anarcho-spartism - and our 250,000th comment.

I'm not sure what's worse - being damned with faint praise by a Trotskyist or having platformists and Trotskyists lining up to call you an anarcho-spartoid. Oh wait, I do know.

Joe - you were contrasting large organisations to small ones simply on the basis of size - while suggesting the reason the small ones were small was because they had tight political agreement and were 'sectarian'. Since you didn't explain how the big organisations got big, I could only assume this was down to them having looser political agreement and not being 'sectarian' - perhaps you'd like to explain that then?

And you've not posted anything which distinguishes the libertarian organisations from the non-libertarian ones - apart from calling them libertarian - again, this is only formal and doesn't deal with the content.

I'm still waiting to a response to this by the way:

catch wrote:

Most revolutions have been fought by revolutionary, and counter-revolutionary, minorities - with the majority giving passive support to one or the other side.

I think the majority can take on revolutionary positions when the question is posed by events - but it'll be as a result rather than the cause of them - you can't gradually recruit people to an ideology, worker by worker, until there's more than 50% of the population in your gang, then declare a revolution/general strike once you get there. Same as it'd be nonsense to describe the majority of workers now as "pro-capitalist". Obviously I think we'll need a very significant minority for anything to be successful - and even during the current period of reaction things could be a lot better than they currently are (and couldn't be much worse), but the building blocks approach just leads to recruitment and growth for their own sakes.

On the same note - those who identify as revolutionary are often on the back end of any real movement, trying to play catch up, trying to avoid over-exposing themselves, trying to pull it back because "conditions aren't ready", or trying to insert their organisation in as a leadership for its own sake, and the rest. And quite 'reactionary' workers politically can be the most militant during strikes (and quickly overcome racial, gender and other boundaries in doing so).

Now, obviously I'd love to be proved wrong about the "always going to be a minority" thing, but I think our primary task is to organise and develop ourselves - not to try to organise the working class and fit it into specific organisations or ideologies. Especially at the moment - one of the biggest dangers to pro-revolutionaries is the naivety and mindless activism that thinks if we just work hard enough and grow quick enough we can turn things around - and that leads to a whole bunch of really, really bad political decisions (not to go back to the no strike thread but that seems to be one of the root causes of that particular debacle). It applies to workplace organising just as much as it does to summit hopping.

Small group sectarianism is certainly present in the Trotskyist movement but the kind of thinking used to justify it is different.

One of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism is the view that it is necessary to build a mass revolutionary organisation after all and even the Spartoid end of the spectrum formally takes that position. Any Spart you have the misfortune to talk to will be only too glad to give you a spittle flecked rant about the limits of sponaneity and the need to build a revolutionary party. There is, of course, a serious disconnect between this political view and the actual behaviour of Spartoid groups, but that's a slightly different issue.

Now you're cheating by using your moderator priveleges to hive off my comment and vaingloriously starting a thread about yourself.

Catch none of this has any relevance to what I've written here or where it does I have already covered it. I've grown tired with your game of putting words in my mouth and then demanding I respond to your critique of the words you just made up so I won't be responding to this.

catch wrote:

Joe - you were contrasting large organisations to small ones simply on the basis of size - while suggesting the reason the small ones were small was because they had tight political agreement and were 'sectarian'. Since you didn't explain how the big organisations got big, I could only assume this was down to them having looser political agreement and not being 'sectarian' - perhaps you'd like to explain that then?

And you've not posted anything which distinguishes the libertarian organisations from the non-libertarian ones - apart from calling them libertarian - again, this is only formal and doesn't deal with the content.

I'm still waiting to a response to this by the way:

catch wrote:

Most revolutions have been fought by revolutionary, and counter-revolutionary, minorities - with the majority giving passive support to one or the other side.

I think the majority can take on revolutionary positions when the question is posed by events - but it'll be as a result rather than the cause of them - you can't gradually recruit people to an ideology, worker by worker, until there's more than 50% of the population in your gang, then declare a revolution/general strike once you get there. Same as it'd be nonsense to describe the majority of workers now as "pro-capitalist". Obviously I think we'll need a very significant minority for anything to be successful - and even during the current period of reaction things could be a lot better than they currently are (and couldn't be much worse), but the building blocks approach just leads to recruitment and growth for their own sakes.

On the same note - those who identify as revolutionary are often on the back end of any real movement, trying to play catch up, trying to avoid over-exposing themselves, trying to pull it back because "conditions aren't ready", or trying to insert their organisation in as a leadership for its own sake, and the rest. And quite 'reactionary' workers politically can be the most militant during strikes (and quickly overcome racial, gender and other boundaries in doing so).

Now, obviously I'd love to be proved wrong about the "always going to be a minority" thing, but I think our primary task is to organise and develop ourselves - not to try to organise the working class and fit it into specific organisations or ideologies. Especially at the moment - one of the biggest dangers to pro-revolutionaries is the naivety and mindless activism that thinks if we just work hard enough and grow quick enough we can turn things around - and that leads to a whole bunch of really, really bad political decisions (not to go back to the no strike thread but that seems to be one of the root causes of that particular debacle). It applies to workplace organising just as much as it does to summit hopping.

Contradiction, surely? Is that minorities of pro-revolutionaries fight revolutions (and it is therefore of the first importance to develop this cadre) or is it that the mass proletariat is the (social) revolutionary subject?

f the latter, surely you don't say that the manner of the mass's reaction to events is not partly determined by their pre-existing ideas, and experience with struggle?

Why was this comment moved, it clearly does not apply to this thread and means that the point is unanswered on the other?

JoeBlack2 wrote:

Why was this comment moved, it clearly does not apply to this thread and means that the point is unanswered on the other?

I'd imagine it was because catch felt that it was necessary to have this discussion on another thread, rather than de-railing whichever thread you were originally discussing whatever you are on. Does it really matter? Why do you care?

:)

Tell you what, why don't I register on anarkismo and spit about it being run by anarcho-trots then see how long it takes for the admins to 'abuse their power'.

Oh wait, because that'd be fucking boring.