Day school on the crisis - Brighton - Sat 29th Nov

Some of the people involved with Aufheben, some of the Cowley Club milieu, some of the non-aligned class politics types. I'm hoping it will be good, and the Brighton Solfed local are hopefully attending en masse, but don't want to make a promise that makes you travel that far! Can find you somewhere to crash if you do though (pm).

i'll make notes. i'm sure there's enough politicos in manc to pull off something similar, and i'm sure the combined might of the AF and Solfed could subsidise a speaker to travel up if there's no-one local. if it's actually any good i'll let you know and i'm sure there'll be discussion on here too.

ok, everytime someone says how this just oncemore confirms decadence, i'm saying the same about the holy spirit. let's try and keep things constructive eh? reasoned analysis and practical suggestions for a communist response would be good.

at least 3 of brighton solfed are coming, 2 are working and 1 has family commitments. don't know about the other one.

well, we will come out of this crisis eventually, unless you think it's the final crisis of capitalism. i don't find the concept of 'permanent crisis' very useful to describe capitalism over almost a century of various developments, as a crisis is my definition a deviation from the norm. but yeah hopefully something concrete will come out of it, rather than just a bunch of lefties telling each other they're right

they could, but they'd fail at statistics

clearly every historical event is in some respects unique, but this is not to say we can't learn anything from past or recent responses to crises (the 70s, when the balance of class forces was much stronger in our favour, argentina 2001 which is clearly a different social context to the UK, the current struggle in iceland which may be informative or be rooted in specific local/historical conditions...).

it's also important to research the local conditions; our solfed local is compiling some info (won't be ready for saturday) on how the recession is likely to effect brighton in particular - employment in financial services, retail, and tourism is above the national average here and these are some of the most at risk sectors for job cuts. major employers have already started making redundancies. i think it's important to survey the local conditions as well as the global-historical ones and a theoretical grasp of what's happening. local councils and development agencies have loads of stats on this kind of thing we can use for our purposes.

You missed out jack, was a good day. At least 50 people attended, possibly more as the cowley club was packed. the first session was a good introduction to the immediate causes of the credit crunch and how banking works (which i found useful even though i work in the sector and have some knowledge of it). the second session gave a marxian analytical framework to understand the crisis (that profits come from labour etc). was a bit jargon-heavy but it is hard to condense marx into a 20 minute presentation for beginners. the second half of the day was more about struggles - some of the presentations strayed back into more abstract theoretical territory but there were good ones on the struggles in iceland (lots of historical background, if a bit fetishising of aggro with the cops) and a talk by a guy mentioning struggles in various places (Germany, China...) which made some really good points, like this isn't a zero-sum crisis where redundancies here mean new jobs in china, but a generalised world crisis with redundancies and attacks everwhere.

the implications of globalisation for the international circulation of struggles were discussed. myself and another guy stressed the recession will hit brighton and the south east hardest because of the financial services-bias of the local economy (25% of employment and up to 33% of GVA is in financial/business services. retail and tourism both also make up significant sectors of employment, and are expected to suffer). there's a wealth of information on this kind of stuff from local councils and development agencies, and i'd encourage people to do a bit of research as to the likely impacts locally to inform a more strategic approach.

also had some good discussions with old comrades and new in between sessions, shame there wasn't more time for discussion but i plugged libcom and encouraged people to carry on the discussions and organising. met miles from the ICC, who seemed sound, made some sensible points, didn't mention the 'd-word' and came off definitely less mental than the guy who insisted the government owns a supermarket, and the petrol pumps, and should 'just raise prices to solve the crisis' (?!). there may well be a follow-up event organised for different groups to co-ordinate their activities, and discuss further practical responses.

i was pleasantly surprised at the turnout - brighton has a large lefty milieu but rarely do you get activists and communists in the same room reading from the same page. in fact haven't seen that spectrum of people in one place since the anti-war movement in 2003. whether any similar movement or wider politicisiation will happen like it did then remains to be seen, i guess we'll see as the crisis radiates out from the financial sector and becomes a material reality for more people, not just something on the news.

was just nice to hear an ICCer making some solid points without the metaphysical baggage

i think he's coming more out of the anarchist-activist milieu than the communist one, and his analysis was shaped accordingly. however i thought a lot of the historical context was useful, even if he seemed to want to frame the current protests as 'national liberation' against the US/IMF as much as anything, apparently not seeing anything problematic with that. i don't think that there's much we can take from the iceland protests, other than people sometimes react to economic collapse with spontaneous anger and a mish-mash of incompatible ideas.

the talks and discussions were recorded (audio), i presume these will appear online, and if not i'll suggest they're put up. i know comrades elsewhere are considering organising similar events so this could be very useful; the aufheben guy's explanation of the credit crunch and how the modern banking system works was very useful and pretty clear.

out of interest, do the ICC think this is a crisis of a system in its death throes? because in normal english, justaposing a 'crisis of a system in its death throes' to a cyclical crisis of growth would suggest you think this is the final crisis of capitalism, since a subsequent upswing and resumption of accumulation/economic growth would make it look rather er... cyclical, whereas death throes tend to be... terminal.

in any case, i'm not sure how any of this has implications for strategy and tactics. i don't think this is a crisis of a system in its death throes, should i stop calling for mass assemblies and run for parliament?

indeed

if you think growth and accumulation can resume, then by your own arguments it's a cyclical crisis (however it is historically situated). it seems you want to toy with hostage-to-fortune eschatology whilst moving the goalposts when called on it. when capitalism is finally overthrown, you'll be right in the manner of a broken clock.

there is a false opposition here. something doesn't have to be in decline to be opposed to our interests. my boss is in great health, but i still oppose him. the nazi party were bad news for the working class even during their ascendancy. capitalist social relations do not serve our needs regardless of whether or not they are in inexorable decline. you're mixing up 'progressive' as a value-judgement with 'not in inerxorable decline' as a historical one.

the incompatibility of capital's interests and our interests does not require any particular historical trajectory, and it's perfectly consistent to argue for strategies like mass assemblies without declaring the end is nigh.* thus i think it's more constructive to focus on precisely the required strategies and tactics than the metaphysical framework you've constructed and which you consider it a failing in others not to mention.

* at some unspecified point in the future

you're equating the possibility of communism with inexorable decline. the two are not the same thing. at all. there's nothing ahistorical about asserting the contradiction of capital's needs and the proletariats, it's a contradiction constitutive to the relation. pre-1914, capitalism was driven to develop the forces of production, unify the world market etc, at great human cost to workers. post-1914, capitalism has continued to develop the forces of production, unify the world market etc, at great human cost to workers. rejecting an arbitrary division into rise and fall is not ahistorical. capitalism is always progessive and regressive at the same time, but the specific interaction of each is historically contingent (so the 20th century brought the golden age of medicine and the internet, and two world wars). the "incredible advances in the standard of living for the ordinary person" you cite were won in blood, not some side effect of a teleological arc. if all 'decadence' means is 'communism is possible' then there would be no disagreement, since you're on a communist board we all obviously think it is.

one only need note the pareto distribution of wealth in the world to realise that significant concessions are possible from the global bourgeoisie to the global proletariat, should our struggles force them. you seem to think this very possibility means we should all be social democrats. but whether they are possible or not we have to struggle in our own interests. if concessions are granted, it's the job of communists to argue it's not enough, that the bourgeoisie are running scared and that we have a world to win if only we want it.

are you saying a population with food on the table will never make communism? i think in a situation capital can't afford to throw us bread we're rather too late. it's not a binary between idealism and necessity. workers have agency and make choices. in a situation of temporary dual power, workers councils etc, there is a choice to move decisively to smash the state and communise the means of production, or take whatever desparate concessions are on the table and step back from the brink. rhetorical appeals to neccessity (as well as halfway revolutionaries being their own gravediggers) may help tip the balance, but you can only declare historical necessity after the fact. history is not like some individual person, which uses men to achieve its ends. history is nothing but the actions of men in pursuit of their ends.

dismissing agency as idealism allows one to step back from difficult questions as to what exactly communists should do to advance the things we advocate, with all the unavoidable contradictions involved in such practice (such as communist shop steward comrades i know opening up meetings to all workers regardless of union, or anarcho-syndicalists trying to build industrial networks). communist practice is reduced to sideline agitating waiting for history and 'the masses' to take their inexerable course, with a triumphant declaration of historical neccessity made after the facts of struggles.

in any case, my point is that the metaphysical narrative of rise and fall is not "the real question here", the real question is what we actually do, to which all this circular argument is of no import (because it does not follow that if you do not think capitalism is in its "death throes" you should try and reform it; you should try and instigate its death throes!). there seems to be broad agreement on mass meetings etc, so the real question is how we advance these in an atomised and defeated class, not which particular narrative convinces us of their necessity. i won't presuade my workmates to all come to the pub together and discuss the drip-drip redundancies by telling them capitalism is in its death throes (though maybe i could persuade them of it in the style of an anabaptist prophet, and make myself a hostage to fortune), but i might by appealing to the evident fact that alone there's nothing we can do about them, but together we might just have a chance of at least upping the severance pay to tide us over while we find something else. material interests not metaphysical necessities are the order of the day.

it depends what you mean by "absolutely fucked." i mean a few of us (co-workers) went to the pub last week to meet a former workmate who was made redundant a couple of weeks ago. when we were discussing the accounts director who's been brought in as a cost-cutting hitman, i relayed the (true) story he'd told me on the train about the time he was employed by a factory to lay off half the staff and had to have his car escorted by police as it got pelted with eggs and stuff at the gates. one of my workmates replied "now i'm not being against capitalism or anything, but they're absolutely ruthless." the fact the disclaimer was necessary says something about the opening of a space for questioning not just the bosses, but the whole social system.

now i reckon i probably could convince at least a few of my workmates this is "the death throes of capitalism", since i'm fairly articulate, trusted, and i'm often asked about inflation/recession and the like because i know a bit about it. but i'd be making myself a hostage to fortune and completely discredit communist arguments when the upswing kicks in. so instead i'm just trying to stress the 'us and them' nature of the cuts, how we're being laid off one by one to cut costs when the 3 directors took dividends roughly the size of the whole wage bill for 40 or so staff last year. we lose our jobs and our boss still drives an aston martin etc.

i mean there's no culture of collective action, and the odds are we're going to get absolutely screwed. the bosses have got us stitched up with a drip-drip of reduandancies one by one, first the less popular incompetent new staff, most recently two of the longest serving and popular ones. this precludes the possibility of a 'spontaneous' mass meeting following mass redundancies. we're atomised and weak. but i think a rhetorical appeal to death throes would be ultimately counter-productive; really what we need is an inspiring example of collective action to show what is possible, but of course everyone's in that boat. in the meantime it's a case of trying to see it as us and them and looking out for each other as much as we can, which mostly means posting condolences on laid off co-workers facebooks