaking of the devils, Frances is the only one that I know that still claims to be a maoist, and that takes ‘serve the people’ seriously.
The trots suffer from the delusion that we live in a permanent revolutionary or pre revolutionary situation, quoting Lenins four thesis on the objective factors, forgetting his three points on the subjective factors, not even mentioning Trotskys theory of dual power… When the illusion brakes they then suffer from a confusion that they have no idea how to handle.
And they often suffer from vanguardism, not understanding that what marx and lenin referred to as the revolutionary vanguard was a crystallisation of the most politically advanced layer of the working class hardened in the class struggle, not a tiny group of people that had read a few books.
And you may well be right about the WSF today, but I was in Porto Alegre in 2003 and the forum had already been lost to the NGOs. Being there was a powerful emotional experience, but already by then it seemed clear to me that the process would not be a vanguard (if you pardon the expression) but a sideshow. That was confirmed by my travels through most of the continent meeting with people who were in real struggles: nobody referred to the WSF, it simply wasn’t a thing.
So I have no problem with people who criticise the new left, but it should be done from a position of first hand experience or second hand knowledge and with a clear understanding of what we were trying to do. And that’s where Aurelian fails when he goes on his reoccurring rants.
You are right about the WSF – but much of the blame goes to the leftists that can't permit others than parties to take on the whole society, so they have to keep the WSF a talkshop, or a buffet of good ideas. Well-funded NGOs must of course also take a lot of blame for that, but in this case it is just what one could expect from their interest in keeping their paid jobs.
It's just recently – last year – less well-funded, member-governed organizations escaped from the trap and could start discuss about priorities and common programs. Of course I don't know if it will last.
And you are dead right about the vanguardism, of course. I have nothing against vanguardism meaning "let's do this" (somebody must take the initiative, whoever it is, and if nobody else...) – but the posturing of "I know it all but you are an amateur because you are not a member of the Party" really makes me sick. It ruined the budding campaign against neoliberalism in Sweden about 1986 (according to Frances), and according to Marcela López Levy: We are millions, 2004, it also ruined the anti-neoliberal movement in Argentina in 2000. To most people it looks like freemasonry.
It's probably irritating to Aurelien also, that's why he writes as he does.
PS. For those who can read Swedish, or have access to DeepL, Frances' view can be seen at https://francesblogg.com/2011/08/13/kampen-och-ofarliggorandet/
"But exactly how did you earn your right to rant?"
Well JH, that was quite a rant. I'll pose that same question to you.
BTW, there is a difference between a polemic and a rant. I believe Aurelian provided a polemic. You should explore the difference.
A polemic is fact based, a rant is emotional. So what A went on a rant (I point to the factual lapses in my post), while my answer was harsh but polemic.
I earned my right to be polemic, to even sometimes mock disgruntled former establishment figures, by being a 24/7 revolutionary Marxist activist for 20 years, earning just enough to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, constantly trying to get the word out about what was happening and trying to organise grassroot resistance.
In no way am I attempting to hide the fact that we failed. Miserably. But at least we tried to stop this bullshit while the bull still was shitting. Did you?